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[Interview] World of Warcraft: Ghostcrawler on Thunder King and Azeroth’s Future

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  • VolgoreVolgore Member EpicPosts: 3,872
    Originally posted by BillMurphy
    Originally posted by Nadia

    i dislike Ghostcrawler but this is a good interview

     

    I liked this more than Ghostcrawlers commentary via IGN earlier this week

     Warcraft Patch 5.2 brings back "old school" feel.

     

    Thanks, Nadia.  And Greg gets a bad wrap.  I'm sure a lot of people would do just fine in his position and please everyone

    /rollseyes

    No, i just find it a bit strange that suddenly Ghostcrawler shows up in the magazines and touts that they intend to "bring the old WoW back", while this is rather about bringing the old subscribers back.

    To me this looks like a PR stunt in order to catch up the probably still dwindling subs. Seems like  asian time card "subscriptions" for 1 cent per hour in an internet cafe may not cover the expenses too well and MoP hasn't brought in enough new players to make Kotic happy. So they aim at those who once quit when WoW changed too much (and Ghostcrawler mocked on those who complained about that) and want to get them back now.

    So Ghostcrawler goes on a spree telling the people that they'll bring back the old feeling and care for the "players who are with us" and "can't take them for granted" -which is exactly what they did for years: taken their base players for granted.

    Shure, the interview is good, imo there is another intention behind all this.

    image
  • MikkhailMikkhail Member Posts: 21

    GC kinda pissed me off with some of his sarcastic rants at the start of Cataclysm ... But I appreciate that the dude has a really tough job ... At any given time he is going to have millions of people pissed off at him and screaming at him on social media ... So, all things considered I think he does as well as anyone could.  Blizz must pay him really well b/c I have been a little surprised that he has never left to pursue his own project.

     

    BTW, for those that keep going on about how WoW is dying and is not paying for itself bla bla bla ... Activision Blizzard financial reports are public record ... just sayin ... maybe you should read up a little and not just make stuff up ...

  • azzamasinazzamasin Member UncommonPosts: 3,105
    Maybe one Day WoW mi9ght actually come out and suprise me with things that are more MMO like then they've ever done but then I realize this is the game that refuses to do player housing and instead focuses on Pokemon battles.

    Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!

    Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!

    Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!

    image

  • OgreRaperOgreRaper Member Posts: 376
    I don't play WoW anymore. But I find it hilarious when people think Ghostcrawler is to blame for WoW's "downfall".
  • doodphacedoodphace Member UncommonPosts: 1,858
    Originally posted by OgreRaper
    I don't play WoW anymore. But I find it hilarious when people think Ghostcrawler is to blame for WoW's "downfall".

    Every single MMO out there would LOVE to be on the same "downfall" wow is on lol

    Everytime there is a drop in subs, Blizz points out that the vast majority of the drop is in asia...yet everyone ignores that and tries to imply that 3/4ths of thier 9.4 million players are "asian 1 cent internet cafe players that play 5 min a month".  Lets all also ignore the fact that the 9.4 is not their lowest point in the past 2 years.

  • just1opinionjust1opinion Member UncommonPosts: 4,641
    Originally posted by Thane
    [mod edit]

     

    Exactly.

    President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club

  • strangiato2112strangiato2112 Member CommonPosts: 1,538

    The one thing you have to respect about Ghostcrawler:

    noone in the history of MMORPGs communicates half as much with his audience as he does.

    He knows whatever he says will be attacked by one side or the other, but he keeps the communication going regardless.

    MoP is a collosal improvement over Cataclysm, even with the talent changes.  And I can kind of see his point where everyone took cookie cutter trees anyway and there has been no real choice in the trees since vanilla.  But now thats it clear that its launched and people still dont like it, maybe next expansion can bring back some interesting character building again.

