Fans would prolly listen to them if a CMs words meant anything. But sadly, for the last like 10 years... they haven't meant shit.
Like, maybe instead of firing everyone who's responsible for communication because communication is worthless and shit... maybe, just maybe, you know, work on communication. Oooooor instead just fire them all despite you not giving them anything to work with. Talk about throwing out the baby with the bath water.
More Q&As than ever that all ultimately said about +- nothing. I don't see a difference between 2 and 12 pointless Q&As per year. Quantity doesn't make up for a lack of quality, especially when that quantity somehow only ever comes into play as some sort of damage control.
These recent Q&As have been nothing but 'you think you do, but you don't, 'having said that... you're actually wrong', 'pet battles are an important part of the world of warcraft', 'for the 17th time, transmog is a very important topic for us', 'can't give you any specific details on pretty much anything about we are about to do', 'the azerite system is actually a great system but we simply have to live with it's unforeseeable flaws forever because who could've fucking thunk things would turn out like this' aaaaaaaaaaaaand the latest 'after ignoring 6 months of your feedback... you're actually right, we had a developer actually log into the game for the first time in 6 years and play with azerite and he did indeed confirm it to be shit, we're going to change it.... eventually... but that being said, can't tell you anything other than that it's gonna be awesome'.
just because they dont answer "HEY BLIZZARD FUCK YOU, WHEN IS ION GUNNA BE FIRED" does not make them bad... every Q&A has had many good questions. maybe not all of them but atleast 3-4
Lets look at the last Q&A for example since you love to say they answer literally nothing.
Kul Tiran Humans and Zandalari Trolls
They will release with Patch 8.1.5
You only have to get the war campaign achievement to unlock them, which you obtain before the quest to go into the raid.
They are not available yet because story wise they wanted the events to play out that solidifies them joining the larger fight.
They originally planned to have the Zandalari available with the Dark Iron Dwarves at launch, but replaced them with Mag'har Orcs so that it would make more sense with the flow of the story and to pair them with Kul Tirans.
Kul Tiran humans are an entirely new rig and therefore were more time consuming to create.
War Mode
They don't anticipate the item level 400 reward quest happening every week because there are a lot more Alliance participating in War Mode.
The extra rewards were meant to encourage more Alliance to participate but also to make Horde who did not like PvP to turn it off.
They agree that item level 400 is a little too high at the beginning of a raid tier. It won't be changed this week, but next week if it is available again it will be reduced to 385 and another form of reward will be added, such as war resources.
The War Mode bonus is determined by the amount of players participating on the outnumbered faction. They believe it might drop to 25% next week.
The discrepancy between factions in War Mode has been cut in half since the change.
The team is working on the issues causing the lag in certain War Mode shards.
Character Slots and Alts
They might allow the cap of 50 characters total to all be on the same server.
There might be a way for you to transfer War Resources from your main to your alts in 8.1.5.
Gear Upgrades and Item Level
The valor point system to upgrade gear makes the transition between raid tiers awkward as it makes you have less chances for upgrades in the next raid.
The valor point gear upgrade system is something that could make sense during the last raid tier of an expansion.
The 30 item level increase is the smallest number to make upgrades feel relevant in a new raid tier.
PvP Vendors
The team has given each slot several options to choose from over the course of earning conquest cap each week. It is different from a vendor, but gives the player more control and options to fill in gaps as time goes on.
There isn't a raid vendor where you can just buy a piece you want, and so the team wants reward systems to feel balanced across the board.
If there are extremely outlying stats for PvP for a class the team wants to address that instead of making the player feel like they need a piece of gear with that stat.
Mythic +
There is nothing to announce at the moment, but the team wants to give more unique rewards for Mythic + seasons.
The invisibility potion cooldown reduction was meant to lessen the necessity of a rogue's shroud.
The team wants to better showcase other classes' unique utility in Mythic +.
The team wants to take a look at timers, mobs, and dungeons that seem to encourage needing invisibility.
