To all the Bellulars, Asmogolds, Preaches, QoL'ers and Fans that want to Design WOW.

[Relapses]

I already addressed the opinion thing. I don't care what your opinion is. Nor does anyone else. You do you. It's YOUR money. What I DO care about, is people like yourself and the OP who want to pretend everyone else is the problem, and daddy Blizzard has done nothing wrong and you point the finger at everyone but the company who is the root of all that is happened up to this point. They have clearly for years now released sub par, unfinished products (see Warcraft Reforged for the Optimus Prime example). They have been caught flat out lying to the public on numerous occasions. They have openly displayed their greed in the form of copious amounts of store items on top of sub fees and expansion costs. They have refused countless times to listen to players say something is incorrect or not working from the jump only to a year and a half later go "Daddy's got you." They have openly mocked people in an unprofessional, immature fashion on social media many times. They have been arrogant, stubborn, and inept at their jobs while being flat out pathological lying dicks to the people who pay their bloated salaries all the while trying to do virtue signaling for BLM and the LGBTQ community and on the same token supporting China and physically harassing their own people. But you, the OP, and others desperately defending this trash company are right. It's everyone else, and they are just FoLlOWiNg StReAmErS. Nothing I am writing is "nonsense". It's reality.

Your superior moral compass has been noted, categorized and will be summarily ignored. Have a nice day, dude.

[roboscorcher]

Spot on like everyone is saying. Bunch of armchair developers that don't know the first thing about what it actually takes to do this. Meh about Preach, but Asmon would be worse then the current lawsuit Blizz is dealing with.

Preach was spot on about his PTR critiques of: Legion leggos, azerite armor, and covenants. Asmon is more of a reactionary, his best critiques are usually of Twitch. But for Ion to ignore prominent criticisms over and over, this is why the game is tanking. The one system they did right in Shadowlands, PvP, was the one spot where they actually listened to PTR players and revised. Players complained, they changed, they complained again, change again, players happy.

And then there's Ion who ignored all the warnings about covenant abilities. Legion's success went to his head I think.

[Kralljin]

Land fall rep thinking it’s how you got a bawlers pass (it didn’t people still complained)

That's just a non argument.

"People had to do something, they complained about it", like please, at least pick a criticism that has a modicum of merit to it, Brawler's guild was entirely optional and quite likely voiced by people who wanted to engage in the Brawler's guild - not by raiders who actually just wanted to raidlog.

Shado-pan offence for progress gear.

Again, primary source for that Rep was raiding.

Kirin tor/sunreavers offensive, rep wasn’t needed but daily’s to ungrate the isle of thunder.

So if you really dislike them...why did you do them?
It's not like the contribution of one person suddenly accelerated that by days or even weeks.

If you were stuck on a server that frankly didn't a give shit, then you're out of luck, you doing dailies certainly won't accelerate that process by significant amount, you might as well sit back and not piss yourself off.

shado-pan rep was massively farmed by pug groups clearing the first few troll packs before resetting just like icc, because the gear was good for starting progress people complained they needed to do it just like the launch reps.

In other words, rather than wait until the rep comes in by just playing, they wanted to get it done ASAP, which is their choice.

Let's not forget that you'd need the VP anyway to buy them (which is weekly capped) and those Items were equivalent to Normal ToT loot, so alternatives were not out of reach for raiders.

Sorry, this is again such a minute complaint that, guess what, primarily applies to non raiders.

The offensives also unlocked the isle which in turn unlocked a world boss raider wanted for an extra chance at loot.

So if you didn't want to do them you could just...wait?
You as a single player didn't have much control on how fast this is going to progress, if you still feel compelled to engage in that content despite *waiting* being a completely legitimate option, that's on you.

Like, can you please voice complaints that are like "If i don't engage in that content, i'm not going to get a given upgrade, regardless of my preferences" like it is the case now, not those fringe cases?

I also remind you again that World boss loot was Normal ToT Ilvl - not out of reach for raiders, especially by the time it unlocked.

I take it you haven’t progress raided before?

Been a hardcore raider from Cata to BfA, so yes.

Because this isn’t how most progress raiding works. You don’t pass on easily obtainable upgrades when trying to progress. For an example going through say 5.2 next to no one is going to look at shado-pan upgrades when starting the tier and just ignore them because better or equivalent items might drop while progressing and they might get them.

We didn't do that and we still manged to get a Top 10 spot on the 10man Heroic Ladder.

If you were a heroic raider and decked out in 517 gear (509 Base Ilvl + 8 from VP), then those 522 were hardly worth the effort, disregarding that you'd need multiple weeks of VP cap to buy them anyway.

no it wasn’t hard and wasn’t time gated people still complained about it because raiders didn’t want to farm mobs just like they didn’t want to do 2 BG’s for the quest line.

