World of Warcraft: Dragon Desperation

[J1M]

Several of those issues seem to be due to or fear of twitter commentary. Which makes it even more obvious that they have no grand plan aside from using the mystery box approach.

 

[Dr1f7]

Several of those issues seem to be due to or fear of twitter commentary.

blizzard is the twitter community at this point
which is why, again, you really shouldn't be giving them $$ you're just funding people who hate you

 

[Myobi]

Several of those issues seem to be due to or fear of twitter commentary. Which makes it even more obvious that they have no grand plan aside from using the mystery box approach.

People censoring themselves to avoid offending social media vocal minorities instead of just focusing on making good fucking products for the people actually buying their shit deserve to lose money.

Then we get developers moaning about games like Elden Ring n BG3 setting "unfair standards", how dare those cunts making decent products with only a fraction of our resources! Blasphemy!

 

[Axel_am]

Several of those issues seem to be due to or fear of twitter commentary. Which makes it even more obvious that they have no grand plan aside from using the mystery box approach.

People censoring themselves to avoid offending social media vocal minorities instead of just focusing on making good fucking products for the people actually buying their shit deserve to lose money.

Then we get developers moaning about games like Elden Ring n BG3 setting "unfair standards", how dare those cunts making decent products with only a fraction of our resources! Blasphemy!

It's a game for the masses. I guess those have to exist as well.

It's a bit sad but with the way things are going in the industry I don't think we will ever get a MMO with the DA:O tone you mentioned earlier in the thread. I would be happy if we get anything like DA:O, but again - that doesn't seem to be happening. People seem to be convinced that video games are for children only and they don't need to tackle serious topics.

Comparing the intro cinematic of Reign of Chaos to the one in Dragonflight would make you think that they were going for a horror story with Warcraft 3. Which is so far from what War3 actually is. It really boggles the mind how the entirety of that rough appeal has just been evaporated. I would say this applies for the rest of Blizzard's games. All of them seem to be more focused to appeal to a younger audience. And that also includes Diablo - a game where you actually fight the devil.

Anyway, if WoW is purposely designed to be more appealing to children Blizz are doing a stellar job with the game.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

if WoW is purposely designed to be more appealing to children Blizz are doing a stellar job with the game.

To me it seems like it is poor business sense to alienate your existing playerbase, trying to chase after people who aren't going to buy your product anyway. In the communities and PUGs and guilds I've been in, everyone has been around since WoD at the very latest. WoW is not attracting young gamers. Steven Universe fans and tumblrinas are /gposing and going to brothels in FF14.

Last expansion, Blizzard revamped the new player starting experience so you no longer start in your racial zone, and instead start in Exile's Reach. ER does not show off what is unique about Warcraft and is just a discount D&D adventure, and the gameplay there is not representative of the endgame experience. If a new player somehow survives that, they are thrown into the Battle for Azeroth levelling questline where they don't know or care about what is going on, and the quest content is not engaging (for an expansion advertised as being about war, the actual BFA quests are about you helping the locals out with boring chores like harvesting plants or tending to bees). Due to the level scaling, the player feels like they are getting weaker whenever they level up. At first it took them two fireballs to kill a bee, and then it takes three, and then four, and so on. If a new player have somehow made it through all of this to level cap, then they are left at a loss because the gameplay has not resulted in them making friends along the way, so they are at cap and faced with the choice of either 1. meandering around the Dragon Isles grinding renown until they get bored or 2. PUGing dungeons and raids to chase ilevel treadmill until they get jaded and quit for more entertaining and rewarding games.

The game also does not have good controller support (current implementation is halfhearted and inadequate) which means a lot of people are going to be turned off. It is also a PC exclusive and hasn't run on cheap, affordable hardware in years (even with 3070 Ti the game still stutters in Suramar and Zuldazar and Boralus and Arden Weald and Valdrakken and during certain Dragonflight boss fights), at a time when prices are going up but wages are not. There have been no other Warcraft franchise games released since WoW so the IP has no younger fans who might be interested in playing the MMO. Lastly the game costs $210 a year to play. There is so much going against the game when people can get a better time elsewhere for less time and money invested.

