At This Point I Have To Say Something

Community General Discussion
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To Blizzard and this incredible community,

During my 14 years of playing this incredible game, I have defended it religiously against various criticisms. Even when I’ve had slight disagreements, I’ve still defended the game and team because of my belief in what they are doing. Hell we all know the struggle of Warlords and I still defended them during that time.

However I’m to the point where I don’t know how to defend the two following points anymore. I feel like they are going in the wrong direction so fast that there really is no way to properly defend the decisions made here. Patch 8.1 being a major content patch is delivered with the idea of having a plate full of solid content to do and while this current patch is certainly better than the infamous S.E.L.F.I.E. patch, I’m at the level of frusturation. Here’s why.

The first one is time gating. I defended this stance at it’s infancy based around the idea that we would still be getting content at a solid pace, just spread out over two or three weeks at the MOST. The content being time gated was only story content, and at patch launch we were still getting a dungeon, raid, battleground, something of substance. Time gating is now being split in to five parts with the next raid tier coming out roughly around the end of that. I could understand when a raid came out one or possibly two weeks later from the launch of a content patch. Why in the hell are we now waiting seven weeks for the new raid? Seriously why? What purpose does this serve?

I’m primarily a PvE player. Running raids and dungeons is what I love to do, and while I haven’t defeated all 8 bosses in Uldir on Heroic difficulty (I’m not elite like you don’t @ me) I still get excited about jumping in to a new raid when a content patch is released. We’re now waiting 7 weeks? As someone who co-runs a guild it’s already a struggle to keep people in the same raid for longer than three months. Now I’m having to ask them to keep up the grind for an additional seven weeks after the launch of a content patch.

“But you have a new Warfront and two new Island Expeditions pleb.” Both of these features were great in theory but not executed very well. While I will give you credit that the Battle of Darkshore is more entertaining than Stormgarde, the whole Warfront feature isn’t really a highlight of this expansion. It’s a grind for a transmog set. That’s it. It has no real impact on the war, on your faction, anything. Island Expeditions are even worse. The time invested compared to the payoff of Azerite isn’t worth it. The loot is bad and convoluted to acquire, although the new vendor will help somewhat with that.

Ok so now you’re forcing me to wait seven weeks, SEVEN, for the new raid to come out. I can work on acquiring a few upgraded gear pieces to help prepare me for the raid…but wait, I can’t do that because now it’s locked behind a SEASON that is also SEVEN WEEKS AWAY. Seriously? I understand that you don’t want people rocking full 400 ilevel before the raid is released, but this is rediculous. I have profession patterns that are pointless right now because I can’t even acquire Tidalcore to craft said pieces until January 22nd. All world quest, emissary quests, dungeons, etc. are still dropping the same ilevel that I’ve acquired since August.

I sincerely apologize Blizzard but I honestly can’t defend some of these decisions any longer. Time gating that is being abused, content spread over five parts (seven weeks), the raid coming out in seven weeks, the opportunity to acquire upgraded gear from sources outside of the raid coming out in seven weeks. I can honestly say that Patch 8.1 is really coming out January 22nd and not yesterday as was stated. I would highly encourage you to reconsider your thinking regarding these stances. You have the talent, the team, and the resources to come out with a major content patch and have the bulk of the story and new gear come out day one with the raid coming out two weeks later AT MOST.

This honestly isn’t a joke anymore. Everywhere I turn, from forums to videos to streams, so many of them are expressing the same frusturations that I have and more. Please, really listen to your community right now and work on fixing these issues. We all love this game and have a passion for it for some reason or another. It kills me inside seeing where we are at currently with time gating, with a large part of the worthwhile content coming out seven weeks from now. Give someone like myself, a staunch defender of your incredible game, ammo to use in your defense. Right now I have no bullets in the chamber. I’m exhausted and now I’m to the point of frusturation.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

19 Likes
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7 weeks is nothing to a game that is 14 years old.

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7 weeks is everything to a game that still wants more subscribers than it has.

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Releasing a new raid right before the holidays would be an awful idea, so I’m glad its not out now. That being said they could have released it earlier in January.

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If you think a hard release date is a time gating then technically every thing is time gated. Why haven’t they released the next 10 xpacs yet? Dang time gating!

