This is hardly surprising. Ion is notorious for absolutely despising solo/casual players who don’t have the time or energy to raid or mythic plus.
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I created a topic asking what challenging content people would like: What kind of challenging content do people want? - #28 by Antiman-bloodhoof
Feel free to post ideas there as far as content you would like to see, rewards need not be discussed, it is just content focus.
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How would they only nerf lower M+ keys that won’t affect the rest? They literally scale in chronological order.
How am I trying to destroy content if I am just trying to preserve it?
Some people do WQs because they enjoy them. Some people consider them a chore but do them for the gold, rep, gear, resources, currency, or whatever else they offer.
But I think the thing you are failing to realize is that a certain player demographic both enjoys actually doing WQs and enjoys being rewarded by them. Just like raiders who enjoy actual raiding as well as the power progression it provides. Why do you think this concept only applies to you and not other types of gameplay?!
My point was that elitist players like you that want to nerf or destroy open world gearing always claim that open world gear rewards destroy the social fabric of the game because people won’t need to raid for gear anymore—but your claim is preposterous because the higher iLvl gear is always going to come from Heroic and Mythic iLvl, so why would players who enjoy raiding stop raiding because they can do open world content that they hate for Normal downgrades?!
And one last thing, this game lost most of its social aspects when it went more hardcore with the Cata and WoD expansions. Guilds and even servers died out to the point where people didn’t have anyone to do content with.
LFR had to be introduced. Legendaries for all players and seasonal welfare gear became concepts in MoP. Legion had to introduce open world gearing and M+ to keep the game alive. Ironically, devs listened to elitist players and their actions had an adverse effect on the health of the game.
If you truly want WoW to become more social, you are going to need to population to start increasing again. You don’t do that by forcing out all the casual, solo, and open world players.
Open world players enjoying their content has nothing to do with raiders or M±ers enjoying their content.
If what you imply is true, and open world content is more enticing than group instanced content despite the inferior rewards, then we have a huge problem here: that would mean that WoW devs are intentionally killing their own game by killing open world content to keep raid and M+ metrics high.
They are doing that. WoW sub numbers have been plummeting, while FF14’s have gone up.
Note: FF14 is not a truly single-player game, but it respects the gameplay and progression experience of solo players rather than trying to force them out like you want to do.
Players started leaving in Cata because that’s when the devs starting focusing on endgame instanced content. The leveling zones and leveling experience were minimal, there was no capital city, and Heroic dungeons were overtuned.
Players left in even greater numbers in WoD because the only PvE endgame was raiding. WoW devs that think like you tried to bring back the social aspects of the game by forcing grouping, but the attempt failed so miserably that Blizzard no longer publishes WoW-specific sub numbers.
Legion was a banger of an expansion after WoD because it introduced open world progression and M+. Guilds and servers became active again, leading to more social interaction.
The game content itself—and the actions of WoW devs—tells a story. That should be all the evidence you need.
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I said this in another thread but it’s time for him to step down
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They could leave our 15’s alone and give you challenge seekers more affixes after 15 and have it start scaling considerably more after 15.
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This thread got juicy over night lol. 
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Yes it did.
I am like I missed a lot while I was gone lol.
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I would like more options for open world or solo content, but that would require more resources from Blizzard that they cannot spare, and we learned from Torghast that WoW devs are going to refuse to offer power progression through anything but the 3 pillars, leading to the failure of any expansion feature like Torghast.
So all we are left with for 10.0 is open world content. If the open world has nothing for me other than a monthslong grind for LFR iLvl, then I don’t buy the expac, simple as that. I’m not going to trust that the devs are going to get things right like I did for SL.
Here’s a simple concept for you: No modern MMO can survive on raiding alone, not even WoW.
And one more bonus shocker: Having an open world where gamers can fight together and progress in power is the hallmark of a successful MMO!
Definitely.
Sometimes the LFR version is a unique color like green, pink, or purple. The devs might have thought they were giving the lame color to LFR, but sometimes it’s the best one.
The only reason I would ever be doing M+ in the first place is because elitist players like you convinced WoW devs to nuke open world progression.
And the only way I would be doing M+ in DF is if the lower levels were made queue-able.
If M+ were made queue-able, the fail rates would skyrocket and nerfs would be inevitable.
In effect, if you want to preserve the difficulty and exclusiveness of M+, you need to advocate for alternate progression options to keep the “bads” and casuals out of the equation.
Relic drops were very RNG dependent in 9.1 at first. You only got a few chances to loot the epic relic items each day, and you would be locked out for the day even if you didn’t get that much.
Also, many players didn’t know about or want to bother with the chests in the rift.
It would have taken longer than 28 days to reach rank 6 for the typical open world players, even if they felt like they were doing all that they could each day.
