More money, less content

#0 - June 9, 2010, 9:31 p.m.

What is happening to WoW? Every time I turn around, there is a new "feature" for sale to the playerbase. Why is it there time to develop new paid feature rather than content? Burning crusade didn't milk us for anywhere near this amount of money, but look at how much we got!

Just compare the end game of bc to that of wotlk:

BC
Kara
Magtheridon's lair
Gruul's lair
Serpentshrine cavern
Tempest keep
Hyjal
Black temple
Zul' aman
Sunwell
Kazzak & doomwalker

Vs

Wotlk
Naxx (rehashed old content)
Malygos
Obsidian sanctum
Vault of archavon
Ulduar
Trial of the crusade
Onyxia (rehashed old content)
Icecrown citadel

There was more raid content in bc than wotlk, and none of it was reused content that was already in the game. Furthermore, the insane stat jumps between ilevels makes over half of the "current" content obsolete. People were still running ALL of the content of BC to the very end of the expansion.

Where is the $30 a month that I've paid for 4 years going? Why is there a need to include cash shop items in a pay to play game? I've paid for more than enough, but I'm receiving less and less for my money. Think I'm really going to spend $80 more for a new expansion after this? You're kidding yourselves.

Red text: kazzak was rehased content too. I know

Zarhym

#11 - June 9, 2010, 9:47 p.m.

I'd better understand the purpose of this thread if game content could be defined purely as raid content, and every developer and producer did nothing but pump out raids. Wrath of the Lich King required much more development time and resources than The Burning Crusade, just as Cataclysm development time will end up trumping Wrath of the Lich King development time. In all of this I am speaking purely about features to which you gain access when you buy the game, the expansions, and pay your monthly subscription.

Zarhym

#23 - June 9, 2010, 9:58 p.m.

Q u o t e:

Switching something to 10/25 man or from normal to "hard mode" barely qualifies it as new content.

Yet it requires a lot of development time and is aimed at providing more content to a great percentage of players. When we're talking about content, that's ultimately how it should be quantified.

Zarhym

#42 - June 9, 2010, 10:07 p.m.

Q u o t e:

but fighting the same bosses in 4 different modes of the same instance is freaking boring.

That's not really the point. We're looking at how we can design the most amount of content to which the largest percentage of players have access. It's not trivial, and we do not expect all players to see it from our point of view, but we still feel it's the best route to making a game everyone can enjoy.

Zarhym

#49 - June 9, 2010, 10:12 p.m.

Q u o t e:

lol tapdancing around semantics to defend your position?
How about you allow me (the gamer, the paying customer) decide what counts as content.
Normal/Heroic and 10/25 man versions DO NOT count as individual items of enjoyable content. That was never the deal, we cut you guys a lot of slack during the end of BC when this wacky stuff was being announced for WOTLK. One of the major complaints was 2 versions of the same raid potentially meaning less overall content.

You can decide what counts as content to you. That's fine and what I was referring to in my last post. What you can't decide though, is what counts as content to all of the paying customers around you.

Kalgan

#294 - June 10, 2010, 2:45 a.m.

Q u o t e:
What is happening to WoW? Every time I turn around, there is a new "feature" for sale to the playerbase. Why is it there time to develop new paid feature rather than content? Burning crusade didn't milk us for anywhere near this amount of money, but look at how much we got!

Just compare the end game of bc to that of wotlk:

BC
Kara
Magtheridon's lair
Gruul's lair
Serpentshrine cavern
Tempest keep
Hyjal
Black temple
Zul' aman
Sunwell
Kazzak & doomwalker

Vs

Wotlk
Naxx (rehashed old content)
Malygos
Obsidian sanctum
Vault of archavon
Ulduar
Trial of the crusade
Onyxia (rehashed old content)
Icecrown citadel

There was more raid content in bc than wotlk, and none of it was reused content that was already in the game. Furthermore, the insane stat jumps between ilevels makes over half of the "current" content obsolete. People were still running ALL of the content of BC to the very end of the expansion.

Where is the $30 a month that I've paid for 4 years going? Why is there a need to include cash shop items in a pay to play game? I've paid for more than enough, but I'm receiving less and less for my money. Think I'm really going to spend $80 more for a new expansion after this? You're kidding yourselves.

Red text: kazzak was rehased content too. I know

I know it's easy to take for granted from the outside, but a substantial amount of time and effort goes into making sure each raid zone supports both 10 and 25 player raids, and has both normal and heroic difficulties. Burning Crusade raids didn't support that.

So for example, if you were to look at Burning Crusade content from the standpoint of a 10-person raiding guild, you'd only see Kara and Zul'Aman (with ZA having only a semblance of a heroic mode).

Zarhym

#328 - June 10, 2010, 3:55 a.m.

Q u o t e:
I think it has been established that encounter wise, we are at an equal number or slightly more with Wrath over BC. The main thing that I'm hearing from my raiders is that this time around it has been a single raid location for each tier/patch - except for Sarth, Maly, and Halion. Whereas before, the number of bosses in say Naxx would actually have been 2-3 BC Raid Instances instead of 1. I don't think the change of scenery/location is given enough credit on how it can keep things fresh. It also allows raids to be flexible when it comes to switching people up throughout the week.

I think the general idea going around is that in Cata we are returning to the smaller raid instances, but will retain the same number of unique boss encounters. That would definitely be welcome. Even though it may be easier to stick it all in one large giant raid instance, the mental attitude about being able to go somewhere else for that day is huge. I personally don't agree with counting heroic/hard modes as another "unique" boss...but they are challenging and can be fun. Let's just split them up a bit so we don't have 12+ purple droppers in the same instance. :)

Thanks to the Blues, especially Mr. Chilton, for sticking with this thread. Was kind of shocking to see Kalgan on the blue tracker again. :)

Great post. :)

Zarhym

#351 - June 10, 2010, 5:04 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Give us more Algalons! =)

Mal'ganis should have been in Icecrown Citadel after we uncovered him in the zone. He would have made an excellent hard-mode only boss.

One of the raids we're shipping the expansion with will have a boss that can only be challenged after the final boss of the raid is defeated on Heroic difficulty.