WoW: Warlords of Draenor

[Gerald Tarrant]

I came off as a dick with my Pally comment, but I ran with another Pally stacking Parry/Dodge/Stam in MoP. Holy shit, he took 1.5 times my damage while tanking and healed for 80% less. I could outheal our healers while tanking, mostly because they could take a break unless there was raid-wide damage. Meanwhile, he'd OOM them constantly even with me throwing him my excess Flames. God that guy was an extreme shitter. Only good thing was, since he was passing on all Haste/Mastery gear: I built up a badass Prot/Ret set in no time flat (we had no melee in that raid group). Same reason I got my Warforged Greatsword of Pride after we replaced him with a bear tank.

It's fine, I remember having the argument you were giving me with my other pally tank in Siege, he was a classic raider, so his viewpoint was still stuck on total table coverage type stuff, so stat weight was avoidance and some stam. His argument was that I took way more damage, so I was worse; my healers told him to shut-up, since he died more from the 2 crits in a row situation which will come up. I could always shield of the righteous and Word of Glory, since I was generating more holy power than him. I know the argument about it, it just felt like my idea when I validated it by experimenting with my own weights, my healers were good guys who were tooling around with their own weights on disc and resto druid(disc was mostly reforge away from all spirit). When I was doing progression on ToT there were actually a few fights where your haste cap was arguably lower, Tortos and Horridon, the idea was since the major melee attacks were timed you needed just enough haste to get 3 or maybe 4 holy power every swing, everything else went into mastery for that little bit of extra mitigation on the block. When we got stuck on Horridon that, and my pally bubbling off his armor rend stacks were what eventually pushed us through.

[TheFeniX]

And now that a couple days have passed the blizzdrones are coming out in force. It would be funny if it weren't so cringeworthy; most of the attempted defenses are bog-standard "they don't have to cater to you" "shut up and quit" and "they never actually promised flying in Dranor why are you so upset" whining with the usual "OH MY GOD YOU BABIES ARE SO IMMATURE" crybabbing thrown in. Nobody can articulate a better defense of no-flying than they could six months ago, it's all just thrashing and shitflinging.

They're using shit like "entitled" unironically, which is pretty indicative of how bad it is.

The hilarious part is, by making this a moral choice Blizzard's effectively trapped themselves. People are invested in the no-flying now. If blizzard sees big subscriber drops from this and decides to backpedal and put in flying on Draenor after all, not only will they not get a lot of people back (whether from inertia or mistrust of such two-faced policies) now they face the risk of upsetting and losing the people who have bought into the no-fly deal. Blizzard's set themselves up for failure no matter what.

Blizz subscriber loss is going to affect them even worse than it would other MMOs. You need 40 people to fill an LFR. People not doing LFR push up queue times. People not playing the game means less people queueing. So, as numbers drop: you get less content as a matter of course. And to keep LFR queues doable, you need even less alternative content. So, LFR is the problem, but it's all Blizzard's fault, not the players.

I know the argument about it, it just felt like my idea when I validated it by experimenting with my own weights, my healers were good guys who were tooling around with their own weights on disc and resto druid(disc was mostly reforge away from all spirit). When I was doing progression on ToT there were actually a few fights where your haste cap was arguably lower, Tortos and Horridon, the idea was since the major melee attacks were timed you needed just enough haste to get 3 or maybe 4 holy power every swing, everything else went into mastery for that little bit of extra mitigation on the block. When we got stuck on Horridon that, and my pally bubbling off his armor rend stacks were what eventually pushed us through.

Avoidance builds worked for Paladins back when "unhittable" was still possible. They broke that to push Tankadins into Haste builds, which I think was a really good idea. Pally tanking was always pretty boring. They fixed a lot in 4.0. But the changes made for MoP were fantastic: there really is no reason to take any parry/dodge for pallies.

A better example of multiple viable builds were DKs. Parry/Dodge equated to more crit. You had to know your CDs, but you could do ridiculous damage if done right. Straight crit builds were used for people trying to push progression too fast. The "standard" Mastery build was great for people just starting out and needed a buffer. As you got more gear, you could slough more Mastery into parry/dodge, to mitigate more and do more damage, but still have enough Mastery to get yourself topped back off/shielded when shit gets real. It was a real balancing act.

