Blizzard: Expect More WoW Expansions, Sooner

[Adamantium93]

Other than a minor new story, 10 levels, and making the MoP farm into a "Garrison", there's almost nothing new to WoD. There's no new classes, no new races, no new enemies or allies (Orcs vs Draeni). The zone itself is taking Outland and repairing the broken stuff while adding light to where dark is now...that's the basic of it. Unlike MoP, this expansion they have coming just screams "milking customers dry, because they don't know any better."

They released a new race and a new class just one year ago. At this point, the number of playable races is starting to feel bloated and the playable classes are already a nightmare to balance (34 specializations in total to all keep relatively equal). Taking a break from that to focus on what they've already added is probably a smart idea from a gameplay and storyline perspective. Also, updating the new character models are more work than creating a new race.

As for no new enemies or allies, you have to put yourself in Blizzard's position. Every expansion besides MoP used preexisting enemies with a slight graphical upgrade as the main bad guys. The Legion, the Scourge, the Twilights Hammer and the Armies of the Elemental Lords have been around since Classic and hence were all well received. When they released MoP and introduced the Sha and the Mogu, the player base threw a hissy fit because WoW was creating new lore rather than drawing from the selection of bad guys we've already fought. They need to keep the game feeling like a Warcraft game, and they do that by keeping enemies familiar to the main evil groups in the lore. They are also using this time to expand upon the history and lore of the Draenei, something which is sorely needed.

They are completely rebuilding Draenor; only using Outland as a guide. They didn't just reskin the current map and call it a day. They created it from the ground up and while some zones share vague resemblance to their counterparts in BC, most have been completely re-imagined.

 

[Gxas]

snip

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

I liked Deathwing, I read the books and I think he was one of the best characters in the world :'(
I never really liked orcs (except Thrall) cause they all sound like the (obviously superior) tauren but with more bloodlust and savageness

Ahh, see, I never read the books.

Actually, I rarely see novelizations of games or movies as canon, usually. Maybe that's my problem.

 

[VoidWanderer]

Does anyone in Blizzard's PR department actually pay attention to anything? And did Blizzard just announce an HD remake of Burning Crusade!? So they are doing player housing, kinda.

It is like we read the exact same speech when a new expansion is announced. More content,faster and better. What always happens? It will get announced when it is complete, now shut up and keep raiding.

... Sigh

 

[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"

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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