Dev Interviews - Patch 9.2 Final Major Patch of Shadowlands, Level 60 Boost Now Live

[damonskye]

Buddy I'm not dying on any hill here.

You are though, but that's fine.

[Bladesyphon]

My real-world experiences are perfectly valid in being relevant to shaping my opinion about this game. You're a very confusing poster, because you alternate between positions and temperament on a regular basis like someone's shot your dog. I really have no idea what hill you're dying on here.

I don't fault its developers; I fault the company itself. It used to put out plenty of regular content; it doesn't do that any more. It used to also be an independent company; now it's an Activision subsidiary. There is no reason not to connect the dots. (And whether you believe me or not makes no difference to me; I have a lot of friends in this industry, and *everyone* who works in the industry knows what's going on at Blizzard internally. It's certainly not hard to decipher. These are good people continually being pushed to make more with less, and it shows.)

Care to link us to some of the games your "Dozens of friends" have worked on, as well as the roles they played in their development?

I don't profess to being an expert in the game development field, but I do know enough about it that Joe Everyman over there on Indie Game Team #83 that developed another pixel-styled platformer probably isn't the target developer that Blizzard is seeking when it comes to developing one of the largest MMOs on the market.

You remind me a lot of a friend I have a work, who also claims to have an "In" with the industry, both in his "indie development team" that has yet to actually put out any form of product, or even anything concept based (but don't worry, he's totally going to have a hit game on Steam soon, just you wait and see!) and his "Friend" who works for SNK on the King of Fighter's development team. I mean, as much as someone who does website design and advertisement only for SNK's products is on the King of Fighter's development team can be.

The point Relapses is making, is that it's not as simple as "This guy is programmer, he can work on game for us!". Odds are that Blizzard is actively searching for developers, but as the MMO Genre is starting to die out, finding people with the experience and ability to work to the level Blizzard wants and needs for WoW is pretty damn hard. And yes, there is always the option of hiring on new developers and training them up, but anyone who works in ANY industry can tell you that's a fairly risky endeavor, as there's no guarantee the new hire is going to stay on, that they're going to work out, or that they're going to pick up the skills they need to fill the position you're training them for.

All of this adds up to it being a lot more complex than "Blizzard doesn't want to hire people because of money!".

[Jdance]

i havent played this dogshit excuse for a game in years but have returned just to laugh at the fact that they are doing EVEN more timegating like holy fuck blizzard you're so dumb

[Kyphael]

Its' legacy will be "at least it's better than Warlords of Draenor."

[damonskye]

Care to link us to some of the games your "Dozens of friends" have worked on, as well as the roles they played in their development?

No, because I don't have to justify having an opinion based upon personal real-world interactions to you or the other guy. I just know how things are in the gaming industry in general because of friends here in town who do development in MMO and FPS gaming as well as mobile gaming (we live in L.A.) But you don't have to believe me... pretty much everyone in the industry talks about the more-for-less approach of Activision these days, so feel free to check for yourself. Believe me, don't believe me, entirely your call.

And by the way, maybe y'all should be asking the actual important questions, which is... why can't Blizzard put out regular WoW content like other games? That's the $64 million question.

[Khaza-R]

Level 60 boost just in time for the TW MT. What a surprise.

[Kalarm]

Its' legacy will be "at least it's better than Warlords of Draenor."

WOD was better IMO. The problem with WoD was the low amount of content (linked to the garrison that was... pretty much nothing to actually do). Otherwise what was there was fun. SL has more content but it's more recycled and tedious and ultimately less fun :-/

[JSoup]

WOD was better IMO. The problem with WoD was the low amount of content (linked to the garrison that was... pretty much nothing to actually do). Otherwise what was there was fun. SL has more content but it's more recycled and tedious and ultimately less fun :-/

The other large problem with WoD, and the dev team admitted this themselves after the fact, is too much was shared for expansion content that was, at the point it was shared, either hardly in the development phase or still just an on paper concept.

Was still more entertaining than Shadowlands, yeah.

[bryroo]

For as often as I've read that the developers want to get more content out to the players i dont think I've ever heard them say how they plan on doing that.

Here's a wild concept: a team C or D that develops stand alone events that take place/update a zone in the old world.

