i’m pretty sure its both. Covid is messing with their team coordination, but they were so sure of themselves for so long and each time they are proven wrong and a heavy backlash. With activision coming down hard on Blizzard and them finally realizing that they have no idea whats wrong (not listening to community) they are trapped and that lack of team work in person only amplifies their doubt and confusion.
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No it really doesn’t, this entire game is optional, raiding is optional, pvp is optional, doing world quests is optional. It’s all optional.
You just choose to assign more importance to one then to another activity.
Even WoD had a major patch other than the selfie patch.
I guess in this case that’s 9.1 and you’re talking about after though. Even so, it’s unlikely. WoDs drought “worked” because it was later in the cycle. If 9.1 is the last content patch (it won’t be), that’s WAY too long. People won’t accept it. WoD was missing a patch but its drought was ultimately about the same as MoP.
COVID played a part in hampering development to some degree, I’m sure, but Blizzard also seems stuck in a groove since MoP. Every expansion has to have a big “hook” now, and they design around it. A cloak, then a ring, then artifact weapons, then the Heart of Azeroth and Azerite powers and corruptions, and now covenants and beyond.
I would be perfectly happy with each expansion being much simpler. Give me a new world with expansive new zones, new dungeons and raids, cool new collectibles, and the continuation of the Warcraft story. I don’t need special weapons or powers. I would prefer a large of amount of exploration and secrets to new powers.
Tweak the classes, but stop reinventing the wheel very expansion. Settle on talents and work on fine-tuning them. Any “hook” they insist on putting in needn’t affect player power, just make it a cool side thing.
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Yeah, because its a side activity of the game itself, like professions and the auction house not the primary point of the game, that would be the end-game activities like M+, Raid and PVP.
That is an interesting take. Things start to make a little more sense viewed that way. A little.
I actually don’t think they’ll pull a WoD and I’ll tell you why…
The game has simply become TOO story driven. think back to every major patch prior to Legion. Things just kind of happened… yes, there was storylines which lead up to Firelands, Throne of Thunder and whatnot, but when you look at how much storytelling was involved in the past compared to today, there’s just no comparison.
Shadowlands will continue marching on in its entirety. The game is too story driven and it would be an even BIGGER failure for Blizzard to say “we’re going to skip patch 9.2, but here’s everything that was supposed to happen so you understand what’s happening in 9.3”.
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I used to really like the NPC’s, but now I dislike the vast majority of them and their current story lines. It’s the authorship, Metzen is gone so who ever is trying to fill his shoes is drowning. I think Activison could really cut back on investing in lore and no one would mind at this point. Fix the classes and at least make them fun to play again.
You cannot fix Baine, Anduin, Tyrande, Malfurion, Thrall, Bolvar, Velen, Lor’themar, Jaina, etc, etc… and especially Sylvanas. They never cultivated cool new NPC’s either, or the ones they did really bring up suck like Calia. That is something my Mom would like, and she’ll never play wow! So it must be someone’s Mom writing this crap. It is pathetic.
I would take WoD over this anyday.
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People keep repeating this very subjective statement and it drives me nuts.
I considered WoD Arms warrior to be the absolute worst iteration of the spec in 15+ years.
Says who? Loads of wow player don’t touch any of those activities any more and the primary activities for them are gold making or roleplaying or world questing.
This entire game is optional to play alltogether.
Is anima optional? Of course. But does it hold higher importance then a high IO score, to a transmog collector who is focused on getting every peice of armour in the game? Well yes.
The point is anima being optional isn’t an excuse for it being a messy unfair system for transmog acquisition.
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Fine, Arms was indeed rather terrible with 3 buttons or something. But overall most classes were better of in that iteration. Though if you take in a completed artifact weapon + all legendaries available, many were really good or better in Legion as well. But we can all see how detrimental the class redesign worked out after Legion.
The artifact traits had to be made baseline and Legendaries as an alternative talent tree and build on that. We all know what a complete failure classes and therefore class design has become in BfA and SL.
I hope not. We all could do with a bit of patience. Remember we’re going through unprecedented times with the Corona Virus. Yes I get it sucks, but that’s how it goes. Lets be glad we’re not stuck in BFA still eh? I’m sure Blizzard is doing their best, and I say this as someone who is very critical of the story and game’s direction at times. Gotta be pragmatic and remember that jokes aside, Hamsters don’t run the servers and even Developers need to sleep.
It ‘can’t’ be easy trying to develop from a home-work enviroment.
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They’re trying to find some perfectly optimised system that keeps players on the subscription hamster wheel with minimal investment, and repeatedly failing to do so.
If they want to arrest WoW’s tanking sub numbers and maintain the playerbase, they need to release a steady stream of content. Not a four-zone expansion and yearly patches with gimmicks designed to trick people into staying subbed.
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They are experts because by the time we get there they’ve been there long enough to “escape 100s of times”, implying the passage of time in The Maw/SLands is heavily accelerated as compared to regular old Azeroth.
As to why we should care about the Jailer: I agree with you. We shouldn’t. He’s a poorly written and poorly executed villain, and I sincerely hope that we decimate him and his plans in Torghast: The Raid, and spend the rest of the expansion restoring SLands - What I’m saying is Free Big Daddy Primus from his Runecrafting shackles.
Only if content introduced does not consume the raid tier like they’ve done with Garrisons.
I would like that. Shadowlands wasn’t that amazing of a concept in the first place.
9.1 looks like a hefty patch. Gives us a decent-ish 9.1.5 and finish it off with another hefty 9.2 patch and call it a day. Jailer dies, set up 10.0 blah blah let’s move on.
I wanna go back to Azeroth.
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if they simply put back wod systems n do more content like good new raids, dungeons, bgs, arenas n bring back some aspects from mop like reforge gear or challenge mode (a lot better than m+) then shadowlands would became awesome
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Shallowlands
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I mean… we’re looking at an xpac that launched with many promises and so far they are deciding to cut almost all of them. I don’t have high hopes for the rest of this xpac. Castle Nathria is a very fun raid, the art, the music, the fights are great. Everything outside of it though… the covenant system is another borrowed power system that feels like it was thrown together. The “make loot feel good” system was absolutely awful. The PVP season has been plagued with 1shot gimmick comps. And they are still revamping some covenants class abilities 4 months into the expansion.
We got no new races, no new classes, and only half the customizations we were told we would get; for a good raid and a subpar everything else.
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