no, this isn’t spam or troll thread, this is a discussion thread;
no, I’m not whining, I’m screeching;
be civilized
Everyone on about 9.1, where is 9.1, no content, when is 10.1 coming, which year, etc. But nobody asking about 9.3. Why?
Do you guys think Shadowlands will have only 2 major patches apart from the release version? Time-constraints aside, you think 9.1 and 9.2 will be enough to sate player hunger for content?
And the more important question is: will this be the trend going forward? People argue the pandemic and/or recent firings, Classic success or other games as reasons for the rather large delay of content. But I don’t think that’s valid. I think Blizzard just dropped the ball with this Expansion, even more so that with BfA.
What do you guys think: are we gonna get 2 patches per expansion from now on? Will this long wait between content be the norm going forward? Or do you think SL is just a victim of “wrong time, wrong place”?
I think it’s too early to tell if there’s going to be a 9.3 or not. Based on previous expansions, I would guess that Blizzard have planned out a 3 patch expansion (since both BfA and Legion followed that pattern) and it really depends whether they want to stick to this plan because they are confident that it’s what’s best for the game, or whether they decide to abandon ship early due to player feedback and sub losses.
On one hand, I’d hate for them to get the story into even more of a mess by just abandoning it, but on the other hand I’d really like to be back on Azeroth in more of a real-world, grounded story and experience.
It’s fair to say that whatever they do, there will be plenty of people here on the forums shouting that they made the wrong choice!
Havent really thought about it, havent even thought about 9.2 tbh. And 9.1 i feel kinda meeeeh about so far. I guess i only stick around for the friends i’ve made and because of my keygroup, not because i enjoy shadowlands.
4 days would not be a necro but go ahead discuss it .I do not think it will be the norm at least i hope not i just think its world events making this happen.
Lets hope it wont be the new norm, cause this is killing the game. So many ppl stopped playing and raidgroups dying. Give me a reason to log on please!
Edit: oh god, i’ve turned into a whiner and doomsayer, i should stop using the forums now
It would be fantastic to see the actual numbers and to know whether it’s just doomsaying and anecdotal evidence, or whether we really are so much worse off that in BfA and other expansions.
From my own anecdotal experience, my guild is still able to get a group to raid, whereas in BfA (until 8.3) we had to abandon raiding before finishing heroic due to numbers. So, if I based it entirely on my own experience, Shadowlands has been much better for player retention.
But the trouble is none of us know and Blizz won’t share the numbers. There will also be plenty of people who bought 6 month subs and such but aren’t actively playing, so even the sub numbers (if we had then) could be misleading.
I want to believe you because i really dislike what is happening with shadowlands even tho gameplay is better then BFA but ION said in interwiev that this is not WOD 2.0 and there will be patch 9.2 so i don’t know
For me its the opposite experience. We raided all through 8.3 (up until pre-patch) but now we have stopped with raids til 9.1 hits.
I have been in a guild where there’s always ppl online and chatter going on. Lively discord. But now its kinda dead. And i’m part of the problem, i never log on unless i have planned keys with my keygroup. I have no reason to log on. And i think alot of ppl feel the same way and are playing other games. I just hope we survive and see players back for 9.1.
The problem I have with 9.3 being cut is the following: it’s a gamble. Either they cut it (as they did with WoD) and the following expansion is better (gets more development time). Or it doesn’t work and they cut content for nothing.
I have no issues with 2 major patches per expansion. But those two patches per expansion need to have a large enough content, in order to correspond to the large wait between said patches. Otherwise, content droughts, like what we’re seeing now, will really bleed the game hard.
There are speculations / conspiracy theories aboot SL not having a X.3 patch. And as time goes on, I do think it’s more and more likely to happen.
So yes, I do think 9.2 will be SL’s last patch. That’s what I think, that does not mean I’d be upset if there is a 9.3 patch.
That depends on 9.1 length. By that, I mean if chains of dominant lasts for more than 6 months then players would be upset, rightfully so, since 2 patches would feature a content drought.
Aboot SL or expansions? Because legion had a gold content schedule release but Blizzard thought it was too fast. But being this slow is bad. I’m pretty sure 5 months is sufficient for a major patch to last, since 6 is quite long.
It’s a nonsens, more especially because Blizzard said it didn’t have any major impacts on their work flow.
People are complaining aboot esport, yet, when Blizzard fires in esport section, they would qq aboot that. That’s another topic but the only firing that had impact on development are code Q&A teams. You know, the dudes that are paid for testing purposes.
I do think Blizzard is planning retail content schedule around classic content schedule. Thinking otherwise would be naive.
I’m sticking with my guns but Blizzard are not helping themselves by creating expansion systems, which require them to start all over again every couple of years. They should drop the idea of expansion systems.
No, if they shift ressources from systems to actual content.
Again, if they have to spend less time on systems that won’t matter in the near future, they would work on more content.
SL is just victim of its own fundamental concepts.
Unless I’m mistaken Blizzard has already confirmed that the expansion will have three major patches just like Legion and BFA. People are just stuck up on the timeline of two years per expansion atm not realizing that Covid has delayed everything including production of content.
Well, in my case: I’d like to see Shadowlands end sooner rather than later.
If it were up to me, there won’t be a 9.3.
I hope so.
No.
But when does it ever?
Legion was just about the only expansion where the delivery cadence of content was so high that there were players who actually went ‘ehm, maybe slow down a bit?’ - I wasn’t one of those players, by the way.
