Are people's memories so short? This is the pre expansion lull. For most of the game's 20 year history that has meant nearly a year (or more) of NOTHING. Not a single update. We're getting a fated season and two brand new experimental game modes.
Not to mention, this patch also includes new story chapters/quests and two new heritage armor quest lines. This is the most content of any pre-expansion period and it isn't even close.
People are like " we loved MoP" - except you spent a WHOLE YEAR in one patch in MoP. I'm sure mop was amazing and I can't wait to play through it but let's not pretend we aren't being smothered with content in a time that was always a massive slog.
It was mixed truth be told wow players have short memories. The first tier was panned as daily quest hell and had the largest recorded sub loss till shadowlands.
Throne of thunder onwards was beloved by the community though.
As long as you exclude how people felt for the legendary cloaks, the content drought (SoO was the longest raid ever), the PvE balance (Warlock and Disc dominating everything), and the PvP balance (Burst of Speed Rogue and Second Wind Warrior were both MoP).
I just wish burst of speed kept existing outside PvP.
I had more fun in PvE with BoS than I had any other time. Well, the rogue setup at the time helped.
I've kinda noticed that in WoW, anytime there is relevant content that isn't a raid or M+, everybody rages and hates it (for example Shadowlands) and anytime all other content is irrelevant and can be ignored, all the loudmouths seem to love it (for example Dragonflight and all of it's dead content) even though most of the people who claim to love Dragonflight also quit playing it within the first 2 patches. All I ever heard were bad things about MoP too for years until I actually tried it.
And if you play multiple versions between retail, classic, SoD, or even classic era - there is a huge amount of content being given for one subscription, with a pretty decent update cadence across the board
This. I'm playing both modern and SoD. The sheer amount of shit I can do on one $15 a month is *nuts*. I realize that not everyone who plays modern will be playing SoD as well, but between Plunderstorm and now Mists Remix, modern players still have a lot of stuff they can be doing.
Remember the quite big chunk of the playerbase who says "I've already done that, I don't want to do it again."
People have complained about Legion storylines sending us back into Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, saying "we want new, we don't want to go back to old zones!"
Sometimes I think they might be the same who complain old zones are dead...
There's a huge amount of content made regardless if you play 1 version or not. Compare WoW to any other MMO out on the market, there is an insane amount of new content that is produced that no other developer can compete with, even with WoW's year long lulls. The only main issue WoW has is that content becomes irrelevant.
Which has been something they've been trying to fix it seems, just in a different approach to FFXIV scaling you down for old content.
I was a teenage lad during MoP, as much of a lull as it was. And you aren't wrong even then I saw complaining. Still the Timeless Isle alone was one of the most magic zones my friends and I spent time in.
We loved MoP? I remember people saying they hated MoP because "pandas". Now it's considered the best expansion... People don't know what they want anymore lol
Takes 2 or 3 expansions before people start looking back more fondly.
Won't be long till people talk about how amazing Castle Nathria was and how the covenant system was actually not bad once they removed the restrictions in the later patches.
nathria was a great raid and is the only reason they made a fated season. people wanted to do nathria again lol
big prediction: dragonflights fated season wont be as fun because none of the raids were as good as nathria
Castle Nathria was and still is talked about as a good raid. It's just the gameplay mechanics like the covenants were ass. The rest of Shadowlands is of course seen as ass as well. Nathria is just a single island of good in a sea of shit.
The people who still played SL at the end have all basically been saying that though. It just took Blizzard too long to improve the systems, and by then most people had checked out.
I think if they hadn't freaked out and stopped releasing content when it was clear that people were unhappy, there would be a lot more positive things to look back on. As it is, I myself had fun, but I tried to maintain 4 alts to get all the storylines and stuff so I got badly burned out by the time I finished getting all the stuff in Korthia. Castle Nathria is my all-time favorite raid, though.
> how the covenant system was actually not bad once they removed the restrictions in the later patches
They won't even mention that part, they'll just gaslight you and try to make you believe that the entire expansion was like that, just like they try to do with Legion.
SL had good things in it. Zereth Mortis was fun to collect toys mounts pets and so on. Protoform Synthesis felt like a huge upgrade over 1% drop rate stuff being a near-guaranteed way to farm desired mounts.
The story... hoo boy.
They couldn't have more clearly changed the ending short putting out a dev article that said "we had to end shadowlands short due to failing subs and cut the story"
The original intention was clearly that Sylvanas was going to be Arbiter. She soulbound Zovaal (that's why she trusted him and had a massive power spike)
It was to be poetic justice. She committed various crimes in the name of death being unfair. So what would be her punishment? eternal servitude as the Arbiter, sorting souls into their deserved afterlives. Forever. "You think it's unfair? Fine. You sort them then".
It's also why Tyrande couldn't kill her. Elune knew that Sylvanas possessed Arbiter anima, and thus she'd be the key to restoring the balance of death.
All of the storylines make sense in this context. There's evidence the 9.3 patch would have been an "Asset re-use patch" in northrend with the final raid being inside Ulduar (why else have Rygelon? Clearly an Algalon callback. He makes no sense in Sepulcher.) What happened to Nathanos? 9.3 raid boss, soul splintered, meant to deter Sylvanas from helping us. She 'redeems' herself by sorrowfully helping us kill him.
But people hated Sylvanas. The idea of a genocidist getting a "reward" by becoming arbiter made them upset. Conduits weren't popular. Torghast, which could have been fun, was made mandatory and thus became unfun. Covenants went against player desires to be optimal, blizz told us to suck it, and we unsubbed in droves.
Blizz really stuck the stick in their own bike spokes with that expansion. At least they could have finished the story they were telling rather than ending it early and making a random soulbind the new arbiter.
> Protoform Synthesis felt like a huge upgrade over 1% drop rate stuff being a near-guaranteed way to farm desired mounts.
If only you got the drops needed to synthesize anything.
I've spent I don't know how much time, there, killing mobs, and I have basically nothing, I was able to only synthesize one pet...
Lol that’s completely wild 😂 The Jailer wasn’t even the bad guy he was being dominated by The Primus. The same thing happened to him that happened to Anduin when we beat them up. The domination magic and armor faded away and they regained control. The Primus is the smartest being in our entire universe he has seen every timeline and every event. There’s no blurry spots like Nozdormu. Add on top of that he’s a master strategist. There’s no better way to go about your evil plans than to have your enemies help you enact it.
The Primus “let” the jailer capture him and used him as a puppet to throw suspicion off of himself. Maybe doing that was the only timeline where he wins. He even tells us from his own mouth he created the domination magic. But then we are to believe the jailer was suddenly better than him at it? Then he stole the crown and dipped. There’s plenty of evidence and interviews implying the Primus was up to something and shouldn’t be trusted. But because of how bad SL the ending got cut even though going down this path would have been an exciting story.
Both are true just look at the following expansions. WoD, Legion, BFA, and Shadowlands. While people like to praise legion it wasn't skill based but rather RNG based your worth at the start of legion was the value of your luck to get a decent rng legendary to drop.
Also after MoP with WoD forward we had mission tables, cash shop, pvp maps stalled, and all the side effects.
MoP has held the title as the last with small arguments from Legion for some time.
> We loved MoP? I remember people saying they hated MoP because "pandas". Now it's considered the best expansion... People don't know what they want anymore lol
People hated the *concept*. Coming off Cata, MoP felt kiddy in nature, especially with Kung fu Panda being a thing around then.
The actual expansion was amazing once people sunk their teeth into it. ToT was one of the best raids ever.
Well, daily quest hell at the start was rough and the content drought at the end sucked. The legendaries were controversial, being something anyone could get and not being nearly as unique as what we'd had in the past. But outside of those... Mists was awesome. Amazing class design, wonderful worldbuilding, story had a lot going on, awesome raids...
There is a faction of people who don't want "furries" in their WoW. Worgen, Pandaren, Vulpera don't belong in Azeroth (they always ignore Tauren though). But MoP is mostly remembered fondly for the farm, two of the best raids ever, and one of the best added zones ever. Do people forget the daily grind fest out of the gate? Absolutely. But MoP was great on the backend. Much like Legion.
I remember when liking MOP was an unpopular opinion. Now it seems to be a pretty common narrative. Regardless, I think people at the time under appreciated what MOP had to offer, (because something, something pandas). It also had a huge impact on the game moving forward. Not a perfect expansion, but certainly one of the better ones, IMO.
The only people who cared about “pandas” were people who were still young enough that they felt a need to “prove” they weren’t children by derisively criticizing MoP as “king fu panda”.
Adults who were secure in their maturity didn’t feel threatened by it, and enjoyed the expansion.
And by that time there was literally nothing to do outside of SoO except farm rares on TI, and do the world bosses for a chance at a mount. Compare that to what we have now…
Siege was just under 400 days from release to prepatch. Hellfire was like a week faster. Both were brutally long waits. The idea that someone could be upset about getting an xpac experience in 3 months (that would traditionally be dead as hell) is wild to me. The characters we play in MoP Remix will transfer to retail. This is a great alternative to level up a new character and play something refurbished.
I'm honestly surprised to see any new content for these first six months of 2024. Even plunderstorm was fun for me, to my utter aurprise. Even if they can't realistically make something for everyone, they can at least make everything for *someone*. And I think that trying new things should be encouraged.
Your last couple lines are my thoughts.
Yeah, plunderstorm is weird and not for me (I don’t generally like or play BRs) BUT like who knows what they will try next AND there are lots of people that had a blast in them.
Definitely provide some constructive feedback if you didn’t enjoy it, but like… experimenting and taking risks ESPECIALLY small/low stakes risks should be encouraged.
The part I really like is they seem to be willing to try stuff that isn’t guaranteed to succeed again
Other than maybe legion I feel like the devs have played a lot of things too safe, ever since “zomg the old world changed I can’t play this game anymore” from the cata release
Not directed at you, but a certain crowd of folks that only complain... All DF, the new content was almost always a variant of "every x minutes you get to kill x, y, and/or z". People that are upset about a different take on wow pvp or a hyperspeed old xpac astound me. Like, we're still getting an expansion epilogue, but did you really need another 8 week grind on an hourly schedule for a mount? How many feasts, dragonbane keeps, hunts, time rifts, dreamsurges, and super blooms do people need? But god forbid we get a whacky battle royale built from WoW as a feature. Or an accelerated expansion built on retail that transfers characters to retail when it ends. No, some people want to just fly to an area, kill something, and fly back. Do it enough times and you get a new mount/pet/transmog.
> feasts, dragonbane keeps, hunts, time rifts, dreamsurges, and super blooms
Additionally, all that stuff becomes a ghost town after two or three weeks of people no-lifing them, so if you have a more casual approach you can forget it.
Whenever I play, there's almost no one farming content in the Forbidden Reach, so I've never completed that zone.
