Do you remember this? Back in the day when they tried to make hardcore gamers happy? The Wii this gen has been perhaps the most successful flop in history. Nintendo took a gimmick approach with this, clearly that more "casual" people would maybe consider, waggle. What happened though was the old R&D budget didn't allow them to pack power under the hood of the Wii. Most of it's games are appalling to look at. Many of them don't utilize the gimmick properly. And most don't have the depth expected by hardcore gamers. Not saying hardcore gamers don't want quirky games, but that's something easily covered by handhelds, cellphones, and XBLM and PSN can offer to us. The lack of power under the hood further crippled something even more critical for the hardcores, third-party relations. These people just don't want to put their high-powered hits on the machine. Be it because of the horribly clunky "standard controls", the wonky "bounding boxes", the lack of power to recreate physics and AI elements, or just that they don't want their game to look horrible. Nintendo has never been well liked by 3rd parties, for sure, but when even your incredible sales don't warrant developers AAA main stage titles, there's a problem here.
So, as many of us know, we're due to see Nintendo's "Next-Gen" system at this upcoming E3. Rumors flew from being more powerful than the current machines as in a proper generational jump, to being "slightly more powerful" than just the xbox 360. Of course it wouldn't be Nintendo now without some gimmick, and rumors show that they are looking to put a rather large touchscreen LDC into each control. Sure, this has many applications that can be fun like inventory management, character status, maps and so on, but remember this is going to impact cost of the hardware. Assuming now that a controller may cost around $10 in parts for a manufacturer, add in another $50+ to a controller is going to impact the final cost of the hardware. This expended budget per machine could have been used for buffing up the machine's power via CPU, GPU, or even RAM. Why do I know that Nintendo won't do all of these? Simple: They like money. They've been known to launch their machines at break-even or profitable day-1 pricing. Figure the regular history of machines, even going by the Wii, take it's launch price of $250, add in their cost of the fancy new controller, you're looking at a price-point that won't cater to the masses, and if the console doesn't have the punch, you can't expect hardcores who normally are the ones to drop their cash on $300-400 and beyond priced machines to run out and get this.
It's certainly possible that Nintendo really shot themselves in the foot here, and sent the next machine out to die here. Launching almost certainly a year sooner than both next-gen machines from Sony and MS, it's very safe to assume it's going to be outdated the minute those machines hit the shelves, or even when their specs are unveiled. The other issue is we'll KNOW what's under the next Nintendo machine, and by time it hits shelves, we'll be bound to know what Sony and MS are going to be bringing to us, both of which are known to love putting power in their boxes. The hardcore may just wait for their machines to hit, or see the specs before running out and buying the new Nintendo system. Also, if this system is outclassed power-wise, along with still not having a proper online network, 3rd parties may once again look past their offering, indirectly impacting if the hardcore go to said machine again.
So while this article is small, and quickly written, it's more of my personal speculations of what we'll see. Once we do see what we have, I'll certainly be able to go more in depth with my thoughts. But once again, I'm skeptical of Nintendo here, and sadly not expecting much just like the majority of people hitting the forums discussing this topic. Perhaps we'll see Nintendo return to glory, or they will once again forget about us, the people that made them what they are today, the hardcore gamer.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Change of the guard.
This gen has seen some amazing shifts. One area I find most interesting is how the tried and true top-guns have been dethroned in either experience, or in fan-hype. Remember when Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy were the get goes? Well that has seemed to have been shifting faster than a gladiator-quality Druid.
