Support NeoGAF

[hamchan]

Faster expansions and content is a good thing.

 

[Belfast]

WoW's biggest and most fundamental problem is that it has always been a game full of half-baked ideas.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

As far as I'm concerned Blizzard has done terminal damage to WoW that can never be recovered.

Ages between new raid content, ridiculous scaling of stats and health, the world is dead (because everyone does random cross server dungeons where no one talks to eachother), allowing items that remove the nature of gear progression until later levels (fuck your heirlooms, levelling is stupidly fast and easy as it is), PvP is as unbalanced as it's ever been and many more.

I don't understand why so many people still play. The game has nose dived massively since TBC.

TBC was the first nosedive. They managed a decent altitude correction at the beginning of WOTLK but by the end it was pretty clear they were running out of ideas. Cataclysm basically confirmed it when the best idea they could come up with to make instances interesting again was "let's give everyone 5 - 10 times the HP and not increase healing output to compensate".

 

[Sober]

TBC was the first nosedive. They managed a decent altitude correction at the beginning of WOTLK but by the end it was pretty clear they were running out of ideas. Cataclysm basically confirmed it when the best idea they could come up with to make instances interesting again was "let's give everyone 5 - 10 times the HP and not increase healing output to compensate".

Would've worked if they actually nerfed things like mana regen.

 

[zugzug]

Pandaren would be really cool to play as.

I think I'm going to take a break from WoW, but I'll probably come back to check out the next expansion.

And this my friends is the target audience. This type of person with this type of posting.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

TBC was the first nosedive. They managed a decent altitude correction at the beginning of WOTLK but by the end it was pretty clear they were running out of ideas. Cataclysm basically confirmed it when the best idea they could come up with to make instances interesting again was "let's give everyone 5 - 10 times the HP and not increase healing output to compensate".

Not sure what it was but Cata turned me off WoW like nothing else.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

TBC was the first nosedive. They managed a decent altitude correction at the beginning of WOTLK but by the end it was pretty clear they were running out of ideas. Cataclysm basically confirmed it when the best idea they could come up with to make instances interesting again was "let's give everyone 5 - 10 times the HP and not increase healing output to compensate".

The dumptrucks full of iLevel that pull up to the dock every raid lockout is the compensation, and the reason that increase doesn't exist at the spell level.

 

[dimb]

Um, what? Two+ years between WoW expansions is perfect.

Two years with the majority of the admittedly sparse content patches primarily being rehashed dungeons is perfect?

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

you don't understand what the real money AH accomplishes. it is meant to counteract the rampant item selling and bot spam that plagued diablo 2.

You think that will actually stop spam? Spam will be worse than ever.

 

[ampere]

And this my friends is the target audience. This type of person with this type of posting.

The expansions are still good games, whether or not they merit a continuous subscription... not for me at least.

 

[The Lamonster]

Pandaren are pretty cool but it'll take more than that to get me back into WoW after TOR. One MMO is enough for me.

dude Pandaren are a big deal. this would be huge news and easily enough to bring me back.

 

[Eljay]

TBC was the first nosedive. They managed a decent altitude correction at the beginning of WOTLK but by the end it was pretty clear they were running out of ideas. Cataclysm basically confirmed it when the best idea they could come up with to make instances interesting again was "let's give everyone 5 - 10 times the HP and not increase healing output to compensate".

I'd argue the opposite to be true. WOTLK significantly reduced the difficulty of the game's most popular content and handed players similar types of items regardless of what they were spending their time on. In Cata they tried to make up for this mistake which created the initial backlash from players who had previously been used to face rolling their way through every heroic they entered. The rapid escalation of stats to accommodate this change has also made gear progression a ridiculous numbers game that makes me miss the days long ago when something like +13 spell damage on a weapon was a huge freaking deal.

 

[Belfast]

TBC was the first nosedive. They managed a decent altitude correction at the beginning of WOTLK but by the end it was pretty clear they were running out of ideas. Cataclysm basically confirmed it when the best idea they could come up with to make instances interesting again was "let's give everyone 5 - 10 times the HP and not increase healing output to compensate".