  • expressoexpresso Member UncommonPosts: 2,218
    "You cannot please all of the people all of the time" Thats all GC needs to remember, the player numbers 8 years on proves whatever he and his team are doing they aint doing too bad.  so many of us think we can do a better job (I'd remove flying mounts) but chances are we'd run the game into the ground within a patch or two.
  • MortisRexMortisRex Member UncommonPosts: 350
    This is all so very fascinating. It reminds me of the drama that my 12 year old daughter and her friends engage in. The projection, the inability to separate personal and professional, the feelings of persecution, and of course who can forget the whole "sour grapes" about sub numbers. I played WoW for a good long time, I quit a while back because I didn't care for the simplification. This did not enrage me. I did not take as a personal attack against me or any of my classes. I left, because it's a game and when it's not fun, move on. The ridiculous conspiracy theories about favoritism, padded account numbers, and malfeasance on GC's part is absolutely stupid. 7th grade teenage girl stupid. If you don't like the game, move on.. Like a normal person. Hovering around the edges waiting for Blizzard to issue an official apology directly to you for not programming the game as you see fit is not going to happen. I can't imagine the level of mental gymnastics that let's one call 9million subscriptions after 9 years on the market anything but a success. How "interesting" your psyche has to be to convolute something like 9 million suscribers as an idication of failure and decline.
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  • KanethKaneth Member RarePosts: 2,286
    Originally posted by strangiato2112

    The one thing you have to respect about Ghostcrawler:

    noone in the history of MMORPGs communicates half as much with his audience as he does.

    He knows whatever he says will be attacked by one side or the other, but he keeps the communication going regardless.

    MoP is a collosal improvement over Cataclysm, even with the talent changes.  And I can kind of see his point where everyone took cookie cutter trees anyway and there has been no real choice in the trees since vanilla.  But now thats it clear that its launched and people still dont like it, maybe next expansion can bring back some interesting character building again.

    Agrred on all points here. Ghostcrawler is the most vocal dev around, and can actually hold a decent conversation. He just says what he says and let's the chips fall where they may. He takes those attacks pretty well too, all things considered. If there is one thing you learn from working at Blizzard, is how to deal with angry commentary.

    I also agree that MoP is a much better product than Cataclysm. I only recently quit the game, after an 8 year run. Some changes were too little too late for me. Additionally, the population issues on many servers is what ultimately killed the game for me. Greymane is still active on the alliance side, but I was horde and we didn't have anything major going on. The AH was all but dead, and finding new blood to keep the raiding program was pretty much impossible. The guild I ran took a vote to move servers, and it failed. Those who wanted to move did so, and our raiding program fell apart. Our casual folks weren't affected, but everyone else either transferred or quit.

    Blizzard needs to address the populations issues all over, because when you're on a dead server or a dead faction side on an active server, the game feels very diminshed.

  • XiaokiXiaoki Member EpicPosts: 3,821


    Originally posted by BillMurphy
    Originally posted by Nadia i dislike Ghostcrawler but this is a good interview   I liked this more than Ghostcrawlers commentary via IGN earlier this week  Warcraft Patch 5.2 brings back "old school" feel.  
    Thanks, Nadia.  And Greg gets a bad wrap.  I'm sure a lot of people would do just fine in his position and please everyone. 

    /rollseyes



    Im sure I could lose 3 million subscribers just as easily as Ghostcrawler.


    "MMORPG: It’s fluff, but it’s good fluff."

    Yeah, just like this paid advert ....uh, I mean interview.

  • NadiaNadia Member UncommonPosts: 11,798
    Originally posted by strangiato2112

    The one thing you have to respect about Ghostcrawler:

    noone in the history of MMORPGs communicates half as much with his audience as he does.

    i disagree

     

    yes

    Ghostcrawler is very vocal since Blizzard hired him in Feb 2008  (same year as release of LichKing)

    there have been other unpopular vocal devs -- like Brad McQuaid and his "vision" thing during the first 5 years of EQ

     

    many EQ players disagreed with Brads vision

    but unpopularity didnt stop Brad from speaking out his agenda on forums

  • waynejr2waynejr2 Member EpicPosts: 7,769
    Originally posted by Icewhite

    >we wanted to get that epic old world feeling that people really missed.

    With micro-raids and random groups... Right, we can totally see that.

     Hey if we can't finish this 15 minute "RAID" in 10 minutes we are a bunch of losers!

    http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2010/QBlog190810A.html  

    Epic Music:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1

    https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1

    Kyleran:  "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."

    John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."

    FreddyNoNose:  "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."

    LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"




  • PurutzilPurutzil Member UncommonPosts: 3,048

    Honestly the sounding of 'confidence' in knowing where they are going isn't really good. So far every expansion has done more to harm the game rather then improve upon it. Its to the point nostologia stands no chance in ever bringing me back to the game like some of the older MMos I use to play (FF11 or Ragnarok Online for instance). Its just digging a deep deep deep deep deep pit in which I just have less and less insentive to play. 

     

    Unlike other games, WoW keeps just losing that nostologia feeling that usually keeps players around a game. Its taking away what made the game good. Not saying of course Vanilla was perfect, there were changes that did make it better in TBC (which was a pretty good expansion really just with some flaws) and unfortunately they seemed to take more of the negative elements and just expanded upon them, as with every step forward there would be one giant leap back. 

     

    Then again, maybe the vision isn't as bad as its made out to be? I'd love to see the talent system back in game (it is NOT a talent system now, no matter how you try to claim it, further making it cookie cutter then ever before) and making maybe raids and progression... I don't know... feel like they have purpose and geniune challenge and reward for completing? Till then, I have 0 intentions of ever returning back to play WoW.

  • RazperilRazperil Member Posts: 289

    You have to love how they think they can bring back people by saying they will "Bring back the older days". The only thing that will continue to happen is more people leaving. I don't care what the Wow kids, or blizzard bandwagon community says about it either. The fact is, the game has been in decline for some time, by thier own doing too. I know for one that I don't want to play a kid's game or a game that requires less than no thought to play. I don't blame Ghostcrawler for it's slow demise either, I blame Blizzard for their greed. We can debate about this topic all day (which usually leads to a tempt ban for me, hah!).

    As far as Borcraft being the "first" successful MMO, I think you might want to look back further at the first MMO's that  "were and are" successful. Borecraft brought nothing new to MMO's; the only thing it did was create copies/clones and tell developers that watering down a game or taking away it's "thought" factor, was okay to do. This is not an attack at the game or it's developers. This is just the reality of it. Giving honest constructive input is not a bad thing either. It's just too bad that doing it on these forums results in a warning or tempt ban. (Which I'm sure I will receive nonetheless) :)

  • ComafComaf Member UncommonPosts: 1,150

    In Vanilla, and even Burning Crusade, we had pretty crappy quests.  Because we just didn’t have the technology or the experience to do really clever things.  So the entire game was based around combat being more interesting, and you had to be careful, and have help from friends.....

     

     

    [mod edit]

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  • VirrukVirruk Member UncommonPosts: 8

    This was a really good interview to read...I played WoW since beta until about 2 or so months after Cata came out. It wasn't that I didn't like the expansion I just finally reached my point where I finally quit and had no urge to go back. After reading this if I had time I would love to try out all of the new features and really sink my teeth in, but what a 19 month old that's not going to happen any time soon! Haha.

    Anyways, I wish WoW and Blizzard the best. They kinda sucked it up with Diablo 3 imo. Hopefully they continue down a successful path with WoW - and even more so - "Project Titan" :D

  • expressoexpresso Member UncommonPosts: 2,218

    Truth is it matters not what Blizzard say or do people will find something and anything to complain about,

    D3 - "Oh what its not a straight up clone of D2, blizzard suck"

    SC2 - "What! I have to pay for an expansion?"

    WoW - "You mean Blizzard cannot make a game I have been playing for years and for 100's of hours still feel fresh and new?"

    Now I have my issues with WoW but that is just that I am one of millions with one opinion, WoW is still a massively successful game by any measure and it's still the biggest MMO (8 years after it's release) due to the choices blizzard made this past 8 years.

  • JudgeUKJudgeUK Member RarePosts: 1,676

    Ghostcrawler -> Cata - how to lose a couple of million subscribers and still put a positive spin on it.

    And for heavens sake, change the skill build system back to something with at least 1% of interest - simply awful.

  • WraithoneWraithone Member RarePosts: 3,806
    Originally posted by BillMurphy
    Originally posted by Nadia

    i dislike Ghostcrawler but this is a good interview

     

    I liked this more than Ghostcrawlers commentary via IGN earlier this week

     Warcraft Patch 5.2 brings back "old school" feel.

