23 Responses to Blizzard announces new dev team for WoW

1. Dril says:

   November 23, 2011 at 12:49 pm

   Woah, don’t hate.

   WotLK was quite good until ToC.
   • Rammstein says:

     November 23, 2011 at 2:14 pm

     When I level a character, I enjoy 1-68. Then I rush to 80 using whatever tricks I can. Last one went to uldum at 75 and leveled via herb/mining to 80. Wotlk questing = super annoying.

     Naxx= ruined what was an awesome raid at lvl 60. (My guild had done most of naxx at 60….it was incredibly nerfed at 80…so old content, made to be easier, presented as new content, to the high end raiding guilds? What? Worst idea ever. Now if wotlk had launched with naxx and ulduar both, and presented naxx as easy-mode intro raiding, then fine, whatever.)

     EoE/OS–very well done mini-raids, I guess if we put them together that can count as 1 piece of almost major content.

     WG — fundamentally unbalanced, though fun otherwise. Going to have to say overall a failure.

     Ulduar — well done, superseded by TOC kinda quickly though, what was their hurry to replace well done raid with that?

     So, my scorecard reads 2/5 major pieces of content well done, for the period which you call the highlight of wotlk. Looks like we disagree.
     • Telke says:

       November 23, 2011 at 6:18 pm

       RE:Questing: really? Most I’ve talked to hate the cata quests more (heck, I refuse to do vashj’ir past unlocking the portal to it) the handholding is just awful.

       At least in Wrath we could choose our questhubs – excepting Icecrown/parts of storm peaks – and actually access quests there.

       But I agree, parts of wrath’s questing aren’t cool. I just heirloom it up and rush everything.

       EoE/OS take up the gruul/magtheridon legacy – you can’t really say they’re just one piece of raid content. EoE was awful as well, that drake phase was one of the worst ideas i’d ever seen in a raid. Agreed about WG, fun but not balanced.

       I think Naxx would’ve been fine if it was either A:harder than heroic 5-mans or B: your idea, with another tier above it. as it stood though…naxx10 felt like UBRS sometimes.

       I think blizz admitted ToC’s release was too quick, but they wanted that patch out quickly because it released the new daily zone, or something? At any rate, Uld was awesome and wasn’t relevant for long enough.
       • Paul says:

         November 26, 2011 at 2:25 pm

         The reasonng they used at the time was they wanted to get IoC out. I think PvP was not going well in early Wrath, and I imagine they thought a new battleground might save it.
     • Azuriel says:

       November 23, 2011 at 11:16 pm

       I second the “wha…?” regarding Wrath questing. You think TBC did it better? Really? I never got around to seeing the new 1-60 experience, but out of vanilla, TBC, Wrath, and 80+ Cata, Wrath is the clear winner in the questing department.

       The only real failure with Naxx was that it didn’t come with hardmodes.
       • Novead says:

         November 24, 2011 at 2:43 pm

         That’s funny. I found the Cata questing so horrible just because it replaced the old fun quests with the newer WLK-style quests. It was barable when you just had to do them from 70 to 80, but when they suddenly included the entire leveling period, it was just too much.
       • Wingpie says:

         November 24, 2011 at 3:34 pm

         Wrath questing was just more bells and whistles. Sadly in the big wrap of everything Blizzard forgot that they were making a MMORPG and the Wrath quests were extremely linear and encouraged only single players. Vanilla quests can be forgiven for being ‘bland’ because they only reason why they became bland was due to the fact that people got so used to them. You could find quests in the most odd places, and take a wrong turn and find something new. In TBC and esp in Wrath you could never take a wrong turn, yet alone find something new even if a wrong turn did exist.
2. Polynices says:

   November 23, 2011 at 1:12 pm

   He’s actually right. If they’d followed Ulduar with another Ulduar (and waited a few more months for it) we’d all still love Wrath.
3. SynCaine says:

   November 23, 2011 at 1:20 pm

   Ah yes, WotLK, so good it stopped the growth of a landslide MMO.
   • bhagpuss says:

     November 23, 2011 at 1:31 pm

     That was time that did that. Going to do the same to all of us.
     • SynCaine says:

       November 23, 2011 at 1:37 pm

       Time huh?

       Ok so let me make sure I understand this correctly: MMOs only grow for 4 years, then stagnate for 2, and then decline after 6?

       Got it.

       Strange though, only one MMO seems to fit the above formula. By my calculations EVE should have stopped growing 4 years ago, should be shutting down this year (oh wait…), and Darkfall is currently in the prime of it’s growth? And could someone please tell UO it’s been dead for years now?

       So confused…
       • bhagpuss says:

         November 24, 2011 at 5:32 pm

         No, that’s not what I meant at all. I was talking about WoW in particular, not MMOs in general.

         WoW is a “pop culture phenomenon”, not just an MMO. Pop culture phenomena burn very brightly for a relatively short while then go into decline. If there was substance, the decline is prolonged and slow. If not, it’s crash and burn.

