I have seen a lot of posters claiming that the game is so bad, that before they just could have fun and that the world is going to end. From the time gate thing to “lol a dailies only Patch”.
So lets review each expansion and their end games shall we?
Vanilla Classic End game:
Doing quests that you forgot to do while lvling?
Regular Dungeons and 10 man dungeons Grind for gear
PvP Grind for honor (hours or hours to stay relevant)
Reputation grind for in order to enter some raids (you need honored with the argent down to start the attunement quest).
hours of farming for mats and resistance gear.
long quest chains to get attunements for raids.
killing thousands of fulborgs in felwood to grind reputation to buy a recipe.
20 man raids and 40 man raids.
BC
farming reputation to aldor or scryers
complete quest that you didn’t do while lvling for complete the story.
Farming reputation with all factions in order to be able to do Heroic dungeons
Daily Quest in different zones, Terrokar forrest, shadow moon valley, netherstorm and Blade Edge Mountains (LFM escort, member that?).
Heroic dungeons (they were hard, I can imagine that an average player nowadays would ask for a nerf)
10 man Kara
25 man raids
Bgs
arenas
WOTLK
Dailies in zones
complete quest that you didn’t do while lvling for complete the story.
Normal and Heroic dungeons
Grind reputation to buy gear and recipes
Arenas
Bgs
Wintergraps
10 man raid
25 man raid (and hardmode).
Cata
More daily quest
Heroic dungeons
Reputation grind
Arenas
Bgs farm for conquest gear
Tol Barad
Normal Raid and Heroic Raids
LFR introduction
MOP
Even More Dailys
Reputation grind
Heroic Dungeons
Challenge Mode dungeons (where very hard)
Scenarios
Arenas
Bgs
Rated Bgs introduction.
Timeless Isle
LFR, Flex, Normal and Heroic Raids
WOD
Garrisons
Reputation grind
Heroic and Challenge Mode dungeons
Taking a selfie on the open world
More garrisons for mats and gold making
Apexis Crystal dailys
LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic Dungeon
Treasure Finding in the open world?
Asharan
Bgs and Rated Bgs
Arenas
Legion
Reputation grind
Complete quest for the story in every zone.
World Quests (which essentially were a new way of Dailies)
Heroic and Mythic and Mythic + dungeons
Legendary grind.
Class halls campaign, getting new followers and upgrade them.
Mage Tower
Bgs and Rated Bgs
Arenas
LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic Raids
AP farm (Im going to put this, but AP came by just playing the game, in other words doing all above).
BFA
Reputation Grind to unlock Allied Races (a bad move IMO, I agree with people that say that you should be able to play allied races buy just purchase BFA).
War Campaign
Island Expeditions
Warfronts
Essences grind
Complete quest for the story in every zone.
World Quests
Bgs and Rated Bgs
Arenas
LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic Raids
Heroic and Mythic and Mythic + dungeons
Warmode wpvp (people organize for this so, it counts as an end game content)
Minor and Major Assaults
Horrific Visions
Cloak upgrades
HoA AP Grind (same as AP grind in legion, you could do it by just playing the game)
So, as you can see, BFA has everything that previous expansions and base game had and more. Also, everything people hate from BFA were present within the game before. So how exactly the game is under its worst stage now?
Explain.
Time gating? That was present since Vanilla
Endless reputation grind? That is a thing since Vanilla
Dailys? That was a thing since BC and in some cases, for PvErs, that was the only end game content besides the regular thing (dungeons, Bgs, arenas and raids).
At Least BFA develops something very important introduced in Legion, the self-progression.
There’s a major difference, in the past you just needed gear and you were mostly ready, in bfa, you need way more that is gated behind timegated grimds
“Especially ones that instead of being the final 10% of your character’s power end up being 50% making them mandatory for all serious content. -First it was azerite, then essences, now rng corrupted gear.”
That statement can be reduce to: In BFA we need gear.
Same as before.
Cause people like to complain, whine, piss & moan, cry, kick & scream about every little thing these days. No matter what Blizzard does the entire player base won’t be happy. I remember people in Vanilla calling the game trash and quitting. It’s an endless Hivemind cycle that once some one whines enough, more jump on the bandwagon for it.
Are they right to complain? Perhaps(I believe so pending what they are complaining about). Is there issues with the current game? Most definitely. But the question no one ever answers is how do you make the game benefit the entire player base? No one can ever answer this question because there’s not a single person who plays this game or works at blizzard that can answer it correctly.
It’s like the definition of insanity is being displayed on a daily basis.
Remember when the world was static and didn’t scale with you, though? It sucks when you’re leveling that you get weaker when you level as the mobs scale with you but your gear isn’t updated yet.
Boy, I remember world scaling in Legion. It was so overtuned. Being in strong gear that wasn’t top tier meant the world was harder for you than a near fresh 110.
Didnt know this was a thinkg, my guild which was a Heroic and first bosses mythic guild never force me to get all forged gear to stay within the raid, didnt happend in MoP, didnt happened in WoD, Legion and BFA
Get azerite traits
you mean get gear?
Get essences
Get HoA level
Get Cloak level
are you in a Mythic only guild that pursues world first? Now I don’t raid anymore, but you dont need to farm any of those to raid (at least not for heroic). All these 3 can be obtained by playing the game. Essences locked behind reputation? meaning farming reputation? a thing that people were doing this Vanilla.
Let me put it another way: How many layers of grind are too much?
Essences, that’s one layer too many.
So what did Blizzard do? Add another layer in the cloak. They pushed player patience too far so now we’re leaving.
I don’t think the game is boring honestly, there’s plenty of fun activities. The problem is that reaching those activities demand a lot of time investment before they get fun. I want to experience challenging M+ content from a different perspective (tank or mdps) but I can’t, I have to grind for a month to unlock enough essences to play keys as an alt on a level that I find engaging, meanwhile I’m stuck grinding lower keys until the 4th week finally comes and I can unlock rank 3 focusing iris or vision of perfection.
BfA is very demanding; almost as much as Vanilla, which is the one reason I don’t play Vanilla.
People grind M+ and farm content more regularly hoping for a good TF, or a socket or a high key item. There’s no, “done” when you can get a TF socket high M+ item that is better than raid gear.
No? Azerite traits may be static, but hunting specific ones is the annoying part. And you stack the best ones, there’s no real thought to it.
Just because you don’t feel obligated to do it doesn’t mean other people don’t. Plus it’s a near never ending grind, which is never enjoyable. And we all know at the end of BfA we’ll lose the heart and feel incomplete again.
It is virtually impossible to not have any certain lvl of those by just playing the game doing the exact same thing that you did in previous expansions. Even without farming directly, you can stay relevant for Heroic Raids.
As someone who has wanted a new main for ever and just drug my mage through current content to see the story and then unsub, Allied Races really hit that niche for me, Role playing as an Ambassador (with my Ambassador title) doing lore master, when I’m done with Lannisteros here I wanna make a Zandalari Druid or Vulpera Warlock as my Horde main, and I’ll charge through lore master on that character too, so I’m finding BFA reinvigorate my love for wow.
But that is just me I’m in my own lane with what I consider fun