Not looking forward to WoD anymore

#1 - June 30, 2014, 7:22 a.m.

-Black Temple and Frostwolf keep no longer hub cities, just quest locations you visit once.
-New faction cities are copy pastes of the 4.1 krasarang wilds faction bases in ashran, an island in nowhere
-Garrisons only in one zone now, no longer customization, no longer lets you name npcs, no longer has skill boosts, is just a daily quest hub phased to you.
-average class goes from 40 spells to 7
-no new skeletons or animations, literally every creature in the expansion is a remodelled creature.
-portions of entire zones are copy pasted from the BC devset
-the rest are not flying compatible and have 2d jpg mountains -now you know why shamans had far sight and hunters had eagle vision removed.
-now only 4 dungeons from level 90-100
-client code for garrison cash shop functionality discovered, quickly removed along with tweet mentioning it from cory stockton
-less raid content at launch than any expansion
-less dungeons than cataclysm had in PATCHES
-no flying
-story is a barely canon side timeline alternate dimension just to give another enemy to fight while trying to lure in veterans with nostalgia and a 'veterans first!" beta access program
-almost all CC removed in pvp. totally removed in pve
-adding healing and tanking npcs in quests
-Heirloom and tabard storage tab just cut until "later"
-replacing quests with "dynamic, interactive world experiences" that appear once and when you do them disappear leaving huge swathes of zones empty.
-new models have a single face and the cosmetic choices in almost every model but undead simply adds a new texture to said single face.
-homogenized healing to the point that its all just different colours now
-guild levleing removed
-talents auto fill per spec to avoid confusion.
-80% of announcements from blizzcon for the expansion are confirmed cut or extremely truncated in some way.

i was really looking forward to it when i saw the announcement at blizzcon... with all the changes, content removed, and the mass purging of abilities to the point where the game is slowly turning into diablo 3 with six spells to use. i'm all for removing bloat but from seeing the changes its gotten to the point where stuff seems to have gotten removed because they could. i mean really, far sight? it didn't even need a keybind. it was a fun ability to do when running around exploring every now and then. it help create immersion with the class. even earthquake was removed. the most asked ability by shaman.

i've been playing wow for an extremely long time. long enough to see every expansion release. every release there was always complaints but this time its different. i can easily say this expansion has been the first where i've seen so many complaints about a whole bunch of stuff. virtually everything. more people than ever before.

Bashiok

Community Manager

#343 - July 31, 2014, 11:57 p.m.

The OP appears to be a copy/paste from a forum reply on MMO-Champion, which is unfortunate as almost everything listed is just incorrect, if not intentionally misleading. Reading it I'm tempted to say it's a well crafted troll because ... I'll say: because of the outlandishness of some of the claims, but the fact that it has so many upvotes here tells me that either people didn't read it, or they're agreeing with something that promotes their general feeling without counting on any of the specific points being made.

Being wary of a feature or direction is absolutely warranted, being unhappy or even upset about something is something we want to know about, providing feedback and telling us how you feel about something is critical to us so we can create an excellent gaming experience, but it's so absolutely important that everyone be curious, and research, and want to learn, and become knowledgeable, and use that knowledge to empower what they themselves think and say. I see a lot of people here are being critical of the points listed, which restores some of me, but so many are assuming the things they're told are true, and that's a poisonous way to ... hell, to go through life, let alone how to feel about a video game.

Simply repeating what someone else said is so very easy, and especially in this case, a good way to undermine your own voice. Have a voice, be critical, but do it because you have something to say. That is what is helpful, and that is what we want to hear.

For those in the thread attempting to inform people of what is accurate, we appreciate your effort. We'll try to step it up to help you out.

Bashiok

Community Manager

#357 - Aug. 1, 2014, 12:15 a.m.

07/31/2014 05:09 PMPosted by Darkfriend
Sorry Bashiok, but OP is right about a number of things, including the massive amounts of cuts to content on launch, low number of dungeons, and extreme dumbing down of PVE.

Look at the forest from outside of the trees. You and the rest of the devs.

Massive cuts of what? Faction hubs being in a different place? There are 7 dungeons + an updated max level UBRS. What does extreme dumbing down mean? This kind of response is the exact point of my previous reply.

Bashiok

Community Manager

#372 - Aug. 1, 2014, 12:23 a.m.

07/31/2014 05:16 PMPosted by Mazinkaiser
07/31/2014 05:15 PMPosted by Bashiok
...

Massive cuts of what? Faction hubs being in a different place? There are 7 dungeons + an updated max level UBRS. What does extreme dumbing down mean? This kind of response is the exact point of my previous reply.

Ability pruning for one.

After 10 years of adding more and more abilities, there's a point when we need to take a critical look at all that we have wrought. We can't just constantly add more and more and more abilities to the game forever and expect it to hold up under the weight of itself. Our intent as a company is always to design simple systems with lots of fun gameplay depth. Easy to learn difficult to master is our motto. Having tons of abilities does not necessarily make a game deep or fun, just complex. We've posted these exact points many times. If you disagree with Blizzard's core design principles, or any specific changes being made, we'd be happy to hear specific feedback, but saying a game is going to be bad because there are less class abilities is not particularly helpful, or even accurate.

Lore

Community Manager

#461 - Aug. 1, 2014, 1:05 a.m.

This thread is getting a lot of attention, which is unfortunate, as it's chock full of misinformation. Let me clarify what I can:

-Black Temple and Frostwolf keep no longer hub cities, just quest locations you visit once.

