World of Warcraft just needs someone better in charge, along with developers who actually care about the game.
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They are deliberately trying to maximise the amount they make off of wow while minimizing investment into it.
They didn’t think it would drive it into the ground, they just knew they wanted more of your money and want to get it while spending less on the product, thats it.
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the fact that servers are a ghost town says you are wrong.
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That isn’t what I am implying. It isn’t possible to determine who exactly is the majority; because there are so many negative posts, they only appear to be more numerous.
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I completely agree that the missteps (real or perceived) are entirely just that: unintentional errors. The bigger uproar that I think you’re seeing from online journals, reviewers, and YouTube personalities is that there is a noted degree of deterioration between Legion (which many articulate has been a tremendous achievement for Warcraft) and Battle for Azeroth (and others have done a great job articulating all of those downgrades).
Warcraft has long been a cash-cow for Blizzard, but rather than ship off its top talent to the Incubation Team or to other initiatives, Blizzard should consider tackling the opportunity in front of it eagerly and with all of its resources: namely, that the demographic is older, more mature, less inclined to tolerate timesinks, and more interested in casual progression to the end-game. This is what made Legion so accessible and popular, and conversely, what makes the lackluster Azerite armor system and time-gated timesinks in Battle for Azeroth appear like a step backward in comparison.
And it is all very, very fixable. Have faith; I do.
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An argument no one is positing, set up only to be discredited.
That said, I have seen a lot of “Blizzard is trying to kill off this game” & related conspiracy posts.
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Deliberately? It’s hard to imagine that, and hardly anyone has even suggested that. So you’re starting with a big strawman argument here.
But a more interesting observation might be that they have done so many things wrong or wrong-headed that it’s hard to imagine them damaging the game so badly even if they were trying to do just that.
It also doesn’t mean they’re not. In fact, the only major difference between people who visit forums and people who don’t is (surprise, surprise!) people who visit forums like to discuss things with random strangers on the internet. Very likely the consensus of forum regulars represents the playerbase at large. Most people who don’t like to visit forums just stop playing the game when they no longer find it interesting.
I guess you haven’t been to the PTR forums to see what people who have tried these “changes” think of them, have you?
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I know they probably do not try to make the game bad, but it is just that BFA did not solve some problems people had in addition to some rather flawed systems.
-Island Expeditions were a mystery and now getting a completely change in how rewards are earned.
-Azerite armor in general as you mentioned.
-Crafting professions, aside from Alchemy, seem useless. A normal raider is likely not going to have enough Sanguicill to get a 385 piece of gear unless clearing the raid every week. A lot of people probably will not do that. Heroic/Mythic raiders on the other hand will have an extreme excess.
-Class tuning as well.
This is getting a fix and more, its just that why was it released in such a state? Island Expeditions needed just a bit of clarification and nobody would bat an eye. Give professions the ability to at least make BoE gear and its fine, some additional pieces couldn’t hurt either. Class tuning should remain roughly similar to Legion until actual satisfying changes are made and tested. Azerite… well it sounds nice but the traits do not feel that special nor is the necklace nearly as nice as Artifact Weapons.
So no, there probably is not an intention to drive this into the ground. However, there were a lot of problems that could probably be solved if it was thought about for another hour (like making crafting costs less for those who would likely use them most).
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I think it’s understandable if some people are mad, but I wouldn’t throw them all into the conspiracy buckets.
You can still love Blizzard, love WoW, and think that BfA is lackluster. You can also think BfA is great, as some do. The feedback is always coming from a place of wanting to see the game be better.
8.1 won’t address all of the concerns, but it will address some of them. Is it enough? No of course not. There’s still a lot to do.
I see what you’re trying to say, but I don’t think assuming that anyone having anything negative to say automatically believes the idea that “WoW is being purposefully driven into the ground” is what you should be doing to try and get that across.
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Agreed. Blizzard is unintentionally doing this to their own game because quite frankly they don’t know what goes into making an MMORPG enjoyable.
