We Have Time on our sides.

So here we are, It feels to me like everyone is over Warlords, and pining for Legion already...

     This week was fairly O.K.  On Saturday we went in and downed the first three bosses in Hellfire Citadel again.  I am still back and forth on saving progress here, because I know there is a couple pieces of gear folks could get from the first few bosses... but I want to move forward more quickly.

     Sunday we picked up on Council, and even with odds against us we started working on the Council fight again.  We only had 3-4 pulls when the tank we pulled from the nether dropped and left us stranded with 45 minutes left to go.  Rather than pull someone in for half an hour by the time we found them, we called it there.  Of course... we made some nice progress on council!  We might have downed them too if we hadn't lost the guest tank.  He dropped without a word.  Next week I'm pretty sure we will have that fight down.

      Now, with Legion on the way, and despite my tone here it is on the way, we still have some time to wait.  Beta hadn't dropped yet, and with Blizzard the betas for World of Warcraft tend to last a long while.  Several months in most cases.  So, supposing that the Beta for Legion starts right after Blizzcon, in November, we are still probably looking at a March release if they move quickly.  That is guessing at a 3 month long beta and that Blizzard might be very far along in their process.  Most likely the Beta will be longer and we will be looking at June for the time the next expansion drops.  I could be wrong, feel free to tell me I'm wrong, but I feel it's unlikely if we don't see the Beta by Blizzcon that we won't see the next expansion sooner.

     So what to do in the mean time?  I know I plan on sticking to raiding schedule.  Other then that Denarin and Scorpiack are working on openly recruiting to our guild "Fear Itself" on Zangarmarsh.  My hope is to get some of these folks that get abandoned as guilds start to go elsewhere and unsubscribe.  I'm looking at this time of "dulldrums" to do some building.  I haven't had a lot of time myself lately, but I'm managing to log in for an hour here and there.

     Other things that you can do right now? Level your characters.  Build up the character you want to play next expansion.  If  that's your main, you can always get an alt ready.  If you want to try something new, now is the time to get working on it.  Unless it's a demon hunter, demon hunters will have to wait.

     You can work on old achievement and content.   I know on my pally I can solo anything form original wow to dragon soul fairly easily and quickly.  If you ever wanted a rare mount drop off one of those raids, go start farming it.  There are several sweet mounts that are hard to find.  Go get 'em.

     Level something new from scratch.  1-100 still takes a little while.  Go experience the story from the beginning again.  Or start a character on the opposite factions side.  If you haven't played all the starting areas since Cataclysm you are missing out on some great stories.  I recommend the Forsaken starting zone.  It's the reason I have some a desire to see Blizzard do something big with Lillian Voss....

     If you can't find anything to keep you interested, then unsubscribe and wait.  The game will be here when you get back.  I'm a die hard and probably won't unsubscribe unless I literally have no more time to play.  As long as I can at least do raids I'm here for the duration.  My honest guess is that with Wow down to 5+million subscriptions right now, that before Legion drops we will be down to 3.5-4 million.  Once again I don't think this is a death knell in any way for Wow, because when Legion comes back the players will too.  And I think we will have a resurgence that quiets the naysayers until the next subscription drop.  But that is my guess as well.  Since this is all speculation and opinion, I could very well be wrong.

Lag.

Things I'd like to see in Legion.

So, I was at a wedding in Vegas last weekend, so I didn't raid.

      Now here is one of those things that bear asking before the launch of a new expansion.  What have they promised, and what do you want to see that hasn't been mentioned.  And I'll admit it is kind of a hard question for me this time, because it feels like everything has been thrown into this expansion that we have asked for.  It has been called the fanservice expansion in a few descriptions I've read, and I'm not sure how far from the truth that is.  But here are some things anyway....

      I want to see more dynamic professions.  Warlords gave us a neutered down, generic path for our character's professions.  It largely felt like it didn't matter what profession your character had, because you could just get a vendor in your garrison to make whatever you needed for the most part.  The only exceptions seemed to be the items used to level up the ilevel on gear.  Gathering professions where just laughable.  Your garrison pretty much gave you everything you needed on this front.

    Class specific quests.  It feels like we may be getting some of these with the class halls, but I'm not holding my breath.  I have walked in to to many things only to find that we have been supplied with the same quests as everyone else, just with a different starting point, or different faction.  I am hoping that each class with have a series of quests unique to each.  So my Paladin and Death knight can have very different experiences.

