9.1 is almost out

Wyrmrest Accord
805

It’s greed, right? Back in the WotLK/Cata era the word was you’d need $100-150M to make a WoW competitor.

That was a long time ago but I think if Blizz/Act is serious about maintaining WoW cashflow, they need to think about how much you’d need to make a FF competitor in 2021.

Just feels like they’ll really need to pile $50-100M onto the budget of any expac that could reinvigorate the game.

And use that money to give people what they want ffs. At this point it’s about ensuring the health of the IP (though if they were smart it wouldn’t even slim WoW margins by much).

At some point, a game this old has to get a reinfusion of major content, talent etc. Maybe that sort of happened with Legion, but the trick would have been to not follow up with BfA.

I hope we get a big, happy surprise when the next expac is launched. The last two announcements were pretty lukewarm, even, like you just knew it was going to be a hit-or-miss thing.

2 Likes
806

It’s not just FF. FF just happens to be the biggest presence outside of WoW, and big WoW personalities are looking into it. Elder Scrolls Online is still trodding along doing its own thing. Star Trek Online, despite being heavily monetized, still has a surprisingly healthy playbase. Runescape is even enjoying a second renaissance on mobile devices. Can’t speak for The Old Republic or Guild Wars 2, but I see even Neverwinter got a recent content expansion.

To say nothing of the two Everquests, who remain around even if relevancy has long passed them by (Heck, both just got expansions in 2020).

While it’s easy to assume the MMO market has shrank, if anything it’s gotten a lot more diverse with enough options that it really is a buyer’s market. WoW made itself a titan of the industry because of how easy it was to jump in, that the learning cliff face of most MMOs was smoothed into a gentle hillside.

The current design philosophy of WoW, especially pushing Mythic+ and high end Raiding, ironically runs counter to the game’s founding principles.

They are, that’s the terrifying thing. They’ve locked themselves in a bubble of positive reinforcement that’s been ongoing since the days of The Burning Crusade when they released Arenas and made the big E-Sports push. The problem is they’re not listening to the people who actually make up the bulk of their subscription base.

Case in point - Anyone remember Justice and Valor badges? Did anyone legitimately have issues with them and how they could be used to purchase “catch up gear”? I sure as hell didn’t, and the badges made dungeons and Heroics relevant long after you’d outgeared them. I think since Warlords of Draenor I’ve done every dungeon exactly twice sans when I’m farming for transmogs. Because there’s literally no reason to go back into them once you have gear that outpaces it (Generally just handed out via World Questing).

6 Likes
807

Yeah let me qualify that: use that money to give me what what I want haha

4 Likes
808

At this point, WoW needs the FFXIV treatment.

The folks upstairs need to shuffle around management. Put Ion back on raids where the man shines. Get a new head dev with actual vision for the entire game. Then get us some new writers or let the existing writers actually work without their hands tied.

Set the game on fire. End it with a big, “You lose.”

Merge all timelines to reset reality itself. Start over. There’s almost two decades worth of documentation on what story elements players like and dislike to work from, as well as ways to make the game more balanced.

When it comes to races, no more of this, ‘Allied Race,’ nonsense. Create the core race, add customizations for different variations that are playable, and different nameplates for tooltips. Be a Jungle Troll, or a Forest Troll, or a Sand Troll. Be an Ironforge Dwarf, or a Wildhammer Dwarf, or a Dark Iron Dwarf.

Balance the classes. For the love of all that is holy, balance the classes. I’d sooner have a system where there’s only 1 class for each armor type, with three specs for tank/dps/healer, and each of them ends up customized/named for faction or racial distinction, than the mess we have now.

3 Likes
809

you’re having fun and therefore I am not;

i find this situation most disagreeable and therefore will result to insulting your reality, sexuality, and maternal kin

have at thee, squire, your mother was not fit to feed the wretched of quel’thalas

5 Likes
810

I don’t think WoW will ever get a FFXIV-style reboot. That’d be a massive undertaking that’d require a lot of time, a LOT of money, and a lot of care. And Blizzard doesn’t care enough about Warcraft to take the time or spend the money to pull off something like that. Besides, they’re making plenty selling sprite darter pajamas and faction transfers, so why would they bother?

Honestly, all I want is for them to address the current dearth of casual content. If, like me, you’re not interested in hardcore raiding, pushing Mythic+, or participating in rated PvP, what’s left?

Story content, LFR, and stuff like the Darkmoon Faire or the Ember Court? All time-gated.

WoW’s transmog system, while slowly improving, remains lackluster, restrictive, and incomplete (why is stuff that’s been in-game for YEARS still unobtainable?), so there’s no real “fashion endgame”.

Heroic dungeons feel like they exist solely to funnel you towards more “serious” content, rather than standing on their own.

Unrated battlegrounds are full of people with high-end raiding gear that a casual PvP aficionado has no hope of competing against. But, hey, it’s not like you get all that much from Honor levels, so why bother?

That leaves, what, World Quests? Oh boy. How exciting.

12 Likes
811

it is absolutely beyond insane how much good stuff is locked away in the files for no reason

7 Likes
812

Yeah, like why are the Gilnean starting zone clothes not transmoggable still? They are so good, but are just grey level items.