 

[Myobi]

I don't think we will ever get a MMO with the DA:O

Just it being an MMO its already a huge risk for a company. It's a massive fucking investment for such a gamble.

Steven Universe fans and tumblrinas are /gposing and going to brothels in FF14.

God bless Yoshi, now that is true fucking end game right there.

 

[Axel_am]

if WoW is purposely designed to be more appealing to children Blizz are doing a stellar job with the game.

To me it seems like it is poor business sense to alienate your existing playerbase, trying to chase after people who aren't going to buy your product anyway. In the communities and PUGs and guilds I've been in, everyone has been around since WoD at the very latest. WoW is not attracting young gamers. Steven Universe fans and tumblrinas are /gposing and going to brothels in FF14.

Last expansion, Blizzard revamped the new player starting experience so you no longer start in your racial zone, and instead start in Exile's Reach. ER does not show off what is unique about Warcraft and is just a discount D&D adventure, and the gameplay there is not representative of the endgame experience. If a new player somehow survives that, they are thrown into the Battle for Azeroth levelling questline where they don't know or care about what is going on, and the quest content is not engaging (for an expansion advertised as being about war, the actual BFA quests are about you helping the locals out with boring chores like harvesting plants or tending to bees). Due to the level scaling, the player feels like they are getting weaker whenever they level up. At first it took them two fireballs to kill a bee, and then it takes three, and then four, and so on. If a new player have somehow made it through all of this to level cap, then they are left at a loss because the gameplay has not resulted in them making friends along the way, so they are at cap and faced with the choice of either 1. meandering around the Dragon Isles grinding renown until they get bored or 2. PUGing dungeons and raids to chase ilevel treadmill until they get jaded and quit for more entertaining and rewarding games.

The game also does not have good controller support (current implementation is halfhearted and inadequate) which means a lot of people are going to be turned off. It is also a PC exclusive and hasn't run on cheap, affordable hardware in years (even with 3070 Ti the game still stutters in Suramar and Zuldazar and Boralus and Arden Weald and Valdrakken and during certain Dragonflight boss fights), at a time when prices are going up but wages are not. There have been no other Warcraft franchise games released since WoW so the IP has no younger fans who might be interested in playing the MMO. Lastly the game costs $210 a year to play. There is so much going against the game when people can get a better time elsewhere for less time and money invested.

Yes, valid points. But when it comes to MMOs what else is there? WoW might be lacking on the technical part of what a game should be but it's colorful and has one of the best aesthetics in the genre. It's also riding the recognition wave of the Blizz and WarCraft name which are strong even today.

Perhaps the MMO that Riot are developing is what will be the WoW killer. Both League and Riot seem to have the advantages that Blizz and WarCraft had in the past. They also have a big grip on the younger demographic.

However, you are wrong that there haven't been any new games under the Warcraft umbrella. Hearthstone and the upcoming Warcraft Arclight Rumble. A lot of books and comic books have been released as well. A different medium but they should still be able to generate some pull.

It's true that the game feels pretty empty after the leveling is done. Which is just bonkers. I always thought the social aspect to be one of the best parts of WoW.

 

[Myobi]

But when it comes to MMOs what else is there?

Final Fantasy 14, if you don't mind the weeb shit.

Riot is pretty much the only hope of a decent MMO right now, they got pretty much everything to pull something really good.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

when it comes to MMOs what else is there?

I think GW2 and FF14 have better new player experiences. You create a character and then go through the story in order and get properly introduced to the characters, the setting, the plot, the terminology, etc. The actual quality of the writing and the gameplay content is another thing (protagonist suddenly losing his voice for the first two seasons of GW2, FFXIV's story only being 10% gameplay and the rest is a visual novel and half of the time not even presented with a cutscene), but you don't get the strange experience of WoW where you are dropped into the middle of the seventh expansion and you're expected to know about these characters and factions and the history of the setting and a lot of strange terms. Those games also don't make you feel weaker as you level up like in WoW. GW2 has level scaling for mobs but it is only to prevent low level zone mobs from being oneshotted by level capped players. There is no instance where it takes after levelling up, it takes more button presses to kill the same mob. FFXIV does not have mob level scaling. The player gets levelled down while in instances and loses abilities, but again they aren't having to put in more effort to do the same thing they were already doing like in WoW.

