I was always told retail was much less grindy than classic. Not true at all.
I just got my second toon to 80 only to find out the new requirement for heroics is 567? Which is completely unachievable from running normal dungeons. They don’t even drop up-gradable gear.
So I go buy two vendor pieces with crystals from both characters. Then I go to the delves, I do a level 3. Then I go to try level 4… only you cant. You have to complete the main story line to do them.
I’m reading, oh just craft them. But blacksmithing is taking forever and is confusing. Which BTW why do mining nodes give such little materials? I have mined a lot, even maxed it out and I’m around 50/100 blacksmithing.
Finally is the whole upgrade your gear garbage. So even IF I can get the gear I still need the stupid badges to upgrade it…
This game feels like I’m entering an Xpac in its final phase and I’m months behind. Only they typically have easier ways to catch up. In TWW everything is locked out and stuffed behind some kind of grind.
To a returning player its obvious this is all in an effort to make you play more. Its not convenient, its intentionally convoluted. Without constantly viewing guides on the internet I would be completely lost.
I am really trying to get into it. I even kept my sub for another month. Stop making so many hoops to jump through… I just want to play the game.
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Who on earth told you that?
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Yup… that might be the issue haha. This was something I kept hearing from people who were playing both classic and retain.
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It’s a faster grind but it’s still a grind.
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People who play classic seem to have… strange understandings of things.
(Thinking classic is “hard” being the first. 
)
But grindy… my goodness, classic servers haven’t even reached the expansions with AP yet. That’s a whole new world of grinding.
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It is really weird that regular dungeons dont give you good enough gear to do heroics. I am not sure why they made that change.
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Interestingly I am finding I might like the leveling grind much more? Its an adventure with a real sense of achievement? Like getting some new piece of gear that lets me now do other content to get other gear… which can be transmoged anyways… IDK just isn’t doing it for me.
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Maybe they want people to play the game as a whole.
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Leveling is easier than gearing.
You should have done the main campaing on your main, so you can skip it all on your alts at lvl 80.
And also, your main can drop BoW gear, wich your alts can use.
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My guess is to force you to do delves. But honestly who cares if you have 1 or even 2 under geared people? I never cared that much to carry people through heroics.
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Good thing there are others options to gear up than just normal dungeons.
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I have never played Classic WoW, but I did play Vanilla WoW 20 years ago. And it felt more time consuming, or grinder, than today. I’m not sure if people are confusing classic with the original 2004 game, in terms of defining it.
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Oh the horror. You have to play through the game? I’m out.
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comments like this are I think one of the real issues in wow. I am giving legitimate feedback as a returning player and your thoughts are to just mock and gaslight me. If I want to get geared before returning to do quest… Thats my choice. Thats what I planned on doing. Your telling me I HAVE to play the game this way. Thats stupid and your comment is childish.
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You know how to unlock the thing you want, and the bar is to play through the leveling campaign. Your feedback is you don’t want to play the leveling campaign, which, you are entitled to not play if you don’t want but that means you don’t unlock endgame delves. I, and many others, see that as a non-issue.
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As someone who played in Vanilla, yes, it’s not grindy.
In Vanilla, you could get Exalted rep in 3 days. How? Becoz there’s no timegate. You are forced to complete it as soon as you can OR YOU WOULD BE LEFT BEHIND. That’s not the case in Retail. With timegates, those no Life players wont completely leave you behind.
In Vanilla, you can only do 1 toon if youre into high end raids. I know non-hardcore players has plenty of toons back then but most of the content they did are lowbie content. BTW, Molten Core is a lowbie content.
In Vanilla or Classic, you redo dungeons over and over and over and over to upgrade all your slots. In Retail, you can get gear and upgrades outside of dungeons. Take note, there are no daily quests or weekly quests in Vanilla. You just need to learn how to play Retail. You hunt for items that are upgradeable… from quests or rare boss drops and use VALORSTONES and CRESTS to upgrade them all the way to 567. FYI, AH has upgradeable greens. Pls buy those greens I put in AH.
You cant skip the storyline. I am not a fan of it and I find the main quests are a bit too long. But I know there are million players who likes these stuffs so I just have to let them be.
The game is just like few weeks old. Casuals would be left behind. I am Casual too and I dont care if they leave me behind. I am not in a race. I have around 30 weeks to get KSM and AoTC. I have plenty of time for it. I know those elites. They finish the game in a month and they would all whine of nothing left to do by that time.
If you are Casual and a returning player, you can easily be overwhelmed by this game. To me that is great… instead of getting bored with nothing left to do. Just take your time. Take a bite bit by bit.
This is a game of grind. If you have no time for its grind, you might be on a wrong game. This game is grindy but softer than all previous WoW. You have a week to complete your Weekly quest and to fill your Vault. Dont mind those diehards if they did 20x Mythic+, 20x Delves or 20x Raid Boss kills. They would only get 1 from the Vault. And you could also get 1 from the Vault just by doing 1 dungeon or 1 delve.
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I went from fresh max level to 600 ilvl in 1 day.
I have no idea what you are doing OP but what ever it is you’re doing it wrong
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Hit 80.
Fly around in whatever zone currently has the memories up, it will have floating glowy orbs. Fly into an orb to get 1-2 weathered crests.
Continue flying through them until you have 360 weathered crests.
Go to an enchanting vendor. Buy 12 weathered crest thingie(can’t remember the name) for 30 crests a pop.
Go to the work order vendor and order 12 enchanted crests.
Wait for orders to fill, they usually fill relatively quick.
You can now put up public orders for crafted blue gear with those crests slotted in. If you use 3 star mats and a missive, you’ll get at least a 3 star, maybe 4 result. Or you offer like 1k per item in trade chat to have someone craft 5 star for you, and engage in the private work order system.
It’s more of a learning experience than previous expansions, but the reward for engaging beyond “zug zug, me queue dungeon” is significantly more respectful of the players time. You can hit 593 and almost ignore heroics entirely in a matter of hours.
Instead of the old system of grind 5 hours of normals, then 5 of heroics, just to be ready for the real end game content.
4 Likes
See so honestly thank you for this thoughtful response. I guess buying stuff on the AH is the best way, its just disappointing. I’m leveling as a prot warrior doing dungeons, imo I should have gotten geared doing so… But ill give the greens and upgrading some a go.
1 Like
I’m surprised Blizz has failed to learn that particular lesson at this point.
There’s a definite line between “leveling content” and “level cap content”.
Quite frankly, the leveling aspect has LONG been neglected by Blizz, though I’m hearing TWW has made steps to help fix it. It’s accelerated to the point that it’s over long before you should be done, leading to you running face-first into the wall that is the “endgame content” at the level cap. There’s at least some half-decent stuff in there, but it’s a tangled mess depending on which expansion you pick.
You’re pretty much playing an ENTIRELY different game with a much more drawn out reward structure. It’s hard to say if even the gameplay us the same, thanks to gear progression causing a very noticeable difference in how every class & spec plays.
In any case, if you enjoy leveling content more than the endgame, that’s perfectly fair… hell, I’d argue the only content really “worth doing” in WoW (at least from my perspective). But even then it feels like you’re fighting the game’s various under-the-hood systems in some way.