Should Blizzard Skip 9.3?

[Kralljin]

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.

I disagree.
Classic for example offered a vastly different lowlevel experience based on your faction and even had faction specific classes.
Which ironically did not lead to massive faction imbalances in Classic itself, despite that game getting min/max'd to death in almost every aspect.

You don't have to go nutsdeep on PvP in order for the concept to make sense, but you have to give it something.

[crusadernero]

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.

Agree. Also, theres big potential in adding more stuff in the world of pvp within the game. Blizzard have tried several times, but it never really worked all to well. We always end up with the good old BGs & arena. Since they either cant make good pvp content in the whole game or cant be bothered anymore, factions really dont matter all that much really. We always end up "on the same team" in every xpac anyway, so the faction barrier is getting tiersome.

Maybe the are saving it at a big selling point for a new xpac..


On topic: I dont really care either way of a 9.3, but I always enjoy new content. Theres always most new content in a xpac than in a patch. Im not going to bother farming my legendaries out and all that in SL, so 9.2 better have alot of new stuff to do besides that.

[Tyrannica]

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

I played alliance quite often, i know.

Still...this is going way too far a change here will be too drastic, for instance take the battlegrounds and the option for horde to speak to a mercenary to fight as alliance. This was never a good idea.

On the other side, its not great to want to play some rbg and a specific CR as alliance just to find out there are no groups for you, because you are not horde.

But if you lift those faction restrictions this game is no longer world of warcraft, its something else. Might as well make a new game with its own identity, the game itself has new designers anyways.

Its allready odd to remove the "war" in world of warcraft as seen in SL.

[The Stormbringer]

LOL! Middle of 2023 for Patch 10.0? Hilarious, that's hilarious. Maybe the end of 2023 at the rate they're putting out patches lately. More likely early 2024. Mid-2023 is far too optimistic.

EDIT: Sorry, I meant to say early 2023.
EDIT2: And by that I mean, early 2023 is the earliest I think they'll be able to manage it.

[Tyrannica]

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.

BfA felt much more alive, its zones and 2 captiol city hubs were much populated and active, beautiful designed in detail and 8.1.5 gave us faction assaults, people that played them with warmode enjoyed the game very much, despite some stupid design like azerite gear.

SL is just dull. The designers shouldn't put all cards onto 1 thing - Jailer, Sylvanas and shadowlands- more themes would have worked much better, some side attractions - both TBC and Wotlk did this well. TBC had Kara and the Isles of Quel'thalas places not on outland and Wotlk had the blue dragon flight, the old gods and the scourge.

MoP had some great designs as well, later with content patches. It just started out a little bit weak, but other than the Sha theme, ther was the Thunder God theme and Faction war theme.

I'd say the current retail themes are as monotonous as the modern class design, its all missing exclusivity

9.2. better be on the radical content side, story narrative, world building, heck i would even put in a that necromancer class in the middle of the expansion, just to gain some trust from the playerbase back, if i would be a lead dev. Because, i feel this is the biggest missed opportunity in SL alltogether. All we got is a necromancer cosmetic set in patch 9.1.

Guess i am not the only one who wants to see something else than just little effort, you can make the best raids in the world, but only so much people will play it. A new fitting class to the expansions theme would be availible to everyone and a strong reasion why to play this game now.

But who knows if anyone cares, do we have passionate developers like the game director of FFXIV in wow? Would like to read their names just once.

[Greyvax]

9.3 WILL be skipped. they will blame COVID or staff re-organization i'm sure.

Then they will put out some PR about how they will take this extra time to make the next expansion "the best ever" and return to "blizzard quality releases".

fast forward to 10.0, and you'll see the same slew of issues (not listening to feedback, lack of content, timegating, etc...) that happened during 9.0, 8.0, 7.0.


Time is a flat circle

[Woobels]

I'm not sure if it'll be skipped but 9.3 even existing seems dubious to me right now, 9.2 is a pretty logical end point and Blizzard needs out of this expansion because any mistake/bad patch etc will draw huge amounts of ire.

[Cosmic Janitor]

SL is just dull. The designers shouldn't put all cards onto 1 thing - Jailer, Sylvanas and shadowlands- more themes would have worked much better, some side attractions - both TBC and Wotlk did this well. TBC had Kara and the Isles of Quel'thalas places not on outland and Wotlk had the blue dragon flight, the old gods and the scourge.

