Why the negative response to all the positive changes in 9.1.5

[WinningOne]

Everyone is complaining its some desperate attempt to grab players back that should have been in game from the start. People still flaming blizz and the new systems coming in 9.1.5.

New management is taking over and immediately making positive changes, why is this a bad thing? This is a promising thing for the future.
I've played more heavily than I would like to admit since TBC and this already was a more alt friendly/new player than other expansions (even more so than Legion and BfA were which seem to be the most similar comparisons to modern wow). Now I do admit I mainly M+ and can gear a toon to 230+ in about a week and already have 4 alts key logging, but as someone that mainly stays off the toxic forums and just enjoys the game I don't see much validation in the complaints besides, possibly, entering pvp as a new/alt player. Is this just an echo chamber for blizz bashing now?

Most of the people who post on 3rd party websites like MMO-Champ are unhappy with the state of the game. I'd also propose many of them have an unhealthy attachment to WoW which makes it impossible for them to acknowledge anything positive. The people with positive opinions are busy playing the game and have no reason to come here and wade through this sewage of negativity.

[Deneios]

That wasn't at all my experience. I played beta, I played 9.0, I have 5 toons 230+ doing m+ and continue to have a blast. I dont do assaults, I dont do torghast when I don't want, I don't have to do anything in my order hall besides doing shaping fate and 1000 anima once a week, im 10/10hc and am not even the best covenant on all my toons. I'm really confused, maybe you lot should try playing the game instead of echoing fake complaints here all day.

I dont see how this has anything to do with my analogy about the way blizzard handles QoL feedback. This exact same song and dance was played in legion and bfa.

[Atrea]

Look all I'm saying is, if you came here hoping to find people satisfied with updates you are going to be sorely disappointed.

People can't be happy and enjoy things in this community; they can only shit all over stuff. This is a proud World of Warcraft tradition dating back to November 2004, with patch 1.1. Go read about the changes in that patch and how people shat on them, said the game was dead, etc.

This has been going on for nearly 17 years, it's part of the mythos at this point.

[Kiwijello]

Because they were told in ALPHA what the issues were, then told again in BETA, and they basically said to "fuck off" because they knew better. Turns out they didn't, but instead of admitting they were wrong, they blamed the playerbase AGAIN, and made up some bullshit story about having to steer people through a single Covenant because storyline blah blah blah.

It's because of RESENTMENT. Blizzard resents us and now we (some of us) resent them. They aren't making the game for us anymore, they are making it for stockholders. If you HAPPEN to enjoy it, that's just a bonus. My experience doesn't change yours, nor does yours change mine, but I am willing to bet there a lot more people UNHAPPY with Blizz right now than are happy with them...

[Yooginava182]

->"Hey look we see your feedback, but... screw you, our way is better"
->*looses players specifically cause they didn't listen to feedback
->"Hey look good we are, we listened to your feed back from alpha / beta, and we are just NOW finally putting into the game, look how good we are, see we listen" (This is usually a year+ after release.
->*Releases new expansion with new system and completely cans the one they just fixed
->"Hey look we see your feedback, but... screw you, our way is better" and repeat.

Pretty sure this has been the standard for blizz since Legion.

Give me an expansion that isn't completely broken that we have to get it fixed a year later. Waste of time and resources when instead of fixing, we get new content. What a world.

[Samuraijake]

New management is taking over and immediately making positive changes, why is this a bad thing?

just curious.. how do you know that new management is responsible for these changes? who in particular set this up

[Gaidax]

just curious.. how do you know that new management is responsible for these changes? who in particular set this up

That's just his headcanon.

Some derp on twitter posted something along these lines as if it's effect of new management and Mike Ybarra responded this: https://twitter.com/Qwik/status/1431324003621212164

[OrangeJuice]

But you miss important thing - leveling in SL is not leveling in old WoW. Saying that WoW was alt friendly in "good old days" is complete nonsense. And expacs pre-Legion had their mandatory chores as well - attunements in TBC, legendary questlines in MoP/WoD etc.

Now we have both fast leveling and only fraction of mandatory stuff to do compared to Legion/BfA. When you reach 60, you can be in Korthia and do relevant content 5 minutes later. Everything has clear end, there is 0 "infinite" progression.

Only last two (important) things I find irritating about alts are mandatory campaign (takes 2-3 hours, but still repeating max level campaign is no fun) and smaller issues about 50-60 leveling. 9.1.5 fixes both.