Depends entirely on how they action the decision to cut 9.3 (if they do)
In WoD case it was the right decision because Legion was the phoenix from the ashes of WoD’s smoking corpse. That was the correct decision to make and was one hell of a redemption.
I’m not going to say SL needs a redemption (we haven’t even had 9.1 yet) but the time the aptch after 9.1 takes will determine that for me, I think “pulling a elgion” for 10.0 is absolutely imperative for blizzard to get that “blizzard quality” back.
And by this I don’t mean it resembles legion in terms of design philosophy or whatnot, by “pull a legion” I mean throw out an expo that clearly had a truckton of work put into it and the players can’t debate that. You can hate legion and what it did to the game but anyone who claimed it had barely anything put into it would be delusional. It’s obvious blizzard poured their sweat and tears into that expo by the sheer scale and ambition of it (even if some of that was misfired).
I think in a way, legion (and what it showed blizzard to be capable of, when they put their focus on) actually made blizzard too arrogant, particularly in empowering them to believe that fiddling with systems every expo is a good thing. It’s also given them the issue of setting player expectations quite high, because we’ve had this expo that gave us huge unique storylines for every single class, big outdoor zones and many of them, a storyline like suramar (timegating done right), lovely raids (sans EN) and a revived and superb dungeon experience AND a new class. You show players “this is what we can do in an expo” and then offer up the volume of an expo like shadowlands. Christ, it’s not going to go well.
the patches in SL need to do some BIG stuff, like bigger than any other patches in WoW’s history to have SL be seen as anything more as “piecemeal” in my opinion. 5 new zones and a reskin of the power system in BFA is not what i;d call “premium expo quality”. It’s like the basics of what we;ve come to expect, but where’s the added extra? Where’s that “other thing” that makes people go WOW?
I think blizzard thought Chromie time and the customisation options would be what players took it to be, and whilst cool enough, they simply aren’t it. SL players are still asking the chef “where’s the rest?”
once they see that 9.1 is complete flop management will do only possible choice - abandon SL and focus on 10.0
they cannoy fix SL without catering to casual players - and 9.1 does nothing to bring casuals back to playing as its doubling down on catering only to their toxic mythic+/mythic raiding community .
again - only logical outcome in which SL gets 9.2 is if 10.0 comes out in 2023 not 2022 because in order to release it in 2022 they haave to have beta launched in 9-10 months. so they woudl be theoreticaly already behind on 10.0 too at this point.
Realistically? We’re a bit blind outside of “next patch” and “next expansion”. Plus I think it’s entirely reasonable for players to suspect that if 9.1 keeps moving away from what we’re asking for, then there’s no point in sticking around for 9.2.
Plus Taliesin already ran a video questioning whether 9.3 will even exist.
Personally, I’m questioning whether 9.2 will exist. We feel like we’re in some kind of wrapping up period where players are being encouraged to leave because there’s nothing for them to do.
Although it’s odd, because at the start, we were all thinking “4 covenants = 4 raids = 4 seasons”… But I think Blizzard have conflated the poor reception of SL’s systems (conduit energy, locking down valor, renown, Torghast containing nothing but soul ash and misery) with a dislike of the actual environment, story, and content. I do believe SL could be totally rescued, and with surprisingly little effort, but it’s on Blizz to do it.
OTOH, ask anyone in it and they’ll say they’re looking forward to coming back for 9.1 because they miss raid/dungeon night
But yeah, a lot of us have just put WoW on pause. We’ve done as much as we wanted, be that get KSM, or curve, or just hang out with each other while the hanging was good.
I think they’ll come back for a few weeks regardless - people don’t wait a month and wait to see whether it’s worth coming back, they jump in so’s not to be left behind.
Weeks 5-6 after 9.1 launch will be telling. That’s going to be make or break for SL, honestly. If it turns out to be another fluff patch with systems that push back on players and make their lives harder without giving them anything to work towards… definitely no 9.3. Someone somewhere will pull the rug from under SL and divert resources to 10.0.
Reminder that 7.0 had people deleting max level characters because they looted a bad legendary, and if your main spec wasn’t dps, it was green weapons for world content.
Not saying that Legion didn’t end on a high note, but it was not a phoenix on day 1
Shadowlands could be rescued. It really could. The solutions to its problems aren’t even hard, because it’s problems are self-inflicted. It’s mostly a case of Blizz getting the needless systems and pointless restrictions out of our way and letting us play the game.
You mistake the meaning of my comment. I never said it was a phoenix in the sense everyone loved it, I meant in the respect you went from an expo where blizzard’s management of content was poor and failed to be delivered, to one where they had tons of content and different things going on on launch.
Whether you liked it or not is another question, but i’m looking from the case of showing whether blizzard can actually knock something out with meat on it’s bones, which legion was, even if people hated that meat, it can’t be denied.
The fact that some individuals did that in response to some of their less-well thought out ambitions does not change that.
It;s like the difference in someone baking you a single cake, and someone baking you a spread of cakes and pastries. Even if you don’t like the pastry spread or the cakes on that spread, you can’t deny that person put more work into what they did and was really pushing the boat out. That’s what I mean. Even if you don’t like that spread, you’d be remiss to describe their efforts as “lower tier baking” than those of the person whom baked a single rather generic cake.
Legion showed blizzard can, where effort is employed, do LOTS.
The issue is they got carried away with it and flew too close to the sun, and became obsessed with all the things they could do, such as fiddling with the game systems. Legion taught them they could do that and their takeaway was incorrect in thinking therefore it’s something they should keep doing.
