There are, IMO, far too many "Producers" fucking things up. I have no problem seeing some of them fired, they're glorified middle-managers (which are usually a cancer in any company, I speak from experience) and the game could only improve from having less of them fucking around with the Devs.

We need a couple of sensible and experienced Lead Designers in charge for the next expansion, if that means recruiting from other companies or promoting talent already in the company, whatever, do it. But things, obviously (from their POV aswell as ours) cannot go on as they are.

You guys know that they'll just point to the rising revenue numbers overall, as well as the fact that they haven't dropped below MoP levels. Come on.

We've known for a long time that Blizzard is a fairly toxic good ol' boys club internally, and there are way too many "cook" to produce any decent management or direction. Not unlike most other big companies, I might add.

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El. Psy. Congroo.

True, at least to some extent. It's certainly true that Blizzard have a too-many-cooks situation going on, but "most other big companies"? You're going to have to give me a few examples, though EA certainly springs to mind.

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I fight for the Greater Good.

Bloated management and people keeping their not-so-competent friends in positions they don't belong in (a frequent accusation leveled against Blizzard by former employees) is fairly common in business, heck in the employment market. Blizzard is no different.

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El. Psy. Congroo.

/sigh

Geez, Business is where fairness and ethics go to die. No matter what your potential employer does, it's who you know, by and large. Heck, I've had to fall back on it myself once or twice - no way I would have gotten work experience at a trade union if my uncle didn't happen to work for them.

As a matter of fact, do Blizzard even have a creative vision anymore, apart from dollar signs?

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I fight for the Greater Good.

So basically, WoD is a big new world with a touch of mystery and exploration being a big issue, the Horde and Alliance are fighting a series of imminent threats to their own safety while fighting each other under the table, there's no flight except the use of taxis, there are a couple of dungeons here and there but only two raids (with one in the process of being tested) and the two main points of appeal are the questing/instance gameplay and nostalgia for the RTS days?

Holy crap!

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I fight for the Greater Good.

This drop is arguably worse than MoP's low point. MoP's lowest point was in June 2014 which was after nearly a year of no new content. This is six months after an expansion launch and only two months after a 'patch'. They better hope 6.2 drives their numbers back up. WoW would be seriously hurting after another quarter like this one.

You can't lose nearly 1/3 of your sub base and not be in trouble or worry.

Not debating that. I`m saying that's how they're going to justify it, and you can bet your ass they'll try as hard as they can to keep the same broken structure internally.

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El. Psy. Congroo.

You guys keep talking like Blizzard doesn’t know that WoD is underwhelming.

Yeah yeah, I know, I’m the resident optimist/fanboy/apologist/whatever. But regardless of any shortcomings there’s no denying that Blizzard is staffed by some very passionate people. Getting into the spirit of what they’re working on is a cornerstone of their culture. So I’d wager that the WoW team feels like absolute shit over how WoD turned out and has for some time. It’s obvious from the pained silence from the blues, the lack of fanfare on content patches, the lack of engagement with the playerbase overall (hardly any Q&As for example), the way they’ve circled the wagons and cut off twitter communication as much as possible. They’ll never admit it because it’d be PR suicide, but they’re downright embarrassed by it all. They’ve been in damage control mode since WoD launched, if not sooner.

But I’m hopeful they’ll take this as a hard learned lesson and carry it forward, pointing here to 6.2 as an example. It would’ve been pretty easy to just plop out something weak and quick in the interest of getting WoD over and done with so they can focus on 7.0 instead. But there’s a very real sense of effort that’s going into the patch, as much as you could expect from the final patch in the xpac. I also kind of like how they’re using WoD as a testing ground for new ideas, since it’s pretty “low risk” at this point.

It sucks that the players suffer because of Blizzard’s mistake, but honestly, if you aren’t having fun in WoD then just quit. You aren’t forced to keep your sub going and honestly you probably aren’t going to miss much. One of the big silver linings in all of this is that I feel like the raiding scene is the strongest it’s ever been, and raiding alone is enough to keep me playing, but if WoD is really that unplayable for some of you then just quit and shut the f*ck up about it already.

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Head Canon: The Deathwing Gambit

You know, now that I think of it, that time when they claimed that they were "training" the increased staff to "learn their philosophies in order to be able to create good content" - that sounds almost exactly like WWE taking good new talent and trying to break them down and turn them into 0815 company products.

