- Took off on monday so it is tuesday random thoughts this week.
- I guess random thoughts fit for any day after a weekend.
- My horde hunter is finally starting to get a few 100 followers.
- Nicer seeing 100% completion chance once in a while now.
- One problem with leveling so fast is your garrison missions level with you.
- A bunch of 90s, 91s, and 92s do tend to have some difficulty with level 98, 99 and 100 missions.
- I wonder why.
- It is still starving for garrison supplies.
- I could run out and kill some rares, collect some items in the world, just to gather up some.
- There are ways to get them, just no quick ways as of yet.
- I'll get there.
- But this really stresses to me how horrible this expansion is for an alt.
- If you level them fast, which will happen as you know what to do and they have rested, you can hit 100 and put yourself in a bad position with building up.
- With that in mind I bought my warlock to draenor.
- Just so I can start leveling up the early followers and build some resources.
- My other characters that have been sitting around playing in their garrison building resources and leveling followers made the smooth transition to 100.
- But the one I played right through and did on two sundays in a row, ouch.
- Not very fun at all.
- Like I said, I could fix it if I invested some time in it.
- But it is an alt, I do not want to invest some time in it.
- So I will do it slowly this way.
- Just seems like an uphill battle when most missions sit around 40%-60% at best.
- Speaking of alts, got to tank a little on my druid again.
- Joined an already in progress run with just the last wing bosses left.
- It was only normal but normal can still be challenging depending on the group.
- One shot iron maidens and one shot kromog.
- Might not seem like much to you, but it is the first time I tanked a kill on either of them, so I was happy.
- Almost one shot blast furnace but things went a little whoops at the end and we wiped.
- Never did get that far again, but it was a nice run.
- And I didn't win a ring this week again.
- Woohoo.
- I won nothing instead.
- Boo.
- Want to hear something funny about my tank?
- I have tanked some heroic bosses, the starter 6 only, but I still don't even have the savagely epic achievement.
- Yeap, still have one blue piece I just can not replace.
- Don't you hate when that happens?
- We all have a piece or two that always gives us trouble.
- I need to get over this anxiety I have over playing with people I do not know lately.
- Even vastly over gearing and knowing all the fights like the back of my hand, I still would not even pug into a highmaul run.
- It is not a fear of failure, I know all the fights.
- It is not a fear of under performing, because I know I do decently on my character.
- I can only chalk it up to a fear of people.
- I will not join a group any more unless someone I know is already in it.
- And even at that, sometimes I still won't.
- I have developed a very irrational fear of pugs.
- I'd rather log off than join a pug.
- I would even rather log off than join a pug that would be willing to carry me and expected nothing of me.
- I just do not want to play with random people I do not know.
- This feeling is expanding too.
- I have not even bought my new hunter into skyreach to start the legendary quest line.
- Admittedly the 40 minute to an hour wait is not an attractive thing looking at it to begin with.
- But it is more than that, I just do not want to deal with people.
- The rogue that refuses to DPS trash because hes too good for that crap.
- The tank that chain pulls and runs out of the healers range all the time and then blames everyone in the raid, even the DPS, for why he died.
- The healer who refuses to heal damage dealers because their job is the heal the tank.
- The damage dealer who spams recount after each trash pack.
- The idiot that zones in and starts whining before the first pull and then continues to whine the entire time saying how everyone sucks and he is god even though it was a totally smooth run.
- I am just sick and tired of the people that play this game.
- I do not want to be around them any more.
- I wish blizzard could do something about it, make people act... human.
- But they can't, people will be people, and I just hate them all.
- Speaking of groups, I always liked world boss groups.
- Even if they sometimes went bad, usually even on a fresh character or a character you suck on, it is easy to blend in and go unnoticed in a world boss group.
- Too bad after looking for an hour I did not find one world boss group.
- Do you believe that? Not even one world boss group.
- I miss the days when world bosses were actually worth doing and people made groups for them.
- I could start my own, this is true, but seriously, not gonna happen.
