Should Blizzard Skip 9.3?

[Flaim]

i paid for the expansion expecting receiving a 9.3 content patch. if they rob me again, as they did with wod, i'll bail. ffxiv looks quite a bit more appealing anyways.

[Lahis]

people say there SURELY wont be 9.3 bcs in 9.2 we will defeat zoval and thats it but... we dont have to fight zoval in 9.2, we could be totaly sidetracked, or have some "interplay"

think about warth of the lich king, the main villain and pretty much the core of expansion was lich king, who we got all around 3.0, and got to fight him in 3.3

but in 3.1 we got ulduar, which was kinda side-step from lich king, it was continuation of storm peaks story (and we can have lets say continuation of Denathrius and nathrezim story in 9.2) but it didnt realy advance fight against lich king
and in 3.2 we got tournament, which was "interplay", it was continuation of fight against LK, yet we didnt get to fight him, we only saw him, they can pull something similar too

and more currently mechagon, although it was same patch as nazjatar, it could be alone as small patch if they decided to, and it had pretty much nothing to do with bfa story...

If there was some sort of sidetrack planned for 9.2 they can just throw it into the trash and let us kill Jailer already.

[huth]

That is rubbish. You have no way to kow that (no one does outside of Blizzard). To make such a statement you'd not only need to know their current progress on the next expansion and patches, you'd also need to know how much resources a patch vs an expansion needs, how much work can be done in parallel, how full their current pipeline is and how many additional resources they can mobilize once they get into the hot phase of the next expansion. All of these are unknown.

Remember WoD and Legion? More people means they can work on more things, but it won't make stuff happen faster. Dropping 9.3 might expand the scope of 10.0, but it'll release more or less the same time, possibly even later.

Your mistake is assuming these are complete unknowns. They aren't.

[Tyrannica]

No, SL isn't good. But that's another thing. Recently things started to get worse. We can't even be sure, that Wow isn't outsourced now.

like outscoured by dreamhaven?

might be actually a good thing, if that would be true.

Why people here even care, next expansion will be as worse or woser as SL, the guys that made wow fun left the ship some time ago almost entirely? Its not like, D3 didn't do well in comparission to D2, because David Brevik wasn't the lead designer.

That said maybe outsource D4 as well.

[Accendor]

No, they should not. In fear of getting another BfA in 10.0 I much rather want to go with more SL which has some quality at least.

Another BfA would be the final mistake. Shadowlands is many times better so lets finish it properly.

I need to point this out, SL it's very very bad, but at least it's not BfA.
On the other hand, it is very, very close.

[Al Gorefiend]

I need to point this out, SL it's very very bad, but at least it's not BfA.
On the other hand, it is very, very close.

Nothing about SL aside from the content drought and dumb story Id call bad.

[Tyrannica]

You can also quote me, stamp this, keep it in memorialized in gold: WoW will never have cross faction grouping. IE where you can do dungeons and raids with members of the opposite faction.

cross faction grouping will the be final nail in wows coffin, if that happens together with all the mindless ingame censorship going on right now, the game can no longer be called world of WARcraft, shadowlands is allready too much of a side show to that faction war theme.

some people desire to destroy the very foundation that this game series is based on....they don't know what they are doing. This is not Final Fantasy XIV!

- - - Updated - - -

Nothing about SL aside from the content drought and dumb story Id call bad.

You sure love walking circles in Oribos.

[Lahis]

cross faction grouping will the be final nail in wows coffin, if that happens together with all the mindless ingame censorship going on right now, the game can no longer be called world of WARcraft, shadowlands is allready too much of a side show to that faction war theme.

some people desire to destroy the very foundation that this game series is based on....they don't know what they are doing. This is not Final Fantasy XIV!

Deliberately halving the playerbase hurts the game more than it helps it.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Remember WoD and Legion? More people means they can work on more things, but it won't make stuff happen faster. Dropping 9.3 might expand the scope of 10.0, but it'll release more or less the same time, possibly even later.

Your mistake is assuming these are complete unknowns. They aren't.

There is no logic to your argument. Having more human resources is definitely something that makes stuff happen faster if you can at all work in parallel, which is something you can generally do in game development. That is also part of how Legion's quick content cadence can be explained. At least in the case of development of divisible portions, like different zones, classes, art assets etc. more people give you the option to finish a project quicker. None of that adresses though that we don't know how much resources they have and how well Blizzard can actually work in parallel right now. Considering that it took them an unholy 7.5 months for that measly bit of 9.1 I certainly don't see any reason to be optimistic about them having the capacity right now to crank out patches and do considerable amounts of work on the next expansion.

Best case (despite being highly unrealistic) Blizzard is currently capable of splitting their resources 9:1 and working on a patch just costs them 10% and they will release the expansion when it's finished without or barely any delays. Worst case they can only work in sequence for the most part right now, meaning everything they add just postpones everything after by at least that amount. The reality will be somewhere inbetween, without intimate knowledge about the state of their project management situation, I just don't see how you want to make a reasonable claim here.

Also yes I remember WoD, when they doubled their team and produced less than before. Legion had a nice content cadence (once they thaught all those new devs how to work), but that was already forgotten in BfA. We don't even know the size of Team 2 right now, neither in absolute numbers nor compared to the past. There are rumors that personal currently get's shifted around alot to help with projects where they are most needed (last I heard OW2), but they wouldn't be in favor of your argument either, which is why I'm ignoring them and went with the "you can't know" stance.

[Austilias]

A new expansion release on time will always make Blizzard much more money than even the best content patch.

That's the bottom line. Blizzard will stick to their ~2 year Expansion cadence, consequences be damned.

Even if it means pulling a WoD on SL (cutting it short).

Which they almost certainly will, not least because it's been a bit of a sh*tshow since Day 1.

