World of Whorecraft: Battle for Asseroth

[Ninjerk]

^ lol

Thinking even if they did make a WC4 that it would be worth a shit.

 

[Bigg Boss]

I know it probably wouldn't, but I am curious if they could pull it off. Diablo 3 was shit partly because none of the original talent work at Blizzard anymore. I understand it is a slim chance in hell. Part of me still yearns for when I bought the original Warcraft, pulled out that badass instruction booklet, and saw a dragon holding a lady with bewbs. My little mind absorbed every moment of the first two games. Now they retconned shit, so I don't care for the series as much.

 

[Metro]

There are so few of the original developers left. And the ones that are don't give a shit anymore having moved up to higher management positions. The people developing Blizzard games today are l33tdewds in their mid/late twenties who probably never played any Blizzard game pre-WoW. That's not to say someone who is 25-35 is incapable of developing a good game -- they did a couple decades ago. However, you're dealing with a generation of adults who grew up on the nuShit.

 

[Zeriel]

There are so few of the original developers left. And the ones that are don't give a shit anymore having moved up to higher management positions. The people developing Blizzard games today are l33tdewds in their mid/late twenties who probably never played any Blizzard game pre-WoW.

Pretty much, this is also why they are so complacent. Their staff is filled with grads from the 00's who are just pleased as punch to be working at Blizzard and don't understand why everyone is so upset.

 

[Metro]

That and there has been a 'too big to fail' mentality at Blizzard for a long time now (since 2005 and the initial runaway success of WoW). Their headquarters is a posh 'campus' where people slack off all day. You're not dealing with folks who put in 60-80+ hour work weeks. It's work 20ish hours, dick around on the basketball court or playing consoles or going to ice cream socials the other 20 hours. How else can you explain the abortion of WoD? It's a fucking joke that the game has never had more developers than it does now and yet not only do they produce LESS content but it's inferior to shit they put out a decade ago.

The head developer for Heroes of the Storm doesn't look a day over 30.

Zero pressure to produce. Valve is in the same situation although they're blessed by not having to even remotely worry since they skim 30% off the top on a sales platform. WoW has finally hit critical mass where people are no longer content to shell out $15/month to chat with old guildies because many of them have long since quit. That they think the movie will bring in new players to the game is laughable.

 

[Bigg Boss]

It will bring in new players. They just won't stick around very long.

 

[Zetor]

Maybe Blizzard will do what they did 10+ years ago: hire some insane uberguild people from a dominant-but-declining MMO as designers and use their experiences with that game to polish the features of WOW to sorta-perfection! Hey, it worked once, it'll surely work again...

... oh, right, this time THEY are the dominant-but-declining MMO. Carry on, then.

 

[Rahdulan]

That and there has been a 'too big to fail' mentality at Blizzard for a long time now (since 2005 and the initial runaway success of WoW). Their headquarters is a posh 'campus' where people slack off all day. You're not dealing with folks who put in 60-80+ hour work weeks. It's work 20ish hours, dick around on the basketball court or playing consoles or going to ice cream socials the other 20 hours. How else can you explain the abortion of WoD? It's a fucking joke that the game has never had more developers than it does now and yet not only do they produce LESS content but it's inferior to shit they put out a decade ago.

I think, despite all the talk about "WoW never had more people working on it", it really comes down down to manpower allocation. And keep in mind Blizzard now has three F2P games [Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch, which is still being developed] so unless they went on a major recruitment spree that somehow evaded everyone's notice those people had to come from somewhere. Not counting Diablo 3 which is on full life support, I guess. Like you said, it's really not the same Blizzard anymore, but neither is the market comparable to that of over a decade ago.

 

[Aildrik]

Maybe Blizzard will do what they did 10+ years ago: hire some insane uberguild people from a dominant-but-declining MMO as designers and use their experiences with that game to polish the features of WOW to sorta-perfection! Hey, it worked once, it'll surely work again...

... oh, right, this time THEY are the dominant-but-declining MMO. Carry on, then.

Speaking of that, just wtf are Furor and Tigole up to at Blizzard. I remember one or both were working on the 'super sekret mmo' but they were moved back to WoW when that tanked. You don't really hear much from them anymore; I don't even think they made an appearance at the last Blizzcon.