Same with MasterFrost vs HasteFrost in Cata. Then they gutted HasteFrost because Blizzard hates fun.

[Terralthra]

I remember pally-tanking through Wrath. It was pretty simplistic to stack up haste to get the CDs on the 3/2 rotation to 9 and 6 seconds, respectively, then get avoidance and stam up to your healers' preference. For most fights one could just bumblefuck through that rotation with a minimum of fuss, and movement didn't hardly matter to the rotation unless it was a huge move right around the Consecration. Cata was more of the same, and I quit tanking for raids midway through the expansion, because none of the raids were anywhere near as fun as Ulduar.

[Gerald Tarrant]

And now that a couple days have passed the blizzdrones are coming out in force. It would be funny if it weren't so cringeworthy; most of the attempted defenses are bog-standard "they don't have to cater to you" "shut up and quit" and "they never actually promised flying in Dranor why are you so upset" whining with the usual "OH MY GOD YOU BABIES ARE SO IMMATURE" crybabbing thrown in. Nobody can articulate a better defense of no-flying than they could six months ago, it's all just thrashing and shitflinging.

They're using shit like "entitled" unironically, which is pretty indicative of how bad it is.

There's a few common faces who over and over are saying "If you don't like it [it being no flying] then leave" completely missing the irony of them continually joining in threads in which they hate everything that is said.

The hilarious part is, by making this a moral choice Blizzard's effectively trapped themselves. People are invested in the no-flying now. If blizzard sees big subscriber drops from this and decides to backpedal and put in flying on Draenor after all, not only will they not get a lot of people back (whether from inertia or mistrust of such two-faced policies) now they face the risk of upsetting and losing the people who have bought into the no-fly deal. Blizzard's set themselves up for failure no matter what.

Blizz subscriber loss is going to affect them even worse than it would other MMOs. You need 40 people to fill an LFR. People not doing LFR push up queue times. People not playing the game means less people queueing. So, as numbers drop: you get less content as a matter of course. And to keep LFR queues doable, you need even less alternative content. So, LFR is the problem, but it's all Blizzard's fault, not the players.

I thought it was 25 in LFR, but LFR queue times are stupidly long as dps anyway.

I know the argument about it, it just felt like my idea when I validated it by experimenting with my own weights, my healers were good guys who were tooling around with their own weights on disc and resto druid(disc was mostly reforge away from all spirit). When I was doing progression on ToT there were actually a few fights where your haste cap was arguably lower, Tortos and Horridon, the idea was since the major melee attacks were timed you needed just enough haste to get 3 or maybe 4 holy power every swing, everything else went into mastery for that little bit of extra mitigation on the block. When we got stuck on Horridon that, and my pally bubbling off his armor rend stacks were what eventually pushed us through.

Avoidance builds worked for Paladins back when "unhittable" was still possible. They broke that to push Tankadins into Haste builds, which I think was a really good idea. Pally tanking was always pretty boring. They fixed a lot in 4.0. But the changes made for MoP were fantastic: there really is no reason to take any parry/dodge for pallies.

Not arguing, I came back to tanking and playing seriously in end of Cata start of MoP so I kind of fell into the correct build by trying lots of stuff that didn't work, then reading up on it, trying my version of it, looking at my logs, and seeing how haste was better, and finally adopting it, but I tried everything and even if it wasn't hardcore progression viable; I could still do some content with the worse builds, and kind of see the results that were just posted as SimCraft excel spread sheets on theory crafter websites. And that was actually kind of fun, I could get the results that were theorized and converging/discovering the optimal build was a game in itself.

A better example of multiple viable builds were DKs. Parry/Dodge equated to more crit. You had to know your CDs, but you could do ridiculous damage if done right. Straight crit builds were used for people trying to push progression too fast. The "standard" Mastery build was great for people just starting out and needed a buffer. As you got more gear, you could slough more Mastery into parry/dodge, to mitigate more and do more damage, but still have enough Mastery to get yourself topped back off/shielded when shit gets real. It was a real balancing act.