And compared to the last few expansions, grinding for an hour or two to do the work for an entire patch would be heaven.

Disregarding that this whole "Do PvP for PvE progression" is pretty disputed and hasn't been repeated again in the same fashion.

I can’t say you’ve helped your case on you playing mop when you act like people didn’t care about unlocking world bosses or being able to get more slots of raid quality gear from a rep vender on the isle.

And i can't say you helped your case when you realize how fringe those cases actually are.
You try to nitpick, then even get shit wrong but also fail to realize how completely irrelevant those things were to people that did actually raid on a consistent basis, especially top end raiders.

[Lolites]

Damn imagine that, someone actually believe that people really invested and passionate on the game would actually make the shit we have right now worse LOL.

well, passionate people on this website already shown with their ideas to "save wow" that vast majority of them would make it INCREDIBLY worse... some did indeed offer ideas that sound great ...on paper, but tbh so did warfronts, island expedition, azerite gear and many other...
thing is passion doesnt necessarily make you good at something...

- - - Updated - - -

Talent is one thing(and talent is a pursued interest), but I've always thought the issue was less with talent(we aren't reinventing the wheel with wow) and more to do with priorities.

i think the issue is the beta is too late, they spend year working on something, half a year before release they put it on beta and people go "nah, its not good"
now what do you do? Blizz decided to go with "lets hope some people will like it and rest wont care much"

its like if you have a school project and shortly before deadline someone tells you it will be passing grade, but barely, what you do, try to iterate on it to make it a bit less shitty, to be sure you pass, or scratch it and start anew hoping you will make it in time and get good grade, BUT risking you wont have anything done for deadline?
its not easy choice even to do it for yourself, but to do it for company... well thats decision i dont envy the manager

[Relapses]

I'd say the big difference between some anonymous rando on a meager fan forum and a big-name content creator who makes a living off playing/talking about the game is that the content creator is staking their reputation and livelihood on their opinions, so they probably give them a hell of a lot more thought than "gee, I'd like this thing".

You'd think that but then there's people like Bellular whose only motivation in life is measured through YouTube analytics.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

So if you really dislike them...why did you do them?

I didn't dislike them but others did and were vocal about it. I agree with you if don't enjoy doing content just don't do in most cases they aren't actually needed.

The problem is there is a vocal portion of the player base that think's they need to do every little thing possible to get every advantage possible and then while jumping though any hoop in the way to that advantage will complain about said hoops. This vocal portion isn't just ignored blizzard will change things to appeal to them which then leads to negative effects on other portions of the player base which is exactly what happened with wod and its massive shift In content when compared to mop.

[Kralljin]

I didn't dislike them but others did and were vocal about it. I agree with you if don't enjoy doing content just don't do in most cases they aren't actually needed.

That doesn't change that the situation is fundamentally different - especially as on most servers this whole thing took long enough that the most cutting edge progression was over by that point.

Keep in mind, the actual cutting edge progression happens within the first 2-4 weeks, after that, it sharply declines and as long as people don't need to actively engage in a system, it doesn't bother them too much, really.

The problem is there is a vocal portion of the player base that think's they need to do every little thing possible to get every advantage possible and then while jumping though any hoop in the way to that advantage will complain about said hoops.

The problem is that the issues you're raising largely applied to people that aren't even raiding or only raid very casually at best, only there those mechanics actually *might* have caused problems, but they didn't because that audience is, just that, more casual in their approach.

Like seriously, the issues you're describing flew over the heads of most people that have been invested into raiding because the Ilvl of raiding was high enough that you didn't need to bother with those things post 5.1.

I am sorry, but i see this as just another attempt to rationalize the conspiracy theory that WoD in the state it launched was actually planned by the devs, despite that being obviously horseshit - the expansion was halfassed and the only part they finished was raiding, plain and simple.
Of course there is nothing else to do besides raiding because the devs likely sank too much time into terrible features like Garrison and then decided to cut and run with the expansion.

No engaged raider would have given a shit if they had released a zone like Suramar or stuff like the Withered scenario in WoD , as long as those elements don't award universally relevant power upgrades, most engaged raiders are pretty open about these things.
Reputation are probably the best example how halfassed WoD was, whereas in MoP they at least had some daily / story quests, WoD just had "kill some mobs in a zone", basically Vanilla reputations without the Vanilla flair.

[Release]

I don't think you can defend Blizzard in this instance. The sub numbers are way down and the prominent critics of the game like Asmon etc were correct in that Blizzard always release dogshit systems at the start of the expansion then iterate on them to make them good at the end.

