Blizzard is doing exactly what Vivendi/Activision wants. Getting evey dollar out of a maturing title that will be hitting its 20-year anniversary in four years.
I know. I should not be surprised however itâs sad to see non the less. Like many I love wow and want to see it thrive. Want the best for it.
I hate to see it cheapened like this makes meh sad
Its already thrived. Anything in the modern gaming culture that somehow still is standing after 10 years is a miracle.
Best way I can describe wow right now is like when you are little and someone puts your most hated vile food that makes you gag on the same plate as your favorite dish you would like to just eat your favorite food but itâs mixed in and you canât separate it. You either eat it and gag or Forgo the meal all together.
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Whatâs scary is this: 8.3 is supposed to be a sample of the changes coming to Shadowbland.
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So hereâs my âalt-friendlyâ comment fwiw:
One of the biggest gripes is being required to repeat content - both content that is unrelated to their interests/goals and content that is designed as âintroduction to new systems.â Some examples of this:
- Having to do PVP to get azerite essences that are valuable in PVE and vice versa. This is just patently stupid.
- Having to do the same introduction to Nazjatar, benthic system, follower system, crucible of flames upgrades, etc, just to get access to followers and missions, azerite essences, world quests, etc.
- Having to do the same introduction to the cloak system (and scenarios) just to get access to removing corruption from items - even if you donât want to do horrific visions - but also if you want to do anything related to the invasions (even casually).
- None of these are difficult to complete though they do take time (a few hours here, an hour plus a timegate there, throw in a few scenarios, a dash of âgo here, go here, go here,â etc). The problem is they are overly tedious to repeat and since they are introducing new systems that players have already become acquainted with previously, they really serve no purpose to repeat. Even worse, often they only relate tangentially to player goals. They become time-gates to actually âplayingâ a character.
The counter argument has primarily been âyou donât want to play alts - you want multiple main characters!â but thatâs pretty much a strawman. Most people donât want multiple âmainâ characters. My main tries to do things at a higher level of difficulty than my alts and goes for achievements. I personally play my alts to play as different roles, help out with some low level keys when folks are missing a tank or healer and donât care as much about the timer, and later in an expansion even an alt raid or helping out in a pinch.
At a basic level though I do understand some of the underlying cause that creates this point of view and it stems from a systematic game design flaw. There is a large amount of âfreeâ high-quality gear being given out. In my opinion this started with LFR (but you could argue it started even earlier with PVP welfare epics). Emissary quests, Darkshore and Stromgarde, LFR, and BoA gear (plus the standard BoE gear) basically makes it simple to get a character to a 400+ level shortly after level 120. This is/was intended as a way for alts to âcatch upâ in gear, but this makes essences and the cloak the only thing preventing an alt character from being equal to a main.
Someone (either in this thread or another) brought up Wrath of the Lich King as the polar opposite of the way this is functioning and I have to agree. In Wrath and BC (not to seem overly nostalgic) you got to max level and then your character could gear however they wanted by doing the things they actually wanted to do. If you wanted to do casual raids on your alt, you could go work toward raiding quality gear⊠by raiding⊠(though you probably had to have done some heroic dungeons first, depending on how much you could be carried).
Unfortunately, one of the issues was that RNG for loot made it difficult sometimes. So the devs slowly adopted a âwell, if they grind enough they should get something.â This wasnât inherently bad (think a vendor selling a raid-quality item at exalted reputation) but it slowly moved toward more âthe only way to be relevant is to grindâ rather than âdo what you want to do to get better at what you want to do.â
If, PURELY AS AN EXAMPLE, the amount and quality of âfreeâ gear decreased dramatically, but the azerite essences and cloak were account-wide, it would skip the need for âreintroducingâ the same concepts over and over again. There would still be a need for some âbasic catch-up gearâ (such as some of the BoA tokens, though likely toned down) to allow players to catch up in an expansion, but a new 120 wouldnât be able to be maxed out.