These are not the same developers that we had during Vanilla or TBC.
Developers in essence are just creative minds trying to make something they envision come to life and be playable/enjoyable. Unfortunately BFA is a steaming hot plate of trash that’s appeals to player’s who quite frankly have never really played a good MMORPG.
Hopefully they don’t do anything drastic to Classic and keep its core game untouched.
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I just wish that Blizzard was privately held. Public companies and private equity held firms are brutally unconcerned with what they would refer to as the minutiae of operations and are solely focused on profit margins and earnings per share.
If wow was ever spun off it would probably be a good thing at this point. But that’s not going to happen.
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Been a while since I’ve agreed with a Blue. Nice.
I can’t love Blizzard, because the company name is not tangible. I cannot love WoW for the same reasons. However, I do enjoy the product. As long as the product is valued at my perceptive enjoyment minimum threshold or greater, I will continue to purchase extra time. Otherwise, there are many fish in the sea.
When Uldir opened up, my guild merged with a smaller guild. We had two raid groups going and over 50 people in Uldir at the same time on some nights. Fast forward a mere 2.5 months and my guild struggles to get even 15 people online for Heroic Uldir.
People burned out of BfA far faster than any other expansion launch I’ve seen, even WoD. It honestly feels like a Diablo III season, you gain 95% of your power in the first month and then you’re just grinding for small stat increases. The return on your time investment diminishes far too quickly and you’re left feeling like there’s little you can do to progress your character.
I don’t know if the majority consider BfA to be terrible but from my perspective, it sure is.
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WTH is this? A blue admitting mistakes in a serious fashion??
bfa still sucks and your company is a shell of its former self but at least you did one thing right.
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My personal opinion is that yes, Blizzard is “running” World of Warcraft into the ground. Intentionally? No. That would be a side effect.
World of Warcraft is a product of “faith” and “trust”. Blizzard must believe that their game will succeed and players must trust that Blizzard will make the game worth their time and money. What we are seeing is that those values are being broken.
Blizzard is not believing that WoW is worth enough investment to properly “support” the game (whether they actually can is also subject to debate). This is something we know with Battle for Azeroth’s limited internal and external testing, thus releasing in an un-ready state (numerous bugs, class tuning problems and Azerite gear issues to name a few).
Alternatively, many players have partially, or completely, lost their trust in Blizzard’s quality standards. If you asked me when is the best time to play WoW, I would now answer starting at the last content patch of the expansion. This is when you will enjoy the full story, the best class balance, the least amount of bugs, the best iterations of the expansion’s systems and the highest levels of freedom.
Battle for Azeroth’s ultimate flaw is that I can expect that the end of the expansion will be more entertaining than the start and nothing has been said to convince me otherwise. If Blizzard’s answer to most problems is: “wait and see”, then I effectively have to wait for better stuff to happen. Waiting is not entertaining. Waiting is not fun.
That would be my recommendation for Blizzard. Stop relying on future content to promote the current game to existing and potential players. Emphasize on what is available and how to make the most out of it.
This is not easy, by the way. As creators and developers, Blizzard overseers the past, present and future. Since the bulk of their work is on future content, it is very easy to slip and brag about what is coming. It is always easier to admit something is wrong when you can claim that it is already fixed in a future content release. For players, this is the worst feeling, because now we get to know that we are stuck with our current state of the game until that content releases at an arbitrary date.
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Yes, yes I do.
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I feel cheated that we still can’t like blue posts. ![:slightly_frowning_face:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slightly_frowning_face.png?v=6" ":slightly_frowning_face:")
I’ve literally never seen anyone criticizing BfA or Blizzard as a whole right now try to make the argument that it’s being done intentionally or to sabotage the game. I only ever seem to see that argument being refuted by those saying it’s been posted.
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I have seen people with that notion lately. And i can see where they are coming from.
In my 43 years though I have learned that incompetence happens a lot more than sinister evil.
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