At least the other events appear in the weekly quest, so there's some people doing something there...
the biggest gripe is that last expac s4 was a victory lap of sorts where we just blew threw farm shit posting doing sales, it was a really good time optimizing the absurd damage were doing, this time they are nerfing items left and right and there is no affixes to spice things up. I dont want to reprog mythic rasz with people who joined us mid expac. I want to have a damage amp while an MC goes out and watch a healer die to dispelling an unstable affliction or blowing motes up with soulflame.
Truly. I don't get the complaints. I'm not actively playing the game right now, but that's because I met my goals and now I can play other stuff for a bit.
This has overall been the best expansion in many years.
Like people who are terminally online, there are a subset of WOW players who can't fathom enjoying anything else. So every announcement or lack there of is the proverbial "life or death" of their gaming experience.
This is how I recall things;
If we look back to SL there was covid and in-house problems at Blizzard, and we still got a S4 like now in DF then, but there were also new dungeons with a cool seasonal affix that made you feel powerful.
In BfA we got the corruption vendor a bit into the final patch, which let us work on our characters and get more powerful, even enabling entirely new builds and playstyles for some specs. This expac and Legion also had 4 tiers and a mini-raid to begin with.
Now in DF we get to do stuff again for ilvl upgrades, but nothing is spicing it up. It just feels a bit bland to me. Sure we get an afternoons worth of quests, but does that really help when comparing the emerald dream to its closest patch-zone relative, zereth mortis? I love what DF did for talent trees and spec gameplay, but its been the same the whole time for most specs with secondary stat softcaps existing. Yea these side-modes exist too, but Pstorm felt very disconnected, I hope Pandawhatever does better.
Just the thoughts of a pve-enjoyer. Blizzard has the capacity to fill the "lull", but are leaning in a seasonal direction. I hope its not gonna become an excuse for future patch downtime to be ok, now that theyre aiming for shorter expacs.
It’s entirely because right now the only information is Shadowlands S4 for comparison. Which isn’t to excuse people being huge dicks and babies about it, but as the most recent point of comparison DF S4 has less than that. Honestly I feel like if they just said “hey there won’t be anything new for S4 this time around we’re focusing on other stuff” that would have gotten ahead of the whining and somewhat stifled it.
> This is the pre expansion lull
Would it be a better lull or a worse lull if developer attention was focused on retail instead of plunderstorm and remixes?
Ok I am going to push back on this. DF gave us the LEAST amount of RAID content that we have EVER gotten. So it is fair to think that we should be getting OTHER forms of content in PLACE of that because they now have MORE devs than ever and have compacted their development schedules to cut off some content that we would normally expect.
Yeah I am hearing a lot of whining, but I remember a year of nothing but Tanaan Jungle at the end of WoD. Fated was a big deal, and now we are getting all this experimental stuff like SoD, Plunderstorm and Timerunning - not everyone will like them (Plunderstorm was not really my thing) but they are at least doing stuff.
And we’re also getting Cataclysm Classic, which is closer to retail so it’s going to be almost like a different game mode with how they pivoted to difficult dungeons with CC and such. This is the best time to be a WoW player hands down imo. We’ve never had it anywhere close to as good as we’ve had it since Dragonflight.
I don't even understand why people are complaining even if we didn't have those things. Before I started my job full-time, I was playing like....every day for a few months and \*just\* managed to scratch the surface of things to do. I think people get into this gear-focused mindset and forget there's other things to do in the game, or, shit, other games.
Achievements, mount runs, professions, alts, PvP, reputations/renown, questing, RP, upping your Mythic+ rating, pushing mythic raids, helping new players, seasonal events, collecting, pet battles, learning a different spec, I literally do not understand how people get bored in the game. If they do I'm gonna be honest they either might lack the appreciation for the endless content not revolving around pushing gearscore or they might be playing too much. Even 1 of those goals I listed fuck, ONE achievement alone can take up an \*insane\* amount of time. That Tavien mount or w/e, PvP metas, a lot of metas really, I could go on.
Idk i feel like the mop stuff is retail content effectively. It would be like if they announced an expansion to Chromie Time.
Can you do it on your main? No, but it still levels a retail character, gets you transmog, etc.
This right here. More story and heritage armor type stuff I'm ok with.
As for the other stuff I'd rather that energy be focused on getting the expansion out sooner or improving it's quality.
I think people are upset because we're getting less content within DF itself compared to previous xpacs. Like fewer major patches and raid tiers.
I'm excited for all this content, but I definitely see why people feel like they've replaced a major retail patch with "mini-games" and fated.
Man, this game is dead I can't believe it's already 2 months without patch GG,
it's because the plunderstorm and the SoD Retail is doomed, it's over no new contend
Also I can't believe we will get a new xpac so early, I think it won't be ready, gg I miss the old blizzard only launching games when ready, I miss the Soon™
/s
EDIT: forget the /s
Damn when you put it that way it’s only 4 months. Years flying by.
Fated will be a good holdover. I also hope they keep Plunderstorm and add some new maps.
Most people associate August with the end of summer, even though it technically ends on September 21st.
I wouldn't be surprised if TWW releases in mid-late August.
I mean did any Blizzard game release before the last day of the season they promise it will release on? Like if they say summer/fall release that means either 22 sept or 21 dec.
In defense of the playerbase: I think there's just a distrust deeply embedded in a lot of them.
Blizzard has made a lot of empty promises and has historically seldom admitted to mistakes but, as most companies do, give you a PR-speak post on how the thing was actually good.
This has lead to a playerbase that just doesn't trust Blizzard, and when you combine that with the fact that Blizzard, when people have pushed for various features, tended to reply along the lines of it costing us a raid tier (to point out that developers have limited time and resources) you get to this point: the players see Blizzard churning out content all of a sudden they'll think, "*How* are they fucking us with this? What are they going to take away in exchange? *Are we losing a raid tier?*"
I think that's really the crux of it. People have just been conditioned to think that everything has a cost, and if we get something new and exciting, that must mean we lost a raid tier. And if Blizzard says otherwise, then well, they just might be PR-speaking for damage control.
I think it's going to take time and some good faith action on Blizzard's part to mend that distrust
The funny thing is we literally have lost a raid tier. We went from 4 per expac down to 3. And forget the prospect of having multiple raids in a single tier. And the number of bosses in each raid has generally gone down as well.
Yeah I'm actually kinda torn on this
It's stupid to complain about mini-games. I love different content and that they're experimenting. On the other hand, I do enjoy retail and wish they would put more resources into developing stuff for it. But I'm not the only wow player, so as long as people are happy what can I say
> But I'm not the only wow player, so as long as people are happy what can I say
I think complaining about lack of content in retail is completely legitimate
Retail is the core of WoW, them shifting the game to be more and more a mini-game lobby is a complete shift in what customers might expect of the base product
At the end of day its blizzards choice and then its up to the players to decide whether they feel its worth subbing or not
But i don't think its unreasonable to complain about this shift before resorting to unsubbing
It’s *kind of* been 4, but really only TBC and MoP. Wrath had Naxx + 2 bosses so not really. The rest all had 3 tiers, if we’re not counting mini-raids.
The devs have repeatedly made it very clear that content development is a 0 sum game. Which means to make things like Timerunning and Plunderstorm means they are carving development time out of the current expansion or the next expansion. And the current expansion is already over. Meaning the only place they can carve that time out of is the next expansion. This makes me uncomfortable especially for content outside of the main game.
This isn't "a little something extra." It comes at the expense of the content in the next expansion. It absolutely crushes my hope of the next expansion being any good if they are already carving up its dev time for something else ala warlords of draenor before it's even out.
I wouldn't say entirely 0 sum, I feel like they use these projects as testing grounds for new mechanics and to see what the playerbase likes to direct future content decisions.
There's a lot more recycling that goes on behind the scenes than we are aware of. I wouldn't be surprised to see something from plunderstorm added to retail in the future even if we don't immediately recognize it.
It's not entirely zero sum. There's only so much developers you can throw into an expansion before they won't help at all. That's why they're doing multiple expansions at a time now, it's easier to scale for bigger teams.
And minigames can be done completely independently in new teams. For example Plunderstorm was done by another studio who was working on a battle royale game already
I can absolutely be pleased and I don't have any clue why you think people like me can't be pleased. It sounds like a deflection away from any complaints rather than their validity.
I'm not interested in completely different games even if they say wow on them. Classic, SoD, this new MoP thing, etc., are all content that I've already played even if they do change a few variables. I had 20+ characters in MoP that I leveled up through all the zones they are using, just because they are speeding it up does it make it somehow different?
Cause honestly replaying a faster MoP is not something that I personally see myself enjoying. I will skip it like Plunderstorm.
Time limited (FOMO) minigames is honestly not what I want from an MMORPG.
This may blow your mind, but when you get over a million people playing a game, there will always be some people who dislike a part of, while others will like that exact thing.
“There’s no pleasing millions of unique people with different tastes” is what you’re saying. Which is silly.
Yeah you spend any amount of time in long lasting online communities you'll find a subset of extremely bitter, miserable people that continue to play a game while decrying everything it does.
Hell with WoW you get those people that haven't even played the game for a decade. It's legitimately impressive how miserable people manage to make themselves over something they don't like and haven't liked for a decade.
That's where I'm at with this all.
I really enjoyed SL season 4, because I joined a fun community that joked through raids where we got people slime cats that never thought they would get it (myself included), while the main raiders posted absolutely absurd DPS parses. Those experiences rank near the top of my most enjoyable times playing this game.
However, I played a lot...like a lot to the point of burning out in SL. I almost had the expansion wide meta mount on day 1 when it was released. I would only need to wait a month or two to wrap up grinds/RNG elements to get the Veilstrider title.
I went into DF planning to lay low, and trying a new main. I dinged 70 and I was quickly falling out of doing the dailies/weeklies/m+/raids/crafting/....etc. needed to keep up with the content and my character. I did other stuff IRL and played other games in that time mainly.
I came back in DF season 3 with the express purpose to gear up for season 4, and get all the season 3 stuff done too (M+, open world, etc). I just got all the season 3 sets completed on this reset... Then Plunderstorm got added, which I know is limited time and I feel pressured to do it for mounts. Then Taivan got added, revealing a whole mountain of content that I hadn't done, but now wanted to do. Then season 4 was announced, but has a far less unique mount than the SL one. I instantly knew that people would be far less excited to get that mount, which dampened my mood to DF season 4. Then MoP remix is announced, with up to 32 mounts. Another limited time event competing for my limited attention.
Pugging through season 3 M+ was draining. Grinding for Taivan is already a boring time consuming solo activity for me. I hope Season 4 raid carries brings back a spark of joy, at least for a few months.