The more interesting thing is that Rockstar and Square-Enix haven't been left in the cold. Instead, they have the IPs that either surpassed the old guard, or have an IP that people are clamoring for. Red Dead Redemption is in my opinion, the best sandbox game to date. The story was enthralling, the content immense, the gameplay fun, and the different setting that wasn't done right in a long time maybe the punch the sandbox genre needed. Every Game of the Year award won by this title was well justified unlike the last GTA which rode a hype machine to any nomination it received I believe. Now it looks like Rockstar may have another killer title hitting, L.A. Noire. This game seems to have all of said values, but in addition it has a setting that wasn't every properly fleshed out before. In this game you follow the journey of an ordinary police officer, as they go from the beat, to getting a new shield moving into the crime department. This is another breath of fresh air to me as it's an interesting era. In a day and age of "Modern Warfares", this one is surely to stand out. It seems to be an untapped segment. Sure, games have gone dated before, like many RPGs with your staple of knights and armor along with slaying numerous Nazis, and they certainly have gone both current and future, but there's these untapped segments that stand out and will certainly garner the interest of millions.
Both of these titles have launched with their first iterations this gen, and both were met with some rather luke-warm receptions. People either expected more from these games or they were hindered by issues, and perhaps even more so, people may have finally been burnt out on them.
The more interesting thing is that Rockstar and Square-Enix haven't been left in the cold. Instead, they have the IPs that either surpassed the old guard, or have an IP that people are clamoring for. Red Dead Redemption is in my opinion, the best sandbox game to date. The story was enthralling, the content immense, the gameplay fun, and the different setting that wasn't done right in a long time maybe the punch the sandbox genre needed. Every Game of the Year award won by this title was well justified unlike the last GTA which rode a hype machine to any nomination it received I believe. Now it looks like Rockstar may have another killer title hitting, L.A. Noire. This game seems to have all of said values, but in addition it has a setting that wasn't every properly fleshed out before. In this game you follow the journey of an ordinary police officer, as they go from the beat, to getting a new shield moving into the crime department. This is another breath of fresh air to me as it's an interesting era. In a day and age of "Modern Warfares", this one is surely to stand out. It seems to be an untapped segment. Sure, games have gone dated before, like many RPGs with your staple of knights and armor along with slaying numerous Nazis, and they certainly have gone both current and future, but there's these untapped segments that stand out and will certainly garner the interest of millions.
So now onto Final Fantasy. Has this series finally reached it's burnout phase? It seems so, even by just looking over various forums and just hearing ramblings out in public. But Square-Enix isn't exactly left in the cold neither. Unfortunately, they haven't tapped their resource. Kingdom Hearts, yes Kingdom Hearts is one of those series that has a huge interest going for it. A truly unique setting combined with something that tugs at the old heartstrings, Disney characters and content, along with it's fun yet simple gameplay, is something people have been wanting more of. Unfortunately, Square-Enix has utterly failed it's fans here. Sure they released numerous "spin-offs" on portables, but people want the flagship console game. They want what we can expect from a full-blown console title, with fully fleshed-out story, tons of settings and content, and of course stunning visuals and audio. This is something neither the PSP nor 3DSi'phones can deliver. Perhaps the upcoming "NGP" or PSP2 can due to it's incredible hardware can, but let's be realistic here. Who wouldn't prefer watching a beautifully rendered animated film in which you control from your comfy couch while viewing on your massive TV, and hear it all in full-surround glory? I know I want this. Unfortunately though, Square-Enix is lost this gen, like many Japanese developers, who have all-but dropped the ball. It's not that people don't want those games anymore, it's just they're NOT there for us to drop cash on. But hey, this is a different topic I may discuss later on about.
Of course not all proven IPs have flopped and burnt out. Metal Gear Solid, SOCOM, Gran Turismo, Halo, Call of Duty(ies) have all been successful. But let's be honest here, who last gen would have said that Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy would have fallen from grace?
Monday, May 2, 2011
LOL, I get PAID to do this, can you believe it?!
Remember when there was a time where product reviews were legit? They'd heavily influence your purchases, as you trusted said source to give you the facts. Those days are long-gone. Let's take a look here once again via the gaming lifestyle. Here you used to be able to get a review stating replay value, quality of gameplay, hell, quality of the game overall. Well those days are gone.