- At least not with how I feel about groups now.
- I need to get over these anxieties or I might as well just quit now.
- If I can't play with other people and raiding is the only content blizzard seems they want to add now, why should I stay.
- Speaking of quitting, I wrote my I quit post over the weekend.
- I am not going to post it of course, as I am not quitting, but this is the first time I actually wrote the post.
- Not just started it, not just through some thoughts in it, not just outlined it, but completely wrote it from beginning to end.
- That says something about my state of mind and the state of the game within my mind.
- How about that no flying, probably ever again, in current content.
- Blizzard has really jumped the shark, is putting the final nails in their own coffin, and whatever other cliche you can think of.
- They might be cliches but it sure as hell feels accurate.
- Games that are growing are adding flight.
- So I guess it makes sense that games that are dying are removing it?
- 6.2 will be released June 23rd.
- Why do I say that?
- Because final fantasy 14s expansion comes out june 23rd.
- Just look at the facts.
- Blizzard has historically released things to compete with their competitors.
- Right now FF14 is the top competitor.
- They will want to challenge them.
- Plus there is the fact that in the last quarter wow was down to 7.1M subs and FF14 was up to 4M subs.
- Think of that, a game that just came out was bleeding subs.
- A game that was out for a long time and its expansion was still months away was growing.
- This is not how it is supposed to work.
- So if, and that is a big if, blizzard does not put out 6.2 before the end of this quarter, which that is, they might actually see themselves behind FF14 in sub numbers.
- Did anyone think that was ever possible?
- Or possible this soon after we saw them up to 10M just a few months ago?
- I could see blizzard losing another 1.5M easily in this quarter with no patch release.
- That would be a very reasonable loss based on the current trend.
- So that would put them down to 5.6M subs.
- If FF14 was growing before the release of the expansion, with so many people upset with or leaving warcraft I could see them testing out the new expansion, so it is completely reasonable to believe 2M new subs could find their way to FF14 when the expansion comes out.
- So the very possible outcome of FF14 with 6M subs and wow with 5.6M subs could happen.
- If blizzard does not release 6.2 on June 23rd.
- See, there is that if again.
- So, that is why I see blizzard releasing 6.2 on June 23rd.
- Maybe a week sooner, possibly but unlikely a week after, as it would allow FF14 to add that weeks worth of subs to their numbers which I am sure blizzard wants to stop.
- So I believe they have to release 6.2 June 23rd, and I think we will see it then, even if it is not done.
- Just like they released warlords even though it was not done yet.
- Blizzard will do so to try and save face, because can you just imagine what the doom sayers would be on about if warcraft is not the #1 sub MMO any longer?
- They are a business first and foremost, and they are not going to gamble at losing that number one spot they have held so long.
- Sure it is a huge long shot that FF14 would pass them even without the patch, but do you think they will take that chance?
- Absolutely not.
- So we will see it then.
- I am sure of it, or we might be looking at a new leader.
- And blizzard surely will never allow that without a fight.
- And surely they would never allow that to happen all because of 1 expansion destroying everything they worked so hard for.
- Did you ever think we would see an expansion worse than cataclysm.
- I surely didn't think so.
- Simply amazing if you ask me.
- Even if I was not all that excited about this expansion I never even thought I would be talking about the possibility of another game passing it in subs.
- Even if it is a huge long shot that probably will not happen.
- Just the idea we could even consider it possible after that boost to 10M is astounding.
- Have a great day.
Christmas Is Coming!
12 minutes ago
There's no doubt in my mind that I wasn't the only person on Friday that Reupped their FF14 sub and have not played wow at all since.
ReplyDeleteI did play WoW this weekend, but I did reup my FF14 sub as well. So see you there. ;)
DeleteAlso have 3 guild mates that are joining me there now as well and a few other on the fence about it. After they read the no flying they all said, hey isn't that game you play adding flying, I said yeah, they said, sign me up.
