Bitch Thread for Warlords of Draenor

[Setanta]

I haven't logged in 2 weeks and it's only sheer laziness stopping me from unsubbing - just did the deed.

I get that they see flying as an issue to their game, but at what point did they forget it was their subscribers' game (again)? At this point in the xpac cycle, giving us flying in Draenor would have been smart.

[Paelos]

I don't think they can. I think they designed it in a way where it's not possible to give you flying without exposing the landscape.

I could forgive them if they said, "Guys we just can't put out content if we make it flying due to the clipping issues, so we're committed to a release every quarter instead of long gaps."

But they don't even do that. The only big patch so far was in February, and it was a QOL-Balance patch. WOD came out in November. That's 7 months with no real content updates other than garrisons.

[Draegan]

Like you said, it's probably a lot more expensive to create content that can be flown around than creating content where you are land bound. You're probably able to hide more things. With the age of the game and the losing of subs, they probably want to keep the game as cost effective as possible for the long term.

I really don't care or expect them to spell out the real reasons why they are for this change.

[Paelos]

I really don't care or expect them to spell out the real reasons why they are for this change.

They don't really need to. At this point it's becoming obvious they know the cow has left the barn.

[Malakili]

It's ok, I've been seeing Heroes of the Storm ads lately.  They are moving their eggs to a different basket.   

[dalien]

I don't think they can. I think they designed it in a way where it's not possible to give you flying without exposing the landscape.

I could forgive them if they said, "Guys we just can't put out content if we make it flying due to the clipping issues, so we're committed to a release every quarter instead of long gaps."

Naw, the Draenor zones are fully modeled in 3d (at least the existing zones).  There's a few ways to fly temporarily (such as Aviana's Feather and a couple engineering gadgets) and there's no glaring holes or 2d sprites covering things up.

It's a 100% design decision on their part and not a smart one imo.  A big part of the max level carrot has always been the ability to fly over all the ground stuff you had to slog through before.  Perhaps it will save them money on creating future content but that has to be balanced against how much they lost in sub revenue due to this change.

[Merusk]

Not lost, continue to lose.  7Mil subs was a point low enough they hit Marketplace on NPR a week and a half ago. (old media: so behind the times on the e-front.)

After this decision I suspect we'll have another story because there will be an even more significant dip when the reports come in at Q2 end.

It's ok, I've been seeing Heroes of the Storm ads lately.  They are moving their eggs to a different basket.   

Yep, though it's risky to make that call now, when Overwatch is delayed indefinitely due to the lawsuit and we're not sure how much revenue HOTS will actually bring in on top of Hearthstone. Will it make-up for the sub loss? Paelos can probably give us a breakdown.

[Paelos]

The stock is so overvalued right now. If I could short it, I would, but I don't want to set up a margin account just for that. It would be dickish.

[Merusk]

Oh, looks like he did during my edit.

[Paelos]

LOL just snuck in there.

The stock's at a 52 week high basically, right after they posted sub losses. And that WoW revenue is about $45M per quarter every time it drops 1M subs. It's one of the few stocks I can think of where revenue has dropped for the last 2 years and everyone is just like NAAAAAAAAAAAH IT'S FINE.

Meanwhile the stock went nowhere for years when everything was great. It's really odd how the market values it.

[Merusk]

It's almost as if people who invest know nothing about games but marketing buzz. But that would be crazy talk because people research what they invest in, they don't just go for the big name.

/s

[Ironwood]

Overwatch lawsuit ?  What's happening there ?

[apocrypha]

Blizzard's trademark was suspended because there was a mobile shooter with the same name. Link.

[angry.bob]

At this point in the game they should just rename it and move forward. It's not like it was integral to the game or anything. From everything I've seen of it so far they would do okay with the name Generic but Extremely Pretty FPS, or GEPFPS for short. Add a few words to make the acronym spell something and they're golden.

[Paelos]

Why they haven't renamed it is beyond me. I can only assume it's because Kotick refuses to yield and is going all Emperor Palpatine on the situation.

[Ironwood]

All of that is really silly.  Sounds like a Belson situation.

[Draegan]

I'm biased because I'm not an FPS person at all, but the game looks really neet but boring. Kind of like how HOTS looks pretty but it's incredibly boring to play.

[Malakili]

I'm willing to give it a shot if they don't totally botch the free to play model. I'm of the opinion that a FPS really can't lock people out of the classes and be a legitimate game, but I worry some of them will require unlocking. 

The other big question is whether or not its going to be as good as TF2.  Team Fortress 2, despite the fact that I burnt out on it a bit, just nailed that formula and is still one of the best class based shooters ever. Overwatch (or whatever they will call it) has to at least be in the ball park or all it is going to do is make me reinstall TF 2 again.

[Paelos]

I'm biased because I'm not an FPS person at all, but the game looks really neet but boring. Kind of like how HOTS looks pretty but it's incredibly boring to play.

The reviews I'm getting out of HOTS from people who I consider to be "Gaming Plebians" aka they are good mass-appeal tests, really like HOTS. I think that one's going to do very well, better than DOTA. These were the same people who liked Hearthstone a ton.

This? I'm less sure on. This is the kind of thing Blizzard usually would have completely scrapped by now. For some reason they are retooling it.

[Malakili]

I think that one's going to do very well, better than DOTA.

DOTA 2 has the advantage of 1) Being on Steam 2) Being completely and totally free to play every hero and 3) Having an insanely huge international player base.  I would be honestly pretty surprised if this thing got more popular than DOTA. It will do well, but it's not going to become "the" MOBA.

