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Wow. Ashran sounds terrible.

May not be relevant, but the June 23rd release of 6.2 coincides with Heavensward release for FFXIV. On the off chance Blizzard is trying to mess with the release, it's going to be a rough sell.

No pre-mades for Ashan and gating gear behind it? Holy shit, and I thought Illum was bad in SWTOR.

So, Blizzard's offered an olive branch.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/198005 ... -6-10-2015

In an upcoming Public Test Realm build, we will be introducing a new meta-achievement called Draenor Pathfinder. You’ll earn this achievement in Patch 6.2 by mastering the outdoor environment of Draenor—exploring Draenor’s zones, collecting 100 treasures in Draenor, completing the Draenor Loremaster and Securing Draenor achievements, and raising the three new Tanaan Jungle reputations to Revered. Initially, this achievement will award a rylak mount: the Soaring Skyterror, one of the native beasts that roam Draenor’s skies. Players will remain ground-bound on Draenor until a small follow-up patch (6.2.x), when all players who have earned Draenor Pathfinder on at least one character will unlock the ability to fly in Draenor on all their level 90+ characters.

We believe this strikes the right balance between ensuring ground-based content lives up to its full potential, while providing players who’ve already fully experienced Draenor’s outdoor world extra freedom to “break the rules.” This also provides a general blueprint going forward for content to come. Players will explore new and undiscovered lands from the ground, and then once they’ve fully mastered those environments—a notion that continues to evolve with each new expansion—they can take to the skies and experience the world from a new vantage point.

This is not unexpected. Like I mentioned, Blizzard's announcement of 'no flying going forward, ever' met with one of the most sustained periods of negativity and backlash I've ever seen on the wow forums. I can easily imagine this announcement having been forced by watching sub numbers drop and the accompanying bad pr, especially given the timing since barely a week separated blizzard's no-flying stance and FF XIV's "HEY GUYS WE'RE PUTTING IN FLYING" announcement.

I still have to chuckle a bit at them gating the reward behind tanaan reps and a bunch of other stuff, though the fact that the achievement rewards account-wide flying (as opposed to having to do it over and over) counterbalances that a lot. Now the question is how long it will take them to get this 6.2.x patch out. Now that the cat's out of the bag I imagine people are going to start getting antsy a month or so into 6.2 if it hasn't dropped.

And of course, the anti-flyers are now starting to have their cry over the matter. I wonder if any of them will have the stones to quit, but I doubt it'll be more than a drop in the bucket compared to the losses blizz would have seen if they'd kept no-flying.

If people don't want to fly in Draenor (or anywhere else) they don't have to.

Frankly, this "olive branch" is somewhat like flying in prior expansions where you either had to wait for a patch, or get a particular level AND fork over a lot of gold.

I'm largely fine with these requirements, since one of my suggestions (on a different forum) was making Draenor Flight Training available account wide after completing Loremaster & Explore. Not to thrilled with the 3 Tannan reputations, because from what I have heard they are as dull and mindlessly grindy as every every reputation in WoD.

Wow look at that backtracking - no wonder they've been delaying the Q&A I imagine the last few weeks have been full on crisis mode for Blizzard until they could figure out a way to introduce flying.

Guess I best go and complete all the questing areas on my main.

Meanwhile, I need to go check and see if I've done it already, because my playstyle usually involves poking into every odd corner. I get "Loremaster" achievements by accident half the time.

My sub runs out in September, I may re-subscribe off of this, we'll see how the raids and Tanaan look though. Embarrassingly, I had the achievements spread out over three characters which I've got to fix now.

Broomstick wrote:Meanwhile, I need to go check and see if I've done it already, because my playstyle usually involves poking into every odd corner. I get "Loremaster" achievements by accident half the time.

MMO Champ checked some stats about that after the announcement hit. They apparently looked at 1.8 million players who have logged in at least once since May 1. Out of that sample, about a quarter have the Loremaster achievement, 15% have the Explorer achievement, an unknown number have the necessary treasures (there's no 100 Treasure achievement, but it's somewhere between 6% and 43% going by the 50 and 200 treasure achievements), and less than 4% have the "do all the Apexis crystal zones at least once" achievement. So, according to that estimate, at most a bit under 4% of players have the currently available requirements completed, and probably much less since 4% assumes that everyone who's completed the Apexis daily achievement has also completed the other requirements.

