World of Whorecraft: Battle for Asseroth

[Caim]

I'm almost positive they are at a loss with WoW at this point

One month of game time costs $15. At four million subscriptions that's $60.000.00, give or take rounding issues and the subtractions from the more cost-efficient packs. Times twelve that's a rough $720.000.000. Adding in the money from microtransactions and people buying the whole game I'd say that's a rough THREE-QUARTERS OF A BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR. Even with the cost of WoW, that's nothing to sneeze at.

 

[Lacrymas]

It doesn't matter how much money they make, it matters how much profit they make. If 60 million a month can't pay the salaries of the team responsible for WoW, which is a realistic possibility, they are at a loss. If they are making a profit it depends how much it is, it's not worth going for 5% profit. You have to realize that they were making 3 times more money at the end of WotLK and the salaries of the staff should've reflected that and they probably did, going from 12 million subs to 4 million is an insane dip in profits. Unprecedented probably. When that happens you either cut salaries or lay people off, which immediately translates to less effort put into WoW. They are never, ever going to funnel money from their other projects into WoW, it's just not how it works. That's why you had the WoD problem of few raid tiers while they were working on Legion, most of the money was put into that. They could've easily diverted resources from Hearthstone/Diablo/Starcraft/Heroes of the Storm to cover the expenses of creating more raids, but they clearly didn't and won't, ever.

Also one of the reasons they introduced the gold token in WoD and not in TBC, even though it's a somewhat obvious (but not really effective) workaround for gold sellers. The idea wasn't even to combat gold sellers at all, everyone who believed that is naive to a fault.

 

[Rivmusique]

Yes.

 

[GrainWetski]

Someone needs to find out how Blizzard can make people happy about lazy recycling. Must be some kind of mind control.

 

[Helton]

If 60 million a month can't pay the salaries of the team responsible for WoW, which is a realistic possibility, they are at a loss.

I really don't think that's a realistic possibility, mate.

 

[Jaesun]

Why the fuck doesn't Blizzard just go ahead and greenlight WoW 2?

The visuals are ancient at this point.

Because when your Cash Cow™ continues to deliver, you don't release anything that would endanger that. Probably similar to why Ultima Online 2 was canceled (at the time).

At SOME point, there will be a WOW II, but that more than likely will still be years from now, they are just waiting for the right time.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

If 60 million a month can't pay the salaries of the team responsible for WoW, which is a realistic possibility, they are at a loss.

 

[Echo Mirage]

Getting in tune with new ret is like getting accustomed to being ass plunged with a three-pronged dildo with spiked heads and barbed shafts.

Sure the damage is mediocare, we're not bottom of the tree but the rotation and abilities are so shit that even vanilla seal-judge paladins would lol at the dysfunctionality.

Ret really as bad as I'm hearing? I was a main ret paladin during Pandaland to The siege of orgrimmar. Back then I remember hitting hard but having to use CLC Ret to keep an eye on all the crap I had to use during my rotation.

 

[Angthoron]

Getting in tune with new ret is like getting accustomed to being ass plunged with a three-pronged dildo with spiked heads and barbed shafts.

Sure the damage is mediocare, we're not bottom of the tree but the rotation and abilities are so shit that even vanilla seal-judge paladins would lol at the dysfunctionality.

Ret really as bad as I'm hearing? I was a main ret paladin during Pandaland to The siege of orgrimmar. Back then I remember hitting hard but having to use CLC Ret to keep an eye on all the crap I had to use during my rotation.

Ranged abilities have been removed, ret is almost entirely melee now. Your only ranged attacks now are Judgement, Blade of Wrath (eh sorta) and Ashbringer's special attack (eh sorta). Melee attacks are now [melee] rather than [5 feet] range, so you better hope Blizz never fucks up a hitbox again. Or that you don't have to be in mobility fights. Judgement effects lasting just a couple of seconds and providing the main bulk of extra damage but only on finishers, but still valuable enough to always be included in rotation. Judgement not generating HP. Blizz designers seeming to now encourage 5HP rather than 3HP as baseline of where you want your HP to be, so you end up spamming HP generators more than ever.

I had to get a completely different UI and change all my keybinds - Panda/WoD had you keep an eye on all the CDs you had, now you have to have spammable abilities in the corner of your mind all the time instead... Although if you're a masochist, you can add a couple of CD abilities from talent trees as well.

 

[Revenant]

Blizz designers seeming to now encourage 5HP rather than 3HP as baseline of where you want your HP to be, so you end up spamming HP generators more than ever.

Wasn't it always like that, though? All the retardin guides I've read suggested prioritizing HP generating abilities over HP spending ones, unless you had 5 HP or some expiring CDs.

 

[Lacrymas]

The only thing I can say is that you people vastly underestimate the spending of a multi-billion dollar company which lost 2/3rds of its income :p The lack of content in WoD speaks louder than words however.

 

[Kem0sabe]

So I resubbed for a month, I played from the euro launch to wrath and then went clean from wow for years...