Journalists these days, along with the sites they work for have been for the most part, turned into advertising companies. Not just all those annoying ads on their sites, but what they're reviewing itself can seemingly reserve buffs and nerfs pending on what the publisher/developer perhaps is offering them via revenue bucks. These people know how "reviews" can influence your very wallet, and it has shown in numerous manners. For example, it's been suspected, and in cases noted that developers receive bonuses based on the "Meta-Critic" rating. Meta Critic is a site known to gather reviews of games and such and post them up for consumers to have a one-stop research spot. General thought is, higher the score, better the product. But let's take a closer look shall we?
Call of Duty has become a juggernaut. It's the best selling franchise of this gen, and it's not losing any steam. There's always a ton of advertising to be had (sometimes this budget is 2 or more times the budget for developing the game itself), and if you give something a favorable review you "may be compensated" better, well, potentially. So, anyways, Call of Duty (CoD) Black Ops was the most recent release to discuss here. As we ALL very much know, this game was released on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. If you cared to glance over reviews you'd think the game was perfect, an adrenaline rush like you never experienced. You rush out to the midnight sale for the next iteration in the series, come home, tear that case open with whatever even remotely qualified object you can find, and throw it in. So you get in the game, expect to be amazed, battles about to begin, and here, we, g... Um, g... G... WTF. Connection error *insert long ass character code*. How can this be? I didn't see this mentioned. It's an online game, and as we all know all too well, things happen. After the game is finally up and running, hours, maybe days later, and here, we, go! 3, 2, 1, begin... to fall through an invisible hole. WTF take 2. Anyways, long story short, you get to finally get it to work, you notice crazy amounts of disconnections, wall glitches, imbalances, and worst of all, LAG. Online gamings snake in the garden of Eden. And these things are easily noticeable, and quite often. So why wasn't this mentioned?
The newest trend as we all know is "Exclusive First Reviews". These will assure you to get your site it's hits as it's one of the first articles and videos of the game in action. So how do you obtain said exclusives? Well in many cases it's suspect to be known that it's based on what SCORE your review gives said game. Score it higher, you win an earlier green light to publish, perhaps days or weeks in advance of the game's official response.
Games of higher hype thresholds will garner more interest. This can be from favorable preview, demos, or it could be the follow up to the wildly successful prior iteration of the series. Like I said, as we well know, Black Ops was plagued, riddled with problems. Disconnects, lag, screen tearing, graphical glitches, wall glitches, and cheaters. "Bu-bu-bu I only had a couple hours or days to test out this game, I didn't see these issues", yes, the "get out of jail free" card of gaming " journalism. Then WAIT to release accurate observations of what happens when the game goes live. If one version is noticeably worse than another, don't throw down the other famous tactic, the blanket statement "nearly identical, not gaming changing differences". This is simply non-sense. There are people who are subject to noticing these deficiencies more so than others, and some people suffer things like headaches even due to screen tearing and frame rate drops. Then again, some of these things are noticed in offline play and get "overlooked" or "written off".
Then you have other game reviews where some how, some way, the reviewer will complain about the lack of a feature, yet it's right there in front of them... usually by lesser backed titles. They'll mis-report number of players, content, bugs-glitches, and imbalances a lot of the time. We're only human, so people make mistakes, but journalists are not people many of the times as we've seen this gen, they're business people..
Bottom Line: Don't trust these reviewers as they lack integrity these days, being more of an extension of an advertising service, more than a "reader knowledge service". Take everything with a grain of salt. If you want to wait and see how things pan out, you're better off reading forums and seeing what other gamers have to say, which while not 100% trust worthy themselves for various reasons, but you have better odds of being able to form your own judgement from a wealth of info rather than a few "pre-approved" reviews. Buying day one is a risk, but if the prior game was incredible to you, that helps ease your mind for sure...
Journalists these days, along with the sites they work for have been for the most part, turned into advertising companies. Not just all those annoying ads on their sites, but what they're reviewing itself can seemingly reserve buffs and nerfs pending on what the publisher/developer perhaps is offering them via revenue bucks. These people know how "reviews" can influence your very wallet, and it has shown in numerous manners. For example, it's been suspected, and in cases noted that developers receive bonuses based on the "Meta-Critic" rating. Meta Critic is a site known to gather reviews of games and such and post them up for consumers to have a one-stop research spot. General thought is, higher the score, better the product. But let's take a closer look shall we?
