I don’t believe that because mop was out for quite a bit. The launch wasn’t so bad really but nothing came afterwards? A selfie patch. We were even in SoO patch for a whole year before the release. I think it was such a long patch because they were testing out this new concept and they saw people doing it (nothing else to do really) and decided to try to go with this new more open play style.
I think it’s because they were trying to redesign the world like timeless isle and it turned out stupid with their mission board system so they would have to actually make a pile of new dailies and stuff for people and they choose not to do the work to fix their own mistake. Like hey maybe this design is better but we need more time to make it.
Straight up. WoD was a fine expansion at launch EXCEPT for the design of outside instanced content for us to do because they didn’t create it. They wanted us to run around and kill junk like dummies for no reason like timeless isle I believe.
I’m not sure what is worse… having low budget patches. How BFA finished or cutting an entire expansion early like WoD…
I just know, I didn’t pre-order Shadowlands and didn’t purchase it at launch because they keep having less and less credibility. Warcraft 3 Reforged. Previous expansion (BFA) had drastic cuts near the end of it and it was apparent.
There is one thing I am aware of WoD tho, they had one of the longest stretches of time to complete the expansion. I remember the forums complaining about months and months of SOO. (Last raid of MoP) Maybe the Iron star mechanic didn’t help with this…,? Either way the next expansion (WoD) didn’t seem like it benefited from the additional time.
So it’s all up in the air… whatever way it goes. I feel like the bad rap sheet is racking up quite a bit with World of Warcraft. One time (Legion) out of how many other times… with cuts. Cons outweighing the pros. Then with their other products (IPs) being flops. I was definitely more mindful of the release of Shadowlands and will probably continue this trend.
Granted, it couldn’t save BFA from being an unsalvageable expansion until 8.2 or so, but at least BFA was clearly finished and had a semblance of a direction, even if said direction was bad.
WoD had no direction. Most of what was promised didn’t end up making it into the final product, and what did make it into the final product was nigh-nonexistent and half-baked.
I’d sooner take an expansion that tried and failed than an expansion that literally didn’t even try.
i believe they once said they are usually 3 ahead of whats current, in different stages of development. and i dont remember if it was during Legion, or BfA, they said they had the next 5 expansions planned out, story wise. im leaning towards Legion when they said this, its been a while. but they definitely have several in the works at all times.
I remember going into it very lukewarm. Savage. Orcs. It was so… underwhelming. Then the stupidity of introducing time travel poorly and for no reason. But for us, the worst was beating back and winning control of the dark portal in the opening sequence.
I mean, we beat them in the first round, in an hour. How was there to be dynamic tension after that, and why didn’t we just seal the portal and be done. Just… set the story up for failure for me.
As always I enjoyed the leveling process. The Garrison was fantastic for RP - we finally had a guild hall. Ah… yep, that’s it.
The only thing I miss about WoD - the Garrison. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave the Guild a level of permanence and place in the world. If only they hadn’t time shifted it, we could still use it.
I would be surprised if this story really was planned out that far and advance.
The overarching story in WoD had a very silly premise that made it hard to care about anything that happened afterwards. Shadowlands is sort of the same thing-- if you start thinking too big picture the whole afterlife falls apart and doesn’t make sense.
WoD just didn’t have enough. It missed big time on player housing by garrisons. Aka we take the Multiplayer out of MMO. Flying was way too big of a chore to complete so no one did.
WoD could have been amazing. But activiblizzard all bout that profit, so it’s okay to release it unfinished.
Because the philosophy of WoD in itself was flawed. The idea of WoD was centered around the Garrisons, being this Garrison Commander, which everyone hated because capitals were scrapped and nobody saw other players. It was also the beginning of the flying debacle, whereas it was made with the idea there would be no flying EVER and people hated that too. WoD from a design philosophy standpoint was doomed by 6.1 and they knew it. So they abandoned it and went forward with Legion which was built around different gameplay philosophies. PvP’ers also hated Trashran, was more PvE than PvP back then.
The Warcraft Movie (many people forget about this).
The movie redirected and took up a ton of resources, warcraft artists/storywriters, and money away from Warlords of Draenor which released around the time of production, filming, etc for the Warcraft Movie. The movie literally cost Blizzard millions of dollars to make and produce, etc. It undoubtedly nuked all profits and such made through WoD sales, and any cushions of cash Warcraft had, etc.
Gotta keep in mind that the Warcraft movie cost 160 million to make, and Blizzard footed the majority of that bill. And when the decision was made to abandon WoD, this was when the Warcraft movie had bombed in the box office having only grossed ~$27 million in the US market at the time. So yeah Blizzard was in financial turmoil at the time (as this was long before it eventually broke even, especially thanks to the foreign box offices raking in an additional ~$390M).
Devs decided to do a 180 with the story of WoW, it was evident that the story was meant to end/conclude very differently, but Blizzard decided to shift focus and make us deal with the burning legion and more. and along with #1, really needed to ditch the expansion and immediately begin work on the next expansion to inject money back into WoW via sales of the next expansion, so they utilized this to drastically change the focus of WoD and prep pllayers for the next expansion with the complete story 180 in 6.2, where we were battling the iron horde with the ultimate big bad villian being grom hellscream, to suddenly grom being on our side as a good guy.
“orc” fatigue.
Ill take orcs over anything we had since WoD ended.
i hate elves and i hate all the characters that got the spotlight in the last 3 expansions.
After SoO itr was weird, I think I was on timeless Island when wrathion did some time travel dream or was it another dragon like nozdormu? Anyway when I had that hint of Garrosh whisked away, it seemed contrived, hurriedly implemented sort of like ending of GoT.
