Definitely not. You’re not going to have the CEO or CFO sitting in a meeting discussing content design. They’re going to discuss player metrics and how to extend content. The developers will create the game based on what parameters they’re given. Activision might decide things based on the bean counters, but the developers have to program the content itself.
And again, why is Activision releasing quality games when they’re the reason Blizzard isn’t? If every development team is held to the same standard that the people who did the most recent CoD and Sekiro, then why is Blizzard failing?
Practically none of the original guard is left, too. So why do you think Blizzard is the victim and not partially responsible?
Also this. Activision could have told them to put that in, but I’m betting Blizzard still feels the sting of missing out on DOTA’s success and put that clause in for that reason.
I remember the Azerite discussion and the window of time they were looking at when it hit beta and it was received poorly. They were in a rush to quickly find ways to fix it and then did in 8.2 nearly a YEAR later.
So if it takes a year to develop something like the Azerite necklace essences there’s no way they can fix 36 specs in like months between a beta and release candidate. It’s just not plausible so it’s best to be very specific very early which I try to be long before betas land.
That itself might be part of the problem though. Why did it take all that time for Azerite gear to reach us and how did it even get off the design table? I feel like the designers need a list of things that are just good principles in MMORPG design, possibly from us players that have been in the MMORPG space for over 20 years.
The audience is very diverse of course and so we don’t all want the same thing. So the first principle should be to not force us all into the same box. Though I think it should work that way for everything. Itemization, rep, etc. You should be able to wear whatever hat the game offers and get your character progression done. That’s the way to secure the largest player audience.
I think people expect Blizzard to fix everything all at once. But what are they fixing exactly? With the wide variety of players, every change is reviled by someone. But at the same time, I do believe the devs have lost passion, or at the very least they’ve lost the identity of an MMO in an attempt to push how often players log in. They focus on the metric of how often players log in rather than how long someone stays logged in, and in my mind that’s the incorrect metric to focus on.
I also think a big issue is you have developers who worked on a dungeon crawler (D3) now working on an MMORPG. They have some overlap but it’s not equal in terms of content, and they’re struggling.
I’ll reserve judgement for Shadowlands. See if they’ve learned anything. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but the evidence strongly supports the Good-Bad-Good expansion cycle (at least in my opinion). So…who knows?
No, actually it isn’t. Activision merged with Blizzard in 1997 (ish) under Vivendi. Merged. Not two things, merged. Pointing out some unrelated stupid doesn’t change how things actually are.
No, if people follow my train of thought, they wouldn’t end up with such stupid and incorrect logical flounderings. Lambourghini doesn’t own volkswagen. All dogs are mammals, not all mammals are dogs. Understand your logical groupings before you start talking about them. Also, Lambourghini never merged with volkswagen. It was sold by its creator, resold, resold and resold. These are completely different circumstances.
So, totally different things. And without your absurdly poor attempt at logic, it’s really easy to see. Let’s move on, shall we?
That’s actually what I meant. They tell them what they expect from the game. And the dev team creates the content within those requirements. Those type of restrictions surely make it difficult for them.
Anyways. It doesn’t really matter who’s fault it is. We still have a scuffed game either way. And the company is called Activision-Blizzard. They’re one company. They don’t even have any of game’s creators working on it anymore. They all bailed.
Well yeah, that was my point. When something is bad in beta rare are the circumstances that will allow that to not be bad at release. Especially something as systemic as azerite armor.
Those things have to be culled on the design table when ideas are being presented before any other resources are spent on them. That and things like classes have to be done before encounters. Just basic things like that to me anyway are smart moves.
I’m not convinced there is no passion there. I see a lot of love in the world artistically and thematically. I think it’s more one person’s idea somehow becomes what we all should love and they just roll with it. There’s probably not enough creative diversity at the design table. Specifically how do we implement X and simultaneously make A,B,C,D,E,F,G,n players happy? That’s the filter all ideas should be going through. If they don’t pass the filter no money should be spent on them. DOA.
I do think the D3 influence has been negative on WoW. M+ is a good addition but if I could take back all the other influences including M+ I would. I think the other influences such as talents and itemization have really been that bad.
The good > bad > good cycle is obvious. It’s been obvious for years. I think it’s probably either one team is larger and maybe a larger budget or the bad cycle is done by a team that has a lot of churn. It’s been my experience managing IT teams that the teams with the worst churn have the lowest productivity. Maybe that explains it.
As for Shadowlands for me it’s rep tabards or skip. Too many games now are available to suffer an encore of that. I don’t mind WQ/Dailies to exist for people who like that but I sure don’t want to be doing it.
You’re all asking the wrong question. There’s no seperating acti and Blizz. They’re one and the same. They’re seperate brand names. Not seperate companies.
What you should be asking is, how much would it cost to buy the Warcraft IP in its entirety off acti-blizz?
Yeah, we agree on about the same things, I think. All we can do now is be vocal (in a mature manner, hard as there is for General Discussion) about what we like and what we hate and hope the developers can figure it out from there.
As for the passion point, I don’t know. The art team and even music is still owning it, but as far as development goes it feels lazy. Maybe that’s my negative perception, but I haven’t been fond lately.
That’s the key. It’s not going to be the beta forum that makes the difference. Strange as some may think that will be the general forum and the suggestion forum. People who care about where the game is going should be outspoken and be well spoken. As best as possible.
And, there are few players at that level of acquisitions with a) the capital; 2) the will.
There is still a ton of money to be had with the Warcraft IP but in the end it would be an exercise in musical chairs with different corporate masters. The current leaders of WoW don’t have the scratch to pry it away from Activision - some of the old leaders might but they saw the writing on the wall and went all golden parachute to do their own things.
Blizzard would need to buy itself out, and while they do make a significant amount of money, I don’t think it’s enough to separate the companies and have Blizzard become an independent entity. There’s also the question of whether or not anyone at Blizzard Entertainment wants to pull Blizzard away from Activision. Activision provides them with a substantial amount of resources. A good example being the folks that are now Blizzard New York (formerly Vicarious Visions). Without ties to Activision-Blizzard, Vicarious Visions would not have even begun working on Diablo 2: Ressurected, and we’d likely not have it at all.
But I may be wrong. Blizzard owns all the IPs that it has produced. Activision-Blizzard cannot lay claim to any of them, unlike other IPs developed by Activision and its subsidiaries. If there’s enough push internally for Blizzard Entertainment to divorce itself from Activision, it could happen, but it would require a LOT of work to get it done.