i always wondered why kalecgos choose kalec to be a half elf, if no half elves existed in wow. where’d he find a group of half elves, numerous enough to get his attention and decide to emulate. no reason given. he just did. i thought that was a nice loophole to promote playable half elves of some kind. dragonkin version was one. human half elf was another. but ear mods were inserted instead, though velfs still dont have them
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Usually in software development (I’m not 100% if it’s the same for game development) features come in cycles. So there’s a whole list of things that the dev’s want to implement, but they can’t do it all at once. That’s why there tends to be a list of priorities and a development cycle that needs to be followed because this is also tagged to the appraisal and performance evaluation.
In other words, it’s likely that they already allocated the resources they initially planned out for player customization. We’ll probably see more later on when they have time to work on it.
I would like to think that he identifies as a Half-Elf, because he doesn’t quite feel a full Dragon Aspect in comparison to Malygos.
While that is true, with Blizzard it hasn’t been something you see later unless the community complains enough about it. They’re very good about “We didn’t have time, we’ll get to it” then never actually doing it. That’s why the most prominent meme of WoD is a poorly drawn orc and it saying “We’ll fix it if we have time.” That was their entire mantra going into WoD. It’s just been elevated to the entire game now.
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Ya but Blizzard is really consistent at throwing out old systems every cycle, and they don’t always fully compensate when they bite off more than they could chew.
Look at the Artifact weapon acquisition questlines, a few classes got unique thematic quests, and others had theirs obviously copy and pasted onto these fleshed out ones because they ran out of time.
Like the Scythe of Elune questline was great, but they reused it for other specs because they got lazy.
It might not be the same thing, but I thought I’d just share to add something to the conversation. I’ve worked in a software company where the boss kept promised the world to it’s stakeholders, and then the IT team had to constantly scramble to keep up with the demands. I was a tester, so I’d keep throwing bugs their way and it was like dealing with a bucket full of water with a hole at the bottom. It just never stopped lol.
I get the sense that’s what the employees there probably go through. And I think it just goes back to the principle of don’t overpromise and underdeliver. Everyone is angry as a result.
Not to mention some classes got completely shafted on their items. Other people get actual legendary weapons from the lore. Rogues got some daggers made from the teeth of Sargeras’ favorite dog. Daggers that had no real name that Garona wielded. Then “spooky powerful sword that corrupts your soul”.
Another good one to mention was when they were supposed to be adding more Azerite Traits in the future to kind of add some interest to the system past them just being passive effects, added like one for each class then called it good.
Then also Blizzard is in love with the idea of taking systems nobody really liked and making them baseline and necessary to the entire game. Like Netherlight Crucible which is the framework for conduits.
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I just wish they would scrap most of the borrowed power and add more rows to the talent tree.
At least they didn’t do that for Shadowlands. This is the “That’s all?” expansion. Feels like 8.4.
They might add more CC options but OP is correct to be skeptical, if I recall we have expansions worth of old content that never got visited again, garrisons for one which are dead. we still have 18 poly swords in the game from vanilla beta and various low poly geometry that Minecraft players would mock.
I love playing this game but they really need to just skip an expansion and just redo the whole thing fix all the classes so we don’t need borrowed power systems that force us to grind for years and add useless systems that get removed in a few years. a revamp on the old parts of the game needs to happen.
or a new spec. i had another weird idea about adding new classes via new spec. for example, faery magic spec to druids with fae shapeshift. necromancer spec to warlock with lich / banshee shapeshift, etc. i cant help it. i’m in constant creative mode. lol
Ya, 4th specs have been my dream since they added Guardian Druids. I was sure we would get some every expansion or so.
Would love a time mage that heals.
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It isn’t so much that. It’s that Blizzard isn’t allowed to do the things they promise because the shareholders are breathing down their neck. Similarly if something is interesting but too complicated the players then instead cry about it. The game used to be “ready when it’s ready” made and it brought a lot to the table on just the release alone.
Look at TBC, the expansion launched with tiers 4 and 5 fully done with half of tier 6 initially already in the game. Then released Black Temple to wrap it up with 2.1 before people had even cleared tier 5 to enter tier 6. Sunwell came out much later just as something to give the players content since a lot of guilds had Illidan on farm since 2.2 or so with more hitting that point. Zul’Aman they tossed in as an interim raid with a fun challenge for a mount, something that was widely loved by the community at the time.
