World of Warcraft: Current Year

Dandai_sl said:

I can tell you put a lot of time and effort into making that list, so instead of an asshole, snarky reply, I'm just going to say that I strongly, but respectfully, disagree with your assertion that they will not only retain more subs, but bring back old players by completely ignoring progression and doing the sort of expansion you described.

If they released this as an in-between-expansions thing, I could definitely see it being a hit, but these assholes take 24 months to put out an expansion. Devoting that amount of time to nothing but secondary items that strictly effect the appearance of your character sounds like a great way to get players to try out other games.

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I do understand where you are coming from, that they should put this out 1/2 way between an expansion cycle or something, but we all know Blizzard is too slow to do this. Keep in mind if they did this, they could still add raids/content every patch like they do now, and launch with a raid tier. The biggest thing I am thinking, instead of adding a whole new continent, 1000's of new quests, a new level cap, rebalancing talents yet again, scrap that, and use the dev time instead to make this new stuff instead. Still continue to push out content patches after though. What would we really miss out on? 1-2 weeks worth of leveling, and new zones that we burn up and go back to sitting in Stormwind/Org? That and I don't mean only add appearance items, but add unique clicky items etc, like EQ had. Items that you can use from your inventory. Shit that will actually help your character from everything from everyday stuff to raiding. Not necessarily stuff like noggenfogger, that would just get old.

Also, players may try out other games, but once they see how stale the market is, they will come back to WoW anyways, if they are wanting an MMO. The hardcores will come back for raids like I said, this is just a way to get the casuals back too. It's not like Blizzard has to worry about competition at this point. And look how big of a hit one of these side meta games (pet battles) became. They need to do content like this x10 in my opinion, and find ways to reuse their previous content (raids and expansion continents).

Guessing masses of players who had a year sub with the free D3 promotion won't be 're-subscribing' now that year has just run out. Wonder what Blizz will do this time to try get players to come back.

Huh, my year ran out last October. I figured that's why their last quarter dropped so hard. Could you really still get that deal last June? Anyway, they've got Hearthstone coming up; I'm sure they'll tie it to WoW in some meaningful way. Might be as easy as giving you free loot card drops from Hearthstone that gives you stuff to use in WoW.

I was kinda expecting this was the year they went full steam on releasing Titan info and stopped giving a fuck about keeping WoW subs. Now it's gonna be interesting seeing how desperate they get to last until 2016+.

This expansion has been the strongest yet, almost too much to do really. The only weakness is the 5-mans, but those have sucked since they went to the Scarlet Monastery model in BC.

kudos_sl said:

You seriously are going to sit there and tell me that 4 difficulties for the same content isn't bloat?

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That's not what you stated. You used the "little Timmy noob player" argument and I poked a hole in it.

-Rare unique items off of new super rare spawns scattered throughout the world, everything from vanity to special clicky items, etc (Think Jboots, mounts, rare pets, etc)

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Do you even play MoP? That is a feature in this expansion.

DavivMcD_sl said:

Huh, my year ran out last October. I figured that's why their last quarter dropped so hard. Could you really still get that deal last June?

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I thought so, but I could be wrong. D3 launched a year ago last month.


Actually thinking of going back to WoW for a month, maybe two, just to try out the Pokemon. Have only played for two months in the last four years.

Anyone have links to either a guide on what pets to look out for and where they drop or something similar on these new rare loot dropping spawns ? Maybe there is an app for that somewhere.

http://www.warcraftpets.com/is a good starting point. Original/longest running pet collector site for WoW (Blizzard honored the creator's avatar by making it the pet shop owner in Dalaran). Ever since pet battles, though, the site has added a lot regarding pet battles.

This xpac has been a blessing and a fucking nightmare if you like stuff to do and are casual but then have ridiculous OCD completionist disorder and would like to dabble in alts. I have felt overwhelmed at times because I no longer raid hardcore but I can't break my mind from it....so I grind and gnash my teeth at months behind.

kudos_sl said:

Pretend you're a new player and you know nothing about the game. Do you think it's good design to have all these different options to essentially do the same thing? Have items named the exact same thing only different color or even just a different ilvl? Not everyone is the MMO pro you are.

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I never played EQ2 past level 20 because I didn't have enough fingers. However when I was trying to dive in and see what the end game was like, I saw all those tiers of stuff and I just quit. Fuck figuring all that shit out, it's not like the game is that great to begin with.

