What World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth Needs to Succeed - MMORPG.com

SBFord

What World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth Needs to Succeed - MMORPG.com

World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is struggling after stellar sales and glowing early reports about the story and the beauty of the expansion design. However, success for an expansion means more than the number of "day one" sales and more than the first two weeks of excitement over new content. Success is measured in the longevity of the expansion and in how players remain involved and interested over the long haul. So, what does BfA need to become a success? We have a few ideas.

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Nanbino

Close down. Just run a vanilla F2P no strings attached but perks and cross marketing other games like live in game Hearth stone amtches linked to your hearth stone account.

Charge xpansions in cash shop. With more cash goodies non p2W.

Watch your population quadruple, servers crash like it is 1999 due to huge success, and watch revenue pick up.... or stay ignorant and cater to the chineese market.

SBFord

@Nanbino That's not going to happen. The article is written, not from the perspective of the typical "WoW hater", but from that of someone who cares about the game as it is and wants to see it get better. There's tons of room for improvement and they need to pursue that.

Classic fans will get their turn soon enough. Let's keep the thread on track please.

WhiteLantern

I'm pretty sure we've seen this same headline within 3 months of every release since Cata. The team simply can't (or won't) keep up. Every expansion plays great out of the gate, but turns bitter by the time you hit the juicy center. It's funny how Warlords is now considered the "worst" considering the praise that was heaped upon it at launch.

But I haven't played since one week of playing Warlords, so /shrug.

wergas

I think , one thing missed here too . old continent upgrade . People really be happy to see , that they effort done some changes . It's really boring do same stuff again with alts . It's like became close circle of repeating .

Albatroes

You know what would be cool...is if we actually got abilities/passives again when we gained levels....I know it sounds crazy but some games do that. They purposely remove things so we can temporarily get them again or just outright move them to pvp only for no real reason. Next year they will announce the next expansion which will mostlikely be level 130 cap and a new class, yet 10 more levels of no new abilities. Also I dont know where people are getting the concept that 115 should be the new tier when they just did it from 90 to 100 in wow, so a 110 and 120 tier would've made more sense. WoD is already better than BfA AND Legion (yeah I said it) simply because we got at least one thing that added to our gameplay. Legion just added an ability into existing talent tiers (for some classes, not all mind you) causes us to lose other things in the process. Ion signs off on this stuff, so maybe its time to get someone else if he can't find better ideas than to either take stuff away and give it back to us in a different form like he did in Legion, or letting us rent abilities/passives for an entire system because "that's just the downside of the system" according to the dev mouthpiece Lore. Right now, many people play wow because of its potential, not because it actually produces something you care about. All these "Things to do in WoW if you're bored" videos when the latest expansion is only 2 months out just prove that.

SBFord

WhiteLantern said:

I'm pretty sure we've seen this same headline within 3 months of every release since Cata. The team simply can't (or won't) keep up. Every expansion plays great out of the gate, but turns bitter by the time you hit the juicy center. It's funny how Warlords is now considered the "worst" considering the praise that was heaped upon it at launch.

But I haven't played since one week of playing Warlords, so /shrug.

I don't think that's totally true. While fatigue arrives within a certain time period, it's never been this fast. New features of most expansions haven't been met with such 1) boredom or 2) hostility. Most expansions had at least ONE redeeming quality (excluding the always amazing art and level design). BfA simply doesn't.

Everything is lackluster or outright bad once the initial rush of leveling is finished. Story is bad. PvP is bad. World Quests are boring. The Heart of Azeroth is easily overlooked. Azerite Armor is lackluster. Island Expeditions are repetitively dull. War Fronts are mostly forgettable from week to week. War Mode has bombed. Class design is a dumpster fire.

All of it is "fixable". It remains to be seen if they'll try.

@Wergas You're right! A little polish and modernization of the older zones would be amazing.

Kabulozo

Only Classic can possibly reignite players will to come and play, even for one month or two. BFA got busted already, its problem stems from the fundamentals, which can't be solved just through a smaller update, but only with a whole new expansion patch.

MadFrenchie

This all is what got me to finally hit the unsubscribe button, sadly.

