One very important change that we have seen, and that we hope really is a new long term vision, is the abandoning of borrowed power. They have taken the time, over the last several months, in fleshing out new talent trees and testing them, responding to feedback, tweaking them.
Now, by the time Dragonflight launches, they will already be working on the next expansion (we’ve heard they begin work on the next project immediately… that’s how we get a reveal and cinematic at BlizzCon, about a year from now).
Since they won’t have to dedicate any teams to the development of a borrowed power system, they will be able to use those resources to help further develop or ameliorate existing systems or work on other core systems.
They seem to have come to terms with some major things that weren’t working, even if they won’t always admit it with words, and are working to better themselves in that regard.
If I’m going to be honest, one thing I’m legit going to miss about Shadowlands are my Covenant abilities.
I legit could not tell you at this point what the Heart of Azeroth did or what my Legendary Weapon in Legion did. But the Covenant abilities slot nicely into the general flow of gameplay and how I set up my pulls.
I think it’s a little silly to try to figure out which writer is worse or “responsible” for the terrible story we have now.
Let’s be honest–Chris Metzen had a few good ideas and a lot of enthusiasm for them and not much else. Some of the doofiest decisions in WoW’s story happened on his watch, after all.
What Metzen, Afrasiabi and Danuser all have in common is that they’re part of a company that’s so intoxicated off its own hype that it is actually company policy to not listen to criticism (remember the “no negativity in the dojo” story?)
So you end up with these Idea Guys that don’t actually know plot structure or character motivation that believe they don’t need to know how to write. Instead of realizing “our ideas are good and our skills at expressing them could be better,” it becomes “our ideas are good so we don’t need to improve.”
Which, as you can see, is a difficult business strategy to use when you actually don’t have any good ideas anymore.
I’d also say a big factor in WoW’s downfall is that WoW is now developed by people who grew up playing WoW. It went from being the most casual of casual MMOs to becoming hyper focused on very specific forms of gameplay to the expense of all others, which has killed the lion’s share of MMOs over the years.
Basically, WoW Devs forgot WoW’s success was in being an All You Can Eat Buffet and not a hyper specialized Food Truck.
it seems like they’ve kept a lot of the more popular covenant abilities which is pleasantly surprising - and that’s definitely not something i say often about blizzard lmao. i really like divine toll and primordial wave so i’m happy to see them stick around for more than 1 expac
I’m also very happy to see some of the legendary abilities baked into the talent trees too, I’m looking at you 1min CD AoE Touch of Death!!
Otherwise looking forward to no more borrowed power systems. I boosted a DK with my DF expansion boost and getting hit with, oh well no you need to collect memories for you legendary, collect currency to craft your legendary, collect orange juice tokens to turn gear into tier, level up your sanctum, level of your conduits, level up your soul binds, do this and do that. I just want to play my stupid DK without doing all this crap all over again.
Oh yeah, and the “tiger palm now jets you forward” is so fun.
I’m swapping from shaman to monk for DF, I think, unless Evoker really grabs me in the prepatch. Not that it hasn’t in the beta, I just mean if the healing ‘clicks’ for me. Fistweaving is just too fun though, plus I sort of want to main a Forsaken in DF (and the monk I’m gearing now, he’s definitely not alive).
That’s so odd considering they [at least the ones I played] were pretty fun. Looks like only ‘Death Chakram’ seems to have made it and that’s the only one I didn’t take on any of my hunters.
Yet they added a bunch of Windrunner-themed abilities to Marks. And, if I’m not going crazy, I think wailing arrow uses a Sylv banshee scream sound effect?? Quite unpleasant.
Hopefully they add them to the trees later, I expect the trees to be updated at least for 11.0 if not earlier as people play the extended alpha (aka ‘December 2022 through December 2023’).
Ah, I missed my Chakrams somehow. Still don’t actually see it, but I did find the ability.
And yeah, lots of Windrunner stuff in Marksman spec. Not sure how I feel about it yet. Gonna have to play around with things. Also going to be weird that Kill Command is now universal.
It’s just wild to me that you have job titles with the words “narrative” and “designer” in them and structure is thrown out the window.
The no bad dojo vibes is the worst. Creative work relies on constructive crits. Hell, it’s often worth paying for e.g. having a few pro readers go through the first draft of a screenplay before you waste any agent or manager’s time with it.
For example, I’d have definitely called out the hole in the Jailer’s chest. To have that and NOT have Sylvanas disengage out of it is almost criminal. Or if Tyrande was chasing her and she jumped into that hole for safety.
I’m imagining Sylvanas doing that, there’s a few seconds of silence, some rustling sounds, and then a very startled and flustered Sylvanas pops out with a shibara’d Nathanos in a maid outfit, flies up to Zoval’s face and says that dreaded phrase.
Wait, what? The Lich Queen is stuffed in a box where she belongs but now I’m gonna have to spec swap on my Hunters to escape stupid Sylvanas-themed power fx in Marksman? Are we ever escaping her?
…
Check that. I will accept exactly one Sylvanas-themed effect, and that is if Feign Death becomes a powerslide into a randomly spawned Frostmourne.
I haven’t had a chance to play beta but this is what I’m reading on the CC forums. If this is true this is exactly what I was afraid of: rushing out the door with a mess of unfinished content. Considering everything that’s happened with SL and Blizzard this expansion needed to be a grand slam, Blizz absolutely cannot afford to release an unfinished product.
It’s too bad because the hunter feedback thread looked really promising a few months ago. I’d be pissed if the “ranged” abilities in the hunter tree were unusable as survival (except barrage, maybe)
