I feel optimistic about WoW

[hulkgor]

I don't understand why people that actually seem to hate wow, and state they've not played in a long time, continue spewing their disdain on a daily basis on mmo-c or similar online forums.

Whenever a game stops entertaining me, i stop playing it and thinking about it. If something new happens to it (a big change, a patch, an expansion) and i find it interesting, i'll check back.

I don't linger on its message boards trying to convince everyone it's a shit game, or a dead game, or what not.

Guess i'm the odd one.

[arkanon]

I don't understand why people that actually seem to hate wow, and state they've not played in a long time, continue spewing their disdain on a daily basis on mmo-c or similar online forums.

Whenever a game stops entertaining me, i stop playing it and thinking about it. If something new happens to it (a big change, a patch, an expansion) and i find it interesting, i'll check back.

I don't linger on its message boards trying to convince everyone it's a shit game, or a dead game, or what not.

Guess i'm the odd one.

Is anyone trying to convince others its a shit game? or just stating their opinion in a thread asking for their opinion?

[Kalocy Jim]

Tell me - how do I feel?

How DO you feel? This is fun going in circles bud!

Doesnt this contradict the idea that the devs are listening and making positive changes? If they didn’t make the change because of feedback, then they are still not listening….

If your assumption is that they make changes solely on player feedback, then you'd be right, i'd be contradicting myself. But thankfully they don't. They certainly incorporate player feedback into the changes they make. In some instances they flat out disagree with the community, to which i'm thankful for because the game would be terrible if it was the case. In other instances (to which they indicated in their 9.1.5 post) they agree with player feedback and the change is made PARTLY because of that feedback. It is also partly because of the experience of having it in the game and it not working out exactly like they thought it would.

You really like going through next level mental gymnastics to try to prove a point or win an argument when i'm not asking for people to disprove me or counter any of my arguments. Again, i'm really not making any points or arguments, im simply stating that i'm optimistic and stating why i'm optimistic about the future of the game.

How is this hard to understand for you?

[arkanon]

How DO you feel? This is fun going in circles bud!



If your assumption is that they make changes solely on player feedback, then you'd be right, i'd be contradicting myself. But thankfully they don't. They certainly incorporate player feedback into the changes they make. In some instances they flat out disagree with the community, to which i'm thankful for because the game would be terrible if it was the case. In other instances (to which they indicated in their 9.1.5 post) they agree with player feedback and the change is made PARTLY because of that feedback. It is also partly because of the experience of having it in the game and it not working out exactly like they thought it would.

You really like going through next level mental gymnastics to try to prove a point or win an argument when i'm not asking for people to disprove me or counter any of my arguments. Again, i'm really not making any points or arguments, im simply stating that i'm optimistic and stating why i'm optimistic about the future of the game.

How is this hard to understand for you?

So which is it? Because of the community, "PARTLY" because of the community, or what you said literally a few posts ago:

They clearly stated in their post that the "ripcord" being pulled wasn't because of the community, it was because it made sense to do so in the context of the story and where we are at in the expansion life cycle.

People dont generally "ask" for their points to be countered or disproven, so im really not sure what this is supposed to mean? And to be completely honest, you kind of did ask for varied and potentially conflicting point of views when you asked for players opinions on the direction of the game.

The italic part kind of makes it sound like you really did just want everyone to agree with you, but thats not what you OP asked for.

[Kalocy Jim]

So which is it? Because of the community, "PARTLY" because of the community, or what you said literally a few posts ago:

Can you read? The ripcord issue is 1 issue. There are many changes being made in 9.1.5. I just said they incorporate player feedback about issues, but not that particular issue. They clearly stated it was because it made sense in the context of the story.

I'm really done going in circles with you, if you can't accept that, then all good. Its been fun chatting with you though bud.

[Niwes]

Derail the thread? What are you talking about? You asked if people are optimistic or not, and some people are not. They are even going so far as to explain WHY they are not optimistic, and you are automatically saying that is pessimistic, which is disingenuous at best.

