I know they are talented, I know they can do more. I don’t know how many people are left who care enough, but if they don’t do everything they can, they’ll lose a position tha tis the envy of the gaming world, and it’s impossible to get back.
We al have a list of things we think blizzard need to do to draw people in. I have been making a few alliance improvement topics recently like this:
But I think they need a revival in the love for the franchise… and the MMO by itself is not enough.
They need a Warcraft TV series - animated
No seriously, a good one, focus should be post current expansion/ pre incoming expansion, = 1 season. Mid expansion possibly for 2nd season.
And work doubly hard in the game to give cool features, good systems, raids. The story has put a lot of people off, there is such a disconnect and discontent - it doesn’t feel warcraft nor the things people are interested in even if in itself interesting, it’s not been powerful enough to draw or excite. And it is features and lore that really draw people into a fantasy… they need to this well.
You have to make people fall in love with the world again, the franchise, the lore , the story… Nothing can advertise or get people into a fantasy world than a good series, and you have an unedning game they can continue the story and play fun in… this is usally the hardest thing to do.
Your game doesn’t do story half as welll as it should or could. So share the load with a series. Seriously.
Have a new beginning, like a time skip, revamp, and kick it off with a cool animated series, you can release a book to deep dive for those who read, but you’d get far more traction with a good show and a good game, than a book. A book though will always be good for details and those who love them. All you need to do is stop overriding your own damn lore, cos no one will buy your books if you keep invalidating their content 2 years after.
TV series + expansion + mid expansion tv season + end of expansion/pre new expansion next season of the show.
Judging by all the development issues they’ve had over the years (rumored and confirmed) and the recent issues with the lawsuit and what not. I really don’t think Blizzard are capable of producing anything of note at the moment. Everything they have touched the past 5 years have been affected by a terrible rot.
I don’t really know why this is, but i recall reading some post over at the US forums a year or so ago. Which claimed that three biggest reasons Blizzard have had so much issues with developing games recently is because:
Their development tools are horrifically outdated and is years behind the industry standard, and as a result, suffers from the worst case of spaghetti code you can imagine.
The managment is woefully incompetent. And is basically filled with Yes-men looking out for each other.
Blizzard is suffering from a major brain-drain. Mostly due to reason #2.
Fold the project? Maybe they’ve milked it to the last, but it’s such a large and rich world, the game obviously doesn’t do it justice, books are not enough either, at needs several tv shows if you ask me.
Sounds like one of those warlock spells they seem so interested in.
Yes, I have often wondered that. One of the reasons story telling is so hampered I seriously suspect is due to how difficult it is to make quests. But then taht could be an issue that is far more complicated or intensvie to fix than we realise. We just don’t know.
When you think about it, you just need an NPC and mobs, you should have tools for even creative to insert the NPC, insert the texts, and all the bread crumbs needed. Maybe they do, but the frequency and length of time it takes inclines me to think they don’t. Because if they do, then I might think they just can’t be bothered - which is still an assumption on my part ofc, not knowing exactly what goes on. But only knowing that they need the level of detail and effort that went into legion.
I suspect everything has to go through the programmers, so changes on the fly, additions, extra stories just add so much, they don’t have the time to do because of the long process involved.
The tools need to be updated to be able churn things out.
It is funny though, they have updated their art creation tools, the model updates in 6.0 made it a lot easier and quicker to make adjustments, updates, new animations etc, and new races now are much easier using re-skins of existing ones.
Kul’tiran were a new model, but I hope they use that rig to do Mok’nathal ogres like was suggested in this post so you can get basically smaller sized ogres and half orc ogre rolled into one race
I had noticed a hint of that, coming through some of those interviews and youtube Q&As where more than one of them were around, they seemed to only accept easy questions or be satisfied with bad answers to tough questions when a senior man said yes. But I’m just speculating here, so don’t take this as any proof.
No challenging whatsoever, so basically guys who are good at one area are making poor decisions for areas they have no expertise or right too… like the lore, so we end up having basically ego fantasy fan fic instead of a decent story built on a solid foundation that is enriched rather than devalued.
Well, most of the talent that developed there has left, but there is talent there still, I’d wager. But if the management is bad… it’s hard to tell, a lot of changes… the company has the money to hire quality that costs, but it does take a certain know how and intelligence to find the right people for the job.
Would any of the decent senior developers and managers want to work for this company right now? Probably only the scummy ones after a large paycheck? Who knows. I hope I am wrong.
A lot of people are employed by blizzard, and I don’t want them losing their jobs unfairly. The project is not beyond recovery either… you need maybe 1 or 2 more bad expansions to kill it off, if they do a Legion-esque / greater than legion type expansion, it would shoot to the top again, and they only need repeat that.
they should also consider alternatives… like doing a new single player project, or RTS or action Warcraft game, ad allow wow to continue as a sand box, with single player games, TV series, carrying the thrust of the story, while the MMO provides the nitty gritty world detail to explore and raids /dungeons etc
This project should have expanded well beyond the MMO a long time ago. The MMO could have been at the heart, the place you go to check the detail of it all, with single player games, TV series, movies all bringing people into the insight.
Because an MMO is continuous, it would always hold players if you decide to do it well. The IP IS big enough to have expanded , it was capable…
It still can, but it would be harder now than it was 10 years ago… yet, with TV series like Arcane Legends about, and this game still going …this is the future of the project and the franchise.
