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[Column] World of Warcraft: Expansion Post Mortem - Warlords Turns to Borelords
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
With World of Warcraft’s latest expansion, Warlords of Draenor, sitting at eight months out the gate, it is time to take a look back at WoD, now considered to be ‘feature complete’. Has Warlords added meaningful and interesting content to WoW? Is there enough to keep players going until a new expansion?
Read more of Suzie Ford's & Catherine Daro's World of Warcraft Expansion Post Mortem - Warlords Turns to Borelords.
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Comments
Honestly WoW's had a good run, but it's time for Blizzard to get serious and make a WoW 2, or another MMORPG. It's more and more obvious that they don't really have any ideas for the game. Since WOTLK the game has been all about prolonging the revenue stream, which is fine I understand it's a huge money maker.
I have a soft spot for Blizzard as a developer (though I feel it's going away), but really it seems like they are done w/ wow. Maybe they can make it work with just story expansions, but the features they have added have been nothing more than mobile games w/ a WoW interface. It's sad.
The story remains somewhat interesting for those who are deep into the lore.
Really though everytime I try to play heroes of the storm all I really want is Warcraft 4, please make warcraft 4....
I sometimes question what planet these reviewers live on because Blizzard has followed this formula since vanilla. NO ONE REALLY EXPECTS new content after release. They expect new raids, dungeons, and dailies. Totally different thing. If you think grinding a raid for weeks on end is content, then you have a no idea what content is to begin with.
The whole point of WoW is to keep you playing. It's why they didn't outright give you flying, they're making you grind for it. Welcome to WoW. If you're that blind as to not see it, you and Blizzard are a match made in heaven.
Of course, a lot of people have nothing better to do with their time, so what's $15 a month in the grand scheme of things.
Garrisons weren't the problem the problem was they were trying to appease too many audiences at once and when you do that you tend to not get it right. This is something that's happening to GW2 right now they keep bouncing back and forth between the casual and the hardcore in their design and there's no happy middle when you do that.
The reason I unsubbed was due to their requirement to have a Tier 3 Garrison to see the Taanaan area which is something that's time locked behind Garrison missions.
The notion that you have to have a special something to see the content is just as outdated a design flaw as when they had everyone getting keys to get into raids. Those designs should never come back in another form ever.
This is the first time EVER that the raids / content has only lasted THIS SHORT a time.
Now we're all buckled in for another year before the next ex pack, with Blizz once again massively failing to deliver any content in that time period. THAT we expect.
THIS is a new level of insult to the injury. Blizz really needs to change it's game up and fast or it'll risk ACTUALLY pissing off it's fans.
While I agree that the rest of your post may be correct, they might have tried to please 'everyone' too much. I ask you how exactly weren't Garrisons a problem?
They took away from people having a 'world' to explore, and there was no hub for people to meet and gather and happen upon one another to chat like every other ex pack had.
Garrisons were the crux of the problem with the design of Warlords.
Yes they were.
All I wanted was a nice house where I could move things around and place trophies, maybe even have some extra storage. Instead I got a Facebook game which made it feel like you were grinding every time you logged in.
This game has become too much a single player game and is why I left. I want forced grouping where you cannot take a quest line farther unless you do an Instance. Also I would love to see them get rid of LFD and LFR because too many people who use these tools just want easy fast content and they are at the core of the problem with MMOs. You cannot have easy fast content in an MMORPG and expect people to stay for any time. Does it have to be TBC hard? No. However if you can do a 25 man raid boss with 20 people dead and the other 5 people completely ignoring boss mechanics there is a major problem.
I was in the WOD beta and the first week where I needed to CC mobs and focused killing 1 mob at a time all the way through the instances was Refreshing and great. Yet having people who Hate doing instances posting on the Beta forums how much the instances suck and how hard they were because these same people wanted MOP 15 minute dungeon runs. Blizzard then relented to these people now what do we have with WOD? People bored because they can tunnel a boss, kill mobs without any threat of dying and sub in decline. All for people who want easy fast stuff. Telling people on these forums that tunneling a boss is not fun however having a boss like Watchkeeper Gargolmar the first boss in Ramparts is more enjoyable because back in BC you would CC one or both of the bosses healers, kill the boss then the healers one at a time is more enjoyable. Then being told screw off them days are gone and that boss fight is too much work. Guess what this is why I left WOW and why I play FFXIV, because you cannot tunnel vision bosses in the game. You have to do the mechanic or die.
WOW's days are over. They continue to listen to people who DO not like the game and just want an easy welfare like game.
The dungeons were so ridiculously easy they got boring fast. Same for the leveling content. A giant snorefest in which you struggle to stay awake and can only wonder why you bother.
Garrisons felt like the daily quest grind, except now everyone is doing it in their own private single player version of the game.
I did a PUG raid to see how those worked. Everyone ignored boss mechanics yet the bosses were downed anyway. So why bother?
The new character models are awesome, but that does little to outweight the more fundamental issues of the expansion. Only organised raiders seem to get meaningful content.
WoW is old. Many saw the flaws in the past,w ere laughed at by the fanatical WoW players, now many more ppl see the flaws more and more and say it: "been there, done that, boring".
World has become too big, content looks all the same and is too easy, new content often makes no sense. (alternate dimensional universe with other timelines to prevent messing with current world lore?)
PVP is a joke.
The mystery is gone, Blizzard realizing this and selling out more and more through their cashshop.
Everything is available to everyone now, no racial differences.
