World of Warcraft: Current Year

Lambourne said:

Some information from the inside, allegedly.



One of the comments was interesting too:

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That shit is all over Glassdoor and has been for a long time.

It's like asking an associate at Walmart vs the COO if it's a nice place to work. Totally different perspectives. GM of WoW? Even when WoW released that was a nobody position. If we see Tenks bail out and go back to an auto dealership or whatever then you know something is screwy.

I do share the sentiment that Blizzard is going downhill and has been for a long time though. Far as I can tell there is only a few of the original hardcore people left. Much like an uber guild they dislike 99% of the new people who think they are leet just by association and not accomplishment. Frankly reminds me of every guild I've ever been in towards the end of their lifespan. Riding on the coattails of better people/players and never realizing it.

I attribute much of their downfall to laziness personally. They always take the easy road and disguise it as making the game "accessible". Robust rune/skill system in Diablo 3? Nope fuck that instant respecs and no depth at all. Deep evolving itemization in WoW? HAHA NOPE! I mean they are one step away from fucking adding +gooder and calling it a day. Itemization colors mean almost nothing now as well. How about deep growing talent trees? Dream on. It's soooooo much work to balance out three talent trees and in the end there is only one "best" anyways, so why bother???? Ohh here's another great one. Let's make a MOBA that unites three of the coolest fucking universes in gaming two of which already have extremely robust and well known items! Oh, wait..... we have to create all of these items and their relevant skins in game as well as balance them across a variety of characters..... Hmm, yeah.... let's just make it "accessible" and not do any of that! BRILLIANT!!!! Fucking dipshits could've ate Leagues lunch easily!

I mean FFS just look at Warriors in Vanilla vs now. The depth of the class has gone down dramatically. Stance dancing, rage management, and utilizing your abilities effectively is all but gone. How is this better? Because it's easier for little jimmy to spam Over Power and then Mortal Strike? Was tab targetting Sunder Armor that fucking hard??? I mean did I miss the fucking memo or was WoW not at it's peak before 90% of this easy mode bullshit. Did Diablo 2 not do well with its deep skill system? I don't recall a lot of forum posts bitching about all the skill options and how it's too difficult to make a decision.

This doesn't even touch base on all the terrible decisions that were made with things like flying, sharding, LFR, LFD, scaling zones, etc. All things that make the game more like a lobby than a persistent world. It's really quite sad. Why the hell do you think people hunger for Classic? It feels like a living world. BFA feels like you're sitting in a CoD lobby waiting for game to start.

I sincerely hope Mr. Pardo's Bonfire Studios can replicate the magic even if I'll be stuck being a filthy casual.

Legendaries were a step in the right direction implemented in a horrible way. The fact that Ion pissed in our throats at the end of Legion by allowing us to target them is exactly the tipping point that drove me out of WOW. They know exactly what they are doing with "retention" mechanics. I forget who put it like this, I think it was Preach, but you are no longer paying 15$ a month per content patch, you are paying 15$ a month for content that is intended to be strung out through multiple patches.

Ukerric said:

At this point, there is not a single reason why STR, AGI and INT are still separate stats. Every item that has one has all the others needed for its intended classes. The only ones still having separate "strength" stats are weapons.

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I think that's what EQ2 did there towards the end or something along those lines. They copy pasta'd one set of primary attributes across all armor types.

a c i d.f l y said:

How could the same assholes who made legion shit out BfA...

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Aren't there two development teams working one expansion each? Like team A worked on Legion while team B did BFA? Or this is just an internet myth?

The dev who blew up on Reddit a couple months ago said that. Nothing he said has been proven false to my knowledge.

Kaige said:

My only issue comes when I reach BfA levels, where the questing is stupid boring, islands only allow 3 characters, and you can't fly yet. They're adding in assaults next patch, but apparently they don't give a whole lot of experience like invasions do.

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...why?

I really appreciated how in Legion when I went to make a Demon Hunter after leveling my first character to 110 that the mission table had +exp awards and that the invasions were piles and piles of experience. It was like getting a pat on the head for having going through the leveling process once and encouraged making alts which encouraged continued play.

Is the money to be had from that kind of encouraged player retention just dwarfed by the money they make selling boosts?

How late in Legion did invasions come in? It's still the start of the expansion pack.

Fyff said:

How late in Legion did invasions come in? It's still the start of the expansion pack.

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Then where is everyone?

Arbitrary said:

Is the money to be had from that kind of encouraged player retention just dwarfed by the money they make selling boosts?

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I doubt it. From my perspective the only thing dwarfing the amount of money made via player retention is the size of the egos of those in charge. Many of the changes they made for this expansion don't seem to jive with financial gains, unless you just like to use the lazy "blizzard has the numbers!" excuse and apologize for Blizzard. There seems to be a common theme among certain types within the WoW community. They believe that if you aren't forced to drag out completing the main storyline progress on your main you have no other reason to stay subbed and play. No alts, no t-mog/mount/achievement farming, no M+ pushing, no Mythic raiding progression. And in their mind making it take an extra 2 weeks to complete your rep is all the money blizzard needs from you before you quit. Logically it makes no sense, but people still make those claims. I mean there were people in this thread trying to justify the shitty exalted rep rewards that way. Useless 350 ilvl garbage that could have been useful had it become available to players earlier, but to them it would have made people say "I'm done!" and cancel their sub. 35 ilvls lower than Mythic raiding and 20 ilvls lower than M+10 gear and it was too good in their mind. Same thing goes for the warfronts. 340 gear... 340. It's LFR garbage. But people still complain that makes it too easy to gear up.

Actually, maybe they are just listening to the wrong people and making these changes because of misguided community outcry.

Another week here and gone. My Mythic+ cache has only given me 2 385 azerite pieces (both were shoulders with the same trait) and 1 weapon. I've gotten plenty of cloaks though! I'll be so pretty one day.

Penance said:

Then where is everyone?

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I don't know what that has to do with the topic presented. Please explain to me how leveling faster to get to the end game everyone on this board hates would help player retention.

Fyff said:

I don't know what that has to do with the topic presented. Please explain to me how leveling faster to get to the end game everyone on this board hates would help player retention.

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Systems that encourage players to make and level alts help player retention. Alts keep people playing, let them experience aspects of the game they otherwise were not going to, and see more of the story.

Well, they would if leveling wasn't ass.