 

[abija]

WoD had the highest quality leveling content so far in WoW, by a long shot. The world is full of details and it's probably the first time since vanilla when exploring felt somewhat rewarding. That's where most of the manpower went.
Too bad they conditioned the players to race past it.

As for D3 being on life support, wtf are you smoking. How many b2p games you know that had even half the post sale support of D3?

Furor is in some leadership position for WoW afaik, and isn't Tigole busy casualising the FPS genre?

 

[Wilian]

WoD had the highest quality leveling content so far in WoW, by a long shot. The world is full of details and it's probably the first time since vanilla when exploring felt somewhat rewarding. That's where most of the manpower went..

The manpower didn't go into that. It went into remaking most of the zones again and again during alpha because at first they got blasted by "MORE ORCS??" brigade which made them to shift focus away from them on zones like Gorgorond that was remade like 5 times and then the forced inclusion of garrisons to the questing experience that caused them to re-do practically the whole questing few months before release when they should've been focusing on making end-game solid.

 

[Aildrik]

I think Blizzard has made a huge mistake in the direction they have taken the lore, but as has been said many times, the movie has probably dictated some of that. If you look at many of the polls conducted on various sites over the past few years, you see some re-occurring themes as to what players would want to do next, expansion wise, and I can guarantee you "time traveling expansion to old draenor" was nowhere on the list.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Speaking of that, just wtf are Furor and Tigole up to at Blizzard. I remember one or both were working on the 'super sekret mmo' but they were moved back to WoW when that tanked. You don't really hear much from them anymore; I don't even think they made an appearance at the last Blizzcon.

Furor's a story/world/quest fag and Tigole fucked up Titan and is now working on overwatch.

 

[abija]

The manpower didn't go into that. It went into remaking most of the zones again and again during alpha because at first they got blasted by "MORE ORCS??" brigade which made them to shift focus away from them on zones like Gorgorond that was remade like 5 times and then the forced inclusion of garrisons to the questing experience that caused them to re-do practically the whole questing few months before release when they should've been focusing on making end-game solid.

???
So manpower didn't go into leveling zones and questing but into... leveling zones and questing?

 

[Wilian]

???
So manpower didn't go into leveling zones and questing but into... leveling zones and questing?

If you wish to simplify and overlook the point.

 

[abija]

Point being what? Remaking shit is how Blizzard develop their games, nothing new there. End result is what I said, good leveling content where they spent most of manpower and most of playerbase ignores.

 

[Metro]

The problem is leveling in WoD takes maybe 20ish hours and is over in a couple of weeks even at the most casual of paces. You can't hang an expansion on the lore/story presented in the leveling experience. Not when you only have five dungeons, two raid tiers, and a bunch of recycled time-waster shit. The amount of effort that goes into WoW given the money and manpower is pathetic. There's no arguing against that.

How does this shit have less content than MoP? Less content than Cata? Less content than Wrath? Less content than TBC? How? Every passing expansion has delivered less and less despite Blizzard getting richer and richer and having bigger and bigger payrolls and assets. It's a joke.

And spare us the 'faster expansion' bullshit. It's always taken around a year from announcement to launch and I doubt this will be any different. That means WoD will have lasted two years (same as other expansions) and people will be farming the same fucking raid tier and filler/fluff Timless Isle redux zone for over a year.

Re: Tigole and Furor. Furor is one of the dudes who moved up to high management. He oversees quest/world design or some shit. I doubt he does very much at all. Kaplan/Tigole is on Overwatch which is the remains of their FPS MMO. They decided F2P shit was the safer investment.

 

[Wilian]

Point being what? Remaking shit is how Blizzard develop their games, nothing new there. End result is what I said, good leveling content where they spent most of manpower and most of playerbase ignores.

Point being that because of remaking their game practically five times over in the months before release they had least of overall content ever available in the history of WoW for both leveling which was substituted by massive XP boost giving side objects to cover up the fact that each zone had in reality just handful of actual quests and end-game that was almoust as lackluster as it was in Cataclysm release but without excuse of remaking entire old world. And this is without delving into the fact that they had to push Tanaan into a patch instead of having it on launch because of the time they spent fucking around.

