This post isn’t even about rewards - the game is pretty unfun at casual and solo levels of play in terms of gameplay and engagement.
Every task in Shadowlands seems to require an inordinate amount of time to attempt, let alone complete/succeed at. Gone are the days where I could login, putter around for 20-30 minutes and put a chip in my goal, whether that was farming some cloth, or doing Hodir dailies, etc.
Right now, in SL, most of my time and mental energy are gone in enduring the annoying maps, annoying hubs, or flying from zone to zone through Oribos, no less.
And let’s no even mention the timesink that is Torghast. All I’ll ask is this - why isn’t there savepoints between floors?
This problem of the game feeling unfun or unsatisfying at casual/open world levels is not unique to SL. BFA had this issue too. I found the base game so boring; it was only when I began doing M+ that WoW seemed to open up a bit more.
In SL, we see an extreme version of this. M+ and high end content are still mechanically fun, but open world content is somehow even worse than BFA. (Perhaps because it is just more BFA, something we have dealt with for at least 2 years now).
Please Blizzard, go back to your earlier iterations of WoW where it was as fun to log into your character for 20 minutes as it was for 6 hours.
Everything is designed with the understanding that it is funneling you into cutting edge content rather than being designed to function on its own merits.
Right! And I dont think this is necessarily a bad end goal, but it seems that the former is coming at the expense of the latter. The game world, systems, gameplay are all on rails until you pass that cutting edge content threshold.
No flying kind of kills the fun in the open world for me - I loooove flying in this game. Excited for flying whenever they implement it (they say 9.1 but IDK if it’ll be heavily time-gated or not).
Given how quickly flying is coming in SL compared to say BFA, it makes me wonder at why even bother gating it so? Why not just have it unlock for characters at level cap?
I hope you aren’t playing Classic nor BC Classic when it launches because that would be pretty hypocritical on your part. I am sure you will say you won’t but do.
Anyways, you are completely wrong. First off, mmos aren’t made for people who play 1-2 hours a week and expect to have good results. Your post basically makes it sound that way because for me, I get everything I need to do pretty quickly. Maintained renown extremely easily not putting in much time each week and even Torghast takes maybe 30 mins to finish unless you need to do TC.
Dailies are still extremely fast to do as well. So, no idea what game you are playing but I am not experiencing that.
I don’t play classic; I don’t see the appeal. I will be playing TBC Classic here and there because I started in TBC so nostalgia trip for me.
But that tangential point aside, I have to say you are completely wrong in your takeaway here.
The thing about classic, TBC was that while things took much longer overall, you could still log in, chip away and have something to show for it in due time. In modern WoW, the systems, rewards, and literal content are jettisoned to the point of irrelevance when the new patch comes out.
First off, mmos aren’t made for people who play 1-2 hours a week and expect to have good results.
Funny that you say such a line that basically admits that I have a point. You are conceding that stuff takes forever to do in WoW!
Honestly, it’s coming to that point for me. I prefer to do IRL chores and errands; and when I do game, I wanna play old RPGs, GW2, Dota, maybe even some D3.
I might just come back mid-late SL, as I did with BFA. The game is kinda dire for me rn.
But you still can? You can still spend 30 minutes doing world quests for some Anima for your mount or covenant sets, you can still hop into a normal heroic dungeon for a quick go, you can still grind gold.
Honestly I don’t see how they could even add more low entry point content without it feeling bloated, if it does not already.
I don’t understand these complaints, I get all the daily grindy content done (Callings, mostly) in the 30 minutes I take to slowly drink my coffee before work, and usually in Heal spec. In Classic if I had 30 minutes to log in I could, at best, farm some gold for a bit.
That’s interesting because when I log into SL, my map and quest log are so full of mumbo-jumbo from all their different systems, callings, currencies and mobs that I get exhausted/bored before even doing the content.
If you look at the map and decide its too much for you, thats your choice. You don’t need to play this game. But it’s silly to come to the forums and complain about not having any casual content, and then instantly admitting that you just choose not to do the content which already exists for, frankly, silly reasons.
