Blizzard release schedule up to 2015

[Azazel]

WoW could continue to cater to the hardcore contingent, while Titan goes after the low-hanging LCD fruit.

The issue I have with this is that I'm not sure it's possible for WoW to rebrand itself this radically at this point.  Boot up any other MMO, and when people talk about WoW, they talk about how casual it is.  That's how it's seen.  Nobody cares that the Cataclysm raid bosses were slightly overtuned or that only 5% (or whatever) of the top end guilds have beaten Cho'Gall.  It just doesn't factor for them.  Even for people who are playing WoW already, it's generally less "yay, more hardcore content" and more "boo, this is a pain, my friends are leaving because the content is too hard etc. etc.".

To be honest, I'm kind of curious just how Blizzard intends to make Titan more casual friendly than WoW.  A lot of the stickiness of MMOs depends on character advancement, while a lot of the appeal of "casual" games works against that, in that you don't need to devote X hours to do Y.  And at this point, it's not like WoW has a lot of arbitrary gating mechanisms to frustrate casuals.  How are they going to change it, I wonder?  Remove levelling?  Remove rep grinding?  Remove gear progression?  Make raids/dungeons super short and easy?  I'm not sure how you'd remove a lot of that without hurting your stickiness.  I kind of suspect it'll be an F2P cash shop game, but beyond that, I really don't know where they plan to take this.

Valve has shown them the way.  Sell hats and they will come.

Appearance Tab, several cosmetic outfit slots, sell cosmetic gear. Seems to be doing ok for Turbine...

[Speedy Cerviche]

casual = shooter?

login and pew pew competitively without having to catass

Well, CoD does make about a billion dollars a year.

Exactly

Blizzard does CoD with Planetside style persistance to justify the recurring subscription = $$$$$

[Malakili]

casual = shooter?

login and pew pew competitively without having to catass

Well, CoD does make about a billion dollars a year.

Exactly

Blizzard does CoD with Planetside style persistance to justify the recurring subscription = $$$$$

I'd play it.  Hell, doing away with leveling/progression and still having world persistence is practically my biggest hope for the genre.

[WindupAtheist]

One way or another, there's really no excuse for WoW to be as content-starved as it seems to be anymore. Even if we're talking about shitty c-team content, there's no reason for there to be so little of it. It's not like WoW doesn't make the money, aging game or not.

[Tannhauser]

WoW's barely above maintenance mode.  Do you really want your c-team to add content to your cash cow?

[Paelos]

At this point, I fully expect them to rehash AQ raids since the expansion seems to only be about reskinning old content.

[Fabricated]

At this point, I fully expect them to rehash AQ raids since the expansion seems to only be about reskinning old content.

Considering that there are strong indications that the next big raid will be the original battle with C'thulu in the Caverns of Time, yeah, AQ20/40 being the new 5-mans wouldn't stun me.

[Rokal]

At this point, I fully expect them to rehash AQ raids since the expansion seems to only be about reskinning old content.

If you don't say it, maybe it won't happen   

[Amaron]

If you don't say it, maybe it won't happen   

Some of us want it to happen though.   WoW sucking and everyone fleeing it is about the best possible thing that could happen.

[Sheepherder]

Every other game isn't going to magically get better just because Blizzard are being goddamn stupid.

[luckton]

I came in here looking for a Release date, found the same conversation thats going on in 5 other threads!

 

Is that seat next to yours taken?  I offer  in exchange for it if it not.   

[Amaron]

Every other game isn't going to magically get better just because Blizzard are being goddamn stupid.

The tears are so delicious though.

[Sheepherder]

Schadenfreude is a comfortable feeling for people following MMO development.

[Nija]

Isn't that TOR in a nutshell?

Maybe, TOR is going to be carrying around the huge shoulder growth that is the Starwars license in a massive multiplayer setting.

[Ingmar]

Frankly turning the AQs into 5 mans wouldn't really be a terrible choice, there's a lot of content there that wasn't seen by a huge number of people. Even lots of people who have been playing since release never saw that stuff when it was relevant.

[pxib]

2015: StarCraftVille, Mafia Warscraft, and Diablejeweled Blitz

Rachel's new StarCraftVille zergling is hungry.
Rachel just adopted a scaly friend to help around the hive.
Bonnie is hungry and Rachel wants their friends to send their zergling some minerals!

[Paelos]

Every other game isn't going to magically get better just because Blizzard are being goddamn stupid.

People fleeing the game will cause Blizzard to react in a better manner than they have been, though. If they lose 20% of their base over a year due to choices made in an expansion, that's a true "Cataclysm" that will cause heads to roll.

I'll say it again. I want a formal apology. I want them to publically admit that this was a horrible decision and reverse their course. The day they publically and directly do that, I will sign up for a full 6 months of sub. I don't even care if I play much anymore, I just want to support that decision with my money.

[Ingmar]

I want a formal apology.

You realize just how far down the road this is into 'get over yourself' territory, right?

[WindupAtheist]

I want to see Ghostcrawler eat a plate of shit on national television.

[Paelos]

I want a formal apology.

You realize just how far down the road this is into 'get over yourself' territory, right?

I'm well aware how crazy it is. Still, I've gotten to a point now where I want what I want, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

[UnSub]

I want a formal apology.

