Time.
Gates.
It's the latest craze among critics of the World of Warcraft: Legion.
This sort of pacing isn't new; it's been around since some of the earliest days of
WoW, but somehow, maybe with thanks to echo chambers within various corners of the internet,
it's become this sudden phenomenon.
Somehow, now it's unacceptable that the narrative of WoW's story is staged in episodic
pieces.
Somehow, now players find it better to have content front loaded and forced down their
throats.
Somehow, the lessons Blizzard has learned from over 12 years of producing the World
of Warcraft, the data and surveys and trials and errors and success and failures don't
matter.
7.2 has been out, and for many vocal players, the 'largest patch ever' is nothing more
than another boast and future meme.
But I have a different perspective, and an opinion to offer.
Hey it's Soul, bringing to you to the Word of Warcraft.
Today I'm going to go over this most recent content deployment, basically Blizzard's
approach to how they gave us things to do, and how we're told to digest it.
As always let's not pretend I'm on a pedestal; I'm not a designer.
I'm just a fan.
I've been playing long enough to know that 7.2 is a very, very different patch from previous
ones.
The talk about time gating and whatever might have legs but is a bit short sighted.
On the other hand Blizzard has done a poor job of communicating just what this patch
means to them and to players.
In other words, in my opinion, Blizzard has delivered on their promise to bring players
a constant flow of activities and content.
But they've screwed up on managing players' expectations with poor messaging, leading
to the false perceptions of waiting and time gating.
My hopes are that I can give my perspective and help you understand what's going on.
And I could be wrong.
Oh well.
The days and weeks before the launch of 7.2 was like any other pre-launch.
Anxious players were preparing themselves for the upcoming storm.
Content creators and writers were busily working at producing guides and tips and walkthroughs
to help these players along.
Economists guesstimated the incoming disruption of in game and WoW Token markets.
When the guns fired off on US realms and the patch was deployed earlier than anticipated,
the flood gates opened, and like dogs being let out of a cage, WoW's most fervent players
were let loose upon the Broken Shore.
But when the dust settled and our foothold was established, we asked, what's next?
When are the assaults coming?
When can I upgrade my Order Hall talents?
Where's the content?
What came afterward was an amalgam of some wonder, confusion, frustration, anger, anxiety,
and other emotions that summed up to a sobering conclusion.
Blizzard must have gone wrong with this patch.
Over the next week or so, while taking care of the numerous patch bugs that are of the
usual fare, Blizzard finally but again poorly clarified just how this patch launch was supposed
to go, some of which by the way wasn't even new information, just information that many
players forgot within the maelstrom of other news, updates, notes, tweets, posts and live
Q&As.
As it turns out, Blizzard's plan to slowly release 7.2 content over time was both an
understatement, and an entirely intentional endeavor on their part.
The order hall campaign wasn't just an 11 week long questline but an engine of content
deployment that helped create a natural feeling of advancement within the Legion story.
Of course on top of that was a new dungeon, the additions of heroic and mythic and keystone
and hell, pet dungeons, increased difficulty throughout most content types, a bunch of
new world quests and progression for our weapons and quality of life changes...but that didn't
seem to matter to a lot of people.
Vocal players wanted something new to do right now, and doing more of the same, even with
a refresh, wasn't cutting it.
This is 7.2.
This isn't a small patch like 7.1.5, and 7.1 was done and over with many moons ago.
This was the big patch.
THE patch.
But it hasn't delivered.
At least not yet.
But again that didn't seem to matter.
That hasn't stemmed the anger and frustration of waiting for these arbitrary time gates,
as they call them.
This is catering to casuals, some say.
This is a disrespect to players who want to play their game in the manner and pace of
their choosing.
To a more harsh critic, 7.2 is a disaster compared to most other major patches.
Players are accustomed to a veritable jackhammer of content invading your personal space for
days or weeks at a time, getting players into a high of game consumption and content binging
until valor points and rep and timeless coins are spilling out of our ears.
7.2 by contrast, is what they call a series of gates.
So just what was Blizzard thinking with this sort of deployment approach?
We've got to go back to BlizzCon 2016 and focus on a key phrase that isn't "Class
Fantasy."
Instead it's the "steady stream of content" that Ion Hazzikostas and his team are pushing
in Legion.
And it's shown in ways that haven't been so heavily practiced in past expansions.
And it's subtle.
Take the Nighthold raid for example.
Early on the public was under the impression that it'd be part of a multi-raid, initial
tier for Legion.
It was, though it turned out that the Nighthold would be released nearly half a year later,
even though data from the raid was already prepared for deployment.
The Nighthold was just sitting in players' hard drives for months, waiting to be used
until the time was right.
Instead of the Nighthold raid we were surprised with the inclusion of the Karazhan dungeon
and Trial of Valor raid.
Think what you will of how they turned out, but the point is that Legion wasn't simply
frontloaded with the initial raid tier.
