Blizzard: Expect More WoW Expansions, Sooner

[briankoontz]

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

World of Warcraft has dominated the MMOG industry to such an extent that it's been the template for countless other MMOGs, which is a terrible outcome from the standpoint of diversity, creativity, and player enjoyment.

Every time I try a new, popular MMOG (Rift, Tera, Firefall, Guild Wars 2), I invariably find it's another WoW clone with one or two different features. So I get bored in the first hour of playing it.

When World of Warcraft fails the MMOG genre will greatly benefit, since developers will be encouraged to make original games.

 

[Juliana Pocase]

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

World of Warcraft has dominated the MMOG industry to such an extent that it's been the template for countless other MMOGs, which is a terrible outcome from the standpoint of diversity, creativity, and player enjoyment.

Every time I try a new, popular MMOG (Rift, Tera, Firefall, Guild Wars 2), I invariably find it's another WoW clone with one or two different features. So I get bored in the first hour of playing it.

When World of Warcraft fails the MMOG genre will greatly benefit, since developers will be encouraged to make original games.

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.

Heirlooms basically give you a 50% boost to experience gain, they've nerfed the experience needed to level and have streamlined the process so that you will be max level before you run out of content.

 

[XDSkyFreak]

[/quote]
And I think Blizzard's choice to split the SC2 campaign into three is a logical one from both a business and gameplay perspective. We're getting 2 full length campaigns for the price of an expansion pack and you're complaining?[/quote]

ok .. this. So it's ok to pay the full price for a game to get 1 campaign (which allready is more expensive than what games used to cost, but i'll let that slide becasue new tech=higher costs) and then pay twice the price of an expansion for 2 extra campaigns that for all intents and purposes of the story were ment to be there in the first place? So when i payed full price for a game and got 3 FULL campaigns and 1 COMPLETE STORY i should have been disatisfied because they did a shity job releasing 3 campaigns in one game? What? Seriously? Am i missing something here or have i somehow gone insane or have the rules of logic changed while i was sleeping last night?

I wont even start discusing the fact that the quality of the story in SC2 frankly is abysmal when compared to the original SC (its like comparing a popcorn action movie (SC2) with a war drama (SC and BW)). That is a whole different can of worms than this topic. But I do feel the need to comment on another thing. Specificaly your "both WoL and HotS have more content than SC and BW combined". I can't even begin to comprehend how retarded that statement is! 2 campaigns versus 6 somehow equals more content?! The ONLY thing that SC 2 has over the first is this: Graphics! Because the gameplay changes and new units they added ... well they did that before. It was called Brood War, it added new units and mechanics and gameplay AND added 3 new campaigs detailing the next chapter of the story after the one in the original SC ended AND it costed the price of an expansion pack! STARCRAFT 2, ALL THREE OF THEM, ARE BASICALY JUST THE BROOD WAR EXPANSION PRETENDING IT'S A NEW GAME AND 2 EXPANSIONS. Now I'm expected to pay upwards of 100$ for the whole thing AND get it in chunks separatted by absurd lenghts of time that's only there as a flimsy justification for making 3 games instaed of one (becasue if anyone believes they didn;t have all 3 campaigns done before WoL hit the shelves, my friends you are delusional)AND somehow think it's a good ideea (according to you at least) when before this whole affair was 20$? I wouldn't mind the 60$ price tag if it ment i got a complete game. As it stands the three chunks of SC 2 are a complete insult to the consumer, a slimy, greedy activision marketing stunt that only worked because of 2 things: people like you who obviously can't tell when their getting conned and because of Blizzards renown. Well there is no shortage of guys like you sadly, but at least some people are waking up to the fact that blizz has suffered a drastic loss in quality on all fronts.

Sadly for blizz, at this point they preety much set fire to the bridge they are on and now are trying desperatly to run for their lives. They had 3 franchises that were regarded as clasics. Now ... Diablo 3 was a complete and utter mess that destroyed their public image, SC 2 since it's inception garnered a mixed response and deserved criticism for the stupid non-consumer friendly ideea of spliting 1 game into 3 and demanding full price plus 2 expansions price for it, a practice that thankfully hasn't been duplicated (and really in this industry where any money making scheme is copied instantly the fact the EA or Ubi haven't done this yet is a clear sign that even they know it's retarded and ActiBlizz got a pass just because of blizzards old renown) but it still delivered yet another blow to blizzards image, as for warcraft ... warcraft has been in hell ever since WoW came out. And now even WoW is dying off. Slowly, but it is. And no amount of desperate nostalgia milking with expansion after expansion trying to recapture the glory days wont save it sadly. Because the people who loved the warcraft universe jumped the boat when they started raping the story with TBC, WotLK and finaly killed it with Cataclysm. I'd love to see the sotry of Warcraft revived with a new game (and the BS of WoW retconned into meanigless grind). I would love for blizzard to mount a comeback and once again show the world the quality, dedication and respect for the fans their company was built on. But to do that they need to cut out the cancer that has attached itself to them. And by that I mean Activision. Take a look back when criticism against blizz and cracks in their image first started to appear: it started right after the merge with Activision. WotLK was the first expansion for WoW where i had friends tell me they were disapointed with some of the things happening and it was the one where i stopped playing. Cataclym saw most of my friends abandon the game and even the stoics jumped ship to GW (oh the irony: the best wow clone is now the template for all of the new features in the lates wow expansion. how the mighty have fallen) when MoP came out. Then came the SC 2 controversy and sadly coupled with what alot of old SC obsesing buddies of mine called a dumbing down of the game. And for alot of old fans blizzards image got ruined. And then Diablo 3 ... do i even need to say what that did?

I'm a cynic. Yet if I do hope for something, is for blizzard to become somehow come back and break free from Activision.

 

[Grospoliner]

Blizzard's big problem is they out-mode old content with their gear itemization and stat requirements. I haven't played since Cataclysm released, but effectively each new expansion contained content that made it pointless to continue working on previous endgame content, primarily because the gear itemization was so drastically changed. Obviously this is going to conflict with the episodic nature of the end-game content as Blizzard releases it. Even though they try to maintain a hub concept now to let them set level ranges in an attempt to avoid this, we still see things like end-game content constantly being dropped from players "do" lists.

Since itemization is the primary problem with the game leading to content being rendered pointless, I think it would in Blizzards best interest to finalize a level cap and no increase it any further, as the level cap increases are the direct cause of the itemization increases, and vice versa. It's a vicious cycle. If they finalize the level cap, they can revamp all the game content to make it viable, but in a less linear fashion.

They can keep the multiple zones of a requisite level range, but they need to make the gear from these ranges vary, not on stats, but on some other metric such as item style. That way it varies the content from zone to zone but it doesn't require someone to favor one over the other for itemization. Doing this, they could effectively return old content such as Molten Core to circulation. Imagine being able to collect Tier 2 armor with the same stats as Tier 8, or 9, or whatever they're up to now. I think a lot of players would be more than willing to play to do that. Not only would it add more variety to end-game, but it would add more variety to the player base with a huge number of viable styles to pick from.

If they want to keep releasing new content, they need to stop adding levels and increasing itemization requirements, and instead focus on plot, style, and creative boss mechanics to increase difficulty. The short and dirty of it is players need to have a tangible reward they can earn, through hard work.

 

[JSoup]

While I like the idea of less downtime between expansions, I'm not fond of the idea that I'll have to shell out crazy inflated Blizz expansion prices every year.