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I can understand if they didn’t want to release the raid before the holidays. Makes perfect sense to me. Release Patch 8.1 on January 8th with the bulk of the story, Warfront, IE’s, everything, raid launch on the 15th, and the final part of the story on the 22nd post-raid.

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Giving hard launch dates vs, literally pully a DBZ of NEXT TIME ON WARCRAFT Z! where you only get to do a wopping 5 quests before you need to wait several months. Or gating content behind such ridiculous time walls as several weeks to experience one side of the new content. Warfronts are a great example of time gating. When they launched you were forced to wait close to a month to experience both side of it. There is no reason warfronts are not on a 2 or 3 day cycle.

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First off I hated island expeditions. With the changes they are actually fun now.

The new ones specifically the vrykul one. Is probably the best zone art done in the history of the game.

Again I probably did less island expeditions that a good 70% of the community but the changes actually made them fun and rewarding. At least from a leveling perspective.

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Screw that much needed stuff like bug fixes, class balances, and the multi threading shouldn’t have to wait on story content.

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I haven’t done any, but you’ve convinced me to give them a try :slight_smile:

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They reduced trash mobs and pumped up the amount of rare mobs and events. It’s almost non stop action.

Especially on the smaller islands like the snow covered one this week.

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Having a hard release date is not time gating unless everthing that isn’t released immediately is considered “time gated”. There is nothing you have to do, just wait until it is released. A lot of guild haven’t even completed the normal raids nevermind heroic. Heck, I don’t really raid anymore and I haven’t even done all of the LFR raids yet.

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It makes sense to me. Otherwise you’ll have certain guilds falling behind and complaining because of the holidays. Releasing a new raid two weeks before Christmas isn’t a great idea.

I mean, there is, though. Lots of people can only play on the weekends. If warfronts were only available Tuesday through Friday or whatever, how would those people join in? A week is a good choice. Gives everyone some time to get all of their alts in and get all the rares down.

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but that is just it. He is complaining that the raid is time gated because it is scheduled to be released in 7 weeks. He is equating the date 8.1 launched to the date the raid should launch and deciding that Blizzard just wants to time gate the raid launch.

I definitely agree that time gating in Legion was bad, but complaining about a raid launch date seems odd. Like complaining about anything that had a release/launch date.

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Monday tuesday Alliance control
Wednesday Thursday Horde Contol
Friday Saturday Alliance
Sunday Monday Horde

Weeks have odd numbers of days, and you are basing it on an even number for cycling. Even on the week end one side would get the experience both sides each week. Why would you not want that? Because then even if you can only play on the weekends you get to have BOTH experiences.

I understand that some people can only play on the weekends, but thats not he majority. Why should the majority of the players suffer because of a few? They should not. Having to sit and be suck not experiencing half of the warfront for several weeks does not make for a fun experience. Look at winters grasp, there was an excellent example of how warfronts should have been rotating in and out.

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Maybe they should have said the “raid patch” 8.1.5 will be released in 7 weeks, then there is no time gating, and all they have to do is turn on the raid. The most trouble free patch ever :wink:

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@Nillah, no raiding guild should complain about falling behind when they’ve had 20 weeks to complete 8 bosses in Uldir. That is plenty of time to complete an 8 boss raid and be ready for the next one.

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Because two days is an extremely short time, given that most gamers now are adults and have jobs/kids/lives. If you can’t log in for those two days due to whatever reason, oh whoops you missed out on an entire cycle. Too bad.

I’m still trying to collect the 370 sets so I’ve wished before that they’d shorten the cycles, but on the other hand, I don’t want other people to miss out because losers like me can play enough to get it done on day one. It’s not that big of a deal.

I’m talking about the new raid, you dingus. You release it two weeks before Christmas when a lot of people need to travel to see family and can’t play for a week or more, then some guilds can’t compete and fall behind.

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This, if my RP guild can manage to zul on heroic in 3 nights of raiding there really is no excuse to “fall behind”

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If you are getting bent outta shape because you cant raid in a video game because the new raid released during the holidays and you HAVE to go see family and travel. I think you need to reevaluate your priorities and whats important in your life.

And again, if you have to “miss out” because you are an adult, and have kids, or a job, thats called being an adult, welcome to the world, its unfair, dont punish everyone because you just happened to miss out one week, there are more weeks in the year. Making everyone suffer and being able to do jack in the game because you are stuck on the “defensive” side of a warfront is not fun.