     More involved story lines.  A lot of Warlords felt like we were watching events unfold, but not necessary to the story.  This was a departure from the feeling of places like, say Jade Forest where we did something, and felt like we were personally responsible for the consequences at the end.  In warlords despite being called general etc... it felt like we were watching others achieve thing for us, and we just happened to be helping a little.  In order to feel involved our characters need to feel like the driving force in the game.

     Involvement from characters in Warlords  or Mists, or.... Rather then having great character like Yrell disappear from this point on, I would love to see them pop in here and there as we move forward.  Even if it's just running into her while visiting the king on a quest that takes me back to Stormwind. I hate that we get invested in characters and storylines just to see them abandoned for the next big flavor.

     That is the list on my mind, what would you like to see in Legion when it drops?

Lag

Speed Versus Quality.

I have a ponderance about this....

     Saturday night and Sunday both went well.  (Yes, I'm combining this blurb this week)  Both nights we raided.  I had saved from the previous week so  it was all council fight both nights.  We still haven't downed the fight, but we are on the way there.  Now if everyone would watch the strategy for this upcoming week to help out.....

     This week I want to discuss one thing that occurred to me the other day.  Do you think that Blizzard's more quickly released content had effected the quality of the game?  Hear me out here.  I know I have often said that I think the more quickly released content has had a negative effect on the game itself.  It ramps up expectations and now content that would have been fine for a six month span until the next big patch is being hailed as old with in two months.  That is not what I'm discussing here though.  I want to look at quality.

    First of all, let's go to the first expansion to accomplish this.  Mists of Pandaria was fantastic all the way through.  We had scenerios, lot's of endgame content, and the story felt like it had a direction that our characters mattered in.  The big patches were release, Landfall, Throne of Thunder, Escalation, and Siege of Ogrimmar. That is four big patches in what was a great expansion.  However, let's be honest here.  Before Pandaria launched we had a year of Dragon Soul in which Blizzard had time to work on this content.  I honestly don't know how much was done before hand, but I feel a lot more prep time was given for everything we experienced.  That being said, look at the last couple of patches.  Escalation had a couple of scenarios. Siege had a raid and the Timeless Isle.  While siege was big, Timeless Isle I would argue is just reskinned content with a theme that could be explored and experienced within a couple of hours.  Yes there are rewards for sticking in and working there longer, but overall, there was no reason to hang out there unless you needed some gear or had time to kill.

      Now we are in Draenor, and I think it has been less successful.  The leveling game was fantastic, but after that there is little compelling reason to leave the garrison.  Yes there was in game content, with dungeons, weekly garrison quests, etc... but to me it never felt necessary.  I had out geared heroic dungeons in two or three weeks and never looked back.  Garrison quests took a couple hours a week, and then done.  There was no reason to go out and farm since my garrison gave me adequate amounts of ore and herbs.  I've never been a part of PVP so I haven't experienced the Ashran mess.  But by all accounts I've heard it's a mess.  The raiding has been good, but that is a small part of anyone's week for the most part.  Tanaan Jungle has been fun, but once again it was basically in game at launch, and they have just had to populate it with npcs.  We walked through a large part of it in the opening cinematic, so we know at least a large part of it was finished.

     So what happened?  I suspect that without as much time to develop content that we are getting the abridged version of things.  The story lines are there, but they aren't the great bits of unfolding we saw in Landfall, or Throne of Thunder.  Instead we get little bits that last about an hour a week if we are lucky.  To me it just feels like not as much time as been spent on keeping people engrossed.  And yes before you say it, I know they have added Mythic dungeons.  Which, once again I have no reason to run because in a week of grinding in Tanaan they had no gear for me.  I do like the timewalker dungeons, but those are once every three weeks for a weekend?  On top of that, both those and Mythic can all be chalked up to re-skinned content.

    So my question is, will this be what we are looking forward to in Legion? Is everything going to be short, condensed and abrupt?  Is the content feeling like this because of the speed of releasing content, or is there something else behind it.  I have to believe the speed is part of it.  I have no evidence other then my suspicions, but if there is another reason I'm not seeing it.  Blizzard has stated they have the largest group of people working on World of Warcraft then they ever have, so it can't be manpower.

     The other problem is that if speed of release is the issue here, there is no good cure.  I've often been told that you can't do something for a customer, unless you expect to be able to do it every time.  Because once you've done something once, it becomes that customer's expectation they will get it again.  You think flyinggate was bad, see what happens if Blizzard goes back and says they are spending more time on content, rather then releasing it quickly.

But that's my opinion, what's yours?

Lag