Current Retail issues

Community WoW Community Council
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This comes from the point of view of my small, small corner of the world. There is a giant gap between the basically ignored patch of 12.2, and the absolute monster of a hype train of WoW Forever. Personally I think it speaks to the quality shown by the two different branches of development.

The TL:DR for Retail is this -

  • Stop using JIRA to set timelines. JIRA is a mediocre ticket system. Not a production pipeline.
  • Go back to a normal release pacing. This rapid fire content drop non-sense has been VERY poorly received because there is no QA to it
  • Re-Hire a proper QA and Support Team. This is probably the single most important thing that could be done for retail to help preserve the life of it.
  • Slow down your story pacing and develop your story more.
  • Actually listen to your playerbase rather than give the tired “We hear you and we are listening” line every video.
  • Give NE Paladins Silver holy Light. This is extremely significant for lore reasons.
  • Stop making 47 currencies for players to juggle. Nobody wants as many stupid currencies as we have now.
  • Pull away from the absolute emphasis on being max level as fast as you can be because “OMG I MIGHT FALL BEHIND”

I think Midnight, which I have often seen compared to Shadowlands in terms of quality and reception, has suffered from one or more of the items on this list. The story, Attack on Sunwell and Reunification of the Elves, was solved in 3 months. This was literally an entire xpack worth of a story that could have covered the globe with void assaults and such. Solved in 3 months. Just done.

Content drop pacing would be tolerable if every content drop didnt add more bugs while undoing what little fixes we got for the last patch before it. And to be blunt - Who actually cared about Sporefall, the other two planets that were reused assets, and Kith’ix? Hell Kith’ix showcased how out of touch Blizzard is by lining Liadrin up to be the first Undead Paladin. If she isnt, then what an absolute waste of a character to die from literally “Trying too hard…ish.”

Also the use of JIRA as your pipeline has created issues for yourselves. This has lead to some backwards content drops that are out of sync with the game (Bugs invading Hollowfall in TWW. Harandar being pushed back silently because it wasnt done. The recent questline with the Kith’ix patch where you go discover troll ruins with snake teasers… AFTER we are done with Ula’tek). This was supposed to be the trio of xpacks that were “Better because we could plan them out better”. Absolutely not hitting that goal.

If you are going to take the notion of “This is the xpack/story to wrap up the last X years of Insert Game” from FFXIV then please also steal their questing and story pacing philosophy. You already lock people out of Season 1 now at the start of the xpack, so make proper use of that time.

Also figure out a way to reduce the rat race. The reason people speed run your story is because “OMG I AM GONNA FALL BEHIND!”, and some players just accept that fate and dont do content. Which is unfortunate for them because barring Midnight S0 and S1, WoW PvE has some of the most banger dungeon and raid drops. The quality difference of the lesser Crown of Cosmos vs the good stuff we got in the Ula’tek raid is staggering. Night and Day.

Above any other point I will make, WoW needs a proper QA and Support teams again. It really does. Your patches are broken and bad. The community is arguably the worst its been to pug in. There are no quality controls or ToS enforcement. Your system basically relies on an easily abusable mass report system. Like… FIX. THIS.

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I personally at least like getting a new raid boss over the patch as that gives more raid content. Getting a new raid boss by .7 with valuable loot did make it at least fun to login for a couple weeks. The way Kithix and the story is tied felt bad because it feels more like this should have happened with Venomous Abyss right after, the momentum was lost from trying to do the Aqir invasion. In term of story 12.1 feels like it is all over and that event don’t really happen in the right order and I still dislike how it all started with Zul’jan by making 1st a diplomat which seems pretty bad decision but then him going about dark power when the Horde wouldn’t have mind to help them more most likely.

I will always agree that the story feel rushed and more a point to point execution as a lot is simply pushed forward to get to where the content needs you to be.

As far as leveling speed and the overall feeling to be behind that’s also an issue with pacing and how competitive focused the game has become because not much else matter when gear is basically as easy and fast to obtain. I feel a bit too much has been made accessible and a bit too much emphasis on the competitive scene has been made to keep players engaged as it’s the only thing that really matter for a lot season to season when everything else reset.

To me a lot of changes need to be made toward gearing and power systems which would also adress currency issues. The crest system seems to have had its time and has been abused so many ways and doesn’t really accomplish what it was made for which is to make it so people do content of the appropriate difficulty for better rewards but turning crests to higher quality crests is something so easy to do and farm moreover with the crest uncap.

When we see all of that new content also and that S3 cannot get new dungeons it also feel much worse to me, m+ is a major pillar and should be able to get new content each patch. It is one thing to re-use some dungeons but another to not be able to bring new ones moreover affixes have gotten stale and the difficulty tuning simply makes the gearing experience not very exciting as again everything is pushed toward competitiveness.

