Isn’t it telling, though, that this is the most shining praise anyone can manage to give it?
It’s not that bad - it ‘only’ takes a few weeks, it’s not even the worst grind in WoW’s history, or even one of them. … But what does it add to the game, exactly?
I ask that as someone who likes the initial period of being grounded. Why does the ability need to be locked behind not only a couple weeks of monotonous daily grinds, but also a wait until a very specific patch? Does that make the game better, or more fun, for anyone?
Any feature that doesn’t add to the enjoyment of a game - especially one we’re paying a monthly fee to access - deserves scrutiny.
I didn’t forget, and thats why it felt very much like punishment when it was introduced. “You want flight back? Fine, you get to do this tedious grind, have fun!”
Its interesting because you said in the previous sentence that they changed their minds and gave us back flight. So if they can change their minds about a development decision one way, they can change it again. I’m fairly sure this game is littered with instances of them changing their minds about things.
Hadn’t played since Panda and the WoD and legion grinds are just as bad. Spending a month or more slowly pecking away at obsolete content.
These grinds may keep people subbed for an extra month but you got to wonder how many people get burned out from them and dump their subscription shortly after wards.
That’s me. I’d gladly stay subbed for an extra year or two if Pathfinder didn’t exist, that’s what I used to do before Pathfinder existed. I rarely unsubbed at all before Pathfinder existed.
If Pathfinder was just one achievement and available at launch, a lot of the issues associated with Pathfinder wouldnt matter. Or even, lower the rep requirement to Honored if its still too agregious to mos tpeople.
It took less than 2 weeks, back when it first dropped…
So I imagine it is faster now.
With so many REAL grinds in the game now, returning players can chill out and casually solo Pathfinder for under two weeks (after the other “easy” reps are revered.)
Yep. Blizzard’s “play our way or blizz you” attitude and general arrogance on this topic are pretty awful. I’ve just come back from a 8-10 year break and have been playing thorugh, but the idea that I have to grind rep in every zone is finally starting to wear down my enthusiasm for the game. They absolutely must unbolt rep from the core gameplay mechanics like flying. If the current dev team can’t figure out how to design content that includes flying, they should be allowed to move on to other jobs that are better suited to their skill set, and blizzard should hire people who do have that ability.
That’s the point. If the problem is that they have the arrogant attitude of “play our way or go blizz yourself” then the solution is for them to not have that attitude anymore. This is a problem created by them to solve issues that don’t exist. If they aren’t up to the task that devs in BC and WOTLK handled easily, designing zones that include flying, then they should move on to a different company that is better suited to their talents, and management should hire people who are capable of doing something that has already been done.
Looks like I guessed it. They found a new way to make flying more difficult. It’s like the mechagon debuff on steroids. If you get near these, you get a stacking debuff that lasts for 3min that slows your flying speed to the point that ground mounts are faster. I expect they will have something like this in Shadowlands as well:
I do not mean to sound crass here, but that is the cost for quitting for a bit is it not?.
You may still have rep tkk grind that others got naturally in the process of playing? Or in case of Rustbilt may have had much easier groups to grind when it first came out?
Nah I work in the hotel industry and if I had a “stay my way or go blizz yourself” attitude I’d get fired. We actually take care of our guests here. I think they’d be well suited to being something with less active choices, since that’s what they like. Maybe food, makeup, and pesticide testing.
If you were right that might be true, but your take has the fatal flaw that some of these reps don’t come “in the natural course of playing.” The PF Part 1 reps more or less do, since you pick them up mostly just from doing the quest lines. But PF part 2 is forcing new content on players that doesn’t have a natural path to revered. If you complete every quest in the swamps, you’ll be at or close to revered with Talanji’s Expedition (as an example). If you complete every quest in Mechagon you have to come back for weeks over and over and do a bunch of disjointed random activities in a zone that is basically Azeroth’s answer to Pine Bluff, Arkansas (if you’ve never been, just imagine Mechagon but with less functional technology).
They created content that they had such little faith in that they felt the need to gate a popular feature behind repeating it. And of course that means when they are talking to the only people they care about (the suits with MBAs who only look at numbers) they can put up a graph and say “Look how many players are using this new content daily, they obviously love it.”
They’re simultaneously scamming both us AND the useless business school drones who sign their paychecks.
Well that’s bad news, look like I won’t be purchasing any more game time. Too bad for them video games are actually a competitive industry and any time I miss the boring grind I can just deep clean my apartment.
If Blizz devs ran fast food then if you wanted a big mac theyd make you pay then send you across town to actually order it right before sending you into the next county to pick it up but then if you wanted it supersized the tell you go back to the first store to get that done before finally telling you itll be a few months until you actually receive your burger and heaven help you if you ask for large fries or a drink
