The WoW community received some interesting news yesterday, although not the Warlords of Draenor info they had hoped and prayed for but close enough. Holinka the PvP Designer for World of Warcraft announced that there would be another PvP season (Season 15) before Warlords of Draenor is launched.
This is great news for the PvP players of WoW as waiting for the prolonged season at the end of an Expansion can feel painful and cause interest to fall. This now means that the players will have something to keep them occupied while the Expansion comes to an end, well not all the players… The announcement sparks a lot of questions and speculation, does this mean WoD won’t be as soon as we had hoped? Will it turn out similar to Dragon Soul, where casual and PvE players had little to do during the next expansion wait? Or do the devs also have something planned even though they previously stated in the Warlords of Draenor Developer Panel at Blizzcon
“Another MoP patch would delay WoD, so Patch 5.5 isn’t going to happen. The entire team is working on WoD right now, so any more MoP content would slow down development.”
The majority of the WoW community expected WoD to drop in Q2 of 2014 meaning we would have played patch 5.4 for around 8 months. This seemed to be a comfortable wait, a little longer than most would like but acceptable without seeing a patch 5.5. But now with the next season announced things aren’t looking too promising for WoD within Q2 so that leaves two options, will we see a 5.5 patch with new PvE content although that would mean they are taking people from WoD development to do another MoP patch or do they plan on having 5.4 for 9+ months and just hope that the players will stick around or return for WoD.
Now after playing Blizzard games and following its potential rivals over the years, I’ve come to learn they don’t like to give their competition a chance if they have the opportunity to. The reason I bring this up is this year will see two new MMOs that have gained a decent amount of interest and for Blizzard to delay WoD without giving its player base an alternative wouldn’t seem like something they would do especially as they tend to learn well from their mistakes and wouldn’t give us another Dragon Soul repeat if it can be helped.
Personally I feel they have something planned in terms of WoD beta, instead of releasing a new patch for the current expansion why not make the next expansion be the thing that keeps people entertained? By this I think they will make WoD beta a lot more open than it has been before, doing large amounts of invites around the times the new MMO’s will launch. This seems the more tactical plan as it will build next Expansion hype, keep the current player based interested in the game and less likely to switch over to the competition without causing them to have to create content for an expansion that is due to end.
How would you feel about getting WoD beta access over a new patch, do you want a new patch instead and do you like the idea of an extra PvP season before the expansion ends? Let us know your thoughts on it all in the comments below!
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