Blizzard: Expect More WoW Expansions, Sooner

[Eldritch Warlord]

For fuck sake, they'll do anything to keep this one alive. How much does it cost to get all these expansions to play the game now? Including, is it still 15$-10$ to play every month? This is milking at it's worst.

To answer your question: $60 is how much it costs to buy the game and every expansion on Battle.net and yes the subscription fee remains the same as always. That doesn't really seem outrageous to me, that's the standard cost of a AAA game and the game is more than old enough for inflation to be an arguably valid excuse to raise rates.

How exactly is it "milking at it's worst" to continually make content for a game? Is that not the standard MMORPG business model? If they were adding less content with each expansion then you may have a point but that remains to be seen. For what it's worth MoP has had more major content patches than Cataclysm or WotLK.

 

[Lunar Templar]

It's based on an increased development team/having a fairly functional release schedule versus disparate patches or having only a vague idea of what they're doing. The whole "content release pipe-line" as an idea is actually pretty recent, so they've had to adjust to players wanting to consume more content rather than being able to go through it multiple times/take a while to go through it. Essentially, the playerbase evolved past the game's capacity in some ways. As a player this actually does not sound that bad, although it coming with a patching system would probably be preferable.

In short: The words you're looking for are "assembly line", not necessarily rushed. I don't think there's been that much just straight up filler content for a while, although opinions may vary.

that's not really better ... besides, WoW, as another guy stated, all the expansions are gonna hurt it in the long run, as some one else said, its just gonna drive up the cost of entry and turn people away. They should be looking at WoW 2 or something, not pulling a 'Sega32x/CD' and stacken shit on.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

Out of topic a little:

I only played the first 3 Warcraft games, the strategy games. Never played WoW.
How much the story of the game changed because of the WoW? I heared some bad things, but never something specific about it.

Mostly Blizzard has only added new elements to the lore. The only thing they reworked and retconned to a major degree has been the draenei. Best just read a wiki page on the draenei if you want to know more.

I guess they made Tauren and Night Elves have some sort of long history together that's never really explored but somehow allows Tauren to be druids too.

If you've heard bad things it's because people were really indignant about the changes to draenei lore in TBC (personally I think it's pretty interesting).

 

[Zeckt]

MoP has been the best expansion yet and Siege of Orgrimmar has been the best raid since Ulduar in my opinion. I'll be buying WoD. I'm a bit apprehensive with what they're doing to gear and stats but as long as the raid content keeps coming I'll keep playing.

I'm glad you claim that as simply your opinion and not a fact. My favorite was wotlk and in my opinion is the best.

 

[Nilanius]

snip

As someone who has been with them since "the beginning", would you accept the argument that it wasn't Activision that killed the lore, but the fact that they were using unimportant lore?

No one cared about Deathwing. No one. No one cared about the Pandas, until Garrosh got heavily involved and we got to fight him.

But now, going back to actual WoW lore with Thrall and the Orc clans? You can't say that sucks. That is fucking awesome.

Actually I can say it sucks. It is bad writing. Think about it. End of Cataclysm, they said the dragon aspects, all of them, lost their powers and became mortal. This means since the bronze were timeless and controlled the time ways, their powers are gone.

Then you got mists of pandaria's ending. Garrosh has been beaten, he is under heavy guard. Now, he's going to escape from all the guards holding him prisoner, and jump through a time portal to mess with time. How does he get the time portal? The bronze have no power over time no more, and even if they did, they sure as hell wouldn't send him back in time.

And somehow, WoW players are going to be sent back in time to chase after him? How, again, the ones who had the power to do that, no longer have the power. And they always said from burning crusade, all the way up to cataclysm, that any changes in time, that aren't identified by the bronze, would change azeroths future almost immediately, hence why WoW players kept fighting the infinite dragons. The bronze didn't know where the infinite were hiding, WoW players brought them out of hiding and slew them, the bronze having now identified where they appeared, go back further and correct the interference.

So the fact they are now trying the whole "it creates an alternate universe" is poor writing, and even the fact they are having him use something that no longer exists, makes it even worse. So no, it's not "awesome". And if they continue what they been doing since cataclysm, stealing other sources for storytelling, like Rambo, CSI, Indiana Jones, etc, and also Mary Suing their lore figures such as thrall, then no, that is not "awesome". It is all just the worse form of writing one could ever experience. And I am glad I left Blizzard when it started getting bad in Mists of Pandaria.

 

[Nazulu]

For fuck sake, they'll do anything to keep this one alive. How much does it cost to get all these expansions to play the game now? Including, is it still 15$-10$ to play every month? This is milking at it's worst.

To answer your question: $60 is how much it costs to buy the game and every expansion on Battle.net and yes the subscription fee remains the same as always. That doesn't really seem outrageous to me, that's the standard cost of a AAA game and the game is more than old enough for inflation to be an arguably valid excuse to raise rates.

