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[glaurung]

I quit a few weeks after 6.1. What happened in 6.2 that it felt rushed?

6.2 had that shipyard stuff. People did not like it because unlike the regular garrison missions, the shipyard missions would take entire days and longer to complete. The way I heard most people react to it made it sound like a definite downgrade for them.

I never got around to trying out any new raid content with 6.2.

 

[Meia]

I quit a few weeks after 6.1. What happened in 6.2 that it felt rushed?

Also, WoD just came out. I highly doubt we see any new WoW expansion is less then a year. Reaper of Souls came out almost 2 years ago.

They officially said that 6.2 was the last content patch of Warlords of Draenor. That means that they only added one new tier of content, no new 5 mans, no new reps, nada. This is the most content-lacking expansion they've ever done. I'd almost say they'd better announce not only an expansion but a heavily discounted price for it too at this point, they've kind of royally fucked up.

 

[Anoregon]

I recall reading somewhere that alongside WoD they stepped up the WoW release speed. Something about a new expansion at set intervals, more content at more regular intervals etc. Could have dreamed it too.

That was definitely their stated intent, yeah. There's been no reason to believe them, though. So far we are seeing only the downsides of such a plan, (with WoD being a content-light, unsatisfying expansion), without the benefit of faster content releases.

 

[Samurai G0SU]

i dont see hots moving to consoles due to battle.net, but with cross-play moving forward with these consoles, it may be an option in a couple of years.. i could see overwatch sooner than later though.

 

[Silvawuff]

WoW is essentially F2P now with the token system. They really need to step it up after WoD -- the leveling experience was fun, then it craps out and turns into a "push buttons, get loot" sort of game; not fun at all.

What I would really like to see is something to bring the community aspect back and reward positive interactions/play with other players. WoW really is the most fun when you're playing with other people, and it doesn't have to just be grinding raids, pvp, or dailies.

 

[Interfectum]

i dont see hots moving to consoles due to battle.net, but with cross-play moving forward with these consoles, it may be an option in a couple of years.. i could see overwatch sooner than later though.

Battle.net connectivity, HOTS controls, SC2 engine, lack of MOBA players on consoles... I'd say they have much more incentive to port Overwatch than HOTS, tbh.

 

[Tenebrous]

Still a really low chance. They have Blizzcon this year. I doubt they will be doing the big ones there (if there are announcements). Has WoW ever been announced outside of a Blizzard event? Better chance for a Diablo expansion.

As others have said, they cannot afford to wait until Blizzcon. They have to act soon, and they have to act generously. Get on their knees and beg, basically.

What I would really like to see is something to bring the community aspect back and reward positive interactions/play with other players. WoW really is the most fun when you're playing with other people, and it doesn't have to just be grinding raids, pvp, or dailies.

Yep, this is definitely needed.

 

[ChaosZeroX]

They officially said that 6.2 was the last content patch of Warlords of Draenor. That means that they only added one new tier of content, no new 5 mans, no new reps, nada. This is the most content-lacking expansion they've ever done. I'd almost say they'd better announce not only an expansion but a heavily discounted price for it too at this point, they've kind of royally fucked up.

Wtf? Thats fucked up. Especially after how awesome BRF was.

 

[Samurai G0SU]

Battle.net connectivity, HOTS controls, SC2 engine, lack of MOBA players on consoles... I'd say they have much more incentive to port Overwatch than HOTS, tbh.

Yea all of that included sounds right.

 

[Finaj]

http://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/blizzplanet-heading-to-gamescom-2015-press-event

-Considering past GameCom events, Blizzard Entertainment prepares to make massive announcements next week.
-In our private staff channel, we internally have various speculations, and not concrete facts. Only one thing that we can share with you to get the hype-train going: We are interviewing a World of Warcraft developer on Friday.
-We plan to take video of the Media Briefing announcement, and developer interviews.

