World of Warcraft - Lore & Storyline discussion [SPOILERS] - Page 700

Nathanyel · 08/23/11, 4:33 PM

Originally Posted by Exemplar

Staging a mini-patch with dungeons a month before the raid patch just makes so much more sense, but them seem to be explicitly stating that is not the plan.

In theory, you could even use those dungeons as a kind of attunement, "do them once to be able to enter the raid", but in reality, people will complain about "that patch without a raid" (see 4.1) or, if it is the same patch number, with the raid delayed, that Blizzard is "trying to stretch content artificially".
People are used to the batch content delivery of major patches, a change to smaller batches is difficult, even if it doesn't actually reduce the amount of content per time.
I've even seen complaints about the plans to decrease the time between expansions, some even with the money argument attached.

Starfire · 08/23/11, 4:52 PM

Originally Posted by Ukerric

Apparently, the Gamescon info concurs. The 4.3 raid is "smaller than Ulduar". And we might fight Deathwing multiple times, pushing him back. Presumably until he's got no choice but to finish it all.

(the cynic in me wants to put in snarky comments about amount of content if we have to fight the same boss multiple times, but I'll pass)

And it's really the culmination of the expansion.

4.4 is announced to be the world event leading to the next expansion. We still might see a small raid to kill N'Zoth, but it's far more likely that we'll get a raid that introduces us to the thematic/story of the Pandaria expansion (just like Ruby Sanctum was a kick-off raid for the twilight dragons which were a lot in the backdrop of this expansion).

The real question is, which Ulduar.

Ulduar was amazing because it's Heroic modes were more like unique encounters... Blizzard should bring that concept back, but this is neither the thread to discuss that nor something Blizzard seems intent on doing; though such a design is obviously a good way to handle the final instance of an expansion.

Exemplar · 08/23/11, 5:03 PM

Originally Posted by Nathanyel

In theory, you could even use those dungeons as a kind of attunement, "do them once to be able to enter the raid", but in reality, people will complain about "that patch without a raid" (see 4.1) or, if it is the same patch number, with the raid delayed, that Blizzard is "trying to stretch content artificially".
People are used to the batch content delivery of major patches, a change to smaller batches is difficult, even if it doesn't actually reduce the amount of content per time.
I've even seen complaints about the plans to decrease the time between expansions, some even with the money argument attached.

People fear change. Use 4.1 to 4.2 as the template, repeat it a few times and it's no longer change, it's the norm. Patches twice as often with half the content - stagger 5man and raid content between patches. This would arguably be better for overall subscriptions with less "down time" between new content. This down time often sees slumps where people let subscriptions slide then re-up at the next patch. I'd wager that every time a few more do not re-up, but if they didn't have weeks/months to break the habit/addiction, those would be ongoing subscribers.

And Blizzard's also mentioned they do not intent to gate the raid in any fashion, so that even negates the dungeon attunement possibility.

Overall it just seems inefficient, and that just rubs me the wrong way. All purely personal opinion. There's nothing overtly wrong with their decisions, it simply looks like they could make even better ones.

Anaxo · 08/23/11, 6:39 PM

Originally Posted by Nathanyel

New/interesting stuff:

Kobolds are related to troggs.
There's a whole double page for the trolls, including a corner for... the kaldorei and their respective subraces.
Magnataur are related to Cenarius/keepers ("Now THAT was an awkward conversation. Hoo, boy")
Grells are "maybe" (quote of the ancient) created by/related to Aessina.
There's a pointer from ogres to ettin, and he mentions fossil evidence - but aren't the ettin creatures of Azeroth?

Some others of note:
- Tauren predate the Titans.
- Northrend still has lots of iron dwarves, giants and vrykul. Thorim and Mimiron are trying to "fix 'em".
- Pandaren have a society older than that of the night elves, and they claim to be older than furblogs but are not related to them. Brann says he learned this from Chen. (sounds like lore setup for the next expansion)

One of the MMO Champion moderators wrote up the entire list here, with all the connections Brann has made. There's also a drawings of Sargeras and the other Titans by Chris Metzen.

Kaejin · 08/23/11, 10:07 PM

Interesting. I'd always assumed Goblins were some sort of stunted offshoot of Trolls.

