Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[SilverLion]

I think an issue is more about an absence of leadership and direction. Whether because of incompetence or because of a choice to just let people to do whatever is the concern.

Which has been an issue for Blizzard since 2006. The old stuff was just as poor quality, we just cared less. We were younger. The amount of nostalgia the WoW fandom mistakes for criticism is notorious. The literal only way to fix it is to accept that "old Blizzard" was as bad as "new Blizzard" then chart a course that takes elements of both that people enjoy. I mostly personally take issue with the "It used to be x" type stuff people throw around. The fact that Metzen didn't actual put in real effort to sound unique until Thrall hit middle age is telling.

[Nymrohd]

Which has been an issue for Blizzard since 2006. The old stuff was just as poor quality, we just cared less. We were younger. The amount of nostalgia the WoW fandom mistakes for criticism is notorious. The literal only way to fix it is to accept that "old Blizzard" was as bad as "new Blizzard" then chart a course that takes elements of both that people enjoy. I mostly personally take issue with the "It used to be x" type stuff people throw around. The fact that Metzen didn't actual put in real effort to sound unique until Thrall hit middle age is telling.

Yeah there are several cases were the issue was not proper control (most notable being Stonetalon Garrosh) that go way back

[COBRAstriker]

Everyone here has ears, eyes and a brain. Use them and compare the old with the new. The new is off and of poor quality, like a lot of other things.now. It's not Warcraft anymore. Don't let anyone gaslight you. Danuser, Afrasiabi, Metzen, Pretzel, whoever you may think the 'face' of WoW's writing or creative direction is, aren't the issue. The issue is that the wrong people took control of the franchise. How often do you see people shitting on Anne Stickney? I would say that most WoW players don't even know who she is. But it's people like her that are ruining WoW. A good reminder perhaps that she was also very proud of the Gilneas Reclamation questline which was a complete dud

It started with BfA and it went completely off rails with the 2021 scandals when the balance of power changed. That's it, and you're seeing the results. Retail WoW is run by people who have no interest in keeping the game as close as possible to the original. They want THEIR WoW, because the old one was made by people they hate

Nothing will change until massive changes are made to that team

[COBRAstriker]

Honestly to me we just have a complete franchise stagnation, extremely hard to get some gasoline into the tank again when again everyone have already decided that this is status quo and nothing will change.

Just continuously scapegoating random people over and over again as if there's always someone to bring onto the bonfire is unproductive at this point. Commerce has overtaken art and it has now to a degree done so in a manner in which the franchise no longer excites or engages people.

It also does not help that because the franchise is in a bizarre position due to the "World Soul will be gone" after the Saga, this too means there's no incentive to do anything but ride the train to the end station because the blank slate will be given afterwards.

You very much can, just like they did with WoD after MoP. A good, cool cinematic is often times all it takes to get people's interest. But everything around WoW, from a creative point of view, is just lame, bad or of very poor quality now. Wrathgate cinematic is as old as dirt, and if you listened to Terran Gregory talk about it, extremely rudimentary. The 'NPCs' were actually PCs using in game emotes. And it's still better and more memorable than anything today. Better execution, things are actually happening with consequences, voice acting on point. It's not nostalgia, it's facts. The people running WoW's creative side have no talent or interest even to make the WoW that most fans expect. From writing, cinematics, the characters we deal with, the new races, you name it

What I don't get is how did the gameplay team manage to do a 180 on a lot of their bad choices or design, but this other one is seemingly untouchable. I refuse to believe that they hold that much power. Something has to be done, these people can't be allowed to continue to tank the franchise while introducing more and more monetization schemes to offset those losses

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Because the Gameplay issues was just "Create extremely less friction and whenever drama shows up shut it down with a fire extinguisher"? The fact we flipped from Gameplay issues because of Gameplay and Narrative collapse in Shadowlands leading to a worsening of the Narrative situation is not that surprising when you consider that the Game Model they selected after they could use the "Shadowlands Drought" as a sheep in wolfs' clothing they immediately defocused and deprioritized Narrative as Chris Metzen stood on stage announcing this epic saga by removing a Major Patch confirming that the meme tier response Ion had about there being only 2 Major Patches planned for Shadowlands was actually about the future of World of Warcraft post-Shadowlands.

The Narrative at the end of the day is just a vehicle to move units of expansions, its a concept not a realized one. You're being sold a vision that may just be that a vision. There's no vehicle of dismay and anger that will sway the Gameplay side to believe that the Narrative situation is untenable. Again, we're in a art vs commerce situation and art is losing hard because the commerce is far more important and because the Gameplay at the end of the day remains king it squeezes and frustratingly destroys the Narrative Team completely as they are deprioritized, debudgeted and exhausted of all resources.