Started a druid, again, and noticed that they changed a bunch of stuff in the early areas, new quests, new mechanics, darkshore looks very diferent. I think the story is more engaging compared to vanilla... And that's about the only positive thing I have to say.

The zones feel empty, chat is empty, grouped for wailing caverns and in the group there was no communication at all, just a mindless zerg.

The butchered the classes, now you choose to be either one of three specs, choose one talent once per x levels and that's my fucking progression.

Everything feels dead, like an abandoned playground.

 

[Angthoron]

Blizz designers seeming to now encourage 5HP rather than 3HP as baseline of where you want your HP to be, so you end up spamming HP generators more than ever.

Wasn't it always like that, though? All the retardin guides I've read suggested prioritizing HP generating abilities over HP spending ones, unless you had 5 HP or some expiring CDs.

I forgot one special caveat - HP generators now have charges so you can't spam them. And it's somehow worse now than it used to be.

 

[Zed]

Getting in tune with new ret is like getting accustomed to being ass plunged with a three-pronged dildo with spiked heads and barbed shafts.

Sure the damage is mediocare, we're not bottom of the tree but the rotation and abilities are so shit that even vanilla seal-judge paladins would lol at the dysfunctionality.

So why do you keep playing it?

Boost a monk or something. A melee class has never been better.

 

[J1M]

Getting in tune with new ret is like getting accustomed to being ass plunged with a three-pronged dildo with spiked heads and barbed shafts.

Sure the damage is mediocare, we're not bottom of the tree but the rotation and abilities are so shit that even vanilla seal-judge paladins would lol at the dysfunctionality.

Ret really as bad as I'm hearing? I was a main ret paladin during Pandaland to The siege of orgrimmar. Back then I remember hitting hard but having to use CLC Ret to keep an eye on all the crap I had to use during my rotation.

Ranged abilities have been removed, ret is almost entirely melee now. Your only ranged attacks now are Judgement, Blade of Wrath (eh sorta) and Ashbringer's special attack (eh sorta). Melee attacks are now [melee] rather than [5 feet] range, so you better hope Blizz never fucks up a hitbox again. Or that you don't have to be in mobility fights. Judgement effects lasting just a couple of seconds and providing the main bulk of extra damage but only on finishers, but still valuable enough to always be included in rotation. Judgement not generating HP. Blizz designers seeming to now encourage 5HP rather than 3HP as baseline of where you want your HP to be, so you end up spamming HP generators more than ever.

I had to get a completely different UI and change all my keybinds - Panda/WoD had you keep an eye on all the CDs you had, now you have to have spammable abilities in the corner of your mind all the time instead... Although if you're a masochist, you can add a couple of CD abilities from talent trees as well.

It reading melee range instead of 5 yards is just a UI adjustment.

 

[Angthoron]

Getting in tune with new ret is like getting accustomed to being ass plunged with a three-pronged dildo with spiked heads and barbed shafts.

Sure the damage is mediocare, we're not bottom of the tree but the rotation and abilities are so shit that even vanilla seal-judge paladins would lol at the dysfunctionality.

Ret really as bad as I'm hearing? I was a main ret paladin during Pandaland to The siege of orgrimmar. Back then I remember hitting hard but having to use CLC Ret to keep an eye on all the crap I had to use during my rotation.

Ranged abilities have been removed, ret is almost entirely melee now. Your only ranged attacks now are Judgement, Blade of Wrath (eh sorta) and Ashbringer's special attack (eh sorta). Melee attacks are now [melee] rather than [5 feet] range, so you better hope Blizz never fucks up a hitbox again. Or that you don't have to be in mobility fights. Judgement effects lasting just a couple of seconds and providing the main bulk of extra damage but only on finishers, but still valuable enough to always be included in rotation. Judgement not generating HP. Blizz designers seeming to now encourage 5HP rather than 3HP as baseline of where you want your HP to be, so you end up spamming HP generators more than ever.

I had to get a completely different UI and change all my keybinds - Panda/WoD had you keep an eye on all the CDs you had, now you have to have spammable abilities in the corner of your mind all the time instead... Although if you're a masochist, you can add a couple of CD abilities from talent trees as well.

It reading melee range instead of 5 yards is just a UI adjustment.

The UI adjustment was especially tangible during Legion invasion event when you had to stand inside the fucking bosses.

 

[J1M]

Sounds like they did a sloppy job of setting the hitbox radius on those creatures. Wouldn't be the first time.

 

[Coma White]

The zones feel empty, chat is empty, grouped for wailing caverns and in the group there was no communication at all, just a mindless zerg.

This is the thing I miss most of all: the "you sheeped/Sapped the wrong add faggot!" dungeon drama. For some reason somebody at Blizzard (read: Activision) thought this was a problem and totally removed it in Cataclysm. They'd rather players never communicate than have them communicate for good or ill. Fuck. That.

 

[Rivmusique]

Lich King was where 5mans went full mass pull/aoe down. A lot of Cata Heroics brought back CC and target priorities, though people complained like crazy and it went away rather quickly (I forget what happened, general nerfs or maybe that was when that +15% health/damage/healing for the party came in). Trash can be sort of tricky in some of the few legion mythics I've done, but stuns, avoiding cleaves/glowing circles and a "skull" target is usually enough to get you through. Mythic+ might get tough.

