If Blizzard announced a roadmap of expansions at the Blizzcon - not just 11.0, but teasing names/logos of 12.0 and 13.0 too - would people find that reassuring or offputting?
Frequently it feels like Blizz fly by the seat of their pants and despite them stating they have expacs planned well in advance it never really feels like they do. Would you find them committing to “11.0 is Shadows over Avaloren, 12.0 is Heaven’s Fall, 13.0 is Horde’s End” a positive move or not? Would it do anything at all for you?
I mean it would give credit to them repeatedly stating they plan ahead, but like any other prodect; they will keep revising it any way shape or form up until the very end.
So, eh, it wouldn’t do anything for me, personally, knowing how the final product might be something entirely different several years down the road
I would find it reassuring, but only if they also made a commitment to the next expansion instead of using the roadmap as a way of deflecting the problem of 11.0 having little effort put into it.
Basically, if Blizzard tells us 12.0 is going to be a world revamp, but 11.0 is going to be some low effort, filler expansion, it would not please me. In the end, we don´t know what the future holds and 3 years from now is a long time.
For a different company I’d find that reassuring and trust building. For Blizzard which has repeatedly fumbled, revised, changed things even though they constantly say that “All is planned, we know what we’re doing.” but the narrative ends up a mess or completely lackluster because it’s heavily tied to gameplay… No, I’d treat the roadmap as just a draft of what’s to come at best but hardly a seal of proof that everything will be delivered.
I see no point in the whole “announce more expansions” bit. We know that WoW will go on especially with the Microsoft stuff now. I’d rather they continue to give us a DF esque roadmap with a bit more detail if anything. Having a full overlook of things has been really nice as to when patches can be expected.
Mind you, I used to be really fond of the MCU and I imagine a lot of people know how those “roadmaps” ended up looking like.
To join the cavalcade of clowns who have also tried to use AD as a platform for internet clout only to then throw a temper tantrum when they turn out to be unpleasant individuals.
There was a high point when we had AD ‘tourists’ making a mess every other week, be it Sodapoppin coming in literally crashing the server to look at the ‘rper zoo’ or LazyPeon deliberately disrupting RP events and then going on a forum meltdown when called out, then cried he was ‘deported’ from the server.
Or Nixxiom living up to the great stereotype of many night elf RPers and going on a twelve page vocal rant about how terrible we all are for not being able to ‘take a joke’.
Man, really makes you think, what is it about this server?
Considering Blizzard can’t organise itself out of a shopping trip to Aldi I’d be rather concerned. We’ve seen what former ‘plans’ tend to pan out with.
Cataclysm’s cut content, WoD’s half an expansion cut because they had overinvested WAY too many resources into Project Titan (which then came halfbaked as Overwatch to save face).
And with recent expansions an apparently lack of cohesion at the highest ranks (even after purging the frat house culture allegedly). Blizzard just doesn’t seem to know what they are doing, they are directionless.
Slim hoping that perhaps with Metzen onboard again they can be at least coherent to the true Warcraft vibe rather than two expansions in a row of being a therapist to throwaway tickbox npcs.
You could just go and google the Forum Thread “Kakio de la renard” and you’ll pretty much get the same pattern of random youtuber deciding RP servers are in fact a safari visit.
Arranged a May Day march through Stormwind while on Stream which resulted in the server lagging out and almost crashing due to the influx of thousands of Twitch chat goblins spamming memes in /yell during peak RP hours.
People from Argent Dawn then went to his stream and started questioning why he’s orchestrating Twitch streams to grief RP and he went on a weird tantrum trying to claim he was on Kazzak and not Argent Dawn even though we were literally there. He went on a melt down about how he’s a “big part” of the AD community despite never having RPed here. He’s super important!!! Blizzard knows him!!!
Eventually he just started banning us from his chat when he didn’t have a good answer for why he was actively griefing RP, and then moved his goblins to another server to continue the parade there.
Such a big part of the community that the majority of us had no idea he was even on Argent Dawn before he caused all of that drama and griefing. I definitely wasn’t aware prior to that.
You wound me, Blizzard wouldn’t know diversity even if it came and slapped them over the cheeks. Tokenism is not diversity sorry and you don’t get to grandstand about it otherwise.
When we actually have main characters, as in major role characters, who are engaged in the story and not just a throwaway side character or even worse fulfilling the “bury your gays” trope then I’m afraid Blizzard is still the same and we all know why.
It doesn’t sell to the intended audience. Corporations are not your friends, you are a statistic to be counted and tickboxed.
Post-hoc making Flynn Fairwind bisexual does not count, nor does having a transgender dragon count (as dragons can LITERALLY BE ANYTHING THEY WANT AT ANY TIME).
I used to actually somewhat follow his content until this happened, and now the only WoW related opinion heads I actually give my viewing time these days is unironically asmonbald and crendor.
Even Bellular has become vexatious and a bit of a hack.
The polls I’ve seen show MoP to be the best expansion based on the results.
The whole " WoW died in WOTLK I see only pandas before me " is just hipsters who nostalgia goggle about the good ol’ days.
Also Classic >>> TBC >>> WOTLK and I’m tired of pretending otherwise. I played Classic and WOTLK when they came out and WotLK is nowhere near as good as people remember. You have basically nothing to do outside of raids. At least Classic had an entire world full of mysteries and a far superior social component.
This is objectively and statistically correct on all levels, from a narrative sense all the way down to systems with the -SOLE- exception being the talent tree overhaul which was janky as all hell in 5.0.
MoP catered to -every- taste and provided one of the most coherent expansions we’ve had in terms of delivery.
WoTLK was always a very mid expansion when weighed against the others. It looked better in hindsight to Cataclysm because of the objective fudge factory that turned into and TBC was the madcap first time Blizzard even tried an expansion, though ironically they did a lot of things better in TBC especially in regards to player progression.
on Dragonflight, their through expansion roadmaps were a welcome sight