Someone needs to make a list of the things they backpedaled on or kowtowed to the idiotic community for. The game would be much better if the development showed any kind of consistency. Every expansion, every patch almost, reversed or changed some system in the most retarded way possible.

 

[Kifimbo]

Since Blizzcon is later this year, the expansion might be revealed (or simply confirmed) tomorrow afternoon, since Activision Blizzard will announce their financial results, followed by a conference call.

 

[Sober]

I'd argue the opposite to be true. WOTLK significantly reduced the difficulty of the game's most popular content and handed players similar types of items regardless of what they were spending their time on. In Cata they tried to make up for this mistake which created the initial backlash from players who had previously been used to face rolling their way through every heroic they entered. The rapid escalation of stats to accommodate this change has also made gear progression a ridiculous numbers game that makes me miss the days long ago when something like +13 spell damage on a weapon was a huge freaking deal.

I think the only thing they really fixed by WOTLK/Cata was making classes a bit more equal. Could say I'm biased from being a pally tank through Hyjal trash, that shit was annoying. I didn't do Sunwell but I read about all the shit mages had to put up with being table and AB whores and not actually raiding. TBC was pretty bad too when certain classes/specs were useless. Mages kings of AOE? That's why Seed > anything in Hyjal right? Or ele shamans doing like a small fraction of damage on the first SSC boss when he goes into poison stance.

It's funny what Blizzard will fold to and over-nerf/buff certain classes but how long did it take for them to backpedal on keeping healer "niches" when they "fixed" tank niches and DPS class balance?

 

[MaximusNeo701]

If they keep things up at this rate they will be getting to some overtop the story stuff if they want to continue adding content to wow and pretty much dried up the pool of story for any future RTS if it ever went back to that. Warcraft had a lot of characters and loose ends more than any of their other franchises I would think. But they are going to run it into the ground when they do all this. I mean I would play another WC rts reguardless of the lore being finished but that really kills off for a lot of people.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

I'd argue the opposite to be true. WOTLK significantly reduced the difficulty of the game's most popular content and handed players similar types of items regardless of what they were spending their time on. In Cata they tried to make up for this mistake which created the initial backlash from players who had previously been used to face rolling their way through every heroic they entered. The rapid escalation of stats to accommodate this change has also made gear progression a ridiculous numbers game that makes me miss the days long ago when something like +13 spell damage on a weapon was a huge freaking deal.

When your game dungeons are based around the Random Dungeon finder making heroics that can't be completed because you got a certain set of people is not good.

As someone who was looking to play more casually I thought Ulduar and Icecrown difficulty was fine. But even with all that, even the other Cata changes, I didn't find the game as much fun as I used to. Sure I had taken some breaks before but it was mostly when people were waiting for the next expansion.

I think part of it was the gear and class changes in Cata made playing my Rogue less fun than it used to be.

Of course then they announce that 3.1 will not be a new raid but redone old dungeons because the rate of success in clearing the Cata raids has been below their expectations...that itself tells you they gone fucked up.

I lost interesting in Cata raiding pretty much the day my guild started and let my sub lapse, could you explain what you mean by this a bit? As someone who raided on a holy/disc priest through WOTLK I found 5-mans and early raid content in Cata horribly lopsided as far as damage and healing throughput was concerned.

That was a problem. You need a healer on top of their game early heroics or someone who was exceptionally geared.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

The dumptrucks full of iLevel that pull up to the dock every raid lockout is the compensation, and the reason that increase doesn't exist at the spell level.

I lost interesting in Cata raiding pretty much the day my guild started and let my sub lapse, could you explain what you mean by this a bit? As someone who raided on a holy/disc priest through WOTLK I found 5-mans and early raid content in Cata horribly lopsided as far as damage and healing throughput was concerned.

I'd argue the opposite to be true. WOTLK significantly reduced the difficulty of the game's most popular content and handed players similar types of items regardless of what they were spending their time on. In Cata they tried to make up for this mistake which created the initial backlash from players who had previously been used to face rolling their way through every heroic they entered. The rapid escalation of stats to accommodate this change has also made gear progression a ridiculous numbers game that makes me miss the days long ago when something like +13 spell damage on a weapon was a huge freaking deal.