Unfortunately thatâs a dramatic shift in the way WoW has been trending for LITERALLY the last decade. Welfare PVP epics were probably 2009? LFR was 2011? Please correct my time frame if Iâm wrong, but my point is - I donât see it changing in Shadowlands. I could be completely off-base, and I hope I am.
Grindy with fun classes im ok
Grind with boring class No Thanks
Exactly, if a game has fun classes even doing pvp in random bgs is a fun activity, but the way they have pruned and ruined classes makes pvp feel like trash removing one huge aspect of the endgame for many casual players.
Yeah and guess what happens when a government creates regulation and laws limiting company greed.
Hell the fact that thereâs limit on maximum profit/wealth says everything. Companies want unlimited every growing profit, that idiotic unrealistic desire will never be stopped unless governments intervene, or mass people with guillotines but that is more unlikely, it isnt France.
Then you should probably not only listen to big flashy new stories
Yep, this very much. Iâm gonna jump their hoops till I get the heroic aotc mount and the 30 day quest mount then Iâm out of here till maybe shadowlands (and thatâs only if what I see in PTR testing looks decent.
If it doesnât Blizzard can take a very deep dive off a very steep financial stocks cliff and I will not weep for them.
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8.3 is hands down some of the worst damn post content Blizzard has put in the game, the Assaults are easily the WORST invasion idea they have done yet, the grind is unbearable, the dailies are an absolute joke, the rewards are garbage, the spawn rates, the annoying traveling is unbearable, and for the love of god more abysmal rep grinding for what is easily the worst set of dailies i have seen in wow in awhile? If anything 8.3 is a reason to Quit, its hands down the worst freaking patch in BFA to date and thatâs not saying much and its one of the worst overall good lord i just cant keep playing this game if they keep putting out such crap content like this it makes me really worried for Shadowlands, i just cant handle this crap post content anymore.
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I think Blizzard devs go with whatever is already in their development pipeline. They solicit comments to make peripheral changes to keep certain segments of players happy (like raiders and high end m+ players) and for PR purposes. Just my opinion.
ESA is a lobbying group.
Iâm one of the rare specimens that actually liked Cata. Iâve played mostly WOTLK, Cata (actively raiding and pushing progression) and the beginning of MoP and was going on/off for a while (never played competitively again). Decided to return to wow in bfa for some reason (kinda thinking about dropping really).
Back in cata I had 6 lvl 85 chars: DK (main, tank), rogue, priest, mage, shaman and druid (gatherer). All their professions were properly leveled and I offloaded gathering to my druid. After the (short) rep grind with tabards, I just needed to log into my DK for the weekly raid or just having some fun with guildies and rushing people through dungeons. I got max lvl archeology, cooking, first aidâŠ
I knew what equipment I needed when the patch landed, the only âissueâ would be the tier sets which were basically mandatory to get 6 piece, but Iâd already know which piece Iâd ditch. On weekends weâd do an optional raid for the guild alts.
If I wanted a new alt Iâd just get my heirloom gear and run through dungeons from 15-85 (although Iâd usually vary). Canât even do that anymore because heirloom gear just has stupid requirements for upgrades now.
Now weâre at BFA and I have 2 lvl 110 boosts (1 from bfa and 1 that got upgraded from mop or wod I think) and I have absolutely no desire to use them because I can barely do all the work on a single character, let alone alts.
Leveling feels like a downgrade. When you level so do the mobs around you, but your gear is still the same and you end up taking even more time to do the same things you could do the level before. Finally reaching lvl 120 and having to level the neck while farming mediocre gear is so discouragingâŠ
Gearing for raids is abysmal. Back in the day we had GearScore (essentially ilvl) and achievements as requirements for PUGs (I remember people asking for https://www.wowhead.com/achievement=5366/ready-for-raiding so youâd be invited to a raid group). getting all blue gear and running LFR was enough to be ready to join a normal raid. Now itâs all based on RaiderIO so I have to hope people let me join their group because I donât have 1000 M+ runs to be able to join a M+ group to get 1000 M+ runs to be able to join a M+ group to getâŠ
Also, is something wrong with the personal loot system (not on M+)? I donât remember running dungeons being so unrewarding and having to run multiple times to get a single piece of decent gear, but maybe my nostalgia glasses are skewing my perception on this one.