And bitch please, the way Blizzard kept re-doing everything in WoD again and again to adjust into their continuously shifting design goals is UNPRECEDENTED in history of WoW. Sure, there has been zone here and there they've remade after initial feedback like Jade Forest was ONCE in Pandaria but remaking entire game over and over again just months before designated release date?

 

[J1M]

Visited this thread hoping to see some expansion predictions.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some sort of class added with a Demon Hunter spec that also offers a Sentinel/Warden flavor for tanking. That would be a safe choice that would certainly pander to the masses.

I'd rather see them be more bold and introduce a 4th role to the group experience. Some kind of non-healing support role would be the most obvious choice. I'd prefer something more original though. In any case, taking those DPS classes which have 3 ways of doing the same thing and completely changing some of the specs (Arcane, Enhancement, etc) to fit the new role would be nice. I'd also like to see something like Beast Mastery and Demonology changed into tanking specs. That probably won't happen though, since they will strip Metamorphosis from Warlocks to give it to the new Demon Hunter spec.

Biggest selling point given the current subscription numbers would probably be the ability to buy it with WoW gold.

 

[Ninjerk]

Visited this thread hoping to see some expansion predictions.

Biggest selling point given the current subscription numbers would probably be the ability to buy it with WoW gold.

You can skip to the end game in WoW.

 

[Metro]

Visited this thread hoping to see some expansion predictions.

After the rabbit hole they pulled the concept for WoD out of there's no telling what they'll do next. It could be as awful as reintroducing the Scourge.

 

[Ninjerk]

After the rabbit hole they pulled the concept for WoD out of there's no telling what they'll do next. It could be as awful as reintroducing the Scourge.

The world tree was merely a setback!

 

[Ulminati]

My predictions:

1: Expansion will either be Aszhara or however it's spelt or - more likely - they'll add another landmass to draenor seeing as all the players have their own personal fleet. It makes sense to go sail to a new place. Especially because (afaik), Gul'Dan escapes into a portal in the current endgame raid.
2: Demon hunter class or something similar are 50-50 odds. So far it's been BC (New races), WotLK (New class), Cata (New races), Pandaland (Class+Race), WoD (Neither). So we're on curve for getting a new class. If draenor and more infernal legion, then demon hunter melee dps/tank makes sense. Or we could get something ranged since both classes added so far were melee. But demon hunter exists in the lore already and would fit thematically if they don't add a content patch to WoD where we get to kill off Gul'Dan.
3: Garrisons are 50-50 whether or not they'll be in. They kind of removed the MMO aspect (everyone's idling in their garrison instead of interacting in the cities). And most players seem to agree they don't add anything to the game plus they made crafting and gathering really dull. But on the other hand, I imagine they reduce the load on the servers to segregate people in solo instances and blizz has the code. We'll either get no garrisos (hopefully), or BIGGAR UND BETTAR (ugh) Garrisons.

 

[Aildrik]

Point being what? Remaking shit is how Blizzard develop their games, nothing new there. End result is what I said, good leveling content where they spent most of manpower and most of playerbase ignores.

I agree that leveling in WoD was enjoyable. The problem is, it was a ridiculously fast trip from 91-100 especially with the XP boost potions. Let me say, I hate leveling alts.... with a passion. However, I was able to overcome that revulsion in WoD because it literally took less than a day to take each of my alts to L100 and get the garrison cash machine flowing. In Vanilla, I remember that grinding was a very inefficient way to level so you did quests. I had to clear quests in most of the end game zones to hit L60. You generally ended up running many dungeons as well since quests took you there. In WoD, you could hit 100 by just going through a handful of zones and not even completing half the quests there.

I know it sounds like I am complaining because of a less painful leveling experience I just wonder.... is that what Blizzard's expectations are now? That players should go level an army of alts to make up for the super short leveling experience?

 

[Keshik]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1WIEl4hRvA Gamescom stream

 

[Black_Willow]

Deamon hunter and Medivh return confirmed.
Ulminati predicted the new class, bravo.