I'd argue that what they actually did in Cata was go back to strictly enforced gear progression but made it possible for anyone to be a part of it. I've been raiding since MC and I must admit that the first day of being level 85 felt very similar to the first day of being level 60 but without the sense of wonderment.

 

[Bento]

Sounds like this could be Rise of the Godslayer for WoW. Asian themed environments and all that stuff, could be fun and hopefully comes with some colorful locations (and of course Pandas! PANDAS!).

 

[sykoex]

What's the deal with the Emerald Dream anyway? I've seen those hidden Emerald Dream environments exploiters/dataminers have found that looks all crazy psychedelic and awesome, but then there are a bunch of times in the game where there's a quest where you "enter" the Emerald Dream and it's the same exact environment you're already in, but with green fog everywhere.

 

[pieatorium]

They do intend to release expansion packs faster, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the next one in Spring/Summer.


Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/268...1-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=qanda

They've been saying that since before BC I remeber back then a comment about futre expansions moving up to 18 month cycle rather than 2 years.

 

[Finaika]

Cool. I hope Blizzard will release an expansion for WoW every year.

 

[Eljay]

I think the only thing they really fixed by WOTLK/Cata was making classes a bit more equal. Could say I'm biased from being a pally tank through Hyjal trash, that shit was annoying. I didn't do Sunwell but I read about all the shit mages had to put up with being table and AB whores and not actually raiding. TBC was pretty bad too when certain classes/specs were useless. Mages kings of AOE? That's why Seed > anything in Hyjal right? Or ele shamans doing like a small fraction of damage on the first SSC boss when he goes into poison stance.

Sunwell was pretty much the shining example of how unbalanced the classes were in TBC: Druids tank Brutallus because of ridiculous dodge, bring six shaman because Chain Heal is unbeatable, make the mages log on only to provide food & water.

I'd argue that what they actually did in Cata was go back to strictly enforced gear progression but made it possible for anyone to be a part of it. I've been raiding since MC and I must admit that the first day of being level 85 felt very similar to the first day of being level 60 but without the sense of wonderment.

You summed it up perfectly. I also had been playing since the earliest days and when I hit 85 I suddenly realized that I was back to square one. I had no interest in doing something I already went through four years prior, the magic was gone, and I promptly walked away from the world that had dominated my gaming time for years.

 

[bengraven]

Um...Pandaren are cool and all, but an entire expansion based on them?

 

[Sober]

Um...Pandaren are cool and all, but an entire expansion based on them?

"Blizzard favours [faction that Pandaren are on]!"

 

[jim-jam bongs]

That was a problem. You need a healer on top of their game early heroics or someone who was exceptionally geared.

Yeah, and I was never a slouch as a healer either. I took the time to learn every tool in my kit, which was the reason that I preferred to play my priest over my druid; more and better tools for more situations. When they revamped talents and added Chakra I was really excited for Cataclysm because of the synergistic healing style it promoted which allowed Holy to escape from being a Prayer of Mending/Empowered-Renew bot.

Flash forward to level 85, in decent crafted gear because my guild loves to twink my priest, and I'm sitting up the back casting ProM on cooldown and spamming Heal to try to keep with the damage people are taking without totally burning through my mana. Sort of killed it for me.

You summed it up perfectly. I also had been playing since the earliest days and when I hit 85 I suddenly realized that I was back to square one. I had no interest in doing something I already went through four years prior, the magic was gone, and I promptly walked away from the world that had dominated my gaming time for years.

sad-fistbump.jpg

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

I lost interesting in Cata raiding pretty much the day my guild started and let my sub lapse, could you explain what you mean by this a bit? As someone who raided on a holy/disc priest through WOTLK I found 5-mans and early raids in Cata horribly lopsided as far as damage and healing throughput was concerned.



I'd argue that what they actually did in Cata was go back to strictly enforced gear progression but made it possible for anyone to be a part of it. I've been raiding since MC and I must admit that the first day of being level 85 felt very similar to the first day of being level 60 but without the sense of wonderment.