Agreed about WoW still having the best aesthetics in the genre.

Hearthstone and the upcoming Warcraft Arclight Rumble. A lot of books and comic books have been released as well. A different medium but they should still be able to generate some pull.

I have never heard anyone say "I got interested in WoW because of Hearthstone". It is almost always either the opposite ("I play WoW so I decided to check out the card game"), or they are TCG players from Magic or Pokemon and wanted to check out an alternative TCG and don't really care about the other games in the franchise.

The early Warcraft novels and comic books could have drawn in new people. Ie, the War of the Ancients Trilogy or Day of the Dragon, books that weren't written to be direct tie ins to the MMO and could stand on their own and properly introduced their own characters and world, and had a definitive ending. But those stopped happening by Cata and from then on the only novels published were expansion bridge books like the Shattering or War Crimes that presumed that the audience was already invested and didn't bother trying to get the audience introduced or invested in the characters/setting/stakes. I could recommend the WotA trilogy to someone who had never played WoW before since it stands on its own as a decent fantasy read, but I would never recommend War Crimes to someone who had never played WoW. Same issue with the WoW comics after Bloodsworn; they're just expansion tie ins to try to appeal to existing fans (ie Son of the Wolf).

Riot is pretty much the only hope of a decent MMO right now, they got pretty much everything to pull something really good.

I am not optimistic about the Riot MMO anymore. It has been in development for almost a decade and Riot has nothing to show for it. A lot of the hype for the Riot MMO was that it was being directed by Greg Street, aka Ghostcrawler who was the lead game designer for WoW during its peak. But then he left earlier this year. He claimed it was wholly due to family issues but personally I think that was also a polite excuse to leave a project that wasn't going anywhere or he wasn't enthusiastic about anymore. We saw the same issue with Blizzard and Project Titan where people were spending years working on a project that wasn't going anywhere and those people had nothing to show for their time spent and wound up dispirited and left to work at other companies that would actually reveal and ship their projects.

 

[Axel_am]

Final Fantasy 14, if you don't mind the weeb shit.

Well I mean... isn't the weeb shit the main appeal of FF14?
Personally FF14 is not my cup of tea. Maybe in a few years, or with the right sage I will give it a proper try.

Val the Moofia Boss Jeesh, I never really thought that the books are just meant for people that are already knee deep into WoW. The idea completely went over my head but it makes perfect sense. I stopped reading them 'cuz the quality of writing is absolute garbage. If you've got any recommendations feel free to share them. Not a big fan of Christie Golden.

I've got no idea what's happening with the Riot MMO. No real expectations either. I just know that they are getting bigger by the minute and that they have everything any developer could need to make an MMO + the stated interest.

 

[Dr1f7]

Yes, valid points. But when it comes to MMOs what else is there? WoW might be lacking on the technical part of what a game should be but it's colorful and has one of the best aesthetics in the genre. It's also riding the recognition wave of the Blizz and WarCraft name which are strong even today.

Eve
Guild Wars 1
CoH

Not to mention games like dota 2 and fromsoft stuff, and even morrowind that are essentially mmos

Perhaps the MMO that Riot are developing is what will be the WoW killer. Both League and Riot seem to have the advantages that Blizz and WarCraft had in the past. They also have a big grip on the younger demographic.

 

[Axel_am]

Yes, valid points. But when it comes to MMOs what else is there? WoW might be lacking on the technical part of what a game should be but it's colorful and has one of the best aesthetics in the genre. It's also riding the recognition wave of the Blizz and WarCraft name which are strong even today.

Eve
Guild Wars 1
CoH

Not to mention games like dota 2 and fromsoft stuff, and even morrowind that are essentially mmos

Perhaps the MMO that Riot are developing is what will be the WoW killer. Both League and Riot seem to have the advantages that Blizz and WarCraft had in the past. They also have a big grip on the younger demographic.

Those are games from like 20 years ago. I don't see how they are in the same conversation. I love Guild Wars 1 but I can't compare it to Dragonflight.

