This game is slowly coming apart at the seams yet Blizzard does not seem to care at ALL. There is a reason the moniker “Beta for Azeroth” exists.
Younger or newer gamers will not know, but there was a time when “Blizzard polish” was a concept in the industry. It meant that whatever Blizzard released would have this undeniable finish to it that would take the experience to the next level and leave consumers genuinely looking forward to the next product. People played their games consistently because they had fun doing so, not because of time-gating metrics or some other psychological experiment.
So many bugs and bad game design decisions abound, yet we are what, 8 months, into the expansion and nothing is done about it. Here are few that I have personally seen and these are all cosmetic (I am not even addressing gameplay ones):
Pterodactyl mounts, dread raven shrink character models.
OG tigers roar/mountspecial is broken and has been since days of Legion
Legacy loot has been broken beyond belief since the system was introduced
Dazar’Alor terrible design - people have given feedback FOR MONTHS - about this hub. Simple fixes such as a portal between the Great Seal and Docks, or even extending trade chat and rested XP to all of Zanchul and the docks would work. But nothing. In the past, this would have been hotfixed 1 week into the expansion, WTF.
Zandalari and Kul Tirans are unfinished and lack polish. When Zandalari swim, they swim ON water.
Zandalari cannot purchase most mounts from Argent Tournament. How did this make it past QA?
Glyphs that only work for spells in one spec when really they ought to apply to the whole class if the spell is shared…
The list goes on. This game is disintegrating, bit by bit, as it goes on. That’s normal. What isn’t normal, what is absolutely embarrassing is how Blizzard does not seem to care anymore.
Servers crashing. Loot lag. Bugs too numerous to count. Classes that were IWIN buttons just by existing. Raid nights on Tuesdays where you really shouldn’t even bother logging in. 8 hour maintenance windows every week.
Did I mention loot lag?
(not a fan)
The game is constantly changing and evolving. There’s never been a golden age where everything was wonderful. There’s always been challenging situations both with game features and with the underpinnings of the game itself.
Regarding 1, 2 and 5, that’s because the game is running on an ancient engine. It’s pretty clear they have no desire to update it or the graphics to 2019 levels. We’re apparently stuck with an engine that you can run on your old 2002 PC.
It’s definitely never been perfect - I vividly remember defending Blizzard to a friend of mine who insisted they’d gone to pot in 2006-2007, in fact, but you can’t deny the laying off of their QA staff has had some … unintended effects.
Funny thing about that is, WoW runs worse than all but the most unoptimized modern games, now, for the kind of graphics it’s pushing - and the amount of players on screen at once. It’s kind of pathetic, actually.
I just have to add my two cents because I have been leveling an alt recently. I am starting to get annoyed seeing new models added in the old world that does not properly affix ‘doodads’ to the models.
I will give two examples, I am leveling a goblin, in their starting area there is a quest that you ride a mecha shark to kill an elite. The shark model was updated to current but the rockets and such were not connect to the new skeleton, so they are just hovering in air like they are on an art palate because they are not coded to connect to any thing.
The second example is in vasjir, because I just leveled through it. There are these drown pirate skeletons, the skeleton model was updated and now their pirate hats are sticking out of their ribcage instead of on their head.
I have seen tons of these types of things while leveling and if they went back through and made sure that if the new model replaced an old that everything still fit it would give polish to the game.
TLDR; New models are breaking old stuff and they need to do QA checks when they are implementing them.
I read a post on reddit from a first-time player recently (they woulda played in the last 3 months) and the general verdict was, “I can see the heart and soul and charm this game may have had once but in its current state, it’s unengaging af, and not for me”.
I was being generous in not fixating on the broken mechanics and terrible gameplay design. The point that most of the sycophants totally missed in this thread was that there used to be a time this same company would be embarrassed and ashamed to ship a product with the quality of BFA.
“Blizzard polish” LOL. I remember content patch days that were supposed to be playable at 2 or 3 in the afternoon not open till 10pm or later. When WoD came out Frostfire Ridge was so bugged they had to patch it in the first hours to skip quests because it was so bugged. MoP was so bad there were waiting ques on all the realms to keep everything running.
I think you either do not know what you are talking about or are at the very least disingenuous
Milennials are all almost 30 now. You’re thinking of the new batch of Gen Y “meme lords”. That worship their favorite streamers like gods. They take every silly quip they say as gospel.