[Paelos]

We'll see. The undertone of the group I'm talking to has been very positive. HOTS and Hearthstone are the two things keeping the stock analysts afloat. If HOTS does really well, the money flowing in between those two will more than offset the WoW losses, which is what they are banking on.

[Malakili]

I'm not saying that's wrong, I'm just saying I would be very surprised if it actually became more popular that DOTA 2.

[Typhon]

Does DOTA 2 still have just the one map?  How long do games take? (still like an hour?)

[Malakili]

Does DOTA 2 still have just the one map?  How long do games take? (still like an hour?)

Yes to the first question, more or less to the second question.

[Typhon]

Thanks, it's been a looong while since I looked at DOTA 2.  I think HOTS may be in the ballpark of DOTA 2 size, but without cannibalizing the DOTA 2 audience to any great extent (my guess is LoL probably has more to worry about).

[Merusk]

Does DOTA 2 still have just the one map?  How long do games take? (still like an hour?)

Yes to the first question, more or less to the second question.

You now have two reasons HOTS could do better than DOTA2. The third is the PVE mode in HOTS.

I despise team vs. games with random teams. I enjoy HOTS because of its PVE mode where stupid decisions by my teammates don't equal instant-death for me.  There were (last I played) 5 maps and the games took 30-45 minutes, tops.

Also, every character IS "free to play" if you grind for them, just like in Marvel Heroes. Costume changes, mounts and consumables for extra XP cost money.  Seems to be a fairly successful model and players love grinds (to a point).

[Malakili]

Well, for starters I know it was a huge turn off for me to go from DOTA 2, where I had access to whatever character I wanted to play, to HOTS, where I had to unlock characters.  Maybe there are a lot of people who are happy to grind away for gold to buy characters and I am just missing the boat.  I feel more compelled to spend some cash on DOTA 2, where I can buy something like an announcer pack I like to support a game that is good by default, than to spend money to avoid a grind in HOTS.

But my point has never really been that HOTS has nothing going for it.  It's a fun enough little game.  I have played it a fair amount despite my problems with it.  On the other hand DOTA 2 has a decade of intertia, there are hundreds of thousands of concurrent players at all times of day.  The peak today was over 800k.

HOTS will do fine, but it is going to take a LOT for it to be more popular than DOTA.

[Trippy]

But my point has never really been that HOTS has nothing going for it.  It's a fun enough little game.  I have played it a fair amount despite my problems with it.  On the other hand DOTA 2 has a decade of intertia, there are hundreds of thousands of concurrent players at all times of day.  The peak today was over 800k.

Which is still almost an order of magnitude less people playing simultaneously than League of Legends (peak for DOTA 2 was ~1 million, peak for LoL was ~7.5 million).

[Draegan]

HOTS has the lowest skill floor of both LOL and DOTA2 (I'm ignoring all the other random MOBAs out there). It can only help increase LOL and DOTA2 number over the long term. Most people who like HOTS are either people who tried LOL/DOTA2 and hated the mechanics (complex item builds, runes, masteries, last hitting etc.) or couldn't get in to it for whatever reason and they find that HOTS is a fun game. As they get better at HOTS and more comfortable, there is a chance they migrate over to LOL. It's hard to ignore their international numbers and presence on the internet.

[Kail]

HOTS has the lowest skill floor of both LOL and DOTA2 (I'm ignoring all the other random MOBAs out there). It can only help increase LOL and DOTA2 number over the long term. Most people who like HOTS are either people who tried LOL/DOTA2 and hated the mechanics (complex item builds, runes, masteries, last hitting etc.) or couldn't get in to it for whatever reason and they find that HOTS is a fun game. As they get better at HOTS and more comfortable, there is a chance they migrate over to LOL. It's hard to ignore their international numbers and presence on the internet.

I dunno, I feel like most of the HotS audience has already played Dota and/or LoL, I don't think Blizzard has the same unique reach here they had in previous games.

Which is kind of a new position for Blizzard.  Most of their previous successes (MMO, RTS, Action RPG, CCG) were a result of Blizzard jumping in to a genre that was mostly reserved for neckbeardy grognards and turning it in to a streamlined, intuitive, pretty looking game.  But HotS and Overwatch are diving in to markets that are already very competitive and arguably already leaning towards oversaturated.  We get to watch Blizzard try to play catch-up for once.

[Draegan]

I agree for the most part, but I still hear a lot of people trying it out and mechanics are a big selling point.

[Malakili]

HOTS has the same issues as other MOBAs though.  While some of the reduced complexity makes it more approachable, in the end you're still dealing with a 5v5 PvP game that puts you almost entirely at the mercy of the lowest common denominator on your team.  Some guy just wanders to the top lane instead of going to an objective at the right moment, you can just lose the game.  That's where HOTS really fails to me. 

If they made a casual friendly 20-30 minute MOBA that transcended THAT particular problem, then I would be all in.  But they have actually made it, in a sense, worse, because the only progression mechanic you have in the game is tied to your entire team (leveling up).  That means you can't really "carry" the way you can in a more traditional MOBA if you are good.

So sure, that's probably appealing to new players.  But there gets to be a point where you aren't the new player anymore, and then HOTS gets just as frustrating as the others.

[angry.bob]

I really loathed both LoL and DOTA2 for a variety of reasons, but I'm really enjoying HoTS. Like the build streamlining and that there are similar but different themes to the different maps. Plus Novabutt.

[Mithas]

They changed their decision on flying. Kind of.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/19800551/dev-watercooler-flying-in-draenor-6-10-2015

Basically have to do a bunch of things to unlock flying, but once you do you have it available on all 90+ characters.

[Paelos]

I would love to see how many subs they hemorrhaged before doing this about face.