Maybe they just want their "box" sales, and any subs that come along with that are just gravy. I'm sure they will spend the least amount possible developing this xpac to get the most return. They may make more off of cash shop sales than subs. Whatever they do, Blizzard is not stupid as a business. They are milking this 12-year-old property for all it's worth.
When I read about the changes coming in LEGION, I was really excited. However, I have now played/tested the LEGION alpha/beta and feel a little bit off. I really do not see this expansion releasing before nov/dec time.
There is a lot missing, many parts do not work. What got me was that mobs take ages to kill, even with a dps spec. I am not looking for one shot kills, but combat seem incredibly dull now ;(. I am still holding on to the hope that when it all comes together, the changes will prove to be a shot in the arm for WOW.
I think the longer kill times are designed to get players working cooperatively in groups -- you know, like vanilla.
Seriously, though -- friend and I play alpha together. First we started in MM Hunter / Frost DK but without a proper tank, it was very slow even as you mentioned with 2 DPS as we both had to continue to move and b careful of aggroing more (aggro ranges are b-i-g). Moving to MM Hunter / Blood DK went better with a tank so that she could stand and bring them down faster.
It's my guess that they're making content less solo-friendly and more group-friendly, something people have wanted for a long time.
When I read about the changes coming in LEGION, I was really excited. However, I have now played/tested the LEGION alpha/beta and feel a little bit off. I really do not see this expansion releasing before nov/dec time.
There is a lot missing, many parts do not work. What got me was that mobs take ages to kill, even with a dps spec. I am not looking for one shot kills, but combat seem incredibly dull now ;(. I am still holding on to the hope that when it all comes together, the changes will prove to be a shot in the arm for WOW.
I think the longer kill times are designed to get players working cooperatively in groups -- you know, like vanilla.
Seriously, though -- friend and I play alpha together. First we started in MM Hunter / Frost DK but without a proper tank, it was very slow even as you mentioned with 2 DPS as we both had to continue to move and b careful of aggroing more (aggro ranges are b-i-g). Moving to MM Hunter / Blood DK went better with a tank so that she could stand and bring them down faster.
It's my guess that they're making content less solo-friendly and more group-friendly, something people have wanted for a long time.
"Something people have wanted for a long time". What people? You mean those that are the loudest on the forums? Also people want something until they get it, then they realize what they had before was just better.
I remember how it was with ESO in the beginning. Sure it has action combat, which immediately makes it a harder game, but when you can't kill 2 mobs at once, then you know it's just way way too hard for an average gamer. That's what the Veteran Ranks used to be in the old days, and people cried and cried until ZOS nerfed it. Even today many are still struggling, but that has to do more with the steep difficulty in learning the action combat mechanics, rather than the game being that hard. Still I would have preferred if the difficulty stayed the same, but I know that I'm in the minority.
Then Craglorn released (group zone), and the nerf cries just got worse and worse. Simply put, people don't want a challenge when playing solo, unless it's some kind of solo endgame (Maelstrom Arena). Any content that is not endgame content, shouldn't be hard if you want to keep your playerbase happy.
For better or worse the majority of MMO players nowadays are actually solo casual players, it's not wise to piss them off. Blizzard did exactly that with WoD, when they released so little of solo content, which is no wonder that they lost 50% of subs in barely 6 months.
@josko9 ; Well, I think that Warlords demonstrated that too much solo play is a bad thing and I actually agree with it. There's also the difficulty ramp up with players using greens/blues that are better than WoD but low end in Legion that makes things harder. Trust me: 2-3 months after Legion's release, those who want to will happily be able to solo.
I actually like having to consider my moves and working with a small team. I'm not a raider or even much for dungeons, so this 2+ player experience is fun.
At this point I'm not really even sure that Blizzard pays attention to their own subscriber base. From an outsider who just popped his head back into the game recently, the fact that so many people disliked garrison and left due to the issues it caused should have indicated doing anything with that system in the next expansion should have been off the table.
It's like... OMG a well respected, proven developer with a amazing track record of blockbuster games actually listens to feedback and criticism and seeks to improve their craft and keep their playerbase happy. Weird!
And here I was, thinking the arm-chair devs on MMORPG.com had all the answers!
For better or worse the majority of MMO players nowadays are actually solo casual players, it's not wise to piss them off. Blizzard did exactly that with WoD, when they released so little of solo content, which is no wonder that they lost 50% of subs in barely 6 months.
Nope WOD released the game to be nothing but a Solo RPG online game. That is why it fail. True MMORPG players want group content Period. If you want a single player experience go buy dragon age. You can say that the majority of MMORPG players want solo content yet WOW has been a Solo MMORPG since WOTLK and continues to be designed around solo game play and guess what the game blows and has fewer and fewer subs because of it.
