Borrowed Power has always existed. Why is it viewed so negatively now?

Community General Discussion
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Borrowed Power: progression systems designed to be used for a single expansion, then replaced some ways into the next expansion by a new progression.

Borrowed Power isn’t just things like artifact weapons, essences and covenant abilities however. In the past, we had forms of borrowed power that were much better received by the players - tier set bonuses, and glyphs.

Explanation of these in the spoiler

When people think of borrowed power, they usually think of the flashy examples from recent expansions, like artifact weapons and essences. But borrowed power existed in much older expansions too - the most common forms for it were tier set bonuses, and (back when they impacted your power) Prime and Major glyphs.

Tier set bonuses are the oldest form of borrowed power. Most of them change how your character plays, and all of them are designed so that they are good for the expansion the set is found in, but get replaced in the next one - either willingly by the player as the gear becomes useless, or forcibly by Blizzard if the set bonuses themselves are disabled server-side (immediately, or when you hit a certain level.)

As for glyphs - back when they existed, Prime and Major glyphs were designed such that you needed to replace the past expansion’s glyphs with those from the current one, even if they did the same thing. The basic reason for this was so that you had to use the newest expansion’s herbs - supporting the market for those professions. That design requirement to upgrade or replace your glyphs in the next expansion made glyphs another form of borrowed power.

Given that we’ve had these expansion specific progression systems for almost the entirety of WoW, why is borrowed power seen so negatively now? (I do actually have my own ideas on reasons why, but I was curious with what the community thinks!)

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It’s the amount. Obviously if you break it down enough literally everything is borrowed power. It should just be limited more.

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I think the biggest part of the problem is that they’re used as a crutch for the worse designed classes/specs to a point where you don’t feel you’re playing your class anymore, and they completely throw the game’s natural class relationships out of whack. People DEFINITELY complained about trinkets, but it felt smaller so the disdain didn’t radiate out the community as much.

Most people who dislike something dislike it because others told them to dislike it. WoW community is kinda sheep.

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Classes were not built around tier set bonuses and glyphs. Abilities weren’t removed in order to make room for those same abilities to be re-earned via an expansion-specific system.

When people complain about borrowed power, they’re complaining about our classes being deliberately designed to be incomplete without an external system to fill in the holes, not about tier bonuses or glyphs that adjusted how an ability worked.

Perhaps we need a more specific term than “borrowed power” for the current “we take it away so that you can earn it back” design philosophy, just to decrease the number of people making spurious arguments that every piece of gear in the game is technically “borrowed power”.

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I mean, if we wanna be meta, the reality is everything in WoW is borrowed power. But that’s not what people are talking about. People are talking about expansion wide gimmicks that’re just gonna be gone and tossed in the bin, and people being aware of that off rip.

Tier sets and all of that were a gear / tier specific thing, which people knew just like all other forms of gear, would be replaced eventually. But it wasn’t a system to just be tossed in the bin.

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this honestly is like when someone says “everyone hates eating dog poo” then someone says “there is one person that likes it so you’re wrong”

you know exactly what we are talking about when we refer to borrowed power, so I ask you what was the point of this thread?

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This is what people are sick of:

https://www.darklegacycomics.com/716

I don’t remember my tier sets ever killing something for me.

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Eg:
How is Stamina a borrowed power? In what expansion was it absent or taken from you? For myself, I’ve always had it.

Eg:
Prior to BfA, in what expansion did you have Echoing Void? None? What about after BfA, like in Systemlands? Will it be there? No?

So on one hand we have an ability that’s always there; on the other we have one that isn’t.

The difference gets clouded only with strawmanning.

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Said this in other threads so will put it here as well and let people think what they think, this is my opinion only. Some will argue gear and/or talents were borrowed power, but I don’t feel like they were because you kept them going forward.

Did all your gear suddenly lose all its stats at the end of an expansion. Did tier set bonuses suddenly become inactive at the end of an expansion, no. In fact tier set bonuses worked all the way until Blizz actually turned them off because people were using them in timewalking.

Were talent trees really borrowed power, did they disappear at the end of an expansion, no. They were expanded upon from Vanilla through Wrath, then the trees were condensed in Cata, then removed in MoP.

Borrowed power systems are exactly that, borrowed, meaning we don’t keep them.

I honestly think people wouldn’t have such a problem with them if our classes and specs didn’t rely on them to function properly half the time. Which means designing classes and specs that can stand on their own, then using these borrowed power systems to enhance said classes and specs.