I have a feeling a few more are going to follow. Sad that it could kill the raid team in the long run, but I would never fault people for leaving if they are unhappy with WoW.
This was written prior to the no-flying announcement and while not revolutionary, it seemed a good recap of players' feelings.
ReplyDeletehttp://massivelyop.com/2015/05/15/wow-factor-a-three-million-loss-lesson/
What a great post and point on in many places. Blizzard should read this stuff from time to time. But what would it matter, they would ignore it like they do everything else.
DeleteI never thought of actually leaving WoW before. But I'm seriously contemplating it. My WoW time is paid on tokens now, even though up until this week I was fully planning on continuing to pay with real money. My 15$ might be going to FF14 too. It's partly the flying, partly because several of the subs they already shed were pretty much all the people who got me into the game.
ReplyDeleteI really did not think hearing no flying, possibly, forever would impact me as much as it did either. But reading that really did leave and impression, so much so I wrote a post about quitting, even if I was not going to. That is kind of huge, in meaning anyway.
DeleteNearly all, except 3, of the people I knew when I started playing are gone. Most left in cataclysm, more left this expansion, and a few in between in mists. This expansion is poison for a game as great as it has been. They need to do something. You would have thought they would add flying just as an attempt to stop the bleeding. I am amazed they would rather just see it bleed more.
Amazing, Grumpy, I did exactly the same thing this weekend -- wrote my goodbye post but did not post it, did not yet unsub. The no flying announcement hit me harder than I would have expected, it just seemed to suck that final little bit of air out of the game for me. Not sure why.
ReplyDeleteI logged on once this weekend, ran some garrison stuff on my alts and logged off. Previously even running garrison stuff was somewhat engaging for me, I think because I expected that collecting profession mats, garrison resources, and making gold had a point, that I would be able to use all this stuff in some way at some point in the game. If not next patch, at least next xpac -- the gold, anyway. But this weekend I thought what's the point. Blizz has given us a disaster of an xpac, and patches that double down on the worst features of the bad xpac.They keep destroying the class spec I love to play, seemingly with no understanding of what they have done to it. Their actions have had a cascading effect on guilds and social play.
And then Friday, in a sneaky move that is a new low even for them, Watcher drops the bomb of no flying, in a minor interview with a third party web site at the start of a huge U.S. Holiday weekend.
It was as if Blizz was flipping us all a big ole bird. This move told me there is zero hope that the game will ever get better.
Right now I am still subbed because I love the idea of what this game used to be, even though I take no joy in what it has become. But before long I suspect even someone like me with overactive loyalty and nostalgia genes will move on.
There is an interesting post at
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3186766-activision-blizzard-setting-up-for-a-tumble#comments_header
about one economist's view of Activision Blizzard's long term prospects. Admittedly, he is kind of a maverick in his field, but it is a good read.
The announcement really did suck the air out of the game, that is an excellent way to put it. It sure does feel that way.
DeleteThe announcement was meant to be two things, 1, on a long weekend so they do not have to deal with the initial backlash, because they knew there would be one, and 2, in a place where most players would never notice it, so they can pull the, but we told you way back when card, instead of posting it on their own site. It was a very strategic statement release.
I am still subbed holding on to those memories. I reminisced in the quitting post about some of them, and one of the biggest one, surprise surprise, involved flying and blizzard took that away from me.
I'll take a look at that post as soon as I hit publish.
Thanks for linking that article, Fiannor. It that is even remotely correct, BlizzardActivision is in for a world of hurt. A good summary of that article would be: Poor game design has real-world consequences. Indeed so. If you put lipstick on a pig, people might just look at the lipstick at first. At second glance, however, they will realize that it is a pig.
DeleteThe article was good, and sort of fits what I have been saying. Glad to see someone in that area of expertise sees what I see. Even if he is going against the grain. The outlook is good in many aspects, but not for the warcraft franchise, at least as I see it. I did not even know about the other games and their issues that he mentioned.