Class specs are still a dumpster fire in and of themselves. 8.1 is making progress, but it's too little too late and they're avoiding some of the overarching issues because they don't wanna accept the feedback coming from players. Creating a GCD AND nerfing the hell outta Haste was just a bad idea. I'm not sure how an entire team of Blizzard's caliber could playtest those two changes and go "nah, it won't be frustrating for players."

They literally only needed a cooldown that triggered for other instant buffs/shields when the first one was used (I.e. bubble into Pally wings). There was absolutely no need to default skills onto the GCD and demand a special case be made to them for each skill the players feel shouldn't be on GCD. Add a CD that triggers between the skills susceptible to macroing, not all skills.

Not only that, but they added the GCD then reduced some specs down to the point that you might as well allow it to be ran on macro because there's only two skills to be used (MM Hunter Steady Shot/Aimed Shot build being one of the most infamous). When you have specs only using two skills, trying to chase down macros should be low priority for the dev team.

Azerite Armor, Warfronts, and Expeditions were just swings and misses. Of the three, the only one I would call "uninspired" is Azerite Armor. The other two I feel just aren't as fun or interesting as Blizzard thought they would be.

I'm not sure what's worse, the idea that Blizzard is truly and earnestly out of good ideas (exemplified by things like Warfronts), or if they're just stubbornly heading in a direction mandated by leads out of touch with the playerbase.

Thane

Nanbino said:

Close down. Just run a vanilla F2P no strings attached but perks and cross marketing other games like live in game Hearth stone amtches linked to your hearth stone account.



Charge xpansions in cash shop. With more cash goodies non p2W.



Watch your population quadruple, servers crash like it is 1999 due to huge success, and watch revenue pick up.... or stay ignorant and cater to the chineese market.

uh stfu with your vanilla wow. why would we want to screw 14 years of development? bc some cry babies don't like em?

sorry, but those who play like em.

uh and for those who don't like it, as always, over there is the door. bye.

you want classic servers? pathetic, you have NO idea what you ask for there.

what exactly do you want? those 3 instances or that one raid where you actually had to farm for several months so you could enter and fight the firelord for real?

most of you guys would INSTANTLY start crying with the ammount of grind needed to put your weapon skills to the reqiured lvl alone.

Octagon7711

Listen to their testers and expand on the types of testers they have. Make sure there's a cross section of their player base as testers. Hardcore, casual, PvP, PvE testers. Pay more attention to exit questions asking why a player dropped their sub. in general honor player feedback to a greater degree.

ceh430

dead game:P (but im waiting for next expansion to see if they will really kill it or no:P )

Octagon7711

ceh430 said:

dead game:P (but im waiting for next expansion to see if they will really kill it or no:P )

Good point, it's hard for MMO's to make every expansion great, most alternate from bad to good.

Mensur

wow needs a new and fresh dev team..out with old in with new I say!

MadFrenchie

Octagon7711 said:

Listen to their testers and expand on the types of testers they have. Make sure there's a cross section of their player base as testers. Hardcore, casual, PvP, PvE testers. Pay more attention to exit questions asking why a player dropped their sub. in general honor player feedback to a greater degree.

They certainly seem to focus on strange areas of the game sometimes, making changes outta left field to things no one thought were issues or blatantly creating "fixes" that have gone beyond what's needed and have created problems of their own.

I'm gonna jump back into ESO for a while, start all over with a new character, then check back in later this year to see where WoW is with BfA.

Oscillate

GAMERS

RISE

UP

Deadrites87

Sadly, I think the damage is already done and from the looks of it the changes that players are looking for are nowhere in sight. I'm already lookin at 8.2 to see if there are any significant changes I want to the game. They would honestly have to change the entire structure of bfa and it isn't happening. They will just make it super casual and easy to play this expansion and ride it out until the next one a year down the road. These devs have no clue why vanilla was so special to many people. The whole design philosophy needs to change.

Albatroes

SBFord said:

WhiteLantern said:

I'm pretty sure we've seen this same headline within 3 months of every release since Cata. The team simply can't (or won't) keep up. Every expansion plays great out of the gate, but turns bitter by the time you hit the juicy center. It's funny how Warlords is now considered the "worst" considering the praise that was heaped upon it at launch.



But I haven't played since one week of playing Warlords, so /shrug.