Same with MasterFrost vs HasteFrost in Cata. Then they gutted HasteFrost because Blizzard hates fun.

I'm not sure it's hates fun so much as "has no idea how to balance things". When they get a result that they think is broken, they seem to over-react in ruining that strategy, an example on paladins was the battle-healer glyph. In Heart of Fear on Wind Lord pally tanks could solo and top heal with that glyph, there'd be so much vengeance from all the mobs that your seal of insight could easily be doing 80 or 90k worth of healing on damaged characters, which was obviously broken, so blizz's eventual reaction was to make battle-healer less viable than bog standard seal of insight, and replace altogether the heal of seal of insight, now it's a completely worthless glyph (unless 6.1 did something). Something similar happened in 6.0 pre-patch. The disc smite spam healing model had to go, it was a bit OP, but rather than introduce trade-offs in it, like maybe making it mana-inefficient to make up for how fast the smart heal is, the made it completely worthless, the only reason to smite heal now is if you're building up stacks of evangelism, and even then only if there's a lull in the fight. Their changes sort of make sense, it's just they all seem to be over-reactions that remove options. But it really is hard to tell whether or not Bliz is populated by joyless martinets, or people over-reacting to "OP" builds or strategies. I personally am inclined to think they just over-react on their balance attempts.

[TheFeniX]

I remember pally-tanking through Wrath. It was pretty simplistic to stack up haste to get the CDs on the 3/2 rotation to 9 and 6 seconds, respectively, then get avoidance and stam up to your healers' preference. For most fights one could just bumblefuck through that rotation with a minimum of fuss, and movement didn't hardly matter to the rotation unless it was a huge move right around the Consecration. Cata was more of the same, and I quit tanking for raids midway through the expansion, because none of the raids were anywhere near as fun as Ulduar.

Man, I hit 80 and our raid team was hurting for a tank because the two tankadins we had got butt-hurt over 4.0. I was working on builds, then they were like: "slot these stam gems, forget hit/exp, stack nothing but stam."

"But how will I hit th...."
"Don't worry about it."
The rogue in our group basically spammed ToT me and healers power healed through the damage and never went OoM. Tanks swaps were handled via the tank with actual hit/exp because my taunts would miss like.... all the time. Damn that was boring tanking. Raid groups were so hard up for pally tanks and all they wanted was Stam gemmed ones anyways. I got into pugs constantly and basically got loots by having misdirections and ToTs telling bosses to hit me. Like, all I did was position bosses where I was told to, or just face-tank them. Still only 7/12 at that time because "real" raid groups wanted tanks with better gems/enchants and I had like... no money at that point.

I thought it was 25 in LFR, but LFR queue times are stupidly long as dps anyway.

Yea, whoops.

Not arguing, I came back to tanking and playing seriously in end of Cata start of MoP so I kind of fell into the correct build by trying lots of stuff that didn't work, then reading up on it, trying my version of it, looking at my logs, and seeing how haste was better, and finally adopting it, but I tried everything and even if it wasn't hardcore progression viable; I could still do some content with the worse builds, and kind of see the results that were just posted as SimCraft excel spread sheets on theory crafter websites. And that was actually kind of fun, I could get the results that were theorized and converging/discovering the optimal build was a game in itself.

I came back a bit into Cata and got called terrible because I was hit/exp capped. Everyone was stacking mitigation before Blizz rolled out all the nerfs. That's why they just upped our threat gen and made taunts not miss. By the time I came back again, right as SoO popped: Haste builds were so far and above better than anything, there really was no reason to do it different. Any extra damage taken was immediately overrulled by your EF HoTs and you did nearly double the damage. Added advantage: you only needed one set of gear, tier pieces aside.

And it was still broken. At about 560 iLvL, I soled Thok from 17 million to 500K. I would have killed him but bubble was off CD 10 seconds too late.

I'm not sure it's hates fun so much as "has no idea how to balance things".
:snip:
I personally am inclined to think they just over-react on their balance attempts.

