I never said they need to do anything like visions again ( but I mean that is thorgast basically).
I said that since they put 470 gear on soloable content, I thought they would actually make a more stable and defined solo path in SL, but It did not happen, actually we backtracked from BFA.
In 9.1.5 I wonāt need 2 paladins to cover 3 specs.
I meanā¦
I suppose thatās a big part of why I hate Torghast.
Sadly very true.
Fair enough.
Hence me looking forward to 9.1.5 mostly because it puts us one step closer to Shadowlands being over.
to level alts to 60 without maw
Well they buffed Sinful Brand so I can finally try Venthyr on my dh tank.
You are trying to pick a fight too hard.
You did a good recap of the things coming in 9.1.5. Well-rounded, etc. Thanks. But it just so happens that the things coming in 9.1.5 are pretty mediocre. They are welcome, but they are merely fixes. And they are woefully incomplete fixes, they are only fixing things that are trivial to fix. We will still have the broken PVP gearing model, we will still have the utter idiocy of spec balance, etc, etc, etc.
So, after going through your list, MY end result = what I will personally do, is: do mage tower a couple of times and perhaps level one or two alts. And this is completely meh. YOUR end result might be different. But MY is meh. And I would venture a guess that MY end result is far from being an outlier.
In fact, let me ask you directly: do you think 9.1.5 will bring back players who quit in 9.0-9.1? As in, will 9.1.5 make the number of players grow back, say, even 10%? Because in my opinion, 9.1.5 will just not bring back anyone, people will keep leaving the game, with maybe the pace of them leaving slowing down somewhat (but it is slowing down for natural reasons anyway).
A lot of them will return in 10.0 (or launch of the next expansion) IF the next expansion looks interesting. Please Blizz. Donāt screw this up. You really, REALLY canāt screw this one up.
Alts will be somewhat easier. Iāve still not managed to get a second character to 60.
Pretty big fixes, though. Conduit energy removal, free covenant swaps, skips, instant 40 renown - small things on paper, but oh so good in practice.
Mmm, yes, the AoE cap redesign is trivial indeed. Anima transfer between alts and covenants is surely trivial too. Legion timewalking (an oft requested thing, mind you), and Legion M+ on top is trivial too, Iām sure.
It will bring some back, yes. I know at least a handful who are planning to come back for 9.1.5, because it has fixes and QoL improvements for exactly the things they had problems with.
Friends who wanted to collect transmogs, see the covenant campaigns, they quit halfway into 9.0, because anima was in short supply, offerings were a pain to gather, and switching covenants was also a royal pain. They started with 4 characters of each armor type, and just burned out.
Now, come 9.1.5, theyāll be fine with 1 character of each armor type, anima is no issue (thanks Korthia!), offerings can be passively collected via callings, they can freely switch covenants, and upgrade them all without any gating at all. They love 9.1.5, because it has everything they wanted. Not just easier to collect the things they want, but relaxing the covenant transmog restrictions are a great boon, too.
You see, transmogs and pets are the true endgame: you donāt need to re-farm them each season, they last forever. Donāt underestimate the collectors, nor those who arenāt into high-end competitive gameplay, for they are the majority.
9.1.5 is more exciting than 9.1 was for me. 
Legion Timewalking. Infinitely more exciting than doing the same boring Shadowlands garbage.
Customisations for my allied race characters, which will also motivate me to make more allied race characters and level them.
quality of life fixes for the aforementioned Shadowlands garbage to make it slightly less garbage.
So itās got a lot going for it.
I get a feeling that you are trying to be ironic here, so if you are, donāt. All these things except Legion M+/mage tower are trivial fixes. I am a dev and has been in the business for 20+ years. All of what you mentioned and all of what is in 9.1.5 in general, apart from Legion M+/mage tower, is utterly trivial. It is clearly seen that being trivial to fix has been the main criteria for picking up things for 9.1.5.
Good, and I think the number of players will keep declining. I mean, yeah, some will return (people come back every week), but more will leave, we are talking about the net result here. Weāll be able to check this 6 months or so later, so letās just wait and see what will happen.
Yes, balancing all of it is surely trivial. Itās not.
Same, been in the business for 30+ years, have worked on huge codebases too. Those fixes and changes arenāt trivial.
Erm. Are you talking about ābalancingā of Legion M+/mage tower? Because I said that all things EXCEPT them are trivial fixes. Itās right in the phrase that you quoted. So angry you cannot even read anymore?
And itās obvious that you are lying about being in the business for any amount of time. )) You are just assuming that since you donāt know a thing about development, noone else on the forums can. Well, you are wrong.
No. Iām talking about balancing the AoE cap removal.
They could be, but the game dev world is infamous for not using TDD, so regressions are a huge problem.
Mate, this is a trivial change in a function spreading damage. As regards balancing, what balancing? They didnāt balance it. They just removed the condition they previously added to some spells returning things back to how they were before. Reused the same exact rule.
Even with massive amounts of tests and simulations, balancing such a change as the AoE cap removal/redesign is non-trivial. Since it alters behaviour, your existing tests become pretty much irrelevant.