@josko9 ; Well, I think that Warlords demonstrated that too much solo play is a bad thing and I actually agree with it. There's also the difficulty ramp up with players using greens/blues that are better than WoD but low end in Legion that makes things harder. Trust me: 2-3 months after Legion's release, those who want to will happily be able to solo.
I actually like having to consider my moves and working with a small team. I'm not a raider or even much for dungeons, so this 2+ player experience is fun.
Sounds ideal for my wife and I. We always duo in most mmos. Wow being one of course. I always play a tank and she is always dps. I'm happy to hear that combo will work well in the expac. The group play is a nice touch by blizzard.
For better or worse the majority of MMO players nowadays are actually solo casual players, it's not wise to piss them off. Blizzard did exactly that with WoD, when they released so little of solo content, which is no wonder that they lost 50% of subs in barely 6 months.
Nope WOD released the game to be nothing but a Solo RPG online game. That is why it fail. True MMORPG players want group content Period. If you want a single player experience go buy dragon age. You can say that the majority of MMORPG players want solo content yet WOW has been a Solo MMORPG since WOTLK and continues to be designed around solo game play and guess what the game blows and has fewer and fewer subs because of it.
I get what you're trying to say and in some ways agree with you. But, WoW has held the highest sub numbers for 10+ years now. With the highest being in Wotlk where you claim the problem began. So I think your argument kinda collapsed on itself.
For better or worse the majority of MMO players nowadays are actually solo casual players, it's not wise to piss them off. Blizzard did exactly that with WoD, when they released so little of solo content, which is no wonder that they lost 50% of subs in barely 6 months.
Nope WOD released the game to be nothing but a Solo RPG online game. That is why it fail. True MMORPG players want group content Period. If you want a single player experience go buy dragon age. You can say that the majority of MMORPG players want solo content yet WOW has been a Solo MMORPG since WOTLK and continues to be designed around solo game play and guess what the game blows and has fewer and fewer subs because of it.
I get what you're trying to say and in some ways agree with you. But, WoW has held the highest sub numbers for 10+ years now. With the highest being in Wotlk where you claim the problem began. So I think your argument kinda collapsed on itself.
Weird as it is, the peak for WoW was during the release of and several months following Cata!
Vanilla, released in 2004 The Burning Crusade, released in January 2007Wrath of the Lich King, released in November 2008Cataclysm, released in December 2010 Mists of Pandaria, released in September 2012 Warlords of Draenor, released in November 2014.
Of course he makes some valid points and that' s why the community is in red alert. Now there will be some guys who will tell you that garrisons are ok and they like them. Of course, these ppl exist. And we should respect their opinion, but you see...they probably didnt play vanilla or tbc or wotlk. And if someone did play those expansions and he still says garrisons are ok then we should ask him to give us some of his drugs cause they must be super high quality. Seriously, they are heading towards a major clusterfuck of epic proportions. If they dont realize that ppl want an MMORPG and not the current WoW, then the game is dead. DEAD. They claim that the new garrison will force ppl out, but the videos show that such is not the case. But its cool...its only the alpha. They will fix it probably. They have plenty of time, 4 months i believe? /sarcasm
We understand that many players are unhappy with garrisons, and in particular with the prominence of follower missions in Warlords of Draenor. We're certainly not sitting around, saying to ourselves, "Wow, everyone loves managing followers and doing missions; let's just copy/paste this feature into our next expansion for an easy win!"
We agree that, especially in the long run, the balance of content and rewards between garrison missions and core world content was a big problem in Draenor. Players too often found themselves without much reason to bother with dungeons or outdoor content, possibly logging on to raid or PvP, and otherwise just checking in to collect mission rewards and send followers out on new ones. And after a little while of that, it's awfully easy for it to stop feeling like a proper MMO experience.
We've tried to tackle this problem throughout our design of Legion. We've focused on replayable and varied outdoor world content and dungeon content as the heart and soul of the Legion endgame, and on reward systems that will support the continued relevance of those systems.
But at the same time, there are people who do enjoy the mission minigame, and there are some positive elements, such as a bit of offline progression, and the fun of looking forward to a reward waiting for you when you get home and log in. Not all aspects of the game are intended to appeal to all players - that's part of the challenge of creating a single game that is played by such a diverse audience with different preferences and playstyles. But while garrison followers and missions were a substantial portion of the content in Warlords, Order Hall missions are probably more like 3% of Legion.
I understand that there is a fair amount of cynicism, and there are some who are probably reading this right now and thinking that it's just a bunch of nice-sounding words trying to cover up our sinister plan of mission-table supremacy. But even if we wanted to, we know that we can’t hide anything here. Well before Legion is in anyone's hands, people will be experiencing the system in its entirety in beta, and we'll be judged on that basis.
But there's key player power at the bottom of my Order Hall tech tree, so isn't that gated behind missions?
