Athalus Race to World First Interview with Morgan Day

[Gadzooks]

I easily do not believe half of what's said in this interview, or the stated answers are an extreme twisting of the truth. As an example, saying that only 3 raids were planned for Shadowlands just be lying via ommission, where the omitted detail is "Only 3 raids were planned once we abandoned the expansion in 9.1... but up until that point we wanted to have a patch 9.3 and a raid for every patch."

I wouldn't be surprised if there were some corporate talking points that had to be said, regardless if Morgan Day believed them. This is my most optimistic perspective on the situation. The cynical perspective? Everyone at Blizz believes their own lies to where they think it's the truth, and there's no hope for recovery in the near future if this is the case.

I found it mildly interesting, that in written form, this reads just like an Ion interview. I haven't watched it, because honestly, I just can't be bothered, but the bullet points could just have easily come from Ion, as Morgan. Kind of surprised Ion didn't do this, too.

Which says to me, perhaps a lot of what Ion says in interviews are canned answers, and it's a "team" effort to get certain points across in these Q&As or whatever they call them in the moment, via a loose script. When you think how much they use(overuse) the phrase "the team", it wouldn't be shocking.

And yes, half of it reeks of dev ego defending their work. Which isn't surprising, considering it's Blizzard. But I just don't care enough anymore to get angry or anything over it.

[avx81]

I have been saying it for years to friends. Get rid of Ion and Morgan day. They are actively destroying the game with a smile on their face. 8 month raid tiers??? We are looking into the Creation Catalyst? They planned 3 raids this expansion?? (YEAH RIGHT). Get rid of them now. There is no more hopium left. You are all watching as the game you grew up loving is being destroyed due to the philosophy of the current developers. All forms of content participation are down significantly. Entire guilds are quitting (mine included) due to the design philosophy changes of these current developers.

[Baza]

6-8 months of seasons 3 and 4... So Q2 2023 expansion then? Guess we'll know in 17 days.

[klaps_05]

with this interview its more or less guaranteed prepatch September 2023 and 10.0 launch pre-xmas with RWF starting in Jan 2024.

[crusadernero]

"The team has been working hard to make raid tuning a science rather than an art."

Yes, like most of the game. Can be debated if its good.

Also - with 6-8 months for each "season", we are looking at a 2023 release in august-sept. lol.

[Trumpcat]

If they consider 6-8 months the new norm then they must have positive metrics to support that release cadence. What my isolated experience says, however, is that my guild stays subbed hoping that we outlive SL and content drought patches won't be the new norm, not because we are happy with it. We aren't going to push through another bare bones expansion.

[Soikona]

The part of making raiding a science, not an art is concerning. By spending so much time chasing numbers, they might forget why it’s fun. It’s blizz, so I am not optimistic when they say something like this.

[Rumred]

3 raids always the plan........haven't people data mined drust raid stuff earlier on in shadowlands?

[pinglong]

The Drust story was completely wrapped up in 9.0. There is nowhere for else for it to go. The only zone or covenant story that was left open in 9.0 was Revendreth, which is why it got a raid to wrap it up. In 9.0 we defeat the Drust invasion and kill their leader.

Korthia looks like reused Drust assets. 9.1 also really changed the story with the infinity sigils that came out of no where and straight away taking the fight to the Jailer and Sylvanas. Normally Blizzard always do a side story before the main fight and it looks like that would have been Drust related.

[Cosmic Janitor]

If they consider 6-8 months the new norm then they must have positive metrics to support that release cadence. What my isolated experience says, however, is that my guild stays subbed hoping that we outlive SL and content drought patches won't be the new norm, not because we are happy with it. We aren't going to push through another bare bones expansion.

My guess is they used less resources and got enough out of it to warrant the product. Probably less overall, but for less investment, which at the end of the day makes it more efficient overall. Well, we will know in 2.5 weeks.

[micwini]

6-8 month raid tiers. I mean, you guys know they can add other content in between right? Like they did in Legion where the raids were separate from the rest of the content. I think it's also more like 6 month regular tiers and 8 months for the last one.

[Sanguinerd]

I'm glad he atleast admits they no longer design this shit for the average player people anymore.

It's all about the challenge and maths.

[Swnem]

They can have 2-3 weeks in a year no? It's good for the game.

I mean things like the system to craft tier sets not being in yet cause they didn't want to affect the world race and it's affecting the rest of us players instead. That is not ok.

[Stickiler]

"The team has been working hard to make raid tuning a science rather than an art."

Yes, like most of the game. Can be debated if its good.

Also - with 6-8 months for each "season", we are looking at a 2023 release in august-sept. lol.

The part of making raiding a science, not an art is concerning. By spending so much time chasing numbers, they might forget why it’s fun. It’s blizz, so I am not optimistic when they say something like this.

I think the point about making raid tuning "a science, not an art", is that the results need to be reproducible and reliable. A lot less fumbling in the dark trying different nerfs and buffs to get raid bosses feeling nice, a lot more "If we add Potassium or Sodium to water we get an explosion", aka "we know with this type of mechanic that tweaking x value modifies the healing requirements by y, which will help the raid teams drop a healer and bring more dps to beat z dps check"

[Lollis]

• The excitement around tier sets has been heard loud and clear and they will continue in future tiers.

I'm sure the multitude of people that are still missing tier pieces and thus falling behind others are absolutely thrilled.

Get fucked.

[Mask]

I'm sure the multitude of people that are still missing tier pieces and thus falling behind others are absolutely thrilled.

Get fucked.

If that is the case, then why were people wanting tier to come back so badly for the past 3 years? Some characters getting their sets before others has been the case every patch where tier sets were in the game. Since day 1 with Molten Core sets lol.

[Hyrja]

Them doubling down on the "we always planned to only have 2 patches and 3 raids" bullcrap is so ridiculous, I get why he says it tho, otherwise he would have called Ion a liar..

[Becket]

Your problem is ION!!!! period.

[Sorrior]

What are you rambling about?

Technically FFXIV is wow....?

is that some ignorant comment based where you're saying FFXIV copied WoW? Cause FFXIV is nothing like WoW...at all...
or...are you trying to say WoW was an MMO first? cause you do know Square-enix has an MMO before WoW ever existed right? called FFXI, it's still alive and did quite well for the time.

Help me out here, there's only so much low iq on MMoC I can handle in a day

Ffxiv 1.0 WAS made by the XI crew you'd be right about that. But it bombed hard so they pulled in Yoshi P to remake it. He himself has outright stated he is a massove fan of wow and it heavily influenced his game design.

And arpund ARR especially it was almost a carbon copy of wrath ERA wow in endgame design(and still is in some sense what with tomestones acting as valor/justice) with a heavy focus on dungeon runs for gear currency, the style of gameplay and more.

As i believe i said before at least in the past it was more WoW(as in Wrath era wow) then WoW is today..And i recall feeling that even in pandaria.

In many ways SE pulled a blizzard by taking what works in the genre and building upon it to create something more(sadly like wow Skill pruning and a degree of homogenization has become common as has a higher focus on raiding as the combat endgame as opposed to dungeons being a truly viable combat role gameplay loop focus)

[McNeil]

So giving Shadowlands this few content was always the plan? Thats even worse than everything that got scrapped from WoD because at least they didn't want to intentionally screw over their players. I guess this is going to be the norm and that WoW's budget just isn't what it used to be.