Its not about being able to reach the relevant content faster, its the fact that we have to do it. Can't just do what you want, everything is gated by stipulations. Everything. Its annoying and tedious because its not what I got into WoW for. It was never what WoW was about for people who started, probably before Cata I'd say. You might not have a problem with it, or people still playing the game now, because the content that you have to do just happens to be content you enjoy doing. But lets say they made a patch where you had to do stuff YOU didn't want to do, like pet battles or PvP or whatever element of the game you don't like, and you had to do that every day to progress your character. You too would be upset. You're not going to convince people to like the game because for people like myself, its just not fun.

I enjoyed PvP. What I wanted to do was login-> farm honor gear-> farm conquest gear. Nothing more, UNLESS I wanted to. Back in the day thats exactly what I did. I leveled up my main, ran bgs for the weekend to get a full set, then capped weekly conquest. The kicker is that farming honor/conquest are done absentmindedly because I was already doing that stuff from the start anyways- because thats the content I enjoyed. When I got done I would go WPvP/duel, sometimes farm old achieves, sometimes farm gold, sometimes just login and do nothing. I was never punished for having fun by being put behind this artificial progression systems. If I wanted an alt, the only barrier to playing that alt was literally just leveling. I could break that barrier in as long or as little time as I wanted.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

It's funny some of you pretend they don't listen to feedback cause they didn't listen to stuff connected to covenants (not to mention it wasn't unified feedback from whole community). Scraping AP grind, loot -forgings, targetable legendaries, PVP vendor etc. - all wanted things are forgotten next day they are introduced and that other thing becomes THING THAT DESTROY WOW. People actually praised Blizzard for listening during SL Alpha/Beta (unlike BfA Alpha/Beta).

Also obviously people starting to quit February/March is because covenant choice, not because there was no new patch. Duh.

This patch is just typical lifting off restriction from launch on late expac. Done sooner than usual, cause SL should perform better at this stage of expansion. Don't make from it Mike Ybarra descending from heavens to punish Ion and bring back balance to the force.

everyone who raided higher than lfr/normal was against conduit energy cuz it doesnt benefit anyone all it did ws that you could not play you spec in arenas and pve or m+ the same time and the same goes for POWER tied behind covenants not the covenants themselfs, we asked for lvl 60 Talentrow and permaent covenants.

[Accendor]

Because the damage is already done. We told them how bad things would be on launch and they didn't listen. 40 Guild members playing first tier for our mythic guild, as of right now I believe 5 are still subbed.

yeah thats exactly right.
Its cool that they change that stuff now, but honestly, it does matter zero to me, as I already "suffered" through it (don't take that word too literal).
All those changes that they are doing now don't affect me anymore at all. Again, still cool for the people for which they are relevant, but for me 9.1.5 currently is completely pointless.
Six month ago this would have been different and I would have been very excited.

[WinningOne]

Look all I'm saying is, if you came here hoping to find people satisfied with updates you are going to be sorely disappointed.

People can't be happy and enjoy things in this community; they can only shit all over stuff. This is a proud World of Warcraft tradition dating back to November 2004, with patch 1.1. Go read about the changes in that patch and how people shat on them, said the game was dead, etc.

This has been going on for nearly 17 years, it's part of the mythos at this point.

I'd expand that to say it's a "proud" tradition for all online communities. I've never played a game yet in which the vocal part of the community was the least bit helpful for anything other than pointing out everything bad about the game in question. Not to mention lashing out like a pack of crazed poo flinging jungle beasts at anyone who dares to post something positive.

[RoKPaNda]

Blizzard is wrong a lot of the time, but it's really hard to tell because the Blizzard fanbase is extremely negative about everything and has been since the WarCraft 2 days at least. Is the community right sometimes? Yes. Is Blizzard wrong sometimes? Hell yes. Is the community right most of the time? LOL, no.

[Empower]

I'd expand that to say it's a "proud" tradition for all online communities. I've never played a game yet in which the vocal part of the community was the least bit helpful for anything other than pointing out everything bad about the game in question. Not to mention lashing out like a pack of crazed poo flinging jungle beasts at anyone who dares to post something positive.

People who point out the negatives fix things. Those who offer praise for token gestures cheapen it. We give out praise to easily these days and offer criticism to rarely.

[GreenJesus]

And this new management working hard to try to make positive change was the ones in charge before launch?