Actually, no. As I mentioned in my post in the Alpha forums, what players are seeing in Alpha right now lacks context, admittedly because we haven't provided much. The research you can initiate in your Order Hall to unlock various perks, culminating in a strong player-power reward, requires Order Resources. Order Resources are not in any way gained through missions. You gain Order Resources from quest content: from the one-time Order Campaign quest arc, from treasures around the world, and at max level from outdoor world quests. If anything, missions are more likely to serve as an outlet for excess Resources once you have your research needs covered.
The Order Hall campaign immediately has you do missions that take a day to complete. That sounds terrible.
That's good feedback, and definitely the sort of thing we may adjust. Let me try to explain the intent here: The core of the class Order campaigns is epic quest content that is custom to your class. If you're a Death Knight, you might be working to raise a new set of Four Horsemen who are powerful enough to stand against the Legion; as a Mage, you may be investigating a plot that threatens to undo Dalaran from within; and so forth. That's what the Order campaigns are. We start you on these chains during the level-up experience, but they're intended to be a story that unfolds over time, complementing the game's level-up and endgame progression.
In Warlords, when we had the Garrison campaign quests, we presented a new one each week, but there was no real indication where the next step would come from, or how long you would have to wait in order to continue. This time around, we want to avoid having gaps where there's no quest in your log. Having occasional steps where we ask you to run a few missions with long completion times seemed like a more elegant way to do that, allowing us to weave in a bit of storytelling, as opposed to just "hey, come back next week for the next step."
I understand that most of the discussion is based on bits of information that emerge from the Alpha, and I know that it's difficult to truly reassure you when you haven't yet seen the things I'm talking about firsthand. But hopefully trying to share our goals and philosophies, as well as acknowledging past missteps (we hear you - really!), can provide some guidance about where this system is going to end up when it's complete. #1470 10 hours ago
TLDR-version:
"We understand that many players are unhappy with garrisons
...but we'll do it our way anyway because when did we ever give a crap about what the playerbase thinks?"
Blizzard rather drives this vehicle against the wall at full speed before they would take the slightest turn left or right on user input - because arrogance, ignorance, stubbornness, total control.
Glad i had not more than one month of business with this company in the last 6 years. Too bad, because WoW is still a good game ..even if only for a week or two every 6-8 month -haha, reading my own words now i wonder if that still qualifies as a "good game" anyway.
I wouldnt be surprised to see subs drop to 2,5-3mio within 3-4 month after Legion. Not that we would ever know, since Blizzard is now dodging to confirm their constant mess up with numbers anymore.
"We understand that many players are unhappy with garrisons
...but we'll do it our way anyway because when did we ever give a crap about what the playerbase thinks?"
Blizzard rather drives this vehicle against the wall at full speed before they would take the slightest turn left or right on user input - because arrogance, ignorance, stubbornness, total control.
Because it is not like housing is the most nagged about QoL feature since.... classic...?
Honestly, I wish that class halls would evolve into player housing -- complete with furniture and trophies that could be displayed on the walls. Perhaps not quite as instanced as garrisons are, but maybe similar to LOTRO's housing system. Add in a guild hall too and it'd be loads of fun. Imagine being able to travel through old dungeons and raids to get a special thingy to hand on the walls -- Invincible's saddle or Illidan's ponytail or, instead of turning it in for a meager reward, Onyxia's head.
Also, racial or class specific decor should be available too. It's always grated on my Belf DK's nerves to "live" in an orc-themed garrison.
Garrisons should have become player housing, fully addaptable, like a building blocks system.... Not just the exterior, butvalos the interior, build and upgrade your own garrison into a castle... Complete with underlying dungeons.... Use your minnions for defense of your garrison..and take your garrisons to war.... Imagine 6 flying garrisons connecting to eachother in a kind of RTS PvP system... Where you would be commanding your minnions...
and when you have destroyed an ennemie.... You get access to his dungeon...with all kinds of defenses, get inside and take 3 minnions and kill the minibosses and go for the treasure...
anyway, they should give minnions and garrisons and housing a real reason...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
And the best is that the huge outcry for the new garrison fiasco is coming from the players who still play wow, in the blizz forums. So dont give me that because ppl play they have to like it also. Most players right now use gold from the garrison missions to pay for the subscription.
It is about the rate of subscription numbers decline.
During WoD WoW lost so many players so fast it almost rivals Wildstar's fiasco.
There is a reason for Blizzard no more disclosing sub numbers.
Name one other MMO that does not suffer from sub-number decline...
WoW actually had a steady and healthy population between 7-8,5 million. When a new expansion would come out the numbers would swell and they would go back to normal in a few months. If you consider the current decline to be caused by the general mmo decline and not that WoD is NOT an mmorpg but a simple facebook game, well, hehe, lets just say me and some millions disagree.
