This. The most successful periods WoW has had were all based around casuals being able to play however they wanted and just enjoy. They didn’t need to raid or grind increasingly difficult dungeons back in Wrath(as an example). You could be casual and work for months upon months of daily effort to slowly get more powerful, unlock new enchants, do argent tournament content, and run random heroic dungeons.
Legion was super popular again due to focusing on leveling content moreso than a hardcore focus on high-tier raiding.
Shadowlands went so horridly wrong because it sucks to play as a casual player. The zones feel very uninspired and are pretty much all annoying to navigate. And once you get to max level all you have is your pointless covenant to grind or mythic+/raiding. There’s nothing for casual players to do, which is why they all left after a month(if they made it that long).
But ActiBlizz isn’t going to learn until “WoW” becomes a word that everyone feels gross even saying.
The main issue is that you don’t understand how personal loot worked.
The game generated loot tables based on your party, and then rolled for anyone who could use the items that were generated. For the sake of the discussion, these rolls were “Need” rolls
The new loot system creates opportunities for both altruism and selfishness. Unfortunately, the more casual the content is in WoW, the more toxic and or annoying the players tend to be. I don’t think we are going to have to be very worried about loot in LFR or Normal raid being “ninja’d” by higher gear players. The higher the skill curve in WoW, in my experience, I have found to be more sensible and kind players than the opposite.
Pugging heroic only is always a bad experience, but I’ve yet to run into a guild group progressing heroic and picking up a couple bodies who WASN’T insanely kind, friendly, and welcoming.
People killing time at 2400+ CR have been pretty similar. Super nice group of players usually who aren’t yelling at you when something goes wrong, but offering genuine criticism that comes from a good place.
Same thing for Key Pushers who were KSH and above. Super nice people who just wanted to be helpful, for the most part.
If that’s your thing, SL should have been amazing. 4 covenants of casual stuff, a boatload of mogs and mounts, and way better open world gear than vanilla -wrath for casual players.
What? There was SO much for casual players to do this Xpac. More than i have ever seen in any other expansion… there was so much “casual content” that it overwhelmed me and i chose not to do any of it.
Like off the top of my head…
There is the covenant campaign.
There is crafting.
There are (at least) 5 zones of dailies to do.
There is Torghast.
There is Korthia
There is Zerith Mortis
There are dungeons: Normal, Heroic, Mythic and Mythic+
There are raids: LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic… idk if Mythic+ raids are a thing, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
There is the Fated Raid system. (I don’t know anything about it, but my understanding is that it makes out-dated raids relevant again)
There is Time Walking.
There are Battle grounds… Both Epic and on a smaller scale, or even Rated.
There are arenas… they even made a solo arena mode.
And i would venture to guess there is even more casual content out there that i don’t even know about.
I’m no hardcore player by any means. I level my toons, I run dungeons From normal up to low Mythic+
I do the occasional raid night when a friend is like, “Hey, my guild needs a healer for the night, want to join us?”
I run some Battlegrounds and do the occasional Arena or two if i’m feeling spicy.
I leveled up a profession.
I completely ignored the Covenant campaign, and Torghast, and dailies and world content though because they weren’t my cup of tea.
I leveled a bunch of Alts.
I don’t play the game constantly, i’m very on and off with it, but every time i come back there is always something new to do. I am pretty much as casual of a player as you will ever find, and there is so much casual content that i literally chose not to do the bulk of it because it was too much and the sheer amount overwhelmed me… And the best part is, that if you’re into Alts, you get to do all of that stuff multiple times.
Yeah this isn’t how video games work. Glad to hear it was your experience, but that’s not the norm. Sweat and toxicity scale at a nearly 1:1 rate in every game in existence, and that includes WoW (especially includes WoW). There are still toxic casual players because the baseline level of toxicity is so high, but that doesn’t mean toxicity is inversely correlated with sweat.
Exactly.And here I thought the moochers of WOW would be happy because …
They get more chances at loot
2.) Mog collectors losing rolls due to new system that says stats get priority over looks.
But then I forgot how many players prefer to freak out over ignorance instead of actually reading or experiencing how it actually works.
I do know that me and a lot of other players days of running LFR on our mains are over. Since I cant run for transmog anymore all those whiny brats who complained about us “toxic players” not giving them our loot can clear that content on their own now. Good luck downing bosses with low dps groups who have no clue on what they are doing and dip out after first wipe to trash.
I think there’s definitely a level in wow where you’re just running into people who are super cool and stuff all the time. Top 10-15% seems to be thay bracket, based on experience
I see its programming more as “need before greed” as I remember it…which makes me wonder why people can take multiple items off a single boss. That’s pretty greedy, even if you need an item; other’s can too, so it’s objectively more greedy to take 2 items and leave them with 0.
But I have my own thread for that…just wanted to chime in here as well.
I keep saying experience for a reason! But I’ve also shared this experience with a lot of people.
I think you’d run into a lot of people who agree that 8-15 is the hardest keystone bracket to get out of, and it’s mostly because of super duper toxic players! After you get out of that range, you really start playing the best version of keys because everyone is mostly super chill
first off nothing worse than farming a weapon off 7th boss and the 6th boss drops u garbage loot you dont even need and you know another week no wep coming. reallllllly great feeling.
My favorite part of posts like this is that Blizzard wins. It is kind of an example of the world in general to be honest. Split people into parties about a topic and have them make drastic decisions about the topic. All the while benefitting from this dichotomy. Who cares about the freaking loot? They just change stuff every 3 years to light some fires up and keep people posting/interested in the game. Look how engaged people are on this topic thread. That’s a dub for blizzard regardless of if you like the loot system that they intentionally change every so often.
That is also true for the new group loot system. You can’t ninja an item because you can not loot the body still. And you can swap your loot spec in group loot as well, to increase the chances of items from the spec dropping.
Oh right, sorry, didn’t realize that none of the activities on that list provide any gear.
And your response doesn’t make any sense in the context of what was being talked about. Loot was never part of the equation… although most of those activites do reward you with loot… Someone said there wasn’t enough casual content, so i pointed to the casual content.
And i’m sorry if WoW is just a loot treadmill for you… that sounds very unsatisfying… but a lot of people play for other reasons than obtaining better loot. Believe it or not, for some people… experiencing the game is what playing it is all about. Exploring the world, going on quests, hanging out with friends, taking part in the adventure… these are what you might call casual players. And while better loot is always nice, and gives you the ability to push harder content, it is not the end goal, it’s more of a cherry on top… I’m not sure you understand what a casual player actually is?
But again. Your point makes no sense, because almost all of the things on that list… almost everything you can do in the entire game, provides some type of reward.
I maintain… I was a staunch supporter of a return of ML… but NOT as an complete replacement to PL. This just is not complicated. Enforce PL across the board, and provide GL/ML as an option in 100% guild groups. That’s all we asked for.