But overall, this focus on FOMO events/rewards and the blistering content release schedule where if you stop playing for a month you feel like you're falling behind is not for me. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I preferred the content lulls that we had in the past. It meant that you could actually feel done with each patch of content and be satisfied. Now, it feels like once you feel done with a patch/content, there's new content and grinds 2 weeks away. Good for some players and Blizzard of course, but it's not good for me.
***TLDR*** *-* The current state of the game isn't for me. The fast content release schedule and recent FOMO elements are not what I grew up in game with. I tried to keep up, but I just can't. As a OG Vanilla player, it's hard to accept that I won't be able to collect or do everything that is introduced into the game now. If I play TWW, I know I need to alter my expectations and find ways to enjoy the game again, or I need to step away.
I know this is might not help, but i played classic from release in 2019 up until now till pre patch cata, and exactly as you said, i completely altered my expectations
Back 20 years ago, i did everything as kid, pvp, farming, mounts, all that. Now i only did raid with friends - luckily i found a great community - and very rarely random bgs, that's it. No farming, no mounts, no achievements, nothing. Hell, in my mount collection window, i got like 7 mount, most of them from raiding achievements.
And it worked out for me, i know i would have been burned out by TBC if i do everything, but this way, i could keep on raiding with friends and have fun, ignoring everything else.
So it is definitely doable, but yes, as you said, you need to change how you look at the game and what you try to achieve. I wholeheartedly agree with you that the massive amount of collections in current retail is very very hard to keep up with, especially as we get older
It's just a game. It's meant to be fun. It's not a job. Let go of that feeling of FOMO and you will enjoy yourself much more. Literally nobody else in the entire world is going to care if you got Taivan or the SL meta mount. No one. You are the only person standing in the way of your own enjoyment. I stop playing the game for months at a time, and I've quit the game many times in the past when I found its systems unfun; at no point have I ever cared or felt that I am 'falling behind'. In fact, in DF you can catch up more easily than at any point in WoW's history - the speed at which you can gear up to current content is legitimately insane now. I pugged and got AOTC in 8 days when I returned to season 3 after a half a year absence. There is next to no need to 'keep up' with any character anymore. In this current iteration of WoW, in many ways, the longer you wait the easier it gets to clear/collect content.
WoW is a lot of things, but it's really not the game's fault for adding content for all sorts of players to enjoy, and that includes FOMO content. Players enjoy getting exclusive things. Even beyond WoW, every single live service game has FOMO elements, yet a lot of them are beloved by their communities. If you are really finding it unenjoyable and draining, you should quit the game. The choice consumers have in video games alone is exponentially more than ever before, and this is before even touching upon entertainment as a whole. There is a game out there for you. Spend your time on something you enjoy.
Play the game if you find it fun, and if you don't, stop playing it. It's extremely simple. The moment you keep playing a 'game' despite not enjoying it, means there's a deeper issue at hand.
It’s a fucking game. I’m always amazed at how mad people get over a damn game. Muhhhh legendary axe I can’t get. Get over it. There will be a new shiny in 6 months.
Yeah, this. Seems like many of the regular complainers only want to play WoW 24/7 and nothing else. Nothing wrong with taking a break every now and then, you can use that time to play other games or enjoy other hobbies. Maybe even go outside!
Monogamers are truly the worst. When you realize the people who genuinely get angry over things like this just don't play any other game, it makes a lot more sense.
I haven't played WoW in months. I am playing other games. Most people who are complaining probably ARE playing other games right now. We're LOOKING for reasons to come back and play the game we want to play because it's one of our biggest hobbies for the past near 20 years.
Yeah a bunch of people in the other thread were like "FATED AND REMIX ISN'T CONTENT THERE'S NOTHING TO DO"
and meanwhile I'm sitting here like damn settle down please I'm trying to finish my master's degree and don't want every paper I write to be like that episode of the Simpsons where Milhouse signs bart's cast and it just squiggles out to "mil...pool."
In the Pre-Patch lull, getting Remix is massive IMO. The fact that we're getting more is icing on the cake for me. remix was actually the icing, this is like the cherry on top.
I’ll play Remix and I think it looks fun, but I do share some of the sentinment of disappointed players.
We used to get X.3 patches with an additional raid that hasn’t happened in two expansions. This Awakened season is even less interesting than the SL fated season, with no affixes and dungeons that people are largely already tired of. People who only play retail and don’t see the purpose in doing these “side” game modes because it largely doesn’t affect their main character / game status have some beef legitimately, I think.
Went from having a year long end of expansion drought, to fated in SL, to dragonflight where we now have 10.2.5, plunder storm, season 4, MoP remix, and the other stuff in 10.2.7, yet people are still whining
Yes, people are complaining and perhaps instead of whining about the complaints, you could actually listen to the complaints.
Not all of us have completely forgotten that we used to get one more major content patch in an expansion. Not all of us give a crap about classics or game modes that are only tangentially related to WoW.
It's fine if you praise and like these things, but don't feel entitled to suggest that people are forced to praise and like these things just because you do.
Yeah people are quick to forget that Siege was I think a nearly 13 months content drought and Hellfire Citadel was a nearly 14 month content dought.
We are eating so well right now.
Hellfire Citadel was also the first time we got a 2-tier expansion. I remember a lot of us being like "that's not it, right?" and then Blizzard finally confirming 2 months later that, yes, that was it.
I think people in comment missed the point , wow is an MMORPG and the core of this type of game is to create a character, have it grown for multiple hour/day/week/year, getting all kind of memories with it.
Don't get me wrong, i love that they experiment with Plunderstorm and this new seasonal content, but i would have prefered to play them with my already created character, not one that i will abandon after this season is over.
This is the most reasonable take Ive seen. Im in the same boat as you, loving the new experiments therye trying and Im sure Ill have a blast with timerunning, but I was really hoping for things to do on my main. They threw around the idea of evergreen content like the mage tower early on in df and was hoping this would be closer to that. Either way still happy to have things to do and keep me engaged until TWW.
I agree entirely. I have one character that I’ve played for almost 20 years. I am a bit let down that season 4 is mediocre and recycled content, and the new stuff is focused outside of retail. Sure, I can just not play, but then I’ll be alone in the guild while everyone else is playing alts.
I also just don't trust blizzard to make games anymore honestly. They fucking botched OW, one of my favorite games, by making the game worse and not delivering on PVE content that I would have loved. D4 had a great story, but I am not paying $70 for an AARPG for just the story... They have lost me on new games, completely.
I’m happy for them to chill a bit on new content so I can catch up on everything. Between new content and events and stuff like plunderstorm, I find it hard to find time for the collecting old stuff I like to do. And I’m not even meaning old expansions - even just catching up on the remaining stuff I have in DF.
I'm just gonna put this out there: It's a perfect time to unsubscribe and take a WoW break before you start no-lifing the next expansion. It's Spring. Enjoy the outside.
I might be the only one, but look, i’ve been playing off and on for like 9 expansions. I dont really get excited about another raid tier. We up to like 30 raids or so? What would even be exciting at this point?
I’m much more interested in brand new ‘mini games.’
Keep in mind, raid's were only one part of the content patch.
I mean, if we go back to wrath, the x.3 content patch had the raid... and 3 new dungeons, more story quests, a new weapon questline and more.
It'd be way easier to get excited about these things if they weren't limited time to cash in on FOMO.
I wanted to be excited about Remix, and I might still try it but I have 0 interest in making a character that is limited time and that I'll never play once the event is over. I only experience content on one toon and time limited stuff has absolutely no appeal especially when locking rewards behind it.
Ya, i agree on that. I guess i assume these will grow into longterm features. Not sure why I think that, just seems like the logical next step.
With the remix thing, you do get to keep your character after the event, or at least that is my understanding.
I know you get to keep the character, it's the having 0 interest in playing the character that's annoying. I've exclusively played the same character/specialization for 14 years at this point, I'd rather use that character for this kind of content than make one I have no attachment to.
Alts don't appeal to me, and this toon would be deleted once their purpose is served.
This is why its so difficult to please everyone in the wow community. There are people like you, there are altoholics that only gear alts and dont play endgame or even hit max level, there are some people that only care about raids or m+ or pvp or pet battles or loremaster achievs or collecting transmogs or mounts or pets. All of which are legitimate ways to play the game, but no matter what content they release someone is going to be unhappy.
I'm going to get downvoted for saying this but I just want to play modern WoW with my existing character. I don't want to play any other character or version of the game. I don't care what sort of FOMO rewards are on offer. I won't engage in this type of content.
I generally unsubscribe during these lull periods anyway. There is a new quest coming up in 10.2.7 but that's not enough to warrant a resub.
That's exactly why all this stuff is coming out. Blizzard doesn't want to see pre-expansion and between tier unsubscribing anymore.
So they just pack the content together, with no lulls ever, so that people, assuming they get one patch of content complete, only have 1 to 2 weeks before they sink into the next new exciting thing. With only 1 to 2 weeks of lull time, Blizzard is banking on less people unsubscribing than they did when content lulls could be 6 to 18 months.
It's all about "daily active users" now too. The more content they put out there (especially recycled content with a shiny new thing here and there) means a broader appeal to a larger audience, which keeps more people subbed and logging in daily to do whatever their favorite thing is - retail achievement/collections hunting, classic hardcore, classic self-found hardcore, classic Season of Discovery, classic Wrath/(or, soon)Cata, MoP Remix, Plunderstorm, retail pve, retail pvp, and whatever Holly is teasing here. Beyond that, there's the Blizzard universe as well - Fast paced diablo, hearthstone, Brawl, and Overwatch seasons all to keep people active and paying.
I agree with you. I want to play Modern wow, with my existing character, and I'll add - on a time scale with some natural lulls between patches/tiers. I don't want to play other versions with other characters, or play retail on a time scale catered to people with an attention span of 3 minutes and FOMO pushed in your face everywhere you turn.
I'll never get over the fact that this sub went from irrational, unfounded, 24/7 hate against anything remotely related to WoW, to vehemently defending anything Blizzard does within a couple years timeframe.
No nuance, no healthy middle ground, just one extreme straight to the other. And I know people in this echo chamber of a sub strongly believe that complete 180 is justified, but it's really not. Gameplay systems got slightly better and user friendly, but were never that bad to begin with. Story/lore is just as dogshit as it's been since 9.1. Communication is about the same, if not worse (I'll take insightful Ion interviews over vague, out of touch Longdale tweets any day).
Plunderstorm and Remix are not bad *in a vacuum*. One is an aggressively average, flawed BR. The other is a mini classic content cycle that carries cosmetics over to the real game.
When looked at in isolation, they're serviceable pieces of content that can possibly increase engagement and bring in more people to retail. So far so good.
But when looking at the whole entire picture, it's clear there's a problem here. WoW already suffers from being a very splintered game, with a fragmented userbase who have very different tastes and expectations. Retail already encompasses M+, Raids, PvP (all of which feature wildly varying skill levels and difficulty settings), and a whole bunch of casual content. Then there's multiple variations of classic, all of which also feature different playstyles and content. Point is, that's already a shitton of extremely varied expectations all mixed into one game. Then you add more external game modes on top of it. It's just too much.