I think it's a combination. Awesomesauce stuff that fits in their mold is allowed to stay, such as Mage dominance in anything. Certain classes get "fined tuned" constantly, other get fucking creamed constantly.

But just their reaction to HasteFrost was annoying. Two comments stuck out. One is that they didn't like Frost DKs utilizing Unholy Presence. The other was the reliance on low ping and high-framerate to ensure you were using your maxed out (short) GCD effectively to make the extra attacks worth the lowered damage. Also didn't help that HasteFrost dominated 2h Frost all the time and MasterFrost on anything but fights with a lot of cleave potential. I picked up 3K DPS with the same gear, just a 378MH and a PvP OH vs a 378 2h. But that didn't fit with their vision of a fun build to use, so they gutted it.

Still those few wonderful moments in Cata where I could murder-roll anything but another Prot Pally in PvP was great. Mage and Hunter tears are so delicious.

[Minischoles]

Or the deluxe edition containing a flying mount you can't use in current content? The flying issue is more the breaking of the camels back. It's being used as a crutch "YOU'RE ELAVING CUZ OF FLIYNG!?" when it's really "this is the last straw. It shows Blizzard gives no fucks about the community's desires."

Ayep.

And now that a couple days have passed the blizzdrones are coming out in force. It would be funny if it weren't so cringeworthy; most of the attempted defenses are bog-standard "they don't have to cater to you" "shut up and quit" and "they never actually promised flying in Dranor why are you so upset" whining with the usual "OH MY GOD YOU BABIES ARE SO IMMATURE" crybabbing thrown in. Nobody can articulate a better defense of no-flying than they could six months ago, it's all just thrashing and shitflinging.

The hilarious part is, by making this a moral choice Blizzard's effectively trapped themselves. People are invested in the no-flying now. If blizzard sees big subscriber drops from this and decides to backpedal and put in flying on Draenor after all, not only will they not get a lot of people back (whether from inertia or mistrust of such two-faced policies) now they face the risk of upsetting and losing the people who have bought into the no-fly deal. Blizzard's set themselves up for failure no matter what.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, by being so vocal against no-flying, they've backed themselves into a corner.

Instead of admitting they may have made a mistake, that flying was being reintroduced, they've doubled down - now they're suck defending no flying, they're stuck trying to justify a position that they know is bullshit.

Instead of asking why people wanted to skip mobs, why people wanted to fly straight to their objectives (mobs are either too weak and faceroll being a minor annoyance, or so strong grinding through them takes far too long) they tried to force people to explore on ground mounts. Granted the first time I went through the zones I enjoyed this, but the third or fourth time (or for me sixth time as i'm nearly 100 on my sixth char) is annoying at best and even worse when you have to go out and do the few quests that make you go out - Harrison Jones being the notable one there.

As I said, if I were a paying customer now, no flying would be a deal breaker - I would not be renewing my sub, but with me paying gold now i'll keep playing. Whether i'll buy the next expac (if there is one with such crippling sub losses) is another matter.

[Sharp-kun]

This may be slightly rambling as I'm posting from work and just typing as I get a minute.

I personally love the idea of no flying going forward, but I can't be arsed being too vocal about it. I felt it was a mistake back when they added it back in TBC and that like other poor decisions back then when the game was young (killing Kael, Illidan etc) that it's something that's haunted them since. I don't really mind the stance being taken (no flying going fwd other than maybe the odd zone / expansion where it makes sense) since I don't want poor decisions (imo) dragging things down for years. I prefer ground mounts and think it makes the world feel better and more interesting. If flying is to be a thing in Draenor it should be added at the end of the expansion (7.0 in this case).

I hope they ignore the fuss people are making over it and stick to their guns so we don't get another faff like the loot changes at the start of WoD where the "community" screamed bloody murder about personal loot in 5 mans, Blizzard listened and changed it, only for it to be reverted 3 days later once people realised that personal loot was actually better for dungeon finder.

