Oh my. My thoughts are best handled via bullet point. Apologies for lack of detail.
Stop starting from scratch with classes ie. Changing the ways all the classes play each expansion
Stop creating expansion specific elements that never again have any relevance to the game eg: Garrisons, Class Halls, artefact weapons etc.
Stop using repeatable world quests/ daily missions as a means of making up for lack of content and to time gate our reps. Especially if they are going to be upping the ante on how important that is to professions
Eliminate LFG/R tier dungeons or raids. Seriously bad idea to create a tier of group content that is lower than the normal tier which should be your entry level.
Make professions relevant to the game experience as opposed to a means of getting transmogs. Questing should bolster your questing gear and lower tier dungeon/raids. Profession crafting should prep you for end-tier. End tier raids should drop rare/unique crafting materials to make your final tier of gear.
Out of immediate ideas.
Edit: Forgot to include, expand the pool of devs for WoW. But that doesnât seem likely⌠then again none of this is likely.
Unless they think they can take the 7% and make more. Cause 7% per year twice is 14% and can that become more than 20% after reinvesting the first? Or maybe, markets are uncertain and guaranteed money now is safer than slightly more later?
or maybe, even rich people are dumb as heck sometimes and their demands donât always align with reality.
I believe it is much more realistic to see a world where Blizzard Activision moves to a 3 year timetable than creating something new every 5 years. Shared worlds need updates and content to keep people active. This is seen in all the largest games in the world. A great core system with slight additions/tweaks to that core every so often.
Wouldnât bother me, if they went every 3 years. Time flies anyways. I guess for the folks who blaze through the content 3 years would seem like a lifetime. Heck I hardly ever finish a good portion of the things to do in a expansion before the next one is about to drop anyways lol.
Do we even need new systems of borrowed power that are more and more confusing with each expansion/patch? No. The answer is no. Get rid of these shambolic systems that require players to use multiple third-party websites to determine upgrades and just make the specs fun to play at a base level.
That comes down to poor design, not length of time. Wrath, MoP and even Cata did a wonderful job of pacing the story while still keeping things relevant. We knew who the bad was and what they were trying to do, and the bad kept popping up to remind us. NâZoth did none of that, and we spent much of BfA and WoD just plodding along killing whoever. For that matter, Nyalotha should not have been thrown out in a single patch, given what the Black Empire once was.
To be fair, theyâve pretty much run out of known bad guys. Itâs why they ret-conned the Void Lords into existence.
Balancing and designing classes/dungeons isnât as hard as youâd think. Players told Blizzard how much classes suck to play in BfA and were told âdonât expect class changes for SLandsâ. Theyâve had 4 years to look at redesigning broken specs, and instead they just give us more borrowed-power systems.
More importantly to all of this, is that unless there is content to do players will simply stop playing, which at the end of the day costs Blizzard money.
It actually takes longer than 2 years to develop an expansion. Blizzard starts working on the next expansion before the current one ships. So, Shadowlands was already being conceptualised and development was starting before Battle for Azeroth launched. So the reality is that expansions take between 4-5 years to develop, give or take some months. That realistically is plenty of time, but mistakes happen.
Also, this is a massive improvement over how they originally developed expansions, or rather what the plan to develop them was, which was one a year. They never, ever, met that goal, but they always pushed for it, with detrimental effects on the expansions that launched in most cases. WoD was the last expansion to use the â1 year per expansionâ model.
They actually plan 2 expansions ahead with the art team about a year ahead of what we see in terms of the game/cutscenes. This information is based on an interview Preach had with Ion during 2019 Blizzcon. The issue is if they are planning so far ahead, why do we have an expansion that is ripe with poorly thought out storylines that could have been entire major patches or even expansions themselves?
Mistakes happen. Folks are only human. What looks good on paper, doesnât always translate into good game design. But more often than not, by the time itâs obvious that itâs not good design, itâs too late, too many systems are built around it, as was the case with Azerite Armour.
And on top of that, public opinion can shape design decisions. We didnât get a Shattrath raid in WoD because the developers felt that we players would react poorly to another Orc raid so soon after clearing Blackrock Foundry, so they skipped that tier entirely and gave us a demon tier.
Wouldnât be surprised if the same thing happened with BFA, only instead of an Orc raid, we were going to get a Sylvanas raid, and Blizzard thought that the players would hate it and think they were copy-pasting SoO so we got Nâzoth and Azshara instead of a focused faction conflict storyline.
People will always use third party websites to get the most out of their character if they want to be the âbestâ in terms of damage because at the end of the day it is math equation. The issue is when the use of these websites provide a 20% boost versus someone in-game who does not use it. Ion has stated that a design goal for Shadowlands is to lessen this gap to only 1-3%. Optimization should still provide a benefit but should be less compared to someone who does not wish to spend money nor time on a third party site.