Creating a punishment for keystone abandoners would probably create more problems and there are certain runs that arguably should be abandoned (such as when a group is in over their heads and would take hours to clear the dungeon)
The team has talked about social ratings and endorsements in Mythic +.
Transmog
Tier sets and class themed armor could return in the future.
Class specific sets were removed for now to allow more variety and distinct sets from different locations over more iterations of class themes.
Heart of Azeroth in 8.2 and Beyond
The team wants to move away from unlocking the same traits over the course of the expansion.
The traits on Azerite Armor will all be unlocked when you obtain a piece of gear.
The artifact power will instead give you abilities on your Heart of Azeroth, many of which are active abilities.
These abilities could be earned and distinct based on the content that you earn it from such as raids or Mythic +.
Titan Residuum
Residuum funneling is only done by the most extreme guilds.
The team would rather reduce the gaps between the advantage these extreme methods provide over other players.
Development and Design
The biggest challenge of WoW is designing for the many different audiences that play the game.
The game is richer for having a variety of audiences over the team focusing on designing for one archetype.
Catch up mechanics are there to lessen the barrier of having to return to old content for months to help someone that is returning to the game catch up.
Global Cooldown
The team is not done bringing abilities back off of the global cooldown.
The team is discussing how to make dps/healing increasing abilities more interesting to press. An example would be having a burst of healing ring out when pressing Ascendance before you transform.
Class Changes and Roles
Healer DPS should not be close to damage dealers as their rotations are simple and have a low ceiling.
Some healers could use some help with their damage, but they want to avoid a Discipline Priest at the beginning on the expansion situation.
There are no major class overhauls planned in 8.1.5.
Pure balance will likely happen over the coming weeks through hotfixes after looking at the new raid feedback, specifically for Arms warriors.
Complete overhauls of a spec (such as rotation and resource alterations) will most likely not happen in a patch and have to wait for a new expansion.
some examples of very good responses tghat tell us alot of good stuff about the possible future
I don't get why Kul Tirans can't be paladins... it would be BADASS!!!
Solid strawman. If the best they can do is 3-4 good questions per 1 hour Q&A every 2-3 months and you're actually happy with that level of communication (just because we had 2-3 good questions every 4 months before that), then that's just sad. Yes, quite literally they're communicating more, but if them working on communication for years boils down to 3 more relevant answers per year... then that is just pathetic for a multi bajillion dollar company.
Them saying they'll be released with 8.1.5 after delaying them for 6 months and then not even giving us an ETA on that is not an answer, it's an excuse. Even more so, it's the 17th excuse in regards to that topic. The Zandalari requiring a proper story before joining the Horde is a load of crap seeing how it took the Maghar and Dark Irons pretty much a 10 minute questline to pledge eternal loyalty to this war. The only 'answer' here is that Kultirans are completely new... and that is something we knew already. We asked 'when' and they 'answered' with 'with this patch that's due in the near future', awesome.Lets look at the last Q&A for example since you love to say they answer literally nothing.
Kul Tiran Humans and Zandalari Trolls
They will release with Patch 8.1.5
You only have to get the war campaign achievement to unlock them, which you obtain before the quest to go into the raid.
They are not available yet because story wise they wanted the events to play out that solidifies them joining the larger fight.
They originally planned to have the Zandalari available with the Dark Iron Dwarves at launch, but replaced them with Mag'har Orcs so that it would make more sense with the flow of the story and to pair them with Kul Tirans.
Kul Tiran humans are an entirely new rig and therefore were more time consuming to create.
Not an answer, that's an admission of them not listening, again. The Alliance got that stupid quest with 8.1, 2 months before the raid released... and people were saying how stupid it was for them to get a free heroic piece of loot every week. Back then they gave 0 fucking shits about giving us an answer. Turns out, 2 fucking months later, with the release of a new raid, giving out a free piece of heroic loot to 1 faction is still fucking stupid. Again, an excuse for not listening to community feedback 2 months ago.They don't anticipate the item level 400 reward quest happening every week because there are a lot more Alliance participating in War Mode.
