Lead Game Director Ion Hazzikostas heavily implied in May 2015 that patch 6.2 wouldn’t be the final patch of the expansion.
“We’ve got plenty of more story to be told after this,” Hazzikostas says when asked whether patch 6.2 would be the last big content update for Warlords of Draenor. But Blizzard is also working hard to make sure players aren’t left waiting for new content in general.
This was not true.
In an interview just a few weeks later, fellow Blizzard lead Cory Stockton revealed the truth – there would be nothing after the upcoming patch. It wasn’t the mid-game update players expected, but the big finale. Aside from the shocking u-turn, the interview struck the playerbase as incredibly out of touch, with Cory being torn apart for statements like, “Overall we are happy with garrison feedback," and perhaps even worse,
“What kind of fucking bullshit is that, 6.1 should not even be called a fucking patch!”
[…]
“How fucking deluded is he? Being happy with how WoD turned out doesn’t give me any hope for the next expansion, which will probably be overpriced and only have one “big” patch. Pathetic.”
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“Do they communicate internally at all?”
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“Nicely done Corey, you just added in the final nail to the coffin.”
All this left 6.2 with a lot to live up to. But would it deliver?
‘The Fury of Hellfire’ released on 22nd June 2015. It was pretty good. Players were finally able to explore Tanaan Jungle, a tropical zone with a demonic aesthetic. Its raid, Hellfire Citadel, was long and complex. Players enjoyed it immensely.
But it served as the first raiding patch of the expansion, and was the only raid the game would get until the launch of the next expansion, 434 days away. It didn’t matter how good it was. No content could stay popular in those circumstances. Warlords went into a content drought (LINKS TO REDDIT) with an already-paltry amount to do.
“Every World of Warcraft expansion prior to Warlords of Draenor boasted either three or four content patches. Warlords settled for a mere two.
It gets worse. Those two content patches for Warlords of Draenor were some of the most anemic and disappointing in the game’s history.”
There was also the issue of cohesion. Most of the expansion lay on the cutting-room floor, and the writers had to cobble together what remained into a usable story. Perhaps that’s why many of the characters in Warlords have such promising beginnings, and such anticlimactic ends. Players often say that if Warlords had been finished, it could have been the greatest expansion ever, but we may never know.
The Farahlon patch was gone. The Ogre Continent never even made it off the ground. Shattrath City, a recreation of the most iconic location in Burning Crusade, had been planned to host a raid, but that had been cut, so it was left an empty shell that couldn’t be entered or interacted with.
The Draenei are pretty much locked out of their own capital city aren’t they? You think something as big of a deal as that would come up at some point in the story but no - we just kill some mobs on the perimeter and act like everything’s A-ok.”
If all that content had been completed, Warlords may have a very different legacy.
But setting all that aside, it may surprise you to know that the big controversy of 6.2 had nothing to do with the writing or the raid. It all came down to an achievement called ‘Draenor Pathfinder’. You see, ever since Blizzard introduced flying in Burning Crusade, they had been looking for an excuse to get rid of it.
Every time the idea was even mentioned, the community rose up in fury, and flying remained. For a long time, the solution had been to let players buy flying, but only after they had out-levelled most (or all) of the new content, so they were forced to play through it once on the ground. That came with the added benefit of making it feel so much sweeter when players could finally fly in those areas.
Prior to the release of 6.2, Ion announced that Warlords of Draenor would not have flying at all, and nor would any future expansions.
“At this point, we feel that outdoor gameplay in World of Warcraft is ultimately better without flying. We’re not going to be reintroducing the ability to fly in Draenor, and that’s kind of where we’re at going forward.”
And so, like clockwork, the outcry began.
“Keeping flight out of Draenor permanently is a truly, profoundly awful plan. Ugh.”
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“The no flying at max level was a disaster. No flying while leveling was great, everything he mentioned. But, no flying at max level made for a dead world, no reason to explore or play the content.”
This was a widely repeated idea.
“I’m fine with not flying while leveling, I’m fine with not flying till the first major content patch, I’m not fine with no flying ever.”
“I just quit WoW over this, on an account active since 2004.”
The user Muneravenmn put it succinctly.
“Wading through crap may be immersive, but it isn’t fun.”
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“if we lost flying it would be another hit against this game for me that would result in me no longer wanting to play. I don’t want to have something that takes 1 minute to reach turn into 5 minutes because I have to run. It would make no sense to bar flying forever, especially since they just released another flying mount with the expack.”
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“Just because flying is allowed, doesn’t mean you have to use it. If you like slowly walking around exploring in old zones, knock yourself out. No one is forcing you to fly.”
“For the time I spent after resubbing I found it great. I’ve played since vanilla and I forgot exactly how much the community lost when they added flying. It was great to have that back.”
A topic on the World of Warcraft forums about this announcement reached over 500 pages, and most of the responses were overwhelmingly negative.
Inevitably, Blizzard backpedalled. They went with a ‘compromise’ that united the playerbase – against them - the Pathfinder achievement. In order to get it, players had to explore every part of the continent, complete all the story quests (each zone had easily over a hundred), collect a hundred treasures, complete twelve daily quests, and grind reputation to ‘revered’ with all three of Tanaan Jungle’s new factions. The latter could take weeks. After doing all this, players could fly in Draenor.
Unless you were willing to dedicate days upon days to the achievement, you were out of luck. A lot of players went multiple expansions without being able to fly in Draenor. And the strangest thing is that Blizzard carried the system forward to future releases.
Writing for Massively Overpowered, Tyler Edwards summed up the mood of the community.
”I think about having to do another Pathfinder grind, and my heart just sinks. The story is what drove me away, but Pathfinder is what keeps me from coming back.
Meeting in the middle always sounds virtuous and reasonable, but Pathfinder is a great example of how a compromise isn’t always fair if the original ask was completely outrageous.
It’s an exhausting, tedious grind, and the worst thing about it is you don’t even get something new and awesome out of it. You just get to go back to using a feature that has been a pillar of the game for the large majority of its lifespan.
I firmly believe Pathfinder only exists as a way to artificially extend the length of content so as to earn more subscription dollars. It’s not as if Blizzard is above that sort of thing."
By forcing players to grind in so many ways, Blizzard guaranteed that everyone would encounter at least one mechanic they hated. Players who liked levelling dungeons were forced to go back and ensure hours of questing. Players who only cared about raids were forced to grind reputations.