This tier took a while, and as of this recording, we're still on this first tier, if we can
still even call it that.
Let's look at the new content platforms that came with Legion.
World quests and Keystone dungeons are two examples of what I've called content platforms
that can be modified and upgraded over time to keep them relevant indefinitely.
And they have.
Then throw in scalable rewards, level scaling and this fangled item level scaling and you
have a nearly complete package of activities and systems to support continued updates to
gameplay even if absolutely no new activities are introduced.
In other words, Blizzard can use these platforms to feel less pressured to make brand new content
because current content is still useful.
Feel free to disagree with that approach out of the principle that game designers should
always seek to create new and fun things, but it's my strong opinion that regardless,
content platforms are smart ways to keep players engaged.
I agree that Blizzard ought to continue to innovate and create, not just reiterate.
But it's impossible and exhausting to put Blizzard in a prison of just developing one
new thing after another after another without evolving from what may have been good ideas.
Making a new battleground, for example, by combining elements of old battlegrounds and
smashing them together isn't automatically a brilliant idea.
Taking a classic battleground and dressing it up with subtle effects to freshen the look
and feel isn't either, but it's certainly less risky and has opportunities to grow.
Or to give up and move onto other things with fewer losses.
Blizzard has been laying down the elements of Legion like building a train track, one
rail in front of the other, keeping a pace that's doing its best to avoid long gaps
of having nothing to do.
Today's players are both empowered and imprisoned to enjoy or burden themselves with Legion's
many activities that are objectively relevant but subjectively entertaining.
How long was it until Warlords of Draenor dungeons lost relevance until Mythic dungeons
came along?
At what point did you stop doing dailies in Cataclysm?
Which brings us back to 7.2, and Blizzard's failure to communicate what 7.2 was really
meant to be.
It was sold to players as a huge patch, and it might be.
There's a lot going on and there's a lot to experience both today and in the coming
months with the campaign and raid and god knows what else is in the data.
But it shouldn't have been hyped the way it was.
It shouldn't have had a trailer released, at least not yet.
Maybe, to help players understand, it shouldn't have been called 7.2, maybe it should have
been called 7.1.9, because this patch is what it is, a game update.
A data dump.
Major patch revisions are associated with the centerpiece of the ongoing story.
7.2 brings us the Tomb of Sargeras, just not today; it will in a few months.
Right now on top of what we have is a revision of existing activities and content and features
that I'd argue is welcome but not very exciting.
It's just a patch.
Blizzard should have slowly and meaningfully clarified what 7.2 was going to be, while
carefully explaining the very meaning of what a "steady flow of content" means to the
players.
That too means very different things, if you look at the complaints on the forums and the
posts and the YouTubes.
Blizzard was not kidding about that phrase.
It started with the initial delivery of Legion content, to the month leading to the Emerald
Nightmare, to the attunements to Karazhan and the Trial of Valor, to the multi week
campaign leading up to the Nighthold, and finally finishing the Balance of Power questline,
to the now multi week campaign leading up to the Tomb of Sargeras, and all the filler
content inbetween that, I should had, has been revisited and refined over time.
Up until Legion, content delivery has mostly been about replacing the old with the new,
and offering ways to transition players through catchup mechanisms we're already familiar
with.
Legion's content delivery is mostly about stacking these many activities with each patch,
and making sure that as players move between one activity and another, everything is updated
to ensure that nothing is too trivial, even for powerful players.
This continued relevance means that releases of newer content like say, a whole zone, have
to be weighed carefully with everything that already exists.
The older paradigm of funneling players away from the old content and towards the Molten
Front or Timeless Isle or Tanaan Jungle doesn't apply here to the Broken Shore.
This isn't that kind of patch.
This isn't that kind of expansion.
It's why players are split about their enjoyment of the delivery of 7.2 so far.
One side of players says there's nothing to do but wait, while the other side points
out the grind that has no end.
Somewhere inbetween that is the rest of us.
7.2 hasn't quite missed the mark on its overall delivery.
We can't say that with certainty until the final boss of the Tomb of Sargeras is defeated.
But Blizzard missed the mark entirely with the messaging.
If Blizzard wants to continue with this style of content delivery, they've got to understand,
and more importantly help their players understand that WoW content is no longer centered around
the patch it's released under, but the merits of the content itself.
One day, if and when Blizzard gets this right, a patch like 7.2 will deploy with little fanfare
aside from the immediate systems and class changes, almost like how systems pre-patches
are launched before an expansion's launch.
From there the trailers and the hype will come from the actual release dates of raid
and story content.
The Tomb of Sargeras trailer is released several weeks before the raid actually launches, not
the patch it sits on.
That would be a methodology that better controls player expectations while preserving what
is, in my opinion, a smart delivery system that keeps players engaged.
This is definitely a lesson for Blizzard to learn.
If they do, players will both understand and accept this approach without even realizing
it, and they can instead focus on how much Nomi still sucks.
Share your thoughts, and Stay Breezy.
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