         EVE, on the other hand, is pay-your-dues. Start small, keep plugging, build word of mouth. No-one pays attention for ages but after a while comes respect and solidity. As long as integrity is maintained the legend grows.

         In other words, WoW is The Spice Girls and EVE is REM.

         Personally, I never much liked REM and thought the Spice Girls were fun while they lasted but I never bought a record by either of them.
   • Azuriel says:

     November 23, 2011 at 11:27 pm

     Ah yes, WotLK, so good it stopped the growth of a landslide MMO.

     Growth was slowing year over year regardless, as the market reached total saturation. Unless you are one of those guys like Nils and Gevlon who believe believe a MMO can grow by 2 million a year forever and ever, it had to peak sometime. Why not in Wrath?

     If Skyrim hasn’t sold 84 million copies by this time next year (7 million a month), it will clearly be because of Bethesda’s DLC policy, amirite?

     Expansions can be good or bad independent of sub numbers. CCP could turn EVE into WoW in space with Crucible and triple their subs. Best expansion evar.
     • SynCaine says:

       November 24, 2011 at 12:22 am

       Using a single player game as your example of MMO growth, really?

       And now, not only is the MMO growth formula what I wrote above, but we have determined that total market saturation completely caps out at 12 million globally huh? So was that just in 2008, or forever? Like in 2012, is the total market cap still 12, or is it 13 now? Maybe 11? And if the total global market cap is 12, why did a game called Lineage have more than that way before WoW? And how is it that despite being years older than WoW, it’s still has millions of customers?

       But yea, totally nothing to do with those expansions that came out, just good ol’ market saturation (that doesn’t add up).
       • Telke says:

         November 24, 2011 at 12:47 am

         Well here’s the thing: WoW hit 10m subs in Jan’08, shortly after the release of Wrath. Also, 12 million subs hit in October 2010 – mostly bolstered by wrath just releasing in China. Come Nov 2011, WoW has 10.3 million players, Aside from those three numbers, we have no idea what WoW’s subscriber base is like – thus, your claims that Wrath stagnated are equally as likely as my belief that early-expansion we get brief resubs, then the rest of the expansion is basically churn – players out == players joining. You can see some of this in Blizz’s announcement that there’s more people who have previously played wow than the 10 million currently playing.

         I’ll go ahead and point out again that you never actually touched Wrath (or Cata) and thus your opinion on the game isn’t tainted by, y’know, actually having any knowledge of its’ current workings.

         As someone who did play through BC, Wrath and Cata, I’ll say this: Cata has been far more damaging to myself and many guilds’ interest in logging in, than Wrath ever was. I’ve been hardcore, been casual, seen all the raids, on heroic difficulty too. And Cata isn’t ‘fun’. BC and Wrath were. My opinion probably doesn’t matter to you, but just my $0.02.
4. Ahtchu says:

   November 23, 2011 at 5:31 pm

   You know, it’s so crazy.. it just might work. I mean, anyone could provide better direction and insight than those presently at the helm, right? Right? o.0
5. Professer says:

   November 24, 2011 at 10:10 am

   Anyone else imagining the few WoW nerds who might score that internship? They’d be like a giddy, young, school-girl their first day at the office.
6. cirdanx says:

   November 24, 2011 at 10:20 am

   BC was the only good expansion this MMO ever had (still had some failures), Wotlk was allready a big step back and Cata is just plain horrible.

   Looking at their new expansion makes me think that all the talented people they had, really left this company.
7. Hudson says:

   November 24, 2011 at 3:15 pm

   The amount of WoW apologists in these replies is a joke. Idiots will subscribe to anything still I guess… Even sheep following Pokemon loving still in WoW Hardcore Casual readers.
   • Dril says:

     November 26, 2011 at 7:30 pm

     Your post is a joke.

     do i win teh intrntz fur being a pr0 h8er?
8. Sparklight says:

   November 25, 2011 at 12:07 am

   You should apply for the position, you know. Infiltrate the corrupted system, take over and show them how a real MMORPG should be designed.
9. Azuriel says:

   November 25, 2011 at 2:07 am

   Using a single player game as your example of MMO growth, really?

   It’s an example of market saturation. We can probably all agree that Skyrim will not sell 21 million copies by January. If December sales are less than 7 million, will that be because of the quality of the patch coming out tomorrow?

   Expansion quality can be independent of subscription movement, is my point. To argue otherwise is to admit the Dominion and Tyrannis expansions were garbage compared to the brilliance of Incursion, simply because the latter was active during a sub uptick. I dunno, maybe Incursion really was the bee’s knees compared to the other two. You tell me.

   All I know is that those three together “stopped the growth of a landmark MMO,” at least in comparison to the percentage gains in 2009.

   Wrath can be considered a terrible expansion for a number of reasons. It cannot be considered terrible just because of sub growth or decline.
   • Nils says:

     November 26, 2011 at 2:59 pm

     *yawn* :)

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