The problems here are that the players actions gave the devs the wrong impression of what would have saved the content.
So this is a case where a set group of players would have gotten more of what they want by doing nothing instead of what they did.
I could also argue that the problem here was that the devs listened to the wrong players about this.
BlizZard is scared that raiders will feel forced to do world quests. Same reason why professions have been gutted since WoD.
Honestly the rest of the game shouldnât be destroyed due to raiders. Thanks to M+ there is a new endgame in town joining PVP.
Right now I would say the combined populations of rated PVP and M+ dwarfs the entire raiding community.
So BlizZard must make some tough choices.
So far they are bringing back the glory of professions despite the gnashing of teeth from raiders.
And what comes next is making open world gearing good again.
They tried this experiment with BFA and systemlands for a patch but once again raiders complained.
The original plan for Torghast appeared to have been more like Horrific visions, which, being the only new content (outside the raid) in 8.3, would surely be played by everyone, including casuals, who would have no choice but to git gud.
It appeared shortly that a lot of players decided it was optional. A video was released on âwhat the legendary is and how to get itâ, as if players were too stupid to know. Players who had taken a break and come back for this were like, âThis is it? Be back next expansion.â Players who had planned on getting the cloak on all their alts and leveling it up got fewer than expected and leveled up fewer. A packed poll that everyone could vote on by all their level 10âs showed that 80% of the playerbase had already gotten the cloak on all their alts and were leveling it up, which was hilariously false.
Even punitive measures like denying casuals without the cloak the ability to cleanse corruptions from world quest gear and dungeon gear and removal of the ability of players without the cloak to purchase essences their other characters had earned, which had been promised, did not inspire them to get the cloak.
Devs decided that Torghast should not be optional. Everyone would have to do it. People who purchased the expansion but did not do Torghast would not have access to content.
Of course, that would have been a failure (massive numbers of players quitting because they were denied access to content being a clear failure), so they nerfed Torghast. Then they removed gear, because it had become nothing but a currency dispenser.
Complaining doesnât bring about changes. Massive numbers of people leaving is what brings about changes.
What I am saying is thisâŚlet me be explicit as possible.
The future of this game is M+, rated PVP whether soloqueue or group quue and open world.
Raiding is really on its last legs based on the data I have observed. These are last ditch attempts to try to make raiding appealing.
But it is not working.
I do not see a way forward for raiding to be more interesting than M+ , rated PVP or open world content with how the MMORPG market has changed the last 20 years.
20 years ago raiding was the crown jewel of MMORPG game play. A cornerstone to a central foundation and pinnacle.
Now with the arrival of M+ the pillars of the raiding heavens have been shaken. And now with the arrival of rated soloque in DF on the PVP scene even more so.
Raiding future in WoW is in peril.
I recall there being talk about Torghast that would have made everyone would have had to do a minimum, like say a weekly run/completion, but then people would have had the option to do more if they so wanted.
Blizzard has this habit of wanting players to at least try the content, like how the MoP cloak took 2 BG wins, even if they were in the lowest bracket (queued) but even back then we had people acting like the cloak took rated PvP.
That contrasts with how it is often implemented, though. Raiders in SLs season 1 had to max out rated PvP gear to raid with, while in season 2 PvPers and mythic+ players had to buy enough mythic raid carries to get all the domination sockets to be competitive in their content.
We have often seen this described as âBlizzard wants you to âdip your toeâ in other content.â I would dispute that having to spend thousands of dollars on carries can be trivialized as âdipping your toe in a different contentâ.
I am a raider and I did not have to do that.
Donât conflate what players require with what Blizzard sets up. Like Blizzard could have put the Lego crafting in torghast to serve as an incentive to get people into it, but it is PLAYERS that made it required.
There were enough raiders buying carries that when a glad was banned for RMT and complained he hadnât done it, PvPers said he was lying. That everyone was selling RMT carries, and none of them needed to have real jobs.
An âincentiveâ. You mean, if you want to do content you have no choice but to get legendaries, to farm Torghast and pay hundreds or thousands of dollars during the expansion to get into content?
No, they didnât have to. They could have lowered their expectations. They could have switched to LFR, which wouldnât have required legendaries. They could have quit raiding entirely, decided that having to pay that much real money was unreasonable. They didnât have to play the game at all. The game is optional. Should we all quit?