Fnar · 08/24/11, 3:46 AM

Originally Posted by Nathanyel

I've even seen complaints about the plans to decrease the time between expansions, some even with the money argument attached.

Same here, it's so depressing that Blizzard made a statement when cata was announced that they planned to start producing shorter expansions and intended to move to a model whereby expansions are released roughly every 18 months as opposed to the 2-2.5 year cycle they have been locked in, and when they look to deliver on that aim they get slated for it. Plus 4.3 is adding the appearance tab that people have been begging for for years, and people complain that they can't tank in a pink dress or dual wield shadowmourne.

As far as releasing the 3 5-mans before the raid patch - that would be a fantastic idea if Blizzard would do it. But they wont for the reasons above, it would be further evidence of how 'lazy and money grabbing' Blizzard is. Obviously if they release 4.3 as two patches that is also further evidence that all their 'best' people are working on Titan and WoW gets all the 'noob' developers.

The two patches could be released only a week apart e.g. 3 5-mans on October 25th complete with all the transmogrification and void storage and Darkmoon Island (this has been seriously overlooked by the playerbase and has tons of potential), then the raid releases on the 1st November. It gives the hardcore raiders a chance to poke their nose in the new 5 mans and check out the other features in 4.3 without it all being buried under a mountain of raiding.

Blayze · 08/24/11, 5:19 AM

Originally Posted by Fnar

Plus 4.3 is adding the appearance tab that people have been begging for for years, and people complain that they can't tank in a pink dress or dual wield shadowmourne.

Trouble is that despite people asking for it for years, we only get it now they fear losing even more subscribers.

Nathanyel · 08/24/11, 5:46 AM

You could say about pretty much every addition/change that is was made to please customers. Because it's true, Blizzard is a company after all.

But this whole "losing subscribers" thing... Could it not be that WoW has simply reached its "subscriber peak"? As in, there can't be more people interested in the game at the same time, once you reached that peak, of course numbers can only fall again. And let's not forget that the first number includes all those new players that started with Cataclysm, and quit again after a few months for whatever reason. It's a market, it can always go just "up".

Fnar · 08/24/11, 8:51 AM

Yeah, I think that wow has pretty much reached a saturation point now where any changes they make to attract new customers are disenfranchising existing customers at an equal or greater rate. It's hard to speculate as we don't have any hard figures around how many of the current ~11.1m subscribers were subscribers at wow's peak of ~12m but I think it's probably pretty safe to say that there is quite a lot of churn in those numbers.

Like any product, wow is governed by the product life cycle.

Grossly simplifying the situation we can say that Vanilla = Introduction phase, TBC = growth phase, WotLK = Maturity, Cata = decline. Normally companies can keep producing add-ons or updates for their product to extend the maturity or arrest the decline which wow will do. Just because it took 7 years to get from introduction to decline, does not mean that after 10 years they will no longer have any subscribers (just look at Everquest, still going pretty strong) it just means that it's natural for them to lose subscribers and does not mean that 'the sky is falling' or to use the parlance of our times, that 'wow is dying'.

Exemplar · 08/24/11, 1:46 PM

I don't disagree that WoW is a(n extremely) mature game and due for the decline cycle. Simply commenting that WoW has traditionally had some portion of the population which were intermittent. These players would subscribe, play for a month or two, allow subscription to expire. Next patch (new content) hits, re-subscribe, rinse, and repeat. Based on my own experience watching a single guild over years, every time this cycle occurs a few more people do not re-subscribe.

Simply speaking, the average player, whether hardcore raider or casual quester/dungeoner, plays at least multiple times a week. Habits (or addictions) are self-reinforcing. If you do them often, you remember to keep doing them often. Stop doing them regularly and you forget to keep doing them, even on an irregular basis. If a player subscribes for a few months and plays regularly, it's reinforced. When the subscription lapses they're less inclined to return with new content. Not necessarily through lack of interest, but if they're not playing and not reading the websites they miss all the hoopla and new features (and release dates!) of a patch and just... never come back.

If Blizzard were to release content in smaller bites at a more rapid rate this would, theoretically, reduce the temporary subscription drops. Some will still drop (burnt out/bored regardless of new content), but the ones who feel they run out of stuff to do would, again theoretically, be strung along for further periods of time. The patch size/speed change would be unlikely to impact permanent departures. There's always the potential for kneejerk "I hate this" departures at any change, even one involving patch size/speed, but so far through WoW's life cycle the forum "I'm gonna quit if..." has vastly outpaced the actual folks who follow through.