 

[XenodudeX]

http://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/blizzplanet-heading-to-gamescom-2015-press-event

-Considering past GameCom events, Blizzard Entertainment prepares to make massive announcements next week.
-In our private staff channel, we internally have various speculations, and not concrete facts. Only one thing that we can share with you to get the hype-train going: We are interviewing a World of Warcraft developer on Friday.
-We plan to take video of the Media Briefing announcement, and developer interviews.

So it's either a new expansion or a new content patch

 

[Daante]

http://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/blizzplanet-heading-to-gamescom-2015-press-event

-Considering past GameCom events, Blizzard Entertainment prepares to make massive announcements next week.
-In our private staff channel, we internally have various speculations, and not concrete facts. Only one thing that we can share with you to get the hype-train going: We are interviewing a World of Warcraft developer on Friday.
-We plan to take video of the Media Briefing announcement, and developer interviews.

Hmm..

"massive announcements" is NOT a new content patch in my book.

 

[Anoregon]

A big press conference at a major international event to announce a patch would be pretty anticlimactic.

"HEY EVERYONE! REMEMBER WHEN WE SAID 6.2 WAS THE END? LOL WE WERE KIDDING HERE'S 6.3 PLEASE DON'T HATE US"

 

[Finaj]

Usually they announce patches on fansites during some random weekday. They pretty much never get coverage at conventions/Blizzcon.

 

[AppleMIX]

Diablo 3 expansion for sure.

Reaper of Souls has been our for more than a year.

 

[Finaj]

Blizzplanet facebook page:

"Blizzplanet reporter Handclaw will be present at Gamescom 2015 where Blizzard will have a World of Warcraft and Overwatch announcement. "

 

[GasProblem]

Maybe an Overwatch release date/beta announcement. And hopefully coming to consoles as well.

 

[Tenebrous]

Diablo 3 expansion for sure.

Reaper of Souls has been our for more than a year.

Diablo 3 doesn't need a saving throw right now, especially with 2.3 on the way. WoW does.

WoW expansion at GC. D3 expansion at Blizzcon.

 

[BreezyLimbo]

Maybe an Overwatch release date/beta announcement. And hopefully coming to consoles as well.

I think the technical alpha/beta is supposed to hit fall of this year. Or we were going to hear more info at Fall.

 

[Entropia]

http://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/blizzplanet-heading-to-gamescom-2015-press-event

-Considering past GameCom events, Blizzard Entertainment prepares to make massive announcements next week.
-In our private staff channel, we internally have various speculations, and not concrete facts. Only one thing that we can share with you to get the hype-train going: We are interviewing a World of Warcraft developer on Friday.
-We plan to take video of the Media Briefing announcement, and developer interviews.

So it's either a new expansion or a new content patch

Hmm..

"massive announcements" is NOT a new content patch in my book.

Interviewing a WoW Developer seems pretty commonplace at Gamescom, so that doesn't get me anymore hyped that it's expansion announcement. It's usually just a re-tread of previous Q&A "blah blah blah player feedback and flying blah blah blah"

 

[helloresolven]

Diablo 3 expansion for sure.

Reaper of Souls has been our for more than a year.

Have you seen the upcoming patch? Diablo 3 doesn't need an expansion announcement to get people hyped.

WoW needs good news fast.

 

[XenodudeX]

Interviewing a WoW Developer seems pretty commonplace at Gamescom, so that doesn't get me anymore hyped that it's expansion announcement. It's usually just a re-tread of previous Q&A "blah blah blah player feedback and flying blah blah blah"

But :

Blizzplanet facebook page:

"Blizzplanet reporter Handclaw will be present at Gamescom 2015 where Blizzard will have a World of Warcraft and Overwatch announcement. "

 

[Anoregon]

Man Blizzplanet is really throwing some fuel on the hypefire, which is funny since like every mod on mmochamp seems very skeptical about any major WoW news coming out of gamescom.

 

[Nirolak]

Let's recap for a moment here.