DPS numbers can skyrocket as it's very easy to fix by just increasing boss health (note they wouldn't reinstate natural resource management being a hinderance). Tank numbers skyrocket, it's more complicated: HP and mitigation pools can be dealt with easily by harder hitting enemies, but avoidance gets the "Sunwell Radiance" or "Chill of the Throne" treatment to avoid having that leading to tanks' health staying at 90%+ but occasionally plummeting to critical whenever a hit lands, neccessitating spamming of heals non-stop.

Healing is different. We can't have only super-high regen, or we can spam heals, and our functionality heals without pause. We can't have super-high thruput, as then we can rest our casting (thus increasing regen pass-actively) and again, use spells with high functionality with abandon. If spells have an overabundance of neat functionality tricks to them, we wouldn't need regen or bigger heals as much. The huge leaps in iLevel ain't stopping any time soon, so voila.

@second paragraph: There's "The Wall" I keep mentioning. We're not spoiled by Wrath, but alot were and it thru them for a loop.

Sunwell was pretty much the shining example of how unbalanced the classes were in TBC: Druids tank Brutallus because of ridiculous dodge, bring six shaman because Chain Heal is unbeatable, make the mages log on only to provide food & water.

Later HMs did this too, it's natural that bleeding-edge opponents will exacerbate discrepancies in balance.

Spoiler

Two warrior tanks for Brut, 3 resto shammies, 3 mages in the raid at one time for our guild, but I don't doubt we woulda downed bosses faster if we had another shammie, our bear hadn't quit in T6, and two of the mages were Destrolocks

 

[sykoex]

"Blizzard favours [faction that Pandaren are on]!"

Evil dark Pandaren for Horde, heroic noble Pandaren for Alliance.

 

[Belfast]

I played a Rogue. My class has been ignored since they tossed us Fan of Knives as a peace offering.

 

[ToyMachine228]

I don't think Pandarens will be playable at all. They'll be neutral. They'll be hosts of the main city, NPC's etc. But not playable. And it doesn't surprise me that Blizzard chose to go this route since Cataclysm has been steadily losing players. For the first time in WoW's history, things are declining. And they're busting out the Pandarens to try to bring players back.

 

[Sober]

I played a Rogue. My class has been ignored since they tossed us Fan of Knives as a peace offering.

Is that better, or worse than your class changing every single patch? (Pallies)

 

[jim-jam bongs]

DPS numbers can skyrocket as it's very easy to fix by just increasing boss health (note they wouldn't reinstate natural resource management being a hinderance). Tank numbers skyrocket, it's more complicated: HP and mitigation pools can be dealt with easily by harder hitting enemies, but avoidance gets the "Sunwell Radiance" or "Chill of the Throne" treatment to avoid having that leading to tanks' health staying at 90%+ but occasionally plummeting to critical whenever a hit lands, neccessitating spamming of heals non-stop.

Healing is different. We can't have only super-high regen, or we can spam heals, and our functionality heals without pause. We can't have super-high thruput, as then we can rest our casting (thus increasing regen pass-actively) and again, use spells with high functionality with abandon. If spells have an overabundance of neat functionality tricks to them, we wouldn't need regen or bigger heals as much. The huge leaps in iLevel ain't stopping any time soon, so voila.

@second paragraph: There's "The Wall" I keep mentioning. We're not spoiled by Wrath, but alot were and it thru them for a loop.

That's actually a really good explanation of the overall paradigm shift, cheers. I don't disagree that the general idea makes sense, but I think that they did a really poor job of balancing it out against NPC DPS in the early Cataclysm end-game. I'm sure they've dealt with the imbalances by now (I haven't logged for at least 6 months) but I'm just not interested enough to go back.

Edit: and yeah, "The Wall". I was in Naxx literally 30 seconds after I dinged 80.

 

[Finaika]

I played a Rogue. My class has been ignored since they tossed us Fan of Knives as a peace offering.

Combat Readiness is awesome.

 

[Belfast]

Combat Readiness is awesome.

It's better than last expansion's solution (HfB) by miles, but it doesn't *really* add any new dynamics to the way that the Rogue plays.

 

[ajf009]

it just feels like Blizzard is becoming more like Activision every single day.

