As someone who quit before the last raid tier, I like this timing. Gives me time to become suitably bored with SWTOR before returning to WoW. I like the announced features, particularly the transmog stuff, plus the Sylvanas fanboy in me got really excited about the cinematic.
Have they said anything about what their flying mount policy is going to be this time?
I enjoyed gearing up my paladin in season one doing battlegrounds, but when I tried to do the same in s2, it felt flat.
I don't know what was happening with the gear drops in pvp or in lfrs, but I could never get anything satisfying while gearing up later during Warlords.
The only thing that has me going back to WoW was leveling my alts, and even leveling my second horde through warlords was a pain because of the way story was set up. Once you have all of your garrison unlocked, there's literally nothing driving me to end game.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
DPS Demon Hunter mastery increases Chaos Damage (meh) and Movement Speed (hark!)
Flight policy will likely be discussed later today. I'm willing to bet they "liked how [the WoD model] kept players engaged in their environment."
I bet they learned their lesson and flight will once again be gated behind some achievements you can finish at max level. Hopefully it's account wide to all your characters lvl 100 and up.
The hots q&a first bunch of questions were like "there is this cartoon i used to like, can you make a hero of one of those characters" and the blizzard guys going "errrr.. No."
A summer release means that, once again, they lied and it's another Year of Last Raid Tier.
Stop. Fucking. Promising This. We have long stopped believing you can get expansions out in any kind of timely manner.
Blizzard lies to themselves more than anyone else when it comes to this, I think for some reason they really do believe they can "get it right this time" and overcome the slow lumbering engine they have to put out content at a reasonable clip. I really thought WoD's shittiness was due to them cutting corners so they could create parallel teams for annualizing WoW CoD-style but the release date for this has shown that's likely not the case.
why can't this game have content updates every 3 months. It's not like they couldn't afford it
The problem is the game is a decade old and the content pipeline for it was designed back then, when the concept of rapid iteration was a pipe dream. They constantly allude to bottlenecks that mean they can't just throw more devs and artists at the problem to get things done faster. What they'd need to do is a full systems overhaul so they can eliminate those bottlenecks but after Cata they're pretty gunshy about doing a bunch of work to fix something that doesn't directly apply to endlevel engagement even though if they actually fixed this it'd help massively for every expansion down the road.
The problem is the game is a decade old and the content pipeline for it was designed back then, when the concept of rapid iteration was a pipe dream. They constantly allude to bottlenecks that mean they can't just throw more devs and artists at the problem to get things done faster. What they'd need to do is a full systems overhaul so they can eliminate those bottlenecks but after Cata they're pretty gunshy about doing a bunch of work to fix something that doesn't directly apply to endlevel engagement even though if they actually fixed this it'd help massively for every expansion down the road.
speaking of which, from the engineering roundtable that wasn't streamed:
The WoW representative described a picture that makes the rounds at the office describing WoW: a trash can, with an iron on it (plugged in and running), with a coffee pot on top, with spaghetti and water in the coffee pot. "Problem solved!"
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Kevin CristI make the devil hit his kneesand say the 'our father'Registered Userregular
I'm liking the transmog changes, including being able to hide shoulders.
I'm liking the transmog changes, including being able to hide shoulders.
oh my god really? FINALLY?!
I love everything about this!
Also re: fashioncraft, I want the heroic chest off mannoroth not because I care about the stats, but because i want to have the heroic set look as well as the normal one. living that xmog life.
+1
HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
Lots of good info in today's presentations, but
You can pre-order, buy the collector's edition, and contact customer service to get the difference.
Ahh, damn you blizzard making me want to play again...
Just based off the artifacts and info, I want to play a druid... but my current 90 druid on this account is a troll, and damn do I hate the look of him in druid gear. It's why I stopped playing him to begin with. Now tk decide if I should reroll a better race or focus on leveling other classes...
For my unsolicited thoughts on the info from blizzcon...
The artifacts look unreasonably awesome. The cynic in me says that there's no way they can hold to the promise of the sort of variety they're claiming, and the end result will be more streamlined cookie-cutter across players. If they can manage to deliver what they're selling, that would be fantastic.