I'd give you Kara, but IoQ was added with the last TBC patch, something we haven't reached yet with SL. As for enemy types, in SL we had the various rogue covenant factions, we also have the devorours and brokers if we are honest. It's not like the blues have much focus outside of Coldara and a bit of Dragon Blight either. The old gods could as well be the Nathrezim right now.

[Tyrannica]

I'd give you Kara, but IoQ was added with the last TBC patch, something we haven't reached yet with SL. As for enemy types, in SL we had the various rogue covenant factions, we also have the devorours and brokers if we are honest. It's not like the blues have much focus outside of Coldara and a bit of Dragon Blight either. The old gods could as well be the Nathrezim right now.

yeah, true, but seems thats not working on me i simply do not care about SL content and i tried hard, even farmed everything what you can buy with anima in all 4 covenants, did all the raids at least on normal and heroic, some high keys mythic+, arenas at least to rival with multiple chars and yet - game feels dull, i did not feel the same in patch 8.1.5 in BfA. I still wanted to play and had fun. Don't think its burn out, its just there is no incentive for me if there is no faction war and least a chance to see a little wpvp, cause lets be honest they do not have an excellent FF story or solo activities in this game to keep players happy once they are bored with group endgame content.

Btw....shouldn't we be in nazjatar and mechagon now? Patch 9.2. should have been released in june this summer and it looks like it won't release this year at all. lmao

[Ehrenpanzer]

Nope.

Shadowlands might even go on to 9.4. Its a good expansion so far, and it looks like its only getting better.

Why would you want to pay $60-$120 for another box expansion anyway? Just get more free content during this expansion

- - - Updated - - -



Also, this 100% ^

Yes... such a good expansion that sub numbers have plummeted to WoD numbers and so great that they FINALLY managed to listen to what players actually want and are basically opening the goody bag for the next minor patch (still hoping for my Arthas skip in ICC) Its fine if YOU are enjoying it, that's great, but the larger metrics tells a VERY different story about the playerbase as a whole.

- - - Updated - - -

9.3 WILL be skipped. they will blame COVID or staff re-organization i'm sure.

Then they will put out some PR about how they will take this extra time to make the next expansion "the best ever" and return to "blizzard quality releases".

fast forward to 10.0, and you'll see the same slew of issues (not listening to feedback, lack of content, timegating, etc...) that happened during 9.0, 8.0, 7.0.


Time is a flat circle

Im willing to cut them some slack due to Covid, its not the pace of the content people are angry about, its the quality. its the features we alpha and beta tested, gave feedback on, Blizzard went "nah its good" and rolled it out, then large numbers of people stopped playing and now all of a sudden its "we hear your feedback"

[Syegfryed]

Yes... such a good expansion that sub numbers have plummeted to WoD numbers and so great that they FINALLY managed to listen to what players actually want and are basically opening the goody bag for the next minor patch (still hoping for my Arthas skip in ICC) Its fine if YOU are enjoying it, that's great, but the larger metrics tells a VERY different story about the playerbase as a whole.

he is obviously trolling, no one in their right mind would say shadowlands is a good expansion so far and they might want to go for 9.4

[Recovery]

I personally doubt they can hold onto people if endwalker is good and the next expansion isn't till 2023. There is a lot of negative press because of the lawsuit and a ton of big streamers just dipping out and they need a win which I doubt a 9.3 would be.

I feel like 9.1.5 is setting up for a big 9.2 itself. All of the shortcuts and catch ups are intended to bring players back for 9.2, which seems to be a confrontation with the jailer. Has anything even been set up for a big baddie of 9.2 other than the jailer? Are we supposed to believe that the jailer is being driven by something larger than himself for a 9.3? If blizzard were smart, they would have immediately began working on 10.1 as soon as they seen 9.0 was a flop.

Hopefully 10.0 is ready a year or so after 9.2.

Honestly, id rather them juts delete everything after WOTLK and start WOW 2 on an alternate timeline.

[Dracullus]

If blizzard were smart, they would have immediately began working on 10.1 as soon as they seen 9.0 was a flop.

Suggesting that fastest selling PC game (at the time) was a flop. Only on MMO-Champion.

And probably you call people saying otherwise delusional. xD

[Recovery]

Suggesting that fastest selling PC game (at the time) was a flop. Only on MMO-Champion.