3 Likes
813

it’s totally nuts

like, cool, 9.1 gave us glasses!!

except we’ve had glasses in-game since cataclysm

we have had glasses in-game but unobtainable for over 10 years

and said glasses are STILL unobtainable

i’d say that’s indefensible but someone on twitter would find a way, i’m sure

6 Likes
814

said glasses probably have a really, really weird catch like being made from your character’s butt polygons or something

815

Blizzard keeps those cool things people want behind a big row of “in case of emergency” glass cases for the times when they screw up. For every time the players have legitimate complaints, they break one open and toss it to us like scraps at hungry dogs.

Allied races
Random transmog improvements
The rare ingame mount that isn’t just a recolor
Armor dyes

You get the idea. Any time they get caught screwing up, they just go, “uh… here, have some more haircuts” with zero effort. They could implement all that stuff -right now- if they chose to, but then there wouldn’t be anything left for them to semi-bail themselves out/string people along to keep playing anymore.

That is the only reason we don’t have all the things players ask for. Player housing will come eventually, but they know people are waiting for it so they’ll only give it when they feel they have no other choice to save subs. Same with ogres and high elves, etc. They will be marketed as a new and exciting feature too, and not just something that should be a basic function of a modern MMO.

We are drip fed but it works for them so they won’t stop.

5 Likes
816

I am here again because sentences like this are bait for me.

BEHOLD…some of things we cannot have:

Not available at all:

Only available a coupe weeks a year:

Not available at all:

Available only in white:

Little annoys me more than seeing an NPC wearing items that I can’t obtain, espcially when they are part of a set and I can obtain the rest of the set…

7 Likes
817

You’re not wrong, but at the same time Garrisons were supposedly their answer to, “Player Housing,” even though they were nothing remotely like it.

High Elves will never happen. Not now that we have Void Elves. The only way they’d happen is if blizzard merges Allied Races and Core races together. At that point they might just rename Void and Blood Elves, ‘High Elf.’

Ogres should’ve happened by now. Mok’Nathal at the least, with Rexxar as their leader, but it would’ve been great to see some Ogri’la or Gorian Empire Ogres in the Horde too.

1 Like
818

I disagree. I think they are saving High Elves as a break glass in case of emergency. I fully can see them giving us High Elves as a neutral core race, and let them pick their faction at the end of the starting zone. They would get their own racials and everything to make them “unique” from Void Elves and Blood Elves.

Do I like the idea? Not really. But I definitely could see Blizzard doing it to bring people back to WoW. I wouldn’t be shocked if they redeem Sylvanas and have her come back as the Ranger General, join up with her sister Vereesa, and those two are the racial leaders for High Elves.

4 Likes
819

I think we’re past the point where long-requested races could be an effective, “Break Glass in Case of Emergency,” solution. New races, new classes, new transmog, housing, etc… None of that is going to solve the real issues plaguing this game right now which is a mixture of design philosophy and developer conceit.

Even assuming for a moment the developers get off of their high horses and gracefully accept players know what players want, the fact remains that the marketing/finance offices won’t let them change the way the game is being made into an E-Sport.

In a way, I can almost see High Elves and Ogres being added as new races as possible just because it’s the sort of out-of-touch thing they would think would be an actual solution.

820

At this point, I feel like the best hope for that is if Blizzard ever bothers to give Void Elves some more of the Blood Elf customization options. Like the non-edgy hairstyles and colors, obviously… but it really is wild that Void Elves and Lightforged Draenei didn’t even get the simplest ones like “slightly longer/shorter ears” and “longer tails” that would take basically zero effort.

6 Likes
821

I feel this needs to be signal boosted.
WoW is a game of almost two decades of age.
City of Heroes was eight years old when it was shuttered and by the time it was there was vast swaths of the game’s systems (Base Building, for example) that basically were left unsupported because the code was impenetrable in how badly it had been noodled together into some form of functionality and the one person who could actually navigate it had left.

I think it’s a little optimistic to assume a game with double the lifespan doesn’t also have Code cluster equivalents of “DON’T OPEN - DEAD INSIDE”.

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822

Seriously. Lightforged Draenei needed SOMETHING and you’d think that would have been a relatively easy thing to add. I can understand why they didn’t give Void Elves ear length options though. People were already having fits about the skin tones.

On some level I do hope they lump Allied and Core races together, and just drop the faction barrier at the same time so that neutral races matter less. I think it’d be better if players could select what they want the tooltip for their race to read as, during character creation. Could be a Blood Elf, or a Void Elf, or a High Elf, or San’layn, or just Undead (unless Dark Rangers have a specific name I don’t know of yet).

I still don’t understand why red eyes and the Dark Ranger skin weren’t added for Blood Elves with their customizations.

2 Likes
823

If they want to keep the faction divide, just give us a new tutorial island where we get to pick our faction of choice at the end of it.

I want to be an Alteraci noble who obstinately remains an ally of the Horde. Preferably one who is still breathing.

1 Like
824

To be honest I’d be fine even if it was just a matter of being able to raid/party/guild/play with people on the other faction. I don’t need a bunch of Orcs in Stormwind or Night Elves in Orgrimmar. If that happens I don’t think I’d care all that much either. Traitors are a thing, and open some interesting story-potential for RP’ers.