I'm going to be frank, I don't think anyone in the Narrative Team is having that much of a cozy time at this point. They may be sociopathic or they may hate their audiences but I don't get the vibe. I do not think when Chris Metzen stood on that stage he wanted to blatantly lie about the Narrative getting better and improving and creating a exciting 3 expansion set. I think they just got hit with extremely bad mistimings that ultimately lead to the outcome of blatant disregard for everything and to just get the ship to Classic+ announcement and 14.0 announcement.

[COBRAstriker]

Because the Gameplay issues was just "Create extremely less friction and whenever drama shows up shut it down with a fire extinguisher"? The fact we flipped from Gameplay issues because of Gameplay and Narrative collapse in Shadowlands leading to a worsening of the Narrative situation is not that surprising when you consider that the Game Model they selected after they could use the "Shadowlands Drought" as a sheep in wolfs' clothing they immediately defocused and deprioritized Narrative as Chris Metzen stood on stage announcing this epic saga by removing a Major Patch confirming that the meme tier response Ion had about there being only 2 Major Patches planned for Shadowlands was actually about the future of World of Warcraft post-Shadowlands.

The Narrative at the end of the day is just a vehicle to move units of expansions, its a concept not a realized one. You're being sold a vision that may just be that a vision. There's no vehicle of dismay and anger that will sway the Gameplay side to believe that the Narrative situation is untenable. Again, we're in a art vs commerce situation and art is losing hard because the commerce is far more important and because the Gameplay at the end of the day remains king it squeezes and frustratingly destroys the Narrative Team completely.

.. what does voice acting or a cinematic have to do with gameplay? And Legion remix is live, go and play it. Legion was full of successful gameplay features but also tons of hype and memorable cinematics and moments

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

.. what does voice acting or a cinematic have to do with gameplay? And Legion remix is live, go and play it. Legion was full of successful gameplay features but also tons of hype and memorable cinematics and moments

Do we have the budgets for that? Voidstorm clearly showcases that they will just create a zone with reused assets to push aside anything interesting, hype and epic because the costs of providing Cinematics and IGCs is too much for the franchise at this moment.

This is frankly deeper than "individual bad", its' a systemic issue based on the fact they were piss scared that one expansion wasn't enough to revitalize World of Warcraft after the Shadowlands collapse and then unfortunately the Narrative/Lore fans became the casualties but in retrospect the entire Blizzcon 2023 comes off as completely laughable when we see how revitalized everything is even when the Narrative and IP is completely stagnant it still can drive extreme revenue through just basic Gameplay First, Frictionless and Deescalation of any potential Drama.

The mistimings of new management into Blizzcon 2023 led to a schism between the idealistic view of the Warcraft Team and what they had to do for their corporate leadership. Its' not hard to recognize that everything kind of just crashed into thousands of pieces as the Shadowlands collapse led to a complete rethinking through board meetings that led to this state of apathetic uninterest and a Narrative Team ran wild on rerunning the same stories for half a decade over and over.

[COBRAstriker]

Do we have the budgets for that? Voidstorm clearly showcases that they will just create a zone with reused assets to push aside anything interesting, hype and epic because the costs of providing Cinematics and IGCs is too much for the franchise at this moment.

Legion reused Dalaran. Reusing assets is not the issue, it's how they're used. We get far more emphasis on story now, a lot more dialogue and cinematics, despite your claims to the contrary. No, the issue is that the people running the creative side of WoW are not fit for such a franchise. That's it. They are alienating their original fanbase for their bluesky hugbox, which funnily enough, is also starting to hate them and call out their poor work, albeit in a very mild manner

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Legion reused Dalaran. Reusing assets is not the issue, it's how they're used. We get far more emphasis on story now, a lot more dialogue and cinematics, despite your claims to the contrary. No, the issue is that the people running the creative side of WoW are not fit for such a franchise. That's it

I mean, I do not see this changing until we do hit a Cinematic that just makes everything beyond the pale even for the lowest common denominator. Even then, it is far more likely they just deprioritize further than doing some Dragonflight style revamp of the Story and its 'priority internally.

Either way, we're never going to run out of individuals to blame. So again, I just do not think in that direction at all about this issue.

[Count Zero]

This is a non-statement. Literally everything that can ever be considered a mistake or problem in the game is a "failure of leadership", because everything is the purview of some form of team lead.