How exactly is it "milking at it's worst" to continually make content for a game? Is that not the standard MMORPG business model? If they were adding less content with each expansion then you may have a point but that remains to be seen. For what it's worth MoP has had more major content patches than Cataclysm or WotLK.

I'll admit, that doesn't seem that bad, at first, though I still wonder how other MMOs could do the constant updates with just the monthly pay. Also, how much do you think people paid from the beginning, with each expansion that came out? Not to mention the money they made from the people who bought the special mounts and other stuff. These mounts and what not were not just 1$, they were like $20 to $30.

This is no small amount and this company is far from suffering.

 

[Aussie502]

Blizzard have been releasing a new expansion roughly every 2 years since the game came out. I don't see this changing any time soon.

I have a feeling Blizzard will be focusing on maintaining continuity between the expansions. In the past random villains have risen without much connection to each other over different expansions. (ie. Illidan, Lich King, Deathwing)
But in this case it seems WoD will have a fairly strong connection with MoP and maybe the next expansion after will be similar.

In my opinion it's better than having disjointed expansions with a new random villain that wants to take over Azeroth because evil.

 

[jackpipsam]

While Cataclysm was a huge disappointment, I am loving Mists of Pandaria (so much I am sad for the now lack of 5.5).

So I have faith in Blizzard keeping WoW going at a good pace.

 

[Ferisar]

snip

As someone who has been with them since "the beginning", would you accept the argument that it wasn't Activision that killed the lore, but the fact that they were using unimportant lore?

No one cared about Deathwing. No one. No one cared about the Pandas, until Garrosh got heavily involved and we got to fight him.

But now, going back to actual WoW lore with Thrall and the Orc clans? You can't say that sucks. That is fucking awesome.

Actually I can say it sucks. It is bad writing. Think about it. End of Cataclysm, they said the dragon aspects, all of them, lost their powers and became mortal. This means since the bronze were timeless and controlled the time ways, their powers are gone.

Then you got mists of pandaria's ending. Garrosh has been beaten, he is under heavy guard. Now, he's going to escape from all the guards holding him prisoner, and jump through a time portal to mess with time. How does he get the time portal? The bronze have no power over time no more, and even if they did, they sure as hell wouldn't send him back in time.

And somehow, WoW players are going to be sent back in time to chase after him? How, again, the ones who had the power to do that, no longer have the power. And they always said from burning crusade, all the way up to cataclysm, that any changes in time, that aren't identified by the bronze, would change azeroths future almost immediately, hence why WoW players kept fighting the infinite dragons. The bronze didn't know where the infinite were hiding, WoW players brought them out of hiding and slew them, the bronze having now identified where they appeared, go back further and correct the interference.

So the fact they are now trying the whole "it creates an alternate universe" is poor writing, and even the fact they are having him use something that no longer exists, makes it even worse. So no, it's not "awesome". And if they continue what they been doing since cataclysm, stealing other sources for storytelling, like Rambo, CSI, Indiana Jones, etc, and also Mary Suing their lore figures such as thrall, then no, that is not "awesome". It is all just the worse form of writing one could ever experience. And I am glad I left Blizzard when it started getting bad in Mists of Pandaria.

Mortality never implied their powers were gone, simply diminished so Knaak could stop getting off to giant flying lizards being god-wizards of Azeroth. There was little tension when something bad happened (even speaking in novelized terms) because you always knew there were three (sometimes 4) giant fuck-off Aspects that could handle as many whelps as you wanted without breaking a sweat. Their fading into the background is good, because it also stops lore power-creep in some sense.

So yeah, that. If all the dragon aspects lost all their powers because of the end of Cataclysm, the Emerald Dream would be just about totally fucked right about now. I'm going out on a limb and assuming Malfurion isn't Yesera-status yet in terms of sheer power. That and the whole "Kalecgos is now the blue-dragon-god-wizard" would have exactly zero meaning, which makes no sense given its build-up in Firelands.

So, in short: no, their powers aren't gone, so that argument is kind of /shrug-worthy.

EDIT:
Also, what "stealing" CSI/Rambo story? I forgot humor was erased by bronze dragons in our reality. Must've been Garrosh. Damn that meddling kid, we could've gotten away with it, too.

 

[Gxas]

snip

I can understand that.

I still don't see how that is Activision's fault, but I understand your disdain.

 

[Ferisar]

It's based on an increased development team/having a fairly functional release schedule versus disparate patches or having only a vague idea of what they're doing. The whole "content release pipe-line" as an idea is actually pretty recent, so they've had to adjust to players wanting to consume more content rather than being able to go through it multiple times/take a while to go through it. Essentially, the playerbase evolved past the game's capacity in some ways. As a player this actually does not sound that bad, although it coming with a patching system would probably be preferable.