Call of Duty has become a juggernaut. It's the best selling franchise of this gen, and it's not losing any steam. There's always a ton of advertising to be had (sometimes this budget is 2 or more times the budget for developing the game itself), and if you give something a favorable review you "may be compensated" better, well, potentially. So, anyways, Call of Duty (CoD) Black Ops was the most recent release to discuss here. As we ALL very much know, this game was released on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. If you cared to glance over reviews you'd think the game was perfect, an adrenaline rush like you never experienced. You rush out to the midnight sale for the next iteration in the series, come home, tear that case open with whatever even remotely qualified object you can find, and throw it in. So you get in the game, expect to be amazed, battles about to begin, and here, we, g... Um, g... G... WTF. Connection error *insert long ass character code*. How can this be? I didn't see this mentioned. It's an online game, and as we all know all too well, things happen. After the game is finally up and running, hours, maybe days later, and here, we, go! 3, 2, 1, begin... to fall through an invisible hole. WTF take 2. Anyways, long story short, you get to finally get it to work, you notice crazy amounts of disconnections, wall glitches, imbalances, and worst of all, LAG. Online gamings snake in the garden of Eden. And these things are easily noticeable, and quite often. So why wasn't this mentioned?
The newest trend as we all know is "Exclusive First Reviews". These will assure you to get your site it's hits as it's one of the first articles and videos of the game in action. So how do you obtain said exclusives? Well in many cases it's suspect to be known that it's based on what SCORE your review gives said game. Score it higher, you win an earlier green light to publish, perhaps days or weeks in advance of the game's official response.
Games of higher hype thresholds will garner more interest. This can be from favorable preview, demos, or it could be the follow up to the wildly successful prior iteration of the series. Like I said, as we well know, Black Ops was plagued, riddled with problems. Disconnects, lag, screen tearing, graphical glitches, wall glitches, and cheaters. "Bu-bu-bu I only had a couple hours or days to test out this game, I didn't see these issues", yes, the "get out of jail free" card of gaming " journalism. Then WAIT to release accurate observations of what happens when the game goes live. If one version is noticeably worse than another, don't throw down the other famous tactic, the blanket statement "nearly identical, not gaming changing differences". This is simply non-sense. There are people who are subject to noticing these deficiencies more so than others, and some people suffer things like headaches even due to screen tearing and frame rate drops. Then again, some of these things are noticed in offline play and get "overlooked" or "written off".
Then you have other game reviews where some how, some way, the reviewer will complain about the lack of a feature, yet it's right there in front of them... usually by lesser backed titles. They'll mis-report number of players, content, bugs-glitches, and imbalances a lot of the time. We're only human, so people make mistakes, but journalists are not people many of the times as we've seen this gen, they're business people..
Bottom Line: Don't trust these reviewers as they lack integrity these days, being more of an extension of an advertising service, more than a "reader knowledge service". Take everything with a grain of salt. If you want to wait and see how things pan out, you're better off reading forums and seeing what other gamers have to say, which while not 100% trust worthy themselves for various reasons, but you have better odds of being able to form your own judgement from a wealth of info rather than a few "pre-approved" reviews. Buying day one is a risk, but if the prior game was incredible to you, that helps ease your mind for sure...
All your personal information belong to us...
Online gaming and services have really came a long way. They made life and such more convenient for many of us. Want to rent a movie? Click. Want to buy a game? Click. Want to buy some other type of goods/service? Click, click, click. Things are just a click away for us for goods, for businesses to sell their goods and products, and for thieves.