I thought DotA was a moba? What do you mean that they are essentially mmos?

Yeaah, sorry about the Riot MMO thing. But it has a lot of money and hype attached to it. Let's just forget I mentioned it. I don't think it will bring anything meaningful to conversation. There haven't been any news about it for a very long time and just speculating is pretty pointless.

 

[Myobi]

Not to mention games like dota 2 and fromsoft stuff, and even morrowind that are essentially mmos

 

[Dr1f7]

Those are games from like 20 years ago. I don't see how they are in the same conversation. I love Guild Wars 1 but I can't compare it to Dragonflight.

I thought DotA was a moba? What do you mean that they are essentially mmos?

Yeaah, sorry about the Riot MMO thing. But it has a lot of money and hype attached to it. Let's just forget I mentioned it. I don't think it will bring anything meaningful to conversation. There haven't been any news about it for a very long time and just speculating is pretty pointless.

Not to mention games like dota 2 and fromsoft stuff, and even morrowind that are essentially mmos

Well WoW was designed from the beginning to be a solo game. Vanilla was designed for players to level to max solo, and current retail even more so. If you do dungeons, for all you know your whole team could be bots, nobody interacts with each other anyway. FFXIV, which is i guess the second most popular mmo is entirely solo and gives you literal npc bots to run through dungeons with. All content in the third most popular MMO, OSRS, is designed for a single player. Should I go on? Because, surprise, TESO and SWTOR are single player games too!

Sure you can see other people running around, but they're often bots, and even if not, they may as well be.

Guess what, you see ghosts of other players and their bloodstains running around in FromSoft games, does that make them mmos? Why the hell not? It's got gear, stats, adventure, co-op, pvp...
Dota has the core mmo-experience built into a one hour match, getting xp, getting gold/loot, gearing up, hotkey abilities, PvE, roshan(raid boss)... And it has infinitely more interaction with other, real, people than the top current mmos.
I could make a mod for morrowind to add a bunch of random npcs bunnyhopping all over the place, clearing dungeons for you, and if you chat with them they can make fun of you for not min-maxing or exploiting. Would it be an mmo then?


Okay okay, the elephant in the room: what if I added a multiplier that made leveling up take 10,000x longer in these games, and charged you $15 a month to play. Would they be mmos now? What if I got a youtube streamer to call them mmos? Happy?

 

[Axel_am]

Those are games from like 20 years ago. I don't see how they are in the same conversation. I love Guild Wars 1 but I can't compare it to Dragonflight.

I thought DotA was a moba? What do you mean that they are essentially mmos?

Yeaah, sorry about the Riot MMO thing. But it has a lot of money and hype attached to it. Let's just forget I mentioned it. I don't think it will bring anything meaningful to conversation. There haven't been any news about it for a very long time and just speculating is pretty pointless.

Not to mention games like dota 2 and fromsoft stuff, and even morrowind that are essentially mmos

Well WoW was designed from the beginning to be a solo game. Vanilla was designed for players to level to max solo, and current retail even more so. If you do dungeons, for all you know your whole team could be bots, nobody interacts with each other anyway. FFXIV, which is i guess the second most popular mmo is entirely solo and gives you literal npc bots to run through dungeons with. All content in the third most popular MMO, OSRS, is designed for a single player. Should I go on? Because, surprise, TESO and SWTOR are single player games too!

Sure you can see other people running around, but they're often bots, and even if not, they may as well be.

Guess what, you see ghosts of other players and their bloodstains running around in FromSoft games, does that make them mmos? Why the hell not? It's got gear, stats, adventure, co-op, pvp...
Dota has the core mmo-experience built into a one hour match, getting xp, getting gold/loot, gearing up, hotkey abilities, PvE, roshan(raid boss)... And it has infinitely more interaction with other, real, people than the top current mmos.
I could make a mod for morrowind to add a bunch of random npcs bunnyhopping all over the place, clearing dungeons for you, and if you chat with them they can make fun of you for not min-maxing or exploiting. Would it be an mmo then?


