So, the common argument against account wide essences is “You don’t want an alt, you want a second main. Work for power gains, you scrub!”
Like, okay, sure.
I don’t mind grinding for gear. I gear primarily through raiding. I enjoy raiding, therefore I do not find it at all problematic or tedious to grind away at gear upgrades through rerunning the raid.
The problem with many of the Essences is that they require me to do things that I don’t find fun.
Rep grinds? I hate rep grinds. I do not want to grind the same reps over and over again because I find it boring and tedious. Several essences are locked behind Nazjatar and Mechagon rep.
Island Expeditions? Boring. They put me to sleep. Not only do I not like them, but you have to do them three weeks in a row and then do multi-day long table missions (which are also boring since they are literally just clicking a button and waiting, but at least don’t require anything other than clicking said button).
PvP? Well, I hate PvP so much that not even my main is getting those essences so my alts can most definitely suck it.
Work for power gains? Sure. When it comes to gear I don’t mind that at all because I enjoy raiding.
Unlock essences multiple times? No, because many of them are locked behind gameplay that I do not like. The problem with this is that essences are very powerful. So, by choosing to not do things that I don’t find fun, I must also choose to severely gimp my character. Which doesn’t feel great.
Its alt friendly for the raid essence because the reuirement get halved for each spec you do it on
Just to compile the information into one post. Many people feel that Blizzard have done nothing. They have done things. I just do not think they have gone enough. The point is to have a convo about this with the news that has come out instead of pretending none of the above happened.
This type of game is designed for a large audience, whereas most single player games have a direct and singular type of audience. In the mmorpg genre there are times when player must do something they don’t particularly enjoy to earn a certain certain. I’m not really sure what else to tell you.
Yea because 8.2 is a shining example of retention. Its not. Everyone I know refuses to redo the essences grind. They do not want to be forced to do solo content in an mmo. They want to play together. The way all our schedules work we cant all get together to do these world quests every day. Blizzard removed the group search function that was available for world quests from Legion and now this is solo content. So we just spend the little time we have together and bench the alts for the rest of the expansion
I want to expand on this. The end game grind is meant to be challenging and hard. None of these challenges for essences are hard. What they are is time consuming and brain dead. The challenge should be the new high end game content. Not time locked rep/pvp grinds that if you do you not do you are considered 30% less effective. If you have semi okay ones you are now 15% less effective. You see people like to value skill and achievements of power. I do not feel more powerful because I farmed rep or hk or daily quests for 3 weeks. I just feel drained. I feel the power in mythic plus but the grind is not worth the time invested for power when i can get the same effect of entertainment with a better grind elsewhere. Therefore I just do it once and stop contributing to the wow community of pugs and people in general because the true entertainment value of this game (M+ & Raiding for me) is time locked behind something that never existed before 8.2.
I have reached the peak of this character for all content except mythic raiding. Mythic raiding pugs is frustrating because of the mythic raiding lockouts. I would prefer to regrind from ilvl 400-440/450 another toon but am not interested in the essence grind.
I mean, 4 essences are basically free for just doing the bare minimum content.
The mythic+ one literally appears in your inventory.
It sucks if your BiS are the rep grind ones, but unless you are really on the bleeding edge it’s strong enough. Similar to not farming a specific trinket or Azerite item.
They gave an essence to basically every game mode at the launch of 8.3.
New zone reps
New zone body guards
New dungeon
New raid
Mythic+
Islands
Random BGs
Rated PvP
World PvP
They should have let you farm the essence currency for this and just buy your bis on a vendor. Where doing all content gives you more currency but us not required as you can farm up to 1 currency per week (like 1000). Instead of forcing players into one set of content for X essence.
I know player agency is the fun buzzword, but it really doesn’t apply here.
Essence have full player agency.
Pick essence
Do requirement to get essence
Get essence
No RNG (well, rank 4 world vein) at all. Direct rewards.
Having it all share currency is just getting stuff for content you are doing anyway.
It would be more along the lines of hating raiding but wanting some of its gear like a razor coral and advocating I buy it with world quest or mythic+ currency because I don’t enjoy raiding.
And based on their in combat use essences are pretty close to trinkets.
Whatever side of this issue you’re on, I just want more players to come back to the game. If that means our necks explode and everyone gets all their essences in 8.3 for the last year of this shootshow expansion then so be it.
I already have the essences on multiple characters. It’s not like you need top tier essences on all your characters to do well.
However there’s plenty of systems in which they can make it easier for alts to get essences. Like making some things like the ‘collection based’ essence items account-bound.
I know my progression raider friends had no issues leveling their alts and getting the essences they needed. To them, that’s part of making an alt raid ready. I don’t hear complaints about unlocking them from anywhere except here. So I can’t say if it actually affects this gaming community at all on the level some think it does.
The thing is that this is something that you should be able to farm up on any toon via a currency after doing it once on your main. This would allow people to choose what to do for the essence and have fun the way they want to have it while still filling up a bar. It can still take 3 weeks to get them, just let us choose the grinding method after the first time. So whoever loves WQs/PVP/M+/Raiding etc will always get something on an alt until they reach the limit of like 1000 currency. At least I can farm what I want and target what I want.
Or better yet, play less or not at all as so many people have decided to do.
I see no reason to spend the rest of the expansion grinding instead of playing to make YOU happy. It sounds like you have no idea how other people play the game and don’t want to know.