Do you like being shown what expansions you'll get years later?

[Sansnom]

I think it hurts the game a little; it's basically a spoiler; the surprise factor is more exciting to me than the anticipation of something I heard years ago.

Depends on the information I guess.

Question, do you feel excited when films based on other media are announced? Example, the Dune movies?

Granted it is a different form of media, but is the surprised factor still there? Spoiler? Definiately.

[Zodiark]

This is not a problem. The Trails series has plenty of background characters who are significantly more powerful than the protagonists you play as. The reason why they don't solve everything is because 1. they have responsibilities and interests that keep them local and discourage them from leaving their post to go to another jurisdiction (Victor has a province and a dojo to run, Matteus has a dojo to run and an army corps to instruct, they might take a special request mission but can't be doing that all of the time, and they are Erebonians and can't just go running around doing stuff willy nilly outside of their country. Cassius Bright is now a Liberlian general and has a military to organize and can't just leave Liberl to go running around doing high profile stuff in other countries. Arios MacClaine has a daughter to take care of and is a well respected Bracer who gets sent a lot of requests by the Bracer guild leadership, so he has limited time. And so on).

WoW's issue is that the writers stupidly ended the faction conflict and made everybody buddy buddy with each other, so now you get ridiculous shit like half of all of the faction leaders showing up at the Emerald Dream to fight against a generic evil, when these people have countries to run and other matters they are worrying about and there are major conflicts of interest like Horde, Blood Elves, and Nightborne interfering with Night Elves and dragons. Another issue is that WoW's writers can't keep the world alive outside of what we are seeing onscreen. During WoD, nothing is happening on Azeroth. During Legion, nothing is happening outside of the Broken Isles and the class order hall campaigns. During BFA, we hear only tidbits of battles happening outside of Kul'Tiras and Zandalar. During Shadowlands, nothing happens outside of the Shadowlands. During Dragonflight, nothing is happening outside of the Primalist stuff in the Dragon Isles. During The War Within, nothing is happening in the rest of the world. There should be stuff happening elsewhere that the other major characters are worried about and keep them occupied, why we are assigned to tackling the onscreen stuff.

I agree with you here. I have always felt that a living world where there are things happening in the background makes the world feel richer and more alive. I don't mind expansions creating new areas to explore. However I feel like if they were to add a new continent every OTHER expansion meanwhile the in-between expansions could be about building the world inwards and showcase some of the events and things that have been taking place while we were away handling other issues and the issues that notable figures have been dealing with around the lands. Thrall and Jaina and all the rest are just basically set pieces nowadays in each expansion. Maybe they hand out a quest or two but don't feel like actual living characters with lives outside of the area they are depicted in.

To me one of WoW's biggest potentials and also one of it's drawbacks is the fact that each zone and area of the game is basically in a time-capsule. A subset of the Defias never regroup and attempt to infiltrate Stormwind or the surrounding homesteads. The Gnolls and other beast tribes never leave their little nooks and respective areas. Undead in Duskfall never cross the river to raid the farms. These and a thousand more examples of a world locked in perpetuity. These types of things could be an actual thing IF Blizzard actually did something along my previously mentioned idea of building expansions inward every other expansion. New Quests, new wings of dungeons, etc. Revisit old areas to solve NEW problems. SEE the leaders actually doing real things governing their people and helping to address these issues.

TLDR: Nothing wrong with making established lore characters shine in their own right AND making players shine in a different light. Both should have things to do and take into consideration the actual living world where things SHOULD be going on regardless of whatever else we are doing.

[Osmeric]

I agree. After Legion BFA was a surprise and most people weren't on board. Granted in hindsight I actually really LIKED BFA. The whole azerite power thing wasn't an issue for me because I don't play the game in any sort of competitive way whatsoever. All that matters to me is the Locales, the music, the vibe, and so on.

Anyhow that being said. Shadowlands was an even BIGGER surpise and this time it had way more against it that for it so that's why I left the game about 3-4 months after launch and came back only during the last month or two before Dragonflight was due out.

I agree; to me BFA was not nearly as bad as some claimed. It had faults but they weren't major ones in my opinion.

SL, on the other hand, I just found intolerable. I didn't last 3-4 months; I lasted 12 days before I stopped playing (even with several months of sub left). It was just intensely aggravating in all respects. Clearly given the general reaction they built that expansion on the basis of a very flawed understanding of what their customers wanted.

[Zyky]

The point is to have fun friend lmao

If that was the point, we wouldn't be having the lowest participation rates since BFA in ALL kinds of content.

[Zodiark]

I agree; to me BFA was not nearly as bad as some claimed. It had faults but they weren't major ones in my opinion.

SL, on the other hand, I just found intolerable. I didn't last 3-4 months; I lasted 12 days before I stopped playing (even with several months of sub left). It was just intensely aggravating in all respects. Clearly given the general reaction they built that expansion on the basis of a very flawed understanding of what their customers wanted.