Tinwhisker · 08/24/11, 3:09 PM

I'd agree that WoW has reached it's saturation point right now and is at it's peak. I wouldn't go so far to say that it's started the downward trend yet though. When we're about half-way through the next expansion we'll be able to tell if what we see now is the start of a decline or simply signal noise.

That whole conversation is a bit off-topic for this thread though (although the ease at which topics can touch on this lately may indicate a lot).

Back on topic, smaller patches to introduce new lore and NPCs would be the best way to allow us to "get to know" them. Imagine a scenario where new NPCs didn't just show up in the patch but would show up after Tuesday maintenance. There's no client download required to plop a new NPC out in the world. Would it make sense to have different travelers show up in the major cities and around the world who would basically start rumors about future bosses or maybe throw in more lore pertaining to NPCs that we know exist but don't know where they are?

Exemplar · 08/24/11, 3:41 PM

Originally Posted by Tinwhisker

Back on topic, smaller patches to introduce new lore and NPCs would be the best way to allow us to "get to know" them. Imagine a scenario where new NPCs didn't just show up in the patch but would show up after Tuesday maintenance. There's no client download required to plop a new NPC out in the world. Would it make sense to have different travelers show up in the major cities and around the world who would basically start rumors about future bosses or maybe throw in more lore pertaining to NPCs that we know exist but don't know where they are?

The new NPCs would need to use standard art (normal racial art wearing pre-existing items) - any new art would require a mini-patch for the client to hold it. Possibly the same with any text they may have. However, pushing out that information with a patch, then rolling the NPCs across maintenance days until the next patch would function if this were to be more ambitious.

Overall ideas like this which sound so easy to implement (and probably aren't) would greatly increase immersion and far better introduce new dungeons and raids. They don't even need to be special NPCs - imagine if we had started seeing increasing numbers of "Troll Refuge"s around cities and even the zone townships prior to 4.1.

It's really puzzling at times the gaps of information that occur in-game. The example I'll continually beat to death is Obsidian Sanctum and the fact that not only were there no quests to enter, there's not even an NPC that mentions the place (barring overall explanation of Sanctums being in the basement) until they added the weekly raid quest which could hit it. Again, it just seems so easy to throw all sorts of fluff breadcrumb NPCs around that it's surprising they do not. Not to mention the huge facility to provide red herrings permitted by doing so.

Duilliath · 08/25/11, 6:23 AM

Originally Posted by Starfire

The real question is, which Ulduar.

You're looking into it far too deeply. The statement simply meant it won't be a 13 boss raid. Most likely not even a 12 boss one.

--

I personally love the idea of breadcrumbing more. But I do feel that it's nowhere near where Blizzard's focus is. Game first, lore second and it shows in a number of cases. It should be easy enough to implement, but it seems like Blizzard is simply more focused on delivering the actual content than giving a proper grounding in the setting.

Tinwhisker · 08/25/11, 4:59 PM

There's no need for a huge undertaking from Blizzard. The NPCs I mentioned could have a standard set based of traveling vendors/merchants or something else. Hell, put some freaky sooth-sayers in that new DMF or some bards that show up in the inns every so often with news from distant lands. Their model never has to change but every time they show up they bring new news.

They don't need a quest interface or click-throughs or items with tooltips to be updated, just a simple single paragraph of text. From what I've seen of data-mining, quest text is stored server-side which means that no client patches would be needed. They only need 8-12 lines of text per major patch and a lot of the early ones will be very vague. In fact, after a major patch we probably shouldn't see them for a month or so. Only when we get close to the next patch do they need to have info.

Doing this would have huge lore payoffs for the community, well worth the work in my opinion.

Nathanyel · 08/25/11, 7:30 PM

This is not about models (there are hundreds of "preset" NPCs to use) but the NPC ID and the associated strings, such as name and conversation lines, and possibly voiceover sound files, which require a client update. Unless they change the way the streaming client works, they still need to bump the version number for the client to load this new data. MMO-C or Wowhead notice that and publish the associated strings, spoiling the plot. It's better to 'hide' that in the lots of other changes of a normal patch, than to just conspiciously add just those few strings.