Modern Blizzard would launch the game with Karazhan, and maybe Gruul’s Lair. Magtheridon would be a content patch. Then you’d get tiers 4 and 5. Know that tier 6 is coming but “We don’t have resources, sorry. You don’t get the fight the iconic villain of the expansion we’re literally selling this content on.”
I do feel bad for the employees because I imagine they aren’t happy with their product and want to do better but Bobby Kotick needs to appease his shareholders who sustain themselves on the hopes and dreams of gamers rather than actual food.
It’s a stark difference from WoW’s main competitor which atm is FFXIV where they deliver content when it’s ready and it’s usually really good and well done. People are happy with it. That community worships Yoshi P like a god because he doesn’t deliver half promises or say something is coming for sure then never deliver. Contrary to him, his WoW counterpart is Ion Hazzikostas who has no real power over the game, and just is a lightning rod of criticism. This community wants his head on a pike daily because of the state of the game.
It really is amusing to compare the two because they are polar opposites on everything and how they are received. Ion has next to no power, Yoshi P basically has absolute control over XIV because Square realized to just stay out of his way, let him do his thing and it’s yielded them very noticeable results.
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It just feels like Blizzard has been in a neverending cycle of selling us the patch, and neglecting the game as a whole.
All these adventures across time and space are neat, but what’s going on in Kalimdor and The Eastern Kingdoms? We’ve had the Cataclysm zones for longer than we ever had the Vanilla zones.
Pretty much this. I think the shareholders learned early on that no matter how many people they lie to and give the middle finger, every expansion will still sell like hotcakes with people playing for 1-2 months at the bare minimum before quitting. Then sustains itself on people who refuse to quit the game because they still find it enjoyable, or because of their time sunk.
It’d be like going to a restaurant, looking at the menu and ordering. They bring them an empty plate and proceed to just pinch a log right on it. When you’re confused they say “Yeah sorry, we didn’t have the resources to make your order. Eat this.” They’ll then find it a superior business model because some people would then say it wasn’t that bad and ask for seconds. People need to have some dignity and start demanding quality or holding their feet to the fire when they pull this crap, emphasis on crap.
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i read an article years ago, how the company and really, most game companies, do really well till they go on the stock exchange and get shareholders, then everything begins to slowly degrade as creativity is replaced by more and more efficiency.
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I basically still play based on the hope that the next expansion is going to revisit Kalimdor and The Eastern Kingdoms.
Before Shadowlands was announced, I was SURE that was what was coming, I thought that’s why they made all the new core race assets with the Warfronts.
I think Steve Jobs said it best about companies. That being it goes downhill when your accountants and shareholders begin to take charge over your actual developers or designers.
I looked up the actual quote and it was: “I have my own theory about why the decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The product starts valuing the great salesmen, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company.”
Edit: It isn’t really even just shareholder class, it’s people who demand a return for their money invested. Look at a lot of crowdfunded games that actually haven’t turned into scams and fallen apart because the backers started screaming it was a scam and they better release it now.
Good example of this is Kingdom Come Deliverance which was a kickstarted RPG that actually was developed and released. Most of its issues aside from the political one because of the Social Justice League crying about there being no black people in the game stemmed from just glitches they could have easily fixed if they were given one or two months more to polish the game. Instead the backers demanded it be released “RIGHT NOW!” and they followed through. Numerous glitches, not enough to make the game a failure as it was widely received by people who actually played the game and met with praise. Just an example of how an exceptional game already just missed the mark of being damn near perfect because of the impatience of people who reasonably were within right to call the shots.
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I’m fine with a 15 year old game going steadily downhill, as long as the servers stay up.
But when it’s going down hill and in the wrong direction, that just sucks. A whole expansion worth of dev time going into a retconned afterlife with borrowed power systems, straying further and further from the WORLD of Warcraft.
i’ll see if i can find the article. it was about a vanilla dev, i think he was the lead dev, also developed arena net, left wow, developed guild wars, and eventually made his own company.
They said from the start that heritage armor would continue to come out as time and resources allowed. When a race is coming in for additional work during a given patch it is much easier to do so.
I would be surprised if heritage armor for at least part of the races that did not have it has not shown at least the start of work at this point. I would expect we will see i continue to be added 2 races at a time scattered throughout the next expac.