Okay okay, the elephant in the room: what if I added a multiplier that made leveling up take 10,000x longer in these games, and charged you $15 a month to play. Would they be mmos now? What if I got a youtube streamer to call them mmos? Happy?

Oh, so we are trying to figure out what MMORPG stands for. Alright.

Having multiplayer in a game isn't the same as being an MMORPG. It has to have a world that's populated, appears to be life-like and continues to be there when you aren't playing. Also, you kind of have to be able to run into other players just by accident. Not because they are from the opposite team or something like that.

I don't see why having bots in an MMO would make it less of an MMO. It's just a quality of life improvement for the players. Nobody is forcing you to use it. I would much rather just play the game than look for a group the whole night. And for all I know most of my teammates in DotA could also be bots.

Just out of curiosity - do you see Guild Wars 1 as a single player game? Isn't it more of an MMORPG game with a single player option?

No matter how you slice it adding a monthly fee and an experience bar won't make a game with multiplayer into an MMO. Adding bots to an RPG won't make it an MMORPG either as it's lacking the MMO part.

The acronym has a pretty vague meaning to be honest, but the same applies to RPG as well. I won't be surprised if people are already calling CS:GO a ShooterRPG or some shit like that.



Josh Strife Hayes made a video about this in which he doesn't really give an answer to the question (just like most youtube videos) but I think that one of the comments described best what an MMORPG is:

"In France, one of the best MMORPG forums website used to be "Mondes Persistants" which means "persisting worlds" and I feel like it's a better descriptor for the genre than any part of the MMORPG acronym. There is this idea that your character exist within a world that does not cease to exist even when you're offline."

Maybe everyone gets to have his own definition of what an MMORPG should be. But that doesn't make everyone right. Just like that doesn't make DotA and Sekiro into MMORPGs.

 

[Myobi]

Guess what, you see ghosts of other players and their bloodstains running around in FromSoft games, does that make them mmos? Why the hell not? It's got gear, stats, adventure, co-op, pvp...

It has gear... stats... adventure and co-op, therefore its a MASSIVE Multiplayer Online game. Sounds about right.

5v5? That's 10 entire players! A MASSIVE amount indeed, impressive how they can all fit inside that stupid ass arena.

 

[Reever]

ER does not show off what is unique about Warcraft and is just a discount D&D adventure, and the gameplay there is not representative of the endgame experience.

I actually think it represents exactly what modern WoW is about. Since ER is just a boring soulless questline where you're introduced to some vapid characters that culminates in an EPIC FINALE! One where you band together with random people you'll never even say "Hi" to and will never meet again to beat a boss that holds absolutely no challenge whatsoever for some SICK loot. The only way they could've made it more representative of current WoW is if it gave you the option to replay the dungeon over and over again but it's stats scaled up every time by 5%.

 

[J1M]

Discord is the MMO people play now.

 

[Myobi]

Discord is the MMO people play now.

Just hate how much p2w there is in it, want more emoji sluts for that extra cancer? pay! Better sound dps? pay! More frames? pay!

MSN was a better MMO than Discord will ever be, microtrasanction free, just pure fun and joy.

 

[Talby]

The Codex is the best MMO. Full pvp, no level scaling and best of all, permadeath.

 

[Caim]

The Codex is the best MMO. Full pvp, no level scaling and best of all, permadeath.

Real life is open world PVP if you have the guts to engage in it.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The 10th annual Tournament of Ages on Moon Guard has begun. Event was pretty packed. I was getting 13 FPS inside the colosseum, and that wasn't even everyone there. There were more people unloaded outside. Outside the colosseum, you would walk 10 feet forward and then suddenly dozens of people would load in front of you.

 

[Myobi]

Hummm... maybe that's why they call it MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER, just like solitaire and majong.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Cutscene from the upcoming patch. I'm guessing Fyrakk and Iridikron will die while the woman will live.

Also, there is yet another 50% off sale for Dragonflight, through September 17th. I think this is the fourth or fifth sale this expansion. Guessing the interest in WoW is at all time low now. Not even Shadowlands had this many sales.

 

[Dr1f7]

it's like a dull filler expansion thematically and artistically nobody cares