They should, but Blizzard hamstrung guilds and left them to die with a “unintended” officer permissions change that means either a GM trusts all of their officers with all of the guild permissions, or none. Summer of '18 they said it was unintended, asked for feedback, and apparently forgot the entire thing. That thread has been going without interruptions or Blues since then.
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I am confused as to why players with low amounts of time are wasting it on unrewarding filler content.
My week is
Reset day 2hrs torghast
Wednesday 2 hrs weeklies (renown first and convent progression then maw if I have time) and 3hr alt raid (if I have time)
Thursday 3hr raid
Sunday 3hr raid
And im done for the week in under 15 hrs and not even logged in daily. If I have extra time ill pop on for an M+ or some maw dailies but progression wise the above is the fastest option to gear.
Yes I was more hardcore at the start (took 3 days off week 1 and 2 on week 2 to level and gear).
Main 206 ilvl and alt 197
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[Preamble, because its a super long one. I never really know where im going to end up when i start, so now that ive finished, heres a quick note to explain: This post is setting up the background/context. I want to talk about the role guilds used to play in game, why they no longer do so, and how this gave us the game we have now (predominantly solo/pug). I then talk about the three problems of gear/skill gap and the psychological wall players face in transitioning into the ‘real game’. So this is a bit of a TLDR if you want to skip it and just move onto the next post.]
Ooof, just woke up to 6 whole notifications. Normally i’ll get one or more likely zero. But ill address this point first since i was rather tipsy and in my feels.
I guess we’re both old school in this. So we likely both played through vanilla, both joined our guilds, you established yours, i hopped a bit more. So we both know and completely understand just how much better the game is when you’re playing with guilds. My problem is more that despite the lip service blizzard pays to that idea isnt followed through by mechanical changes to guild finder. Also, that the playerbase is crazy.
So you end up with the social-casual guilds hoovering up the casual playerbase. You’ll join up, say hi, get a few welcomes, be met with a flurry of other people joining the guild, then next day you log in, complete silence. You and maybe 1 other person online.
Simultaneously you have the guilds looking to fill very specific spots (LF conclave boomkin for 9/10 heroic).
Those are the two types of guilds recruiting. Guild finder is dead. I dont even think guilds recruiting even touch it, its probably faster and more effective just to spam trade.
Now, it brings up an interesting question that touches on a possibly lost puzzle piece to the conveyor belt moving players from the casual game to the hardcore game.
Where on earth are the normal raid guilds? To put it in vanilla or TBC terms… where are the kara, zg, aq20 guilds? Those were crucial in introducing players to the raiding game. They are casual-social. They are easy going and forgiving. And they are a way for players to garner some key skills.
I never see them advertise anywhere in game. Its either bottom of the barrel ‘social’ guilds’ or hardcore progression pushing guilds.
It brings up several things we could talk about.
On topic: Why are they not looking for people? Flex? Is there no pressure being exerted on them to recruit? Should there be? Or should we just accept that they are the remnants of the old F+F guilds who transitioned from 20 man to 10 man to flex and its fine. But if it is fine, then what even is normal in the progression picture? If its a pure self contained and insular system, then the progression path is realistically: world–>mythic dungeons—>heroic raids.
And the trouble with that brings us to another issue:
MIND THE GAP!!!
- The gear gap.
- The skill gap.
- The psychological ga… well, its a wall.
Sorry, im a bit bouncy in my thinking after you were kind enough to ask specific questions (its early morning, im a night person).
But lets deal with number 2 first. Since it really feeds into the others. There is a skill gap between the casual playerbase and the hardcore playerbase. Its only growing as mechanics are getting more complex. Now, this doesnt just apply to mythic raiding, this goes into all LFG content. There is a huge skill gap between players who participate regularly in LFG content versus those who dont. For example, you could tell me “hey ipps! This weeks affixes are bolstering, tyrannical, quaking and fortified” and i would reply “yes, those are words. Ive definitely seen each of those used to mean something in the English language”.
I mean, we can establish there is a skill gap. When you look at the growth in mechanics in raiding (that aszhara fight was just… what?). But to any hardcore raider, they look at it and go, ‘oh, this is just basically that fight from 2 expansions ago’. Meanwhile, im over here Poltergeisting.
So its fair to say theres a skill gap. Solo play doesnt help you very much when mobs die in a few gcds. LFR teaches you very little. Heroics… well, lets be fair, 2 people are probably carrying the other three. BGs are just a fun wall of chaos. Torghast, for all its issues, might be one of the few places where players actually learn how to skill up a little. But the truth is, if you dont jump into LFG, take your lumps, you’re probably going to get stuck in LFD.
