World of Warcraft: Current Year

Palum said:

I thought that was known for a while, is this just the first time they've acknowledged it? Seems kind of a flat delivery for that.

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They brought him back as an advisor, now he fully takes over.

Does that put him below Ion?

Ion is Director of WoW, Metzen is Executive Creative Director of Warcraft Universe. Probably is above Ion but sounds like hes in charge of a broader umbrella. But for the players sake, I hope so.

I dunno I'm not super positive on the whole thing. 80s machismo doesn't mix well with gynocentric emotocracy. Everybody is turning into muh democracies for freeeeedom.

Honestly the worst thing about DF was the story so maybe a decent move.

At first I thought this sounds maybe too much on the nose and the WoW plans seemed unlikely.

However the more I think about it that more this is possibly true. MS are not going to keep failures around. There is a distinct tonal shift in DF that does in retrospect have a flavor of B story mobile game: call backs to known characters with a lot of side plot.

I dunno I could see this being more true than not.

Just to confirm, 9.1 was 6/2021, DF announcement was 4/2022. Seems plausible if it was already in flight and they had cinematic planned or done.

Now I am waiting for Blizz to start quietly rehiring people lost to the great Cosby Suite purge.

That all seems plausible. Hopefully the other leak ends up true too, about classic+.


For anyone who didn't see the first one




Announcing Metzen as creative director gives me a little hope that this first leak has some truth to it. Bring back the Cosby crew and keep it old school.

Uriel said:

That all seems plausible. Hopefully the other leak ends up true too, about classic+.


For anyone who didn't see the first one

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Announcing Metzen as creative director gives me a little hope that this first leak has some truth to it. Bring back the Cosby crew and keep it old school.

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I think the other leak seems more likely.

Now now there you guys go again giving up your hopes.

Unfortunately the what-if classic expac sounds awesome.

Penance said:

Now now there you guys go again giving up your hopes.

Unfortunately the what-if classic expac sounds awesome.

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That expac idea is just too on the nose. Also it just sounds kinda disjointed. The core problem with retail was it basically abandoned the roots of the game over time, filling in a few gaps from that era in a different way doesn't resolve any bigger questions. I also have zero faith they could recreate the classiness of early WoW. There were subtle hints of references to pop culture but the game is literally just a Facebook normie reference library of non-Warcraft pop culture now.

There's also the reality that everything would be tainted by what is, and not what was. Emerald Dream would not be a reimagining from a classic era but a retro filter on all the bullshit from Val Sharah and everything that's touched on the subject since. The elements all had there own agendas and we were clearly just kind of in the way. The ancient dragons were rare and kinda terrifying story wise, they didn't have lisps and could record their voice lines without a bag of dicks in their mouth.

I want the product it should be, but not what it would be.

BoozeCube said:

Even if Jesus Christ came down from the heavens to design the next Bliz box of shit I wouldn't trust it after how badly they have constantly failed over the last decade of aids.

At this point the Blizzard name is more deterrent than a boon. Hell Bobby would probably make more money auctioning off their main IPs than keeping them.

Might as well go George Lucas style and sell off Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft at least then as more hellish abomination failures are released you don't have your name attached to it.

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So its time to hand it off to Daybreak?

Aaron said:

We are no longer college kids with plenty of time, and most of gamers don't have the time, patience or engagement that people had 20 years ago either.

But maybe I'm just jaded...

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Thats not entirely true, and you do sound jaded. Launches like New World, Lost Arks NA release, hell... Diablo 4 - all of them show that if people "believe" that the game is good enough, they'll make time for it. Its only after people find out that they dont like the game, or its just a shined up fucking turd, do they passively decide to stay at work longer instead of wanting to rush home and play the game all night. I guarantee you that if a good MMO came out that had some longevity and it had some good friends playing it, I would waste quite a bit of time playing that and not view it as wasting my time.

Also assumed we're the only generation for MMOs. When I was still teaching going into the pandemic there were plenty of middle schoolers and high schoolers ruining their lives on ESO and Runescape

Aaron said:

Almost a month since the last post til today's bump. Crazy! Once upon a time this thread would have had more daily updates than the Politics thread. How times have changed.

I think the main problem here is that we can't go 20 years back in time. We are no longer college kids with plenty of time, and most of gamers don't have the time, patience or engagement that people had 20 years ago either. While Metzen might be able to salvage something, it will still most likely be sticking a band-aid on an open jugular. Too many shitty gene's have been let out of the bottle of game development for them to be able to get the true feeling of Classic WoW again.

But maybe I'm just jaded...

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I really do think its them (modern corporate driven games), not us. Games used to be made with more passion by gamers who made the games they dreamed of, you see that if you go back and play them. Games like that still get made, but mostly by small developers (with exceptions like BG3 and Elden Ring) and they're fewer and farther between. With MMOs specifically, the trend towards solo/casual experiences you can consume in bite size pieces at a time has actually killed what we loved about them, not to mention the monetization that has ruined most sense of achievement. Sure we're more limited on time now that we're older, that doesn't mean we won't make time and play when we can when something great comes along.