I cannot believe that 10.2 will be the final patch. I cannot believe that an expansion with no major content features is ending with just 2 major patches, leaving us with a raid for a whole year.Absolutely surreal that they're okay with another year of drought.There's no order halls, no artifacts, no legendaries aside from the two special ones, no Torghast, no covenants, no war campaign, no island expeditions... only content they spent time on that died in a month because they didn't make it worth doing mere weeks after release.I'm not saying Torghast or any of the other things were good, but at least those expansions had things going on. DF feels like it had nothing going on. You go make some soup or hunt some creatures. You go kill "rares" and open the same 27 rooms for six weeks and you get a mount. You go kill a bunch of things and then enter a portal and kill a boss. Only Zaralek Cavern actually had something more going on, but still nothing with longevity.A single major patch isn't even enough to round out the story, man. @#$%'s sake.Edit: I want to add that it sucks extra hard if Amirdrassil is the final raid because it's just such a lazy raid in terms of effort put in. The fights being good mechanically will always trump everything else, but the entire raid has like 3 truly unique models for its bosses. And one of them is a new model that gets used for several mounts, and drops as a mount itself, reducing the uniqueness.The next major patch will include world content that even the people announcing it couldn't manage to sound excited for, a raid with mostly reused models, and a zone that looks like stuff we've already seen. And that's the patch we're ending on?
Anyone who have seen blizzard's corporate mind tendencies have probably knew they wont be able to resist trying to make 2 content updates per expansion a norm... not after they have been pardoned for it in SL (even tho that was at least excusable, this one is no longer)Blizzard develops wow like this for a long time now. Probing ppl, trying always skip having to work for their money and only stop when there is a major backlash and even then they just make minor symbolical changes to make ppl think they won.Safe to say, wow's tragicomic management and blizzard's shameful decisions as whole will be great for educational purposes as a deterrent of the 2020s software industry once we get past this horrible period.
It feels like it would be such a weird move to end DF on a .2. It made sense for Shadowlands, the patch cadence was awful and the expansion wasn't well liked. But dragonflight has had an amazing patch cadence and has been relatively well received. It also hasn't even been out for a year yet, which messes with their usual 2 year expansion cycle.First time for everything, but pretty disappointing.
This is probably the least surprising news ever to me. The fact that they were so non-committal about a 10.3 pretty much confirmed it in my view. Hopefully this means a "sooner rather than later" release for the next expansion (as long as it's ready).
Finally, I missed these
I do not want fated
Dragonflight really has not had a very interesting theme or story imo (outside maybe the Tyr stuff) so I'm kinda glad they're moving on. Unfortunately, it seems they might be moving onto a storm/dwarven focused expansion next, which is arguably even MORE mundane in terms of theme, so I'm starting to feel my excitement and love for WoW really dwindle away as of late. I know a lot of people like DF, and I have to acknowledge that, but I haven't been one of them. I feel like the next expac really needs to grab my attention or I might just end up letting my sub lapse for the first time since Cataclysm Dragon Soul.
Praise the old gods! Look Dragonflight was very good, Dragonflight over Bfa/Shadowlands by a million miles, but I'm ready for another theme.
Wonder where people got the idea that DF would go on for years with 10.3, 10.4, etc.Xpacs are usually over at the 3rd raid tier with a few exceptions when they need to abruptly change the plans like WoD or when having to stop everything to remake the entire Heart of Azeroth/Azerith Armor system (Dont mistake raid tiers with two or more small/medium sized raids, look at the raid tier/tier sets/ilvl range). They're already fully going with old dungeons for M+ now, did people think that calling the tiers/patches "seasons" meant that we would be going season after season with DF?Doubt that we're going for an entire year. Why would they be deadset into releasing xpacs at nov/dec when those where the worst dates they had (many problems to fix within the game and with employees not wanting to work during holidays). They've increased the price of the xpac while delivering a little bit less content. Why not selling another xpac earlier?They now have something else to release for nov/dec with yearly D4 xpacs, etc.
There's nooooo way this is the last content patch for DF surely? I feel like it hardly gained any traction. There's so many loose ends and the story has honestly been extremely lackluster...People arguing more content patches. Read between the lines please. These silly little mini patches they have been doing have added absolutely nothing of substance. The vaults, dream surges, time ways it's all just meaningless fluff to most players. Impossible to lose content with no interesting or unique gameplay (unless you consider opening 20-30 doors and clicking on objects "interesting") The only other time blizz had a 3 raid expansion was WOD and that was abandoned in favour of Legion. Only explanation i can think of is either; 1) blizz are simply changing the formula and are adding more stuff before the end of the expansion because they are popular (AOTC mount and runes)or 2) blizz are accelerating their expansion releases because they figure they can pump out smaller more frequent ones for the same/more costDragonflight definitely feels like it needs a .3 patch, and not a fated one an actual new content patch.
I swear if they bring that garbage fated season back.
The prema augment rune is normally a sign of the final raid tier. So this probably is the last major patch of the expansion. I expect them to do something to dull the end of expansion content drought like with Fated in SL (it worked pretty well) and hopefully one more minor content/story patch to close out DF before the pre-expansion stuff. But man this expansion feels short. Assuming this is the last content patch. It feels like we got some cool stuff like dragonriding, new profession system, gear upgrade system, and Evoker but all the other content was pretty meh. Stuff like Assaults, Timerifts and dreamsurges are fun enough "stuff to do" but when I look back on the last year of DF... I'm kinda feeling meh. Nothing really defined the expansion for me. Which is sorta +/-. A strongly disliked signature feature like covenants from SL or Heart of Azeroth from BFA easily overshadows any of the good. I guess one of the things that has me looking back on DF kinda unfavorably was the choice to use old dungeons as a large part of the M+ pool. I like PvE so I raid and do M+ mostly with a little PvP for seasonal rewards. I feel like I spent a significant amount of time in these older dungeons during DF M+, and therefore it felt like I was playing older expansions rather than DF when a 4 or 5 hour M+ session had me doing no DF dungeons but rather older expansion content I'd already run ad nauseum back when it was current content. Which made DF feel kinda "I've seen this already" all over the place. Timerifts are kinda different because of the theming, but I get a lot of "Been there done that. Seen it already" moments in DF. Kinda minor but I think it illustrates what I'm feeling pretty well. There is a PvP WQ in DF that lets you ride ducks with a knockback while you fight other players. Which is very similar and reminds me of the SL one where you were riding Deer or something with a charge, which reminds me of the Legion one where you had like 5 different animals with different abilities including a rareish DRAKE where you could just swoop in from the sky bombing the people fighting each other below you lol! The DF PvP WQ with ridable animals makes me feel like "I've already seen this before and I've seen it done better." Which is kinda a feeling some of DFs other content and system additions give me. I like a lot of the stuff they've brought back, like tier sets and upgradable gear, and think throughout DF the game has consistently been moving in a better direction that it was previously... but a lot of it gives the feeling "I've already seen this before."
Yes, end this !@#$ty expansion already, please.
The augment rune being introduced in the last patch is just speculation. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the last patch. People act like they already made the announcement.