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I fear this is them A/B testing this shit for the next expansion. They will 100% turn this around later and say "our metrics showed that players did not engage with the old raids during 9.2.5, so they did not have fun."
World of Warcraft: Current Year
- Thread starter hodj
- Start date
Animosity
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Bondurant
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Maybe it's just them coming up with last minute ideas to replace the now defunct 9.3 patch and flesh out a "content" patch with well, content. I think instead of getting a new zone / raid / M+ dungeon, we'll get QoL stuff and minor content originally planned but not released.
Chris
Potato del Grande
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Theory is this already happened.
Tazavesh is the cancelled expansion hub, Oribos was just going to be a portal room.
Korthia is the canceled Drust zone, Thros.
Jailer/Lords of Dread were moved from the cancelled finale to the Zereth Mortis raid.
Daidraco
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Some of that would probably be cool, but the fact that none of it would redeem the expansion at least lets me understand why theyre dumping it as quick as they are. Its when they dump content in good expansions that makes you wonder what the fuck (Cut content in WOTLK to launch Cata earlier). You can see why this tier is going to last for fucking eons - there is no telling how much restructuring and shit is going on at Blizzard, or will be happening in this time frame.
Hard games make hard devs. Hard devs make good games, good games make soft devs. Soft devs are shit.
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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Yeah that's the one. There's also Zovaal/Primus role swap speculation based on character models and concept art.
Could be bullshit but then it's even more damning that fanfiction can tie all this shit together many times better than what we got.
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Lunis
Blackwing Lair Raider
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It makes sense b/c the first time I did Tazavesh it didn't feel like a dungeon at all in terms of the layout or feel.
If the leaks are true then they tried biting off way more than they could chew.. which was the same mistake with BfA. Too ambitious where it ends up half-cooked with repurposed art assets & a story that makes no sense. I hope this humbled them enough so that 10.0 is more straightforward with a focus on good content as opposed to 6 new intertwined systems and a pretentious story.
If the leaks are true then they tried biting off way more than they could chew.. which was the same mistake with BfA. Too ambitious where it ends up half-cooked with repurposed art assets & a story that makes no sense. I hope this humbled them enough so that 10.0 is more straightforward with a focus on good content as opposed to 6 new intertwined systems and a pretentious story.
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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The question is why this happened, previous expansions have had more content than the theoretical planned shadowlands.
Was it corporate downsizing for the Microsoft sale or Bobby's new boat cutting their funding?
Was it SJW hiring in California creating a weak team of useless diversity hires?
Was it a pre lawsuit purge of problematic people and their content?
Was it genuine incompetence and this was planned to be like this?
All of the above?
Was it corporate downsizing for the Microsoft sale or Bobby's new boat cutting their funding?
Was it SJW hiring in California creating a weak team of useless diversity hires?
Was it a pre lawsuit purge of problematic people and their content?
Was it genuine incompetence and this was planned to be like this?
All of the above?
Lunis
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 2,258
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I think it was just hubris from the lead devs more than anything. Can't remember which Bellular video it was but he said he had heard from multiple sources that the whole Covenant thing was a complete top-down decision from on high. Whether it was Ion or someone else he didn't say.
Creating some giant design document that you think is the hot shit as opposed to listening to the player base or the people that work under you.
Creating some giant design document that you think is the hot shit as opposed to listening to the player base or the people that work under you.
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The leak said: "These were all cut as the rewrites and a reduced scope/budget meant we had to drastically scale back the entire expansion."
At this point I wouldn't put it past Bobby himself to come down from his throne and say: "Scale down the expansion, we are making more money from cash shop items, so do those instead!"
It was probably because the scope of the content they were working on would have meant the expac would need another year and Bobby would have rightly made the call to scale that back to get a product released.
We all know their dev cycle is glacial in the best of times and it has only gotten slower and slower as the years go on. The team is still massive compared to many games given the relatively limited amount of content they produce and cash shop at most would mean artists and 3D modelers pulled off stuff, you aren't pulling the zone design or raid design teams to work on cash shop.
All of that leads me to believe that like many companies the level of talent has just eroded severely through all the ranks. That isn't diversity hires either, it is just really hard to find high performers who want to work for game dev salaries in cali.
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I should've explained myself better: Cut budget would get artists reassigned from WoW to other projects, of which they should've at least one or two unannounced cooking at the same time. Their recently announced survival game has been in development for at least five times.
Daidraco
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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I wouldnt be surprised if it was budget related. Upper management saw the success of WoW in WOTLK and has been comparing each following expansion to WOTLK's success and reacting accordingly. Then take into account how old the company is, how successful it has been in the past and you know for a fact its bloated from the top to the bottom. Then, from what it sounds like to me, they pay low so they can hire another person onto the team down the line. So now they have 4 under paid dev's instead of 3. But thats factory line work thinking, in that a high salary can attract some extremely skilled coders that will run circles around the 4 devs willing to take a job at the low salary.
In other words - the only way we see WoW get back to enjoyable state will be to see the company fail entirely. Then a different, lean, well oiled machine of a company pick it up. We'll probably see rehashed assets on the first expansion from them and if the game still has legs, they'll probably knock it out of the park on the second expansion by them.
Either way, I think WoW has definitely fallen from its Throne and Im just waiting on it to be excommunicated.
In other words - the only way we see WoW get back to enjoyable state will be to see the company fail entirely. Then a different, lean, well oiled machine of a company pick it up. We'll probably see rehashed assets on the first expansion from them and if the game still has legs, they'll probably knock it out of the park on the second expansion by them.
Either way, I think WoW has definitely fallen from its Throne and Im just waiting on it to be excommunicated.
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Paying people in prestige instead of money means you get shit employees.
Hiring diversity instead of merit means you get the shit of the shit employees.
So Blizzard filled itself with the shit's shit and it's now struggling.
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moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
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Upper management saw the success of Wow in Classic and TBC, and asked: "Why are we paying you clowns so much money to make new content, which by the way everyone of the paypigs seems to hate, when we can just re-release old content and rake in the cash regardless?"
I guess it never really occured to them that they can only sell WoW tokens and pets/mounts/mogs to people actually subscribed to their product.