Imagine WoW on Unreal or something like. There have been little clips of that on the internet before (_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMQ2ZgIayl8) . Imagine all of Azeroth done this way Imagine them just recoding Vanilla on Unreal (TBH, that’ll probably be their next gimmick, taking each expac and slowly upgrading the engine as a separate, playable entity like Classic, reselling them with a couple of mounts, a toy, a month and a boost as is their wont to do).
You’re not wrong. There’s a lot of arrogance in management who refuse to believe players want what they want. But if they’re willing to pay for their arrogance with flagging subs and losing business and revenue, then…
“You think you do, but you don’t.” is a massive problem with these devs.
Like, absolutely massive.
Ion - and a few others on the team - flat out refuse to believe that stuff like player housing, customization, ect ect, are important in an MMORPG. The end-game is the only thing that matters to them, and it shows based on their armories.
I did a little experiment last night and dug into some social medias. Creepy? Kind of, but I was curious - what do these people care about, and what games are they playing?
It certainly isn’t WoW.
Out of everybody I checked, just random people in random positions, only the guy who made the MDI was tweeting about Warcraft pretty much at all. (You know, that esports thing that’s resulted in dungeons needing to be designed around it, and caused a lot of issues with casual players getting stressed out about FOMO since BFA S4. Funny how it was fine until then…)
This isn’t “oh playing other games” - I legitimately had to dig to see anything to do with WoW what so ever on developer accounts.
There is no passion.
I legitimately saw people who are supposed to be working on WoW tweeting more about Final Fantasy than what’s supposed to be their own universe. MMORPGs are pretty much the one genre you want people working on it to be immersed in it, or at least engaged.
Why are they hiring raid-loggers who don’t care about faction balance or customization, when red shirt guy exists? (…seriously, would we be having potential retcons for the venthyr one patch in if this guy were on the team?)
I’ve been saying the game feels very “textbook” lately, like certain design choices feel like they’re very… do it because that’s how you get people to play longer because the book on game dev says so. Not because the games actually fun and people are doing the content on their 3rd alt, but like… you have to do this or you fall behind. You have to do this or you’ll never get it because oops, we’re taking it away. That’s how we keep people subbed!
They’re not listening to any feedback, they’re just doing what they’re told to hit monetary metrics, and because it’s what they want - when they were us for a very long time. At least, some of them were. I often wonder if some of the current people making choices even play this game at all considering how anti-consumer and anti-MMORPG some of these changes have been.
They think they do, but they ain’t showing they do.
Can’t tell you how many software packages I’ve tested in beta that were created by someone who neither understood nor considered the end user. They just took basic requirements and met the criteria. You can tell that’s what they’re doing here. They’re not playing WoW or making a game they think we’ll like, they’re meeting criteria.
This is the disconnect and it’s heartfelt on a server like WRA as we are not Ion’s core ‘metric’. The disconnect here, is probably felt greater than many other servers or communities as a result.
Utter disappointment. I probably need to start looking at other games.
Hard disagree, if more people at Blizzard played FFXIV they would realize how bad their game’s writing is compared to their primary competitor and might actually do something about it.
I think it’s reasonable for someone who works on something to not want to, like, constantly talk about said something (separation of work and personal life and all that), but I do think it’s curious that so many Blizzard employees on social media seem deeply, deeply disinterested in Warcraft.
But, I don’t know, maybe some of that can be chalked up to current management. I mean, they did fire the CM who actually talked about WoW across multiple media platforms and actively engaged with the community and kept on the guy whose sole interest seems to be roleplaying a cop in GTA Online, so who knows.
Hey. It was your guys fault for not expecting anything else except mechagnomes. Allied races are one of those things that aren’t really determined based on community popularity, but what makes sense for the game at the time.
Void Elves never made any sense. Still don’t, as a matter of fact.
That said, the writing was on the wall that Mechagnomes were coming. I think the bigger issue is, like most Allied Races, they’d make far better enhanced customization to their base race, rather than a new race on their own. Heck, Kul Tirans could’ve just been lumped in as a new body-type option for Humans the way Orcs got straight backs.
KTs cant simply be lumped in with SW humans ques aghast crowd
So, I will make one statement for it. Kul Tirans are at least culturally, and arguably cosmically, different from their mainlander Kin through the faith of the Tidemother. Things like Kul Tiran shamans and druids coupled with the lack of Kul Tiran paladins is a way to demonstrate that these two groups are their own cultures with their own nuances, views and motives.
While I agree that big person should be an overall customization for people to better customize their characters as they wish, I do believe that only Kul Tirans should be Thornspeakers and Shamans.
I think the solution to this would have been to include the new classes to Humans. The aesthetics of the Totems and the Druid forms make it clear that they’re Kul Tirans. Granted I’m also of a mind that being able to select a character’s voice should be a part of customization too. That way, you could roll a fat human with a Gilnean accent, or a standard human with a Kul Tiran accent.
The problem with Kul Tirans is they turned a body-type into a RACE, which is a whole different level of insulting by itself. Imaging the idea that being fat changes your race. There is a whole lot to unpack in that alone.
The issue is that they actually did not, since we see there are penty of normal human models (and beanpole human models) all over Kul Tiras.
The issue there is that to fill an allied race slot, Blizz had to present us Trucker humans as the allied race since it’s one of the few ways to decisively visualize Kul Tiras is it’s own Kingdom and not the same as it’s Mainlander kin.
Yet, its only the fat ones who are justified as being a playable race. We see variety, we aren’t allowed to immerse ourselves in it.
Body-Types should never be the main gimmick for a race, and that is what Kul Tirans boil down to. They’re not Half-Drust or Half-Drust descendants, they’re just fat humans.
It really shows just how absolutely creatively bankrupt they were for Alliance Allied Races.
That’s not to say Horde Allied Races are that much better off, creatively speaking, but at least some, like Zandalari, had been a VERY long time in coming.
To be totally fair they are not only overweight but EXTREMELY tall. The reason for this is stated to be because of the Drust blood in their veins, with interbreeding in the early years.
Where it falls short though is that a lot, maybe even a majority, of Kul Tirans are regular sized humans. Would be nice if they could be customised in terms of voice and class
Huh I could’ve sworn hearing something about their size having something to do with the drust… Though I can’t find anything. I guess I’ve been vividly hallucinating about some giant fat English people. Do I need help?
It was either something players had assumed since beta (since it would make sense why they’re so much taller than other human body variants), or it was something some Developer said somewhere on twitter, took down because it wasn’t lore accurate, and then people assumed it until we were told, “No, they’re just fat.”