The current furour so early in the expansion meant Blizzard felt compelled to change the systems quickly after being told from Alpha onwards they wouldn't work and that feedback was ignored. This has happened since WoD, this forum is notorious for defending Blizzard at all costs but I think this is indefensible and the game is in a serious decline.

[Dropakeg]

These two things don't need to be mutually exclusive.

Absolutely. In fact, one would think that fun would actually lead to more MAUs.

[Gangresnake]

Here's an interesting video on the subject :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHg99hwQGY

The TLDR is that customers are the best at identifying problems and engineers/developpers are the best at actually solving them.

If you let the customers run the shop, you're obviously going to be in trouble.
If you ignore the customers complaints for years and solely rely on your developpers because they """know best""", you're headed for even bigger trouble.

[Aucald]

My biggest issue with Blizzard's development woes of late ("of late" being the era of WoD/Legion/BfA/Shadowlands) isn't that they don't listen to the player base, because I don't really think the player base is entitled to be listened to, or really should be listened to on a basic level. My biggest issue is that Blizzard doesn't really seem to learn from its own past mistakes regardless of the obviousness of them, regardless of the fact that they need to do an end-run about those mistakes later on in a mid-expansion patch or the like. This pattern of essential stubbornness has been at its most stark in BfA and now Shadowlands, in which Shadowlands repeated some of BfA's game system problems nearly note-for-note, only to be course-corrected later on in a move that left almost everyone shaking their heads at the obviousness of it.

I can't really tell them what will or should work, as I have my own ideas of what would make a great version of WoW, but that idea probably wouldn't equate to a great experience for other people who are looking for something else. I think I can see what hasn't been working, though; and feel that Blizzard should be able to see that too. The fact that they seem stuck in a rut is something of a dead giveaway. Not really going to flail at Blizzard like a spurned lover, either; they owe me nothing, and similarly, I owe them nothing as well. When and if they solicit my feedback I'll give it to them, but beyond that, I tend to vote with my wallet - they get my money when their product(s) merit it, and if they don't then I seek entertainment elsewhere. That's the limit of my engagement with their development processes.

[starstationprofm]

So if you are not good at the game your opinions don't matter? Or is it that they are both also players like us that their opinions don't matter? Boy I hope you never run a company...

I may not like or agree with those mentioned either, but these people exist to be the voice that helps get out the opinions more broadly

If you're talking about balance, categorically.

Like I never want to hear Asmongold have an opinion on PvP or Mythic Raiding, he's shit at both.

[GreenJesus]

Its actually accurate but not how op thinks. Homer is not the playerbase. Homer is just a random guy hired and told to fix the company issues and he doesn't care about the customers - he doesn't listen to customers but does his own thing. This is blizz perfectly illustrated.

Yep. Homer is actually all of the unpaid interns working on the game.

[Ringthane]

Or they can choose to work somewhere else, where chances are that they will be paid and treated better. Crazy thought, I know

In this country? Not likely. Not while the rich get richer and the rest of us get fleeced for everything we have.

[GreenJesus]

If you're talking about balance, categorically.

Like I never want to hear Asmongold have an opinion on PvP or Mythic Raiding, he's shit at both.

Well technically Asmongold is a gladiator. Kappa. Totally not boosted btw. /s

[lockybalboa]

I love those people because they dare to speak the truth on the shortcomings of the game that the fanboys can't handle

[Varitok]

I love those people because they dare to speak the truth on the shortcomings of the game that the fanboys can't handle

To be fair, They are all fanboys themselves and Belluar gives blizz hard passes on a lot of the things they do.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Well technically Asmongold is a gladiator. Kappa. Totally not boosted btw. /s

You need to filter every person trough their circumstances and what they actually are. Asmon for exmaple is a guy that has an army of online servants and plays more than normal people with a functioning live do. That means his opinions on certain topics are often negatively tilted, especially when it comes to topics like exclusivity, time investment, social feedback (posing), etc. since he frankly lacks the perspective of someone who doesn't want to play the game for their livelyhood and doesn't have an army of boot-lickers at their beck an' call. As long as you account for that some other stuff he says is not without merrit from what I've seen of the few bits I've seen from him.

The same thing is true for preach, he has massive endgame raiiding bias as well as a popularity bonus he tends to forget when it comes to group content.

[starstationprofm]

Well technically Asmongold is a gladiator. Kappa. Totally not boosted btw. /s

I saw that video. I don't recall who boosted him but they were pretty fucking good to 2v3 all those games. They weren't even listening to his voice comms lmao.

[Mendzia]

I was 99.9% sure he was trolling, but he's autistic so who knows, maybe he was serious afterall.

Are you online doctor who can diagnose illnesses through youtube videos?