In short: The words you're looking for are "assembly line", not necessarily rushed. I don't think there's been that much just straight up filler content for a while, although opinions may vary.

that's not really better ... besides, WoW, as another guy stated, all the expansions are gonna hurt it in the long run, as some one else said, its just gonna drive up the cost of entry and turn people away. They should be looking at WoW 2 or something, not pulling a 'Sega32x/CD' and stacken shit on.

Not entirely valid since they simply drive down the price of the expansions to fit into the 60-dollar price-point. You can enter WoW right now with no prior purchase with the grand total of 60 bucks (standard AAA) price and the first month free, so... it really won't work against it unless they keep the price of each expansion up, something they haven't been doing since Wrath? (although BC had a battlechest, so actually, even earlier than that).

Yep... like I said, its downhill from here on out. Never again will an expansion be as good at WotLK. They're just going to pump these out with minor changes and updates from here on out.

"INVENTORY SPACE UPGRADE! 10 EXTRA SLOTS!"

"NEW ZONE: JUNGLEBERRY MARSHLAND!"

"NEW FEATURE: DYE YOUR PVP GEAR!(PURPLE!)"

"NEW CHARACTER PERKS: +10% RUN SPEED!"

ONLY $39.99!

COLLECTORS EDITION FEATURES!

"12 EXTRA BAG SLOTS!"

"MINI PET: ANGRY TURTLOCK"

"EXCLUSIVE MOUNT: FLAMING GRYPHON"

ONLY $89.99!

-_-

Would make sense if Wrath actually had significantly more content than either of the newer expansions (it didn't.) This is not looking at quality, obviously. I'm entirely with most people in saying that Cata (the conclusion, mostly) was terrible.

 

[Evonisia]

MoP has been the best expansion yet and Siege of Orgrimmar has been the best raid since Ulduar in my opinion. I'll be buying WoD. I'm a bit apprehensive with what they're doing to gear and stats but as long as the raid content keeps coming I'll keep playing.

Is Seige really that good? I haven't done a raid since ICC. Would running LFR be good then? I don't have much time to really raid these days.

Siege is certainly exciting and fun for a little while, I wouldn't say that it's better than ICC. LFR's good on it.

 

[Ferisar]

EDIT:
Also, what "stealing" CSI/Rambo story? I forgot humor was erased by bronze dragons in our reality. Must've been Garrosh. Damn that meddling kid, we could've gotten away with it, too.

He's speaking of what they did in alliance questing zones. Westfall had a lot of CSI rip offs while Redridge was almost entirely a Rambo rip off(which bled into the neighboring zone to the north). That's before pointing out that Uldum itself ripped off Indiana Jones so hard that I still wonder why George Lucas never sued them.

Again, it was all done as an homage/joke, not as a rip-off. This is like saying the numerous parodies of Star Wars were all blatant rip-offs. Harrison Jones has been "Indiana-ing" in WoW since at least Wrath. (Grizzly Hills)

The Westfall quest-line was also hilarious. The whole thing just threw one-liners at you every time a quest happened, it was awesome. I'm not convinced.

EDIT:
Uldum was centered around Harrison Jones, sure, but it was still firmly set in WoW universe with Titan lore. I'm just not seeing it, honestly. WoW's been an amalgamation of concepts from the get-go, what with the Lovecraftian Old Gods and Norse mythos injected every so often (They love their trees).

 

[thewatergamer]

Yay, because thats what ever MMO player wants, to pay more money for less stuff, really blizzard?

I somehow doubt that the whole "more sooner" will necessarily mean better, I am going to bet it will be more smaller expansions that no one will really care about

 

[babinro]

Great news for devoted WoW fans. I wish games I loved got this much support!

Far greater barrier to entry for the rest of us.
You mean I get to buy like 8 games AND pay a subscription fee? pass
You'll bump me up to level 90 so I'm completely lost with a decade worth of mechanics and gameplay systems? pass

Of course a game that old is not being marketed to new players anymore. It's primary goal is likely to cement current WoW players while hopefully entice a few that have left to return.

 

[00slash00]

Ughhh I wish they would make a sequel instead of more expansions. I know they have no reason to, since the expansions are still making them tons of money and making a whole new game would be super expensive, but I would happily return to WoW (even though I'd have no clue what's going on with the story or lore) if they updated the game play. I just can't go back to playing a hotkey mmo ever again

 

[Juliana Pocase]

A good majority of those 600k losses had directly to do with the implementation of cross-realm zones (CRZ) and the detrimental issues it caused. Blizzard is continuing to lose long time players because of their refusal to listen to ANY kind of criticism, and how they treat their customers. Their forums are trolled by developers in disguise, as per a former employee who quit to pursue a law degree and who happened to be an outspoken critic on CRZ. No, as long as the current state of apathy exists within the atmosphere of Blizzard, they will continue to bleed out until only the true diehards and kids remain. This new expansion has no speakable end-game content. 6 dungeons and 2 raids? Like many other veterans who remember when GMs walked amongst us like gods, little content and many level-capped alts is not a good mix. My 9 year, three account tenure may soon be ended. I am unconvinced that this expansion will be any better than the last one, which had as much polish, fit and finish as a Yugo.