What new management in WoW are you talking about? Ion is still the head honcho. Danloser is still the story head. Jeff Hamilton is still the systems guy.

[Vakir]

Imagine being so clueless as to how any of this works to believe that company leadership makes the design decisions in one of their multiple properties.

But yeah. People don't trust shit unless 10.0 drops with none of this to begin with.

[Stormwolf64]

Because WoW fanbase. One can only be absolutely 100% miserable and anti-WoW, or 100% positive towards it. No in-between.

For a .5 patch it gives just fine amounts of changes, and it's pretty clear they're feeling the heat at this point. 9.2 will be the real test.

The latest quarterly showed no drop in MAUs, but the next one? Oh, I bet it will.

Really? You'll find a lot of people complaining yet playing. Those are inbetween as they wouldnt play it if they didnt enjoy the game. Well, most of it.

[Paperfox]

The damage of 5 years is not gonna be mended that easily.
You say it's new management, but it's not. The explanation provided for the changes re-states they think they were right on doing what they did. That reveals they either don't understand the problem or more likely, they have in no way changed their aproach to development and are still arrogant and will do the same thing again next expansion.

One would have to be gullable to think this is anything more than a desperate move to try and salvage the exodus. They are not doing it cause they thought it was the best thing for the game. They did it cause of the money it's costing them. They were forced to do it.

Sure, i am glad about the changes. They are positive.
But, the goodwill was lost. One patch of fixing year long mistakes and an explanation that misses the point aren't exactly trustworthy. They have had many chances to course correct and they didn't take it. Only when they were forced to. That inspires confidance not at all. We've been through this rodeo enough times to know who ends on the floor.

This.

You can turn a toy car on a dime, but not an aircraft carrier.

In the last few expansions the absolute best time to play was after the x.3 patch. All the timegating was turned off, the systems were somewhat nerfed so you could actually have fun and enjoy it. These changes are nice, sadly it doesn't mean that Blizz has changed anything other than releasing this stuff earlier than normal.

Their approach to expansions has been pointed out by some already. Will they actually change things? They're making some nice profit from far fewer players so why would they?

[MoanaLisa]

It doesn’t matter really what people say. There are those that blindly attack or defend everything. If one is around enough it’s clear who they are and can be dismissed. The only opinions that matter are the people who play and very few of them post here any longer. There are easily a dozen posts in this thread alone from accounts that haven’t had anything good to say for months and months. Just be mindful that auto-attacking is just as bad as never finding anything wrong.

It’s a balance of what is good and less good and it’s different for everyone.

The kind of changes they are making have zero to do with new people at the top of Blizzard. If you hate the changes blame Ion. If you like them thank Ion.

Personally I hope Ion and the team learn something from this about the systems they create. They are over-engineered and the sort of thing that only theory crafters could understand or love. They typically think less about the players who use them and more about how elegant they are. They need to fix that.

[Nzx]

Why the negative response to all the positive changes in 9.1.5

Because the new meta for playing World of Warcraft is paying for a +15 and while you're afking and other people are playing the game for you, you come to the forums or the subreddit and complain about something your favourite YouTuber told you was bad.

Currently, the best way to get social media "clout" around WoW is to tell everyone about how much you hate it. In Legion, it was to tell everyone how much you loved having an "identity" again. In BFA, you had to complain about not having "meaningful choices" and/or too much "borrowed power". The vast, vast majority of people on this forum and on the r/wow subreddit have never had an original thought in their lives, and this culture where a grand total of like ten or fifteen people with YouTube or Twitch channels dictate the opinions of millions of people is so destructive to the game it is unbelievable.

Don't @ me when Asmongold or someone gets bored of other games and picks up some part of 9.1.5 as a reason to come back to WoW, and then a legion of forum posters mysteriously come back at the same time.

[Thestrawman]

Imagine being so clueless as to how any of this works to believe that company leadership makes the design decisions in one of their multiple properties.

But yeah. People don't trust shit unless 10.0 drops with none of this to begin with.

That's where I am basically. Yeah they fixed the stupid decisions but I remember Ion saying before 9.1 that Conduit Energy was here to stay. I remember a month ago a Blue Post saying Torghast's problems were because the players didn't give the right sort of feedback.

This is the WoW devs in full panic mode. They're grabbing any feedback they can easily do and throwing it in. They need to recover MAUs and throwing these "easy" fixes is a good way to do it for the noncynics.