Can they do it through a press release, or does it need to be nationally televised?

[Lantyssa]

I like WUA's answer to that question.  Mainly because it'd be funny.  I don't actually care.

[Paelos]

I want a formal apology.

Can they do it through a press release, or does it need to be nationally televised?

A press release followed by a development schedule on how they plan to fix things would be fine by me. I'm not picky.

[Amaron]

A press release followed by a development schedule on how they plan to fix things would be fine by me. I'm not picky.

Whoa hold up.  They need to fuck up the game more so everyone quits.   Ghostcrawler eating a plate of shit sounds good though.

[Hawkbit]

Only if Tseric can sit in the background looking all smug.

[WindupAtheist]

I want him eating a heaping plate of shit halftime at the Superbowl while Paelos whips and curses him. Then I want him to bring back WOTLK ret pallies before comitting seppuku.

[Fordel]

I just want no cooldown WoG and HP on misses strikes back :(

[Paelos]

A press release followed by a development schedule on how they plan to fix things would be fine by me. I'm not picky.

Whoa hold up.  They need to fuck up the game more so everyone quits.   Ghostcrawler eating a plate of shit sounds good though.

I don't want everyone to quit. I want them to unfuck the game, publicly admit their complete and utter ignorance of their playerbase, and do the biggest 180 on their design in 4.3 they have ever done.

That being said I think 4.2 was their chance, and they blew it. They are locked in for the rest of this horrible expansion. By the time they pull their heads out of their asses, it'll be November, the Q3 numbers will be a complete mess, and they will be faced with the fact that for the first year ever the game was worse off because they released an expansion.

[Hawkbit]

...bring back WOTLK ret pallies...

I'd come back for a bit only for this.

[WindupAtheist]

BTW, I can't imagine anything worse than them making AQ20/40 the new heroics. I mean how much more blatantly can one scream "Yeah this game ended when the Lich King died, we're just fucking around and milking it now."

[Paelos]

BTW, I can't imagine anything worse than them making AQ20/40 the new heroics. I mean how much more blatantly can one scream "Yeah this game ended when the Lich King died, we're just fucking around and milking it now."

4.3 - RISE OF THE SWARM! - Journey to An'Quiraj to take part in an epic outdoor raid against the Old God Bigba'Daz
4.4 - UNCLOG THE SUNWELL - Journey to the Sunwell where you'll find a NEWER daily quest hub without the random gating! Battle Blizblaz, Corruptor of Doom!
4.5 - OUTLANDS GONE WILD! - Journey back in time a little further before a blind elf took over a temple!

[Merusk]

5.0 - It Burns When I Pee - Bolvar's had enough of the lot of you.

[Tarami]

Besides, Ahn'Qiraj were fucking terrible instances even by that day's standards. Ugly (brown, purple-brown and green-brown manga porn,) empty and with cheap, annoying bosses. Updating Zul'Gurub I can get, it was a popular instance with great visuals, some iconic encounters (the big fish, Hakkar) and had tie-ins with Sunken Temple.

Ahn'Qiraj on the other hand was the refuse of got shit out at the end of vanilla (Naxxramas took to long to design, or something) to keep catasses (such as yours truly) happy. The only remotely fun encounter in either of the instances was C'thun himself and that mainly because of the sense of accomplishment you felt after beating such a ball-bustingly unforgiving encounter.

[Fabricated]

I would however unironically be tempted by a Karazhan re-release but they have a long list of shitty raids they'll redo before Kara.

[Rokal]

AQ20 and 40 were both pretty fun. I'll agree that AQ40's art style got old after a while, but AQ20 felt pretty varied, mostly thanks to how small & fast it was. Both had bosses that would be worth revisiting.

That said, the nostalgia-fest is somewhat less appealing when you're asking people to pay $180 a year to play your game, and you're providing 'new' content that people already played through years ago. New content is needed.

People fleeing the game will cause Blizzard to react in a better manner than they have been, though. If they lose 20% of their base over a year due to choices made in an expansion, that's a true "Cataclysm" that will cause heads to roll.

It won't really cause them to react at a pace people want. Most MMO companies have live patches planned out and partially worked on a year or more before the content is due to go live. I expect that most of the patch content got pushed to the side for Cataclysm, because remaking the old world turned out to be such a massive undertaking. I'm sure they planned for 4.1 and 4.2 to be out sooner (Blizzcon suggests this is the case), and with more content, but those plans were probably scrapped or delayed as 1-60 took up more and more resources. They can't pull new content out of their ass that fast, even if people are leaving the game because they have nothing to do.

I'll say it again. I want a formal apology. I want them to publically admit that this was a horrible decision and reverse their course. The day they publically and directly do that, I will sign up for a full 6 months of sub. I don't even care if I play much anymore, I just want to support that decision with my money.

This is still a completely retarded thing to ask for, and you'd have a hard time getting players to agree on what went wrong with this expansion that they should be apologizing for 

Re: Titan. I always figured it would be some sort of shooter. Borderlands was proof-of-concept that an MMO FPS could work well and actually be pretty fun. I imagine something like Borderlands combined with DDO-style instanced quests that are scalable to your group size and have adjustable difficulties would be pretty awesome, and have wide-appeal.