Out of all the issues WoD has flying is just not a thing to me. I like the garrison, but it has the issue that it runs counter to the world they've made and the effort that's been put into that. It seems that they tried to make the garrison as awesome / useful as possible without thinking about how that runs counter to the world they wanted (would it be cool if you could have xxx in your garrison?! Sure!).

They swung too hard on daily quests after the outcry at the start of MoP. MoP was fine for dailies, it was the reward structure that needed changing, not removing them entirely. There's functionally no different between the apexis "do shit" stuff and daily quests, it just feels not as good / structured and the apexis gear just takes too long to get, even as a catch up mechanic.

Gear in raids is good and feels nice. Gear outside of raids (outside crafteds which I feel they've handled better this expansion the previous ones) is a mess with Apexis being either useless or too much work to get. World Bosses drop nothing of note. 5 mans at the start seemed to give an abundance of rings despite everyone having the quest epic having done Skyreach once.

I don't give two hoots about class balance as things stand right now and a lot of people don't. At my level of raiding and for the majority of people I raid with, it's not an issue and there's doesn't seem to be that big a disparity. Things feel better then they have in the past. Maybe that's not the case for mythic but I don't give a fuck as I (and the majority of players) don't raid at that level. The shield scaling on BE females (smaller when off your back) is by far a bigger issue for me.

I'm enjoying WoD overall. We've got a group of friends who used to raid seriously and these days we tend to kill normal with a few of us doing heroic. It's good fun and there's enough things to keep me interested. A lot of things though come across as the dev teams left hand not knowing what the right was doing. They mentioned that expanding the team had led to issues and I suspect that's part of it and that this expansion has more development issues than others, which is a shame as there's a lot in WoD thats really good.

[TheFeniX]

Flying isn't the biggest deal in of itself, it's the bullshit Blizzard pulled to sell subs and expansion packs, putting in a flying mount into the collectors edition and saying shit like "Swoop down from the dark night skies on the back of a black-winged Dread Raven mount, a mortal progeny of Anzu. Then devour your prey in your next pet battle with the adorably ferocious Dread Hatchling." You aren't swooping down anywhere in WoD. Also the "Garrison's are optional" line of bullshit. They never really were. Now definitely are not with the addition of Tanaan Jungle.

This is a pretty clear case of bait and switch.

Either way, I have always enjoyed the design of "no flying till max level" because it adds a new way to explore content. It's like learning to walk after you've been crawling all your life. I made it a point to explore all of old Azeroth before they added flying and that was quite fun. But I never would have bothered leveling something like Archeology or farming my Crusader rep in the Plaguelands without flying. I only did archaeology on my DK due to the free port to Ebon Hold. Sometimes I would just flying around Azeroth looking for shit. Maybe fly directly rather than bothering with a flight path. Leveling WoD on my Pally with my Argent Charger or Crimson Deathcharger for my DK would be awesome as I rarely get to use them. But that novelty would wear off fast at max level.

WoW mobility has always been terrible and their zone designs generally don't help. The idea of spending 10 minutes just treking to your destination, especially in old content is some old hat thinking. Getting up to grab a drink, piss, or smoke while waiting for an NPC to fly you to a flight-path isn't gameplay, but it is tirelessly defended because that's the way it used to be. As if "old = better" just by nature of being first.

SWTOR copied this and it was generally the most excruciating part of the leveling process. Even worse at max level, though you had no real reason to go to lower-level planets. FFXIV and to a lesser extent Rift bypassed it completely and it was a great design decision. You don't pad the experience with waiting. Sure, the FFXIV story is long winded and crammed with fetch quests, but at least those are still gameplay. And you can port within 2-3 minutes mount distance of pretty much anything in the game and it's still annoying at times. You think getting knocked off your mount is bad? Imagine a 20 second slow with no DR.

But people being out in the world in WoW means they aren't sitting in LFR queues, so times go up. So there's no incentive to make you go out. By contrast, FFXIV queues are terrible for DPS because there's so much to do in the world and a lot of it is better while grouping. You can't be queued while grouped nor when you have your companion/Chocobo out. The game really needs some kind of queue trading: queue twice as tank, get bumped to the top as DPS once.

