https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pcgamesn.com/world-of-warcraft/blizzard-senior-leads-leaving%3Famp
A bit dated but interesting read. It seems no small coincidence that Legion was better than bfa in almost every way. What does this mean for our future?
Hopeful me: A more aggressive exchange that meaningfully conveys the war between Horde and Alliance.
Me thatâs use to Blizzâs BS: Something something plague bomb, something something Alliance got revenge somewhere, somehowâŚ
Pretty obvious what had happened. It happens with all game studios, eventually.
New recruits fresh out of college join the ranks, become model employees, and donât want to ruin their âdreamâ job by rocking the boat with their ideas. Suddenly your home away from home transitions into a corporate 9-5.
You walk through the buildingâs hallways, and everyone knows your name, but no one asks for your input anymore, nor do they seem comfortable enough to âkick backâ and play pool in the middle of the day like you used to (especially not after the latest lay-offs).
The game you poured your soul into has become a product whose sole purpose is to make money, and little else. WoW has become Pepsi. Each year, change the bottleâs shape a little, and shove it into a vending machine.
in every conceivable way possible
Other than the AP grind, loved Legion content.
But even the AP grind wasnt too horrible because as much as I hated that legion weapon it did have its own personality, so it still had some reason to hold my interest.
That BFA neckâŚugh. The azerite gear. 
We had some expressions back in the 70s and 80s to express disgust, but Im sure theyd get me a vacation if used them here to describe how I feel about this azerite garbage.
BFA is a work of art. Literally. some of the best art in this game.
And then they BUTCHERED it with their systems, mechanics and the uncontrollable urge to make the expansion for the investors instead of the player.
I do BFA content because Im forced to if I want to get a few things I like.
Playing BFA is like being a kid again having mom tell me to go do the dishes.
Legion was absolute trash until they balanced the classes in 7.1/7.1.5 and changed the Legendary drops, added the vender, and balanced the abilities. Imagine having a spec completely depended on a RNG drop to even function properly and then having to get that for multiple specs as well as level up multiple artifact and get multiple relics for them? I got lucky and got my 2 BiS artifacts #1 and #2 drops, but man I felt for those who didnât have them.
Yeah legion wasnât the peak of wow, not even close
It didnât even beat wodâs peak subs
MoP and prior were the last times wow was at its peak
MoP is the bomb.
I just cant stay gone for more than a couple hours before hearthing back to my farm.
I miss that farm. It was just a daily hub but the character of it made it a lot of fun.
Loved it. Ive done it all twice and I m leveling another panda shaman now to do the farm and tillers again.
I dont know what it is. I HATE the rep grind thing in BFAâŚbut in MoP its a sheer pleasureâŚbut seems to be just as long. Go figure.
Something about MoP just âfeelsâ better.
The story certainly took a dive, as did the various systems put in place. "Hey, you know how we drained your weaponâs power even if you didnât do the quest? Hereâs a new item that we totes wonât do that to again! promise! Southpark Time Warner employees lift their shirt flaps in anticipation
MoPâs dailies are tied to factions that each have their own unique feel, and youâre rewarded with story quests/events at certain intervals during the grind to keep it interesting. Sometimes you even get small visual changes to the zone they take place in (like the farm updates.)
BFA has none of this. Go help us (somehow) by running in circles for a few seconds or repeating quests that you did while leveling.
Like quillboar dailies in Stormsong. I already dealt with this problem while leveling. They were defeated. Why are they already a problem again? Why is there not some other threat to deal with?
World quests are daily questâs lazy cousin.
Thatâs my two cents anyway. Hereâs hoping to a return to the wotlk, cata, and MoP daily model.
yeahâŚmaybe thats itâŚBFA just seems more âmechanicalâ. Like working for someone else compared to working for myself like I do now.
BFA suffered from poor decision making.
They had years of feedback about WoD and Legion problems and managed to repeat many of them in BFA and make some of them even worse.
I came back to the game at the launch of MOP. Every expansion seems to have the same cycle.
Pre launch - this was the worst xpac ever. Canât wait for the new one so I can forget about this trash.
Launch - Complain about bugs and more bugs
Raids released - this is the most awesome xpac ever
As time goes on, players begin to find stuff they donât like and begin to leave. Devs scramble to adjust.
New xpac is announced and everyone is hyped for it. Which leads us back to pre launch.
Lots of people left during MOP because they were being âforcedâ to do dailies. There were a lot of complaints about Pandaren and how they fit into the WOW universe. It was too kid oriented and not edgy enough. And the whole Garrosh thing became oppressive. Varian stepping in and preventing Thrall from delivering a deathblow was one of my bigger disappointments in the game.
In retrospect, a lot of people have fond memories of MOP. But it was also a time when it bled a lot of subs. Every Xpac since then has kind of had a boom/bust cycle to it. BFA was always going to have a tough time following up Legion. But itâs not as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
Why does noone remember this! Legion was pretty loudly disliked and that didnât change until Tomb of Sargeras, or Nighthold at earliest depending on who you ask.
It would not surprise me. BFA, at launch, was the worst pile of garbage Blizzard has ever produced.
Iâll give the devs some credit: theyâve redeemed the expansion in my eyes with 8.2, but you cannot excuse the simply unforgivable state of the launch experience. Forget bugs - specs were flat out broken. I had to level as a HEALER because my HEALING SPECS did MORE DAMAGE than Shadow with 10x more survivability. And thatâs just the first of about 99 issues I had with it. If it wasnât for Classic, Iâd have never returned until 9.0 (and even that would have been a big if), having just played BFA for its first month.
Iâve never seen Blizzard release anything so brazenly, unapologetically awful.
I started in legion so Im likely biased, but I did enjoy it.
I can tell that Id have liked MoP while it was current even with the problems since Im not a hardcore raider or anything. If i were, I might have thought differently.
WoD ruined the game for meâŚbut it was only because of pathfinder being introduced and some aspect of the garrison that seemed like it was trying to FoRCE me to stay âindoorsâ more than I wanted to be. I could have just been doing it wrong.
I got one garrison up to level three and thats all I could stand. the list of my other characters just got the hearthstone and left it at that.
Legion was a lot of fun even with that annoying AP grind.
BFAâŚwithin two months I was hating it.
The problem is not WoW developers leaving, that always happens in any business, the problem stems from the refusal of the leadership to understand the customer relationship with the company. They are still in the old mindset that âwow is our game and we invite you (the people) to join us, but it is our gameâ That is a lie and will be the downfall of any company. The company is owned by the shareholders, not the dev team. That focus away from the customers is clear and we have never been taken serious by the dev team.
Proof is the lack of communication and the lack of timely resolutions to issues that have been around for 3 xpacs now.
That is the failure of wow and smart employees see that and leave.
This means, that the Lore will go deeper into the gutter since Chris Metzen left, and i guess Ion doesnât give us as much Player Choice as we had before. And no, i do not think Azerite Armor is the same Player Choice regarding Character development as we had with the old Talent System ⌠i see them more like trinkets you have to farm.
But ⌠interesting read indeed. I only knew of Chris Metzen leaving ⌠which made me wonder as to why. His official reason sounded phony.
Since they donât report numbers how do you know?
Part of me really hopes that during the 9.0 beta they will swallow their hubris and actually listen⌠But since the lead CM calls customers richardbags⌠Seems doubtful.