Wise woman.
I stopped reading them pretty much after the Cassandra Nova storyline, I could see the writing on the wall (sic) and thought “here’s a new generation of artists and writers obsessed with anime style and tearing apart 30 years of storylines”.
Always read them however, currently have two full book shelf cabinets full of Judge Dredd Case Files, 1 to 34 and working on the rest.
Eurgh… Aren’t we all.
Pretty sure we will see statues of her in every single location and a new quest “Bow to your Queen”
Kneel in front of Sylvanas and accept that she is the best thing to ever happen to you, and ever will.
A long wistful sigh escapes your lips as you look back and remember how awesome she is
Quest reward “Nothing. You basked in her glory. Isn’t that enough?”
I’m kinda ok with that…one of the interesting things about 2000AD was the publishers getting artists with different graphic art styles, to take on established characters…liked some of them, others not so much…However, a bit like John Peel playing an enormous range of music on his later night Radio show, it broadened your horizons (never understood what he saw in The Fall, though)
damn who will now stop those right wing chuds on twitter
I already know is going to happen but I’m secretly hoping for a last minute alteration in the dialogue to occur. Something like this:
Tyrande: How can I forgive her for burning my people?
Uther: Trust me bro.
Tyrande: Ok :).
Mah KWEEEEEEEEEEN!.. a thousand apologies for my impertinence, Mistress.
Me? Hell no. That would be as insane as current AV in Ukraine. I do not have resources or connections or permissions to transport mobile SAM to Irvine. Think about the consequences! Absolutely terrifying. 
Not you personally. But generally people defending Blizzard’s stupid decisions.
Vulpie here is another example.
The thing is: if you defend bad design, it tends to be designed badly.
But somehting like Blizzard changing the story (which we now know because of the leaked model for The Jailer versus the Primus versus the Runecarver versus the statues in Maldraxxus versus the trailer versus the CGI versus…) happened shortly after the game was announced and before any of us even knew who The Jailer and The Primus were. It’s all just internal at Blizzard - and no one in the community were privvy to any of this when it happened.
Even during Beta everyone just saw the game for the potential it had. There was nothing that indicated early on that Blizzard had internally taken an axe to the project. All we had seen was that the release had been delayed due to COVID-19 and we all supported that, because it gave Blizzard more time to polish the design.
It’s not until patch 9.1 is released that it really dawns on the playerbase that this is another WoD.
How can any players be blamed for being hopeful prior to that, which everyone most certainly were?
I don’t think the core design of Shadowlands, i.e. the gameplay systems and such, is bad. It’s run-of-the-mill WoW design. Some people may not have a preference for Covenants or Soulbinds, but it’s hardly controversial and groundbreaking gameplay design.
I think where the issue lies with the design is that it’s not exciting.
If we dismiss the outliers, i.e. the haters and the shills, then there’s a huge group of players in the middle who likely just went through the game with a meh experience.
I know I for the most part did.
I really can’t say any of the quests were memorable. The cinematics were few and the zone design quite basic and the volume of sheer content on offer was rather low.
It’s low effort, because the project got axed. They’ve cut corners where they could.
The success of WoW isn’t threatened by people like you who rage like an insane because you don’t like the “bad design”. And it’s not threatened by people like me who’s writing fan mail to the developers late at night.
Because we’re passionate about the game. Positive or negative passion doesn’t really matter, people like us are those that tend to stick around, because we’re too invested in the damn game (though I am going on my hiatus soon!).
The real problem is all the players who have just played through the game and had the meh experience. They’re the ones who’ve quit, and they’ve quit in droves. And they’ve quit far sooner and with far less reservation than ever before.
These are the players Blizzard needs to figure out how to get back for 10.0 and how to ensure that their game experience isn’t just meh.
Bad design isn’t Blizzard’s problem. It’s meh design.
Finally some good news!
I hope Ion is next.
Exactly, and that’s why it’s designed badly and people don’t enjoy it. Because of people white knighting bad designs.