[TheFeniX]

This is getting weird. As I've said before, I still troll the WoW forums in my off-time and it's getting to the point where not only are FFXIV (and some other MMO) threads are not being downvoted into oblivion, but they are actually being upvoted. This isn't too surprising for me, but I've been seeing bleed-off into the class forums. WoW Paladin players are discussing FFXIV Paladins and there's like.... no shit slinging. In fact, they seem to be discussing class mechanics with more civility than the FFXIV forums. Shitposters are being downvoted into burial.

No one is talking about FFXIV as a wow killer because there's a bit of consensus that WoW is finally killing itself and they're looking for refuge. Honestly though, don't know how I feel about FFXIV being flooded with WoW refuges.

[Darmalus]

This is getting weird. As I've said before, I still troll the WoW forums in my off-time and it's getting to the point where not only are FFXIV (and some other MMO) threads are not being downvoted into oblivion, but they are actually being upvoted. This isn't too surprising for me, but I've been seeing bleed-off into the class forums. WoW Paladin players are discussing FFXIV Paladins and there's like.... no shit slinging. In fact, they seem to be discussing class mechanics with more civility than the FFXIV forums. Shitposters are being downvoted into burial.

No one is talking about FFXIV as a wow killer because there's a bit of consensus that WoW is finally killing itself and they're looking for refuge. Honestly though, don't know how I feel about FFXIV being flooded with WoW refuges.

The FFXIV community would have to be pretty small for WoW refugees to flood it. My working hypothesis is that for most players WoW will be their first and only MMO, given that those I know who did stop playing went to single player (or regular multi-player) games.

But I get what you mean, there is zero hype for the next patch compared to similar patches in Mists, it's amazing.

[TheFeniX]

FFXIV subscribers seem to be around 500k and Squeenix is turning a steady profit. Lifetime accounts are in the 6 million range, but that's every account created ever. The 2.5 million number seems to take into account all the active and recently active trial accounts and their activation. A lot of this is likely bolstered by gil sellers which are a huge nuisance. I doubt a mass exodus would happen as, like you said, WoW players tend to be WoW players not video game players. Not even MMO players: just WoW players. But a game like FFXIV basically takes a lot of what WoW was and has become and made it actually enjoyable by keeping up with content and offering updated QoL improvements.

But I get what you mean, there is zero hype for the next patch compared to similar patches in Mists, it's amazing.

I've never seen it this "bad." Even 14 months of SoO didn't have this kind of blowback. Nor the brutality of Cata and it's blowback since Blizzard was doing a lot of moderation back then. Even when Cata heroics were destroying people's playtime, Blizzard and "hardcore" players were there to shout down discontent. They silenced the negative press while pushing out nerfs as quick as possible. With MoP, there were more than enough people doing other MoP content and there was a huge push for as many people as possible to get Heroic Garrosh kills after Blizz pushed out nerfs and end of expansion gear-scaling was out of control. If I had to describe end-game MoP forum posters in a word, it would be "bored."

Most of the community was just bored and anyone who drummed up controversy was slammed by fanboys. Now, the user-base on the forums has become actively hostile (like in Cata) but it's the fanboys who are constantly downvoted and shouted down. Blizzard is very rarely to be found aside from the occasional blue post, which is almost always a joke post and says nothing about the issue at hand. I've literally never seen this on another official forum. Even as SWTOR circled the P2P drain, you could not make a dent in the moderator approved fanboy shitposting brigade. They could say practically anything they wanted and, as long as it wasn't negative against BW, EA, or SWTOR: it stayed up and dissenting posts were usually edited out-right.

Blizzard seems to have ditched the forum completely and withdrawn to twitter and other 3rd party sites. I've seen next to no moderation, especially when compared to what went on in Cata. You'd think the shitposters and fanboys would have taken over, but I've actually seen more intelligent and civil discussion on WoW's issues than I've seen for any game, ever, on an offcial forum. Obviously "sunday threads" need not apply, but those and other obvious troll threads are always going to be there and get replies.

[Kuja]

says it all really

[Steve]

*raises eyebrow*

They decided not to allow flying in this one? After introducing it four expansions ago and having it in every expansion since?

