World of Warcraft: Dragon Desperation

[SerratedBiz]

The UI editor is a relative step up compared to Blizzard's previously uncustomizable design; about 10 years? late compared to other MMOs' UI options; and somehow still inferior to what addons have been capable of for years.

The fact that it's riddled with bugs and actually has LESS options than it did in the past just makes it par for the course for nuBliz.

 

[J1M]

The UI editor is a relative step up compared to Blizzard's previously uncustomizable design; about 10 years? late compared to other MMOs' UI options; and somehow still inferior to what addons have been capable of for years.

The fact that it's riddled with bugs and actually has LESS options than they did in the past just makes it par for the course for nuBliz.

It has a higher resolution and more features, but it is aesthetically inferior and bankrupt of any design value.

It's as if each individual element was assigned to a different junior person who really wanted to impress her boss and neither the employee nor manager had any concept of how the elements would integrate with each other or affect the player's experience. There's all sorts of unnecessary eye fatigue. Elements look gray instead of like ornate metal, and the only guiding principle seemed to be "make the UI look nicer on Twitch streams".

 

[abija]

They should definitely fire everyone that worked on/approved the bottom right icons.

was old one.

 

[Sykar]

While they are at it they should fire themselves.

 

[TedNugent]

game developers are truly some of the worst lifeforms that exist, only a few things are below them like video game journalist

It is painfully evident that some Blizzard employees are videogame journos that somehow infiltrated the company.

They have clearly made every effort to remove all "toxic" developers and mindsets from the company. The mentality of the journo is to infest things from the inside out to create rot, not just throw rotten tomatoes from their own decrepit towers. Sometimes this necessitates a career change.

Being a "journo" is a mindset, not a profession.

Regarding Dragonflight, I have decided that ultimately the biggest improvement that I saw on the outset, e.g. the talent trees returning to sanity and Blizzard finally giving up on new borrowed power systems is not enough for me right now. Danuser is still onboard and evidently has lost no prominence or control. There seems to be no recognition that he is a problem. While the new setting is carefully bland to avoid setting out more outrage, it's just painfully plain looking to me. Generic fantasy shite like dragons is one thing, DeviantArt dragons are another thing entirely. I have never liked the dragon lore from Warcraft. Shadowlands is still canon. Even the art seems to have degraded drastically in the last few years, and that used to be half the reason people kept coming back. Environment design is still strong, but if the setting sucks, I don't know if I can stomach any more. Dunno if I can even go in for another 3 months to check out the new content and test systems.

Anyway, I really do think it is time for Blizzard to do the right thing and acknowledge that their writing team is incompetent and that they should be designing games in such a way that the story is as small a part of the game experience as possible.

The only thing I really miss about WoW was the core gameplay, they actually did do a really good job on making classes feel holistic and distinct from each other, and the rotations were satisfying. I really just enjoyed playing my class. I unironically enjoyed the PvP in the game, and a big part of me wishes they would bring back the arena pass. It did a nice job of removing everything I don't like about WoW (grinding, collecting, questing, dailies/weeklies, the story, the writing, raids, dungeon farming, gear farming, dealing with other players, etc). I have no idea why they removed the arena pass; it really bothers me.

It would be infinitely more fun as a pick-up game. Then again, the way they obsessively ruin even such things now, by creating grinding ladders and "unlock" systems in FPS games like Overwatch, it is really incredible.

You can't even enjoy a basic PvP game any more without these "MMO" features which are ironically the worst parts of the entire experience.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I am considering buying Dragonflight and checking out the questing experience. I have a WoW token so it'd just be a $50 purchase. The Dragonriding looks like a rip off of GW2's Griffon mount, which I very much enjoyed flying around on. That being said, each WoW expansion has had less and less questing content. I remember MoP having so many leveling and levelcap questlines, I was still occupied during the 14 month long content drought completing them all. But after MoP, you usually finish levelling over a weekend, and then you're lucky if there are levelcap questlines to do. There is another game coming out in November that I am interested in: the Utawarerumono prequel JRPG. It admittedly looks like a visual novel studio's amateurish first attempt at making a JRPG, but there is a good chance it will probably have more content that Dragonflight, so I might get that instead.

It really is sad how WoW charges you $15 a month and a $50 expansion every other year, and yet there is just so little content.

 

[Cromwell]

It would be infinitely more fun as a pick-up game.