The are owned by activision are they not?

 

[carbonbased]

You think that will actually stop spam? Spam will be worse than ever.

yes i do. everyone and their mother will be able to sell items, thereby driving down prices across the board and obsoleting 3rd party websites due to time and hosting costs.

 

[pieatorium]

The are owned by activision are they not?

Blizzards parent company bought Activision to make the merger, it's a little confusing how it all works.

 

[Nirolak]

Blizzards parent company bought Activision to make the merger, it's a little confusing how it all works.

Yeah, Vivendi is the controlling partner in the merger, but Bobby Kotick was put in charge of the merged gaming division of the company.

He's the boss of both Michael Morhaime (Blizzard's President) and Eric Hirshberg (Activision's President).

 

[Duki]

why are you guys surprised that youre getting bored of the game if youve been playing it for years and years

the actual gameplay hasnt changed much really

even with new storylines and content the same game is going to get boring for you eventually

btw pandas horde only or bust ty

 

[Baraka in the White House]

Well, looks like they'll be shelving Diablo 3 again for another year or two.

 

[Acerac]

Oh yeah, The RotFL logo doesnt have a TM so guess not.

Oh god the last major content patch was named rotfl wasn't it? Hadn't put that one together.

I suppose that is appropriate given how quickly they release content these days. I wonder how many more raids are coming before this new expansion hits. Likely less than we were promised before the expansion hit. We still haven't gotten all the raids we were supposed to have at launch.

I'm amazed that a company can get so much money and produce so little content with such bad customer service.

*Shrug*

Oh well. The shittiness of their company has led me to learn about Valve and TF2 so I suppose it is for the best.

 

[JWong]

Warcraft 3 expansion.

 

[Glix]

Don't they name the patches now, even?

Couldn't it just be a patch?

 

[Oni Link 666]

2 big reasons why I don't think Pandaren will be playable

1. China is definitely not having a game which depicts Pandas in violent scenarios and China is WoW's biggest market. Blizzard has said that is the reason why Pandaren are not playable in WoW a few times already.

2. Players will flip their shit when they find out that the Pandaren are going to be part of the other faction. Same goes for Murlocs. Blizzard can't win that one no matter what they do.

 

[Tucah]

Don't they name the patches now, even?

Couldn't it just be a patch?

They name them but they don't trademark the names.

 

[Jira]

It's highly unlikely that this is real because Emerald Dream has been set in the lore for a long time now and has become more and more prevalent as of late. I'd be shocked if it wasn't ED. WoW is currently in the state EQ was before WoW's release and TOR is next in line to take the theme-park throne. Then early next year GW2 will come out and change the genre entirely making everything else irrelevant.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

The major problem with an Emerald Dream expansion is that it's more of another dimension than a geographical space.

 

[water_wendi]

The major problem with an Emerald Dream expansion is that it's more of another dimension than a geographical space.

Whats the problem with that? Make it like TBC and have portals that lead to strange lands.

 

[dimb]

It's highly unlikely that this is real because Emerald Dream has been set in the lore for a long time now and has become more and more prevalent as of late. I'd be shocked if it wasn't ED. WoW is currently in the state EQ was before WoW's release and TOR is next in line to take the theme-park throne. Then early next year GW2 will come out and change the genre entirely making everything else irrelevant.

Player characters are still pretty weak to go to the Emerald Dream, from a lore perspective.

 

[Cipherr]

WoW's problem is that it cant ever be 'new' again. Its old. Its not terrible, its just old. It has a formula, and they cant deviate that far from it without uprooting the whole game, and at that point why not just make a new game.

Its time for D3, it will at least be new, will be a good time. Toss in StarWars, Planetside 2 and possibly Titan if its worth a shit and the next few years are looking pretty good for Multiplayer Online games of pretty much all sub genres.

Oh shit and Guild Wars 2. Forgot about that one.

WoW is currently in the state EQ was before WoW's

Sweet Jesus man, keep it together now, don't get crazy. WoW right now has more subscribers (tenfold even) than EQ had at its peak AFAIK. To try and equate the two, especially using EQ's status right as WoW's release is crazy.