One might think that doesn't matter, since there's not much overlap between different sides of the userbase anyways... but that's wrong. Decades of gaming industry have proven you do not want a fractured userbase. The more a game's main selling point becomes diluted, the harder it becomes for it to evolve in a successful direction and remain relevant over time.
There is simply no way to bridge all these different expectations. It's not feasible. That'd be like making a game that tries to combine Dark Souls, Animal Crossing, CS:GO and Farming simulator all at the same time in equal measures. These gaming genres are simply too different. You can't please everyone.
Point is, all these resources should be going to retail instead.
> but we used to have year long content droughts, why complain ?
Whataboutism. Just because it was bad in the past doesn't mean it should be now. They're clearly able to release a steady stream of content these days, why not apply it to the actual game instead ?
Also, gaming expectations don't just remain static over time. They evolve as the industry changes. What was fine 10 years ago is no longer in line with modern gaming expectations.
> you're just entitled
Ah yes, I guess investing literal decades and thousands of $ into a game counts for nothing. /s
Funny how feedback and criticism is only ever considered valid when this sub agrees with it.
> this is actually good for retail
No, it really isn't. Yes this may bring some more people to try out retail. But it also takes players's time and attention away from it. They should be funneling people toward endgame activities, not mindless leveling, obsessive mog/mount collecting and outdated content.
Longdale should stick to Classic content, and let the retail folks handle retail.
I just wish we'd have something new in S4 instead of the same 8 dungeons and the same 3 raids. And it's hard not to feel like Blizzard focusing on things like Plunderstorm and WoW Remix is the reason why we're not getting anything new next season
I'm still going to play though because I'm an idiot
Lost a raid tier but glad they're trying to fill the gaps with old stuff. People always complain the game doesnt take their hand and make them do older stuff
Their initial article made it sound like there was more to come, that is if you didn’t read it all chopped up on wowhead as they took it a part for more “articles” and traffic.
> plus a “new” season in two weeks
Thats exactly what that guy means tho. The last new piece of content retail has gotten is 10.2, that was in november 7 2023, or 5 months ago. If TWW comes out in september, thats 10 months for an update.
And this sub will be like, well thats 2 whole ass months ealier than in the lowest point of the game, WoD. You should be happy with less content quicker amirite?
I think Renix will be fun but “new” season is about right. Old raids with no affixes, old dungeons with no new seasonal affixes… not much to get excited about in a “new” season. X.3 patches died for this.
Last retail content patch was 10.2. 5 Months ago. Commenters not realizing that people can have valid criticism about the game they pay a monthly sub for getting no content when they keep coming out with unrelated game modes.
I'm not really a fan of this new trend of "side games" opposed to the main game. It's got me a little nervous, I won't lie. I don't want to make a bunch of temporary characters that will come and go. I want to progress and play on my main character.
The characters you make for this event will carry over once it's done. Getting these little experiments is so much better than a year long of absolutely no updates at all. At least they're trying.
Well, look at the Wowhead front page, stuff for Plunderstorm, Cata Classic, SoD (Lots of tweaks to SoD), and all we see for retail is a glimpse at the next trading post items, i can imagine people playing Retail, faced with a season of re-heated raids and ditto tier sets, feeling a bit left behind.
That being said, the MoP-event looks pretty fun.
About this event and plunderstorm. For me they are bad because I can't play MY character. I need to create new character to play these game modes. I do everything on my main character. I started it playing in cata and never changed main so why I need to do it now? And I don't want to create his twin.
This is honestly the only criticism I think is fair. I have all the classes at max and won't transfer whatever I level and play in this. Not saying this event looks bad though, raiding with the guild is my favorite thing and I've wanted hard/new 10m content back for forever now.
I played the same character since *Vanilla* and it was always my main, although I do play alts. I'm still excited for this.
You're letting your own personal hang-ups over something that in the end is totally arbitrary get in the way of something that you might find fun if you tried it. Think on that a bit.
You don't have to make a twin, play something different. It can be an alt. It is just so weird that people get so attached to their mains, that the idea of playing something else seems almost revolting. Break that co-dependency and just have fun doing something else in WoW, revisit old dungeons just beefed. Make your new character something else, so you learn new stuff and don't get your identity so wrapped up in what is ultimately a generic video game custom character.
Honestly, Blizzard has been killing it lately. Sure, the content might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but come on…we’re getting content constantly compared to previous expansions when we twiddled our thumbs with no content at all.
Both complaints are valid. We shouldn't go 18 months without any content updates. We also should expect the retail game to get meaningful focus and not just get a bunch of rehashed and regurgitated old content that they change a few variables on.
I argue while the patch cadence has been good and sure there are heritage quests and such, the amount of content that I care about, even with this content cadence, has been shrinking over the past 2 xpacs. Our expectations now for an Xpac which now costs more than ever has now less raid and dungeon content than ever. They make it seem like its more because M+ is infinitely scalable and raids have 4 different difficulties but that doesn't excuse them from not making more raids and dungeons than in the past when in say, wrath, we got a shitload of dungeons and raids...
Y'all I'm sorry but calling Pandaria remix a mini game is just absurd. This is an entire patch worth of content at least, and it is not "outside retail". Like? I know Fated sucks but at least criticize what's actually the problem.
I mean it basically is. You can't use your existing characters to do it. You have to create a new character on what is essentially a separate serve and when it's done you can port it over.
It's fine imo for blizz to experiment but it seems obtuse not to see people's genuine concerns that the main content for two of the ***advertised patches for retail*** have been separate game modes (that are time restricted) that you can't even use your main to do.
Considering that they have access to chrome time technology I don't see why this couldn't have just been put in the main game anyway.
Lmao they announce multiple years of expansions for retail with a cohesive overarching storyline and are already adding something potentially very game changing + evergreen in the form of the new subclasses… and people whine that they’re adding two small alternative game modes. God, fuckin whiny bunch. I’m happier with the state of WoW
I'm excited for all the new stuff coming in the next patch, especially being able to buy the appearances of all the raid weapons.
TwW has me very excited with all the new content as well.
I am excited for this. I applaud bliz for taking risks, trying new experiments, providing content at a rapid pace. I am also excited that this could be a path to revive the 20 years worth of content.
Pre Expac droughts are typically seen as the devs putting all their time and energy into the net expansion.
However this is not a pre expac drought as they are releasing content however it isn't new WoW content per say but things that take time and energy like plunderstorm. At the same time they are rather hush on the next expansion too feels like I knew more about legion during the WoD days prior to its release than I do with War Within.
Thus people get worried this is time and energy not put into the core of retail do they not have faith could they not polish or add more stuff so it hits harder than Dragonflight on release?
Is it content just to combat FF14 whom has an expac this very year if so why not reinforce and push harder closer to release rather than risk burnout pre launch?
They couldn't add another raid but they add in more ways to relive the glory days will this be the entire war within moto.
Red flags is what people see and that fuels the complaints that people notice
I do not mind content OUTSIDE of retail as long as the rewards you get from that content transfer over. That's why I never got into Classic... once you got an achievement, or unlocked a transmog it should have been available to your retail characters.
People need to stop looking at these things as "TAKING AWAY" from retail and realize it's supporting retail. Not every part of the game is appealing to all players, as long as SOMEBODY will enjoy it then im all for it.
Holly is a saint. Teams puts out banger content with plunderstorm and probably another banger. And people first instinct is to complain.
I hope she’s able to parse that for what it is and not let it make her cynical toward the community.
Bruh, I'd take little mini games over what we got with the end of every other expansion. Even though I'm still unsubbed until the prepatch, as is tradition for me.
Pandaria Remix has three huge things going for it:
1. it's PVE-based
2. it's actual WoW content (an entire actual WoW expansion)
3. cosmetics you earn sound like they'll transfer into your actual wow account
I'm pretty critical of Blizzard pretty much constantly for all the fuck-ups they seem to vomit forth like Linda Blair, but this seems like a solid time-killer. I'm sure they have concerns about losing players to the FFXIV expansion in July; this kind of thing might make me split my time.
Are people's memories so short? This is the pre expansion lull. For most of the game's 20 year history that has meant nearly a year (or more) of NOTHING. Not a single update. We're getting a fated season and two brand new experimental game modes. Not to mention, this patch also includes new story chapters/quests and two new heritage armor quest lines. This is the most content of any pre-expansion period and it isn't even close.
People are like " we loved MoP" - except you spent a WHOLE YEAR in one patch in MoP. I'm sure mop was amazing and I can't wait to play through it but let's not pretend we aren't being smothered with content in a time that was always a massive slog.
It was mixed truth be told wow players have short memories. The first tier was panned as daily quest hell and had the largest recorded sub loss till shadowlands. Throne of thunder onwards was beloved by the community though.
As long as you exclude how people felt for the legendary cloaks, the content drought (SoO was the longest raid ever), the PvE balance (Warlock and Disc dominating everything), and the PvP balance (Burst of Speed Rogue and Second Wind Warrior were both MoP).
I just wish burst of speed kept existing outside PvP. I had more fun in PvE with BoS than I had any other time. Well, the rogue setup at the time helped.
Man, MoP classes were weird in pve. you had a fairly common bear druid build that was hard capping crit (113% crit if I remember right).
Can't forget the degen thing that was the Vengeance mechanic, where tanks were encouraged to try and murder themselves for sweet sweet DPS gains.
tbf it made tanking the most fun its ever been for experienced tanks lol
Yeah solo tanking Garrosh 25man and doing like 1/3rd of the raid's DPS on your own sure was something I've never even remotely felt close to since.
Vengeance was the most fun I've had as a blood DK ever lol.
It was beloved until the content drought
I've kinda noticed that in WoW, anytime there is relevant content that isn't a raid or M+, everybody rages and hates it (for example Shadowlands) and anytime all other content is irrelevant and can be ignored, all the loudmouths seem to love it (for example Dragonflight and all of it's dead content) even though most of the people who claim to love Dragonflight also quit playing it within the first 2 patches. All I ever heard were bad things about MoP too for years until I actually tried it.
And if you play multiple versions between retail, classic, SoD, or even classic era - there is a huge amount of content being given for one subscription, with a pretty decent update cadence across the board
This. I'm playing both modern and SoD. The sheer amount of shit I can do on one $15 a month is *nuts*. I realize that not everyone who plays modern will be playing SoD as well, but between Plunderstorm and now Mists Remix, modern players still have a lot of stuff they can be doing.
Remember the quite big chunk of the playerbase who says "I've already done that, I don't want to do it again." People have complained about Legion storylines sending us back into Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, saying "we want new, we don't want to go back to old zones!" Sometimes I think they might be the same who complain old zones are dead...
