World of Warcraft

[Disc]

I remember back when I first started in Wrath, the perjorative du jour was "Wrathbabies" for those that started in that expansion and missed out on the "hardcore" Classic/BC days (yes, the irony of describing any of WoW as "hardcore" is not lost on me). There was a general sense behind it of "if you didn't play then, you'll never understand," an elitism that tinged a lot of my interactions with those that started earlier.

That was over a decade ago. The period I played (tail end of Wrath to a month into BfA) had ups and downs, but in retrospect, there was a gradual decline for me personally. Mists wasn't quite as fun as Wrath, and Legion wasn't quite as fun as Mists. The expansions in between kept sinking lower, and BfA was such a massive downgrade that I canceled my sub almost immediately. Between how that expansion went and how SL is shaping up, I made the right call.

That said, I feel like most people who are still subbed are those that joined later like you. I won't throw any "[expansion]baby" names around, but I'm understanding more now about what they meant. WoW wasn't perfect, but it really was better a long time ago, or at least less bad. Its best days are pretty much behind it, and barring a major course correction by devs that know how to listen to the community and make the proper changes (so, never), it's fated to a slow decline.

I once again implore anyone still subbed: get out now. It ain't getting better.

Everyone started somewhere on the slope, but for that person, that's the peak.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

I could give a shit less about the changes to old quests or unpersoning references to someone accused of something. The problem is that they can't make a good game, I'll play woke dogshit as long as it's entertaining woke dogshit.

Next patch sounds like it's yet another flavorless remix of old zones people like in service of a terrible story that's designed to throw you into yet another borrowed power timed unlock system you'll do by doing world quests until you get to the next tier where you will have to do a small quest chain where your character changes diapers' for a strong female Alliance character/Sylvanas who got into yet another predicament (but she's totally strong enough to wipe out the Horde by herself, she just chooses not to because she's a good person).

Also really nice how they took the complaint about the lack of class tier was and said "Ok, you can have it back. The class we chose is Priest; here's 12 sets of priest armor"

 

[Dave.]

So many steps ahead will the jailer be this patch? I literally lost count at 100.

 

[Privilege Power Hour]

So many steps ahead will the jailer be this patch? I literally lost count at 100.

Zero because we're finally going to epically kill him after gathering some epic loot from venturing into an epic new zone and fighting through an epic new raid with epic bosses and then we'll epically wait a week and then get to experience WoW's most epic fight yet!!!

But seriously, for all the actual dumb shit in that announcement video, do they not realize we've been making fun of people overusing the word "epic" to describe video games for over a decade now?

 

[Corn Flakes]

But seriously, for all the actual dumb shit in that announcement video, do they not realize we've been making fun of people overusing the word "epic" to describe video games for over a decade now?

They do not. We keep making fun of them, but they're so out of touch they can't see it.

 

[Protistology]

Found a great comment on youtube:

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

it's just retarded enough to be absolutely plausible

 

[Bob_]

Each new patch further cements my resolve to never play retail again.

 

[King Dead]

Hilarious how the Blizzard dicksucking sites turn off all their comments on posts about the ongoing sanitization of WoW. Can't let the pesky little peons have a voice, no sirree!

Everyone started somewhere on the slope, but for that person, that's the peak.

There's truth to that, but looking back, the biggest reason why the "good" expansions felt less good each time was the loss of a personal community.

When I started in Wrath, one of my best friends from high school got me into the game, invited me to his guild, and brought me through my first raids. Long nights hanging out on Vent, shooting the shit and having a good time, laughing at our resident Mexican anytime he got ridiculously angry (which was all the time). Then Cata hit, the guild started to break apart, and even my friend quit playing. Only a core remained, but as soon as the rogue got the legendary daggers, she and a few others bounced servers, the GM fled for greener pastures, and I was left alone.

In Mists I tried again with a fresh guild, and we had a decent go of it, but for the life of me I really don't remember anyone in there except the GM (who was a really nice guy, hope he's doing alright). There just wasn't that same connection, and people went their separate ways before the first raid tier was over. I managed to get the GM to transfer the guild to me, and I used it with another friend group for a while, playing casually. But eventually they stopped playing too, and so I ended up alone again.

I didn't even bother trying to reform the guild afterward; I've never been guild leadership material, and I just didn't know how to go about recruiting people. I had no desire to get back into progression raiding, and pretty much anything I cared to do could be done by myself or in a pug. So I played the next two expansions by myself, and even if I liked a fair amount of Legion's content, in retrospect I can see how much I was missing having people to play with. When BfA flopped out of the starting gate, there was no one keeping me tied down and no reason to stay, so it ended up an easy decision to quit.

You can extend this argument to server communities and such, but it's more about the personal level to me. You can play WoW like a single-player RPG, but it's just not as much fun without friends to play with.

 

[Fcret]

So it's essentially been confirmed that 9.2 is the final patch of Shadowlands then? What an absolute fucking joke. This is WoD 2.0 but without the fun leveling, dope handful of raids, or QoL improvements that WoD had. And the worst part is is that it had the same kind of preorder/launch hype as WoD did, so this is just even more reason to never ever pay full price for a WoW expansion.

It absolutely boggles my mind that they're not on some kind of apology tour trying to salvage every bit of goodwill they can at this point.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

It absolutely boggles my mind that they're not on some kind of apology tour trying to salvage every bit of goodwill they can at this point.

Bold of you to assume they're even aware of the fact that people think this expansion is shit, if their messaging and output is anything to go by. But don't you worry, they're busy stamping out fun wherever it might appear, from changing those item names and quests to removing the funny bug where warriors' diamond flask scaled with healing gear in classic.