Covenant choice tied to player power was from the beginning extremely idiotic decision.
But you’re the shill. The people in the middle had bad experience and haters quit the game.
That was generally problem in past, where you were happy. Now shills have meh experience and everybody else bad experience.
It absolutely is. Like conduit energy.
There’s nothing “meh” about it.
It simply is bad.
I like Shadowlands and you, do not…
You think Conduit Energy is the reason why Blizzard are losing 20.000 MAUs every single day?!
Really?
I think the issue is a bit more general than that.
I’ll say that it’s something like buying Shadowlands and playing through Bastion and doing some inconsequential story for some uninteresting NPCs that ask you to do mundane tasks like kill 20 owls using the same repetoire of not very exciting abilities that you’ve used for years already, and then repeat that whole loop for a dozen hours and finish the zone wihtout any satisfying story conclusion or sense of immersion or engagement in a massively multiplayer world.
That’s what makes people quit.
That’s not a modern triple A game experience.
That’s what we agree on.
Current design is made to be enjoyed by the smallest minority of shills like you, thus so many people quit and vast majority is dissappointed and doesn’t enjoy current direction.
No. I don’t think it’s any singular thing. It’s multitude of stupid decisions put together.
Not everybody cares about story. Same as not everybody cares about conduit energy.
The current design is enjoyed by progressive competitive players who engage in raids, dungeons, or arenas. That’s it. There’s nothing for the shills here per se, because there’s nothing to latch onto besides the seasonal gameplay loop. And that gameplay loop is more tailored toward Echo and Liquid than Jito and Vulpie.
Actually not. You’re talking about me, and I do not enjoy current direction nor any competetively oriented player I know of.
But vulpie enjoys it. And he’s far from being competetive.
So I think you use that as an excuse but in reality you don’t know what that group of people generally enjoys.
Shills are shilling for the brand. Not for some content.
Of course there is nothing for them, that’s why it’s called shilling.
Right. But I think it’s fair to say that gamers in general will evaluate whether to play a game or not within the first few hours of playing it. Either the game is compelling from the start or you uninstall.
We see that with WoW as well. The biggest drop happens a month or two after the release of the expansion or patch. If players stick around longer than that, then they’ve sort of assessed that the game is worth the time.
And certainly if players get to the point of having to care about Conduit Energy, then they’re already very deeply invested in the game and not very likely to quit it over such details.
Blizzard don’t lose the lion’s share of their players to controversial systems design that people go brrrrrr on the forums about. They lose them because the general impression of the gameplay experience is meh. And meh is not good enough to compete on the market in 2022. Other games present better than meh.
In the past players woudl stick around even when the game was a bit meh, because the strength of the game was its communities and its guilds and its servers and its living and breathing world. It was where you hung out with your friends.
But the game has changed its design focus. It’s Seasons and queues and so on. The attatchment to the game is diminished and as a result people don’t hesitate to quit when they’re not having fun. And Blizzard are really learning that first-hand.
In general yes, but not in WoW’s case.
Exactly, which disproves your first statement. Unless you think that it takes gamers month or two to have few hours played.
I disagree.
I think it mostly feels like players are developer’s enemies and rather than working to make the game best they can for them and create good experience it seems like they try to screw them over and over with stupid decisions that have no advantage and just make game experience worse. Conduit energy is small example but there are dozens systems like that.
Yes of course, corporations are famous for hating money and Blizz designed absolutely everything since Vanilla’s Beta, specifically and deliberately to spite you, over the longest possible time.
…and you still have an active sub.
Fact is the majority of gamers have seen and done everything before…so, after the initial shiny novelty of an Xpac launch dissipates, they remember that MMORPGs are systems and grinds, which they grumble along with, until finishing each Raid tier, then unsub until the next patch, because they have ‘beaten’ the game.
During the interim they play whatever the new kid on the block is, particularly if it’s F2P/P2W… Rinse and repeat.