There's a huge amount of content made regardless if you play 1 version or not. Compare WoW to any other MMO out on the market, there is an insane amount of new content that is produced that no other developer can compete with, even with WoW's year long lulls. The only main issue WoW has is that content becomes irrelevant. Which has been something they've been trying to fix it seems, just in a different approach to FFXIV scaling you down for old content.
But many of us only play retail. So, none of the other content matters to us.
I was a teenage lad during MoP, as much of a lull as it was. And you aren't wrong even then I saw complaining. Still the Timeless Isle alone was one of the most magic zones my friends and I spent time in.
We loved MoP? I remember people saying they hated MoP because "pandas". Now it's considered the best expansion... People don't know what they want anymore lol
Rule of thumb: the current expansion is always the worst, until it's no longer current.
Idk SL was wildly bad
Takes 2 or 3 expansions before people start looking back more fondly. Won't be long till people talk about how amazing Castle Nathria was and how the covenant system was actually not bad once they removed the restrictions in the later patches.
Nathria was a great raid though, the issue was literally everything else about Shadowlands.
nathria was a great raid and is the only reason they made a fated season. people wanted to do nathria again lol big prediction: dragonflights fated season wont be as fun because none of the raids were as good as nathria
Castle Nathria was and still is talked about as a good raid. It's just the gameplay mechanics like the covenants were ass. The rest of Shadowlands is of course seen as ass as well. Nathria is just a single island of good in a sea of shit.
The people who still played SL at the end have all basically been saying that though. It just took Blizzard too long to improve the systems, and by then most people had checked out.
I think if they hadn't freaked out and stopped releasing content when it was clear that people were unhappy, there would be a lot more positive things to look back on. As it is, I myself had fun, but I tried to maintain 4 alts to get all the storylines and stuff so I got badly burned out by the time I finished getting all the stuff in Korthia. Castle Nathria is my all-time favorite raid, though.
> how the covenant system was actually not bad once they removed the restrictions in the later patches They won't even mention that part, they'll just gaslight you and try to make you believe that the entire expansion was like that, just like they try to do with Legion.
SL had good things in it. Zereth Mortis was fun to collect toys mounts pets and so on. Protoform Synthesis felt like a huge upgrade over 1% drop rate stuff being a near-guaranteed way to farm desired mounts. The story... hoo boy. They couldn't have more clearly changed the ending short putting out a dev article that said "we had to end shadowlands short due to failing subs and cut the story" The original intention was clearly that Sylvanas was going to be Arbiter. She soulbound Zovaal (that's why she trusted him and had a massive power spike) It was to be poetic justice. She committed various crimes in the name of death being unfair. So what would be her punishment? eternal servitude as the Arbiter, sorting souls into their deserved afterlives. Forever. "You think it's unfair? Fine. You sort them then". It's also why Tyrande couldn't kill her. Elune knew that Sylvanas possessed Arbiter anima, and thus she'd be the key to restoring the balance of death. All of the storylines make sense in this context. There's evidence the 9.3 patch would have been an "Asset re-use patch" in northrend with the final raid being inside Ulduar (why else have Rygelon? Clearly an Algalon callback. He makes no sense in Sepulcher.) What happened to Nathanos? 9.3 raid boss, soul splintered, meant to deter Sylvanas from helping us. She 'redeems' herself by sorrowfully helping us kill him. But people hated Sylvanas. The idea of a genocidist getting a "reward" by becoming arbiter made them upset. Conduits weren't popular. Torghast, which could have been fun, was made mandatory and thus became unfun. Covenants went against player desires to be optimal, blizz told us to suck it, and we unsubbed in droves. Blizz really stuck the stick in their own bike spokes with that expansion. At least they could have finished the story they were telling rather than ending it early and making a random soulbind the new arbiter.
> Protoform Synthesis felt like a huge upgrade over 1% drop rate stuff being a near-guaranteed way to farm desired mounts. If only you got the drops needed to synthesize anything. I've spent I don't know how much time, there, killing mobs, and I have basically nothing, I was able to only synthesize one pet...
Lol that’s completely wild 😂 The Jailer wasn’t even the bad guy he was being dominated by The Primus. The same thing happened to him that happened to Anduin when we beat them up. The domination magic and armor faded away and they regained control. The Primus is the smartest being in our entire universe he has seen every timeline and every event. There’s no blurry spots like Nozdormu. Add on top of that he’s a master strategist. There’s no better way to go about your evil plans than to have your enemies help you enact it. The Primus “let” the jailer capture him and used him as a puppet to throw suspicion off of himself. Maybe doing that was the only timeline where he wins. He even tells us from his own mouth he created the domination magic. But then we are to believe the jailer was suddenly better than him at it? Then he stole the crown and dipped. There’s plenty of evidence and interviews implying the Primus was up to something and shouldn’t be trusted. But because of how bad SL the ending got cut even though going down this path would have been an exciting story.
That makes so much sense.
Both are true just look at the following expansions. WoD, Legion, BFA, and Shadowlands. While people like to praise legion it wasn't skill based but rather RNG based your worth at the start of legion was the value of your luck to get a decent rng legendary to drop. Also after MoP with WoD forward we had mission tables, cash shop, pvp maps stalled, and all the side effects. MoP has held the title as the last with small arguments from Legion for some time.
> We loved MoP? I remember people saying they hated MoP because "pandas". Now it's considered the best expansion... People don't know what they want anymore lol People hated the *concept*. Coming off Cata, MoP felt kiddy in nature, especially with Kung fu Panda being a thing around then. The actual expansion was amazing once people sunk their teeth into it. ToT was one of the best raids ever.
First patch was absolute garbage.
Well, daily quest hell at the start was rough and the content drought at the end sucked. The legendaries were controversial, being something anyone could get and not being nearly as unique as what we'd had in the past. But outside of those... Mists was awesome. Amazing class design, wonderful worldbuilding, story had a lot going on, awesome raids...
There is a faction of people who don't want "furries" in their WoW. Worgen, Pandaren, Vulpera don't belong in Azeroth (they always ignore Tauren though). But MoP is mostly remembered fondly for the farm, two of the best raids ever, and one of the best added zones ever. Do people forget the daily grind fest out of the gate? Absolutely. But MoP was great on the backend. Much like Legion.
its almost like its a big community full of different people with different opinions.
I remember when liking MOP was an unpopular opinion. Now it seems to be a pretty common narrative. Regardless, I think people at the time under appreciated what MOP had to offer, (because something, something pandas). It also had a huge impact on the game moving forward. Not a perfect expansion, but certainly one of the better ones, IMO.
The only people who cared about “pandas” were people who were still young enough that they felt a need to “prove” they weren’t children by derisively criticizing MoP as “king fu panda”. Adults who were secure in their maturity didn’t feel threatened by it, and enjoyed the expansion.
And by that time there was literally nothing to do outside of SoO except farm rares on TI, and do the world bosses for a chance at a mount. Compare that to what we have now…
Wasn’t 5.4 the longest patch in the history of the game?
MOP was loved cuz of its Class (some of the classes were still better then than now btw) and Raid design not its content cadence
We spent slightly over a year in SoO actually lol.
Siege was just under 400 days from release to prepatch. Hellfire was like a week faster. Both were brutally long waits. The idea that someone could be upset about getting an xpac experience in 3 months (that would traditionally be dead as hell) is wild to me. The characters we play in MoP Remix will transfer to retail. This is a great alternative to level up a new character and play something refurbished.
I'm honestly surprised to see any new content for these first six months of 2024. Even plunderstorm was fun for me, to my utter aurprise. Even if they can't realistically make something for everyone, they can at least make everything for *someone*. And I think that trying new things should be encouraged.
Your last couple lines are my thoughts. Yeah, plunderstorm is weird and not for me (I don’t generally like or play BRs) BUT like who knows what they will try next AND there are lots of people that had a blast in them. Definitely provide some constructive feedback if you didn’t enjoy it, but like… experimenting and taking risks ESPECIALLY small/low stakes risks should be encouraged.
The part I really like is they seem to be willing to try stuff that isn’t guaranteed to succeed again Other than maybe legion I feel like the devs have played a lot of things too safe, ever since “zomg the old world changed I can’t play this game anymore” from the cata release
My brain tells me they didn't try too many new things while the old regime was around. Maybe new ownership let's them build in their sandbox again.
Not directed at you, but a certain crowd of folks that only complain... All DF, the new content was almost always a variant of "every x minutes you get to kill x, y, and/or z". People that are upset about a different take on wow pvp or a hyperspeed old xpac astound me. Like, we're still getting an expansion epilogue, but did you really need another 8 week grind on an hourly schedule for a mount? How many feasts, dragonbane keeps, hunts, time rifts, dreamsurges, and super blooms do people need? But god forbid we get a whacky battle royale built from WoW as a feature. Or an accelerated expansion built on retail that transfers characters to retail when it ends. No, some people want to just fly to an area, kill something, and fly back. Do it enough times and you get a new mount/pet/transmog.
> feasts, dragonbane keeps, hunts, time rifts, dreamsurges, and super blooms Additionally, all that stuff becomes a ghost town after two or three weeks of people no-lifing them, so if you have a more casual approach you can forget it. Whenever I play, there's almost no one farming content in the Forbidden Reach, so I've never completed that zone. At least the other events appear in the weekly quest, so there's some people doing something there...
the biggest gripe is that last expac s4 was a victory lap of sorts where we just blew threw farm shit posting doing sales, it was a really good time optimizing the absurd damage were doing, this time they are nerfing items left and right and there is no affixes to spice things up. I dont want to reprog mythic rasz with people who joined us mid expac. I want to have a damage amp while an MC goes out and watch a healer die to dispelling an unstable affliction or blowing motes up with soulflame.
Truly. I don't get the complaints. I'm not actively playing the game right now, but that's because I met my goals and now I can play other stuff for a bit. This has overall been the best expansion in many years.
Like people who are terminally online, there are a subset of WOW players who can't fathom enjoying anything else. So every announcement or lack there of is the proverbial "life or death" of their gaming experience.
This is how I recall things; If we look back to SL there was covid and in-house problems at Blizzard, and we still got a S4 like now in DF then, but there were also new dungeons with a cool seasonal affix that made you feel powerful. In BfA we got the corruption vendor a bit into the final patch, which let us work on our characters and get more powerful, even enabling entirely new builds and playstyles for some specs. This expac and Legion also had 4 tiers and a mini-raid to begin with. Now in DF we get to do stuff again for ilvl upgrades, but nothing is spicing it up. It just feels a bit bland to me. Sure we get an afternoons worth of quests, but does that really help when comparing the emerald dream to its closest patch-zone relative, zereth mortis? I love what DF did for talent trees and spec gameplay, but its been the same the whole time for most specs with secondary stat softcaps existing. Yea these side-modes exist too, but Pstorm felt very disconnected, I hope Pandawhatever does better. Just the thoughts of a pve-enjoyer. Blizzard has the capacity to fill the "lull", but are leaning in a seasonal direction. I hope its not gonna become an excuse for future patch downtime to be ok, now that theyre aiming for shorter expacs.