The extra rewards were meant to encourage more Alliance to participate but also to make Horde who did not like PvP to turn it off.
They agree that item level 400 is a little too high at the beginning of a raid tier. It won't be changed this week, but next week if it is available again it will be reduced to 385 and another form of reward will be added, such as war resources.
This is the first real bit of new information so far. Yet it's shaded by doubt because for all we know they might just manually adjust the war mode bonus every single week. At this point all trust is gone so we just have to take this at face value because instead of showing actual numbers... they're just referring to them.The War Mode bonus is determined by the amount of players participating on the outnumbered faction. They believe it might drop to 25% next week.
The discrepancy between factions in War Mode has been cut in half since the change.
Duh, what else would they say? Don't you guys have $5k rigs and fiber, wtf?!The team is working on the issues causing the lag in certain War Mode shards.
Ok, neat, indeed some new information.Character Slots and Alts
They might allow the cap of 50 characters total to all be on the same server.
Confirming what many already believed to be a thing since it became a thing during Legion as well... although one might ask why we didn't get that from the beginning...There might be a way for you to transfer War Resources from your main to your alts in 8.1.5.
Really nothing new. We know they hate valor points and everything surrounding it and we know they love the magical 30 ilvls. The only thing we didn't know is that they love titanforging making shit irrelevant but upgrades making shit irrelevant is no bueno. Them saying something could potentially make sense in a possible unclear future scenario... is not relevant information.The valor point system to upgrade gear makes the transition between raid tiers awkward as it makes you have less chances for upgrades in the next raid.
The valor point gear upgrade system is something that could make sense during the last raid tier of an expansion.
The 30 item level increase is the smallest number to make upgrades feel relevant in a new raid tier.
There's no PvP vendor because there's no PvE vendor either and thus it makes complete sense. So the last 10 years of PvP itemization didn't make sense, gotcha.The team has given each slot several options to choose from over the course of earning conquest cap each week. It is different from a vendor, but gives the player more control and options to fill in gaps as time goes on.
There isn't a raid vendor where you can just buy a piece you want, and so the team wants reward systems to feel balanced across the board.
If there are extremely outlying stats for PvP for a class the team wants to address that instead of making the player feel like they need a piece of gear with that stat.
Whatever that means. 'eventually we do some stuff and it will be good'.Mythic +
There is nothing to announce at the moment, but the team wants to give more unique rewards for Mythic + seasons.
And it failed horribly at that. But I can't imagine that the question was 'why was the invis potion CD reduced' but more something along the lines of 'why the fuck is it ok that out of the top 200 m+ runs there's like 3 without a rogue, maybe shroud a teenie weenie bit op?'The invisibility potion cooldown reduction was meant to lessen the necessity of a rogue's shroud.
'We're looking into the matter that you've been reporting to us for the last 2.5 years but haven'T done anything about other than... actually reducing utility across the board', solid answer.The team wants to better showcase other classes' unique utility in Mythic +.
Looking forward to getting that then... eventually... perhaps... at some point.The team wants to take a look at timers, mobs, and dungeons that seem to encourage needing invisibility.
This is a good answer. They have looked at a certain issue, discussed it and they came to a conclusion and told us about it. People might not like the answer but it's reasonable where Blizz is coming from and one can understand their thought process and argumentation.Creating a punishment for keystone abandoners would probably create more problems and there are certain runs that arguably should be abandoned (such as when a group is in over their heads and would take hours to clear the dungeon)
Because that is sooooo useful in Overwatch. I'm sure we'll get it eventually... or maybe not. But at least they said something.The team has talked about social ratings and endorsements in Mythic +.
Pretty sure we already had that confirmed like 4 times before that Q&A.Transmog
Tier sets and class themed armor could return in the future.
'Allow for more variety'. Because allowing for 4 armor-type sets per raid is more variety than allowing for 12 (13?!) class-type sets per raid. BUT DON'T FORGET THE AWESOME WARMODE SETS! Also, we've been told that numerous times since they've announced that we're not going to have tier sets this expansion.Class specific sets were removed for now to allow more variety and distinct sets from different locations over more iterations of class themes.