Do i agree that we do not need new systems every expansion? Yes. But I also love the idea of legendaries, class halls, azerite and essences, corruption. These systems are cool and if correctly implemented can bring a lot of flavor to the world and allow great character customization, which is what some RPG players enjoy. We fall in this rut that by only having 1.5-2 years to establish and create these new systems every expansion that they come out poor and not fully fleshed out. By having a longer cycle, this issue can be potentially lessened.
Yes, they were paced well. The overarching story was upfront in peoples faces. There was an end-goal to everything we as a player was doing in terms of story. Perhaps that is not realistically possible with how time-consuming game development is and giving them another year to finish these stories would allow them to feel complete rather than rushed.
What classes are âbadâ to play in BFA? Fun is subjective. Do we want the Classic style where rotations are press 1 button over and over? Do we want the style where we are proc-based? Build up base with a spender? I have 24 Keybinds that I use as a Fury Warrior. Do i really want more or less buttons to press? Will that help my enjoyment? Or are there slight alterations that could be made to each spec to actually help them? Shockwave being base for warriors would be nice.
Exactly. In recent memory, the soccer boss is not a fun boss for majority of the raid. Great idea on paper. In execution, it is not great. But I do not take away from that design because they tried something ânewâ. Did it work? Not really but at least the attempt of creativity was there. Does Azerite armor work perfectly? No it does not. If it had another 6 months to cook with another 6 months of actually player testing, it may have turned out to be something spectacular.
An example was: WoD where they ended up in 8.2 with WTF ending cinematic (although it is no longer the worst thanks to BfA ending cinematic) where there was an 8.3 with a final raid where the final boss was Gromm and the raid was Siege of Shattrath.
and they know why, because despite the fact that neither in Reddit and in any toxic youtuber as Asmondod would you say that the reason is that it was the only time Blizzard gave a whim to Activision to do the CoD logic in making an expansion per year.
Now, they are correct, we need the expansion to live for a while even after the end of its contained patches, but Blizzard does not give that expansion more time because it already has the custom in this last decade of doing a bad expansion ( CATA, WoD, BfA) and a good one (MoP and Legion) and the worst thing is that it is getting worse than the last.
such in the case of WoD and BfA that they rush as fast because it has a tight and busy calendar to give a better expansion than it was the previous one and it is disappointing in the treatment it has in the gameplay and lore in the content thing that It ends up changing or discarding contents that were already prepared at the time of the TBC or Vanilla, which for the next expansion that had a worse rating in the previous one for the next one leaves it with a doubtful view for what it will be until the new patch arrives and after the best expansion, leave it with the right foot to the next thing that after X.0.0 we see the theory of chaos in this expansion.
And so on doing something boring to those who are still waiting for more of the game until WoW is over, and worse will be with complex agenda due to the arrival of previous remakes expansions such as TBC and WotLK and Warcraft 3 Reforged.
and that is why Blizzard does not give more time to the expansion and leaving promises and promises of what it will have of content.
Well, after seeing the underwhelming AR DK intro and absolutely no starting zone/quests for them I was disappointed. The way the old DKâs had a story/zone was very nice and the DHâs also had a story/zone which again was very nice because it was a class story/zone to explore.
Giving us ARâs with no starting zone instead of core races with starting zones is also disappointing. I love having as many races for me to choose from, even if I wonât play them, but I actually like to experience a races new zone and story behind it. Go back to core race development and give us a cinematic camera as the narrator talks about the new races like they us to. Keep the AR ideas as customization like they shouldâve been.
For new zones vs reusing old zones I am for both. I think with more time to develop an expansion they could do both. Adding a new zone gives everyone something new to explore while reusing an old zone would give a dying zone more life or the appearance of life especially for those leveling through it. Plus, they could add new mechanics or a sky/underground zone into the old zones so it would be new to everyone.
As long as they give us a crap ton to do in between expansions I would be fine with them taking longer. They could make raids longer. They could add more lore possibly for every race, class and zone. Could give us a new class and more core races more often. Zones that change depending on player interaction like if they abandon a zone then whatever assault is happening could wipe out NPCâs and towns which players will have to retake and rebuild. Could even add in player housing and mount customization/breeding. They could add in a lot of stuff/ideas players have been asking for.
I just think itâs more like their backers, or whatever theyâre called, want to see profits on a steady basis and so push for more releases/content to keep players paying.
More polished races, classes, lore, zones, dungeons, raids.
Continue to rush content and not finishing it or giving the appearance itâs not finished or is rushed.
More polished races, classes, lore, zones, dungeons, raids.
Continue to rush content and not finishing it or giving the appearance itâs not finished or is rushed.