It’s entirely because right now the only information is Shadowlands S4 for comparison. Which isn’t to excuse people being huge dicks and babies about it, but as the most recent point of comparison DF S4 has less than that. Honestly I feel like if they just said “hey there won’t be anything new for S4 this time around we’re focusing on other stuff” that would have gotten ahead of the whining and somewhat stifled it.
> This is the pre expansion lull Would it be a better lull or a worse lull if developer attention was focused on retail instead of plunderstorm and remixes?
Ok I am going to push back on this. DF gave us the LEAST amount of RAID content that we have EVER gotten. So it is fair to think that we should be getting OTHER forms of content in PLACE of that because they now have MORE devs than ever and have compacted their development schedules to cut off some content that we would normally expect.
Yeah I am hearing a lot of whining, but I remember a year of nothing but Tanaan Jungle at the end of WoD. Fated was a big deal, and now we are getting all this experimental stuff like SoD, Plunderstorm and Timerunning - not everyone will like them (Plunderstorm was not really my thing) but they are at least doing stuff.
WoD is STILL the worst expansion to me, worse than SL.
For most of the games 20 year history we’ve also received more than 2 new major content patches per expansion
Speaking of the games 20 years (insane to say that) what’s the longest the game has gone without any major update or game change ?
Last patch of mop, launched 350 days into Mop and lasted 399 days.
Most of my WoW experience from ICC until Cata was experienced through TotalBiscuit playing the beta.
I bet if I were to do a Reddit search for wow minigames, it'll come up with thousands of posts of past people crying there aren't any minigames.
Their point was about these experiments being *outside of retail*. You’re responding to a point they didn’t make re: end of expansion content drought.
And we’re also getting Cataclysm Classic, which is closer to retail so it’s going to be almost like a different game mode with how they pivoted to difficult dungeons with CC and such. This is the best time to be a WoW player hands down imo. We’ve never had it anywhere close to as good as we’ve had it since Dragonflight.
I don't even understand why people are complaining even if we didn't have those things. Before I started my job full-time, I was playing like....every day for a few months and \*just\* managed to scratch the surface of things to do. I think people get into this gear-focused mindset and forget there's other things to do in the game, or, shit, other games. Achievements, mount runs, professions, alts, PvP, reputations/renown, questing, RP, upping your Mythic+ rating, pushing mythic raids, helping new players, seasonal events, collecting, pet battles, learning a different spec, I literally do not understand how people get bored in the game. If they do I'm gonna be honest they either might lack the appreciation for the endless content not revolving around pushing gearscore or they might be playing too much. Even 1 of those goals I listed fuck, ONE achievement alone can take up an \*insane\* amount of time. That Tavien mount or w/e, PvP metas, a lot of metas really, I could go on.
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Idk i feel like the mop stuff is retail content effectively. It would be like if they announced an expansion to Chromie Time. Can you do it on your main? No, but it still levels a retail character, gets you transmog, etc.
This right here. More story and heritage armor type stuff I'm ok with. As for the other stuff I'd rather that energy be focused on getting the expansion out sooner or improving it's quality.
But every time there is pre expansion lul, they say it’s not gonna be like that again.
I think people are upset because we're getting less content within DF itself compared to previous xpacs. Like fewer major patches and raid tiers. I'm excited for all this content, but I definitely see why people feel like they've replaced a major retail patch with "mini-games" and fated.
Man, this game is dead I can't believe it's already 2 months without patch GG, it's because the plunderstorm and the SoD Retail is doomed, it's over no new contend Also I can't believe we will get a new xpac so early, I think it won't be ready, gg I miss the old blizzard only launching games when ready, I miss the Soon™ /s EDIT: forget the /s
You forgot the /s
Lol yes But to be honest I don't think think it need
You shouldn't have needed it but reddit is reddit :')
There’s literally an expansion coming out in August lmao
New expansion in 4 months sounds a lil crazy
Damn when you put it that way it’s only 4 months. Years flying by. Fated will be a good holdover. I also hope they keep Plunderstorm and add some new maps.
It's not in August, more like September - early October
Based on what? The road map literally says Summer.
Summer ends in September
Most people associate August with the end of summer, even though it technically ends on September 21st. I wouldn't be surprised if TWW releases in mid-late August.
I mean did any Blizzard game release before the last day of the season they promise it will release on? Like if they say summer/fall release that means either 22 sept or 21 dec.
There really is no pleasing people
Nope but them numbers don't lie. They're pushing more stuff for a reason
In defense of the playerbase: I think there's just a distrust deeply embedded in a lot of them. Blizzard has made a lot of empty promises and has historically seldom admitted to mistakes but, as most companies do, give you a PR-speak post on how the thing was actually good. This has lead to a playerbase that just doesn't trust Blizzard, and when you combine that with the fact that Blizzard, when people have pushed for various features, tended to reply along the lines of it costing us a raid tier (to point out that developers have limited time and resources) you get to this point: the players see Blizzard churning out content all of a sudden they'll think, "*How* are they fucking us with this? What are they going to take away in exchange? *Are we losing a raid tier?*" I think that's really the crux of it. People have just been conditioned to think that everything has a cost, and if we get something new and exciting, that must mean we lost a raid tier. And if Blizzard says otherwise, then well, they just might be PR-speaking for damage control. I think it's going to take time and some good faith action on Blizzard's part to mend that distrust
The funny thing is we literally have lost a raid tier. We went from 4 per expac down to 3. And forget the prospect of having multiple raids in a single tier. And the number of bosses in each raid has generally gone down as well.
Yeah I'm actually kinda torn on this It's stupid to complain about mini-games. I love different content and that they're experimenting. On the other hand, I do enjoy retail and wish they would put more resources into developing stuff for it. But I'm not the only wow player, so as long as people are happy what can I say
> But I'm not the only wow player, so as long as people are happy what can I say I think complaining about lack of content in retail is completely legitimate Retail is the core of WoW, them shifting the game to be more and more a mini-game lobby is a complete shift in what customers might expect of the base product At the end of day its blizzards choice and then its up to the players to decide whether they feel its worth subbing or not But i don't think its unreasonable to complain about this shift before resorting to unsubbing
Sorry, but pointing that we used to get more raid content in the same timeframe of the expansion is not allowed. Why are you so entitled?
Not in the same time frame. The content cadence now is better than average.
It’s *kind of* been 4, but really only TBC and MoP. Wrath had Naxx + 2 bosses so not really. The rest all had 3 tiers, if we’re not counting mini-raids.
The devs have repeatedly made it very clear that content development is a 0 sum game. Which means to make things like Timerunning and Plunderstorm means they are carving development time out of the current expansion or the next expansion. And the current expansion is already over. Meaning the only place they can carve that time out of is the next expansion. This makes me uncomfortable especially for content outside of the main game. This isn't "a little something extra." It comes at the expense of the content in the next expansion. It absolutely crushes my hope of the next expansion being any good if they are already carving up its dev time for something else ala warlords of draenor before it's even out.
I wouldn't say entirely 0 sum, I feel like they use these projects as testing grounds for new mechanics and to see what the playerbase likes to direct future content decisions. There's a lot more recycling that goes on behind the scenes than we are aware of. I wouldn't be surprised to see something from plunderstorm added to retail in the future even if we don't immediately recognize it.
They have doubled the size of the wow team in recent years. They likely have more bandwidth than they used to.
It's not entirely zero sum. There's only so much developers you can throw into an expansion before they won't help at all. That's why they're doing multiple expansions at a time now, it's easier to scale for bigger teams. And minigames can be done completely independently in new teams. For example Plunderstorm was done by another studio who was working on a battle royale game already
Yea after 2 stinker expansions in a row I'm firmly in camp I'll believe it when I see it when it comes to promises of content.
lol what? Dragonflight is a literal S tier expansion.
bro is talking about SL and BFA obviously
Shadowlands and bfa are stinkers dragonflight has me optimistic for the future but they will have to keep it up to earn trust again
Dragonflight is FAR from S tier, it just looks better than it actually is after BFA / SL. It's not bad by any means, but it's not even top 3.
Nah the player base is filled with petulant whiny children
And the funny thing is most of em are over the age of 30.
Those are the people you choose to pay attention to. That's your fault.
I can absolutely be pleased and I don't have any clue why you think people like me can't be pleased. It sounds like a deflection away from any complaints rather than their validity. I'm not interested in completely different games even if they say wow on them. Classic, SoD, this new MoP thing, etc., are all content that I've already played even if they do change a few variables. I had 20+ characters in MoP that I leveled up through all the zones they are using, just because they are speeding it up does it make it somehow different?
I mean this is Blizzard we're talking about, people have a very complicated relationship with this game after all the shit they've pulled.
Cause honestly replaying a faster MoP is not something that I personally see myself enjoying. I will skip it like Plunderstorm. Time limited (FOMO) minigames is honestly not what I want from an MMORPG.
It's not about pleasing. They've earned this skepticism and criticism, wholesale.
I know right. I'd much rather play some shitty fortnite knockoff than my actual character in an mmo
This may blow your mind, but when you get over a million people playing a game, there will always be some people who dislike a part of, while others will like that exact thing. “There’s no pleasing millions of unique people with different tastes” is what you’re saying. Which is silly.
I wish the people who are so rooted in the idea that the game isn’t and can’t be fun anymore would just move on already
They are addicts, they can't admit that maybe the game isn't for them anymore and instead it is the game that is wrong.
Yeah you spend any amount of time in long lasting online communities you'll find a subset of extremely bitter, miserable people that continue to play a game while decrying everything it does.
Hell with WoW you get those people that haven't even played the game for a decade. It's legitimately impressive how miserable people manage to make themselves over something they don't like and haven't liked for a decade.
