Bitch Thread for Warlords of Draenor

[Paelos]

Guild leveling broke several of my guilds and the raid alliance, so I'm not sorry if they removed it entirely. It was a stupid idea from a failed game. Some things don't deserve to be assimilated into the Borg.

[Simond]

There's usually at least a couple of people selling L25 guilds* in $CAPITAL_CITY anyway, so all this means is that you can actually pick the name rather than being stuck with <Rouge Angels of Satin>, <It burns when I PVP>, <I Crit In Your Mouth> or whatever.

(*Make guild, spam invites to everyone and their dog, lock down guild bank withdrawals, kick everyone when guild reaches L25, take all money/items from gbank, sell shell, repeat. It's not new).

[SurfD]

There's usually at least a couple of people selling L25 guilds* in $CAPITAL_CITY anyway, so all this means is that you can actually pick the name rather than being stuck with <Rouge Angels of Satin>, <It burns when I PVP>, <I Crit In Your Mouth> or whatever.

(*Make guild, spam invites to everyone and their dog, lock down guild bank withdrawals, kick everyone when guild reaches L25, take all money/items from gbank, sell shell, repeat. It's not new).

Not to mention that it is beyond stupidly easy to level a guild now.  I mean. Hell, my bank alt guild is something like level 15 right now.  It was level 3 when MoP started.  That is purely from the solo leveling of approximately 5 odd alts.  I dont even qualify for the massive guild Exp payouts of things like running guild 5 mans or guild PvP.  Hell, even a guild with only 5 active players in it should have EASILY hit 25 in MoP if they did dungeons or PvP together.

[luckton]

After poking around, it seems that some people have been successful in getting their pre-orders refunded by going through Bliz's support channels, though the action locks out your boosted-90 character until you give the money back or buy the expansion later.

I submitted a ticket just a little bit ago...will report back what happens.

And success. Got the email this morning that my request has been granted, and I just got a separate email from the Bliz Store confirming my refund.

[Paelos]

I'd love to see how many people cancelled those preorders.

[Hawkbit]

They just sent me a free 7-day.  I logged in, saw neither my dad or brother have played in six months.  I tinkered around a bit and realized I just don't care about it any more.  I've played EQ1 more in the past two years than I have WoW.  That's relatively sad.

Chances of me purchasing this xpac are pretty much nil; even if I was given the content, I'm simply over the game too much to play it.

[Wizgar]

Was it this?

http://www.warcraftpets.com/news/pet-breeding-offers-collectors-new-species-in-wod/

No, that's an April Fool's joke based on the pet breeding system they had been talking about on Twitter over the previous six months.

[Simond]

"Most of this is unconfirmed, unofficial news"
"Again, none of this has been officially announced yet"

Um.

Anyway, jumping puzzle! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F-Vz5ZLp2w

[Setanta]

If there's one thing Blizzard does well... it's integrate other companies' games into their own.

[luckton]

Faction-specific Auction Houses are done. Everything is unified in 6.0

[Fabricated]

That makes sense really. I imagine AH barons might be sad, or not.

[Fordel]

Oh they'll love it, saves the hassle of all the cross faction item trading and junk. Our tiny little guild had our servers resident AH mogul, he had like a dozen level 1 characters on either side to facilitate all his listings and stuff. It was pretty nuts.

[Ingmar]

It will cut huge amounts of profit out for some of the guys on smaller server-sides. I had a friend who basically owned the entire jewelcrafting industry on a very small Horde server, because the market was small enough he could buy the entire thing out and set his own prices. Being forced to compete against their overpopulated Alliance side would really hurt him.

Overall a good change for the 99% though.

[SurfD]

If the AH becomes unified I would assume that that means the "neutral" auction houses in the goblin towns are going away, so will using the AH to move Gold from cross faction become easier or harder?

[Merusk]

Easier. You can do it from a capital city with a lesser cut due to faction instead of an out of the way yellow AH vendor. (or did they take that faction mechanic out?)

[Simond]

I need to find out where to get this doff follower:


(Also Leeroy and Jean-Claude down there)

[Sjofn]

That guy observed so many Slap in the Face victories (and defeats) in Karazhan it is not even funny.

[Fabricated]

I can't remember all the items that summoned images and shit like that but I remember having like all of them. I loved popping the archmage image in random places and stupid people would take his quests and ask in global why they suddenly got these really low level quests.

[Mithas]

Heh, Rob Pardo is leaving Blizzard.

[Hutch]

You can read Pardo's announcement here without subjecting yourself to either Kotaku or Joystiq 

[Merusk]

Who was saying that there's no way Ko-Dick would be dumb enough to kill the goose that laid the golden egg?

Ha.

[Maven]

The King is dead, Long Live the King.

