The new patch is nothing but grinds for the sake of grinds and endless RNG upon RNG. It’s like Blizzard doesn’t even care any longer. Their new design philosophy is simply to send the player to do a bunch of grinds without any real rewards or interesting story behind it. Patch 8.3 is like a Skinner Box that they didn’t bother to disguise.
And before anyone says it, I understand WoW has always had grinds. But they were always cleverly designed to stay mostly hidden with enticing rewards at the end. And they had did have a well defined end before - not the endless grind we have now.
Like leveling for example. It was a grind to get max level but players could always look forward to getting cool new abilities or picking new talents along the way. Now? It’s nothing but endless leveling with no new talents or abilities. It’s leveling for the sake of leveling. Why level up if there’s no reward for doing so?
Alternatively, look at the dailies we have in 8.3. The dailies in previous expansions were pretty widely varied (from kissing frogs to rolling down the Great Wall of Panda), were usually progressive (unlocking more of the story line and new quests), had cool stuff happening in them (Bloodmoon in Draenor) or at the bare minimum offered amazing rewards like in Legion with a chance of getting legendaries and mountains of gold.
Now what do we have? Terrible rewards and quests that are about as interesting as watching paint dry. Could they not have boosted the rewards or taken the B.C to MOP format, where the quests were progressive and led to bosses and final quests?
Or even look at gear. Grinding for gear used to be a long slog but you always had a goal. Sure, you might run the same dungeon dozens of time but the dungeon was fun and you were excited to finally see the helm you wanted drop. Currently, I have no idea if the gear I get is good, and I doubt I could tell you the name of any a single. Most of the time I have to another site to see if it’s an upgrade since ilvl means virtually nothing. Players have to endlessly grind gear that may be an upgrade if you’re lucky. There’s no end to it, no goal.
And don’t even get me started on the cloak and the Heart of Azeroth. Those are literally grinding numbers for virtually nothing. Fun.
I really enjoy WoW, but this patch feels like a grind without Blizzard giving me any reason to grind. On many levels, it feels worse than even the BC daily quests, where at least there was interesting stuff at the end and they had pretty cool story lines. But now? Go find 3 rares? That’s not an interesting story and the reward sucks. And aside from rotating every few days, they never change and never progress.
How did the game play regress so far?