I just donât even bother with professions anymore, as we also need to grind to get recipes. Farming reputation is just so annoying. Weâre on the last patch and my gf wants a Vulpera. She doesnât play nearly as much as I do, so sheâs just got Revered and has to do the same few WQ every day, hoping for emissary quests to eventually get exalted. We canât even rush it in a weekend because itâs all TIME GATED, EVEN ON THE LAST PATCH OF THE EXP.
Honestly, BfA is just showing me that what I liked about WoW is long gone. I have absolutely no time to do everything that is required for me to even think about raiding. When I play with my gf we have to catch up on everything she missed so we can finally play the same content. My guild stopped raiding on 8.2 too. Iâm hoping SL improves this based on Blizzcon promises, but canât say Iâm too optimistic.
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I will say this in (potential) defense of Shadowlands - I believe the game had a systemic problem within BFA that I donât think the devs could work around with 8.3.
- Leveling âitemsâ seems cool in concept but it is alt-unfriendly. Gearing alts is more alt-friendly - partly because you donât repeat the same intro quests and acquiring parts and the like and partly because you can gear up the way you want.
- If high quality gear is super plentiful and easy to get - âleveling itemsâ becomes the only thing stopping a fresh 120 from equaling a âmain character.â
- Once youâve made the system where gear is plentiful and you have leveling items - itâs very difficult to escape that loop within the current content. If you stop the flow of quality gear the value of the necklace/cloak/etc becomes even HIGHER. If you remove the necklace/cloak/etc, everyone becomes uber powerful really quickly and easily. If you do both - you really canât make the next set of content much harder (and the entire expansion loses even more cohesion).
Devs didnât have a lot of options in 8.3 to reverse this trend.
- In a new expansion, they could completely flip this in reverse - let a leveled/acquired item be account-wide in some format (maybe not ranks/levels, but essences and skipping introductory content, etc). Then acquiring gear is what separates mains and alts - and you can reduce the amount of âeasy to acquireâ (previously known as welfare epics) gear.
- Or they could even do away with the âleveledâ item concept entirely and rely on gear as a differentiating aspect.
Personally, conceptually, I think legion weapons, heart of azerite, and even this cloak are fun. Implementation on the other hand was a complete failure. But Iâm not sure devs could have escaped that failure for 8.3.
They HAD a Beta???
Easy to pass judgment on something not even in Alpha.
Just wanted to point out that the less grindy stuff was set to be introduced in Shadowlands, not 8.3
Iâm giving them credit for providing flying threats instead of restricting flying altogether. Maybe they can build on that so we can stop having useless travel debates.
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And Loot RNG donât forget the loot rng. Corruptforging is worse than titanforging⊠People go up like 20k dps overnight if they get a rank 3 inifnite stars/echoing void. Everyone else gets like ⊠1k dps from their garbo stat traits. Pure RNG if you top the meters or get to look on with envy. Fair. And echoing void has made arenas unplayable⊠people running around with echoing void doing 30% more dps than anyone else, demolishing people and getting free wins all because of loot rng. Itâs absurd.
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This is really true. The people I would see leave because they got a little bored when content dried up - those guys usually came back when a new content patch (or expansion) was released.
Most of the people Iâve seen leave because of burnout, on the other hand, never returned. Their last memories of the game werenât of running out of content, but of the gameâs base design feeling like a punishment instead of fun.
Blizzard should fear players burning out permanently a lot more than players feeling done for a while and casually taking a break. But everything in the game seems designed these days to prevent players from ever feeling done with anything, so they keep going till they eventually burn out.
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