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I think it mostly falls on leadership.

When I think of the WoW teams I think art and sound knock it out of the park consistently. Quest team is good and encounter team is good aside from some fights here and there. The overall lore team is extremely hit or miss.

Then there is the teams that make the features. I don’t think they are doing anything wrong but they clearly need more time to fix major bugs. Something the 8 week cadence has not allowed. Stuff like for Nightfall, or the Voidforge bonus rolls, how Siren Isle launched or recently how the Labyrinth launched. Just give them time. Either delay the patch or delay the feature to the next patch.

Management and leadership is what controls the tempo. There needs to be some accountability. I don’t blame any of the wow teams when I experience a buggy patch launch I blame the leadership. If there are consistently buggy patches something is inherently wrong. Either the pacing needs to change or leadership. I love Ion and Holly a bunch and like hearing them talk about the game but as game director and executive producer I have to assume they control the pacing unless Microsoft is bullying them.

The patch week cadence needs to be changed at least slightly to allow developers more time. I don’t think it is a matter of lack of people playing PTR as labyrinths had a lot of bugs reported on the public forums we can all see that were not fixed in time.

As the pandaren say sloooow down.

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I think some things retail could borrow and adapt from the Classic team’s development strategy would be to:

  1. Clarify the pillars and direction of modern WoW. Who is this game for? What should it be about?
  2. Be fast paced in development, but build in more time to adapt with player feedback more quickly.
  3. Provide transparency into how developers think about the game and some of the challenges they face.

Forever, in it’s short existence so far, has shown that the above help the community rally around a common goal and provide more accurate conversation around pain points of the game.

Ever since BFA it seems like Blizzard has been on a constant apology tour for retail with some notable big wins along the way. The problem seems to be that when there is a systemic issue with the game (like I’ve talked about with the game being far too bloated) - said issue would not be fixed until the next expansion or later.

Feedback that players want Pet Battles to return, for example, was given at the Midnight Beta but likely won’t be seen (if at all) until The Last Titan. Meanwhile, if Forever players want an RPPvP ruleset added - ‘eh let’s give it a try’ and it’s added in. I know this is a bit apples to oranges, but it’s that kind of flexibility that I think players like. The reality of the situation is that probably 1% of players actually give their feedback, most just quit and go someplace else. So when feedback is given it’s time sensitive in some ways. I agree that JIRA often adds to bloat instead of reducing it.

This rat race is a combination of:

  1. Modern gamers optimizing the fun out of any game, especially when faced with difficult challenges (like mythic raids, 1% achievements, etc.).
  2. The destination being far more developed and cared for than the journey to it. Most player power is simply handed to players for little to no work and a healthy dose of player-favored RNG systems (vault, rerolls, raid tiers, etc.). Having most gear be deterministic (like tier, or profession gear) shovels players into an endgame for little to no journey.
  3. The game is so complicated and bloated that many spreadsheets, tools, addons, simulations, and guides feel like they are required to “solve” what a player should do just to navigate the game.
  4. Too few casual players and systems to entertain the lay player. No Pet Battles, jump puzzles, funny things, odd quests, or innovative new things to explore. Aside from housing it seems like the casual player is invisible to those playing the mainstream game (gearing → dungeons → raids).

Overall Retail wow seems to be at a fork in the road, where a path will likely be chosen following The Last Titan. Will modern WoW be a dungeon-crawling intense mechanic-laden roation-masterin’ power MMO? If so that’s cool, but if that’s the case just give players the levels and gear at the onset and have the game be the destination. Right now it feels like a Frankenstein mash of old and new, too much so to be accepted by new players and appreciated by veteran ones.

Perhaps Legion was where things were best. Just go back to that “simpler” time. And tell players to simply suck it up if they can’t get their legendary fast enough. Trying to accommodate everyone lead to this bloated mess we have now.

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Yeah I think the degrees of freedom Blizzard has has gone down as the ATVI merger happened and now into MSFT. It makes me wish I was a billionaire because I would just buy Blizzard and leave them to be a separate entity. (for the low-low price of readding Pet Battling, although they’d probably do that on their own if given some breathing room.)

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I do agree with many of the points made here. Usually the various teams outside of the lore/story team are doing some heavy lifting as per usual. Even the PvE in Shadowlands was pretty good.

Things are certainly broken at the top, and its showing the impact of that down the line at the production levels. Its a shame as I have enjoyed WoW since 2024/Early 2025 and its just turning into this… mess. Game needs some variety, and not the kind like we got with the recent prop hunt nonsense. Real variety.

They put the focus on RWF, MDI’s, and PvP tournaments and the rest of the game is just suffering.

I will also never budge on the point that they need real QA and Support teams back. Its been insanely bad since they got rid of them.