WoW actually had a steady and healthy population between 7-8,5 million. When a new expansion would come out the numbers would swell and they would go back to normal in a few months. If you consider the current decline to be caused by the general mmo decline and not that WoD is NOT an mmorpg but a simple facebook game, well, hehe, lets just say me and some millions disagree.
I consider the current decline because the game is 10+ years old and not even a personal sexual favor from a Blizz dev of choice to every current and former subscriber would change that....
WoW only real enemy have finally caught up.. Time.. Entropy get us all in the end.
Comments
Seriously, though -- friend and I play alpha together. First we started in MM Hunter / Frost DK but without a proper tank, it was very slow even as you mentioned with 2 DPS as we both had to continue to move and b careful of aggroing more (aggro ranges are b-i-g). Moving to MM Hunter / Blood DK went better with a tank so that she could stand and bring them down faster.
It's my guess that they're making content less solo-friendly and more group-friendly, something people have wanted for a long time.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I remember how it was with ESO in the beginning. Sure it has action combat, which immediately makes it a harder game, but when you can't kill 2 mobs at once, then you know it's just way way too hard for an average gamer. That's what the Veteran Ranks used to be in the old days, and people cried and cried until ZOS nerfed it. Even today many are still struggling, but that has to do more with the steep difficulty in learning the action combat mechanics, rather than the game being that hard. Still I would have preferred if the difficulty stayed the same, but I know that I'm in the minority.
Then Craglorn released (group zone), and the nerf cries just got worse and worse. Simply put, people don't want a challenge when playing solo, unless it's some kind of solo endgame (Maelstrom Arena). Any content that is not endgame content, shouldn't be hard if you want to keep your playerbase happy.
For better or worse the majority of MMO players nowadays are actually solo casual players, it's not wise to piss them off. Blizzard did exactly that with WoD, when they released so little of solo content, which is no wonder that they lost 50% of subs in barely 6 months.
I actually like having to consider my moves and working with a small team. I'm not a raider or even much for dungeons, so this 2+ player experience is fun.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And here I was, thinking the arm-chair devs on MMORPG.com had all the answers!
I get what you're trying to say and in some ways agree with you. But, WoW has held the highest sub numbers for 10+ years now. With the highest being in Wotlk where you claim the problem began. So I think your argument kinda collapsed on itself.
Check it out
http://www.statista.com/statistics/276601/number-of-world-of-warcraft-subscribers-by-quarter/
Vanilla, released in 2004
The Burning Crusade, released in January 2007Wrath of the Lich King, released in November 2008Cataclysm, released in December 2010
Mists of Pandaria, released in September 2012
Warlords of Draenor, released in November 2014.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This guy makes some very valid points. You should watch this one.
Seriously, they are heading towards a major clusterfuck of epic proportions. If they dont realize that ppl want an MMORPG and not the current WoW, then the game is dead. DEAD.
They claim that the new garrison will force ppl out, but the videos show that such is not the case. But its cool...its only the alpha. They will fix it probably. They have plenty of time, 4 months i believe? /sarcasm
"We understand that many players are unhappy with garrisons
...but we'll do it our way anyway because when did we ever give a crap about what the playerbase thinks?"
Blizzard rather drives this vehicle against the wall at full speed before they would take the slightest turn left or right on user input - because arrogance, ignorance, stubbornness, total control.
Glad i had not more than one month of business with this company in the last 6 years. Too bad, because WoW is still a good game ..even if only for a week or two every 6-8 month -haha, reading my own words now i wonder if that still qualifies as a "good game" anyway.
I wouldnt be surprised to see subs drop to 2,5-3mio within 3-4 month after Legion. Not that we would ever know, since Blizzard is now dodging to confirm their constant mess up with numbers anymore.
inb4 registered player numbers
Can you blame them for trying...
This have been a good conversation
It is about the rate of subscription numbers decline.
During WoD WoW lost so many players so fast it almost rivals Wildstar's fiasco.
There is a reason for Blizzard no more disclosing sub numbers.
Garrisons should have become player housing, fully addaptable, like a building blocks system.... Not just the exterior, butvalos the interior, build and upgrade your own garrison into a castle... Complete with underlying dungeons.... Use your minnions for defense of your garrison..and take your garrisons to war.... Imagine 6 flying garrisons connecting to eachother in a kind of RTS PvP system... Where you would be commanding your minnions...
and when you have destroyed an ennemie.... You get access to his dungeon...with all kinds of defenses, get inside and take 3 minnions and kill the minibosses and go for the treasure...
anyway, they should give minnions and garrisons and housing a real reason...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
So dont give me that because ppl play they have to like it also. Most players right now use gold from the garrison missions to pay for the subscription.
This have been a good conversation
WoW only real enemy have finally caught up.. Time.. Entropy get us all in the end.
This have been a good conversation