I don't think that's totally true. While fatigue arrives within a certain time period, it's never been this fast. New features of most expansions haven't been met with such 1) boredom or 2) hostility. Most expansions had at least ONE redeeming quality (excluding the always amazing art and level design). BfA simply doesn't.

Everything is lackluster or outright bad once the initial rush of leveling is finished. Story is bad. PvP is bad. World Quests are boring. The Heart of Azeroth is easily overlooked. Azerite Armor is lackluster. Island Expeditions are repetitively dull. War Fronts are mostly forgettable from week to week. War Mode has bombed. Class design is a dumpster fire.

All of it is "fixable". It remains to be seen if they'll try.

@Wergas You're right! A little polish and modernization of the older zones would be amazing.

Two words summarize BfA: Filler Expansion.

SBFord

Albatroes said:

Two words summarize BfA: Filler Expansion.

While I pretty much think that's true, when it comes to story, there's no walking back the garbage that this one's presented. 

Viper482

Revert the GCD changes, chill out on the RNG and beef up rewards for all the things, chill out on the rep grind crap. Design at least one new warfront to be pvp-based like most of us thought they would be. Make island expeditions interesting.

Sadly I doubt any of this will happen or even be considered. 

Viper482

ceh430 said:

dead game:P (but im waiting for next expansion to see if they will really kill it or no:P )

The problem is the way they are gating things you will still have to dredge through the crap pile that is BfA to enjoy a new expansion thoroughly.  

Gutlard

Not listening to Testers/Beta/PTR players leading up to release, closing down discussions and getting rid of Suggestion/Reasons section to peeps cancelling subs leading them to post it on the forums, and then chasing it back with poles after the fact = Devs being lost in the storm....

Stop drinking your own Kool-Aid and listen to your players, guys and gals.

If your players don't like a mechanic don't totally scrap it or replace it with something worse, but find out what can be tweaked to make it better maybe?

Tweak Garrisons and bring them to endgame as our home away from home, tweak Class Halls/Stories and bring them to current endgame to expound on how each Class would deal with the BfA situation, I wouldn't mind Racial halls/stories to see how they would deal with things individually as well.

I really liked the things in Legion that we could open by doing more of the stuff we already liked doing, with regards to the cool looking Artifact appearances, and Class mounts/stories/gear.

The Artifact trees gave us something to work toward as well with being able to make choices that branched off of each other.

Artifact & Lege's > Azerite Armor & Necklace, especially when taking a higher ilvl piece nerfs you until your Necklace lvl gets higher....just weird.

Gut Out!

Tuor7

Blizzard is like an overly strict father who has created a long list of rules that seem designed to suck all of the fun out of life. He's convinced that it's for your own good, so he refuses to hear any talk suggesting otherwise.

Blizzard is still amazingly skilled at the technical side of the game, but I feel as if they are drifting away from understanding their players. They've become too paternalistic and overbearing, IMO. Too controlling. I hope they come to their senses before it's too late.

Tykam123

It really is amazing to see the amount of negativity regarding this xpac. While I certainly see the faults and agree about the lack of new abilities in recent xpacs, I am having a blast. Yesterday I hit a bit of a lull in terms of BFA content and needed a break, so I rolled a new alt and was instantly immersed in other eras of content. WoW is soooo massive, that you can explore other areas and enter a new atmosphere. Regardless, I am excited to see where the lore goes and what the future for this xpac is. If it doesn't improve, classic will be a temporary escape from it for those of you who aren't happy :P

rokglumac

Finally someone is saying what needs to be said. Game is ruined cause there is no 10 man mythic mode. Bring back 10 man mythic content and you will see big rise asap.

MadFrenchie

SBFord said:

Albatroes said:

Two words summarize BfA: Filler Expansion.

While I pretty much think that's true, when it comes to story, there's no walking back the garbage that this one's presented. 

How about that buckling to player cries and adding an option to the Horde quests?  They've also altered the Alliance side because of it.

It couldn't be any clearer that the devs have no overarching plan for this story or, if they do, they lack conviction that it's a quality story.

It's a bad practice for things like narrative to change at the whims of angry players when player choice in questing and narrative was never a design philosophy of this game.   If this has signalled a move towards a new lore and narrative system that encouraged player agency, that would be great.  It doesn't appear to be a paradigm shift, but simply weak-kneed devs or a product they lack faith in.  Neither of those are good signs.