Blizzard Still Got It…
…in the movie department. Well, the in-game movie department, amirite?
The above is an “official” compilation of all of the cinematics in Battle for Azeroth proper. Clocking in at nearly 24 minutes, it’s quite a lot. This does not include the three Warbringers shorts (Jaina, Sylvanas, Azshara), or the copious amount of in-game animation. It’s almost enough to compel me back into the fold.
Almost.
Alas, unlike my blogging peers, I have but 1.5 hours a day to play games, and I sure as shit ain’t playing Beta for Azeroth anymore. Maybe it got better since I last played… which was an entire baby ago. Ah well. We’ll see how things go an expansion or two from now.
Posted on October 1, 2019, in WoW and tagged Blizzard, CGI, Warbringers. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
In An Age 
Pretty sure you’re getting the best of it just by watching the videos on YouTube. I did that and I don’t feel any need to play any of it. What would that add?
LikeLiked by 1 person
> We’ll see how things go an expansion or two from now.
… unless Classic puts Retail into maintenance mode.
Whoever still decides to put time and money into the further development of Retail at the cost of Classic probaly shouldn’t in charge.
LikeLike
I mean… what more development is necessary in Classic? Opening up TBC later? SynCaine’s fantasy of an alternate vanilla expansion?
LikeLike
I play on a German PvE realm where we have only 3 of them. The 3rd server was at “medium”, which today means you still can’t get a quest mob alive. Last weekend was the first time I’ve seen all 3 servers at full.
Classic is over 1 month old and is still growing. Most other MMOs released in the last decade are dead 1 month in.
This is huge. I don’t know exactly what they should do now, nor if it’s something I want. But I can’t imagine that a company will just shrug and move on with their dying product, neglecting the most likely most successful MMO release in a long time.
Releasing TBC is the cheap route, but it will start the same path of failure again and the Classic project will die with the re-release of WotLK. Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
An additional problem with TBC and later addons is that there isn’t a clear “no changes” patch. They destroyed every meaningful content with 2.4, they’ve completely reworked classes in WotLK, later patches even started without flying which was added at a later point. Everything in Vanilla was loved by the majority (of people interested in Classic), but things like flying or the LFD or token gear have a huge crowd of people who hate it. Whatever you pick you will have backlash, much more then Classic got.
Classic+ is the only way for them if they want to keep earning money longer then just until WotLK is re-released. But how it looks I don’t know. Could be a season thing like D3 (stupid) or completely new content in unused zones (why? We’ve all finished leveling by then) or new raids (Naxx gear is already way to powerful for level 60 content) or they could re-released TBC re-imagined with the Classic mindset. Basically “a crusade reborn”.
LikeLike
I quit Retail mid-Azshara’s Palace (haven’t completed the raid on heroic) mostly for time-management reasons, although had the game been an especially good time, it would have made the cut. Haven’t bothered with Classic, obviously, since my overwhelming feeling is been-there-done-that.
If I had to pick one thing to fix about Retail, it would be endgame itemisation/loot. If you get one of its many, many purple drops and then have to use third-party sites running a monte carlo simulation of different gear setups to determine whether that drop is actually an upgrade, then there is a problem: the Skinnerian reward-jolt is missing. The second change would be the integration of raider.io functionality (the past-performance ‘credit rating’ for being accepted into m+ and raid groups) into the game itself in a clear way. The third, a nod to the Classic levelling game, combine heirlooms into some kind of necklace with the total experience bonus preserved, freeing up gear slots to make loot acquisition while levelling a bit more meaningful.
LikeLike
Yeah, the devs hated Reforging because everyone had to run a program to figure out how best to reforge gear – including how reforging one piece might affect the reforging necessary on other pieces – and their eventual solution was… the current nonsense with randomized stats and abilities.
LikeLike