Transmog looks great, but given that it's identical to D3, there's no good reason it will have taken them 2 years to get it out after they promised it for WoD.
Class halls...meh. I honestly don't get the point. They learned that Garrisons were a bad idea; that they provided, at best, annoying busy work and had so little customization that they didn't feel special. I imagine they hope that getting more people into one spot in the class halls will make the difference; but I think they'll be surprised how few people want to hang out with their specific class only instead of in Dalaran or what have you. They apparently thought spectating the brawlers guild would be a 'thing' too, but at no point did anyone go there unless they were queuing, and spectating was required for admission. Players don't want to be arbitrarily divided up, and had there not been so many 'necessary' aspects of the Garrison (not limited to, but including, the 'best' way to get materials), and/or had the capitols of WoD not been so shitty, fewer people would have hung out solely in them.
The general atmosphere of the xpack feels good. If not a bit too same-y. All of the zones feel like pretty carbon copies of already existing zones.
I get there's only so much they can do visually within Azeroth. But man. If you showed a non-wow player screenshots from Ashenvale and Val'sharah or Eversong Woods and Suramar, I doubt they'd be able to discern any difference. It seems like, to counter this somewhat, they're putting in a lot more visually distinct sub-zones than usual, but that makes zones feel totally lacking any cohesion and more like sprints to one hub to the next instead of actually visiting a region. Instead of the sprawling hills of Nagrand that feels continuous and alive, we'll just have little 'mini' zones within a zone that isn't recognizable as a whole.
Again, sorry, I know I'm being a super cynic, but some of the things they're saying sound way too good to be true (and/or things they've promised before and failed to deliver). Based on how much they walked back various things the past couple expansions I just fully expect a decent amount of what they're claiming is coming with Legions won't make it into the expansion. Either to be never mentioned again, or claims they never said it in the first place; or "pushed back" and becoming a bullet point on the next expansion.
Also, when the hell is beta actually supposed to start? MMO-Champ says "a few weeks" after blizzcon, but that puts it at Thanksgiving, which isn't gonna happen, and I can't imagine anyone working at Blizzard would be thrilled with starting beta between Thanksgiving and New Years. Summer release, for sure. As I said the other day, I'm not surprised at all they won't be giving sub numbers in calls anymore, and I'm less surprised that was announced a week before it becoming perfectly clear there's another half year, at minimum, before the next expansion.
Really I like loitering in cities for the social stuff
not hanging out in my garrison
I do hope the class halls are a social thing since the realm I am on is rather dead
Really I like loitering in cities for the social stuff
not hanging out in my garrison
I do hope the class halls are a social thing since the realm I am on is rather dead
not joking, I believe more than 80% of my playtime in vanilla was hanging out in Ironforge
No more dual specs, I guess. You just have access to everything from go.
?
All classes will have access to all specs. No more having to pick two
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Hide shoulder option, gear with non-stat effects (1, 2), new animations for melee attacks, all Death Knight runes now death runes. All sorts of nice things in this expansion.
Posts
Boy, this sounds a lot like the features from the last few expansions that got cut outright, or pushed back to later (later, later later) patches.
Stop. Fucking. Promising This. We have long stopped believing you can get expansions out in any kind of timely manner.
Have they said anything about what their flying mount policy is going to be this time?
Oh heh a guildie of mine.
I don't know what was happening with the gear drops in pvp or in lfrs, but I could never get anything satisfying while gearing up later during Warlords.
The only thing that has me going back to WoW was leveling my alts, and even leveling my second horde through warlords was a pain because of the way story was set up. Once you have all of your garrison unlocked, there's literally nothing driving me to end game.
