Cortyn views the next major patch of World of Warcraft with suspicion. Are all classes served “a homogeneous experience”?
In time for the complaint hour on Wednesday, Blizzard has released a new version of Patch 7.2 on the WoW servers along with an explanation. However, this does not reassure me, but raises new doubts. Is Blizzard running out of steam in the content frenzy?
I have no doubt that Patch 7.2 will be quite significant. According to Blizzard’s own statements, it will indeed be the “largest patch they have ever created for WoW”.
But I wonder: Is this big enough? With the launch of Legion, the bar was set quite high for World of Warcraft. Each class received its own campaign that tells a – sometimes more, sometimes less – important story about the attack of the Legion. Each class hall was unique and provided different bonuses.
With Patch 7.2, these contents will be further expanded: The class halls will receive new upgrades and the artifact weapons can be enhanced through a quest line.
But this is exactly where I start to worry. The upgrades for the class halls are identical for every class. Anyone can explore the same things – it just has a different name. This increasingly alienates me from the feeling of playing a distinct class when every hall receives the same upgrades.
We just reported today on the second negative point. To upgrade the artifact weapons, it is necessary to complete a quest line. In total, there are 7 different quest lines: one for tanks, two for healers, and four for DPS specializations.
And – without having seen the quests – I already claim that these quests cannot do justice to the individual weapons. Many weapons have personality or a long history that we have gradually learned about through artifact knowledge research. Throwing 4-5 weapons into one pot and imposing the same quest on them seems strange – as if there is no time to do justice to each weapon.
It is important to note that Patch 7.2 is still a long way off and the current version is not yet complete. Nevertheless, what is already “announced” makes me worry that Blizzard is running out of ideas regarding class stories and customization.
A final judgment can only be made after the release of 7.2 – probably sometime in the summer.