 

[King Dead]

Bold of you to assume they're even aware of the fact that people think this expansion is shit, if their messaging and output is anything to go by. But don't you worry, they're busy stamping out fun wherever it might appear, from changing those item names and quests to removing the funny bug where warriors' diamond flask scaled with healing gear in classic.

It wouldn't surprise me if they are in fact aware, but they just don't give a fuck. Given their longstanding animosity towards the community and their suggestions/complaints ("TO THE GROUND," "you may think you want it, but you don't," "that'll cost a raid tier," etc.), it's pretty clear that Blizzard hasn't cared one bit about what the players want for years, if they ever did. There's a massive superiority complex in the higher-ups that seems to stem from its original success, the idea that "we must know what's best or else we wouldn't be such a huge game," ignoring that that success was really more due to the circumstances at the time and not because WoW was all that great. That's why it really doesn't matter how much time and effort the community puts into theorycrafting, bug reporting, or design suggestions. Maybe it'll get a token acknowledgement, but it'll promptly get tossed in the garbage afterwards. After all, you're just a bunch of filthy plebs; how could you possibly compare with the sheer brilliance on display at Blizzard HQ?

No joke, if someone leaked a bunch of internal communications that showed the devs actively mocking players behind their backs for years, I wouldn't even bat an eye. That would probably be one of the least surprising things that could happen these days.

 

[Well Intentioned]

No joke, if someone leaked a bunch of internal communications that showed the devs actively mocking players behind their backs for years, I wouldn't even bat an eye. That would probably be one of the least surprising things that could happen these days.

There apparently was/is an area in one of the common rooms/cafeterias at Blizz HQ that featured streamers doing Blizzard content and there was a group of devs who would watch a couple and hatewatch them. Wasn't Asmon.

The disdain they have towards players/devs isn't really a closely guarded secret, I don't think. Can't recall if it was this thread or another one, but there was someone I knew who was critical (not "negative" or "toxic") of issues in Heroes of the Storm and was initially part of meetings with devs on issues with that game when Blizzard gave a shit about it.

Unfortunately, they didn't like what he was saying, even though he was correct with his feedback, and he was quickly unpersoned while streamer friends of his continued to get invites from Blizzard. And I would argue that the HotS team was a hell of a lot more receptive and open towards the community than WoW devs were.

 

[Smug Chuckler]

Hilarious how the Blizzard dicksucking sites turn off all their comments on posts about the ongoing sanitization of WoW. Can't let the pesky little peons have a voice, no sirree!

Even more hilarious is wowhead which is 100% CCP owned and has scrubbed any clue of its relationship to Tencent.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

It's absolutely confirmed they have no respect for any opinions outside their own bubble. They had/have(?) an invite only feedback form for years and they ignore all the feedback that disagrees with them on it. Last patch was them going back on several shitty design decisions (aoe cap, pretending that covenants are something more then an extra talent and should require like 20 hours of grinding to swap) that they were respectfully told were awful as soon as they were datamined. They ate a certain amount of crow for going back on their exceptional decisions but this next patch shows they didn't learn anything and the last patch was just the bargaining stage of grief; I'm looking forward to depression next.

 

[Disc]

This is a trainwreck.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

She goes into more context

https://twitter.com/ChristieGolden/status/1459607876532523010

She also says she basically meant the art not the story.

 

[Bob_]

God I would never admit to being a writer of the modern wow story. The balls on this woman!

 

[Bobbobson]

I'll never understand why this bitch has so much clout in the community. Now, when I still played the game, I used to read all the warcraft books and enjoy them a lot in a guilty pleasure way (never bought one though). I just liked this huge autistic expanded universe and finding different references to the books in the game. I’ll be the first to admit though that they were all a dollar bin garbage and Golden’s books were pretty much on par with other authors’ works.

People in community tend to treat “Arthas” book as some kind of magnus opus but the main thing I took from it was that Arthas really wanted to fuck his horse, when it died, he opted for second best thing, Jaina Proudmore, and when he was rejected by her, he dug up his horse’s corpse. People praise the death scene of Invincible as some kind of great dramatic moment. To me it’s one of the dumbest and unintentionally hilarious scenes in all of the WoW books. The scene heavily implies that Arthas lost faith in the light because it refused to heal/resurrect his horse after he took it for a joyride and killed it with his own recklessness. It’s completely pointless and makes the whole Warcraft 3 story retroactively worse. There was already compelling reason for Arthas to start doubting the light, namely undead plague and especially decision he had to take in Stratholme. “I killed my horse with my stupidity and had to face consequences” is much less compelling. Hell even, “Jailer planned it al along” is better than this.

 

[Orkeosaurus]

So it's essentially been confirmed that 9.2 is the final patch of Shadowlands then? What an absolute fucking joke. This is WoD 2.0 but without the fun leveling, dope handful of raids, or QoL improvements that WoD had. And the worst part is is that it had the same kind of preorder/launch hype as WoD did, so this is just even more reason to never ever pay full price for a WoW expansion.

It absolutely boggles my mind that they're not on some kind of apology tour trying to salvage every bit of goodwill they can at this point.

I couldn't agree more. WoD gets a lot of shit but from a feature standpoint the game's been absolutely stagnant since then besides allied races, most of which are completely pointless. It feels like the expansions get shorter every pack too. Fuck even Classic was rushed to hell.

Imagine paying 220 bucks in the span of a year for a game that had 2 updates lol