I bet they learned their lesson and flight will once again be gated behind some achievements you can finish at max level. Hopefully it's account wide to all your characters lvl 100 and up.
they know what the audience loves and goddammit it's fashioncraft motherfuckers
The problem is the game is a decade old and the content pipeline for it was designed back then, when the concept of rapid iteration was a pipe dream. They constantly allude to bottlenecks that mean they can't just throw more devs and artists at the problem to get things done faster. What they'd need to do is a full systems overhaul so they can eliminate those bottlenecks but after Cata they're pretty gunshy about doing a bunch of work to fix something that doesn't directly apply to endlevel engagement even though if they actually fixed this it'd help massively for every expansion down the road.
speaking of which, from the engineering roundtable that wasn't streamed:
Steam: YOU FACE JARAXXUS| Twitch.tv: CainLoveless
oh my god really? FINALLY?!
I love everything about this!
Also re: fashioncraft, I want the heroic chest off mannoroth not because I care about the stats, but because i want to have the heroic set look as well as the normal one. living that xmog life.
No sir, I don't like it.
Yes, I think we've figured this out. I suspect they would have made 18 months this time around if OVERWATCH had not jumped the que.
Activision spent the budget on Candy Crush.
Steam: pazython
Just based off the artifacts and info, I want to play a druid... but my current 90 druid on this account is a troll, and damn do I hate the look of him in druid gear. It's why I stopped playing him to begin with. Now tk decide if I should reroll a better race or focus on leveling other classes...
PSN = PessimistMaximus
The artifacts look unreasonably awesome. The cynic in me says that there's no way they can hold to the promise of the sort of variety they're claiming, and the end result will be more streamlined cookie-cutter across players. If they can manage to deliver what they're selling, that would be fantastic.
Transmog looks great, but given that it's identical to D3, there's no good reason it will have taken them 2 years to get it out after they promised it for WoD.
Class halls...meh. I honestly don't get the point. They learned that Garrisons were a bad idea; that they provided, at best, annoying busy work and had so little customization that they didn't feel special. I imagine they hope that getting more people into one spot in the class halls will make the difference; but I think they'll be surprised how few people want to hang out with their specific class only instead of in Dalaran or what have you. They apparently thought spectating the brawlers guild would be a 'thing' too, but at no point did anyone go there unless they were queuing, and spectating was required for admission. Players don't want to be arbitrarily divided up, and had there not been so many 'necessary' aspects of the Garrison (not limited to, but including, the 'best' way to get materials), and/or had the capitols of WoD not been so shitty, fewer people would have hung out solely in them.
The general atmosphere of the xpack feels good. If not a bit too same-y. All of the zones feel like pretty carbon copies of already existing zones.
I get there's only so much they can do visually within Azeroth. But man. If you showed a non-wow player screenshots from Ashenvale and Val'sharah or Eversong Woods and Suramar, I doubt they'd be able to discern any difference. It seems like, to counter this somewhat, they're putting in a lot more visually distinct sub-zones than usual, but that makes zones feel totally lacking any cohesion and more like sprints to one hub to the next instead of actually visiting a region. Instead of the sprawling hills of Nagrand that feels continuous and alive, we'll just have little 'mini' zones within a zone that isn't recognizable as a whole.
Again, sorry, I know I'm being a super cynic, but some of the things they're saying sound way too good to be true (and/or things they've promised before and failed to deliver). Based on how much they walked back various things the past couple expansions I just fully expect a decent amount of what they're claiming is coming with Legions won't make it into the expansion. Either to be never mentioned again, or claims they never said it in the first place; or "pushed back" and becoming a bullet point on the next expansion.
Also, when the hell is beta actually supposed to start? MMO-Champ says "a few weeks" after blizzcon, but that puts it at Thanksgiving, which isn't gonna happen, and I can't imagine anyone working at Blizzard would be thrilled with starting beta between Thanksgiving and New Years. Summer release, for sure. As I said the other day, I'm not surprised at all they won't be giving sub numbers in calls anymore, and I'm less surprised that was announced a week before it becoming perfectly clear there's another half year, at minimum, before the next expansion.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
?
I believe they are moving/cloning dalaran!
not hanging out in my garrison
I do hope the class halls are a social thing since the realm I am on is rather dead
GOOD NEWS
not joking, I believe more than 80% of my playtime in vanilla was hanging out in Ironforge
All classes will have access to all specs. No more having to pick two