PSN (Sony's Playstation Network) which is utilized to play multiplayer games online, view content, purchase goods/service has well knowingly been hacked. Be it an inside job, or something more along the traditional lines, who knows. But this is causing some major pains for many people. You see, in order to utilize the PSN you're required to enter a wealth of your personal information. Address, full name, and most shockingly, if you want the ease of use, your credit card information for purchases. So when security is breeched, there's cause for alarm amongst companies, governments that take part in lawing said grounds, and most importantly, Joe Normal who has his information downloaded and filed. While in this case they have not supposedly gotten the "security code" on the cards, it's still very nerving. Worst case scenario is you're potentially in danger of Identity Theft, and loss of your hard-earned cash.
Sony is taking a beating over this. They didn't communicate the severity of this ASAP which is a major screw up on their part, but they did take appropriate action in taking everyone offline to restore security. Many people claim they won't trust Sony ever again over this debacle, and it has already cost them a fortune in remedies to the situation, as well as loss of sales. But people, we need to look at the bigger picture. This isn't the first time a compromise has happened like this, and it most certainly will not be the last. In fact, how these things are escalating, it's only a matter of time before Microsoft, Amazon, and even your banks are targeted knowing they can get into there. This is of major alarm for not just gamers here people, this is of alarm to anyone who uses the luxuries of ease of use that online services offer us.
This brings up something that has to change here...
Bottom Line: People will be more leery than ever to use these services. It's not bound to a simple "gamer" problem, it can happen to any service. While it's easy to say "things should have been locked down better", the truth of this is that things were most likely incredibly secure, but one needs to remember there will always be someone smarter than the last person to touch something. Meaning there's potential for nearly everything we know to compromised if targeted. While some hackers are out there to get a thrill out of it as a hobby, just to SEE if they can get in there, there are many people out there with malicious intent to do things to cripple a company, or hurt people they never met.
The problem here is that companies want to know too much of our information. You'll be asked for all this information just to activate a warranty, or even just to view media content online, no option to even purchase any goods/services. This has to stop, these companies have bitten far more off than they can chew in that each time they think they're protecting you and especially themselves, they're actually raising your own risk to have your personal life compromised. It's a shame that with all this new technology and services to make our lives easier, it also creates a higher potential to hurt us far worse. Things need to change, and now.
PSN (Sony's Playstation Network) which is utilized to play multiplayer games online, view content, purchase goods/service has well knowingly been hacked. Be it an inside job, or something more along the traditional lines, who knows. But this is causing some major pains for many people. You see, in order to utilize the PSN you're required to enter a wealth of your personal information. Address, full name, and most shockingly, if you want the ease of use, your credit card information for purchases. So when security is breeched, there's cause for alarm amongst companies, governments that take part in lawing said grounds, and most importantly, Joe Normal who has his information downloaded and filed. While in this case they have not supposedly gotten the "security code" on the cards, it's still very nerving. Worst case scenario is you're potentially in danger of Identity Theft, and loss of your hard-earned cash.
Sony is taking a beating over this. They didn't communicate the severity of this ASAP which is a major screw up on their part, but they did take appropriate action in taking everyone offline to restore security. Many people claim they won't trust Sony ever again over this debacle, and it has already cost them a fortune in remedies to the situation, as well as loss of sales. But people, we need to look at the bigger picture. This isn't the first time a compromise has happened like this, and it most certainly will not be the last. In fact, how these things are escalating, it's only a matter of time before Microsoft, Amazon, and even your banks are targeted knowing they can get into there. This is of major alarm for not just gamers here people, this is of alarm to anyone who uses the luxuries of ease of use that online services offer us.
This brings up something that has to change here...
Bottom Line: People will be more leery than ever to use these services. It's not bound to a simple "gamer" problem, it can happen to any service. While it's easy to say "things should have been locked down better", the truth of this is that things were most likely incredibly secure, but one needs to remember there will always be someone smarter than the last person to touch something. Meaning there's potential for nearly everything we know to compromised if targeted. While some hackers are out there to get a thrill out of it as a hobby, just to SEE if they can get in there, there are many people out there with malicious intent to do things to cripple a company, or hurt people they never met.