They won't be hub cities, true. They're a bit more than "just quest locations you visit once," though.

-New faction cities are copy pastes of the 4.1 krasarang wilds faction bases in ashran, an island in nowhere

Even in their current state in Beta, this is false. They don't look anything like the Krasarang bases. Also, they're nowhere near complete in the current build. They'll look closer to what we're aiming for in the next one.

-Garrisons only in one zone now, no longer customization, no longer lets you name npcs, no longer has skill boosts, is just a daily quest hub phased to you.

True, false, true, false, extremely false.

-average class goes from 40 spells to 7

I'd double check your math. We pruned some abilities, but in even the most extreme cases it wasn’t nearly that many.

-no new skeletons or animations, literally every creature in the expansion is a remodelled creature.

False. Even the new character models are getting re-done animations.

-portions of entire zones are copy pasted from the BC devset

False. Everything has been built from scratch.

-the rest are not flying compatible and have 2d jpg mountains -now you know why shamans had far sight and hunters had eagle vision removed.

False. Every zone is built to be capable of flying, and I have no idea where you're getting "2d jpg mountains" from. Also, Far Sight and Eagle Eye were not removed.

-now only 4 dungeons from level 90-100

There are 4 dungeons from 90-99, and 4 more that open at level 100.

-client code for garrison cash shop functionality discovered, quickly removed along with tweet mentioning it from cory stockton

This never happened and such functionality is not planned, please don't spread false rumors.

-less raid content at launch than any expansion

False. The first tier of Warlords raiding contains 17 bosses.

-less dungeons than cataclysm had in PATCHES

False. Cataclysm added 3 brand new dungeons in 4.3, and 2 updated dungeons in 4.2. Warlords is launching with 7 new dungeons and 1 updated dungeon.

-no flying

True, at least at launch.

-story is a barely canon side timeline alternate dimension just to give another enemy to fight while trying to lure in veterans with nostalgia and a 'veterans first!" beta access program

Story opinions are subjective, but I’m sorry to hear you’re not as excited about it as we are. We've had tons of requests over the years for veteran perks.

-almost all CC removed in pvp. totally removed in pve

False and completely false.

-adding healing and tanking npcs in quests

I don't know what this is referring to. Maybe the occasional quests where you rescue someone and they help you fight for a brief time? Is that a bad thing?

-Heirloom and tabard storage tab just cut until "later"

True, though they haven’t been cut, merely delayed.

-replacing quests with "dynamic, interactive world experiences" that appear once and when you do them disappear leaving huge swathes of zones empty.

Questing hasn't been "replaced", and the "appear once and then disappear" bit is just false. Maybe you’ve just encountered an unfinished zone in Beta?

-new models have a single face and the cosmetic choices in almost every model but undead simply adds a new texture to said single face.

False. Have you seen our recent ArtCraft on the topic?

-homogenized healing to the point that its all just different colours now

False, but if you have specific feedback on why you feel that way, we'd love to hear it.

-guild levleing removed

True. We think this is a good thing.

-talents auto fill per spec to avoid confusion.

False and I have no idea why you'd think this was the case.

-80% of announcements from blizzcon for the expansion are confirmed cut or extremely truncated in some way.

We've made some cuts since Blizzcon, yes, but not nearly that many. We try to be as open as possible about what we’re dreaming up when we first announce an expansion, but a lot of things change and evolve from those basic concepts as development ramps up.

Lore

Community Manager

#519 - Aug. 1, 2014, 1:25 a.m.

Regarding Twitter: it's a medium we're still kind of trying to figure out how to utilize most effectively. It's an extremely powerful way to talk to and engage with the community, but it's not great for everything, and we've certainly made some missteps. We're learning, though. :)

Lore

Community Manager

#708 - Aug. 1, 2014, 2:34 a.m.

07/31/2014 07:11 PMPosted by Enekie
07/31/2014 06:05 PMPosted by Lore

Story opinions are subjective, but I’m sorry to hear you’re not as excited about it as we are. We've had tons of requests over the years for veteran perks.

This feedback is what really discourages me about the direction WoD is heading.

"Story opinions are subjective" is not a helpful thing to tell players who are dissatisfied with the way you're telling a story. It more or less brushes them off and tells them that their opinions are worth less than other players.

Definitely not my intention, and I apologize for being unclear if you've taken it that way. I only called it subjective because, while I would call it false, opinions don't really lend themselves well to true/false answers. I'm excited about the WoD storyline, but that may not be the case for everyone (and feedback on why you're not is very useful!)

07/31/2014 07:11 PMPosted by Enekie
But really, it's indicative of an even larger problem: you say you like feedback, but you don't respond to it unless it's positive. When something is brought up that the playerbase doesn't like, you don't talk about it and then sit back and wait for us to accept it.

It's like what you want to say is "we love feedback, but only if it validates our current ideas about where we'd like to go."

One extremely important thing I want to get across here: when we're not talking about something publicly, that means we're talking about it internally. We're discussing the feedback and trying to determine what, if any, action needs to be taken. And until we have a solid answer, we don't want to tease people with a "we read this, but don't have anything to share just yet" response. Aside from the fact that it would slow us down dramatically (we read a LOT of feedback every day), we just don't think a non-answer is a great one.

That said, we're always aiming to improve how we communicate, and definitely get the message that we can do better. We'll keep aiming to improve.