They have 500 demo stations (which is comically astronomical), announced their huge presence back in April in which they stated they have new content showing for five different games, have had six week-long contests fan contest to hype their Gamescom event, have a dedicated webpage for their Gamescom presence, and seem to have a hour long livestreamed press conference where they've invited everyone from major websites to small fansites.

Despite this, there seem to be people who aren't expecting a major announcement.

 

[ViciousDS]

so is blizzard now trying to release expansions yearly? I remember pandaria taking two years to launch. I wonder if yearly updates at $40-$50 if lacking just as much content as WoD did will really push people away. I really could see FFXIV eventually taking the lead with how well the support and community has been behind that game. WoD was just......weird when I played it.

 

[Tenebrous]

so is blizzard now trying to release expansions yearly? I remember pandaria taking two years to launch. I wonder if yearly updates at $40-$50 if lacking just as much content as WoD did will really push people away. I really could see FFXIV eventually taking the lead with how well the support and community has been behind that game. WoD was just......weird when I played it.

Come on now. WoW isn't doing great, and WoD is terrible compared to earlier expansions, but FF14 will never "take the lead." Doesn't it have like 10% the subs that WoW has, and less than 5% the total sales of the base game? WoW will probably end up with more people playing through the token system than FF14 has total.

If FF14 takes the lead, I'll give up on MMOs. I really, really hated my time with 14, but even without playing Heavensward, I can probably still get away with saying it's better than WoD, haha.

 

[Anoregon]

Let's recap for a moment here.

They have 500 demo stations (which is comically astronomical), announced their huge presence back in April in which they stated they have new content showing for five different games, have had six week-long contests fan contest to hype their Gamescom event, have a dedicated webpage for their Gamescom presence, and seem to have a hour long livestreamed press conference where they've invited everyone from major websites to small fansites.

Despite this, there seem to be people who aren't expecting a major announcement.

Well, it's not necessarily a WoW announcement.

 

[dave is ok]

Prediction: Pre-order the new WoW expac for Overwatch beta access.

 

[BreezyLimbo]

Let's recap for a moment here.

They have 500 demo stations (which is comically astronomical), announced their huge presence back in April in which they stated they have new content showing for five different games, have had six week-long contests fan contest to hype their Gamescom event, have a dedicated webpage for their Gamescom presence, and seem to have a hour long livestreamed press conference where they've invited everyone from major websites to small fansites.

Despite this, there seem to be people who aren't expecting a major announcement.

Yeah...they're planning something big.

An Overwatch Beta announcement would be big, but not that big. They ALREADY announced their next Hearthstone expansion, which one would think would be better suited for Gamescom. As for Starcraft 2, they've also detailed the preorder bonuses which again, they could've done at Gamescom.

That leaves WoW, HotS, Diablo 3, and Overwatch. Overwatch having a presense is extremely likely. Another Diablo 3 expansion....is as likely as the next WoW expansion. So it's possible.(Yeah they're working on 2.3 right now, but that wouldn't and shouldnt' stop them from working on the next expansion).

For Heroes of the Storm, I can see them announcing the next event and next set of characters, but that's extremely unlikely. WoW is kinda a wild card, they did just recently have their last update. They might announce another Raid, but that's as likely as an expansion.

And on the very low totem poll is Warcraft 4 and/or a completely new game. It'll be interesting to see what they got planned...

 

[Interfectum]

Let's recap for a moment here.

They have 500 demo stations (which is comically astronomical), announced their huge presence back in April in which they stated they have new content showing for five different games, have had six week-long contests fan contest to hype their Gamescom event, have a dedicated webpage for their Gamescom presence, and seem to have a hour long livestreamed press conference where they've invited everyone from major websites to small fansites.

Despite this, there seem to be people who aren't expecting a major announcement.

I'm expecting new portraits for your SC2 profile. That's about it.

 

[Tenebrous]

Prediction: Pre-order the new WoW expac for Overwatch beta access.