The problem here is that companies want to know too much of our information. You'll be asked for all this information just to activate a warranty, or even just to view media content online, no option to even purchase any goods/services. This has to stop, these companies have bitten far more off than they can chew in that each time they think they're protecting you and especially themselves, they're actually raising your own risk to have your personal life compromised. It's a shame that with all this new technology and services to make our lives easier, it also creates a higher potential to hurt us far worse. Things need to change, and now.
Stockholm Syndrome, it's not just for criminal activity captives anymore!
Blizzard Entertainment, the juggernaut behind titles such as Star Crafts, Warcrafts, Diablos, and of course World of Warcraft. It was easy to see how and why people developed an affection for these guys back in the day. They listened to their fans, they went the extra mile, and most importantly they put quality greatly above quantity. Their IPs were killer, polished, packed with content, received much support, and sported some of the best "gameplay" you can find in gaming. So what am I getting at here you're probably wondering? Here's a brief bloggin' of what my observations have thus far been...
Their golden cash cow, World of Warcraft, the most successful MMO of all time. It has devoured the free time, and in cases, the lives of many people. It was a great time killer for myself, and it was a great value for the time of amusement I got out of it when compared to the monthly subscription fees. But things have been for the better, but for more impact, getting far worse. As we know from their investor reports and such, the game has an incredible surplus of income over it's "operating costs", yet many people have been upset with what they have been getting in return. Slower than ever content patches (adjusted expectations due to current time frames, and financial ability), delays of content due to features no one asked for and in which have little impact to the experience, and the dreaded "recycled" content and assets.
"I'm here for the stats, don't care about looks yo", that's fine and dandy, but what this conflicts is with the masses of people who have been in various ways begging to Blizzard to allow them to "customize" their characters, make them individuals, unique, stand out from the pack. While anyone can obtain this on the respected class, at least it belongs to said class. "Recolors" is another dirty word, and it applies not only to armor, but the majority of weapons to be found in the game.
Players have been asking for more customizable options, like those found in the vast majority of other MMOs. Dyes would allow you to customize the color of your armors, new-more in depth character physical design capabilities would allow you to change your height, weight, stature.
Blizzard knows that people want this, thus their half-hearted barber shops to change your hairstyle, to one of those already in game on another race, and very limited in selection at that. "New Dances" was a bullet-point to their advertising of the Wrath expansion, and it didn't materialize. "It wasn't to their standards, and we didn't think people really cared" was their write off. In reality, they'd have to do new animations for each race, and that costs money.
So what has Blizzard been working on? How about "Mobile Guild Chat"? Which is conveniently packaged into a premium-pay-to-use package, which includes the mobile auction house, which not many people wanted. How about pay-real-money for mounts and pets?
So why the Stockholm Syndrome reference? This is the easiest, and shortest explanation to be had here: Blizzard over the top fans defend every little thing they do. They literally attack posts and comments against Blizzard. Worst of all, the defending of Blizzard is due in large part to why the game is in the state it currently sits. They have to see these opinions and issues are real, they just have to, yet they ignore them, and say "Nice try Blizzard, maybe next time you'll get them, and make them happy", "give them a break, it's a lot of work", and "Thank you sir, may I have another"? Captives who allowed themselves to be brainwashed, and defend their captors.
TLDR? Well let me sum it up in these next two paragraphs. The quality of WoW has dropped. Blizzard has been more focused on making money than the people who fill the coffers. Players have been asking for many features to make their experiences fully, yet Blizzard denies them, and gives them what they believe is best for them, and seemingly their own bank-books. The best part is reading Dev QAs. Blizzard filters out the hard questions all the time, writing them off as "trolls", or will give a vague answer to a weak question. Why even have these then? This article can go on much more in depth explaining even more problems and concerns, but this article is too long as it sits.