Stave_sl said:

Earlier today, I was thinking to myself, what would make me and my wife and friends come back to WoW and had what I think is a pretty decent idea.

What WoW really needs to do, if it wants to draw in numbers again, is release a different type of expansion, all focused on the "other stuff" to do in the game that isn't raiding. No new level cap, no new continents. Totally scrap the time they would use making these normally, and do the following instead

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There is definitely a huge group, including most FOH type people, who would love that kind of xpac. Unfortunately, wow data tends to suggest this kind of player is a minority in wow. I don't have any citations on me but I remember reading that more than 50% of the wow player base takes 4-6 months to level a single character to level cap (playing like 2-6 hours a week), maaaybe does it with an alt, and then barely logs in (still paying a sub) until the next xpac. Literally most of the player base just levels, does nothing at endgame, and waits for the next xpac. They also do absolutely nothing that is multiplayer: no dungeons, no PVP, no raiding. This was pre-LFR so maybe its gotten a lot better since then, but yeah it blew my mind how many people in wow play it like skyrim or another single player RPG.

Blizzard has NSA-levels of player data on how many minutes per session, how long to level cap, what people do in their game sessions, what they were doing before they hit the unsub button, how many times someone dies before they just stop logging in, etc so it would take a pretty huge leap of faith (and big balls) to decide to ignore some of that data and do something you think players will still play. The last time they did that, making dungeons and raids harder (cata) it blew up in their face and the game bled subs far faster than normal.

Unfortunately all of us here know you need to do exactly that to make a great game: ignore the obvious data staring you in the face and take a bold, smart, risky move but at a big corporate type of company that Blizzard has become, that kind of move is almost impossible. Which really makes you wonder about Titan - did it really suck, or was it just so different that it got focus group'd to shit ala Rift?

aaron_sl said:

I was reading about the new Flex raiding system and I started to wonder, why are there caps on the number of raid members, whether it's 10, 25, 40 or whatever? Now I know that the difficulty changes, and that it is possible (there are even achievements out there iirc) to do raids with fewer than optimal, but why can't you have more?

Now, before some start saying "but that would make it too easy!" I'd say, yes, yes it would make it easier. But if you keep the loot quantity the same, and keep raid lockouts the same, then if, say 30 people were to do a 25 man raid, then each person's chance of getting loot would drop. So in theory while the difficulty would go down, then the chance of loot would also go down. What would be bad about that?

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leads to a poor player experience? an easy raid + no loot?

Draegan_sl said:

I never played EQ2 past level 20 because I didn't have enough fingers. However when I was trying to dive in and see what the end game was like, I saw all those tiers of stuff and I just quit. Fuck figuring all that shit out, it's not like the game is that great to begin with.

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You missed a great game, but you had to play it with a group. The chucklefucks that run the place now though aren't worth dealing with. Game had great dungeoning until a few expansions ago.

bixxby_sl said:

You missed a great game, but you had to play it with a group. The chucklefucks that run the place now though aren't worth dealing with. Game had great dungeoning until a few expansions ago.

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I've heard that, but the gameplay experience turned me off. Teljair played the shit out of that game and he always tried to get me to play since he used to have an uber character in an uber guild. Never stuck around long enough.

Flight_sl said:

I thought so, but I could be wrong. D3 launched a year ago last month.


Actually thinking of going back to WoW for a month, maybe two, just to try out the Pokemon. Have only played for two months in the last four years.

Anyone have links to either a guide on what pets to look out for and where they drop or something similar on these new rare loot dropping spawns ? Maybe there is an app for that somewhere.

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You can get pets from well, pretty much anything (raids, achievements, crafting, farming, rare mob drops, blizzard store, yearly holiday events, quests, fishing, etc etc). The site Cybsled linked is really good and the go-to pet site. It will tell you how to get every pet in game. You can also open your pet journal and type in the name of a zone and it'll show you all pets that can be gotten in that zone. Select a pet from the list, mouse over its name, and it'll tell you how to get it (sorta).

OneofOne_sl said:

You can also open your pet journal and type in the name of a zone and it'll show you all pets that can be gotten in that zone.

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Exactly what I wanted to know mate, thank you. SO I know what mobs to kill in which zone while leveling an alt.

Anyone on BDF still playing this shit?