Yeah I only lasted as long as I did because the expansion came out the end of the year / early in the next year. So I didn't really have much going on and wanted to give the game the good ol college try. Maybe I would have been surprised. However that wasn't the case. The systems in place once you hit cap annoyed me to no end initially. I think that was my biggest turn off. Ill be honest the effect even extended into Dragonflight a bit. That's why I actually took a break in DF near the end of S1 for a few months. I didn't want to have to try and figure out the whole gearing process and everything else. Grinding rep was boring and annoying. But I came back when Forbidden Reach came out and I actually had a lot of fun. I mainly ran groups flying around the island and farming rares but there was something primal and basic about that type of gameplay that called out to my MMORPG roots playing EverQuest or something. When I wanted a bit of solo / relaxing fun I actually enjoyed the Zskera Vaults believe it or not. It too evoked something in my RPG veins that I hadn't felt in a long time in a MMO. Searching the tower, finding the keys, solving little puzzles. Kinda made me feel like I was playing a Zelda game. THIS is what really got me back into WoW full swing. I've been playing fairly regularly since.

Bottom line sometimes things are a surprise but in a good way, sometimes bad. Sometime we try things thinking we will hate them and actually love them and sometimes it's just hate as we thought. But you never would KNOW that unless you actually give something a proper try. The devil is in the details and the fun is in the gameplay. Weather you know or not what lies ahead makes no difference if the gameplay itself sucks.

- - - Updated - - -

If that was the point, we wouldn't be having the lowest participation rates since BFA in ALL kinds of content.

I feel like fun is always the point but right now peoples perceptions are being colored because we have a lack of meaningful content to do. Sure we just got .7 patch but honestly as enjoyable or not Siren Isles are, they are basically done in no time leaving players in a vacuum feeling like now what?

Part of the reason is this was a scrapped island expedition map. Something meant to be played in 10-15 minute intervals on a rotating schedule. NOT something to make your home for a few months till the next relevant content comes out. IF people felt like there was more to do then maybe participation wouldn't be so low.

[Zyky]

I feel like fun is always the point but right now peoples perceptions are being colored because we have a lack of meaningful content to do. Sure we just got .7 patch but honestly as enjoyable or not Siren Isles are, they are basically done in no time leaving players in a vacuum feeling like now what?

I haven't felt like the game has been made for fun in a while. Aspects of the game can be fun, however you often feel pigeon-holed into doing content you don't want to do or you're just "behind" or flat out refused to participate in what you want to do. For example, if you want to mythic raid and get Cutting Edge then you're forced into taking part in M+ because 70% of most classes BiS, second BiS, or third BiS comes out of M+ because they don't make good stat'd pieces within the raid and more often than not they're poorly optimized for ANY class on the specific piece. It feels more like they design for making you spend more time in game rather than having an enjoyable experience from playing, especially with them using "time spent in game" as their success metric since WoD's catastrophic failure.

[Osmeric]

I haven't felt like the game has been made for fun in a while. Aspects of the game can be fun, however you often feel pigeon-holed into doing content you don't want to do or you're just "behind" or flat out refused to participate in what you want to do. For example, if you want to mythic raid and get Cutting Edge then you're forced into taking part in M+ because 70% of most classes BiS, second BiS, or third BiS comes out of M+ because they don't make good stat'd pieces within the raid and more often than not they're poorly optimized for ANY class on the specific piece. It feels more like they design for making you spend more time in game rather than having an enjoyable experience from playing, especially with them using "time spent in game" as their success metric since WoD's catastrophic failure.

Mythic raiding is an edge case, because it pushes performance to the limit. Designing the game to not force things on its audience would involve far too impact on others.

The needs of the compulsive optimizers can't drive a game design.

[Zyky]

Mythic raiding is an edge case, because it pushes performance to the limit. Designing the game to not force things on its audience would involve far too impact on others.

The needs of the compulsive optimizers can't drive a game design.

The idiocy of that statement is beyond measure. There are several very easy solutions to the problem, Blizzard is just lazy. For example the most simple of solutions: making raid gear stronger while zoned into the raid, making dungeon gear stronger in dungeons. And instead we end up with absurdly terrible or insanely overpowered trinket scaling that takes them months to just perform tuning on IF AT ALL. I can name two dozen raid trinkets in the last few expansions that had zero viability because of bad tuning and never getting adjusted.

Instead of fixing the core of the problem we need stat and level squishes every other expansion because they do piss poor at their job and never do better despite claiming they "learned so much" every expansion.

[Zodiark]

Mythic raiding is an edge case, because it pushes performance to the limit. Designing the game to not force things on its audience would involve far too impact on others.

The needs of the compulsive optimizers can't drive a game design.

I agree 100% x2 if that were possible. Designing the game in such a way to appeal to the sweaties hurts the overall experience for everyone who isn't. Problem is that if you made it cater to a more casual audience then the sweaties would just mow through the content and cry loudly on the forums that there wasn't anything to do and even IF that wasn't really the case when a loud group cries about something enough it can give the perception that what they are saying has credence.

Back to the point though I will say again that I have no problem with knowing what's in store expansion wise as long as the gameplay is enjoyable. Right now the way things are as a casual gamer-dad these days I don't feel like I have a ton of meaningful content to do. I was done with the Siren Isles stuff in no time. Took like 10 alts thought there just to grab some gems. The storyline is whatever. The zone has a lot of little easter eggs and tidbits of lore tucked away if you want to leisurely roam the islands but that is a little boring to me and many others as well I would imagine. So what do you do? I feel like the anniversary patch leading up to .7 had enough catch up systems that gear wasn't a major issue and the siren isles stuff just gives vet gear which is whatever. So then what was the point? I guess it IS faster to gear up alts but I didn't really think that was a big issue to begin with in the first place.