Classes and specs need to be a solid and complete foundation, need to be able to function without anything bolted on to them, then these systems add to that already solid foundation. That way when we return that power we borrowed our classes and specs don’t feel gutted.

These systems could have solved the ability bloat issue by giving us new stuff every expansion but it not being permanent and enhanced the already solid foundation of a fully fleshed out class and/or spec.

Instead Blizz gutted our classes and specs then solve them feeling incomplete with these systems which go away at the end of an expansion and our classes and specs feel incomplete again.

TL;DR, design classes and specs to be able to stand on their own, or a solid foundation, then have these power rental systems as a way to enhance and add things that will go away and prevent the issue of ability bloat.

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Part of it is “new thing bad” but another part of it is “redundant progression system is redundant.”

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I agree that it really is just the amount.

When done right it gives a special feeling to that expansions and allows players to delve into the content of that expansion more.

When done wrong it removes class identity making it feel broken without it.

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Look, there is a distinct difference between having tier sets for gear and then having a giant story wrapped into the new abilities given. It is not just convoluted but it also just doesn’t feel organic and thus has a lack of immersion to it.

Example. In Legion we were given the most powerful items on the planet in order to do our thing. Once that was done??? My most powerful weapon in the world is useless? No, I don’t want to hear you can mog it. Me having to artificially cover my new green item to look like the old item is poor design.

Power it up. Having to go farm azerite or anima or whatever to power up a piece of gear is not fun. It is not fun at all. Killing something and getting a shard is not fun. Killing a silver and getting a shard is really not fun. Killing a boss and getting a shard is really, really not fun. Loot is like opening a present and when you open it up to find a fricken shard it has zero fun value.

The newest dungeon, the one that you can go solo or with a group up to 5 sounded great…then I read the details. You go to farm the latest and greatest resource to make things. Ergo, we are going to kill things to get shards. Yeah, they are not called shards but they might as well be called shards. This is a problem. Granted, there are going to be pets and mog crap (not into that) so the point of the entire dungeon will be farming to get really cool shards.

I am going to give Sl a shot but I gotta say that this game is a long way off from what it used to be. In the past you did have to get certain resources to attain things but it seems like it has taken over the entire game.

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You’re getting overly technical with this reaching description.

Talent points and abilities in the expansions of old carried over into the new expansion and were not lost.

The current issue with borrowed power is the overabundance of an inflated system, that usually ends up having to be propped up by other inflated systems when they fail, only to have the new abilities from that expansion removed from the game in the next expansion is the issue with borrowed power.

Tier sets were simply sets of gear that altered the way you played your character for a specific raid tier. When you moved on to a new tier set you didn’t lose multiple buttons to press and suddenly become 90% weaker than you were 10 levels ago.

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It’s the degree of damage or effectiveness that borrow power gives your character as well as how they are presenting the borrowed power system to the player. In the past it was less apparent that we were dealing with a borrowed power system because most of it was presented as being a permanent addition to the game, even though we know every expansion they overhauled classes and pruned abilities.

Also they’ve gone too far and how much borrow power contributes to your character. borrowed power needs to be less than 25% of the damage or effectiveness of your character.

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We didn’t have to grind AP to activate our tier set bonuses for the duration of the entire expansion.

There was also variety in bonuses from tier to tier and not the same bonus (sometimes you have to regrind (azerite traits)) for the entire expansion.

Glyphs you could flat out just buy from inscription. No grinding necessary.

Also - tier sets/glyphs didn’t give you new abilities outright usually just modifiers to existing ones.

There really is no comparison to what you define as “borrowed power” of the past and what we have today.

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Because when I had my tier set in Wrath, I knew id get a tier set again in Cataclysm.

These days I get some mega super sword of the godly heavens 5000 that does 90% of my DPS, then I replace it with mega death beam necklace that’s 90% of my DPS.

Then I replace that by joining a cult. Which will probably also end up being 90% of my dps.

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Only thing I want to grind is new gear like it was in Lich King,other than that I won’t bother with the other systems.

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You lose it for 10 minutes if you die and your body is inaccessible. It’s been that way since vanilla.

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That’s cute.

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The game is based on layers of borrowed power, We are constantly replacing gear, and it just added more layers of borrowed power and rng. People get annoyed at the many layers, but I think they can be ok. Like if we had a page in the collections menu dedicated to expansion features we could have better focuses, like account wide abilities their, recipes, legendary kiosk, etc.