Wow is old. Players get older and bored, and move on.
Blizzard can not recover this fully, only slow down a bit. Or grow a new young playerbase.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Have to even read up on how bad ESO has done? I myself have two CE for that game, yet don't even bother logging in anymore.
There are a couple of things with what you've said, for one just because it has been a traditional approach doesn't mean the reviewers are blind. Its there job to review the game, not on the basis of the expansions before it, but based on the MMO as it exists in todays market. The truth of the matter is that the game is weary and i much of the same leaves a stickle then it might be time for your to abandon ship. Which, is what a lot of people are doing. But, as a business do you think Blizzard think "well if they don't like it, they can just leave".
The answer is no, as a business they wish to keep people in those chairs playing the game and the only way to do so is for them to readdress these concerns that make players leave in the first instance.
Also, things aren't the same since Vanilla, considering raiding had a much more interesting spin to it than just "I got new gear". I liked that you needed fire resist gear for MC or nature resist gear for AQ they werent much stronger than each other but the higher the resist gear the better and I loved how the reputation system really helped here, meaning that you got geared for participating rather than just looting.
Also, if you go back between expansions, think Vanilla, how many raids came out before BC? How many raids in BC came out before WOTLK etc etc and you will find that there has been a gradual decline in "content" since the inception of the game. Considering the game upped in subscribers before it declined it is evident that Blizzards approach has been great for business but not so great for the consumer and that is becoming more and more transparant every year.
Vanilla had what, 5-6 raids over 2 years?
Warlords has had 3 raids over 7 months...math not doing you any favours
Honestly, if they come out with a new expansion in November time, I'll cheer for them. But without garissons, those things make little sense. I'd rather have a well-designed city rather than a new Grind-ville.
Exactly. It is supposed to be a multiplayer game and they basically destroyed much of that feel. Garrisons were a horrible design choice.
The greatest surprise is that people are still surprised at getting the same daily grind served again and again. Think about why Titan was axed. As long as WoW is making money for Blizz, as long as people buy the same over and over again, why would they rock the boat?
Maybe Blizz reeling in Stephen Frost will help bring some fresh ideas to the next, or maybe Frost will just be assimilated by World of Borecraft.
So I assume you've cleared all the Mythic raid content?
Five man leveling content is not indicative of the highest level of challenge offered at endgame. Not sure why so many people seem to have an issue grasping this extremely simple premise.
Claiming that the game is too easy when you, and most other people included among the current subscriber pool, have never even attempted the hardest content the game has to offer is about as contradictory and discrediting a statement as anyone could make. Unfortunately this trend has become commonplace over the years, as those with an axe to grind about the game desperately look for ways to belittle and downplay the content offered.
The title of this article is rather offensive and classless as well. "Warlords turns to Borelords", are you serious right now?
I would think that the writers on this site would have a little more respect for the company that revolutionized the mmorpg genre, single handedly carrying it from the dregs of electronic suburbia and thrusting it into the arena (no pun intended) of mainstream PC gaming, then dominating the industry for the next decade.
They've made the barrier for entry into the hardest content the game has to offer easier than ever to get passed, but only the most hardcore even bother to make the effort. That doesn't silence the complainers though! They'll still throw a tantrum about the difficulty being "too easy" even though they'll never see the "hard mode" and have no intention of even trying to participate in it.
As an example, lets take a look at the numbers for Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/4797-Armory-Stats-Highmaul-and-Blackrock-Foundry-Blue-Tweets-Heroes-Map-Rift-Wardrobe
As you can see, roughly 12.5% of players (on an account based level, not individual characters) have killed Blackhand in normal, 9.8% in heroic and 0.4% in mythic difficulty.
The real problem here are the players, who find themselves asking the question "If I got what i needed, then why progress?". These players run LFR and Norm, never making it any further, and having zero intention of ever seeing the hardest content. Those same players then spill over onto popular forums and complain about the game being too easy, perpetuating an ever revolving oxymoron of almost unfathomable proportions.
The game has been this way ever since vanilla. On one hand you have people who have never experienced all of the available content, yet claim the content available is too easy. On the other you have people who have directly experienced all of the content, who know for a fact how difficult the hardest available content actually is, trying to convince the rest of the populace about the level of difficulty.
Haters gonna hate, that is never going to change. However, the reality is that the game is too hard for the majority of the populace and the metrics gathered accentuate that fact.
But your entire post balances on the idea that the raid content, essentially the raid content with varying difficulty levels is all the content anyone should care about. I was never a good raider, and I basically pissed around in Naxx in WotK a lot, the Tournament etc ... but it was fun. Doing all the different levels of difficulty, not so much for me. And there's nothing wrong with liking and being validated by Mythic level content, but when implying that everyone should be OK with that as a wealth of content is just silly.
There really isn't anything additional in the game to do outside of raid. I think you would be hardpressed to find someone who consider Garrison's an asset to the game. Shipyards even more so. Garrisons destroyed the value of crafting and gathering, making crafting little more than a goldsink. Dungeons are great! But It's the same one's over and over and over again. The previous content is actually hard to enjoy because you level through zones far faster than they were originally designed for.
There's just really nothing to do but raid. and raid. and raid. and raid.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
I loved the idea of garrison's, but hate how they were implemented. Only miners should be able to have mines, herbs for Herbalist's, etc...
Some of us play to craft, farm and sell mats. By allowing everyone to farm everything for themselves, the bottom has dropped out of mat sales.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D