Annual pass V2.0. Subscribe to WoW for a year and get the new Diablo & WoW expansions free!

 

[ViciousDS]

Come on now. WoW isn't doing great, and WoD is terrible compared to earlier expansions, but FF14 will never "take the lead." Doesn't it have like 10% the subs that WoW has, and less than 5% the total sales of the base game? WoW will probably end up with more people playing through the token system than FF14 has total.

If FF14 takes the lead, I'll give up on MMOs. I really, really hated my time with 14, but even without playing Heavensward, I can probably still get away with saying it's better than WoD, haha.

It had 4 million active accounts as of June(which is 4 million that have subscribed at least once, not box account), of which lets say around half are active subs due to the xpac. I would say roughly 1-2 mil subs and about 15-20% of wow's base. WoW sub dropped to roughly 7 million(that was 2-3 months ago....its probably a little more down) I think was the last figure we got.

 

[Tenebrous]

It had 4 million active accounts as of June(which is 4 million that have subscribed at least once, not box account), of which lets say around half are active subs due to the xpac. I would say roughly 1-2 mil subs and about 15-20% of wow's base. WoW sub dropped to roughly 7 million(that was 2-3 months ago....its probably a little more down) I think was the last figure we got.

4 million active accounts means little. Blizzard have over 100 million active WoW accounts going by that metric.

The subs have never been announced to be over 600k. A bit of a leap to go to 2mil - They'd be shouting from the rooftops if they had anything near that.

FF14, FF11, and DQ10 don't even have one million combined. There's no chance of it taking the lead.

 

[Abounder]

The Warcraft movie needs its own game, but given all the playable kiosks it's probably a console port/demo

 

[Skab]

The Warcraft movie needs its own game, but given all the playable kiosks it's probably a console port/demo

Wut. Why does it need a game? It already has one.

 

[Abounder]

Wut. Why does it need a game? It already has one.

Easy money and helps promote the movie

 

[traveler]

The Warcraft movie needs its own game, but given all the playable kiosks it's probably a console port/demo

Warlords of Draenor is it. At least, that's about the only decent justification for WoD's premise narratively.

 

[Daante]

Let's recap for a moment here.

They have 500 demo stations (which is comically astronomical), announced their huge presence back in April in which they stated they have new content showing for five different games, have had six week-long contests fan contest to hype their Gamescom event, have a dedicated webpage for their Gamescom presence, and seem to have a hour long livestreamed press conference where they've invited everyone from major websites to small fansites.

Despite this, there seem to be people who aren't expecting a major announcement.

I did not know all of this, thanks for sharing.

 

[dave is ok]

I hope they have some news about the rumored WC3 remake or at least about it being brought over to the Battle.net launcher

 

[Tenebrous]

I hope they have some news about the rumored WC3 remake or at least about it being brought over to the Battle.net launcher

Would be nice. At the very least they should make WC1&2 available digitally.

 

[Anoregon]

Blizzard should announce the next expansion and have it literally just be the combination of everything people have been wanting for years. South Seas and the Emerald Dream and Illidan's return (with playable Demon Hunter class, of course). Azshara, Old Gods, and Sargeras are all raid bosses. High elves on the alliance and Ogres for the Horde.

World of Warcraft: Amalgamation of Hype.

 

[Napalm_Frank]

Man, what happened with WoD? I quit WoW back in Cata but was about to come back when WoD released cause apparently it was supposed to be awesome. Few months later the negativity in the community seems to be ridicilous. Then again I thought Cata was ok and that had a backlash of sorts too.

The lack of content can't be THAT bad.

Illidan's return

Illidan isn't dead?

I just wish they would do a new Outland exp with Sargeras as the big bad since I missed TBC.

 

[idlewild_]

Illidan isn't dead?

Merely a setback

 

[Anoregon]

Man, what happened with WoD?

