While I am excited for the aesthetics of the upcoming expansion, I am very dismayed at Blizzard’s reveal that there will be no class design besides them “unpruning”, ie returning us abilities they took away, or making many spec-specific abilities class-specific ones.
This is a fantastic starting point. But it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface to address the problem that is modern WoW’s dreadful, boring, stale, outdated, one dimensional, unengaging, uninspired class design. This class design is what has lead to, is leading to, and will lead to people quitting and moving on (in the worst cases, moving on for good).
Sure, there is much else that are dealbreakers like artificial time-gates, the questionable story or Pathfinder, for example, that break the camel’s back. But if your game has fun class design that makes people want to log in simply to hop around, and fiddle with their classes, then you retain the player. That’s what kept me subbed: The desire to shapeshift around on my druid, try the different specs, and feel rewarded by the engaging gameplay (WotLK-Cata Feral).
If class design is a patient with a dreadful, possibly terminal illness, Shadowlands is diagnosing the illness, perhaps scheduling a doctor’s appointment. It is not the much-needed treatment.
And Blizzard is making the cardinal sin of tying core class progression to an expansion yet again (for the 3rd time now - Artifacts, HoA, and now soulbinding). Really guys, you ought to figure out by now how to create systems as fundamentals then build on them as expansions come and go.
Giving us stuff, then taking it away only to give it back later is what got us here in the first place and look around - the game is in shambles. It is lazy, bad design, your customers can see through it and frankly, it should take a patch or two for you to “unprune”, not a whole expansion feature.
Shadowlands Class Design, or lack thereof vis a vis:
- No new mechanics to make classes more modern, dynamic or fast-paced
- No changes to revitalize boring or gutted specs that Legion was responsible for
- No GCD changes to solve clunky, unwieldy combat
It is very disappointing because this feels like a gargantuan missed opportunity. You could have used the new lore as a chance to evolve your core class design forward and bring it to the future where it is dynamic, polished, and engaging. But you didn’t.
I wanna be cautiously optimistic and hopeful. I hope this is Cataclysm all over again - if you weren’t aware, the devs initially simply wanted to revamp the starter zones… and as they were doing that, they went, “We can’t just do the starter zones and not revamp ALL of (vanilla) Azeroth” - and so they did. Here’s hoping they wake up and realize that more needs to be done.
[Post edited by Forum Moderator to remove an inappropriate comment.]