Maybe have a patch to build back Camp Turajo or Silvermoon, clean up Undercity, cleanse the Vale.

Stuff thats not so cosmic scale that fits inbetween.

[Tazr]

My expectations were low, but holy shit. I thought the bar could not go any lower, yet, they did it.

Ah, you sweet, naïve child. /pats gently

[exsanguinate]

When I saw the Lead Quest Designer of WoW no wonder why its so bad. Btw is this the mother of this other trash system dev Hamilton?

[GreenJesus]

Legendaries still cost gold right? So if you want to have 1 for each covenant in addition to the other legendary that you might need to adjust based on spec/type of content isn't that basically requiring players to buy several wow tokens to have 4 covenant legendaries + dps legendary + healer legendary + tank legendary + Pvp legendary?

Since you'll have to upgrade them to 9.2 item levels, each one could cost well over 100-200k. And that's PER character.. so we are talking like 500-700k per character at least.... at least legendaries in Legion were free drops and were automatically the highest item level.

[Chakah]

You'll be able to equip two legendary items at once, one regular legendary and one Covenant legendary.

Ah FOR FUCKS SAKE WHY!?

Just let me use the god damn legendaries I want god damnit fucking blizz man...

Because they spent a lot of time developing all of those and (almost) no one uses them?
If they can't *make* you use them, then they were wasting their development time... /eyes rolling like a slot machine

Such a player-unfriendly choice.... Seems like they have still not learned their lesson.

[rhorle]

Since you'll have to upgrade them to 9.2 item levels, each one could cost well over 100-200k. And that's PER character.. so we are talking like 500-700k per character at least.... at least legendaries in Legion were free drops and were automatically the highest item level.

So don't upgrade them? The legendary effect right now is not impacted by the item level of the item and I doubt they will change it for the next patch. So you will be upgrading just for the stats. If you don't want to pay for multiple characters then don't have multiple characters. You really just seem to be fishing for things to hate here.

[Vasilisa]

Why so much negativity? There are no class nerfs.....yet.

[Redroniksre]

So you won't even be able to finish the raid in lfr almost two months after? Why do they still gate that shit so damn heavily?

[Cthulhu fhtagn]

Because they spent a lot of time developing all of those and (almost) no one uses them?
If they can't *make* you use them, then they were wasting their development time... /eyes rolling like a slot machine

Such a player-unfriendly choice.... Seems like they have still not learned their lesson.

Pretty sure the only reason is that some classes have synergistic legendaries where their synergy alone increases damage by more than 30% on top of their normal effects, then there's classes where that's not true at all. There was a very comprehensive list going on before 9.1 speculating on double leggo coming to conclusion why it cant happen without complete retuning.

[EyelessCrow]

Well, I had a glimmer of hope they would pull the reigns back on this cosmic bullshit storyline they have decided to go down...nope they want to go at it harder. Looking forward to a few years down the road where we find out Elune is a planet sized machine who was creating demons all along! But newly crowned God Queen Sylvanas of Azeroth has to stop Elune from taking over the universe by utilizing the light that she alone defeated and took control of (with the "assistance" of a group of nobodies who did all the work but "were just there to watch her awesomeness")

This too "wrapping up storylines from Warcraft 3"

Its' legacy will be "at least it's better than Warlords of Draenor."

Except it's not. WoD for all it's faults was still an interesting story, that just...ended because they gave up. Shadowlands is a boring nonsense story not about Warcraft or Azeroth that will just...end because they gave up. I GUARANTEE you whatever ending they come up with will not feel right because it is being rushed.

[s0ul]

lol what a failure of a final patch and a disaster of an expansion. Absolutely nothing exciting about it mainly due to the awful systems they’re still promoting. The legendaries are a failure as is choregast and the new “tier” system. A new bland zone with the same old dailies where you can grind same old catch up gear!!! Amazing!!! Let me guess, can’t fly there either.

Now that most players have given up on the WoW team and finally unsubscribed, they’re resorting to selling max level boosts lmao. Gotta meet those quarterly projections somehow right? World of Systemlands

[dope_danny]

So yeah Warlords 2.0 right to the end.