with all the faults that SL had, I really really liked the m+ dungeons. Bring back Halls of Atonement, The Other Side, Mists of Tirna and Spires of Ascension! Among the dragonflight ones, only nokhud offensive is on the same level, although slightly above them all. I also liked questing through the arenas a lot. Maybe that's why I don't feel like SL was so bad, because that was mostly what I did, questing and m+
The tough parts gonna be after TWW launch: people will realize how its a DF+ instead of a brand new expac and will leave the game.Hero talents: could have gone under the existing ones but noone would have gave a fk about them. ->middle = newDynamic flying = dragonriding with old mounts1 raid 8 dung = yaaaaayDelves = smells like Torghast. Big during beta, people enjoying it, but by the time it comes out it has too much power attached to it (HC level gear) so its gonna be lowered, or lowered because too easy to get loot compared to m+/raid.Numbers gonna be big for sure tho: TWW and Cata Classic launch are probably happening at the same time because of this.edit: also the problem with SL was the cut content. Happened to 10.3. I dont know if they dont want to do a proper 4th patch or just lazy.They cant make systems either: no system vs full degen MoS farm 18h/day. Thats what they can do. We need a system thats inbetween. Not required but if you wanna do the content easier its adviced to do a healthy grind. Somehow they cant find a person who can design a system like that.
This confirms a lot of what we knew:BfA was losing players.Classic was a big hit and reversed WoW's fortunes.SL was very unpopular and undid much of Classic's positive feeling.The unanswered question is this:Has the recent change in approach to Retail helped, harmed or made little difference to Retail engagement?The slower-than-typical post-launch decline reflects the sentiment that, whilst DF was not an especially exciting prospect for many former players, it did a better job than usual of hanging onto the players who did buy the expack. The removal of borrowed power, the removal of the power grind and the removal of the faction division looks to have worked.However, the reverse in direction of the subscription curve in 2023 Q3 doesn't really match up with any Retail content releases. I'd suggest this is more to do with Hardcore, SoD and also the DF give-away with TWW pre-patch.I think we're actually a bit too early to be able to say how much the 8 week mini-patch cycle is helping Retail. After all, it only really kicked in after the period of slower-than-usual post-patch decline data. The real change happened with 10.2, which arrived with significantly less content up front than other recent x.2 patches. That effect is currently being masked by Hardcore and SoD, which both have a fair amount of buzz around them.In other words, the data in that graph doesn't show "Record post-launch growth and stability" for Retail. It's for WoW as a platform as a whole, and so can't be used to justify the change in approach to Retail content. What we'd really need to see is Retail player engagement data, but I doubt many even at Blizz have access to that. And as the changes to Retail aren't done, it wouldn't even be fair to expect to know that data.
You could not pay me to watch a Bellular video. The guy has perfected the art about turning a 30 second talking point into a ten minute video.
Good thing they kicked Danuser out, WoW wouldn't survive more than a couple expansions with him as lead story writer.
It simply cannot be overstated how devastating Shadowlands was for WoW. What's missing in the presentation as a primary flaw for me is respect for the players' time.The Covenant feature, particularly early in the expansion, was actively developed against community feedback. It destroyed my motivation to play WoW to a degree that didn't exist before. The reason here wasn't the "Borrowed Power", but the absurd grind, time gate and thousands of restrictions that I had to subject myself to.That's when I stopped playing Shadowlands.
No video link to this Conference lecture? There must be one online somewhere.
Shadowlands was fun to play at launch but after a few months the system issues really started to become noticable, the patch dragged for 8 or 9 months if I remember right and then 9.1 came and didn't address anything, in fact they added domination shards which was one of the worst systems ever. They only started to fix and change things with 9.1.5 which didn't come for another 4 or so months and by then getting people back was very difficult. That patch laid the foundations of current game philosophies and those of us who stayed played the good game. 9.1.5, 9.2 and 9.2.5 were great, I for sure had more fun playing the end of SL than I did end of DF but getting to that point was rough.
I wonder how many Blizz devs were out front of the GDC screaming into the air because of GG?
Not gonna lie, a 8 week patch cadence fornthe sake of more content isn't great either. DF has been full of random non progression world content half the player base doesn't even interact with more than a handful of times. That's waster time to me that could be used on developing actual progression content imo. Also 1 "mega dungeon" is not enough for an entire patch blizzard.