[Lolites]

If there was some sort of sidetrack planned for 9.2 they can just throw it into the trash and let us kill Jailer already.

sure they can, they can also not let us kill Jailer for another decade...
i was just pointing out its not so clear there wont be 9.3, as we dont even know whats going to happen in 9.2 and it wouldnt be unusual if 9.2 was "sidetracked" as it happened before...

[Dracullus]

I need to point this out, SL it's very very bad, but at least it's not BfA.
On the other hand, it is very, very close.

Difference is during BfA people said exactly what they doesn't want: titanforging/random loot, AP (and grind in general) or want - like PVP vendors. So Blizzard did exactly all this things to please people.

Now you can't get clear feedback (beside vague: "we don't want complicated and time consuming systems" - like any of SL was ever complicated or time consuming), cause people would have to admit SOME grind is just needed in MMO.

Not to mention there is usual "current expac is shit", problem with regular patches (that's most important of all things), problems within Blizzard outside game and general burnout after two busy expansions. All stack up and only some of this is connected to SL design.

A new expansion release on time will always make Blizzard much more money than even the best content patch.

That's the bottom line. Blizzard will stick to their ~2 year Expansion cadence, consequences be damned.

Even if it means pulling a WoD on SL (cutting it short).

Which they almost certainly will, not least because it's been a bit of a sh*tshow since Day 1.

Question is not if they want to release 10.0 ASAP, question is if they can. You think they didn't wanted to release 9.1 and 9.2 on time?

And it's bullshit SL was shitshow since day 1. People had problems with Torghast or sparse loot, but community bitched a lot less than BfA or even Legion and some sites posted than "honeymoon" lasted longer than usual. No real patch on March screwed things up.

[loras]

No, honestly going for a new expansion won't magically fix their problems.
It's like expecting that an entire book changes just by turning a leaf.

Also it will make expansions seem even more pointless cash-grabs.

[Kralljin]

Deliberately halving the playerbase hurts the game more than it helps it.

I disagree with this notion, i think were used to be some value within those opposed factions, however Blizzard has largely treated as an artificial barrier between players and nothing else.

I think factions were a good concept, but Blizzard simply couldn't be arsed to do anything with it.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I need to point this out, SL it's very very bad, but at least it's not BfA.
On the other hand, it is very, very close.

To be honest I think it kinda depends on what you value more. I think the story is actually worse, systems is a bit of a toss-up depending on when in BfA we are talking about, not having to grind AP is good thing, being limited by covenants is not if you care about that. On the other hand we had 2 full raid tiers already, in BfA Uldir wasn't a full raid tier iirc.

I'm not convinced people would be as eager to leave right now if Blizzard would at least provide a satisfactory content cadence and many people wouldn't have seen through so much of their BS. The compare both expansions I'd probably have do a tally of all features and even then it would be more subjective than usual.

[tomten]

This post reminds me of a few that were posted around the time 8.2 came out and people foaming at the mouth about it and demanding they skip 8.3 and go directly to SL because "Anything is better than more more BFA!". And yet here we are.. LOL

Its a cycle, before that they cut it short also.

[Hyrja]

Yes, let's get out this shitshow of an expansion asap.

[tomten]

And it's bullshit SL was shitshow since day 1. People had problems with Torghast or sparse loot, but community bitched a lot less than BfA or even Legion and some sites posted than "honeymoon" lasted longer than usual. No real patch on March screwed things up.

People always love to bitch about the current expansion.
SL is one of my favourite expos so far, it had a pretty good balance. With my favorite being a tie between cata and mop.
I would definitely be playing if it wasn't for summer and my PC broke down beginning of spring and can't afford one so yeh...

The only real issue I had was raid loot being nerfed way to much, that's it.
Had good balance of progression and the grind was actually fun for the first time in like, forever? Torghast was fun to grind and if they would have let torghast be just that, crazy fun, where you could just have fun, get crazy powers, pull whole floor etc, it would have been my favorite expo grind ever.
FUck doing some boring world quest to grind out the leggo or whatever.

And raids has always been so top notch in wow and if you dont play wow for raiding, why do you even bother?

[Cosmic Janitor]

I disagree with this notion, i think were used to be some value within those opposed factions, however Blizzard has largely treated as an artificial barrier between players and nothing else.

I think factions were a good concept, but Blizzard simply couldn't be arsed to do anything with it.

Factions only serve a purpose if you go full in on PvP, but that is also one of the fast tracks to kill your themeparkl MMORPG, since you don't have the means to progress the game past Red vs Blue without fucking your PvE side. If your game is known for the PvE content anyway, then factions practically add nothing at all.

[Dracullus]

No, honestly going for a new expansion won't magically fix their problems.
It's like expecting that an entire book changes just by turning a leaf.

Also it will make expansions seem even more pointless cash-grabs.

Before we start thinking about how Blizzard should fix numbers, but should analize if numbers need fixing at all. All I see are pointless comparison S2 with launch. Anyone serious should compare numbers with BfA 8.1.5 or Legion 7.2. Personally I play no High/Very High (Full only on launch) server and don't see big differences between now and no-hype periods in other expacs, ton of people are running around in Korthia (yes, from my server).

9.1.5 changes could be hint for lower than usual numbers, but it can be done for two more reasons:

1) really damaged Blizzard image and popularity, new president is showing Blizzard is "doing something" - please SJWs with art/names changing, please rest with lifting launch restrictions and Legion nostalgia

2) 9.2 obviously won't come when it should (November), so this hole need to be filled - and 9.1.5 must do better job than 9.0.5.

New expac will never "fix numbers". It's just 1-2 months quick cash boost, after that WoW will "lose 50%" again. And it's not like it's free boost, production must cost ton compared to patches.