Don’t know if it’s true. But Blizzard themself has mentioned that a lot of bugs in WoW are a result of “spaghetti code”. Meaning, everything is so old and intertwined that, for example, changing one thing in the Maw could break a quest in westfall.
This makes it difficult to develop for WoW. Because things break seemingly randomly and are very hard to fix.
This is the stated reason why it took them so long to just add 4 more slots to the starting backpack. And why we will never be able to replace said backpack.
i dont think fold the project, rather make something new which they can work with easier in the same universe… wow has passed through so many different hands now it must be a nightmare to work with,
I was thinking that… like single player game series - like we had the old Mass Effect , KotOR and Dragonage games
WoW can continue to run concurrent to this with new expansions doing further expplration into the area/zones the single player game explored, updating stuff too
Expansions would not need to be every 2 years like this, but maybe every 4, and instead of having 2-3 major content patches, more like 5-6.
if they decided to make a tv series i preferred it to be something that is not tied too much, if at all, to in game lore or lore in general. just make the story something completely different.
but i dont have much faith in activision blizzard to make anything remotely decent nowadays anymore.
to revive the game they need more than a possible mediocre tv series imo. it just feels like the latest fad to me because riot, who are actually very capable, made something successful.
wow used to be a leader in new and innovative stuff now they are not and at best just lag behind. they dont lead anymore, they follow, zero risks involved, but this seems to be a trend in the gaming industry in general.
Im hoping for better WoW days in future, not wanting it to die for the sake of it, but Im also in the camp of people planning to go away (min of 1.5-2 years that I will dedicate on some irl stuff) and then check out if the game has overall added some QoL improvements that transend expansions and are making it better experience. Its a bit like the line of thinking that players can have if they join in the middle or end of a patch cycle and prefer not to put any effort gearing when knowing the next patch will sort them out.
You see some really cool animated shows out there and fantasy shows, many have drawn inspiration from world of warcraft (DragonPrince anyone?) … but just like DotA ran with something blizzard started, so many others are doing, while these guys just let it go.
Anyway, the guys who started this have mostly all moved on, , Activision owns the IP, but they’re so greedy into games, they don’t see into other horizons.
You need passion, people who really love the IP… nmore than just the game and playing a video game, just loving to play because you can do it well doens’t mean you are interested in the story or the world of the warcraft universe, you’re not going to think about ways to make races, stories, and the fantasy more engaging or write good stories that can make great tv shows or movies to catapult your franchise well beyond the videogame
Warcraft has the potential, many people actually liked the fantasy, it is/was a plus for it amongst the millions that played it, so you simply need to do something good with it and you could become a massive hit.
yeah, those purists that get all bent out of shape if every platform doesn’t follow the source material exactly are crazy, it’s fantasy anyway, not fact, it’s perfectly ok to bring your own ideas to something as long as the core values are kept…
i love Bernard Cornwell’s books, and i LOVE the tv series Last Kingdom, but again, people go crazy because only the first 2 seasons follow the books closely, it’s fine, it’s still an amazing show.
there’s limitations on what you can and can’t do anyway when you cross platforms, get over it jeez
yes, i’d be very happy if Netflix picked up the franchise regardless of any inconsistencies
but if yuo aren’t going to start again from scratch then at least throw some nice venison meatballs at that spagjetti code
What would not be good is if they presnted the world exactly ike in game… which has very bad dimensions… notice the difference between Stormwind in the movie and stromwind in game?
It just need to look Warcraft not be exactly wow.
Anyway, in wow, everything is an approximation apparently. however you would want to tie it to the game.
But you’d need some classic stories. I woudl recommend they did an episdoe on each of the races.
Alternatievly they could really just show some key events…
Warcraft 3 is crucial
then TBC
then WotLk
then Cata
I would skip MoP and WoD, but MoP happened, you can come back and tell that story later
At this point I firmly believe WoW needs to pull a FF and just reboot.
Yes people will be sad/mad. It will cost a lot.
But in doing so current and new devs get a much easier working platform, the current is horrendous.
It doesn’t need to be graphically superior at all, in fact MoP visuals world wide would be fine imho.
But doing this not only allows the above but a class/race overhaul, core content overhaul and most importantly - a solid foundation. They have a planned release cycle, just don’t recycle it all. Keep the world, the core, the raids, just revamp, reinvent and make it worth playing again. No not a vanilla revamp, levelling should be fun, not the slog it was back then.
Current WoW players could have certain titles/mounts crossed over to some degree, perhaps a veteran service which grants them a specific % xp boost for levelling who knows.
Short term loss - long term gain.
The rebirth of Warcraft.
I just can’t see where WoW can go from here, the work required is huge regardless, we have a HUGE borrowed power issue currently and not to mention the workforce is in tatters, with new info coming out about devs near monthly or every other month currently.
Bite the bullet, swallow the disgusting tasting pill.
And yes I believe a series would help, especially an animated one if they use the same voice actors. But again, more money and more time.
Hear hear! WoW 2. The story is absolutely unsalvageable. They went full Marvel fandom due to their success in cinema. Which btw are really bad movies. Just visual golden turds, zero substance.