It is, its just that they want to control how often you pick it up with dailies weeklys monthlys and whatever else shit they have in there, at leats it felt like that to me when I tried shadowlands for a while after years long break. Thats one of the reasons why it isnt fun for me anymore, instead of me actually wanting to log in and do shit they try to force me to and if I do all I get in return is the gameplay of a game you could pickup any minute and play the dunegin loop fopr 30 minutes and log out. If any of theese games would ever figure out what actually makes people want to log in instead of just doing it because they are dead inside and have to I would gladly give them my money and time.

 

[Myobi]

I am considering buying Dragonflight and checking out the questing experience. I have a WoW token so it'd just be a $50 purchase. The Dragonriding looks like a rip off of GW2's Griffon mount, which I very much enjoyed flying around on. That being said, each WoW expansion has had less and less questing content. I remember MoP having so many leveling and levelcap questlines, I was still occupied during the 14 month long content drought completing them all. But after MoP, you usually finish levelling over a weekend, and then you're lucky if there are levelcap questlines to do. There is another game coming out in November that I am interested in: the Utawarerumono prequel JRPG. It admittedly looks like a visual novel studio's amateurish first attempt at making a JRPG, but there is a good chance it will probably have more content that Dragonflight, so I might get that instead.

It really is sad how WoW charges you $15 a month and a $50 expansion every other year, and yet there is just so little content.

I've hopped into retail to see what class I was going to roll in with Dragonflight.

... now I'm just thinking about sticking with wotlk classic and skip Dragonflight entirely.

I don't know how to explain it, or what it is exactly, but retail feels like such a messy experience.

As far as prices go, I remember having a good laugh comparing it with Final Fantasy 14 a few years ago, especially when it comes up to extra services.

 

[J1M]

I am considering buying Dragonflight and checking out the questing experience. I have a WoW token so it'd just be a $50 purchase. The Dragonriding looks like a rip off of GW2's Griffon mount, which I very much enjoyed flying around on. That being said, each WoW expansion has had less and less questing content. I remember MoP having so many leveling and levelcap questlines, I was still occupied during the 14 month long content drought completing them all. But after MoP, you usually finish levelling over a weekend, and then you're lucky if there are levelcap questlines to do. There is another game coming out in November that I am interested in: the Utawarerumono prequel JRPG. It admittedly looks like a visual novel studio's amateurish first attempt at making a JRPG, but there is a good chance it will probably have more content that Dragonflight, so I might get that instead.

It really is sad how WoW charges you $15 a month and a $50 expansion every other year, and yet there is just so little content.

I've hopped into retail to see what class I was going to roll in with Dragonflight.

... now I'm just thinking about sticking with wotlk classic and skip Dragonflight entirely.

I don't know how to explain it, or what it is exactly, but retail feels like such a messy experience.

As far as prices go, I remember having a good laugh comparing it with Final Fantasy 14 a few years ago, especially when it comes up to extra services.

The thing you can't explain is that one product was made by a team of people who played their own game in their own time. The other was made by a team that don't even want to play it at work.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

dailies were the start of the FOMO bullshit that plagues every online game now, absolute cancer

 

[TedNugent]

It would be infinitely more fun as a pick-up game.

It is, its just that they want to control how often you pick it up with dailies weeklys monthlys and whatever else shit they have in there, at leats it felt like that to me when I tried shadowlands for a while after years long break. Thats one of the reasons why it isnt fun for me anymore, instead of me actually wanting to log in and do shit they try to force me to and if I do all I get in return is the gameplay of a game you could pickup any minute and play the dunegin loop fopr 30 minutes and log out. If any of theese games would ever figure out what actually makes people want to log in instead of just doing it because they are dead inside and have to I would gladly give them my money and time.

Shadowlands launch was something else. Literally passed out on my keyboard during my second Choreghast right at layer 9 at 2 AM before weekly reset two weeks in a row. Purely from boredom.

Imagine waking up in your own drool and realizing through the sleep haze that you have to start from the beginning of the tower because you fell asleep.

Oh, shit, reset is tomorrow, I need to get my chores done before I fall behind the power curve.

Great game.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It would be infinitely more fun as a pick-up game.

It is, its just that they want to control how often you pick it up with dailies weeklys monthlys and whatever else shit they have in there, at leats it felt like that to me when I tried shadowlands for a while after years long break. Thats one of the reasons why it isnt fun for me anymore, instead of me actually wanting to log in and do shit they try to force me to and if I do all I get in return is the gameplay of a game you could pickup any minute and play the dunegin loop fopr 30 minutes and log out. If any of theese games would ever figure out what actually makes people want to log in instead of just doing it because they are dead inside and have to I would gladly give them my money and time.