Your original reply to me was when I pointed out recent notable examples. A random bug in the game and a botched expansion reveal are not in the same scope of leadership responsibility. Any given minor bug is not something that is going all the way up the ladder, an expansion reveal is.

[COBRAstriker]

I mean, I do not see this changing until we do hit a Cinematic that just makes everything beyond the pale even for the lowest common denominator. Even then, it is far more likely they just deprioritize further than doing some Dragonflight style revamp of the Story and its 'priority internally.

Like the Arathi one? The Avengers one in Amirdrassil? Or hell, even Midnight's? Midnight's cinematic is still at 2.1 million views, less people bothered to watch it than the one with 2 dudes talking in a desert. It's bad and it's nothing like Warcraft, so most Warcraft fans didn't even bother. It's the worst performing expansion cinematic for an expansion that was supposed to be all about that OG Warcraft with Metzen in full force. If I were a big wig at Blizzard, I would sound the alarm. You say commerce, but poor work like this doesn't bring anyone into WoW, to the contrary, it pushes people away. TWW being bad also left a sour taste in a lot of people's mouth, because they didn't get what they were promised at Blizzcon 23

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Like the Arathi one? Or hell, even Midnight's? Midnight's cinematic is still at 2.1 million views, less people bothered to watch it than the one with 2 dudes talking in a desert. It's bad and it's nothing like Warcraft, so most Warcraft fans didn't even bother. It's the worst performing expansion cinematic for an expansion that was supposed to be all about that OG Warcraft with Metzen in full force. If I were a big wig at Blizzard, I would sound the alarm. You say commerce, but poor work like this doesn't bring anyone into WoW, to the contrary, it pushes people away. TWW being bad also left a sour taste in a lot of people's mouth, because they didn't get what they were promised at Blizzcon 23

Yes, I do not disagree on the performance of the Midnight Cinematic as a canary in the coal mine. However, we have to contrast with the actual player numbers and the fact that historically they can always replace lack of interest with further monetization to make up for lost player counts. Even then the Gameplay side has essentially strangled lore fans as they are clearly stating that they have no interest in the Story and that the Game for them is at its best and I am not surprised if we get more "Player numbers good even if you Lore fans are crying.".

Absolutely, I do not think they're making a good bet shaving of a few millions to 10s of millions on deprioritizing the IPs inherent value which is the World of Azeroth, its' denizens and the stories within.

They don't think so though and they think the Gameplay First/8 Week new update structure/2 Major/6 Minor model is the way to go for maximized commercial gain.

[Nymrohd]

Absolutely, I do not think they're making a good bet shaving of a few millions to 10s of millions on deprioritizing the IPs inherent value which is the World of Azeroth, its' denizens and the stories within.

They think so though and they think the Gameplay First/8 Week new update structure/2 Major/6 Minor model is the way to go for maximized commercial gain.

And doing that while also gambling with gameplay on a greater scale than ever before.

[Joshuaj]

Like the Arathi one? The Avengers one in Amirdrassil? Or hell, even Midnight's? Midnight's cinematic is still at 2.1 million views, less people bothered to watch it than the one with 2 dudes talking in a desert. It's bad and it's nothing like Warcraft, so most Warcraft fans didn't even bother. It's the worst performing expansion cinematic for an expansion that was supposed to be all about that OG Warcraft with Metzen in full force. If I were a big wig at Blizzard, I would sound the alarm. You say commerce, but poor work like this doesn't bring anyone into WoW, to the contrary, it pushes people away. TWW being bad also left a sour taste in a lot of people's mouth, because they didn't get what they were promised at Blizzcon 23

How was the Midnight cinematic nothing like Warcraft?

Also, more people watched TWW cinematic cause it was an emotional, nice cinematic between two beloved characters.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

And doing that while also gambling with gameplay on a greater scale than ever before.

Yeah, I do feel extremely uneasy about that because if they make the wrong bet and we also have a continual "fuck all" is happening in story in the Live Service of the most hyped up expansion concepts they had in their holster, I certainly don't feel easy about it.

Obviously, I don't really like spreadsheet/KPI decisionmaking but they made the decision. So either they are confident in their internal metric projections from these decisions or its the deathscream from the Raid Encounter Team trying to justify their own existence up the chain leadership about Raiding mattering. Either way, it does haunt me. Genuinely I am still rather confused about the whole "We need more Raiders" thing as Delves has vacuumed so many players and if we're talking outside of game non-subscribers joining WoW I just do not see them being added to Raider metric but rather just Delves metric.

I don't really foresee a shaky ground into oblivion though, I think they will probably win out on these decisions even if in the short term its very noisy.