Which brings us to point 3: The psychological wall. Take those lumps. If you dont take those lumps… I didnt deliberately choose the phrase. But its lingering in this idea. Why play the game to feel humiliated? Why even step on that ladder at all? Why face continual push back and rejection from LFG even for the most basic content? Why put yourself through that when you can just chill in LFD content, feel happy, get some progression and bumble about just living in a happy world of warcraft you’ve spent decades immersing yourself in? Why push at all? Whats tyrannical? I dont know! Should i find out? And absolutely shame myself in front of my fellow players? Should i app to a guild, go through the trial, screw up every mechanic and have 19 people laughing at how bad i am at this game?
Or… could i just chill here. Do my dailys and weeklies, explore the world, do all these side stories, maybe level an alt, grind anima, farm cosmetics, run through old content? Yeah. I could do that. That sounds almost fun again.
Which brings us to number 1, and likely the main thrust of this entire discussion.
We have an issue. We have players facing a skill gap and a psychological wall. Since Legion blizz have, i assume been trying to focus on it with the carrot (id argue, now its the stick). You’ve had lots of little ways you can bust through the skill gap through overpowered gear (your heart of azeroth, your azerite loadout, benthic gear, your artifact weapon and legos). Theyve spent the past two expansions making absolutely sure that what happened in WoD (which was an absolute gear wall) never happens again.
The aim was simple: If you dont feel ready to take that content either psychologically or by skill or knowledge, we can give you a bit of a push. So they made sure that gear let players transition and provide success.
In this expansion though, they’ve pulled back a little. I wont say fully (since 200 isnt a number i feel to be entirely unfair), but to gain more than that, you really do need to be doing LFG content. And heres where one of the main issues drops: Thats kinda running out now. Within the next month, casual players will realistically (if theyve been keeping up with their renown/dailys/lego/weeklies) should be in around 200ilvl gear. Then what? I mean… the obvious intention is to push them into LFG… but… instead of competing with 200ilvl players, theyre now competing with 210-220 players.
Now your absolute casual will just go level an alt, run old content, do whatever (or just drop the game for an indefinite period). But your progression casual (the one who wants to raid and run dungeons at a harder level than LFR), is now very much stuck. They need the experience to overcome the psychological wall, they need the gear to push over their limitations in experience. But now all three parts are working completely against him, thus the wall grows. Not only are they in worse gear than their compadres, theyre also less familiar and experienced with the mechanics of the content than they are. The psychological wall just keeps building; Keeps growing.
I guess… ‘i guess i could just log off for a while. Come back next patch and make sure i dont fall behind next time!’
4 Likes
Hmmm… to address your final question. And now that ive sort of set the background context. I think the answer isnt in gear itself. But in mechanisms to open up the hardcore game to the casual playerbase.
Ilvl is such a misnomer. Its always front and center as if its the solution to all the games issues. The problem isnt gear itself. The problem is the accessibility to content (where gear often acts purely as a pseudo gatekeeper - but if not gear, then achievement, if not that, then class, then spec, then covenant, then whatever else the pug world deems super important).
The problem isnt gear. The problem is access. What systems can change within game that would do the heavy lifting that those once upon a time social casual raid guilds used to do in Vanilla and TBC (before the game transitioned to pugging as its primary mode of gameplay for the average player).
And to this we need to look at the three pillars. We need to look at what theyre supposed to be doing? Like why, when you have a ladder system, (3 raid tiers, 30 mythic dungeon levels, and up to 3k pvp rating). Why is all of this locked behind LFG? Sure, some of it… but if this is the ACTUAL end game (the three pillars), then why is it all behind that psychological wall of LFG? Couldnt there be a space for example where mythic dungeons 0-5 are on LFD? Couldnt there be a system where keys HAVE TO MATCH to form groups, and will deplete (restricting your choices in LFD whilst still incentivising players to run LFG 0-5 groups if they’d prefer). Wouldnt that help break through the psychological wall of all these affixes? Or if you dont want that touched, why not have an heroic dungeon weekend here and there where it gets an affix, but also the gear scales to your current gear level?
Couldnt there be a way to bring winged raiding back into the flex system? Couldnt RBGs be LFD? If you wanna premade and smash, then go ahead?
Like why is there a pastiche version of the actual game? Why does that even exist? Its mind blowing.