Many have mentioned it; you are extremely defensive and aggressive towards people not supporting your narrative, and throw around insults and accusations left right and centre – its clear you didn’t want an open discussion, but rather validation of your opinion – many users have said the same thing. If anything, you are derailing your own thread with your aggressive tone and responses to people who don’t agree with you.

very well said.

i still try to figure out what OP is trying to do here. what the real thing is, he wanna get out of it. from a rational point of view there is nothing to win, regardless what the opinion is about Blizz, WoW, future, etc.

just look at the 2 extremes:

- whole thread is full of posts saying he is totally right and they have same opinion. and then? whats the profit for OP ?
- whole thread is full of posts that disagree with him and they bashing each other. and then? whats the profit for OP ?

if you wanna find confirmation, you will not get it in an internet forum.
if you wanna convince ppl about a video game opinion, you will just find „taste differs“.

so, i dont really get OPs motives behind all that. i dont really get it.

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I don't understand why people that actually seem to hate wow, and state they've not played in a long time, continue spewing their disdain on a daily basis on mmo-c or similar online forums.

Whenever a game stops entertaining me, i stop playing it and thinking about it. If something new happens to it (a big change, a patch, an expansion) and i find it interesting, i'll check back.

I don't linger on its message boards trying to convince everyone it's a shit game, or a dead game, or what not.

Guess i'm the odd one.

the simple fact is: reality and truth are not that simple, like you wanna make it look here.

90% of the ppl that you call „ppl that hate wow“ are ppl playing the game for long and literally loved it. and they still love aspects of it, but its more and more difficult to love it, because many aspects of it changed to another direction (they not like). the keyword here is „many“. not all. many. and this means they are disapointed and still wanna keep the good aspects of wow and telling blizz to stop going further in a direction of their beloved game, they do not like. its not they cant let it go. they dont want to let it go, because its not completely shit, in every aspect. but they are driven more and more away from their beloved hobby, and that sucks, and thats why they complain. its as natural and obvious as going poop.

its the same with a girl friend. you dont go „click“ and now you instantly hate everything on her. there are always aspects you like and also things, going in the „wrong“ direction (from your point of view). you dont go „i hate you now“. but you are more and more pissed about some aspects you dont like, combined in a person you wanna like and liked in the past.

so, plz, dont act like that stupid little timmy going „why complaining?, if you dont like it, dont play it“. things are NEVER that simple and things NEVER happen that way…

[Echo of Soul]

very well said.

i still try to figure out what OP is trying to do here. what the real thing is, he wanna get out of it. from a rational point of view there is nothing to win, regardless what the opinion is about Blizz, WoW, future, etc.

He's trying to say, "it's okay now, you can all come back, Blizzard has changed I swear".

The mass exodus probably hit him very hard and he wants, no need people to come back to the game because he himself is incapable of leaving.

You can see it very clearly, he's agreeing with everyone who has something positive to say while brushing off everyone negative as someone who quit years ago but who can't let go and come here out of hate.
It's a pretty basic tactic when you want to paint a prettier picture, you make sure that every one knows that everything ugly isn't actually part of the picture.

This is a "please come back" thread, not a back and forth. It's blind fanboyism, not a nuanced discussion.

[Gaidax]

What I see now is not much more than emergency expansion salvage operation. Some exec in the HQ, seeing the performance last few months, slammed their hand on the table and yelled "just give them fucking everything we can now".

I'd be wary of being overly optimistic at that - I first need to see what will happen next expansion and whether we will keep having this Blizz', lets call it, "attitude" that brought up this crisis to begin with. I'd be more positive about the whole thing if not their blue post rationalizing launch restrictions, it sounded to me like they still think that what they did was the right way to do it and that's a suspect right there.

Over the last few years we had more than plenty declarations about lessons learned or about making things clearer and better, only to often them do 180 on that, and sometimes the next patch (ilvl matters -> corruptions, as example).

The changes are positive, but I just can't get rid of this suspicion that decision makers there still think they did things right with all the restrictions at launch and that is what matters, not some gestures they toss at us in minor patch.

