Under the old system the forums was flooded with people saying, they effectively had nothing to do. It was either raid or die. WoD being a huge example of that. Not saying the new system is the saving grace of it all. But the old system was very limited to what you could farm out of it, and once you did, it was dead and worthless to you.
The fact that with each patch they bump up the rewards in world quest, so in itself they will always offer a small system of catch up for newer toons or alts that are not kept at raid level/mythic + geared.
The fact when it comes to the rep grind you only need to grind it on one Horde and one Ally if you actually want to unlock races. If all you want to unlock is flight then one side or the other is good enough on one toon. Then the whole rep grind is useless. Which I did x2 once on Horde and once on Alliance to exalted on all factions in BFA. I done with the rep grind unless something is offered in 8.3 that is needed to be done that offer something.
Truth is an Xpac is a 2 year adventure not a 2 month one. Anything that can be done in a few weeks or months by slaving away countless hours per day grinding, can easily and less stressful done over a number of months. With the same end goal accomplished, specially for those whom are more casual. No need to limit those whom have countless hours to dedicate to the game and need the none stop burn of having something to do every minute, day in and day out. There are those out there that enjoy it.
I unlocked the Zandalari really quickly by doing all the story quests in Zandalar and doing a a couple emissaries and some world quests. The vol’jin quests gave a nice amount of rep if you haven’t done those.
WoD had many things you could do but most of the quests out in the world were not rewarding. Sound familiar? BFA is WoD 2.0.
Most of the world quests in BFA are not rewarding. Island expeditions can and can not be rewarding depending on how you tackle them. Warfronts were kind of rewarding at the start but have fallen to the wayside.
Tacking on PF in WoD or BFA didn’t make the quests out in the world more rewarding.
BFA is still a raid or die expansion with some mythic + sprinkled in now.
Players that don’t read MMO champ, wowhead, wow forums or the patch notes log in.
They are met with three grinds and a three hour quest chain to start one of the grinds. Okay good so far?
This is where in patch 8.3 you will start to see pigs flying. Time gated content that requires you go to zones with flying debuffs no sane person can avoid based on flights speed.
Throw in some RNG corrupt forged gear and legendary cloak grind no one asked for. And farming of corrupted momentos and you have a tsunami of tears coming back to the forums. Oh and no account bound essences.
The beauty and simplicity of WoW in the past was truly elegant. Gear vendors. Gear with gem slots with fixed amounts. Flying at max level embraced as a means of travel to content. Classes not relying on essences to do a quarter of their DPS, etc.
I decided a week and a half ago that the game was utter misery without flight so I picked a character that was already 80% of the way to Pathfinder and decided to grind it out, to the point that my kids probably feel an intervention is necessary. So after ten days of completing questlines I couldn’t give a crap about, doing that whole war thing whatever, and doing WQ after WQ for hours straight, days on end, only to laugh madly when I finally hit revered with someone so I never have to deal with them again, I can tell you that there is ONE issue easily solved by flight, one issue that has been the constant pain in my booty throughout this whole grindfest and that issue is:
Ground clutter.
It would be SO EASY to fly from WQ to WQ without being constantly stopped by fights with ground trash. BUT NOOOOO! The neckbeards insist that we must engage with every wandering naga or murloc or this that or the other that gets in our way or else we’re not playing the game properly.
Screw that!
I want to play the game the way I want to, but can’t because of these zealots who think they know what’s best for me. They want to force me to explore every nook and cranny and do every quest in the zone, as if these players are my mommy forcing me to eat lima beans. But you know what? I don’t care about the questlines. Never have. If I finished all the quests in a zone over the eight years I played WoW, it was either purely by accident or because I was FORCED TO.
This is not fun. I actually liked BfA when I bought it two months ago–such a relaxing change from the “WORLD’S ABOUT TO END!!!” garbage of expansions past–but these ten days of grinding just to get flight–with at least another week to go!–have made me really start to hate it.
Thanks a lot, griefers. You won. I doubt I’ll resub after I’m done with this. And I sure as hell will never buy any more expansions if Pathfinder reappears.
i hate not having pathfinder only to have people who do taking all my kills. it makes me hate other players and this game! why do you think people level by only doing dungeons. can’t fly? then hit the dungeon que and never see any of that hard made content.
Oh, so what do you do when you’re stuck fighting the naga guarding the way in only to have another player blow through the gate on horseback, unbothered by the gatekeepers you’re stuck with?
Taking away horses won’t fix that problem, either. But that’s the mentality of the anti-flying zealots.
The truth about flying is that they no longer were willing to give out gear for grinding through badges or any other earnables.
Anything good enough to be an upgrade over what you can earn on the overworld is for HIGH SKILL ONLY.
But they have to keep people doing dailies, so the solution is to take away flying and make the grind for that.
Yes, there are manapearl upgrades, only in the last phases of the expansion.
This is something I should have been able to work on since day 1, and lo and behold, on day 509, I am ahead of the people who quit and didn’t play for a year or more.
Even if I am not as high-skilled as them, I might get into a raid due to having better gear. Oh look, I was diligent with my frost badges, even though I could only get one per day and raiders could have gotten more.
This is how it was in Wrath, and why so many people stayed subbed through Wrath.
If you insist that only raiders should have gear, no one else has any incentive to play, so they manufacture one: Earning flying.
I see people make this complaint about the world from time to time and it never makes sense to me. Do you just not look at your screen? Are you on auto run and watching tv or something? I simply do not have this problem. There will occasionally be an extra mob or two that I have to kill, but its the exception and not the rule. This goes for all BFA zones.
I see one or two people a month who are like you, avoiding aggro, jumping around like a champ, able to go down into the elite area of Suramar and not aggro a thing.
I am indeed watching as I try to direct my horse through all the naga and murlocs and everything else all over the place trying to kill me, and when I finally arrive at a WQ I am often mass-murdered by all those aggroed sea-fiends that were following me.
And that’s why we need flying as a baseline to do all the WQs scattered all over eight zones.