I imagine that if/when they do enable flying, only a very small percentage will have it at the beginning. And I have if in that last sentence because I've seen more than a few people state that, based on how Blizzard's previous announcements about this expansion have turned out, they will only believe that Blizzard plans to enable flying when the patch that enables it hits the live servers.

I checked my main, i'd already done the Loremaster thankfully and I only had like 6 sites total to get the exploration achievement.

Only things now are the Apexis dailies - thankfully I can use the scouting missives to get the 5 i need to do rather than wait - and the treasure achievement. That one easily sucks the most, because i've only done like 15 and the treasures are in assholish spots for ground mounts.

6.2 is out, and once again I think the art department as a whole has knocked it out of the park. That will probably be the only no-strings positive thing I have to say about this patch.

The questing is more of the same apexis grinding and the non-apexis quests feel like they were thrown together by an intern who procrastinated until the night before and take roughly 15 minutes to finish off permanently.

6.2 broke the Master Plan addon, reminding me how god-awful the default UI for Garrisons is. I'm not even bothering until MP is up to date again.

Shipyards are... clunky and more of the same. The NPCs required for normal normal use of this feature are (horde side) scattered far and wide over aggravating pathways in such a manner that flying is damn near required to not tear your hair out using it.

Haven't touched the new raid, LFR isn't open until next week.

Took a gander at Ashran, 8 vs 40, didn't feel like wasting my time getting stomped and neither did anyone else since most people left even faster than I did.

at least on my realm the issue with Ashran is that about 80% of the realm population is horde so any world PvP is automatically unbalanced to worthlessness if you're looking for anything else then a penile compensation from beating an opponent that can't fight back if horde (or getting constantly beaten and never winning if alliance).

Lord Revan wrote:at least on my realm the issue with Ashran is that about 80% of the realm population is horde so any world PvP is automatically unbalanced to worthlessness if you're looking for anything else then a penile compensation from beating an opponent that can't fight back if horde (or getting constantly beaten and never winning if alliance).

Other way around on mine, total Alliance domination at the moment. Unbalanced PvP is a natural result of WoWs crappy old faction system. The winners get stronger, the losers get weaker, eventually it's effectively just a single faction.

Fortunately I only play PvE servers, so my solution to unbalanced PvP is to walk out of Ashran and do something else. Let the full raid of Alliance hunt for the few Horde die-hards who stick around.

I read Horde set bonuses aren't even working in PvP and the 90+% of the top arena team are Alliance. That and the combination of Ashran problems makes me feel like we're talking about SWTOR 1.0.

So the latest earnings call has happened, which included the latest subscription numbers for WoW. Another 1.5 million subscriptions are gone.

A few random notes to put this latest loss into perspective:
1. The current subscriber count (5.6 million) is the same as it was back in December 2005, before the release of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj patch in Vanilla.
2. There are 1.2 million fewer subscribers now than there were at the lowest point in Mists of Pandaria.
3. Since the release of Warlords of Draenor, WoW's subscription count has decreased by 44%.
4. WoW lost more subscribers in 6 months of Warlords of Draenor than they did during the 14 month content drought at the end of Mists of Pandaria.

while it certainly doesn't look good, I'd say it's still premature to say that WoW is dying (or that it's dead already).

And to be honest as much as you say about the content drought at late MoP there was still things to do with the Isle of Thunder and Timeless Isle, with WoD there's not much to do once you reach level 100 sure you can do the storylines and bonus areas you've missed, outside of raids there wasn't much in terms of new content and the apexis areas aren't all that well the designed to hide the grind aspect of their nature, basically there was more things to do in 1 patch in MoP then in the 3 Patches of WoD (6.0-6.2).

I don't know, unless the next expansion is shit hot amazing its pretty much not going to solve these numbers - being down to Vanilla numbers is a huge deal, it took TBC and WOTLK (the two best expansions, with probably the best developer teams behind them) to get the numbers up.

Unless they completely abandon the style of game they've been building towards and reverse two expansions worth of poor decisions, the numbers may well keep going down.