Undoubtedly there were and are talented, creative and passionate people working at Blizzard. But it's getting to the point where, as a consumer, one must wonder if the machine has started taking over the spirit.

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El. Psy. Congroo.

Shut the f*ck up and quit, you say? Three millions did, Odok. Are we getting something extraordinary and/or pleasantly unusual in exchange? Nope.

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These are my characters. There are many like them, but these ones are mine.

I've been hardcore raiding for 10 years straight, arguably I've been one of the biggest proponents of WoD around here and I'm certainly among the ones that consider raiding their focus and raid the most on this board.

Good raids aren't enough. Not by a long shot. If I hadn't known I'd be able to pay for my subscription with gold, I would have canceled about 3 months ago - and that would have been my first cancellation of my subscription in a long, long time.

It all looked nice and shiny at first, Garrison seemed new and unique, and the raids were good. Then, the searching began. Ok, what do I do now? More importantly, people who don't raid a lot began asking those questions. "What am I supposed to do now"?

We didn't have those issues in MoP, for all its faults. Many people disliked the content itself, Pandas etc. Many disliked the "filler" nature (something I intensely dislike about MoP AND WoD) of the plot and lore. But in terms of things to do, MoP was just fine.

We had less dungeons, but we had scenarios, at least. We actually got new battlegrounds, and gated outdoor content (yes, gated content is a GOOD thing, I've been saying that for 10 years. Sometimes the player needs to be taken by the hand and told to wait). We have none of that in Warlords, and it became apparent quite quickly while playing that this is a barebone construct of an expansion.

I stuck around for a while because I was enjoying the raids, during Foundry I just realized that fuck, I'm sick to death of beating Orcs and spiky Goblins in fiery pits while hoping for more interesting lore or gameplay outside of that raid.

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El. Psy. Congroo.

I agree with you for the most part. I've been disappointed, even bitterly so, about some of the decisions made in WoD. But I don't think the devs only care about money, don't care, want us to suffer, etc. I think they were trying new ideas that they gambled would work and it's fair to say that they didn't work.

I'm sure the team does feel like shit for not living up to our expectations and that morale is probably in the dumpster because of these results. The dev team at WoW, the ones I have spoken to, are passionate about the game. They want it to succeed and they want us to be happy in their game.

WoD had a lot of questionable decisions and disappointment for me. But I don't doubt Blizzard thought it would be the opposite.

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What?

Ok...? I don’t really know what point you’re trying to make. I just said that raiding is enough for me, not for everyone. Playing this game is a personal choice, I don’t understand why some people have this compulsive need to try and drag everyone else out with them or seek constant validation that growing out of a hobby was an ok thing to happen.

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Head Canon: The Deathwing Gambit

#ItWillGetBetterNextExpansion

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Some good suggestions here but mostly I just see people celebrating and pissing in bonfires about how happy they are that Blizzard's gamble with WoD failed, not "This sucks and here are some constructive ways to improve".

If you are really that bitter and hateful towards WoW, move on.

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Because people aren't growing out of it - or we wouldn't be enjoying other games instead. We're dissatisfied with a product that we want to see get better.

I...my god, I feel like Rotal right now.

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El. Psy. Congroo.

Probably because for some people, playing with friends and family is the thing that keeps them subbed. If they get bored and leave, they have less reasons to play.

Why do people keep assuming that people only leave this game due to growing out of it, and not them disagreeing with Blizzard's choices? Especially when Blizzard will go on to say they made choices that made people unhappy.

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Muffins seems cool...Zarhym on the other hand just seems like one of the worst people ever.


Anyways, it just blows me away that they are creating such a small amount of content for a game that's been out for 10 years. Also the idiotic joke of the Ray d. Tear garrison thing really irks me.

Oh haha less playable content and more facebook

AU future fish orcs it is!

If they fuck up Azshara too or cut it completely I might be out for good.

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El. Psy. Congroo.

"Thrall is the key to all this. If we get Thrall working... because he's a more metal character than he's ever been in the expansions before."

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with extra #savage this time

I just want a story that makes sense and for Blizz to stop lying and talking down to the playerbase regarding design and features

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