So yeah, thats my answer. Look at the systems in game. Look for ways we can move the casual players into the actual progressive game. Look for ways to make ONE end game thats accessible to all players. Keep the gate-keeping for sure the higher up said ladder we go. Or even cap it at an incredibly low level? But look for those psychological barriers that discourage people from even trying that content and find ways to bring those barriers down.
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This deserves all of my 
s and 
.
Elitism’s mighty savior, Raid or Die, said so.
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Holy crapoyla! Are you shaming someone who spends time with their kids because a lazy parent such as yourself would rather pay someone else to spend time with them!?
And you think you’re the quote “responsible” adult?
Brother…I’d rather a poorer parent who spends time with their children, rather then a bogan with money who plays wow all day to avoid his children.
4 Likes
Ive said elsewhere this may be the final wow expansion where the game professes itself to be a single unified whole. My concern is that the game will break off into its component mini games all with their valid gearing/progression paths. But my HOPE is that internally, blizzard are debating these kinds of issues about access and still trying to save the core game experience.
If i can come back to the Wod point. The obvious problem was that gear was a huge block on progression/access. So legion and BfA were designed around solving that problem (with the meta system and rng/titanforging etc). In Shadowlands theyve realised that gear doesnt work. Players just have that alternative power progression system and stick with that instead (by work, i mean, it doesnt nudge you into harder content, it just gives you a satisfying self-contained power progression). So thats why theyve arguably pulled back. The issue of course is that this was precisely the solution to the problems of gatekeeping and barriers of entry noticeable in WoD. And they havent yet figured out an alternative. So we will follow the same trajectory as wod in this expansion, and casual players will end up extremely frustrated by it.
Hopefully though, this has been identified and they will look instead to these barriers themselves. And now they have systems like mythic plus available to tweak, will look to iterate on them to make them more of a core end game (albeit not the final end game) experience trhough widening accessibility (thus retaining the single ladder model of progression they so desperately want to preserve. So i still carry out hope.
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Not to be blunt but WoW and MMOs in general have never been designed around an hour-a-day schedule. A lot of single player games would take a solid month to beat just the main story at one hour a day.
Real advice: If you can really only spare an hour a day, just do what you like and enjoy it for what it is but understand that you will be severely behind everyone else.
And with all that being said, when does he have time to do his daily quests, and world quests for rep? When does he have time to do Torghast, and farm Anima to progress his covenant order hall?
There’s a lot of daily chores that this expansion expects you to do on top of your regular game play. (Dungeons, raids or pvp)
Doing it all in an hour or two is stressful because of the time crunch that you’re under. A lot of times you’ll be forced to leave out a lot of your chores if you want to get a dungeon in, or leave out your pvp time because you want to get a few more world quests in.
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I play this game casually. Yes, I will have my covenant set upgraded to 197. I have 0 issues with ilvls. I don’t have a legendary yet, but I do have 5800 soul ash. Everyday I do my chores. I do my weekly quests, kill the world boss, do my renown. I’m ok with this. It doesn’t bother me. If I run out of time I log out. Is it fun? No.
WoW has always been a grinding game. Fun in WoW is always locked behind lengthy grinds. You have to work for the fun, even at the lowest level of content. The difference now is the time it’s taking to do the chores. The ilvl isn’t the issue. This whole xpan is more time= less rewards. It’s on every level of play.
I think a good majority of the casual players will probably unsub. Anima drips, underwhelming wq rewards, terrible covenant tables, etc can all be farmed later when anima falls from the sky. The midcore players who run normal raids and do some mythic + dungeons will get tired of no loot. They will unsub and come back later too. It will be the more dedicated players who will do whatever it takes to get their loot and rewards that stay anyway.
Please remember when you say everything is optional, you don’t have to do it…subs are optional too. Casual players can walk away from WoW anytime. It isn’t going to have the same effect on us that it does on the hardcore players who have less content later. Maybe they can raise sub prices to make up the difference?
6 Likes
If we’re talking literally only one hour, I don’t think any expansion was very accommodating to that.
After the initial push 1hr a day to keep relevant is quite easy considering this game really has no content.
Ive already proposed my big issues. Now i want to draw on a tiny issue in the scheme of things.
What on EARTH is going on with world quest rewards. Im still trying to get my head around it. So far ive seen 4 maces, 1 sword and 1 axe. Im sin spec. My loot is sin spec. Why is the game only ever throwing outlaw weapons at me (also, the one and only item reward ive ever received from a calling just so happens to be a mace).