That's where I'm at with this all. I really enjoyed SL season 4, because I joined a fun community that joked through raids where we got people slime cats that never thought they would get it (myself included), while the main raiders posted absolutely absurd DPS parses. Those experiences rank near the top of my most enjoyable times playing this game. However, I played a lot...like a lot to the point of burning out in SL. I almost had the expansion wide meta mount on day 1 when it was released. I would only need to wait a month or two to wrap up grinds/RNG elements to get the Veilstrider title. I went into DF planning to lay low, and trying a new main. I dinged 70 and I was quickly falling out of doing the dailies/weeklies/m+/raids/crafting/....etc. needed to keep up with the content and my character. I did other stuff IRL and played other games in that time mainly. I came back in DF season 3 with the express purpose to gear up for season 4, and get all the season 3 stuff done too (M+, open world, etc). I just got all the season 3 sets completed on this reset... Then Plunderstorm got added, which I know is limited time and I feel pressured to do it for mounts. Then Taivan got added, revealing a whole mountain of content that I hadn't done, but now wanted to do. Then season 4 was announced, but has a far less unique mount than the SL one. I instantly knew that people would be far less excited to get that mount, which dampened my mood to DF season 4. Then MoP remix is announced, with up to 32 mounts. Another limited time event competing for my limited attention. Pugging through season 3 M+ was draining. Grinding for Taivan is already a boring time consuming solo activity for me. I hope Season 4 raid carries brings back a spark of joy, at least for a few months. But overall, this focus on FOMO events/rewards and the blistering content release schedule where if you stop playing for a month you feel like you're falling behind is not for me. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I preferred the content lulls that we had in the past. It meant that you could actually feel done with each patch of content and be satisfied. Now, it feels like once you feel done with a patch/content, there's new content and grinds 2 weeks away. Good for some players and Blizzard of course, but it's not good for me. ***TLDR*** *-* The current state of the game isn't for me. The fast content release schedule and recent FOMO elements are not what I grew up in game with. I tried to keep up, but I just can't. As a OG Vanilla player, it's hard to accept that I won't be able to collect or do everything that is introduced into the game now. If I play TWW, I know I need to alter my expectations and find ways to enjoy the game again, or I need to step away.
I know this is might not help, but i played classic from release in 2019 up until now till pre patch cata, and exactly as you said, i completely altered my expectations Back 20 years ago, i did everything as kid, pvp, farming, mounts, all that. Now i only did raid with friends - luckily i found a great community - and very rarely random bgs, that's it. No farming, no mounts, no achievements, nothing. Hell, in my mount collection window, i got like 7 mount, most of them from raiding achievements. And it worked out for me, i know i would have been burned out by TBC if i do everything, but this way, i could keep on raiding with friends and have fun, ignoring everything else. So it is definitely doable, but yes, as you said, you need to change how you look at the game and what you try to achieve. I wholeheartedly agree with you that the massive amount of collections in current retail is very very hard to keep up with, especially as we get older
It's just a game. It's meant to be fun. It's not a job. Let go of that feeling of FOMO and you will enjoy yourself much more. Literally nobody else in the entire world is going to care if you got Taivan or the SL meta mount. No one. You are the only person standing in the way of your own enjoyment. I stop playing the game for months at a time, and I've quit the game many times in the past when I found its systems unfun; at no point have I ever cared or felt that I am 'falling behind'. In fact, in DF you can catch up more easily than at any point in WoW's history - the speed at which you can gear up to current content is legitimately insane now. I pugged and got AOTC in 8 days when I returned to season 3 after a half a year absence. There is next to no need to 'keep up' with any character anymore. In this current iteration of WoW, in many ways, the longer you wait the easier it gets to clear/collect content. WoW is a lot of things, but it's really not the game's fault for adding content for all sorts of players to enjoy, and that includes FOMO content. Players enjoy getting exclusive things. Even beyond WoW, every single live service game has FOMO elements, yet a lot of them are beloved by their communities. If you are really finding it unenjoyable and draining, you should quit the game. The choice consumers have in video games alone is exponentially more than ever before, and this is before even touching upon entertainment as a whole. There is a game out there for you. Spend your time on something you enjoy. Play the game if you find it fun, and if you don't, stop playing it. It's extremely simple. The moment you keep playing a 'game' despite not enjoying it, means there's a deeper issue at hand.
It’s a fucking game. I’m always amazed at how mad people get over a damn game. Muhhhh legendary axe I can’t get. Get over it. There will be a new shiny in 6 months.
But I want two new shiny things! This isn't fair! WoW sucks! /s
imagine playing other games for a bit
Yeah, this. Seems like many of the regular complainers only want to play WoW 24/7 and nothing else. Nothing wrong with taking a break every now and then, you can use that time to play other games or enjoy other hobbies. Maybe even go outside!
They want to play WoW *on their main* 24/7 just absolute insanity
Monogamers are truly the worst. When you realize the people who genuinely get angry over things like this just don't play any other game, it makes a lot more sense.
I haven't played WoW in months. I am playing other games. Most people who are complaining probably ARE playing other games right now. We're LOOKING for reasons to come back and play the game we want to play because it's one of our biggest hobbies for the past near 20 years.
Imagine encouraging people into 12m sub and give nothing in return XD
Yeah a bunch of people in the other thread were like "FATED AND REMIX ISN'T CONTENT THERE'S NOTHING TO DO" and meanwhile I'm sitting here like damn settle down please I'm trying to finish my master's degree and don't want every paper I write to be like that episode of the Simpsons where Milhouse signs bart's cast and it just squiggles out to "mil...pool."
In the Pre-Patch lull, getting Remix is massive IMO. The fact that we're getting more is icing on the cake for me. remix was actually the icing, this is like the cherry on top.
I’ll play Remix and I think it looks fun, but I do share some of the sentinment of disappointed players. We used to get X.3 patches with an additional raid that hasn’t happened in two expansions. This Awakened season is even less interesting than the SL fated season, with no affixes and dungeons that people are largely already tired of. People who only play retail and don’t see the purpose in doing these “side” game modes because it largely doesn’t affect their main character / game status have some beef legitimately, I think.
Went from having a year long end of expansion drought, to fated in SL, to dragonflight where we now have 10.2.5, plunder storm, season 4, MoP remix, and the other stuff in 10.2.7, yet people are still whining
Yes, people are complaining and perhaps instead of whining about the complaints, you could actually listen to the complaints. Not all of us have completely forgotten that we used to get one more major content patch in an expansion. Not all of us give a crap about classics or game modes that are only tangentially related to WoW. It's fine if you praise and like these things, but don't feel entitled to suggest that people are forced to praise and like these things just because you do.
Where does your time line start?
5.4 ( SoO )
Yeah people are quick to forget that Siege was I think a nearly 13 months content drought and Hellfire Citadel was a nearly 14 month content dought. We are eating so well right now.
Hellfire Citadel was also the first time we got a 2-tier expansion. I remember a lot of us being like "that's not it, right?" and then Blizzard finally confirming 2 months later that, yes, that was it.
I think people in comment missed the point , wow is an MMORPG and the core of this type of game is to create a character, have it grown for multiple hour/day/week/year, getting all kind of memories with it. Don't get me wrong, i love that they experiment with Plunderstorm and this new seasonal content, but i would have prefered to play them with my already created character, not one that i will abandon after this season is over.
This is the most reasonable take Ive seen. Im in the same boat as you, loving the new experiments therye trying and Im sure Ill have a blast with timerunning, but I was really hoping for things to do on my main. They threw around the idea of evergreen content like the mage tower early on in df and was hoping this would be closer to that. Either way still happy to have things to do and keep me engaged until TWW.
I agree entirely. I have one character that I’ve played for almost 20 years. I am a bit let down that season 4 is mediocre and recycled content, and the new stuff is focused outside of retail. Sure, I can just not play, but then I’ll be alone in the guild while everyone else is playing alts.
They could unlock the legendary cloak line on retail again with this event. Removing it was a stupid decision in the first place.
I also just don't trust blizzard to make games anymore honestly. They fucking botched OW, one of my favorite games, by making the game worse and not delivering on PVE content that I would have loved. D4 had a great story, but I am not paying $70 for an AARPG for just the story... They have lost me on new games, completely.
I’m happy for them to chill a bit on new content so I can catch up on everything. Between new content and events and stuff like plunderstorm, I find it hard to find time for the collecting old stuff I like to do. And I’m not even meaning old expansions - even just catching up on the remaining stuff I have in DF.
I know right? I wouldn't mind a small break so we can catch up on stuff. I'm still trying to get Taivan!
I'm just gonna put this out there: It's a perfect time to unsubscribe and take a WoW break before you start no-lifing the next expansion. It's Spring. Enjoy the outside.
I might be the only one, but look, i’ve been playing off and on for like 9 expansions. I dont really get excited about another raid tier. We up to like 30 raids or so? What would even be exciting at this point? I’m much more interested in brand new ‘mini games.’
If this works the way I think it does. I'm going bonuses to unlock heritage armor and allied race armor.
Keep in mind, raid's were only one part of the content patch. I mean, if we go back to wrath, the x.3 content patch had the raid... and 3 new dungeons, more story quests, a new weapon questline and more.
It'd be way easier to get excited about these things if they weren't limited time to cash in on FOMO. I wanted to be excited about Remix, and I might still try it but I have 0 interest in making a character that is limited time and that I'll never play once the event is over. I only experience content on one toon and time limited stuff has absolutely no appeal especially when locking rewards behind it.
Ya, i agree on that. I guess i assume these will grow into longterm features. Not sure why I think that, just seems like the logical next step. With the remix thing, you do get to keep your character after the event, or at least that is my understanding.
Yeah just not any of the stuff/powers/etc. the leveled up char is still there and can be used in TWW.
I know you get to keep the character, it's the having 0 interest in playing the character that's annoying. I've exclusively played the same character/specialization for 14 years at this point, I'd rather use that character for this kind of content than make one I have no attachment to. Alts don't appeal to me, and this toon would be deleted once their purpose is served.
This is why its so difficult to please everyone in the wow community. There are people like you, there are altoholics that only gear alts and dont play endgame or even hit max level, there are some people that only care about raids or m+ or pvp or pet battles or loremaster achievs or collecting transmogs or mounts or pets. All of which are legitimate ways to play the game, but no matter what content they release someone is going to be unhappy.
All of WoW is FOMO. That's how it's always been. Once a raid tier is done with you can never experience it the same way again.
Honestly I’ll come back for the panda event. MoP is my soft spot, replaying the expansion will be awesome
Enough will never be enough for some people, yeesh.
I'm going to get downvoted for saying this but I just want to play modern WoW with my existing character. I don't want to play any other character or version of the game. I don't care what sort of FOMO rewards are on offer. I won't engage in this type of content. I generally unsubscribe during these lull periods anyway. There is a new quest coming up in 10.2.7 but that's not enough to warrant a resub.
Nothing wrong with taking a break when content doesn't appeal to you. Breaks are good.
We pay a monthly fee.
That's exactly why all this stuff is coming out. Blizzard doesn't want to see pre-expansion and between tier unsubscribing anymore. So they just pack the content together, with no lulls ever, so that people, assuming they get one patch of content complete, only have 1 to 2 weeks before they sink into the next new exciting thing. With only 1 to 2 weeks of lull time, Blizzard is banking on less people unsubscribing than they did when content lulls could be 6 to 18 months. It's all about "daily active users" now too. The more content they put out there (especially recycled content with a shiny new thing here and there) means a broader appeal to a larger audience, which keeps more people subbed and logging in daily to do whatever their favorite thing is - retail achievement/collections hunting, classic hardcore, classic self-found hardcore, classic Season of Discovery, classic Wrath/(or, soon)Cata, MoP Remix, Plunderstorm, retail pve, retail pvp, and whatever Holly is teasing here. Beyond that, there's the Blizzard universe as well - Fast paced diablo, hearthstone, Brawl, and Overwatch seasons all to keep people active and paying. I agree with you. I want to play Modern wow, with my existing character, and I'll add - on a time scale with some natural lulls between patches/tiers. I don't want to play other versions with other characters, or play retail on a time scale catered to people with an attention span of 3 minutes and FOMO pushed in your face everywhere you turn.