Pardo leaving makes room for someone a new Design executive to come in and try to take Blizzard to whereever it needs to go in the next ten years. Now if they could just force Metzen out and break from the Blizzard IP trifecta in order to get some new, vibrant properties going.

Blizzard could be the games industry equivalent of a Pixar or other "Whatever we apply ourselves to, it will be amazing" type design company. Instead they're a Marvel wanna-be without the pop penetration. This doesn't undermine the sheer amount of crazy talent and expertise within its walls.

[Ironwood]

The King is dead, Long Live the King.

Pardo leaving makes room for someone a new Design executive to come in and try to take Blizzard to whereever it needs to go in the next ten years. Now if they could just force Metzen out and break from the Blizzard IP trifecta in order to get some new, vibrant properties going.

Blizzard could be the games industry equivalent of a Pixar or other "Whatever we apply ourselves to, it will be amazing" type design company. Instead they're a Marvel wanna-be without the pop penetration. This doesn't undermine the sheer amount of crazy talent and expertise within its walls.

 

[Hutch]

Since Pardo isn't immediately moving to a position at another company, or announcing the birth of his own startup, my take was more along the lines of "leaving due to creative differences, but with more class than Street."

 

[Ironwood]

Yeah, that was almost certainly a 'Fuck This Place' or 'I've Been Fired' rather than a 'hey, new gig'.

[Merusk]

Yes, that's exactly what it was which is why my first suspect was Kotick interference.  We've seen it creep in slowly but I expect full on mobile and f2p monetization of gameplay elements PDQ in Blizzard's properties.  Depends on what we see come from Morhaime with this monumental shift.

The King is dead, Long Live the King.

Pardo leaving makes room for someone a new Design executive to come in and try to take Blizzard to whereever it needs to go in the next ten years. Now if they could just force Metzen out and break from the Blizzard IP trifecta in order to get some new, vibrant properties going.

Blizzard could be the games industry equivalent of a Pixar or other "Whatever we apply ourselves to, it will be amazing" type design company. Instead they're a Marvel wanna-be without the pop penetration. This doesn't undermine the sheer amount of crazy talent and expertise within its walls.

Other creative industry companies have had to do exactly what you're talking about in the past, from graphic design and advertising to architecture and movies. Creative endeavors in games aren't special and unique snowflakes. In longstanding companies the 'new generation' talent was able to shine without requiring the exit of their creative leader unless he was an absolute controlling and micromanaging dick. Are you saying that's a flaw of Pardo's?

Blizzard has long been held up as a Pixar by fans, but as you say has only had 3 properties. They're not going to be that, ever. They report to a bigger master who's been flexing his control over the last 4-5 years. Each microtransaction creep is another very evident chink in their armor. It's easy to convince guys in their early 50s through late 30s that "it's just a little compromise."  They have obligations, and that extra few hundred bucks in your check goes a lot farther than the goodwill of faceless geeks. Particularly when you're peen-measuring in So Cal and Silicon Valley.

[Tannhauser]

Yeah, that was almost certainly a 'Fuck This Place' or 'I've Been Fired' rather than a 'hey, new gig'.

That's my take on it as well.  Maybe he can start his own company and re-hire all the ex-Blizzard devs and create Snowstorm Entertainment. 

[Merusk]

Dobutful. More likely he'll be picked-up by someone than starting an endeavor of his own.  Creatives aren't the most business-savvy in my experience. They're too 'free spirited' for things like business rules and budgets.  (Now has a nightmare about his CCO becoming CEO)

[Fabricated]

Maybe he can grab the dudes who left Runic since they can't seem to stand having the same gig for more than a week.

[Simond]

I figured it was the other shoe dropping re: Titan.

And in other news: "So...it was a bear?"

[Wizgar]

I'm just glad whenever one of those EverQuest fuckers hits the bricks. WoW's focus on raids that only maybe one in ten players really seem to genuinely give a fuck about (as opposed to muddling through in LFR or something because it's all there is to do) is an embarassing anachronism in 2014.

[Simond]

So what do you suggest they replace it with?

[Fabricated]

I dunno, shitloads of 5-mans would be up my alley.

[Rendakor]

Back in LK, raiding used to be accessible because the normal modes were relatively easy. Then they turned up the difficulty because the hardcore whined, and threw the casuals a bone with LFR. But LFR is shitty because you're playing with randoms instead of fucking around with your friends.

[Merusk]

Yes.

Plus the fuck-over of 'only one raid a week' instead of 'ok one 10 and one 25.'

Hell, I'm still a fan of the diablo 'go for broke' mode with a really big loot table, but the whining on Divinity: Original Sin steam forums about random loot shows me that the WoW-crowd RPGers won't handle that.