I remember the content drought in WoD, and found looking at all the skipped content (Shrattrath raid, Farahlon, garrison stuff, etc.) pretty interesting to read about in retrospect. That said, after Hellfire came out, I believe Legion heavily benefited from them abandoning that expansion.
If the scuttlebutt is to be believed and we don’t see 9.1 until August (dear god), I wonder if they will simply do a 9.1.5 or a SELFIE cam 9.2 patch and focus on the next expansion. Kind of hard to imagine the expansion doing anything much beyond 9.1 if it takes almost a year for that patch to release.
52 Likes
It’s hard to read what they are thinking. Letting the game go 250+ days from release with no content patch is unheard of even for Blizz and has gotten other game companies sued for false advertisement etc.
28 Likes
Na. We need at least one more raid after 9.1 to stop the Jailer.
4 Likes
It seriously feels like WoD 2.0 at this point.
73 Likes
I’m half-wondering at this point how much if it is attributed to COVID (As for a lot of studios this actually has crippled their ability to coordinate even as late as now) and how much of it might actually be a result of being unsure of the direction they intended to take this expansion.
Even prior to launch it seemed like they were trying to sell Torghast and the Covenants, so whatever they do is likely to expand these two features while adding raid tiers and maybe 1-2 more dungeons.
I’m just hoping they DON’T WoD it since while I can’t claim to have fully hated the expansion I started playing during, I also know how much of my enjoyment was probably the newness and the sense of adventure at that time. lol.
9 Likes
At this point does it really matter? Whether they are working on X.3 or X+1.0 they are clearly either chronically under-resourced or absolute dinosaurs when it comes to project management. They simply have no ability (for whatever reason behind the scenes) to actually create substantial content or balance stuff.
Therefore it really doesn’t matter what stage of any expansion life-cycle we’re at, the wasted time, content drought and systemisation will be a constant of WoW for the foreseeable future.
72 Likes
We were also comparing WoD to better expacs like MoP, whereas Shadowlands is making some people miss BFA. Which should say enough all on its own.
57 Likes
Do people actually CARE about “the jailer?”
He’s Generic Sci-Fi Villain #43 (high metal collar version) and that’s pretty much it. I’m still mystified how the usual suspects (Thrall, Baine, Jaina etc) seemed to suddenly be experts in “Jailer lore” in the intro scenario when we were given absolutely no reason to care AT ALL about him.
I mean, I’ll give some points for it not being Yet Another Horde vs Alliance Crapshow, but really, is anyone going to defeat “The Jailer” in a raid and whoop loudly as they take down the “big bad”?
I mean, he’s no Deathwing. And Deathwing only had feet.
62 Likes
WoD had good class design, little borrowed power, a very good theme. It obviously missed shear content. If we had the amount of content updates Legion had, it would’ve been the best expansion to date.
They should use that expansion as a blueprint and add loads of content to it (minus garrisons in their current design).
I mean things like M+ and World Quests are very simple to do, once the Dungeons are built. That alone would’ve uplifted the expansion by a lot. Still it missed meaningful solo/world content.
12 Likes
Which game companies were sued for “false advertisement” concerning content patches that went 250+ days?
6 Likes
lol,who would know anymore
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They should be close to a new raid tier soon, i dont know not playing shadowlands but its getting close to due.
1 Like
Sounds accurate as i’m in rustbolt working on collecting and killing stuff among several other people while guiding others through mechagon. 
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If you play in a connected server you will see how much people don’t like shadowlands. You’ll see 30 to 50 people each kill at the sha of anger because there’s nothing else to do.
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I think they have a ton of stuff planned and are just behind schedule, working to get it done. And I’d rather them take a few more weeks to finish it up than slap it out early and unfinished like they did with B for A’s corruption patch.
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I think they are concerned because the focus of 9.1 is the Maw and they know the playerbase hates it. So they are probably deciding if they should keep up development time for an expansion we all seems to genuinely dislike
32 Likes
As a former programmer, I had the same sentiment about the delay of SL release.
Boy was I wrong.
It would take something pretty fantastic to get me to trust a Blizzard delay as a sign of due diligence again.
To me it’s an indicator of bad decision making from here on out.
44 Likes
There’s really no point.
Patch cycles are so seasonal now, it’s easier go in a new direction then build an entire new expansion from scratch
1 Like
My first thought reading this: pull the rip cord!
Give flying, portals, whistles, whatever at 40 renown and maybe 5000 gold.
Make those vaults, which I know nothing about, give better whatever those that do need.
If covid or other issues are delaying a new raid at least throw out some transmogs or character looks people are asking for.
The coding for doing all that can’t be that difficult.
Won’t solve all the many and sundry issues, but its something.
14 Likes
At this point it seems clear that the “delay them so we have more time to get stuff out and keep them playing” ploy is pretty much a failure. So they really should consider rolling a lot of that back, because its not really doing them any good.
4 Likes