World of Warcraft got its start by people who loved gaming, spent almost as much time playing as coding. Became a part of Blizzard, who later merged with Activision, and then Activision/Blizzard got bought up by Microsoft. Every step along the way, owners much more interested in making money than in gaming. One big step in cutting costs is cutting people and salaries. Microsoft well known for this, especially in the past year.
Something like housing is especially attractive to managers, have the developers and coders set up an infrastructure one time, after that enhancements can be added. This means the devs are freed up to work on the next big patch while lower-paid staff can design the sofas and wall hangings. Things like housing and transmogs can be added to forever by designers.
Pets and pet battling has evolved over the years into almost a different game than WoW. Takes full advantage of the WoW environment but works differently, requiring separate developer resources from rest of game. Adding a new pet more complicated than a new piece of furniture. Easier if just a recolor of another pet with same moves but fitting abilities and move sets into the overall pet environment takes some planning and a deep understanding of the whole world of pet battling. Remember there’s 2,000 different pets out there and a new one has to fit in.
Especially if you’re pulling pet experts off projects to help with deliver a new expansion on time, sacrifices have to be made. Possibly that’s what happening now. We can hope it’ll get better.
The thirst for more profits could be worse, we might have to start watching ads between dungeon boss fights .
The funny thing is…player housing. Seems to me, with Blizz having such a track record of abandoning things…archeology, our garrisons, and now pet battling…
Why should we invest a lot of time and resources (and potentially real money in the store) to get things for our housing? Why get excited about it when it’ll be forgotten in two expansions anyways? I’ve wanted housing for well over a decade…now honestly, I really don’t care about it. I don’t trust Blizzard to maintain it over time.
If it’s all about the money and they want our dollars, they have to show commitment to all parts of the game. Not just the shiny new feature.
Here is the thing about the money.
I have always bought shop and promo pets in the past - not because they look cool, but because they can actually fight!
If there won’t be any more pet battle content in the future, I’m not buying any more pets. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.
I see the future where player housing will be abandoned, probably by the next xpac, after we put all the time and effort into it…just like…garrisons, pet battles, making maps that are functional for all the areas, having npcs who are integral to the story line actually speaking their parts, etc etc. New teams, less money, teams that are only designing things to sell to players. I guess they really don’t want the long-time players…just the new ones who don’t remember the time and effort that went into the Burning Crusade, MOP, Legion etc. Beyond disgusted.
Exactly. Sad thing is, it wouldn’t have taken much development time to keep some of those old things active, either. Allow players to buy seed packets at halfhill farm for any expansion so they can grow their 16 plots daily…not game breaking, but enough to bring a few people back to their farm (same with the mine and garden in the garrison)…tossing 2-3 world quests in older zones and expansions (even if it’s just usual kill quests or pet battles). Heck, just making the garrison crafting building capable of doing the new crafting system and taking/giving crafting orders from the current expansion (and past expansions where the feature is enabled) would be huge for garrisons.
The fact that so many old features are abandoned entirely…if you’re a casual player, why invest any time in any of them at all? Get max level, get some gear, then cancel the game until the next expansion. If everyone did that, it would be a massive loss of income for Blizz.
How do you keep people playing after 2-3 months into expansions…things like transmorgs, pet battles, building on things from expansion to expansion (completing the garrison, archeology, vanity collections, etc). Pets and pet battles is a huge part of that.
Not sure what Blizz is thinking anymore. They put a lot of emphasis on engagement…then slash things that keep those engagement numbers going long term. It’s mind boggling.
That’s pretty much what they’re worried about.
Solution is to always, always have new challenges just around the corner. Which means the designers and coders are always busy with new dungeons and raids and bosses as that’s what their main user base plays WoW for. Nobody left to tend to us niche players, even when there’s tens of thousands of us.
I’ve hung in there through dozens of lame patches, new lands where you hardly ever see another player after the first month or so, because always pet stuff I need to catch up on. So faithfully sent Blizzard more Real Money (tax included) every month. Just outnumbered I suppose by all the bored heavies that quit till next patch or expansion.
Yes, but players steamroll through that new content in a week or two. There’s no way to make enough dungeons, raids, and gear tier levels to keep players going consistently for 1.5-2 years between expansions. Even when they drip feed content.
And adding stuff like remixes and wow classic has to be more work than sprinkling battle pets in zones and getting some world quests and maybe a dungeon going. That’s what I don’t get…pet battle content isn’t that development/coding intensive. One dev should be enough to do a fair bit of content that lasts an entire expansion cycle for battle pets.
I mean yeah it probably is about money. But they are going to be getting less from me now. I buy pets for the battle aspects, i dont do it just for the collection so…Less to buy now!
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