This is why he needs to be relieved of his duties. He was fine as lead encounter designer because that’s what he enjoyed; it’s what he was passionate about. But now we have a single-minded game director running this game into the ground because his philosophy is to force his game onto the players, when it should be the players forcing their game onto him.
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Watch me propose a shift in design philosophy for the 10,000th time to avoid that issue:)
I don’t care either way. If it is a gold sink, I won’t buy one.
Blizzard prefers to create a game that appeals to its devs and not a game that appeals to its players.
I agree that a housing system like that of FFXIV would be an interesting thing, as many players ask for something like that, among other things like new races, more customization, more options and freedom with the use of transmogs but Blizzard does not want to waste time and resources with it.
If that increased the game’s usage time metrics, we might be seeing a better effort from Blizzard.
The company prefers to try to patch Torghast by adding more currencies and incentives for people to spend more time in the game trying to climb this stupid tower and beat his generous RNG, than to create something that makes the player feel that he is enjoying his time inside. warcraft and not tediously wasting it, trying to win a lottery or fulfilling your round in repetitive activities.
Blizzard has left the profession. Archeology is forgotten.
Blacksmithing? Jewelry??
To date, I’ve only had one item 177, with a slot to try to fit a stone.
I practically don’t buy stones, because I don’t have equipment that has slots to use a jewel or the means to put one on some equipment.
Legendary equipment? I can do mine if I want to.
Blizzard is very little concerned with the state of retail.
Getting people to ruminate on classic and TBC is more important and more profitable than striving to create content that is relevant at the present time.
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#1 problem with WoW. We have a lead encounter designer running the show who doesn’t give a rip about things like housing, immersion, etc. The game has always been sort of a glorified slot machine, but at least it used to be fun to pull the lever and be in the casino.
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Mmhmm…wait was that supposed to show me assuming? Do you know know what assume means?
If that’s not assuming then you don’t know what it means either. Because my question was framed exactly like your’s for a reason.
It’s not though…it was a question however sarcastic it might have been, obviously taking a jab at a long term issue inevitably stemming from player housing systems implemented in the game. What you did was assume I was here out of spite or anger of current microtransactions implemented in TBC Classic…you assumed my reason for being here, you assumed wrong…hence…never assume…? You understand yes? Hopefully?
I never said spite or anger. You asked if this was about monetization. I asked if this was about the trauma of classic boosts. Both are questions.
The issue is that they took all the worst steps.
- They made the garrison essential to the expansion. You were forced to use your garrison for progression in quests and into zones.
- Blizzard added hardly any unique flair. Only adding buildings we could use for function and not decorate or change styles of.
- Blizzard made all professions irrelevant for the gathering. Destroying the economy by making resources gatherable without the profession needed.
The Garrisons were a horrible attempt to give function. They wanted Garrisons to be part of the player power progress, rather than being a means to housing. They did nothing to diversify it all.
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lol…Spite/anger are merely two of many emotional responses to trauma, your “question” however questionable it may have been was put in the context of knowing without proof the meaning or origin of my blatantly obvious comment made in a specific social context…if you didn’t assume then why was the first thing to come from your “mouth” a very specific reason for my question? There are many many factors involved when speaking in group settings that change or alter the rules my friend…it’s ok. Really.
I think this is an important step forwards in a good direction, but I don’t think that player housing will single handedly solve this game’s woes. I think the general philosophy behind player housing (as you’ve described it), however, is the right direction for WoW going forwards.
WoW is very much a theme park: you have rides and attractions that are repetitive, predictable, and carefully curated to meet several factors (reward for time played, increasing character power, etc). Every expansion we get a new ride, but the previous slate of attractions are no longer engaging and fun because they’re old, no longer challenging, and don’t offer competitive rewards.
The result is: you only have a very small amount of things to do in the current content, and you don’t really get a choice in what those options are.
I believe that ever green content, like what you’ve suggested for player housing, is the solution, but it’s gotta be broad reaching.
Give us open world pursuits:
- Treasure hunting Sea of Thieves style out on the Island Expedition maps;
- Puzzles and rotating open world challenges like we had with the Timeless Isle;
- Player housing would allow us to customize our own plot of land and display trophies, which would encourage achievement farming and gathering;
- Guild halls, where guilds can collectively pursue challenges to enhance and upgrade their estates, and maybe even directly compete against other guilds with features like the War Games for PVP content. This can even include invasions like we had in the garrisons, but randomized;
- More open world, naturally occurring PVP encounters like the towers in EPL, Halaa in Nagrand, the fortifications in Hellfire Penninsula, and even Ashran;
- Faction assaults, invasions, incursions, etc, all over the world that stay current and give players a variety of locations to return to;
- Professions revamp - make old materials relevant by incorporating old mats into new recipes. Allow us to get more creative with what we make and how we approach it.
Hyper focusing on one area/one story in each expansion severely reduces the amount of content that can be relevant because it doesn’t fit the theme, and because the dev’s don’t have time to devote to developing ton of new stuff, and that’s an issue. By allowing older content to stay relevant, we’d have more choices, and choices are what define an RPG experience.
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“We TrIeD iT wItH gArRiSoNs AnD iT dIdN’t WoRk”
-some WoW dev
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I have had trauma. No they are not.
I was just making a store boosts joke, jfc.
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having a house wont keep me playing
In my experience, video game housing rapidly becomes little more than ridiculously overpriced money grabbing for addicted whales.
Just look at what it did to ESO. In that game, houses sell from between $100 USD and up, with the nicer ones costing well over $200 USD. That is just for the house. Then you have to furnish it, which is either a massive time and gold sink buying overpriced items on the auction house, or again, spend real money on the cash shop for small “furniture packs” which average $40 a pop and only give you a few items.
Don’t believe me? ESO’s cash shop currency is Crowns. For a pack of 5000 crowns you will spend $40 on their website. The recent higher end homes have been selling for around 17k-21k crowns.
If Blizzard could do it with purely in-game farmed items and no cash shop maybe it could be cool. Otherwise nothing would kill this game faster, as not being over the top whale milk is one of the last things holding its image together.
Which is why Activision would probably never sign off. Because why do anything if you can’t gouge money from it in the short term? No one thinks about the benefit of long-term community cultivation on the health of a game anymore. It has all gone full YOLO swag beach.
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As have many others, and yes they most certainly are…
Mmm I see…indeed
Didn’t he say in an interview that he regrets the systems we got going now?
To be fair, according to GC, Blizzard makes decisions as a team so Ion (and GC before him) likely don’t have as much say as you think - they are more like coordinators making sure things are on track and information flows between the teams; in addition to acting as the public facing front man.
I’m willing to bet there are considerable differing of opinions within Blizzard and that there are many things they want to do but can’t get enough internal buy-in to get the ball rolling.
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Good thing the OP and thread is about significantly more than having a house.
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