And probably you call people saying otherwise delusional. xD

People are always going to buy wow expansions at increasingly high rates because we always have the expectation that it will somehow be better regardless of how much was wrong during development.

If you played alpha, beta, or paid attention to what anyone who did play them was saying at the time, you would know that 9.0 was going to flop, which it did. Scores of people fled the game after the initial launch.

Yes, we all bought 9.0. But, how many of us stuck around for 9.1? How many are around now?

Just because a game is the best in its genre (which is becoming more and more decreasingly the case) doesnt mean its not bad.

We told them the systems were trash. We told them the content was trash. They released anyway.

For so long, MMO's have been competing against wow. Its not time that WOW has to compete against MMO's. IF endwalker is a huge success before Blizzard can get some news out about their future, i fear for the longevity of the game as the best MMO, which is quite upsetting to me because at the end of the day, i play wow for the competitive pvp. And one thing is certain... No other MMO does pvp as well as wow, regardless of its flaws.

[huth]

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.

You're confusing increasing scope with work being done faster. What you're describing is increased scope. Legion still took just as long as previous expansions. They didn't work faster, they worked on more things simultaneously.

Having to many human resources is well known to actually slow work down, as well, because you have to waste to much time on organising to get anything done.

[Tyrannica]

People are always going to buy wow expansions at increasingly high rates because we always have the expectation that it will somehow be better regardless of how much was wrong during development.

If you played alpha, beta, or paid attention to what anyone who did play them was saying at the time, you would know that 9.0 was going to flop, which it did. Scores of people fled the game after the initial launch.

Yes, we all bought 9.0. But, how many of us stuck around for 9.1? How many are around now?

Just because a game is the best in its genre (which is becoming more and more decreasingly the case) doesnt mean its not bad.

We told them the systems were trash. We told them the content was trash. They released anyway.

For so long, MMO's have been competing against wow. Its not time that WOW has to compete against MMO's. IF endwalker is a huge success before Blizzard can get some news out about their future, i fear for the longevity of the game as the best MMO, which is quite upsetting to me because at the end of the day, i play wow for the competitive pvp. And one thing is certain... No other MMO does pvp as well as wow, regardless of its flaws.

What would happen, if all the wow combat designers would migrate to SE and FFXIV? Because the last pvp designer left just before SL launch anyways, but combat design is affecting pvp more than anything else.
Before you think that is an impossible and funny brainfart, type in "blizzard" on youtube and limit the results to the last 2 recent months.

[Vampyrr]

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.

That I will as all rhetoric and trending leans towards the opposite.

[Recovery]

What would happen, if all the wow combat designers would migrate to SE and FFXIV? Because the last pvp designer left just before SL launch anyways, but combat design is affecting pvp more than anything else.
Before you think that is an impossible and funny brainfart, type in "blizzard" on youtube and limit the results to the last 2 recent months.

its the engine that makes wow pvp the best.

No other MMO has ever been able to copy or do better at the fluidity of the engine of WOW.

[Darknessvamp]

They're scrapping their "key expansion features" such as the covenants and their individuality and conduits and their energy system in the next x.x.5 patch by getting rid of their limitations, the Jailer has already reached his goal in the first x.1 patch, Sylvanas despite being the inciting incident is essentially recruited as our next macguffin and the Covenants are set on going after the Jailer. 9.2 looks like it could be the definite concluding patch and a 9.3 would just be diverting resources from focusing on a new expansion whose launches bring in their most income with subs and box sales. Not to mention Activision wants them to keep making releases and a 9.3 patch would significantly move them out of their 2 year release period because of all the delays (also probably shoddy development decisions made this expansion) and it looks less likely there will be another one especially considering the .2 patch isn't even in a reveal state as of yet. Also Shadowlands story is paper thin in investment so it's immediate conclusion and focus on greater investment and set up in grounding and fleshing out the next expansion can only benefit the game going forward.

[Bee76]

I think it’s doubtful there will be a 9.3 at this point. Whether that was always the plan or not is probably never going to be shared, but it certainly felt like 9.1 got made into a larger deal story-wise than I initially expected.

Uhm, to be honest i consider 9.1 a patch with a real low amount of story. Stretched to eternity with reknown.

To OP i hope for a big fat final patch in shadowlands, i dont care if its 9.2 or 9.3. Blizz is able to offer us players real amazing and crazy good stuff, and im pretty sure they will do this after 9.0 and 9.1.