[Joshuaj]

Everyone here has ears, eyes and a brain. Use them and compare the old with the new. The new is off and of poor quality, like a lot of other things.now. It's not Warcraft anymore. Don't let anyone gaslight you. Danuser, Afrasiabi, Metzen, Pretzel, whoever you may think the 'face' of WoW's writing or creative direction is, aren't the issue. The issue is that the wrong people took control of the franchise. How often do you see people shitting on Anne Stickney? I would say that most WoW players don't even know who she is. But it's people like her that are ruining WoW. A good reminder perhaps that she was also very proud of the Gilneas Reclamation questline which was a complete dud

It started with BfA and it went completely off rails with the 2021 scandals when the balance of power changed. That's it, and you're seeing the results. Retail WoW is run by people who have no interest in keeping the game as close as possible to the original. They want THEIR WoW, because the old one was made by people they hate

Nothing will change until massive changes are made to that team

The same old guard scrapped lots of content they promised and made stuff like the Garrisons, RNG Legendaries, and AP systems btw.

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They're not the legends you believed them to be, trust me.

[Hitei]

Your original reply to me was when I pointed out recent notable examples. A random bug in the game and a botched expansion reveal are not in the same scope of leadership responsibility. Any given minor bug is not something that is going all the way up the ladder, an expansion reveal is.

You are conflating things that have nothing to do with each other. """an expansion reveal""" in this case was panel scheduling and video release organization that was largely handled entirely by the marketing department, or perhaps even pulled entirely out of Blizzard hands and handled by higher level Microsoft marketing departments. The blood elf NPC voice acting was almost certainly the direct oversight of Andrea Toyias, who has been the WoW voice and casting director since Cataclysm.

These two things have nothing to do with each other. These two "recent notable examples" are at opposite ends of actual causation. The expansion reveal is a result of departments being cut by executives into smaller and smaller staff or responsibilities exported entirely from the company to the parent. The Voice acting department is larger than ever and being run by the same person who has run it for a decade and a half. One of these is the devs ostensibly getting NO say in a thing, and the other is the devs getting absolute say in a thing.

They are not related.

[COBRAstriker]

they can always replace lack of interest with further monetization to make up for lost player counts

Players shouldn't be nickle and dimed because they refuse to address the problem and instead choose to either ignore it or double down. As long as they want to push their own version of Warcraft and not the one that go us all into the franchise in the first place, it will continue to be a race to the bottom. Retail WoW has no word of mouth, all the big streamers or content creators either quit or moved to Classic to replay hardcore for the 57th time instead of retail's newest patch. Retail's creative direction is less and less Warcraft and more and more people are starting to notice. Blizzard has to tighten up monetization or keep players in through fomo events, it's cooked. When the setting is boring and ass, the gameplay has to do a lot, and I mean a lot of heavy lifting, and frankly, WoW's gameplay is for the most part just decent enough, nothing crazy. The big wigs, and I mean executives not even seniors need to sit and push for changes to reverse course because this trajectory is untenable. Nobody cares if gameplay is good, if M+ is fun, or if shadow priest has nice visuals if the means through which the game is presented to those on the outside, the stories, cinematics, characters and everything else related to the creative aspect are dogshit

They don't think so though and they think the Gameplay First/8 Week new update structure/2 Major/6 Minor model is the way to go for maximized commercial gain.

Also a problem, but not the problem

[SilverLion]

Yeah there are several cases were the issue was not proper control (most notable being Stonetalon Garrosh) that go way back

Don't forget changing lore through tweets. "Sylvanas knew about the Wrathgate!" Garbage ass.

[COBRAstriker]

The same old guard scrapped lots of content they promised and made stuff like the Garrisons, RNG Legendaries, and AP systems btw.

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They're not the legends you believed them to be, trust me.

And I never said otherwise. WoW's always been average to bad when it comes to writing, but it made up for that with cool characters and cinematics. WoW lost even that. And the one thing I think they always did right for the most part, voice acting, seems to be following suit. It's all very off, and any older fan can tell. I realized that the game is cooked for good and it lost even good VA when they added those mole people, niffen, which unfortunately I had to listen to for an entire patch

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How was the Midnight cinematic nothing like Warcraft?

Also, more people watched TWW cinematic cause it was an emotional, nice cinematic between two beloved characters.

It's more of a Diablo cinematic than a WoW one. Too much dialogue, the pacing is off, Liadrin looks like a human and not a blood elf, and the cinematic just kind of fizzles away with some half assed 'combat'. Compare it to WoD or BfA