DeleteAnon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:
ReplyDeleteI read that article last night, the one Fiannor posted. It is an analysis written by an outlier true, but it is written by someone who knows a wee bit more about gamers than most I think. Provide us with a bad product, and your company is in trouble. Do it long enough, and try to cover up lack of development moneys compared to PR expenses by the company and the company is literally pushing themselves off a cliff.
In other words, some bean counters are running the show and Blizzard is no longer about shipping as good a game as is possible to make with current standard tech and more about squeezing every dollar it can out of the game. That is a losing proposition long term. It is also a short term loser in all but the temporary bottom line.
There are many ways a company can screw up using the accountants guidance on how to be more profitable. Perhaps the single one thing most precious that is being spent, liberally like a fire hose pouring out water, is trust. Once trust is killed, trust that the developers are willing to make a good game with the fans in mind; once spent, it is extremely hard to get it back. That was the point I saw made time and again by the folks posting in the forum "Watcher says..." topic. The utterance of the words, by many and perhaps most, for the first time is a psychological effect that represents a breaking point. Sort of like the A.D. and B.C. timeline shift, there is a point before and a point after Trust is Broken. Life before the broken trust, if not rosy, was at least a bit optimistic that ultimately the game developers wanted the best for the game. Life after trust is broken, nothing said will re-establish it and every word will be parsed for duplicity. Blizzard is going to rue this Memorial weekend in my opinion for the loss of that trust.
I really can not blame the loss of trust on any fans of the game. That responsibility is Blizzard's, both by actions and words. Any ducking of that responsibility, trying to make it all better by saying things like "why we thought that announcing it on a third party website would be a better way to make it known" does nothing to build trust and in fact actually erodes it more. I can not think of any other thing which would be more likely to inflame an already outraged group of fans than to publicly insult their collective intelligences with such twaddle. The release was on a lesser known site, a site that does not devote itself to WoW but instead is a more generalized site for gamers (best I could tell from a brief inspection of it).
To compound that error for trust building/breaking, it was released on a late Friday. Making it worse was the fact that it was a long weekend due to a major holiday in the USA. Really if the company wanted to emulate the worse behavior of politicians caught in a scandal, they would have a hard time improving on the release of information like the No Fly Ever After like they did. It was almost designed to drive folks mad, like they knew it was not going to be popular. So what else are people to assume but it was an attempt at damage control before the fact, especially as that is exactly what it was. The fact that they were caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar does not match up with their "what ya talking about, Willis" attitude is a extremely poor defense of their actions.
I am a veteran of the game, been around and playing WoW since early 2005, and just barely fell outside the cutoff for the 10 year vet status. I am not happy now nor have I been for a long while with the direction of the company. I do not want to quit, but the company seems to want me to quit, so now I am left wondering if I should. Final Fantasy XIV is beginning to sound like the game I should be playing. Honestly, how much of a hint do I need to leave? Most especially as there is an alternative that sounds viable. Makes a body wonder...
You absolutely put your finger on it, Anon. Friday's announcement was, to me, a final breach of trust. So much so that when (not if) I finally leave WoW, I will go out of my way to avoid ANY game by Actvision Blizzard, because I hate what I have come to see as their business practices.
DeleteIt's one thing to be driven by the profit motive -- nothing wrong with that -- but to combine that motive with condoning/encouraging outright lies and absurdly transparent half truths when dealing with customers, well, I just can't support a company like that.
Thanks for clarifying for me exactly why I reacted so strongly to the no flying thing: breach of trust.
@Anon
DeleteYou hit the trust issue on the nose. I am not as upset with the removal of flight as being outright lied to about it. They kept saying they would look at feedback and decide based on that and then completely ignored the overwhelming feedback and did whatever they wanted anyway.
What they did was indefensible. They lied to their players. They had no intention of adding flight back for whatever reason it might be and they kept leading people on to believe that it would come back.
-I solved the alt leveling problem by getting them to 93 to unlock the garrison and then stopping...