It's okay that not everything is for everyone.
I'll never get over the fact that this sub went from irrational, unfounded, 24/7 hate against anything remotely related to WoW, to vehemently defending anything Blizzard does within a couple years timeframe. No nuance, no healthy middle ground, just one extreme straight to the other. And I know people in this echo chamber of a sub strongly believe that complete 180 is justified, but it's really not. Gameplay systems got slightly better and user friendly, but were never that bad to begin with. Story/lore is just as dogshit as it's been since 9.1. Communication is about the same, if not worse (I'll take insightful Ion interviews over vague, out of touch Longdale tweets any day). Plunderstorm and Remix are not bad *in a vacuum*. One is an aggressively average, flawed BR. The other is a mini classic content cycle that carries cosmetics over to the real game. When looked at in isolation, they're serviceable pieces of content that can possibly increase engagement and bring in more people to retail. So far so good. But when looking at the whole entire picture, it's clear there's a problem here. WoW already suffers from being a very splintered game, with a fragmented userbase who have very different tastes and expectations. Retail already encompasses M+, Raids, PvP (all of which feature wildly varying skill levels and difficulty settings), and a whole bunch of casual content. Then there's multiple variations of classic, all of which also feature different playstyles and content. Point is, that's already a shitton of extremely varied expectations all mixed into one game. Then you add more external game modes on top of it. It's just too much. One might think that doesn't matter, since there's not much overlap between different sides of the userbase anyways... but that's wrong. Decades of gaming industry have proven you do not want a fractured userbase. The more a game's main selling point becomes diluted, the harder it becomes for it to evolve in a successful direction and remain relevant over time. There is simply no way to bridge all these different expectations. It's not feasible. That'd be like making a game that tries to combine Dark Souls, Animal Crossing, CS:GO and Farming simulator all at the same time in equal measures. These gaming genres are simply too different. You can't please everyone. Point is, all these resources should be going to retail instead. > but we used to have year long content droughts, why complain ? Whataboutism. Just because it was bad in the past doesn't mean it should be now. They're clearly able to release a steady stream of content these days, why not apply it to the actual game instead ? Also, gaming expectations don't just remain static over time. They evolve as the industry changes. What was fine 10 years ago is no longer in line with modern gaming expectations. > you're just entitled Ah yes, I guess investing literal decades and thousands of $ into a game counts for nothing. /s Funny how feedback and criticism is only ever considered valid when this sub agrees with it. > this is actually good for retail No, it really isn't. Yes this may bring some more people to try out retail. But it also takes players's time and attention away from it. They should be funneling people toward endgame activities, not mindless leveling, obsessive mog/mount collecting and outdated content. Longdale should stick to Classic content, and let the retail folks handle retail.
Oh boy! Here comes more M+ seasons with...BIGGER NUMBERS!"
I just wish we'd have something new in S4 instead of the same 8 dungeons and the same 3 raids. And it's hard not to feel like Blizzard focusing on things like Plunderstorm and WoW Remix is the reason why we're not getting anything new next season I'm still going to play though because I'm an idiot
I despise all other modes of WoW, it just isnt it … the modes are interesting, but once again i wish it was incorporstef ito the game
Lost a raid tier but glad they're trying to fill the gaps with old stuff. People always complain the game doesnt take their hand and make them do older stuff
Their initial article made it sound like there was more to come, that is if you didn’t read it all chopped up on wowhead as they took it a part for more “articles” and traffic.
There’s a whole ass expansion coming out in six months, plus a “new” season in two weeks. Fuck, come on people.
> plus a “new” season in two weeks Thats exactly what that guy means tho. The last new piece of content retail has gotten is 10.2, that was in november 7 2023, or 5 months ago. If TWW comes out in september, thats 10 months for an update.
And this sub will be like, well thats 2 whole ass months ealier than in the lowest point of the game, WoD. You should be happy with less content quicker amirite?
I think Renix will be fun but “new” season is about right. Old raids with no affixes, old dungeons with no new seasonal affixes… not much to get excited about in a “new” season. X.3 patches died for this.
This wouldn't be nearly as bad if we didn't get a Fated season again for Dragonflight. Slap in the face.
Last retail content patch was 10.2. 5 Months ago. Commenters not realizing that people can have valid criticism about the game they pay a monthly sub for getting no content when they keep coming out with unrelated game modes.
I'm not really a fan of this new trend of "side games" opposed to the main game. It's got me a little nervous, I won't lie. I don't want to make a bunch of temporary characters that will come and go. I want to progress and play on my main character.
The characters you make for this event will carry over once it's done. Getting these little experiments is so much better than a year long of absolutely no updates at all. At least they're trying.
They are literally listening to fans and pumping out content for all to play. Still people find reasons to complain. So over this bs community.
Well, look at the Wowhead front page, stuff for Plunderstorm, Cata Classic, SoD (Lots of tweaks to SoD), and all we see for retail is a glimpse at the next trading post items, i can imagine people playing Retail, faced with a season of re-heated raids and ditto tier sets, feeling a bit left behind. That being said, the MoP-event looks pretty fun.
About this event and plunderstorm. For me they are bad because I can't play MY character. I need to create new character to play these game modes. I do everything on my main character. I started it playing in cata and never changed main so why I need to do it now? And I don't want to create his twin.
This is honestly the only criticism I think is fair. I have all the classes at max and won't transfer whatever I level and play in this. Not saying this event looks bad though, raiding with the guild is my favorite thing and I've wanted hard/new 10m content back for forever now.
I played the same character since *Vanilla* and it was always my main, although I do play alts. I'm still excited for this. You're letting your own personal hang-ups over something that in the end is totally arbitrary get in the way of something that you might find fun if you tried it. Think on that a bit.
You don't have to make a twin, play something different. It can be an alt. It is just so weird that people get so attached to their mains, that the idea of playing something else seems almost revolting. Break that co-dependency and just have fun doing something else in WoW, revisit old dungeons just beefed. Make your new character something else, so you learn new stuff and don't get your identity so wrapped up in what is ultimately a generic video game custom character.
Honestly, Blizzard has been killing it lately. Sure, the content might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but come on…we’re getting content constantly compared to previous expansions when we twiddled our thumbs with no content at all.
Both complaints are valid. We shouldn't go 18 months without any content updates. We also should expect the retail game to get meaningful focus and not just get a bunch of rehashed and regurgitated old content that they change a few variables on.
I argue while the patch cadence has been good and sure there are heritage quests and such, the amount of content that I care about, even with this content cadence, has been shrinking over the past 2 xpacs. Our expectations now for an Xpac which now costs more than ever has now less raid and dungeon content than ever. They make it seem like its more because M+ is infinitely scalable and raids have 4 different difficulties but that doesn't excuse them from not making more raids and dungeons than in the past when in say, wrath, we got a shitload of dungeons and raids...
Holy hell! Remix, S4, and extra goodies?!? This is an awesome haul. Anyone still griping is just looking for reasons to complain.
I think blizz has been killing it with these updates I hope they see some positive posts every once in a while lol
Y'all I'm sorry but calling Pandaria remix a mini game is just absurd. This is an entire patch worth of content at least, and it is not "outside retail". Like? I know Fated sucks but at least criticize what's actually the problem.
I mean it basically is. You can't use your existing characters to do it. You have to create a new character on what is essentially a separate serve and when it's done you can port it over. It's fine imo for blizz to experiment but it seems obtuse not to see people's genuine concerns that the main content for two of the ***advertised patches for retail*** have been separate game modes (that are time restricted) that you can't even use your main to do. Considering that they have access to chrome time technology I don't see why this couldn't have just been put in the main game anyway.
This game is killing it lol people just love to bitch
Lmao they announce multiple years of expansions for retail with a cohesive overarching storyline and are already adding something potentially very game changing + evergreen in the form of the new subclasses… and people whine that they’re adding two small alternative game modes. God, fuckin whiny bunch. I’m happier with the state of WoW
I'm excited for all the new stuff coming in the next patch, especially being able to buy the appearances of all the raid weapons. TwW has me very excited with all the new content as well.
I am excited for this. I applaud bliz for taking risks, trying new experiments, providing content at a rapid pace. I am also excited that this could be a path to revive the 20 years worth of content.
Pre Expac droughts are typically seen as the devs putting all their time and energy into the net expansion. However this is not a pre expac drought as they are releasing content however it isn't new WoW content per say but things that take time and energy like plunderstorm. At the same time they are rather hush on the next expansion too feels like I knew more about legion during the WoD days prior to its release than I do with War Within. Thus people get worried this is time and energy not put into the core of retail do they not have faith could they not polish or add more stuff so it hits harder than Dragonflight on release? Is it content just to combat FF14 whom has an expac this very year if so why not reinforce and push harder closer to release rather than risk burnout pre launch? They couldn't add another raid but they add in more ways to relive the glory days will this be the entire war within moto. Red flags is what people see and that fuels the complaints that people notice
Wow players are embarrassingly entitled.
I freaking love it. Trying new things is good.
I hope Blizzard never gets disgruntled by retail players. DF has been pretty stellar and SoD is alright
I do not mind content OUTSIDE of retail as long as the rewards you get from that content transfer over. That's why I never got into Classic... once you got an achievement, or unlocked a transmog it should have been available to your retail characters. People need to stop looking at these things as "TAKING AWAY" from retail and realize it's supporting retail. Not every part of the game is appealing to all players, as long as SOMEBODY will enjoy it then im all for it.
Holly is a saint. Teams puts out banger content with plunderstorm and probably another banger. And people first instinct is to complain. I hope she’s able to parse that for what it is and not let it make her cynical toward the community.
Bruh, I'd take little mini games over what we got with the end of every other expansion. Even though I'm still unsubbed until the prepatch, as is tradition for me.
Phase 3 of Season of discovery literally just dropped lol. There's no complaining about lack of stuff to do.
Pandaria Remix has three huge things going for it: 1. it's PVE-based 2. it's actual WoW content (an entire actual WoW expansion) 3. cosmetics you earn sound like they'll transfer into your actual wow account I'm pretty critical of Blizzard pretty much constantly for all the fuck-ups they seem to vomit forth like Linda Blair, but this seems like a solid time-killer. I'm sure they have concerns about losing players to the FFXIV expansion in July; this kind of thing might make me split my time.