I feel optimistic about WoW

[Nyel]

Positive changes of which 99% have been beta feedback and have been GLADLY ignored one year ago? They changed their mind because retail WoW is in shambles, not because they finally realize that their design philosophy is a fail since BfA.

[sam86]

I don't for this year honestly
I do hope it get better next exp, but for me SL already sunk
just to be clear for me wow or bust, i have ZERO intention of play any other mmo beside wow

[Ardourdan]

I'm not sure it will be fixed in Shadowlands. How do you fix a WoW expansion that doesn't feel like WoW? I don't think players want 10 max level systems that require daily management. I don't think they want Boreghast either.

The only thing that can possibly save WoW now is WoW 2.0.

[crusadernero]

BfA was them trying to do an amazing expansion with a huge budget. SL was them trying the same with a small budget, I think they thought they could pull it out better. I'd argue that BfA was worse than SL at the beginning, however, but it got much better.

So far SL suffers from a major content drought, which must be due to the smaller budget and smaller team actively working on it. (No, that's not the product of 300+ people working full time on it, which they said is the size of the WoW team). It will soon be one year of Shadowlands which is half through the expansion and unless 9.2 comes by then, which isn't going to happen, it will remain disappointing. By the same time in the BfA lifecycle we were near 8.2, while now we still don't have 9.1.5. So while I'm curious about what comes next in SL, I don't expect they can turn it around, but would love to be wrong.

With 10.0 they can turn things around again like they did with Legion, it depends on how much resources they are getting for it, the budget is a corporate decision. Does the corporation believe a big budget is warranted for 10.0 or do they think that SL is indicative that it's not worth investing big in WoW anymore?

So I want to be optimistic, but am quite wary that cold corporate decisions may not be what the fans (not the haters) hope for.

SL feels very much like WoD at this point. We will get more content for SL, but they will focus mostly on the next xpac. WoD was the only xpac were I was unsubbed most of it and by the looks of it, SL might be the same. Korthia is a nice zone, but its to little. Its nothing like mecagnome island and wont last beyond the grind people do now.

What might save wow is what Blizzard has in store for us after the last cinematic, storywise. Where will the jailer go? Whats his plans? Whatever happens in SL, it will obviously effect the next xpac in some way. Do we get a "new" azeroth? Do we just travel to another planet/world and hunt him down?

Big brain & unrealistic thinking wants me to see a totally revamped azeroth(Much more than cata did), we are all pushed back to level 1 and each race starts off in the original starting zone. Humans in Elwyn, orcs in barrens, etc. We get to quest through every zone in a changed azeroth once again. End game content and patches could be new zones but also hugely changed EK/K zones were the jailers forces have taken control.

Realistically we get some huge end-of-the-world xpac were we fight space cows with lazers and hunt down the jailer in some weird off-world & different dimenzion world.

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I'm not sure it will be fixed in Shadowlands. How do you fix a WoW expansion that doesn't feel like WoW? I don't think players want 10 max level systems that require daily management. I don't think they want Boreghast either.

The only thing that can possibly save WoW now is WoW 2.0.

tbh I think people would accept longer leveling time if that ment max level had less(none) crappy systems at max level.

[Resheph]

I have enough alts and Goblin activities to keep me busy and interested at points when the main content falters like now.

Yes, I feel 9.1.5 is a good, constructive patch which hopefully signals the way to a 9.2 that would be better received by the bitter and vocal few. Whatever it is I am sure I will enjoy it, just like the vast majority of the casual player base.

[Deneios]

Thet have dug themselves to bedrock with bfa and SL. Only good thing about it is they have a solid footing from where to jump and they should do it before Ion gets the pick axe.
Best thing what can happen to Wow is boot Ion back to raid dev and get someone else to lead.

[Azerate]

I've enjoyed the game a lot in the past years. Sure there were parts of it that annoyed me, but overall it never really affected me to the point of not enjoying the game anymore.

A lot of wow players misunderstand what it means when the game is bad. It's...when you just don't want to play it. A lot of the biggest whiners still play it daily, they just dislike parts of it. People just have the expectation for the game to be perfect, and that's just not gonna happen. If you get enjoyment out of playing the game, that means it's a good game. It's as simple as that.

[Relapses]

I've enjoyed the game a lot in the past years. Sure there were parts of it that annoyed me, but overall it never really affected me to the point of not enjoying the game anymore.

A lot of wow players misunderstand what it means when the game is bad. It's...when you just don't want to play it. A lot of the biggest whiners still play it daily, they just dislike parts of it. People just have the expectation for the game to be perfect, and that's just not gonna happen. If you get enjoyment out of playing the game, that means it's a good game. It's as simple as that.

This is why I rank WoD as my favorite expansion. It was the expansion I raided in the most and the raiding was really, really good. The raid teams I raided with were awesome and I made a lot of friends that I still hang out with today.

It's also why I dislike Legion. Even though I liked the raiding, I hated the RNG nature of early Legion and the AP grind burned me the fuck out. I left right before Tomb which is when everybody says the expansion started to rapidly improve. Sucks, but it is what it is. Since then, I've been a M+ junkie for BfA and SL and I still enjoy the game, I just can't see myself getting back into raiding any time soon. It's still definitely worth the $15/mo and even though I don't think the game is perfect, there's nothing else quite like WoW out there so it scratches a very specific itch.