A lot of people did. A lot of raiders stopped raiding. A lot of raiding guilds are no more. Only 8500 normal raiding guilds completed Sepulcher after tuning intended to drag out world first as long as possible, and gated behind tier that wasnât available to normal raiders for 8 weeks. Does Blizzard consider that a success? Do you?
Or they could have told whoever was requiring such of them to take a long walk off a short pier, and find a group that fit with their desires/goals.
My issues with Torghast have nothing to do with gear. It has everything to do with Blizzard making a roguelike except not fully committing to utilizing what makes roguelikes so fun.
I will continue to repeat it until Iâm blue in the face: I do not care about gear. I just want fun content.
You become what youâre around. The forums as a whole are so unhealthy. All the arguing and debating.
I want to be around nice people and have good conversations. Healthy stuff.
Iâm out of this rattrap.
Yep. They could have quit raiding, as so many guilds did. The idea that normal raiders without 2 legendaries and without tier 4pc should have been killing bosses in Sepulcher when it was tuned to require them is something the players were unable to solve by switching to a normal raiding guild that was going to do hundreds of pulls without killing a boss? Get real. That was disastrous for raiding. Players will only allow you to waste their time so long before they wise up.
Good conversation is arguing
Oh, was it, I recall the first week in normal for my guild, I believe we got to like Halondros, we might have had 2 legos each, but no way did we have 4 piece.
Normal was likely balanced around having ZM gear at the lowest, maybe 2 piece at the outside. So, I ask you, what level of SotFO was balanced around 2 legos and 4 piece and what level did PLAYERS require them?
Yes, but gear also allows you to do the same difficulty level of content more quickly, efficiently, or safely.
Have you never cleared the same difficulty level of raid more than once before?
You are acting like WoW is running world content on a separate engine where gear upgrades donât matter.
Gear provides power progression and is the actual reward. There is no need to go to the vendor if gear drops from the actual dungeons and you want to keep doing them.
The numbers are not random, other than a negligible amount of damage variance.
If youâre trying to argue âitâs all just numbers anywayâ, the same thing can be said of players progressing through M+20s and Mythic raids. You could double the numbers for health and damage of all players and enemies and the gameplay experience would be the sameâso the numbers are indeed arbitraryâbut once the players start acquiring better gear the content will become easier.
Similarly, getting better gear for open world content means that enemies go down faster and your character stays up longer. Gear iLvl is not just a random number, as it actually impacts gameplay.
Itâs not silly to want to see the numbers go up. Are you trying to make the preposterous claim that M+ players and Mythic raiders donât care about their DPS or HPS?
Reality check: All content outside of pet battles and vehicular combat is directly affected by gear.
This is gross exaggeration, and you know it.
No, the game engine is running based on my characterâs actual gear, not the sticker on my screen.
These types of players used to stay for endgame, but recently most of them donât. They may enjoy leveling up and questing, but not organized group content. Give them an endgame worth staying for. Donât you want WoW to be big again?
Again, the number is not meaningless. Doing content on an undergeared character versus an overgeared charcter is a very different gameplay experience, even if you are just doing open world content.
This is false. I was a 1%er in M+ without stepping foot in a raid in season 2. No Domination sockets, no shards, ect. Only what M+ gave me.
âHad toâ
There was like 4 people in my guild that did that.
The bonus was disabled outside of the raid, leaving only the gems themselves, which were a really tiny bonus. If anything, donât buy a Mythic carry, just pug heroic if you really want it.
We were told at the time that all difficulties were tuned for the 4pc, which normal raiders did not have the opportunity to start for 8 weeks. You raided heroic. That means you are not one of the normal raiders from guilds that donât do AotC, which the data was based on. Normal raids were not balanced around having 2 pieces of Zereth Mortis gear.
I donât even understand what youâre asking in that question. Iâm not going to speculate on something that didnât happen and you would never have noticed, since you arenât a normal raider.
Wait. You told us you were a casual. Now youâre a 1%er? Which is it? Can you link to your source that tells us that no mythic+er got sockets?
I do consider myself a casual. I donât have a set team, I pug everything, and no schedule. You fail to realize that there is no set definition of âCasualâ.
Pretty sure you can just check RIO.
Edit: Yep, my gear is there you can check it for yourself.
Jeez I canât help compare ion to ghost crawler haha just seems no matter what people are just going to complain on here.