World of warcraft: Shadowlands announced

[Ravielsk]

Well, it's come to this. Game must be ultra mega super elite DEAD at this point.

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/23761709/development-preview-cross-faction-instances

they manged to lose 3 million players last year. 2 million of which jumped ship since the last FFXIV expansion, released in november. it was the second year of a global pandemic and they couldn't get neets to continue playing their skinner's box.

The game is unsalvageable at this point. Blizzard mismanaged it for far too long to for any fix to have substantial effect. They have been developing the game in a wholly vertical style like a pyramid where each new expansion added a new higher but also narrower section. With each new expansion invalidating everything before it was only a question of "when will the game turn to shit" not "if it will turn to shit". Same with the lore where they have been looking to escalate the threat with each new villain but forgot that eventually that only ends up with a story devoid of tension or intrigue.
Point is that you do not add content by removing content. If you are constantly removing more than adding you are going for a net loss and eventually you end up with nothing. This is why Blizzard keeps making these weird procedural generated pieces of non-content like Expeditions or Torghast because they effectively rendered all previous content obsolete. That is why they keep inventing these new "resource bars" like Azurite because they deleted talent trees and only later realized that not the players have nothing to do without them. That is why nobody gives a shit about the lore anymore because after slaying alternate dimension Satan, the real Satan and his tentacle cousins the latest undead Satan just does not hit hard enough for anyone to care.

If the leaks about the upcoming Dragon isles expansion are true then Blizzard has not come even close to realizing what made the game shit and is just going to inject more MLP inspired fanfiction in the already bloated nonsense that is modern WoW.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I agree that the game is unsalvageable, it has spent two many years relying on bespoke expansion mechanics instead of filling the world with more content that fleshed out existing zones and "forced" players to not only spend their entire time in the expansions but also revisit previous zones.

The only thing left for Blizzard is developing a StarCraft MMORPG, it would fill a market niche that is lacking, scifi.

MS on their part are stuck with two outdated fantasy MMORPGs, with little way to develop them beyond releasing small content expansions that only manage to bring players back temporarily. ESO doesn't even have crossplatform or cross save functionalities, having separate player bases on PlayStation, PC and xbox.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

ESO doesn't even have crossplatform or cross save functionalities, having separate player bases on PlayStation, PC and xbox.

A major reason for no cross-platform play is the lack of mods on non-PC versions. It's basically a completely different game, non-PC players would be at a massive disadvantage.
tbh I don't know how people play that game without mods, the default UI/etc., are garbage.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

Throwing ESO in the same bag with WoW is an insult and just incorrect. It’s not a perfect game but does so many fundamental things much better that WoW that you probably couldn’t think of a bigger opposite.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Throwing ESO in the same bag with WoW is an insult and just incorrect. It’s not a perfect game but does so many fundamental things much better that WoW that you probably couldn’t think of a bigger opposite.

Nah, it's by far the worse AAA MMORPG in the market. The level scaling is just too much, there is absolutely zero challenge in the game, you can faceroll all the content with the exception of their version of mythic dungeons/raids by just spamming a single ability.

The grouping mechanics are shit as well, and zenimax realizes this because they focus solely on providing small content updates in the form of releasing a small questing zone and a few dungeons as "expansions", and that content revolves around your character saving the day in a single player story.

 

[Hobknobling]

Pretty great video about one of the people who ran the biggest gold farming businesses in EverQuest and World of Warcraft.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

That faggot Ion not been sacked yet?

 

[Malamert]

Here's your modern day final patch trailer, complete with generic action music.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Here's your modern day final patch trailer, complete with generic action music.

Formulaic trailer, zzzzzzz

 

[J1M]

These things happen when playing the game you work on stops being a hiring requirement.

 

[abija]

Using that requirement for more than game designers is probably a big problem in gaming in general.

 

[J1M]

Using that requirement for more than game designers is probably a big problem in gaming in general.

You think the designers of wow play the retail game?

 

[Malamert]

This is modern day WoW. A handful of neckbeards boosting casuals 24/7.

 

[Caim]

Always ask them what they're gonna spend all that money on afterwards.

 

[J1M]

You have it backwards. Liquid is going to pay other guilds to funnel that gear to them so they have every possible advantage when mythic opens.

Then, after the world first race, they will do boosting runs to get out of debt.

For reference, right now $20 USD buys about 200k gold.

 

[abija]

You think the designers of wow play the retail game?

Considering the amount of detail and resources wasted on crap I don't care about, yeah they do and their percentage of casuals mirrors the playerbase.

 

[Malamert]

 

[J1M]

That's Garrosh and Arthas now.

I wonder if there's anyone else on their "last jedi hitlist".

 

[Sykar]

Murky?

 

[Dr1f7]

my god this is how people play the game?

is this hud supposed to be the control chamber of a battle mech space ship?
are players even meant to look at the game or are they supposed to just stare at pop-ups and meters and buttons the whole time?

it's funny because WoW players always made fun of EVE online for being "spreadsheet simulator", but then they "play" with huds like this

 

[Malamert]

You what? That UI is super clean when it comes to raiding autism. Here's how it's really done:

 

[Dr1f7]

lmao

 

[rusty_shackleford]

melee were the only people who had to pay attention to raid mechanics 95% of the time so it's not like it mattered for healers/ranged

 

[Sykar]

And people always wondered why I hate addons especially in WoW. That screen clutter is maddening. Blizzard should have never allowed that garbage. To me using this shit was like using map hack in D2. Disgusting. Worse they added the funtion so players could know if you had addons installed or not. The ultimate middle finger to players who did not want to conform. Fuck Blizzard, and fuck a large chunk of the WoWfantards.

 

[Caim]

Update the game to give players the info they need, then ban all mods like that.

 

[Dr1f7]

And people always wondered why I hate addons especially in WoW. That screen clutter is maddening. Blizzard should have never allowed that garbage. To me using this shit was like using map hack in D2. Disgusting. Worse they added the funtion so players could know if you had addons installed or not. The ultimate middle finger to players who did not want to conform. Fuck Blizzard, and fuck a large chunk of the WoWfantards.

it's nuts lol what's the point of all the design and art when most players just fill their screen withspreadsheets lmao
at least addons let me customize my hud pretty much however I want, WoW's base settings are limited with that and ugly imo