[Falkeshall]

I just reinstalled. +1 sub later when I muster up the mental energy to sit and reconfigure bartender, unit frames, etc.

[Syegfryed]

My point was that if everyone is so smart about who should be fired they should also be smart enough to say who should replace them.

Is not a valid point because i do not work with game developers, they do, they know names of people who work in that department, i can only say from what i know, and i know the current team, or at least the lead, is awful. We can see the current job is bad without knowing who should replace then. I could say someone like Metzen or the other guy that is in heartstone now, but id on't know how they are doing or if they will even want the job.

But for all mean, i could replace Danuseur, easily.

[lolmmofuture]

i dont LUL

[Yriel]

EXACTLY. And using your example, the best solution might not be to add solo queue rated content, but rather to ask "why are these people not feel satisfied with the solo queue content / rewards, and how can we make that content more engaging for them". The solution might not be what the players are expecting, but so long as it fixes the "problem" they have, then its a win/win.

I think this is a great example why this design philosophy has flaws. People are different.
Imagine you have 5 players.
- Player one has his RL friends play with him. They go online together after school or work and do everything together. He doesn't solo anything because he doesn't have the need for it.
- Player two has a big, active and open guild. If she asks "Hey anyone want to do XYZ" she always finds enough members to do it. She also doesn't want to or needs to solo anything.
- Player three is in a family guild for years. Many of the guildmembers has become his friends but due to changing life-situations people are playing less and in different timeframes so there are rarely enough people online to do stuff most of the time. So he has to do stuff solo most of the times.
- Player four has been in several guilds and has made bad experiences with all of them. She doesn't want to be in a guild anymore and has to do everything solo.
- Player five is a bit anti-social, he doesn't want to be forced to do anything or play at certain times and doesn't join a guild because he feels he'd be pressured to do so. He also isn't interested in making friends online.

So please, how is the dev solving the "problem" of solo players for all of them?
Forcing them all into guilds? Player three doesn't want to leave his friends and players four and five have no interest in joining (another) guild.
Hoping they find friends in forced grouping? Due to the current playstyle there is no time to actually talk with people in instances and most efficient players are usually of type one or two and have no special interest in playing with the one random they needed to fill their group in the future.

I mean, Blizz tried time and time again and failed every time with this task. They constantly force people into groups only to go back on that later for whatever reason. Maybe it would be a better solution in some cases to give the players what they want instead of "designing" a solution that the designer sees as favourable. Maybe not every time but when it is reasonable.

It's pretty clear that the Blizz Designers create something that they want to play. Not nessecarily something that their customers want to play. That is not always a good way to do business.

[mbit]

My point was that if everyone is so smart about who should be fired they should also be smart enough to say who should replace them.

Its easier to tell dude who lost drivers license shouldn't drive the school bus anymore than figure out which driver is the best. And to make it worse wow is too unique to correlate well with any standardized testing. A really smart guy probably will do better than a dropout but there is no testing for good game design.

[Geckoo]

I'm not currently playing the game and i don't plan to at least until the next expansion. It's not a matter of how good or bad the patch looks, it's a matter of trust.

It's a pattern that keeps happening expansion after expansion: they create a problem just so that they can sell the solution later. The first time you fall for it, because hey, they are listening!, right? But it happens again... and again. So at some point you need to have some self-respect and just move on.

So no, i'm not optimistic about WoW, because this patch is just regluar business with them.

[Echo of Soul]

Its easier to tell dude who lost drivers license shouldn't drive the school bus anymore than figure out which driver is the best. And to make it worse wow is too unique to correlate well with any standardized testing. A really smart guy probably will do better than a dropout but there is no testing for good game design.

True. We don't work there so we don't know who they have who could be a good fit.
If they have to hire from outside the company we definitely have no idea. Sure we could say a name like Todd Howard or Yoshi-P but that's not realistic. We have no way of knowing what talent is out there and would be willing to change jobs.
We can only judge the current leader and see that he's doing a bad job. It's Blizzard who has to find a replacement assuming that they agree with us which I doubt that they do.

