So you’re saying people would be crazy to believe anything Ion says?
The meaningful choice will be whether to continue to subscribe, and as always the answer will be based on whether they are having fun or not.
you mean the fact that people already do?
Actually, yeah. We shouldn’t. He’s a lawyer.
I do remember him flat out saying, “We don’t want you to play it” in reference to a question as to why Demonology pre-Legion - a spec that wasn’t even that good numerically - got a flat 20~% or so nerf. It makes sense in hindsight as they completely redid the spec (and gutted it), but at the time nobody understood.
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Well a big part of the fun is the expansion story itself which a lot of players including myself I think will enjoy doing leveling up my main and alts through.
There goes a couple months of sub just from that.
I see a lot of people saying they aren’t going to be buying the expansion.
Ion said they had a “ripcord” they could pull at any time if they needed to because people were unsubscribing. Saying things like that keeps people subscribed a bit longer.
Yep. It’s a time buying tactic - lawyers like these - but this is actually promising something that never existed.
I saw a lot of people saying they are going to choose covenants based on their aesthetic and RP choice too, perhaps to stick it to the man, so it doesn’t really matter about what people say.
Bottom line is covenants wont really drop numbers til I’d say about end of the first or second patch. End of 9.0 or 9.1
ripcord is gone. not too mention it was a lie actually. He “said there was a ripcord” was there really? naw. You can tell between the interview he had with preach after you watch it and finally found out they dont agree.
People started dropping like flies from BfA almost immediately. I have characters that belong to guilds where no officer logged in after the first month.
This doesn’t sound fun to me at all. I think they think they’re doing some sort of clever social engineering thing to get people to lower their standards.
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Covenants as they are, aren’t likely to cause a noticeable hit to subs - it’s mostly just how it feels bad to players who are pseudo-competitive. For players who are more casual - like I plan to be, and am now - it’s not a huge deal, and it’s going to be received well.
Thankfully, as I said, I’m a casual player now. It’s a design that heavily favours players who have no interest in being competitive.
We can’t really tell how many players left, but using the same design system - stubborn, ignoring player feedback, and doubling down on bad things - as WoD, which saw the sharpest drop in subs ever, it’s likely it was a big impact.
BFA hit me like that too. I was trying to be competitive at Legion launch - and left eventually because it just felt awful - and tried in BFA, but left before we even cleared Uldir. Perhaps being competitive in WoW just doesn’t feel good.
All you had to do was look at the BfA story, Sylvanas burned down a world tree. Then a lot of main selling points of the game wasn’t fun to do pure and simple.
It was a grind just to unlock Azerite pieces at the Heroic dungeon level.
But basically Blizz starts the fire then comes in with the fire truck to save everyone from the disaster they created and claim all the credit too.
That’s why expansions get better with age now.
In my opinion it will hit casuals harder than min maxers, the people who are willing to do whatever it takes to excel.
Choosing based on feelings will mean a lot of casuals will find themselves in a position where they are sub optimal at everything they want to do. It will be harder than ever to get into groups. The groups that a casual with marginal skills and less than optimal choices will be able to get into will be filled with other people who are doing stuff less than optimally. People will work harder to complete content, they will fail more, and they will make less progress.
The convoluted layers of systems means only people who are good at min maxing and enjoy working through these abstract schemes will do well. And they will do incredibly well. The power gap will be even bigger than in BfA, and the carry sell ads will scroll.
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Wouldn’t doubt itl be hard to find a group for anything, it’s always been that way, that’s the main roadblock. Not necessarily the content difficulty itself that casuals approach.
You can just look at Normal Ny’alotha for example.
I’d just make your own group if you are concerned about that.
Thing is it can work it won’t be perfect but they could just make it so there is no barrier to swapping back and forth between covenants besides going back to the hub and changing. Get rid of the time gated bs.
No it won’t. Covenants as they are now discourage experimenting and discourage using all of your 60 talent row. You are going to see someone sprout a third limb and drag a caster around with it hoping out of melee to cancel spells. Then when you do that yourself for a bit and have fun but decide nah I like my swirling mists tp and vamp armor too much so I want to go back you are going to be faced with a 2 week timegate. The forums are going to explode when people actually learn how going back works. You can’t grind to make it faster it’s flat out time locked to two resets at least.
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Aye, no need to continue to make bad purchases with every new expac. I’ll wait until at least the product seems complete this time before buying.
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No one will be pulling a ripcord…Not the players and not Blizzard…
I’m down with removing the time gate, but there should still be a barrier that is infinitely repeatable like the Steamwheedle forgiveness Quests after you become anything lower than Neutral with any of the goblin towns.
So that the only time gate is the Player’s own time and energy.
This isn’t true, you are forced to go through the SL narrative and get a taste of how your mains performs with each covenant before making a choice at 60.
Picking something for aesthtic reasons i feel isnt sticking it to the man, its just because it looks good on your part. It doesn’t help balance the skills because ( I don’t want to assume but I think if youre picking something aesthetically its because you’re casual?) Let me know. I don’t want to assume. Sticking it to the man is posting numbers on said skills at high levels showing yo, This is what this skill does during this or this fight.