It's kind of hard to nail it down to a single thing. It was just a sort of perfect storm of a whole lot of things going wrong together. Being overpriced, not living up to the hype in general, having many features that ended up being mediocre or legitimately detrimental to the game (ashran, garrisons, apexis being largely useless and contributing to 5-mans being defunct faster than any xpac previously), people reacting poorly to developer (lack of) communication, PvP being in by far the worst state it has ever been in when it comes to population balance and player engagement...

Basically, the raids are fine, but virtually every other aspect of WoD has something that didn't work out the way it was supposed to.

edit: I never particularly cared about the flying issue, but it definitely exacerbated the "everyone sits in their garrisons and does nothing" problem, because it was less convenient to just mount up and go somewhere else. I was also a bit peeved by how they basically saved what clearly should have been reputation/achievement mounts for the blizzard store (skyterror and grinning ravager.)

 

[Tenebrous]

It's kind of hard to nail it down to a single thing. It was just a sort of perfect storm of a whole lot of things going wrong together. Being overpriced, not living up to the hype in general, having many features that ended up being mediocre or legitimately detrimental to the game (ashran, garrisons, apexis being largely useless and contributing to 5-mans being defunct faster than any xpac previously), people reacting poorly to developer (lack of) communication, PvP being in by far the worst state it has ever been in when it comes to population balance and player engagement...

Basically, the raids are fine, but virtually every other aspect of WoD has something that didn't work out the way it was supposed to.

I wouldn't even say the raids are fine. Well, they are fine in isolation (except Highmaul which is pretty boring), but I just can't accept that there's only three raids and two tiers... I know I keep using TBC as the comparison, but WoD doesn't come close in overall quantity, and the quality is no better in 2015 than TBC raids in 2007/08.

 

[JORMBO]

I think it will be the WoW expansion. I like 6.2, but there is no way we can play this patch for a super long time. I think the next expansion has to come out early next year at the latest, and waiting to Blizzcon would be too late to announce it.

 

[Felspawn]

I'm betting it is announced here then playable at Blizzcon for release right afterwards.

yep, if 6.2 it truely the last big patch of the expansion then they need to be way further along with releasing the next expansion then just announcing it at blizcon considering thats in Nov.

 

[Anoregon]

I wouldn't even say the raids are fine. Well, they are fine in isolation (except Highmaul which is pretty boring), but I just can't accept that there's only three raids and two tiers... I know I keep using TBC as the comparison, but WoD doesn't come close in overall quantity, and the quality is no better in 2015 than TBC raids in 2007/08.

I certainly won't disagree with that, but the raids that exist at least succeed in being what they are supposed to be. There's also the (not really Blizzard's fault) issue of the premade group finder being at the mercy of the toxic, shitty community. The implied "have better loot than drops from this raid" requirement for many pugs is still prevalent and still entirely shitty. If finding a normal Hellfire pug was as relatively easy as finding a flex Siege of Org pug was a year ago, I'd probably have bought another token when my account expired two days ago.

 

[Muscle Wizard]

Some people say that Blizz will only announce expansions at Blizzcon, but if Blizz is serious about faster expansion releases and not having another 14 month lull between expansions, they realistically would have to announce it at Gamescom and have the beta around Blizzcon.

 

[Tenebrous]

I certainly won't disagree with that, but the raids that exist at least succeed in being what they are supposed to be. There's also the (not really Blizzard's fault) issue of the premade group finder being at the mercy of the toxic, shitty community. The implied "have better loot than drops from this raid" requirement for many pugs is still prevalent and still entirely shitty. If finding a normal Hellfire pug was as relatively easy as finding a flex Siege of Org pug was a year ago, I'd probably have bought another token when my account expired two days ago.

It's been like that since TBC. LFM Kara, link some Tier4/5 stuff. LFM for VOA25, 5200GS req. Etc.

Very shitty indeed. It's pretty amazing when you go on an alt after proving your main has the gear/cleared the content, and then having people complain about your alt being undergeared... And still coming top at DPS. Always loved that in ICC, haha.