Shadowlands launch was something else. Literally passed out on my keyboard during my second Choreghast right at layer 9 at 2 AM before weekly reset two weeks in a row. Purely from boredom.

Imagine waking up in your own drool and realizing through the sleep haze that you have to start from the beginning of the tower because you fell asleep.

Oh, shit, reset is tomorrow, I need to get my chores done before I fall behind the power curve.

Great game.

old mmos: people can't stop playing them
new mmos: they have to hire psychologists to invent ways to trick people into logging in for at least 10 minutes a day

 

[Late Bloomer]

now I'm just thinking about sticking with wotlk classic and skip Dragonflight entirely.

Or you could not play either of them. That is always a choice.

 

[J1M]

The newest copium is people being excited that they've announced they are intentionally telling stories that won't resolve in one expansion. So have fun waiting 6 years to see the beginning, middle, and end of Danuser's tale.

 

[ADL]

I know it'll never happen but going full Old School Runescape alternate reality mode where Blizzard didn't fuck everything up with The Burning Crusade's flying mounts and gutting the open world PvP system would be something worth exploring.

Classic Plus is a missed opportunity for Blizzard.

 

[Reever]

So have fun waiting 6 years to see the beginning, middle, and end of Danuser's tale.

People waited how many years for Danuser's waifu to stop being the center of every expansion only for her to be given a redemption ending. Meanwhile other important and better written characters get killed by trash mobs in side-quests.
At this point I'm positive everyone enjoying and waiting for Danuser's next "tale" has Stockholm syndrome.

 

[Myobi]

Or you could not play either of them. That is always a choice.

As soon as I get bored of it, yes, that's what will happen.

 

[J1M]

So have fun waiting 6 years to see the beginning, middle, and end of Danuser's tale.

People waited how many years for Danuser's waifu to stop being the center of every expansion only for her to be given a redemption ending. Meanwhile other important and better written characters get killed by trash mobs in side-quests.
At this point I'm positive everyone enjoying and waiting for Danuser's next "tale" has Stockholm syndrome.

Well, when you tank things by making an expansion about fighting demon vampires in a robot factory at the heart of the afterlife, any tale about exploring a cave to fight a dragon is going to look stellar in comparison.

What's most embarrassing is how many people are eager to put on the blinders and pretend that BFA's and Shadowlands' story problems are Afrasiabi's fault.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

lol this is a parody but sadly very accurate

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Anyway, I really do think it is time for Blizzard to do the right thing and acknowledge that their writing team is incompetent and that they should be designing games in such a way that the story is as small a part of the game experience as possible.

It's way too late for that. The writing has always been crappy. We just didn't notice before it because the production values everywhere else were always consistently high for the time and video game stories weren't subject to serious criticism until the last decade or so. At best, you get writing that is serviceable like that in WC1+2. Once the writers try to tackle characters then the writing turns to crap, as seen with SC1 onwards.

For example, the beginning of WC3 opens with Medivh showing up and telling the rulers of Lordaeron to pack up and evacuate the entire continent (i.e. millions of people) to Kalimdor, a continent on the other side of the planet that nobody even knew existed before. This would be a serious undertaking, to say the least. Medivh doesn't tell them about the demon or undead invasions, he just expects them to obey whatever he says because he's a fucking idiot. Naturally, the nobles laugh him out of the room because what he's saying is so blatantly insane. I'm surprised they reacted that way rather than, idk, interrogating him further to see whether he's actually crazy or just an asshole who expects everyone else to obey. I half-expected them to listen to him because that also sounds like precisely the sort of thing that only people in fantasy stories do. This is teenager on wattpad tier writing.