     

    Thanks, Nadia.  And Greg gets a bad wrap.  I'm sure a lot of people would do just fine in his position and please everyone

    /rollseyes

    Bill, its not a question of pleasing everyone... Its a matter of why the Ghostcrawler Syndrome exists...  Thats when a Dev, no matter how talented, is focused more on their spread sheets, and data mining (in the endless, eternal chase of PvP "balance"), than they are on what makes a game or class fun to play.  Its happend many times before, but Ghostcrawler has taken it to the level of an art form... ^^

    I've lost track of the number of times and games, where PvE fun has been hammered into the ground because of that focus on PvP "balance".

    "If you can't kill it, don't make it mad."
  • JudgeUKJudgeUK Member RarePosts: 1,676
    Originally posted by Wraithone
    Originally posted by BillMurphy
    Originally posted by Nadia

    i dislike Ghostcrawler but this is a good interview

     

    I liked this more than Ghostcrawlers commentary via IGN earlier this week

     Warcraft Patch 5.2 brings back "old school" feel.

     

    Thanks, Nadia.  And Greg gets a bad wrap.  I'm sure a lot of people would do just fine in his position and please everyone

    /rollseyes

    Bill, its not a question of pleasing everyone... Its a matter of why the Ghostcrawler Syndrome exists...  Thats when a Dev, no matter how talented, is focused more on their spread sheets, and data mining (in the endless, eternal chase of PvP "balance"), than they are on what makes a game or class fun to play.  Its happend many times before, but Ghostcrawler has taken it to the level of an art form... ^^

    I've lost track of the number of times and games, where PvE fun has been hammered into the ground because of that focus on PvP "balance".

    Agreed.

    Back to my personal bug bear, Cata. When will ghostcrawler be honest about the worst expac the game has seen.

    Firstly the change from 10 to 5 levels - mistake. 10 levels gives you the room to progress your character at a decent rate. 5 levels was just not enough to feel like any acheivement.

    Secondly the story - trying to follow on from the LK story was always going to be difficult, but to replace this with a fifty foot talking dragon was just terrible. In a single step you lost all the personal emnity lore of the LK, to be replaced with a toytown Godzilla with an awful storyline.

    Thirdly and most contentious is of course the Cata dungeons. If you are going to have dungeons of that difficulty suddenly introduced then you got exactly what was expected - a God awful row. I do not have a problem with dungeon difficulty - what I do take issue with is dungeon consistency. Dungeons should gradually increase in difficulty as you progress, not thrown at the playerbase with seemingly haphazard difficulty.

    You trained the playerbase to expect dungeons of a certain level from levels 1-80. Then after informing the playerbase that dungeons where like this you hit them with the original Cata ones - What a ridiculous thing to do, and one of the biggest reasons for player exodus.

    What you should have done was give players an increasing difficulty curve with dungeons, not walk throughs then suddenly met with one mistake death instances. This was Cata's biggest problem and the exit door started spinning. 

    Of course, the dungeons where toned down after a while - too late, sections of the playerbase had already voted with their feet. You should have increased the difficulty of the lower ones as players progressed, getting people used to the harder penalties, then the Cata dungeons would have streamed into this.

    But no, instead there was the god-like edicts from ghostcrawler about Cata  - totally forgetting that the players are his customers. Well Cata was a lesson for you - listen to your customers and they won't, by the millions, walk away.

     

  • eindinblocheindinbloch Member Posts: 60
    I'm sure I'm alone here, and this is slightly off topic, but probably the only reason I would come back to play this game is if hunters got melee combat with skills/talents back.  There were alot of things I like about WoW, but when the immersion is killed for me, it isn't worth playing.
  • ArthasmArthasm Member UncommonPosts: 785
    Greg is one the reason why Wow is screwed for me. And bloody Pandas. Hope to see Emerald Dream, Ashara, Nzoth or BL in next expansion. Until then...
  • NC-JohnNC-John Member Posts: 113

    He's a well payed chimp, He is gonna do what he is told by the suits who wanna make WOW wizard 101

    Until they have 500k subscribers nothing will change over there with old Wow. no legacy server like EQ. They will have new MMO's coming, one for the PC 'Titan' and one coming for next gen consoles. plus the movie is getting ready for production. I think gonna be a great time for them as they phase out old Wowcrap and start moving forward with soemthing fresh.

    "Not even a cray super computer can make this game run well. Thats what happens when you code an MMO in pascal. " - miglor

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