Anyways, thats part 1 of my mini rant. Part 2: My ilvl is 183, im fully caught up on my renown. Said axe was, earlier today at 181. I just checked back, its now 171. Along with the… is it bracers (my only other gear choice i believe)? Both dropped from 181 to 171. Why is this system so buggy? Why are the rewards worthless? Why has none of this been addressed or acknowledged? What on earth is happening with the world quest system? Its an omnishambles.
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…Right. So. Imagine if someone doesn’t raid or do M+, there are a lot of players like that in this game and probably WAY more than you realize. Now look at your list again. Does that make it easier to understand why some people might be upset?
Just because people keep repeating this it doesn’t make it true, and it’s not really the norm for casual players anyway. Most of them talk about having an hour a day to play because that’s the most they get on a work day, and then maybe have a day or two on the weekend to play a few hours at a time. My wife has played that way since DaoC and loves MMO’s, the idea that you can’t have fun with them without spending hours every day is nonsense.
And it’s not a matter of being behind everyone else, every casual player understand that they aren’t going to be keeping the same gear level as hardcore raiders. That, however, is also an increased problem in Shadowlands since it has content that requires you to be more geared like the Maw or Torghast but does nothing at all to allow you to gear up other than throw some pity gear at you (and then makes you spend time doing dailies to get the anima to raise it, usually at the expense of something else).
Just to reiterate part of the issue here, I quit playing for three weeks shortly after Shadowlands launched. I came back and started a different character, leveled to 60, and was beyond where my main character was when I quit (other than rep) after 2 days. On the one hand, yay for catch-up; you don’t feel behind, right? On the other hand, there was zero point to playing for that three weeks. I didn’t miss anything. I was actually better off for not playing at all. And after those two days, I was right back to waiting for weekly resets again to have a couple of hours worth of content to feel like I was doing something useful, and then it’s wait for another week.
For as much as the community has complained about timegating in the past, I just do not understand why they seem to give it a pass in Shadowlands when it’s far worse than ever.
6 Likes
I fail to see an issue,
If I didnt raid or m+ my week would be
Reset day 2hrs torghast (clear highest layer I can with the gear I had)
Wednesday renown quests and campaign quest + maw stuff 2hrs
1-2 purple anima quests a week 45 mins
3 epic bgs no more than 1 win per day probably 3hrs max
And I am now all caught up would be wearing 8 piece covenant set 190 ilvl (197 after reset) would by a 200 darkmoon card and 1 pvp trinket, pvp weapon, rings and amulet.
Overall ilvl about 187
And thats it im caught up in 8hrs a week
Because if they didn’t put SOME level of timegate… the norm would be to grind til our eyes bleed to maintain rankings. Which isn’t something that a lot of players who play somewhat competitively want to do. So long as we have power rewards behind these systems… some level of time-gating is required. Otherwise we get situations like guarm. A boss that was so tightly tuned that it straight up could not be killed without maxing out AP. Which meant that if you got to him and you weren’t maxed… congrats… you’re not progressing further. So guess what players did. Maw of souls… 100’s of times…
In older expansions people used to state that vanilla had tonnes of grinding relative to retail… I’ll be honest… Legion and BfA gave vanilla a run for its money in terms of grinding to remain competitive.
I know I know I know… We choose to play this way. Ya ya ya… Got it, you don’t care.
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Any game that always ends with a 50/50 chance of setting off that last mine can DIAF, IMO. 
Damn if you’ve only got time for one hour a day I don’t think any mmorpg is for you.
I have a NE hunter like this for story. See story, on to the VE hunter alliance main or the BE DH horde one.
She can be 2 hours on 1000 anima day. That varies based on pops of the 2 weekly dungeon quests. And if I get AV, isles or ashran for epic bg. These I can say are wins more than half time for me so its anima that comes in fast-ish. Wintergrasp…yeah…that be a monkey wrench to throw off times.
I’m well aware that you can kill a few bosses in MC in an hour - these players don’t want to do any scheduled group content in retail.
Check my replies for Jared with accents above the vowels. He said it literally in this thread.
yeah and the casuals I’m talking about are fine with group content as long as the computer does forced groupmaking / nonconsensual grouping.
The loot firehose in BFA was a terrible mistake that I hope Blizzard never repeats. The Scrapper was invented just to draw a figleaf over just how much loot they sprayed at players. A couple expansions and people will get used to loot being more impactful and necessarily more rare.