Oh well, it will be interesting to see the MMO market if WoW finally collapses like a rotten tree.

[Broomstick]

I think they will eventually relent on that... but if they don't, it will still take awhile to "collapse".

Don't know WTF happened - they changed the water supply or something? Didn't a lot of the original guys leave recently? Maybe that's it?

[Minischoles]

There is essentially only one 'original' developer left at WoW right now - and thats Tom Chilton and he joined in TBC, the rest have left for various other projects or games.

Its been fairly clear that the B team has been working on WoW for some time now, the A team originally went off to do Titan and when that folded they ended up as the Overwatch guys.

[bilateralrope]

Oh well, it will be interesting to see the MMO market if WoW finally collapses like a rotten tree.

The only change I can see is that we will see more MMOs releasing directly as free/buy to play, instead of starting out with a subscription and dropping it later.

[Broomstick]

Blizzard seems to have ditched the forum completely and withdrawn to twitter and other 3rd party sites. I've seen next to no moderation, especially when compared to what went on in Cata.

A lot of companies are moving away from forums, where someone actually has to moderate and where they may be asked to explain themselves or engage in dialogue, towards things like twitter and facebook where they can just state what they want without being called on it.

I'm actually finding quite a bit to do without raiding at the moment, but then, I was always one of the oddballs that pretty much found some enjoyment in most parts of the game.

We'll see what happens, but if this is the beginning or middle of the end... so what? Ten years is a very, very long time in the gaming world and if WoW "collapses" then it's still had an amazing run.

[Grumman]

We'll see what happens, but if this is the beginning or middle of the end... so what? Ten years is a very, very long time in the gaming world and if WoW "collapses" then it's still had an amazing run.

People have sunk thousands of dollars and who knows how many hours into the game and its community. I haven't seriously played any MMO since DuneMUD (I played Guild Wars for around a week for $25, and spent a few seconds in Second Life before backing out, never to return), but I can still see why throwing all that away because Blizzard decides it's no longer worth the server load would be depressing.

[Broomstick]

Well, yeah, I started playing over 9 years ago, I'm certain I've sunk thousands of hours into the game and more money than I care to think about. However, I knew from the get-go it was never going to last forever. I dunno, maybe being older is part of that.

Despite the sub drop I don't see this going away for quite awhile. Downsizing, yes, but not someone yanking the power cord out of the wall.

[TheFeniX]

We'll see what happens, but if this is the beginning or middle of the end... so what? Ten years is a very, very long time in the gaming world and if WoW "collapses" then it's still had an amazing run.

The "so what" doesn't have to exist. Multiple game series have survived decades as well by retreading the same basic concepts over and over, yet still remain engaging to play. There's no good reasons for WoW's drop in quality, only laziness and stubbornness on part of the developers. People have been saying since Cata (since ever, really): the P2P MMO is dieing, which makes no sense. WoD's launch numbers proved them wrong again.

WoW doesn't have to bleed subscribers. Not when Blizzard already knows what works and what doesn't.

[Broomstick]

I agree, there is no good reason for WoW to die. However, if Blizzard doesn't give a fuck anymore and it goes down the drain it will hardly be the first company to fail under such circumstances. I would certainly miss it if it disappeared, but in the end it's a game, it's not real life, and I have far more serious things to get upset about.

Now, someone who doesn't have my serious real life concerns... sure, I can see it being a catastrophe in their world.

[TheFeniX]

I agree, there is no good reason for WoW to die. However, if Blizzard doesn't give a fuck anymore and it goes down the drain it will hardly be the first company to fail under such circumstances. I would certainly miss it if it disappeared, but in the end it's a game, it's not real life, and I have far more serious things to get upset about.

I, personally, am not that upset about it.* I moved on and the only thing I miss about WoW is my Death Knight and Paladin and all the cool QoL shit I collected over the years. But I can see how people are pissed. They have invested a lot of time and money into this game, helping make Blizzard one of the largest video game developers and publishers in the world and allow them to basically print money with WoW. Blizzard has an obligation to its players, stockholders, and employees to continue to provide quality content and keep the gravy train flowing.