ReplyDelete-I let the garrison do the rest since I really have no desire to actually play my alts...
-I've found that follower gear is very inconsistent. One toon only gets weapon upgrades while another only gets armor... I really wish those things were BoA...
-Got lucky and Reins of the Azure Drake dropped off Malygos this week
-Also bought a cheap Mottled Drake off the AH
-So I'm at 197 mounts now... almost at 200.
-I can understand the "fear of people". It's one of the things that keeps me from pugging.
-Ditto that world bosses suck...
-Did you see the video of someone soloing Rukhmar on a Boomkin? I guess a few different players have done it now.
-The "I quit post"... I almost wrote one of those on the forums over the weekend, but my sub is paid til August or something so I decided not to be too "hasty"...
-The "No flying" comment really sent me over the edge though. Definitely a "breach of trust" as Anon said. I upvoted as many posts as I could in the forum thread about it and retweeted all the hashtags #BringBackFlying #NoFlyNoSub, etc...
-That announcement deserved a lengthy blog post on Battle.net with actual discussion of player concerns and why Blizzard disagreed with all of us. Not some minor remark in a random interview followed by snarky tweets/blue posts about how they're "not ignoring feedback"...
-I see that today they quickly announced a plan to have a live Q&A on June 6th, but I don't have much hope for that. I expect them to pick useless questions and give BS answers just like they usually do... At least it's on a Saturday instead of a weekday like they usually do.
-The article that Fiannor posted is quite interesting. The reductions in development costs vs increases in marketing are quite telling... How are they spending less on development after working on so many new games and increasing the WoW team by 50%... Just means they are doing cheap work...
-I'd consider jumping ship to FF14, but I already have ESO and I have Dragon Age:Inquisition and Witcher 3 that I still need to find time to play...
-This may be my last WoW expansion though unless Blizz really turns the ship around. I can keep paying my sub with gold via tokens, but I won't buy the next expansion if it's just another WoD...
Congrats on your mounts, so so close now.
DeleteI do that with most of my alts, just got on a leveling run with my hunter and blew through it so fast. I love leveling hunters, they are such great levelers.
They really insulted the player base by the breach of trust and then further by releasing the statement late on a holiday weekend on some 3rd party website that most people never even heard It was like they were trying to be sneaky about it, which makes it even worse.
I am more upset with the removal of valor gear than I am with the removal of flight, but either way, it is not looking well for my future with the game either. It has changed from what I liked.
I jumped to marvel heroes 2015 and they really improved after a disastrous start. Alts are a huge plus and they do have a lot of account wide perks to transfer to start like synergies and omegas. Best of all its free and you can reach the top lvls alt heroes and gear all free with eternity splinters and such.
ReplyDeleteKinda diablo like and it does have its bugs and imbalances.
I played marvel heroes when it first came out. Even spent a little cash getting some extra heroes. But none of my friends came over with me and I lost interest rather quickly.
Deletefound out yesterday wow tokens are BOP soulbound.
ReplyDeleteThey can't be put in the bank.
I wonder what happens if i leave them in my mail?
I want to buy them now before prices skyrocket or Blizzard changes their mind and alters the way they work.
22k is so cheap. I had 70k a couple weeks ago and bought 2 wow tokens. Will continue buying them if they are under 23k.Will try leaving them in my bags though.
--
Regards,
regardsanon
Yeah, tokens can not be sold or traded. It is partly their way to fight the dupers. Good idea if you ask me.
DeleteBut you can send them to alts. So if you make a level 1 alt, just put them in that characters bags for save keeping and they will not waste any space.
"You can't mail soulbound items." is what it says when I try to mail it to an alt.
Delete--
Regards,
regardsanon
Why don't you just use them? It just adds the additional game time to your account.
DeleteThey must have already changed that than. I am sure when they first came out they were account wide. At least that is what I read, I have not purchased one.
DeleteOkay, idea number 2.
Send the gold to that level 1 alt. Buy it on the alt. Now it takes up no additional space.