[Farora]

The people that made Wow good have left many years ago, so I don't see it becoming a game worth playing ever again.

[Uvania]

Same, atleast on alliance side since all min-maxers have left for horde side to "optimize" for m+ and raiding / pvp which has made alliance pugging way less toxic on EU atleast

They maybe faction changed to win bgs but... last time it was a brawl i cared about (warsong scramble) i won 9 of 10 battles i did as alliance, what a shocker huh?

[saixilein]

Im not. Because i felt soooo often like u right now and they was able to fck up everything in some other ways in next Xpac. Or They Fix A, fck up B and dont change C at all. Then next Xpac they dont change A, fix B and fck up C. etc etc... Game will never be perfect, there are som fck up that stop me from playing the game and some i dont really care.

[Enter Name Here]

for me it feels as if they might lose even more players with that move since all it does is showing that they only are willing to give the players some quality of life when it's convenient positive PR in times of need.

[Relapses]

for me it feels as if they might lose even more players with that move since all it does is showing that they only are willing to give the players some quality of life when it's convenient positive PR in times of need.

Ah, the duality of the WoW community.

Players: Blizzard, please make your game less shitty by allowing free Covenant swapping, removing Covenant energy, removing the AOE cap, making Torghast less of a chore and improving Legendary crafting

::Blizzard makes the game less shitty by doing all of these things::

Players: lol just doing it for the PR

Blizzard:

[Hellobolis]

bit early for optimism.

if they listen to player feedback in 9.2 PTR then there is cautious hope for optimism. and then they have to keep that up and not do a major fuckup until at least 10.0 before people will actually start to give them the benefit of the doubt again.

if they fuck up before 10.0 there will be "told you so" all over for weeks.

[Merin]

I am not returning to Shadowlands. There is no worthwhile content in this expansion, so systems being relaxed and a scant few cosmetics being added to niche allied races doesn't interest me.

"We've made it so some parts the game don't actively punish you for existing and also this hyper-niche race that should have been a checkbox for another race used to have with 4 hairstyles, now it has 6." Sorry, but that's not an exciting patch to me, I'd actually reallly question the standards of anyone this impresses.

The best part is all of this all clearly existed in the pipeline and they simply chose to lie about it. Ion says no ripcord? Ripcord pops up instantly. Almost like it was planned for 9.3's lull as per usual. Blizzard says no more race customization for SL, wow, look it's 10.0 content from the future! I'd question how often they do this but even at launch content is usually thin, it's like the entire company is alergic to work.

Anyway, I am willing to pay attention to substantial work done in the future and hope for the best, but it'll be deeper into expansions so I can stop delivering charitble contributions to Activision. The last year finally severed my interest in the game. Blizzard is an interesting studio but they have fully cratered in terms of quality. There are simply far better games out there to play.

[Kaver]

With all the positive changes to the game coming in 9.1.5, I can't help feel optimistic about the game and the direction they are heading in with it.

I'm excited to see what 9.2 brings, and 9.3, and eventually a new expansion in 10.0. I bet they will plan some massive expansion for 10.0 to celebrate 20 years of WoW.

Do you feel optimistic about WoW and where its headed?

I really hope they won’t continue the same circle of mistakes they have made the last 5 years. I’m not sure if I’m optimistic or not.

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Ah, the duality of the WoW community.

Players: Blizzard, please make your game less shitty by allowing free Covenant swapping, removing Covenant energy, removing the AOE cap, making Torghast less of a chore and improving Legendary crafting

::Blizzard makes the game less shitty by doing all of these things::

Players: lol just doing it for the PR

Blizzard:

You left out the part where we asked for all those things 1.5 years ago during the alpha/beta of the expansion but Blizzard decided to leave us in torture for 1 year before acting on it.

[Relapses]

You left out the part where we asked for all those things 1.5 years ago during the alpha/beta of the expansion but Blizzard decided to leave us in torture for 1 year before acting on it.

Did I forget the part where Blizzard was holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play the game in a state that you didn't like? Is it really Blizzard's fault you bought an expansion that was exactly the way it had been advertised?

[Hellobolis]

Did I forget the part where Blizzard was holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play the game in a state that you didn't like? Is it really Blizzard's fault you bought an expansion that was exactly the way it had been advertised?

and... it's those people that quit the game that are now feeling optimistic about it?

[Flaim]

Gearing and itemization was almost perfect at the end of BFA. The randomness, and cool effects from the corrupted gear, and changing Azerite armor was almost universally praised by the players. [...] and the quest daily content was engaging for almost the entire patch life.

thanks for outing this thread as bait, ion. you can, kindly, get lost.

all they did was what they would have normaly added in last shadowlands patch,they did it early this time because of desperation,losing milions of players is pretty bad

when an expansion launches with these changes and no bs systems maybe they can get some credit

amen.

[Marrilaife]

Gearing and itemization was almost perfect at the end of BFA.

Lol, you mean after most guilds were 80-90% done with the progression they were told "now you can pick corruptions, go back to grind?" It was a massive spit to the face to basically force everyone to go back to the content they thought they were done grinding to "optimize" their corruptions. Basically the whole BFA was an exercise in wasting players' time. You got X? Now grind that content again because we put Y in it. For example islands. Fuck them. Every time I thought I won't have to see another island in my life they attached a new carrot to it. That's why if BFA turned anything around was my willingness to play this game. Seems Shadowlands is continuing that path.