I tie this to the differences between leveling and grinding. Once you’re WQ grinding your content will not change, there’s no real progression at that point in the game and you’re really just doing it for Mogging.
Whereas players do enjoy being in the world if running all over the place actually was tied to some sort of progression bar like leveling was. I notice this difference in TBC vs Retail. I don’t mind running from place to place in TBC right now while leveling because my content is changing with the character I’m playing. Whereas with WQs I think we’re limited to what the same 10 quests over and over again with no actual change in the location or anything.
I mean it is what is because it’s endgame but I think really the fact those players are mad because the speed in which you get to that content.
I think a lot of those people fall into the category where they think they can do harder content but can’t. I know right now leveling in TBC is great. No rush at all.
I think this also ties into the alt-friendly discussion. People see the quick leveling, and how easy it is to get all your alts up to par with the same ilvl and consider that to mean alt-friendly.
And, they are right. If that’s what you care about, levelling and gearing quickly, this is a very alt-friendly expansion.
But, if you have other goals, this is the most alt-unfriendly expansion we’ve ever had. And, going out into the world to do world quests isn’t terrible - to a point. But, when we’re talking about doing five times the amount of world quests than we had to before in order to play the game as we want, it’s excessive, unfriendly, and torturous. I’m not the only person who has used the words, “it broke me.”
That’s why I’m back in TBC. I unsubbed but my buddy IRL wanted to play TBC with me. Now I just casually level that when I’m bored and it’s been fun so far. World feels a lot bigger but that’s also because I never played original WoW past level 10 back in 04. I was an EQ player.
I’ve admittedly enjoyed some TBC I’ve been playing. But, it’s like, after what they did in SL, I really don’t want to give them any more of my money. But, that’s just a personal dilemma I have to figure out.
I have done more content in SL 9.0 than all of BFA. The only thing I dislike are the systems, and Anima grinds. M+, Raiding, and PVP (Which I haven’t engaged in for years) has been a blast and I am enjoying it.
The only thing I don’t really enjoy are Boreghast for Soul Ash, and how too much meta attached to covenant abilities.
Leveling alts isn’t fun because the combat isn’t engaging when there’s no sense of danger. Pvp gear disparity is too much to be enjoyable. Keys for me no because I just never see any active guilds on my server to join. That leaves maw/torghast to grind.
There’s something about the aesthetic of SL for sure I just don’t like. Doesn’t seem warcraft-y to me. Another thing that grinds me is these basically ‘islands’ you have to fly through oribos to get to another. I really despise having to do that. I don’t mind taxi flying when its on a big continent. I don’t even mind walking in Maw as much as having to fly through oribos so much.
I don’t have an issue with all the systems, i think they’re better than bfa. But I just don’t feel the drive or longing to log in. That new torghast horse mount looks really cool. Maybe I’ll go for that in 9.1. Outside of that I’m holding out hope for class sets.
Hate covenants and the Maw. I wish the maps were bigger. Covenant abilities should have been a talent row. Also threads of fate needs an xp adjustment. Also, content drought.
Becoz that’s the best get around than use a single toon for both PvE and PvP where you cant switch covenant.
Every expansion, there are new game mechanics. And we adjust accordingly.
Shadowlands is now more on Weekly Vault rewards than End of Dungeon rewards. With this, we adjust. We focus now more on Weekly Vault than on End of Dungeon Loots. If you maintained your obsolete gameplay from the past and focus on End of Dungeon Loots, you would suffer. Becoz Weekly Vault is way way more generous than previous expansion rewards.
Blizz knows how people would react on new game mechanics. I believe Blizz expects us to do another toon if we would do both PvE and PvP. They have this data from the past and they know we have multiple toons. They know. You dont know.
I can only speak for myself, and as a player that mainly engages in world content. For me I find the world content this expac extremely uninteresting. The anima grind is not worth it as the cost/reward is so off that I just don’t engage with it. The wq are too drawn out and not rewarding enough to invest in them. I would like to try out different legendaries but I find the maw and torghast so unbearable that I have only crafted one with each character. I honestly don’t see any redeeming qualities in torghast or the maw and from a selfish point of view I would rather see them give up on them. 9.1 is all focused on the maw and torghast so I couldn’t be less excited for that. As of right now I do the world boss each week and purple callings and that’s it. Nothing else feels worth my time or fun. Content needs to be fun or rewarding enough to feel worth it, and sadly nothing in SL fills either of those requirements for me. In BfA I cleared the map of wq every day on 5 characters and enjoyed it greatly, in SL I can’t even bring myself to do that on one character.
For real, I am very lucky to have the guild I’ve been in for over a decade, but this expansion feels different. All of us are frustrated, things are increasingly tense, and people continue to drop off one by one.
None of the new content coming in 9.1 seems likely to fix it.
Shadowlands might finally be the expansion that takes us down.
I honestly have a solution that would likely fix it for my group (Or at the very least ease things) but I can’t really talk about it without being told to “Git Gud” so I just don’t bother anymore.
Something that’s helped us is Discord. I urged them to text chat and use voice chat, even if it’s different games. I’ve been pushing them to play different things together and they may even start a Warcraft TTRPG group on Discord.
Sotjeuve been doing well to tell people what game they’re in and hop into voice chat, just so we can all stay connected. They’ve also been enjoying Old Republic, which helps too.
A few of us have been branching off on off nights and stuff. We played Valheim for a bit but I could never get it to work so I abandoned it. (As for refunds early y’all…) and the other night they were playing Overwatch.
I can’t get any of them to play HOTS with me but I’m NOT BITTER ABOUT IT AT ALL WHY DO YOU ASK?
So this statement of yours is wrong. You are okay doing the dungeons over and over when you are getting upgrades week after week until you reached the max rewards.
If this is true, you just run out of things to do. And you are hiding on your alt… you are scared of something.
I’m logging on to do occasionally dailies for gold, I’m renowned capped, got curve, over 1k io, compare this to bfa? As of right now I’m gonna go with bfa because of the extraordinary long content drought, I miss Azeroth, still no god damn tier sets, maw sucks, choregast sucks this covenant imbalance bull sh!t (night fae or gtfo) (islands were also better) I can keep going. Still love the game but it seriously can be so much better.