Their golden cash cow, World of Warcraft, the most successful MMO of all time. It has devoured the free time, and in cases, the lives of many people. It was a great time killer for myself, and it was a great value for the time of amusement I got out of it when compared to the monthly subscription fees. But things have been for the better, but for more impact, getting far worse. As we know from their investor reports and such, the game has an incredible surplus of income over it's "operating costs", yet many people have been upset with what they have been getting in return. Slower than ever content patches (adjusted expectations due to current time frames, and financial ability), delays of content due to features no one asked for and in which have little impact to the experience, and the dreaded "recycled" content and assets.
Remember when Blizzard stated, "Tier armor is something everyone should strive for, not only is it very powerful with stats and bonuses, but it's what makes your class stand out, and gives you individuality". As it has been going on now for a few years, what has happened is that Blizzard has been recycling their Tier armor models as "non-set" pieces of loot that drop from various bosses or perhaps obtainable by vendors. So now you TOO can look like the class you want even though you didn't put in the work of said class! Basically, what Blizzard does is re-uses the art from said set and recolors it (most of the time) to save themselves time and money, cutting corners here to just get out some filler.
"I'm here for the stats, don't care about looks yo", that's fine and dandy, but what this conflicts is with the masses of people who have been in various ways begging to Blizzard to allow them to "customize" their characters, make them individuals, unique, stand out from the pack. While anyone can obtain this on the respected class, at least it belongs to said class. "Recolors" is another dirty word, and it applies not only to armor, but the majority of weapons to be found in the game.
Players have been asking for more customizable options, like those found in the vast majority of other MMOs. Dyes would allow you to customize the color of your armors, new-more in depth character physical design capabilities would allow you to change your height, weight, stature.
Blizzard knows that people want this, thus their half-hearted barber shops to change your hairstyle, to one of those already in game on another race, and very limited in selection at that. "New Dances" was a bullet-point to their advertising of the Wrath expansion, and it didn't materialize. "It wasn't to their standards, and we didn't think people really cared" was their write off. In reality, they'd have to do new animations for each race, and that costs money.
So where is this pile of money that WoW makes in which Scrooge McDuck would be happy to swim through? To other projects. It has been confirmed by Blizzard themselves that their prior "A-team", those who made WoW great for players, have been pulled and placed full time on project "Titan", their new MMO due out in 2025. What we're left with are people who have been there for a limited time, and it shows in their current art and content quality. Art is subjective of course, but when you release a patch that has recycled content from Vanilla and TBC era WoW, and it takes months longer than expected to launch, it better be bug free. Unfortunately, that was not the case, and patch day and following days frustrated players with various game-breaking bugs that ruined what "hype" was generated.
So what has Blizzard been working on? How about "Mobile Guild Chat"? Which is conveniently packaged into a premium-pay-to-use package, which includes the mobile auction house, which not many people wanted. How about pay-real-money for mounts and pets?
So why the Stockholm Syndrome reference? This is the easiest, and shortest explanation to be had here: Blizzard over the top fans defend every little thing they do. They literally attack posts and comments against Blizzard. Worst of all, the defending of Blizzard is due in large part to why the game is in the state it currently sits. They have to see these opinions and issues are real, they just have to, yet they ignore them, and say "Nice try Blizzard, maybe next time you'll get them, and make them happy", "give them a break, it's a lot of work", and "Thank you sir, may I have another"? Captives who allowed themselves to be brainwashed, and defend their captors.
TLDR? Well let me sum it up in these next two paragraphs. The quality of WoW has dropped. Blizzard has been more focused on making money than the people who fill the coffers. Players have been asking for many features to make their experiences fully, yet Blizzard denies them, and gives them what they believe is best for them, and seemingly their own bank-books. The best part is reading Dev QAs. Blizzard filters out the hard questions all the time, writing them off as "trolls", or will give a vague answer to a weak question. Why even have these then? This article can go on much more in depth explaining even more problems and concerns, but this article is too long as it sits.
Bottom Line: I have to say those upset with the state of WoW, that they feel shortchanged, are right. Sure, they can just walk away like many have, but why not express opinion and hope it's heard so that your favorite game becomes better, or perhaps, back up to par?
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