This is especially true as Hellfire Citadel is the last raid for Warlords - which since the new expansion is being announced at Gamescon, potentially means another four to six months with zero new content. The game will hemorrhage subscribers in that period.

Lord Revan wrote:while it certainly doesn't look good, I'd say it's still premature to say that WoW is dying (or that it's dead already).

WoW's pretty goddamn dead. Yea, they're going to continue to have millions of subscribers until they shutdown the servers because there are people who have that much invested into WoW or just don't know any better. It also helps that the token system will be bolstering subs for quite a while. But being dead doesn't mean you close up shop, it just means the developers don't give fucks about their product and rely on rubes or people with more money than sense to continue paying a monthly fee.

And to be honest as much as you say about the content drought at late MoP there was still things to do with the Isle of Thunder and Timeless Isle, with WoD there's not much to do once you reach level 100 sure you can do the storylines and bonus areas you've missed, outside of raids there wasn't much in terms of new content and the apexis areas aren't all that well the designed to hide the grind aspect of their nature, basically there was more things to do in 1 patch in MoP then in the 3 Patches of WoD (6.0-6.2).

And that's really why it's dead. I could come back during Timeless, get all my welfare gear, run ToT once or twice, and get into SoO. But with that, there's still stuff to do in IoT that's worth doing. There's still quests and rep grinds scattered around that are also worth doing. The sacrificial dagger and/or Gokk'lok's Shell. Little things.

WoD is basically raid or die and play facebook games in the meantime. The amount of shit they cut from both the expansion itself and older expansions was pretty big. Just one that pissed me off was Scenarios. Unique 3-man content and it gave me an excuse to use my Retadin set as the damage, tankyness, and off-heals made them fun as Hell to play there. But WoD finally brings us!.....!!!!.... another tier of dungeons........ which are really just retuned challenge modes.

Blizzard has no idea how to wrap up an expansion (don't know about TBC). Wrath, Cata, and MoP ended on pretty lackluster notes and dragged on too long (some more than others). But that was bolstered by the expansion themselves being pretty good. Say what you want about Cata, at least it had a load of content. Oh, and the addition of new dungeons that late into the expansion was great. Blizzard doesn't seem to want to do that anymore. If it's not an addition to existing content, they don't seem to bother with it.

On that note: Squeenix needs to get off their ass and quit this shit as well. There's only 2 expert dungeons right now and a harder version of a raid is not content, even if it drops better gear. Besides downing Ravana EX, I have nothing to do on my main. Luckily I'm having fun levelling alt classes, making shittons of money with crafting, and playing Payday and Left4Dead in the meantime.

Lord Revan wrote:while it certainly doesn't look good, I'd say it's still premature to say that WoW is dying (or that it's dead already).

It is dying. Just not quickly. With the exception of a bump right before the release of a new expansion, the subscription numbers have been on a steady downward trend since the beginning of Cataclysm. It's been about 4 and a half straight years of pretty consistently declining numbers. The best you can say about the current situation is that the subscription drop since Warlords' release might only have been as massive as it was because the pre-expansion increase in subscriptions was abnormally large.

But even then, the current count is still 1.2 million lower than the lowest point of Mists of Pandaria. It's still a net loss of subscriptions even after you account for the unusually large increase going into the expansion.

Another couple more random facts about the latest announcement:
1. Q2 2015 is the second largest single-quarter drop in subscription numbers in the game's history. The single largest drop was Q1 2015.
2. Between Q4 2014 and Q2 2015, subscription numbers dropped by 4.4 million. Between Q2 2011 and Q3 2014 (from the launch of Cataclysm to the last quarter before the launch of Warlords), subscription numbers had a net decrease of 4.6 million (5.2 if you only count from Q2 2011 through Q2 2014, and ignore the slight increase leading up to Warlords' launch). So, depending on how you count it, 6 months of Warlords of Draenor have resulted in almost as many lost subscriptions as Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria combined.