It's very unreasonable to expect the customer to solve staffing issues. If I go to Wendy's and I'm treated like shit I can demand that their employee be fired but it's not my responsibility to find a suitable replacement. I just want to know that the next time I go there that that employee will be gone and someone competent will greet me in their place otherwise I'll go to a different restaurant.

[MoanaLisa]

Its easier to tell dude who lost drivers license shouldn't drive the school bus anymore than figure out which driver is the best. And to make it worse wow is too unique to correlate well with any standardized testing. A really smart guy probably will do better than a dropout but there is no testing for good game design.

"Good game design" is in the eyes of the beholder/player. I dislike the systems that are being created for WoW as much as anyone and have said so. That said, MMO's are grindy beasts, nearly all of them and complaining about grinds in MMO's is pointless. It's not so much the fact that there's a grind but there are good and bad examples to be found. What bothers me most about the game as it now sits is the lack of transparency.

My primary issue with calls for anyone to be fired is that the forum crowd is a guided missile not pointed at whoever is responsible for things but at whoever is doing the communicating. GC, then community managers until Ion took over communications chores. Tom Chilton was game director for years and during some of WoW's most difficult times (Cataclysm being the best example) but who got the blame? The guy doing the talking at the time: Greg Street. And that's the main reason why I consider calls to fire anyone at Blizzard BS. Guaranteed: If Ion turned over the responsibilities for talking to players to someone else it would only take a few months before that someone else needed to be fired. That's just BS.

[ClassicPeon]

Blizzard is virtue signaling IN their game.

Its one of the worst things a fantasy game maker can do. Literally limitting the stories you are going to tell because they have to conform to specific rabid emerging cultures on social media platforms.

Any and all evidence shows that pandering to this group of people is bad for business. Hopefully Blizzard will see that soon enough

[Aggressive]

What I see now is not much more than emergency expansion salvage operation. Some exec in the HQ, seeing the performance last few months, slammed their hand on the table and yelled "just give them fucking everything we can now".

I'd be wary of being overly optimistic at that - I first need to see what will happen next expansion and whether we will keep having this Blizz', lets call it, "attitude" that brought up this crisis to begin with. I'd be more positive about the whole thing if not their blue post rationalizing launch restrictions, it sounded to me like they still think that what they did was the right way to do it and that's a suspect right there.

Over the last few years we had more than plenty declarations about lessons learned or about making things clearer and better, only to often them do 180 on that, and sometimes the next patch (ilvl matters -> corruptions, as example).

The changes are positive, but I just can't get rid of this suspicion that decision makers there still think they did things right with all the restrictions at launch and that is what matters, not some gestures they toss at us in minor patch.

This is my thinking. 100% agree with you. This is nothing more then giving players what they want cause the MAU's are sucking ass for them right now. I agree they still feel they were right in how they launched the game, and they still think it was ok in how they did things in the game from the beginning. So nothing about these changes make me optimistic. Only when the game is borderline to dying will I think Blizzard has changed, and only then, to listening to what the player base wants. Until then Blizzard will continue to make these grindy shitty systems.

[PingPong]

1. Create shitty systems that players hate,ignore feedback for over a year.
2. Fix shitty systems way later after massive player leave the game
3. some players come back and play with the new fixed system
4. rinse and repeat next expansion with a new shitty system

it's a never ending cycle with the current wow team

just don't know at this point,a patch like 9.1 is not going to bring player back,they need to do something big ,fingercross for 10.0 -_-

[Ardourdan]

Kind of disingenuous post don't you think? They even told us the reason why the "ripcord" has been pulled because it makes sense in the context of the story so far, not because of some player outrage that only affected the hardcore raiders.

Personally I really liked the rigid choice of covenant. It committed you to a cause, and made you feel like you were a part of something and that leaving had consequences. But i'm also glad they are easing up on those restrictions because it makes sense now to do so.

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This seems like streamer talking points to me.

Why does the vocal minority always listen to those dbag streamers / content creators? Can you not make up your mind for yourselves?

At this point, the only objective and non-biased streamers / content creators are Taliesen & Evital.

I don't watch any streamers, but if they're saying it that works for me