The copium levels around 7.4 are honestly impressive, as usual. It’s like every time the game hits a big patch, the loud “Yoshi-P can do no wrong” fanclub collectively decides that this is the patch that’s going to save everything. We’ve been doing this dance for years now.
You’re going to log in, pretend everything is fine and “saved,” and within one week fine, I’ll be generous within two weeks, you’re not logging back in anymore and the game is right back to its boring, stale state.
Don’t get me wrong 7.4 has some cute changes, but that’s as far as it goes. Acting like it’s going to fundamentally fix the deeper issues with Dawntrail shows a certain detachment from reality.
The core problem isn’t a lack of things to do. It’s that almost everything funnels into the exact same formula: log in, do the patch content, clear it in a week or two, then wait. If you’re not raiding, the game increasingly feels like a checklist MMO where the long-term systems barely evolve. If you are raiding, the rest of this patch just feels like filler padded out with copium.
Music is still top tier, sure. But working with a drummer from Rage Against the Machine fixes… what exactly? No one is saying it isn’t a cool collaboration, but it doesn’t fix Dawntrail’s problems. Pretending that compensating with collaborations will somehow last forever doesn’t change the fact that the underlying gameplay loop remains largely unchanged.
A patch can’t fix direction. It can’t undo years of design philosophy that prioritizes predictability, especially when the dev team has grown comfortable knowing the loud minority will accept almost anything presented to them.
So yes, enjoy 7.4 for what it is. But maybe we stop pretending it’s some kind of reset button. The game isn’t “dead,” but it’s also not being saved by this patch. If anything, it just keeps highlighting how players keep getting the short end of the stick while development time goes into things no one really asked for.
By the way the all jobs can wear anything glamour thingie was turned down over and over again (check previous QA from years ago) but now they decided to fix it when the ship has already sailed.
The contradictions and hypocrisy are there but the community loves to just ignore it.
Continue reading...
You’re going to log in, pretend everything is fine and “saved,” and within one week fine, I’ll be generous within two weeks, you’re not logging back in anymore and the game is right back to its boring, stale state.
Don’t get me wrong 7.4 has some cute changes, but that’s as far as it goes. Acting like it’s going to fundamentally fix the deeper issues with Dawntrail shows a certain detachment from reality.
The core problem isn’t a lack of things to do. It’s that almost everything funnels into the exact same formula: log in, do the patch content, clear it in a week or two, then wait. If you’re not raiding, the game increasingly feels like a checklist MMO where the long-term systems barely evolve. If you are raiding, the rest of this patch just feels like filler padded out with copium.
Music is still top tier, sure. But working with a drummer from Rage Against the Machine fixes… what exactly? No one is saying it isn’t a cool collaboration, but it doesn’t fix Dawntrail’s problems. Pretending that compensating with collaborations will somehow last forever doesn’t change the fact that the underlying gameplay loop remains largely unchanged.
A patch can’t fix direction. It can’t undo years of design philosophy that prioritizes predictability, especially when the dev team has grown comfortable knowing the loud minority will accept almost anything presented to them.
So yes, enjoy 7.4 for what it is. But maybe we stop pretending it’s some kind of reset button. The game isn’t “dead,” but it’s also not being saved by this patch. If anything, it just keeps highlighting how players keep getting the short end of the stick while development time goes into things no one really asked for.
By the way the all jobs can wear anything glamour thingie was turned down over and over again (check previous QA from years ago) but now they decided to fix it when the ship has already sailed.
The contradictions and hypocrisy are there but the community loves to just ignore it.
Continue reading...