 

[Wulfstand]

Been playing for a bit, will be maining Sylvanas for Alliance and Tarren Mill for Horde (I've got a IRL friend over there, and the server seems to have quite a few good guilds for when I'll end up wanting to raid).

From what I've been playing of nu-WoW, I feel like I'll end up quoting in one way or another what the posts above me said. Most of the Cataclysm revamped zones (with a few exceptions, depending on your taste) make for at times a great Warcraft game, but a pretty terrible World of Warcraft game. It's funny how I feel like Legion is about as much of an MMO as the first Guild Wars was. Loved what they did with some areas (such as Dustwallow Marsh and Eastern/Western Plaguelands), but the writing in some of them is incredibly terrible, worse than Amazon self-published stuff (the detective quest chain in Westfall). I really do miss getting into a random, shittalking guild, as most of the ones that invited me were void of any form of conversation, most of the guild chat was filled with achievements spamming and stuff like that (I really need to disable those notifications in my chat box).

I'm saving my 100 boost for if I find out there's an actually worthwhile guild on a different server than those first two, hit me up if something actually comes about the Codex guild.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Lich King was where 5mans went full mass pull/aoe down. A lot of Cata Heroics brought back CC and target priorities, though people complained like crazy and it went away rather quickly (I forget what happened, general nerfs or maybe that was when that +15% health/damage/healing for the party came in). Trash can be sort of tricky in some of the few legion mythics I've done, but stuns, avoiding cleaves/glowing circles and a "skull" target is usually enough to get you through. Mythic+ might get tough.

I was shocked when I first entered Wraths heroics as a druid healer. Warrior just pulled 2 groups and everybody started aoe ing. After some series of mini heart attacks and CD burning I realized that no one is in real danger unlike TBC heroics...
I did wrath heroics as oomking or feral druid "healer" for a good time :D

 

[Wulfstand]

(more rambling) I really hope they get to implement that scaling technology into the (future) Pristine servers. It's ridiculous how the current design philosophy for the leveling is to just shrug off a good chunk of 10+ years of content and rush through it, and hopefully get to learn at least one of your class' specs, in order to get to the current expansion. Spending more than a few minutes in any major Capital City makes me feel like I'm playing some remake of an old Asian MMO, like MU Online. Maybe the pristine servers will fix the kitsch, who knows.

Leaving aside the fact the xp rate even without heirlooms feels like I'm on some custom rates private server, my main gripe is how weak all of the mobs from the previous expansions scale with your current stats. It's ridiculous. All I do on my fire mage (which I'm starting to regret having picked) is spam Fire Blast->Pyro Blast->Dragon's Breath(if there's more than 1 mob AND the mob isn't an elite, 2x Fire Blasts and 1xPyro are more than enough)->Flame On, rinse and repeat. I don't even enjoy doing instances currently while leveling, as most of the times mobs get squished by melee before I even get one Fireball off. I'll still get him to 100 as I imagine said mobs won't be as squishy.

What I found to be completely jarring was the stark contrast between the Cataclysm leveling quest' design and those on Outland/TBC. While the former tries to go out of its way to flavour up the 'kill X bears and bring my their pelts' or to even avoid them alltogether, TBC as a whole much more similar to Vanilla's grinding quests, only this time the quest hubs are much better placed. Honestly waiting on those 'no heirlooms' 'Pristine' servers (if they'll ever come out and will be worth while) in order to enjoy the BC content properly, as currently it just doesn't work with the way nu-WoW plays like a singleplayer game.

By the way, if I ever decide to want to join a Mythic raiding guild, how fucked am I if I want to main a DK? From what I've seen, they're among the top 3 most popular classes (granted, I haven't even reached 100 and I imagine most of the ones I've seen in are mainly there because you get to start at level 55 on any server you want to play on, maybe there are less of them at max level, since the DH seem to be the major Edgelords of this expansion). I've only played the beginning/tutorial map and so far it has been really fun, gameplay wise.

 

[Caim]

One way to alter the Heirlooms experience (at least for a bit) is to add full sets of the things (so also boots, gloves, bracers and belts), and give them all a 5% increase instead of 10% while making them cost the same. It'll be more difficult to get the full set for a character so you'll have to play more to get more.

Oh, and make them non-transmogable so everyone will know you for the carebear that you are.

 

[Naraya]

Do you really think Blizzard won't fuck up this whole pristine server idea to the point where it won't resemble vanilla at all? I'm sure as hell they will.

Also - level scaling can DIAF. I had my time with it in GW2 - never again.

 

[Lacrymas]

They decided against "Pristine" servers a while ago. Getting heirlooms was never difficult, maybe at first in WotLK when they cost a lot of badges you get from heroics, but never after that. The fishing ring is a pain to get still though. I don't think it's a good idea to make the leveling like it was in vanilla because 60 levels was a lot back then (and now on private servers) and 110 levels are almost double that, it would take months for people to level. Too many months.