This is new information, this is good. Sadly it's coming 6 fucking months too late because they've decided to ignore 10 months of community feedback before deciding to change something about this obviously flawed system... eventually... maybe in 4-6-10 months or so.Heart of Azeroth in 8.2 and Beyond
The team wants to move away from unlocking the same traits over the course of the expansion.
The traits on Azerite Armor will all be unlocked when you obtain a piece of gear.
The artifact power will instead give you abilities on your Heart of Azeroth, many of which are active abilities.
These abilities could be earned and distinct based on the content that you earn it from such as raids or Mythic +.
Ok.Titan Residuum
Residuum funneling is only done by the most extreme guilds.
But why if it's only done by like 20 guilds? If it's only done by 20 guilds the advantage can't be that big.The team would rather reduce the gaps between the advantage these extreme methods provide over other players.
Ok, very new information, spend more time elaborating please, haven't heard anything about your philosophy in that regard before.Development and Design
The biggest challenge of WoW is designing for the many different audiences that play the game.
The game is richer for having a variety of audiences over the team focusing on designing for one archetype.
Catch up mechanics are there to lessen the barrier of having to return to old content for months to help someone that is returning to the game catch up.
Good to hear, but also very pathetic. It speaks volumes about your competence if you have to revert 75% of the changes you made to something after 8 months of feedback.Global Cooldown
The team is not done bringing abilities back off of the global cooldown.
9.0 will sure be great.The team is discussing how to make dps/healing increasing abilities more interesting to press. An example would be having a burst of healing ring out when pressing Ascendance before you transform.
Duh.Class Changes and Roles
Healer DPS should not be close to damage dealers as their rotations are simple and have a low ceiling.
Some healers could use some help with their damage, but they want to avoid a Discipline Priest at the beginning on the expansion situation.
Another real and new answer, sadly again a pretty sad one.There are no major class overhauls planned in 8.1.5.
Nothing new.Pure balance will likely happen over the coming weeks through hotfixes after looking at the new raid feedback, specifically for Arms warriors.
Another real and new answer, sadly again a pretty sad one.Complete overhauls of a spec (such as rotation and resource alterations) will most likely not happen in a patch and have to wait for a new expansion.
In there there's like 4, maybe 5 answers I'd consider valuable new information. The rest is repeating shit we already know and them acknowledging community feedback 12 months too late. This Q&A could've lasted 10 minutes and we'd have had all the new information, having said that, it lasted an hour and was filled with useless crap and platitudes.
i really wanted to play zandalari, but this game has currently lost my interest for the time being
In FF you don't even need to do that. When an expansion launches with a new race, you'll get one free Fantasia(race change potion, for those who don't play) with the expansion. So unless you are indecisive on what race to play and keep buying them, you can go pretty far with the free ones.
It’s not just that video though, that’s the point. Even videos that wowhead have posted have gotten instant dislikes (to the point where they’ve turned like/dislikes off on videos), with people even saying they’re dialling them purely because it’s Blizzard related. That’s toxic.
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Apart from we knew at BlizzCon when we were getting them, so I mean...
To be fair there is no mention of a free fantasia with the Shadowbringers collectors edition despite Viera being added.
But I mean it's £5 to race change anyway. Compared to the £19. Although they could possibly give a fantasia as a reward for the level 70 MSQ. Because the level 50 MSQ gives you a free one to replace the veteran rewards system going away. Who knows?
Doesn't affect me either way because I have no intent on playing Viera. I mean the models and animations from what we saw on the females is pretty damn good but I just love my Au Ra too much.
More Q and As doesn't always equal better either lol. Especially when Ion just spouts things that nobody wants to hear and Lore looks miserable as hell.
Look at FF14 and their live letters. Informative and they don't look like they want to just quit their jobs. They tell us what we want to hear. Least imo.
Troll paladins make no sense, they have never appeared ingame before as NPCs so shouldn't be playable.
The hunter hoe with the least beloe.