The current WoW dev team has been apologizing for shoddy game design ever since WoD. So no, I’d say it’s unlikely the next expansion will be really good, especially since things aren’t exactly looking rock solid over at Activision Blizzard lately.
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I think Cata failed because they devoted a ton of resources to re-vamping the old world. This left end game very empty and void of much to do but your weekly raiding or Arena caps >> then log off. Until the Firelands patch there were very few things to do in the day-to-day at end game in Cata.
WoD had much the same issue but bafflingly without the major commitment of resources anywhere to be found. ( I guess the stat squish may count?) WoD fell flat on it’s face because of a lack of content and general things to do, which for the life of me, I can’t figure out how that happened. I heard them talk about hiring new people during MoP, near doubling the team in size by the end, and getting them accustom to working on WoW took a lot of effort. Making WoD’s failure just seems like a symptom of colossal mismanagement due to all the cut content we keep hearing about outa that expac; Chronal Spire, Fharalon, Taanan at launch, capitol cities of karabor and Bladespire, 0 dungeon additions, Yrels “Dark Secret”. Seeing as they apparently had the time, manpower, and resources to do more than they actually put out in WoD it really was unfortunate.
BFA’s issues are all to do with systems design as far as from where I stand.
It has content, updates come at a nice rate, and there is hardly a lack of things to do. Compared to Legion it has objectively more activities with additions like Islands and Warfronts. But everything they’ve done systems-wise seems to have majorly missed the mark. Azerite traits, class design, reward structure… it all just seems a little off and not very well done. Which makes you wonder how important some of the senior Devs that have left the team in the last 6-7 years actually were. The role may be more critical to the success of the game than most had previously given it credit for.
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I haven’t been truly hyped about the game since MoP. That was the last expansion I truly had amazement and extreme fun about the game
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I’ve asked for this before, but they don’t want to take the time to do it. There are still fires and destruction all over the place, that logically the locals would have started repairing.
The Barrens still has a lot of high level guys from a quest chain you can no longer do from several expansions ago. Don’t ask me what it is called, because I don’t remember this far out, but these will never be used for quests again, so why are they still there?
The area I am talking about is northeast of the Crossroads.
This is largely true, but I also felt that pruning was an issue. Also, dungeon design seemed to ignore LFD and what made it work previously. They nerfed tanks and healers then expected dps to pick up the slack. LFD worked because the tank and healer could pull the dps through dungeons, the lesson they took instead was that dungeons needed to be simpler and easier.
It was the beginning of the end, which is why it is historically viewed as a bad expansion.
i just hope for a much much MUCH longer main storyline. maybe a few less hurdles to jump through. i am enjoying my return to the game
but this grind for that, time gated this, kill 500 of something over there for no reason to give a goblin some gold so the warchief will give you the next mission thing just…why can’t we just have intersecting stories/missions where everything is tied together in a meaningful way other than “hey, i met this group of monster people things a few years ago, go help them for the next month”
“i then will give you the next step in the mission you were on (timeline wise) an hour ago”
I don’t think the current development team is capable to creating a really good expansion equal to stuff we’ve seen in the past. We have seen what the limits of their abilities are and what this teams ‘vision’ of WoW is - both are really low on the totem pole.
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Bam. Nailed it for me, Phydeaux. I was burned-out raiding LK for months and it was so darn epic story-wise (Wrath) for me that when WoW 4.0, Cataclysm, was announced, with new race/class combos and talents, i was too stubborn and - dare I write - arrogant to welcome that change. Embarrassingly so. I missed out on some good lore and raiding by taking roughly 6 months - maybe more - off and coming back an aloof fool.
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I don’t know if Blizz needs an incomprehensible Final Fantasy-length storyline - frankly I don’t think they’re capable of writing and developing content around that - but definitely having a less linear leveling story and content that’s not tied to anything like the War Campaign would be great improvements.
Im no one’s disciple - at least not directly - but I think creating killer content is more nuanced than who is creating it. Like Other media, most of it seems to “dry-out” by about half a dozen years (shows, music [very rare for bands to keep that creative spark going being about the 5th album, with few exceptions], books, movies).
The art form/media is defined within the first couple iterations and deviating from that becomes hard because you risk alienating your devoted fan base - of which there are millions of fans of Warcraft.
Though, to be sure, my bias is that I like it when Blizzard takes some risks in exploring new content. I like seeing the growth of the game. Like music, I may love the band, but not every album they create.
My two cents, not meant to be inflammatory or contrarian.
That was me with Pandaria at first, Cataclysm was great for me so I was stubborn for the beginning of Pandaria pre-patch. Unsubbed but came back for Seige and loved it.
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The only truly bad expansion imho was WoD, I’ve really enjoyed all the rest including BfA.
i think they can, the problem is would they? it almost seems like a few people come into the office every now n then to work on a bit of a patch n bring up some random idea…and then suddenly the entire story revolves around that idea and that one idea only until somebody remembers something they havent finished yet
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I thought WoD had amazing questing. It was just the lack of options for endgame.
I think they’ve mentioned that before - that traditionally the designers just kind of do their own thing in terms of the content and the writing usually ends up having to be shoe-horned in later.
They made a big deal before BFA launched about the writing team actually being involved in the content design stuff but so far that certainly hasn’t produced any better results!
Tell the replace the whole current team. Not just Ion. The whole upper team. Then they are going to continue to produce exspansions that are lackluster and generally boring. I came back after two and nothing has changed. They need to do this or they will fail.
Are there two teams working on expacs? Also I really enjoyed Cataclysm.
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Really good?? Nope
Better ? Probably… I am just here for the free drama stories ![:rofl:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/rofl.png?v=6" ":rofl:")
i doubt they will fail anytime soon as in game killing it will head into the decline though. even with a lot of us returning after however many years. when i came back i would do a quest, go to somewhere else in the world and the person i just killed or watched die, was now a quest giver or something…WTF moments for sure.
i dunno if it would work now if they forced people to go through each xpac to get to the next, but if they did that, maybe we wouldnt have to be time gated on EVERY…SINGLE…THING… if somebody wants to run a heroic 50 times in one day let them ffs… if you are worried about the content being cleared to soon, do as i said previously…you go from xpac to xpac main storyline. kill off most of the side quest crap thats required to unlock other things especially if they are in no way related to the main plot anyhow.
they need to work a bit on trying to tell a story. i mean after this many years of hitting the same buttons with pretty much the same gfx and animations in front of you etc etc…the story is about all you have left to try to squeeze out of this old engine lol
i might be wording some of this wrong, or not really flushing out my point entirely but i think you get the general concept of what im trying to say
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oh dear lord, i just realized…somebody from the blizz team might actually read this and take it wholeheartedly word for word and implement that very very rough draft brainstorm i just typed
if i just killed the game…sry guys. they obviously have very few people with new ideas of their own on the team