The way Blizz writes military scifi/fantasy is just so fucking offensive. They treat it like a fucking soap opera. If they made a historical game then they would write it about a love triangle between Cromwell, Montezuma, and Joan of Arc, and then have the conquistadors and Aztecs say "Satan made us do it!" and then have everyone teamup against Satan.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

Knowing only really Warcraft 1 the first one, this lore is super confusing. Like I think the orcs are now from another world where they were driven off first?
Because I'm pretty sure if you win WC1 as the orcs, the orc narrator then tells you, the Waaaagh-boss, that your warlocks now have permission to experiment with portals that will allow "subjugation of other worlds", which I thought was meant to imply that the orcs very much consider the world they've just subjugated (Azaroth?) as their "prime".
Was there a major retcon after WC2 or am I remembering that wrong.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Knowing only really Warcraft 1 the first one, this lore is super confusing. Like I think the orcs are now from another world where they were driven off first?
Because I'm pretty sure if you win WC1 as the orcs, the orc narrator then tells you, the Waaaagh-boss, that your warlocks now have permission to experiment with portals that will allow "subjugation of other worlds", which I thought was meant to imply that the orcs very much consider the world they've just subjugated (Azaroth?) as their "prime".
Was there a major retcon after WC2 or am I remembering that wrong.

Sadly blizzard is the king of retcon wow lore have no sense you will fall on insanity to try to understand something.

 

[TedNugent]

Anyway, I really do think it is time for Blizzard to do the right thing and acknowledge that their writing team is incompetent and that they should be designing games in such a way that the story is as small a part of the game experience as possible.

It's way too late for that. The writing has always been crappy. We just didn't notice before it because the production values everywhere else were always consistently high for the time and video game stories weren't subject to serious criticism until the last decade or so. At best, you get writing that is serviceable like that in WC1+2. Once the writers try to tackle characters then the writing turns to crap, as seen with SC1 onwards.

For example, the beginning of WC3 opens with Medivh showing up and telling the rulers of Lordaeron to pack up and evacuate the entire continent (i.e. millions of people) to Kalimdor, a continent on the other side of the planet that nobody even knew existed before. This would be a serious undertaking, to say the least. Medivh doesn't tell them about the demon or undead invasions, he just expects them to obey whatever he says because he's a fucking idiot. Naturally, the nobles laugh him out of the room because what he's saying is so blatantly insane. I'm surprised they reacted that way rather than, idk, interrogating him further to see whether he's actually crazy or just an asshole who expects everyone else to obey. I half-expected them to listen to him because that also sounds like precisely the sort of thing that only people in fantasy stories do. This is teenager on wattpad tier writing.

The way Blizz writes military scifi/fantasy is just so fucking offensive. They treat it like a fucking soap opera. If they made a historical game then they would write it about a love triangle between Cromwell, Montezuma, and Joan of Arc, and then have the conquistadors and Aztecs say "Satan made us do it!" and then have everyone teamup against Satan.

Well, the difference is a little more pronounced than that, between old and new Blizz, IMO.

It was during my fevered flight that the Presence finally made contact with me. It radiated untold power, but it lacked the emotionless control displayed by Kil'jaeden. My senses seemed to take control over the dread that had engulfed me, and my mind began to cipher and reason. I knew that if I could divine the desires of this force, no matter how powerful, I could use it to further my own ends. The presence identified itself as Medivh, a sorcerer from some far and distant world. We communicated not in words, but in a guarded joining of minds. His mind seemed boundless, but his thoughts moved so swiftly that it was difficult to learn anything from him. All the while, I knew that he was probing me - learning more and more about the Orcs and our magic. I could never learn as much from him as he would from me, and I soon broke contact with him.

 

[J1M]

Knowing only really Warcraft 1 the first one, this lore is super confusing. Like I think the orcs are now from another world where they were driven off first?
Because I'm pretty sure if you win WC1 as the orcs, the orc narrator then tells you, the Waaaagh-boss, that your warlocks now have permission to experiment with portals that will allow "subjugation of other worlds", which I thought was meant to imply that the orcs very much consider the world they've just subjugated (Azaroth?) as their "prime".
Was there a major retcon after WC2 or am I remembering that wrong.

The orcs conquered their planet but it wasn't as bountiful as Azeroth. So they looked for new places to invade.

 

[MajorMace]

Afaik Orcs were originally ripped off Warhammer's Greenskins, and had little to no variation from these. They were vicious raiders interested mostly in pillaging and raping villages, hailing from poisonous, treacherous lands with poisonous, treacherous-sounding names such as "The Black Morass".
As soon as Warcraft II, Blizzard started to give 'em some "good savage" vibes, but it really is Warcraft III that redeemed their awful exactions figuratively and narratively by having Grom Hellscream heroically sacrifice himself at the end of their campaign. And Thrall who's, still to this day, a good guy with 0 flaw.
Greenskins Orcs are now a rather peaceful people who only aspire to farm some ancient gods and other cosmic demiurges in order to acquire phat loot. That's canon.