 

[Juliana Pocase]

Great news for devoted WoW fans. I wish games I loved got this much support!

Far greater barrier to entry for the rest of us.
You mean I get to buy like 8 games AND pay a subscription fee? pass
You'll bump me up to level 90 so I'm completely lost with a decade worth of mechanics and gameplay systems? pass

Of course a game that old is not being marketed to new players anymore. It's primary goal is likely to cement current WoW players while hopefully entice a few that have left to return.

the game up through Cataclysm is included in the battle chest for about 20 bucks. the game mechanics change every expansion so you can't use that as an excuse.
with heirlooms you can level from 1 to 90 in about six days
so every argument you present here is absolutely moot say how you really feel

 

[Alorxico]

It's almost as if people want World of Warcraft to sputter, fail, and cease to exist.

I must ask, why? If people continue to enjoy the franchise what harm is there in letting it continue to be?

The people who want the game to fail are the people who have been (all be it metaphysically) hurt or betrayed by the game. When they started playing the game, WoW had lots of options and you could do almost anything you wanted with your Paladin. Yes, there were unnecessary steps to learning spells and you had to buy upgrades to the spells you all ready knew to make them more powerful, but it was challenging and the REQUIREMENT to buy these abilities kept them coming back.

But then some A**holes broke the game; they found just the right combination of power, armor and weapons to make themselves invincible and they began to scare away the new players by being d**ks. People started complaining. Desperate to keep their baby alive, Blizzard changed the rules and tried to balance the classes so people would stop complaining and the a**holes would stop being a**holes.

But that just made people complain more, because now the game was different and the a**holes, who had too much time on their hands, found how to break the game in less time than it took to download and install the patch. So, the a**holes continued to scare away new players and the regular players kept complaining, So Blizzard tried, again, to fix the game, and while they were at it removed all the "unnecessary" buying of skills and upgrades to make it more appealing to potential new players.

Rinse and repeat for the time between Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandrian, because the once Pandrian was out it was a whole different ball game. All the things people LIKED about the game were taken away and dumbed down to the point that even kids thought it was too simple (not making this up, a friend tried to get his 10 year old to play WoW with him and the kid's response to the Talent Tree was "That's retarded" Hardly the voice of the masses, but the kid's bright so I'll give him this one).

There is no need for Crafting Skills anymore, either, and many of the special items that Inscriptionists, Weavers and Engineers used to make and sell to other players for gold, have been re-coded so only the creator can use it and once you are no longer a practitioner of that craft, you can't use it. So if you want the motorcycle mount, you must take the craft needed to make it, level all the way up to the top, find the rare recipe and material to make it, then NEVER drop that craft.

In an attempt to FIX the small problems in the past, Blizzard as created more problems and changed the game so much that many who have left and wish it to die felt hurt. It WAS a fun game, but the a**holes who like feeling important SOMEWHERE in the universe and the corporate hive-mind that demands to see a profit EVERY quarter or some department will be sacrificed to the God of Wealth and Power ruined it.

But that's just my opinion. Me? I don't care if it fails or suddenly finds new life. I played it, I liked it, I now don't like it, I stopped playing. If they fix the issues I had with it, I might go back. But right now, I am having fun on Rifts (when I have time to play) and am looking forward to the new Elder Scrolls game.

Now, if Nintendo made a Pokemon MMORPG, I would be in heaven!

 

[babinro]

Great news for devoted WoW fans. I wish games I loved got this much support!

Far greater barrier to entry for the rest of us.
You mean I get to buy like 8 games AND pay a subscription fee? pass
You'll bump me up to level 90 so I'm completely lost with a decade worth of mechanics and gameplay systems? pass

Of course a game that old is not being marketed to new players anymore. It's primary goal is likely to cement current WoW players while hopefully entice a few that have left to return.

the game up through Cataclysm is included in the battle chest for about 20 bucks. the game mechanics change every expansion so you can't use that as an excuse.
with heirlooms you can level from 1 to 90 in about six days
so every argument you present here is absolutely moot say how you really feel

Guess I need to chalk this up to poor marketing on Blizzard's part of just lack of awareness on mine. I don't know what an heirloom is in gaming terms and the barrier to entry of an MMO this size 'seems' overwhelming.

Chalk my post up to jealousy given the level of support this title has received. I played Diablo 2 for about 7 years and would have happily payed for another 5 expansion packs during that time.