And to be honest as much as you say about the content drought at late MoP there was still things to do with the Isle of Thunder and Timeless Isle, with WoD there's not much to do once you reach level 100 sure you can do the storylines and bonus areas you've missed, outside of raids there wasn't much in terms of new content and the apexis areas aren't all that well the designed to hide the grind aspect of their nature, basically there was more things to do in 1 patch in MoP then in the 3 Patches of WoD (6.0-6.2).

That's kind of the thing, though. Those 14 months at the end of Mists was the longest the game's gone without any new content patches, and the game still lost fewer subscriptions in those 14 months than Warlords did in 6.

TheFeniX wrote:It also helps that the token system will be bolstering subs for quite a while.

Only if there are players who want more gold than they are earning in-game. Once those players dry up (say, because they have bought all the useful gear they can buy with gold), then they won't be buying tokens from Blizzard to sell to other players.

Forums are getting blasted I assume. Can't get anything to load except some clear text. Dug around about the new expansion details:

Legion: more BC-era stuff. Sounds like WoD 2.0. So, really does fit with Blizz's current content release strategy.
Illidian is back.... I am, kind of prepared for that.
New class: Demon Hunter. Leather-wearing, one-hand wielding, melee DPS...... also tank.... Honestly, isn't it about time for another ranged-physical Mail-wearing DPS class?
Some sort of new "Class specific" garrison. You're basically the leader of whatever class you play. Doesn't really vibe with more than a few of them.

EDIT: oh yea, Artifact weapons: class weapons.... so, I can grind a new Relic at some point because that totally wasn't annoying in FFXIV and grinding legendaries is fun is WoW......

As with WoD, we will see how much of that lands on the cutting room floor or gets rewritten into oblivion.

For amusement's sake, I've been mentally replacing every mention of artifact weapons with murlocks.

[*]There are 36 murlocks, one for each specialization.
[*]Earn Murlock Power as you accomplish things. Completing quests, dungeons, battlegrounds, and most major activities. The power is spent to unlock traits that empower your murlock and character, as well as visual customizations.

I'm easily amused.

At any rate, I'm not going to even bother remembering these promises and just see what actually get's delivered.

TheFeniX wrote:Forums are getting blasted I assume. Can't get anything to load except some clear text. Dug around about the new expansion details:

Legion: more BC-era stuff. Sounds like WoD 2.0. So, really does fit with Blizz's current content release strategy.
Illidian is back.... I am, kind of prepared for that.
New class: Demon Hunter. Leather-wearing, one-hand wielding, melee DPS...... also tank.... Honestly, isn't it about time for another ranged-physical Mail-wearing DPS class?
Some sort of new "Class specific" garrison. You're basically the leader of whatever class you play. Doesn't really vibe with more than a few of them.

EDIT: oh yea, Artifact weapons: class weapons.... so, I can grind a new Relic at some point because that totally wasn't annoying in FFXIV and grinding legendaries is fun is WoW......

Basically now that "Wacraft 2: the Nostalgia Trip" is done it's time for "Warcraft 3: Trip Harder"

That's all Blizzard has going for it nowadays; banging and crashing as hard as they can on the nostalgia drum. Their biggest cash cows, HOTS and Hearthstone and WoW are running on little more than nostalgia and inertia.

Kuja wrote:That's all Blizzard has going for it nowadays; banging and crashing as hard as they can on the nostalgia drum. Their biggest cash cows, HOTS and Hearthstone and WoW are running on little more than nostalgia and inertia.

I liked the WotLK aesthetic better. Oh well.

Webpage up. Ok, someone check me here because WoW lore has always been meh: Demon Hunters are all around Illidan's hunting days, right? Or something to that effect. I remember him ranting about some shit in either WC3 or maybe WoW in one of the Caverns of Time dungeons. Why are the Horde Demon Hunters Belfs and not High Elves?

Ugh, DK Relic weapon is an axe. Axe animations are always shit due to the grip point making zero sense.

Why are the Horde Demon Hunters Belfs and not High Elves?

Because politically, the high elves that are left are all Alliance-aligned - either part of the expedition to Draenor (and thus cut off from the events of Warcraft 3) or part of Dalaran (the Silver Covenant). Also back in the BC days Illidan was trying to train a bunch of Kael's blood elves to be demon hunters which is where that one boss in Serpentshrine came from, so presumably these new guys stem from that lot.