I’m genuinely curious how the general population feels about these things, and whether or not you think they are a good addition to the game.
I.e.:
MoP legendary cloak
WoD legendary ring
legion artifacts
BFA necklace
It’s clear that blizzard thinks we need something to progress all expansion long, and I’m guessing it’s here to stay.
From a selfish point of view I wish we just went back to gear being the main progression, and it being less common so it felt better instead of being thrown at you every time you log in. And I feel like this is the main reason why people find the game so “alt unfriendly”.
Once upon a time you could cap a char, have your guild run you through raids to catch up on gear and you’d be set. Now you need to maintain your neck level, get all the essences you need etc. On top of that, (again, selfish perspective) it kinda kills the whole raid logging thing which a lot of my casual friends attempt, and then quit. I remember in legion it was like pulling teeth trying to get everyone to get their third golden traits because they just wanted to log in, have a raid night with the boys, and do other things rather than grind AP all week.
So what is everyone else’s thoughts… Net positive or net negative to the game?
I think it’s safe to say that the majority of the forum doesn’t believe in working for something anymore, especially long-term. It seems most would rather have the best of the best for simply logging in.
I wish we had long-term progression goals to work towards again.
2 Likes
Which long term goals are you referring to?
I think they’re good if done right (legion artifact weapons), but kind of wish they would settle on one that works well and keep it. I fear that if they don’t pick something good to use and stick too it we’ll keep having ups and downs.
I enjoy them, it can be fun developing something throughout the expansion. But I’d rather have something like the legendary questline between the two. I’m not a fan of the endless artifact grind.
I kind of hope next time we either go back to the quests or they do something different instead.
I like legendaries with the long quest chains. I don’t like artifacts or the HoA because those are grinds that just do not excite. I wish WoW would also start to use resources of old, instead of making up new ones for EVERY BLOODY ITEM.
Personally, I’d be happy to go back to WotLK gearing system for PvE, and MoP for PvP.
I could see the outcry right away. This has been the easiest expac to gear alts and have them ever and look at all the post wanting everything to be account wide. The: “I’ve done it once” mantra is rampant here. Makes me laugh that some of these people think this will improve when Vanilla comes out.
Personally, I have a lot of issues with BfA predominately lack of content, poopy classes etc. But reading here on a daily basis that WoW should be more like FF, GW2 or ESO makes me sigh, I wonder if those people actually realize they left those games to come here…
Mixed feelings. I like having alts, but get discouraged by the daunting task of grinding on the alt.
The main difference to me is basically from vanilla-cata, it’s only gear we’re talking about. Now with the arbitrary “grind x all expansion” systems, it’s so much worse.
Nobody is saying “I already ran this raid, my alt should get free gear”. What you hear is you need x essence, but to get that you need y rep, and such and such azerite level which means you need to do all these daily unfun chores. All things that weren’t ever really something you needed to do on every character before.
So even as someone who doesn’t really care about my alts, it’s easy to see why it’s kind of BS when before it never used to be a problem.
And this is different how? Sorry think back to expac where we needed rep to get keys to get into dungeons, they didn’t hand that to you back then either? It has always been something people complained about. There are far too many people looking for instant gratification these days.
IDK to me attunements aren’t the same as this.
Artifact Power and Azerite to me just reeks of "we don’t know how to keep people engaged, so we’re going to create an arbitrary grind that people will NEED to do to keep up with the curve, and thus it ends up being unfun and disliked feeling like a chore because you NEED to do it. Rather than grinding for something you want simply because you want the reward at the end.
It’s why Pathfinder feels terrible. We HAVE TO do all these chores because of how fundamental flying is to the game. Verses something like grinding completely optional reps to get a cool mount that most people won’t have or won’t do.
Never once said pathfinders was great, but if you have multiple alts it kind of is, could you imagine the cost of flying with in game inflation alone? Frankly I don’t mind it I just hated how long it took to release it.
But to me essences are much like gear, it gives you added benefits to your toon, and if you want the ranks of it you have to put in the work, most understand this, it is no different now than it was to the Legion weapon. They gave us the champs bonus to the neck, much like they did in Legion with the artifact knowledge books. You got a one time boost that was it, if you wanted to go further for the increase damage you had to work on it on each of those alts.
Nice strawman.
Anyways the game has always vacillated between too much commitment required to progress and not enough, and it is doubtful they will ever find an optimal point that satisfies all players.
For me, I enjoyed the MoP and WoD chains, though I dislike the AP grinds of the past two expansions - especially as both are tied to terrible class design (prune classes to bones only to add back power tied to an ongoing never ending grind).
Expansion long progression is usually good, until it comes to alts. Like essences right now, I am hesitant to play an alt because I don’t want to grind essences again.