The “choice” was made before Plunderstorm was even in development; gone are the days of four raid tiers.
No, you were getting a Fated raid either way. Plunderstorm is just side content developed by a third party studio that got absorbed a bit ago.
To be fair I know the pvp crowd may be a smaller percentage the pve players but even they deserve to be shown some love by Blizz once in awhile . PvE can’t get everything and pvp get nothing .
I’m more of a PvE player myself (Some raiding and lots of open world) and I don’t expect the game to just cater how I like to play . To be honest anyone that thinks Blizz should only make things for their style of playing comes off as pretty entitled in my book
Not saying you are just those that think Blizz should of made exactly what the wanted .
We could have had more interesting stories and raids but got this weird pirate thing 
Have you met the community ?
It can’t decide on what it wants most of the time and when it does they can’t agree on how it should be done .
This generally ends up in us getting what we ask for corrupt a wished .
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Plunderstorm seems like something that was cut from BFA but just released now to give us something fun and random to do for the end of the Tier. There was never a chance of an additional full Tier.
I do think though, this is a case where the devs silence about the patch actually hurt them. In a vacuum, people got worked up watching all the speculation videos hypothesizing these huge content patches to do with pirates because of that pirate ship easter egg. Then they ended up disappointed when that didn’t happen.
That literally was not going to happen. Plunderstorm is just a third party’s game mode with WoW skinned over it.
10.2.6 was never going to be new dungeons, or a new raid, or new storylines, or even a new season. That’s 10.2.7, which is happening within a month to bring in S4 and Fated Raids.
I keep seeing this and im not sure yall understand what season 4 is supposed to be. We didnt miss a raid, this is a bonus end of expansion season. We have 3 more expansions and classic cata coming. Yall need to seriously stop complaining
Yeah, that’s always the excuse. “Don’t worry about the 400days of no content in MOP, they’re working on WOD”. “Don’t worry about the even longer content drought and cut content and selfie-only patch in WOD, they’re working on Legion”.
“Don’t worry about how bad Shadowlands is, they’ve cut it short to work on DF”
“Don’t worry about the recycled nothing content in Dragonflight, they’re working on TWW”
“Don’t worry that they’re charging full price or higher for expansions with even less content than before, it’s a trilogy”
Is there literally anything Blizzard shovels up that you wont gobble down smiling all the way?
I don’t think we should ever discourage Blizzard from trying new things, just maybe better communication / more bread crumbs next time. I might not be the biggest fan of PS, but it was something different for the game.
… I would have preferred a 4th raid as well.
I’m aware of all this. My gripe still stands lol
Blizz has been doing end of expansion droughts for 19 straight years and through 9 expansions.
It’s what WoW is and parts of its life cycle.
Players thinking it’s going to change one day are out of their mind.
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Granted it was also a mistake and poor timing in the other direction but I seem to remember Vanilla concluding with most people not even getting their foot in the door of Naxx.
I think it’s odd that people are all about Blizzard trying something new but not, like, more of a balance of content throughout an expansion apparently. That’s a bridge too far I suppose.
“Plunderstorm is something new, they should try new things.”
but also
“There have always been massive content droughts and expecting them to try something new is raising the bar too high.”
Raids are boring
If you want the final raid to have low participation they need to remove all but 1 raid difficulty, remove mythic+, about halve raid drops, and massively gut catchup gear.
Do you think those would be popular decisions to make?
I’m not saying having droughts is good or anything, but it’s what their design cycle is. It’s been consistent for almost 2 decades.
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Nothing new was made. No new assets, systems, anything other than some models for the rewards. Its very easy to code a shrinking circle.
Plunderstorm piggybacks off of the UI overhaul which was made for this xpac, and the character screen pretty clearly uses the tech they have lined up for warbands. The abilities are basically multiple boss buttons.
Compare to what is needed for a raid: Art, Modeling, rigging, environment design, encounter design, loot design, tier set bonuses need to be created tested tuned, music and sound design, tier set appearances need to be concepted out iterated and cleaned, not to mention even before the raid you have to write and design quest chains so that the raid can be placed in context of the world.
Garrisons needed all the artwork, modeling, systems design, hundreds of quests had to be written and implemented, there was definitely new tech to be written/debugging etc.
They’re not comparable to Plunderstorm.
Most people seem to be suggesting something like a mini-raid which I think would be do-able with all difficulty options remaining. Throw in some related questing in the world, minor events, etc. and it would be a decent hold-over that, imo, would add infinitely more value to the game than PS has.
Just my two cents on it. I’m just conveying that the people saying “stop trying to scare Blizzard from trying new things” are saying it to others that are, in fact, actually suggesting new approaches to their process and design cycle.
They may not like those suggestions and might be trapped in a “we’ve always done it this way mentality” but they should open their minds a bit.
I would take new explorable world over raids, dungeons and plunderstorms. So tired of regurgitated content in the form of hard, mythic, +, ++,…
Tired of pvp and raids being the only progression. Tired of the loot on a plate. When did the massive part of MMO become current raid and the same dungeons over and over and over.
10.2.7 has been on the roadmap for months with story quests, heritage armor, and “Timerunning Pandamonium” whatever that is.