The massive timegating was put in place due to the lack of content that was offered. Things like the eye of the jailer which pushes you out for the day…Torgast resetting weekly while being the only place for soul ash…along with several other impossible grinds.
I don’t recall his name but I remember reading that a long time wow dev resigned right before the SL launch. He didn’t seem thrilled about it either. My guess is he realized SL would be inept.
Just because Patch 9.1 isn’t here yet, doesn’t mean they haven’t been working hard on the expansion as a whole. They have been. They just haven’t been doing what some folks on the forums wish they would.
The “DH/Tank Nerf/Fix/Buff” post from today kinda confirms it.
“We usually wait until the first major content update but…”
Things are so broken, subs are dropping so fast and the patch is so far away…
WE HAD TO DO SOMETHING UNPRECEDENTED.
This here is one of the most telling things of all.
To have someone stick around through all these other expansions, but SL was the straw that broke his back?
Speaks volumes as to the groupthink there at Actiblizzard now. Seems like a very subtle shift had been made and for someone who spent his entire working life making these games, it had to have been pretty bad to abandon your career company amidst a global pandemic.
Like I said I have become disillusioned with this game. I do have nostalgia about how things use to be. But I know that will not happen again.
i think you’re really overestimating the effort involved here
I could see some focus group saying something along the lines of, deliver a subpar product, since majority are locked up due to restrictions, and let the profits roll in.
Let’s be serious, in reality, streaming and gaming has enjoyed the benefits of these restrictions since Covid has occurred. Nothing else for the majority to do!
This whole classic sht is a mess and should never have happened.
I mean, I was literally playing TBC content…in retail just the other night. In nearly every other franchise I’ve ever played, players are forced to let go of their nostalgia and either adapt to the new iteration of the game or move on.
But not Blizz, noooo, they won’t ever let that precious $$$$ go to waste. So they’ve split themselves apart, split the community apart, assumingly fragmented their development process because why else the shrinking content and delays, all to chase a dollar.
I wonder how much better or faster Shadowlands would be fixed if they didn’t have an entire parallel snapshot in time version of WoW literally on the verge of a 2nd expac release.
They are releasing the entire game expac by expac all over again and it blows my mind. Eventually - from a business sustainability perspective - only ONE can remain. No budget is infinite.
Cute that you think I’m raging over this, honestly.
So your point then is that “PTR cycles and Beta cycles last different times, that means Blizzard is devoting all of their resources to Classic TBC.”
Stellar argument.
The fact that TBC beta is out before 9.1 hit the PTR, while TBC beta is a GUARANTEED MASSIVE INFLUX OF SUBSCRIPTIONS, and Shadowlands community/subscription/active player base is in the state that it is…
It’s 100% obvious that Shadowlands has been benched for TBC.
The only thing that would prove otherwise is if 9.1 hits the PTR in a proven feature complete testable state, within the next month.
Otherwise, all resources ARE on TBC, besides maybe, the art team…
But from a business model, they win. You want to relive your past experiences in WOW? We give you the original and can pay for it! (Outside of pservers)
Then continue with new versions, worst case, they get upset and revert back, all paid with the same sub, regardless.
Also, interesting in the nature of SL systems, Lack of loot in pve has pushed players into pvp, which will reward a definite item, caused an explosion for token sales due to carries. In the end, return more money on the passive side.
They will focus on Classic TBC and ignore SL because its less work and more money. Then they will release 9.1, continue to excel at fail with SL, give the CEO another bonus and lay more workers off.
Exactly. From a “business perspective” it makes sense.
I mean from a business perspective Samsung could have just said all Note 7’s were sold in fair working conditions and any defects/damagr is a direct result of the customers abuse and/or shippers/third party resellers/carriers etc.
May not have been the “best” long term business decision, but for a decision made purely for greed and self preservation, it certainly was the best business decision they “could have” made.
From a customer stand point though?
If they would have stiffed me on that Note 7 though? You can bet your bottom dollar I wouldn’t be typing this post on a Samsung S21 Ultra right now.
That’s the kicker.
How long do you go on with metrics that assume your customer base is blind and dumb to your antics before you realize the hard way that they in fact aren’t dumb, just loyal, and now they aren’t that anymore either…
All this means is that TBC is closer to ready than 9.1. You know what that indicates?
Absolutely nothing. They’re not comparable. I don’t know why you keep pushing this.
TBC has been ready for beta since the initial TBC beta
You obviously know nothing. So let me educate you.
The physical servers, let alone the operating systems, let alone the networking topologies, let alone even the ip addresses, let alone even the engine itself, is not the same as it was in 2006.
They are not simply just spinning up an old VMWare snapshot from 2006 and “turning it back on”.
THE CLASSIC BETA WAS 2.5 MONTHS LONG.
So why was the Classic Beta not ready for Beta until over a year after Classic WoW was announced?
Why would I assume you are operating on anything besides pure baseless rage if your entire argument is baseless in itself?
Also, they are releasing TBC in a future patch than what was at TBC release. So the previous BETA for Vanilla TBC is irrelevant. They are releasing TBC with more content than was even available at the original release…
They are releasing content in stages that are not consistent with the stages it was released in Vanilla.
Your understanding of software is lacking, let alone hardware.
Back in 2006? The cloud didn’t exist. Deduplication wasn’t even a thing yet for the VAST majority of GLOBAL CORPORATIONS, let alone litttle ol Blizzard that hadn’t even merged with Activision yet… TBC was stored on physical servers with spinning hard drives…
Nowadays, WoW operates completely on DELL EMC Cloud in flash drives and in data centers duplicated across the world, and also using data deduplication techniques to increase performance while reducing costs.
This isn’t just a widget you add to your desktop for the weather. There is MASSIVE WORK to be done to make software function properly in this type of environment. And the tuning… oh the tuning required to achieve stability for high performance servers…
All in all. From a software standpoint. IT’S NOT POSSIBLE to just do as you claim and just spin up TBC real quick again.
The hardware we played on and the hardware it ran on, is nowhere near the same as it is now.
The client side has to be reworked as well to make it run well on current gen hardware/os.
There are MASSIVE amounts of changes to be made in order to get it working again. If it was easy it would be released already. Classic stopped inflating subs months ago.
I get that you don’t want to accept what is laid out plainly before your eyes. We all do.
But that doesn’t change what is before you into something that it is not either.
GET EM VISERION!
Well said. Its obvious that resources were taken away from retail to work on that dumpster fire nostalgia classic version. But hey, from a business perspective they’ll claim “bUt cOvId-19”.
I definitely felt this way with BFA and Classic.
Maybe they are trying the same routine and see if it works out for them again?
Spoiler alert, if it didn’t work the first time, why would it work the second…
I haven’t supported Shadowlands in any way, aside from the gametime I used to purchase to play old content. Didn’t buy it on any of my accounts. I saw what was coming (though not any bc concerns) and realized that for a casual there was going to be nothing of interest to do.
That would explain things.
lmao yeah i’m the one raging here
Your post is a big OOF. You know the first sign of acceleration already happened with TBC character boost. The slippery slope is getting setup for maximum profitz.
I guess the writing is on the wall.