@heqteur: What do I expect from a $39.99 game? If a developer is charging $39.99 for a game, they better have a lot of game there. That's more than NBA 2k25, Fallout 76, and No Man's Sky on today's Steam store.

You're acting like they released a free demo. They didn't. They are charging $39.99 for this, so it's more than fair to judge that its content is nearing completion. Otherwise it would have been a free demo.

@Dezuria: They're charging over $40 for it, so yes, it is out, and to charge that kind of money, you're suggesting that the game is at least 70% complete. It's not a "demo" exactly at that price. More should have been included.

This looks very much like developers who are going to take their $40 a pop, add a few more things to the game, spend the rest of the money on cars, and then release it in 2030.

@heqteur: They're charging $40 for the early access game. To charge that amount of money, almost up to a AAA price, you're going to have to deliver more than this.

Any time a developer charges that kind of money for a game, it's fair to expect that something is going to be in it worth playing for a few months.

@jenniferr-y: I'm not going to support either. I'm sick of time management games.

With voice technology and AI in the mix now, the ability to create more realistic human models and dramas, it's kind of hard to believe that over two decades after the Sims, all they could come up with was "Sims 4 with Grand Theft Auto V graphics."

Sims 4 and inZoi both are time management games. "Do this" and "Do that." There's very little organic "life" to it. In order to do that, you'd have to program every NPC character with a backstory, personality, and set of quirks that play out on-screen, not in a menu. You'd also have to add voice controls - the ability to approach in-game characters and say, "Who are you?" or "Want to go for a beer?" and get an answer.

Still over two decades after the Sims, the technology still doesn't exist to create this kind of game. For the most part, life is human interaction and drama. And without a real conversation system, the ability to talk to and go places with NPCs, you can't have a life Sim, only a time management game with neat little throwaway things to do for awhile.

Not one comment from World of Warcraft's 7.2 million subscribers? It's almost as if they're Microsoft bots and not real people.

@jenovaschilld: In my opinion, Dragonflight had great promise when it first came out. I loved the single player campaign and the flying mechanics. It's when I got into the Mythic+ that I really struggled. Some of that may be that I'm older/not as coordinated as I used to be, but I really struggled to play without mods (and that's how I play). They're probably ramping up difficulty thinking everyone uses mods, but man if you are not using mods, good luck. In BFA, I could be average with no mods, in Dragonflight, I quickly decided not to frustrate groups trying to learn things.

Where it really derailed was in the pacing of the campaigns. That was even worse in Shadowlands, not only were the single-player campaigns dumped all at once, but some of the areas were just painful to travel through (and so small compared to the glory days). I can't explain it, but in prime WOW, the campaigns were spaced apart really well. You knew exactly what you were supposed to be doing, and it felt like there was progression. With Shadowlands/Dragonflight campaigns, it felt like, "Do this! And now this! And this! Look over here at this, hey this now" with no natural progression.

I would love for them to be telling the truth about its current success. With the game being so old, coding probably being a nightmare, is it time to look ahead to a follow-up, even if it's just a complete graphics overhaul? I can't imagine Silvermoon City with modern graphics, I'd probably walk around it just to see it for a few months. I think it's a good half-decade away from when they should have updated the graphics (if that's even possible).

I'm with you. I hope the next expansion surprises everyone and lives up to its single-player campaign. It's a subscription-based game. Gamers need something to keep them in-world after the single player campaign is over.

Best is a strong word.

@stickemup: And that's what 2024 is. A whole lot of nothing. Just cookie cutter shows thrown out for the hell of it with investor dollars, and then bye. And yet their prices keep going up and up and up.