Daidraco
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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World of Warcraft: Current Year
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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It really makes you wonder what in the fuck they are doing. Are their artist and content designers just creating random shit then their story people work backwards off that? Are their artist and content people sitting around twiddling their thumbs this entire time waiting for the story people to give them concepts/ideas to create?
At the very least its clear theres no person in charge and havent been for quite some time.
Araxen
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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I firmly believe there is ZERO accountability at Blizzard. It's the only way to explain things, and why people haven't been fired for incompetence. Geoff Goodman is a good example of a person that should have been long gone awhile ago. He's terrible at balancing things. When he left the HOTS team I read that people said the game improved tenfold, but it was far too late by then. He's now part of the Overwatch balance team, and the balance has been all over the board with that game.
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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Toxic positivity. You can see it in the 9.2 video. You can see it in how they shut down community feedback. Everything has to be described as amazing.
I do wonder if a lot of the stories about shitty abusive managers were actually coddled safe space Californians having mental breakdowns over mild criticism.
For example the Japanese devs for FF14 just straight out say "yeah the severs are bad, sorry guys we are doing our best to fix it". Blizzard devs would never acknowledge a server issue (ghost servers or fa tion imbalance), just quietly open free transfers sometimes.
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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Well for 9.1 the only new stuff was Korthia right? Which looked like shit probably because it was made last minute because they didn't know what the story was.
The dungeon wasn't part of the story and the raid is just "Torghast Raid".
I would speculate that Tazavesh was originally going to be "The City of Secrets" and they changed it for some weird reason (we need a new zone to maze people, not a dungeon), but kept the name for the shitty world zone.
The dungeon wasn't part of the story and the raid is just "Torghast Raid".
I would speculate that Tazavesh was originally going to be "The City of Secrets" and they changed it for some weird reason (we need a new zone to maze people, not a dungeon), but kept the name for the shitty world zone.
Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Made me laugh. Like they really care if it feels like "Time passed" between encounters. This is purely a business decision.
Granted not like I was going to play anyway. I cashed out into bnet cash in the first month of this expansion.
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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I find it hard to be there is this insane of a disconnect between their various teams. Does she not ask whats going on herself?Even the author they hired to write their books doesn't know anything about the story
I imagine her WoW stuff is her major source of revenue. I am betting if she asks at all it isn't forcefully.
EDIT: I checked her work on Wikipedia. The vast majority of her work over the last 15 years is World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Star Wars. With Blizzard franchises making up around 70% of her total work in those 15 years. Yeah she is not going to rock that boat too hard.
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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It's really interestingly because in FF14 I found the Scions really annoying allies and the Asians boring generic baddies. I didn't give a shit about the story and skipped the cutscenes.
But they looked at exactly which storylines players liked and promoted the people who wrote them, they had a meritocracy. The lady who wrote the Heavensward Dark Knight questline got promoted to the Far East half of Stormblood then to lead writer on Shadowbringers.
They invested in both the characters with time in game and their writing teams. Now I'm all in on the story it inproved so much.
At Blizzard they are failing upwards, why is Danuser still the lead writer after two failed expansions?
I'm not sure how planned out FF14 was, but The Twinning dungeon in Shadowbringers is pretty mindblowing when it ties to together the raids of the last 3 expansions to explain the mystery plot of Shadowbringers (Crystal Tower can open portals to other worlds, Alexander can travel through time, Omega can travel through dimensions - together they can send the Crystal Tower and it's caretaker back in time to another world)
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Folanlron
Trakanon Raider
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14 will lock Savage till 2 weeks after normal's are opened up, but this also gives them a little bit more time too balance out savage sense they design the fights as Savage First , then rebalance them for Normal ..
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I think it's blatant corporatism, and incompetent management. What gets measured gets managed, and they have no idea how to measure "fun".
From an external point of view, their PR department has probably too much control over the whole company, which is why:
- they force the developers to come up with the next "big shiny", so they can put it on the box of the expansion as a "big feature", when most players just want refinement of their decade-old game, and new content to play. This seems to royally fuck up the content development pipeline.
This is how we got garrisons, island expeditions and the Maw. All of these "big expansion-selling features" were overpromised, underdeveloped, and then abandoned as soon as possible. Most likely because they had to use their development resources budget to come up with the next "big thing" instead of fixing the last "big thing."
The development team probably hated this cycle of bullshit the most.
- All of the communication with their customers is a total mess. And this is directly the fault of the PR department.
After they saw the interview Ion had with Preach, and the reactions and fallout in the community, they decided to never do an interview like that anymore. Just like they cancelled Ion's and Lore's podcast, where they condescendingly answered player questions in the most abrasive way possible.
But that looked like it was the last line of direct developer-to-player communication they had. Everything by now is pre-arranged, where you get briefed what questions you are allowed to ask, and what topic you can cover. That's not an interview, that's regurgitating press release talking points.
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The characters the FFXIV playerbase is most raving about weren't always immediately welcome. Emet-Selch was introduced in Stormblood and wasn't really liked by the players, but Shadowbringers turned that around pretty much. Interestingly, Fandaniel had a similar fate until now, and people expect Endwalker to flesh him out as well.
Good storytelling isn't about coming up with new ideas, it's more about mixing and matching existing tropes and telling the story in an interesting way. If you play your archetypes well you can have massive success with "adopted boy finds out that he has latent magic powers, finds an older mentor, new friends (a boy and a girl), and then goes on a hero's journey to save the world". Look how well that worked out for Star Wars and Harry Potter.
And I think the presentation of the story plays a large part into it: FFXIV invested heavily into the storytelling, but didn't abandon any story beats, characters, or even retcon stuff. Every writer on their team worked together to achieve a pre-planned goal.
Blizzard on the other hand have no roadmap, and seems to have the problem that Danuser wants to remake Warcraft lore into "his own" now that Metzen is gone. Hence all the "no, the Titans were not the creators, it's the first ones!" and "the jailer was behind Ner'zhul" bullshit. It's cultural backstabbing, and one-upmanship.
Once Danuser is gone we'll probably get the next writer, who will come up with "the first ones were not the real creators, it's the Zeroth ones!"
Because his target and bonus payment was probably tied to how many expansion boxes they sold, and Shadowlands was the fastest selling expansion on day 1. So they promoted him.
Their management has probably no other objective metrics to value his "work."
It's not only that, Ishikawa is the writer for basically every and all content FFXIV players are raving about: Coerthas (Inquisitor/setup for Heavensward), Rogue job quests, Binding Coils of Bahamut, Dark Knight job quests, second half of Stormblood, Shadowbringers 5.0, and especially ... 5.3.
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Bondurant
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Box sales metrics is probably why they think all the negativity and criticism is just few people and a couple content creators. Why listen to anyone, when money talks louder?
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jayrebb
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Exactly. Like it or not-- Shadowlands broke records in sales. That buys you a lot of ignored feedback.
It demonstrated to them that the Shadowlands beta players that criticized the design needed to just piss off and they know best. As far as they're concerned, all of the SL beta protestors bought the box.
It demonstrated to them that the Shadowlands beta players that criticized the design needed to just piss off and they know best. As far as they're concerned, all of the SL beta protestors bought the box.
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You guys miss the point that WoW is a subscription service and yes the box sales are big bi-annual boosts for them, if they lose 1 mil subs that is $180 mil a year of passive revenue gone. I agree with the idea that as long as they sell enough boxes, and can convince retards to 6 month sub with a faggot mount they are mostly golden but it isn't like going to turn a blind eye to loss revenue.
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