Yeah I just mean lazy in concept, because the whole idea is to keep us busy with busy work and timegated things revolving around this ‘new’ shiny system for the expansion. The system in Legion made sense, and the one they added in BfA kinda made sense, but it just keeps going at this point.
And yeah on top of that the ambition is a good thing but the downside is Blizzard isn’t exactly known for their speed in development to the point it’s a meme. This is one reason I guess I say maybe new talents next expansion and some love to the talent system as part of character progression.
It’s just sad to see because it’s such a waste in terms of their resources. It’s why I found the entire “meaningful choice” argument pre-SL pretty bad because in an ideal world that works great, but it doesn’t in reality because you’re wasting your development time over something that is impossible to balance.
Then there’s also how they seem to be deriving the wrong lessons from their past expansion mistakes. E.g. they felt like BfA questing was confusing, so as a result they over-fixed the problem and created too much structure within their questing system which resulted in an alternative leveling mode which requires a whole load of hours to fine-tune and balance. From a project management perspective, I would’ve just told them to not care and just follow Legion where you have a main chain, and a bunch of bonus objectives, and spend time on creating 1 or 2 more dungeons instead.
Yeah I like the Threads of Fate idea personally, but the way the leveling felt story wise restricted choice and felt too forced so I’d agree on that as well (Be nice to go to whatever zone I want first instead of funneling us all into a linear path with linear quests). More dungeons could also be fun even if they added them in later as new end game dungeon content to keep Mythic + feeling a bit fresh.
Hopefully whatever next idea they have will at least learn from this and that people will always just funnel into whatever they think is optimal for each type of situation (raids, dungeons, pvp, or whatever else). On top of that they want to be able to switch on the fly to be optimal as well.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If not you end up like Blizz where you have to find solutions to new problems when the original problem didn’t need to be fixed in the first place. cough pathfinder cough
Edit: Actually something I forgot to mention is that there’s a very simple underlying logical basis of why this is better. If you give people options to do what they like, they’re going to avoid what they dislike. So they only end up happier.
What we’re seeing a lot of in modern-WoW design is “everyone must be funneled into all sources of content,” and this will obviously create negativity.
This is on eof the biggest issues Imo. I didn’t mind Islands occasionally. What I didn’t like was having to farm like a hundred of them to get my gear to work for raid.
Torgast can be fun with some friends ramping each other with buffs etc. What isn’t fun is having to do it every week on any character I wanted to gear up.
If they gave option s of how to get a weekly cap of ap or soulash/cinders then I would enjoy the content more because I don’t have to do the same thing every week.
I don’t want to farm artifact power again so make something better than legion. Preferably with some nice involved leveling, group elite quests while leveling and finally revamp the classes so they aren’t minor iterations on legion design without the artifact weapons.
So after the official preview today it looks like we finally have (what appears to be) confirmation that there won’t be a 9.3, they specifically mentioned that 9.2 will be the…
…of Shadowlands (emphasis mine).
Thanks for listening to your players @ devs
Really looking forward to 10.0, please don’t disappoint us again… make it good please
A new interview out today with Steve Danuser and Morgan Day strongly suggests 9.2 ends the expansion, while leaving a door open for another patch.
From the article:
“With the stakes this high, it is impossible not to sense the finality of the story. In the history of World of Warcraft, expansion packs have followed a release cycle that consists of three major content patches, which fill the two-year gaps between expansion packs. With “Eternity’s End,” however, it seems World of Warcraft is breaking that tradition. “We set out to plan the Shadowlands story as this drama in three acts,” Danuser said. “We have intended for “Eternity’s End” to be the culmination of that story.” While he clarified there may be more content to come, patch 9.2 is the grand finale of Shadowlands. A patch 9.3 could still be forthcoming, but Danuser’s statements and the delays and cancellations both Blizzard and Shadowlands have suffered over the last year, suggest otherwise.”
I’m thinking a “full” sized patch 9.2, with a small/minor 9.2.5 later in the year is a good way to wrap it up.
The main meat of the content can be “crammed” into 9.2, so we have enough content to last us most of 2022. And patch 9.2.5 can be the prepatch that sets up the prelude/eases us into 10.0
Then they can release 10.0 at the very end of 2022 (optimistic estimate) or early part of 2023 (conservative estimate).
A 2022 release would probably make Bobby & shareholders happy, but potentially leave players with another rushed product, so I have my doubts about a quality product coming out 2022…
I mean, we could be wrong too You just never know anymore. I think they purposely leave things ambiguous nowadays so that they can change direction contingent on the air quality
You just never know anymore. I think they purposely leave things ambiguous nowadays so that they can change direction contingent on the air quality