*Sort of untrue. I am upset I can't go back to WoW because the game has gone in a direction I don't care for. But the emotional response is specifically due to the stupidity and the general similarities on how WoD was handled vs the bumblefuck way EA/BW handled SWTOR. It's annoying because I did not expect this from Blizzard, at least not before the Diablo 3 release. I thought WoW might be immune from this, but SoO proved me wrong.

Now, someone who doesn't have my serious real life concerns... sure, I can see it being a catastrophe in their world.

No one here is talking about a catastrophe. We're just discussing the stupidity of Blizzard allowing WoW to churn out the least amount of content ever for the most expensive WoW expansion. These are legitimate complaints, even in the entertainment industry.

[Kuja]

No one here is talking about a catastrophe. We're just discussing the stupidity of Blizzard allowing WoW to churn out the least amount of content ever for the most expensive WoW expansion. These are legitimate complaints, even in the entertainment industry.

June is going to be a bad month for WoW. Q3 is also going to be a bad time.

Shortly after the interview with Ion came out, I saw at least one thread of people posting their account cancellation messages. Being as it was mid-May, most of these end dates were in June. Patch 6.2 is probably coming out June 23rd (the PTR is going through its last builds and I beleive I saw that they've given the pvpers their usual 2-week notice) but that new bit of content is probably going to be too little, too late to salvage things. Moreover, they made the decision to push the re-interview with Ion back from June 6 to June 13, thus inevitably delaying any potential good news he might have to say that might stop people from quitting.

I'm not a mind reader, but it really wouldn't surprise me if the decision to delay the interview was because the backlash from people over flying was much harder than Blizzard expected and they needed to discuss how to handle it. Honestly, if the forums are any indication, the handling of flying and related behavior by the blizz crew has really bit them in the ass. I've been playing WoW since just before AQ dropped and I can honestly say that while realID was probably the biggest single bomb that inflamed tempers, I have never seen the wow forums so doggedly, pervasively negative about the game and blizzard in general. I really do thing the Q2 report is going to show another painful drop for blizz, maybe not quite as steep as Q1, but it would not shock me if they'd dropped to 5 million people by June 31st (I know I said 4 million earlier, but I forgot July1 was the beginning of Q3 already).

That's June. Q3 I think is also not going to be good for Blizz. 6.2 is coming out, but apart from the hellfire raid everything about it says more of the same: a new zone (with little or not content aside from...) more apexis dailies (which are hated) with factions that have little to no story (which is boring), more garrison chores (which are hated), still no flying (which is widely hated), nothing that bangs or sizzles. Add to that most people are aware that Tanaan was supposed to be included in launch and was pushed back and nobody seems excited for it. Then there's blizzard still desperately, pathetically trying to push Ashran by putting pvp gear behind it, which the pvp community naturally hates. 6.2 is not poised to make WoW new friends.

WoD may or may not actually kill WoW, but at this point I think it's impossible to argue that it's anything but the expansion that broke the image of Blizzard as a hardworking, pro-consumer, responsible company.

[bilateralrope]

[quote="Kuja"] Then there's blizzard still desperately, pathetically trying to push Ashran by putting pvp gear behind it, which the pvp community naturally hates. /quote]

I'm seeing more people angry over the fact that they have to get lucky with RNG to get the gear they want. Meaning some people will never get the gear they want, because the RNG keeps spitting out things they don't want.

As someone who doesn't play WoW, could someone tell me what makes Ashran so bad ?

[Kuja]

I'm seeing more people angry over the fact that they have to get lucky with RNG to get the gear they want. Meaning some people will never get the gear they want, because the RNG keeps spitting out things they don't want.

Trust me, it's both.

As someone who doesn't play WoW, could someone tell me what makes Ashran so bad ?

Ashran promised a lot and delivered crap.

Sorry to answer with a youtube, especially a 40-minute one, but I'm going to bed soon and I'm not a little bit drunk so I don't have the coherence to lay it all out myself right now, but this guy does a decent job.