The instanced players complained because they felt compelled to grind Korthia for the 252 conduit upgrades. The 226 and 233 gear upgrades were so heavily timegated that hardcore players would never have gotten upgrades from Korthia unless they had really bad luck with a certain slot.
Definitely! The game actually tends to collapse on itself when it removes progression routes or makes them less accessible. There are reasons why WoW subs started dropping in Cata for the first time in its history, or WoD sub numbers got so low that Blizzard stopped publishing them.
It is the fault of Blizzard for removing alternate treadmills that have existed for years now, all to force more players onto their same favorite treadmill.
WoW is different from a single-player RPG because solo players don’t have the option of doing those hardest dungeons/bosses for the better gear, yet they need that gear for the monsters they do fight.
WoW devs are making sure that WoW is a broken game for solo players, when the game was fine in expacs like Wrath, MoP or Legion.
No worries. We know that you are going to say that world content is too easy and even LFR iLvl is too high.
The game may go live in an even worse state than it is on Beta/PTR.
A couple of years ago, solo and casual players were told that SL was going to be great and not to worry about development cycles, but the game was released in a terrible state for them.
More than likely, yes.
WoW devs spent a lot of resources on professions, and want players engaged with crafting as much as possible.
Also, some players are going to buy WoW tokens to be able to afford crafted gear if they don’t want to farm the mats themselves.
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Literally never said to nuke any world gear. In fact, I most always collect the mogs from them.
But you keep your little trible “us vs them” thing going, it’s all you got.
Everyone could do it in 28 days. Most people didn’t bother to check guides before patch to know how, my buddy Niannas though, he was committed. He knew about Rift keys and everything to get the max relic per day.
Guy I responded claimed it was impossible, I proved him wrong. Well not me, but my buddy did.
Facts
I did hear that professions were going to give comparable gear to mythic+ in dragonflight but I’m not sure. It really depends on the power scaling between item levels. If 390-400 is only a 5% power increase it’s not too big of a deal. But if it’s anything like shadowlands, 390-400 will be like a 20% increase
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On the live game, dungeons provide up to a 15% damage/health boost if you queue for them.
Theoretically, if lower M+ keys were queue-able, the lower keys would be effectively nerfed. The higher keys would still be more difficult, just with a more noticeable gap because you would lose the bonus.
You don’t preserve content by nuking the rewards for it.
Wouldn’t M+ participation rates drop it if only offered LFR iLvl no matter how high the key?
Gear (unless cosmetic only) has an iLvl and associated power level. You are encouraging WoW devs to nuke the value of world gear for the players that actually need it.
Elitist players and WoW devs are creating these tribes.
Your player demographic is insisting that content for my player demographic needs to be nuked as part of your reward, even if there is no logical or objective reason why this would be necessary.
I actually want M+ and raiding to be successful for the health of the game, even if I don’t do them.
If you were actually an expert on game systems, you wound realize that Korthian relic progress was highly timegated at 9.0 launch, and your rate of progress varied considerably depending on RNG. You only got a certain number of loot chances per day, and if you didn’t get any epic relic items, then you were SOL.
Also, hardcore raiders were likely geared enough to be able to clear out the rift more comfortably than true open world players.
Professions will be able to craft raiding iLvl gear, but the Heroic and Mythic ranks will require soulbound reagents that can only be obtained from group instanced content. (The person receiving the BoP gear will need to provide their own soulbound reagents through the new work order system, so open world players will be able to craft Mythic iLvl gear but not equip it themselves.)
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It would drop, but then again that argument doesn’t hold up because M+ is a “Pillar of End-Game” content. A major pillar wouldn’t be capped at LFR.
Or they can just get better and learn to play if they want the rewards from it?
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This isn’t a mythic+ thread, this is about open world content
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He brought it up, making M+ queueable.
Exactly!
An endgame pillar wouldn’t be capped at LFR iLvl. That’s why open world gearing needs to be restored as an endgame pillar (albeit an inferior one), as much as that would distress you for some reason.
It is a simple fact that queued content needs to be nerfed to accommodate for the lack of experience, interest, knowledge, gear, or coordination on the part of the players.
It’s OK for the highest difficulties to not be queue-able. But it’s not OK when the only endgame content that qualifies for Great Vault rewards is LFR.
I already said I would rather not do M+ to begin with, but the topic comes up when open world content doesn’t provide progression, and the game requires premade groups for anything other than LFR.
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In order for it to be “restored” it would have to have been considered an “end-game” pillar to begin with.
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But putting BIS Mythic ilvl gear in simple WQs is forcing everyone to do WQs and there are players that don’t want to do WQs so it goes both ways. I don’t think more gear progression pathways is the issue. The issue is that if all pathways give the same level of gear then they need to have the same level of difficulty. But there are definitely people in this thread preaching against that.
Yes but there is always a mathematical BIS.
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The treadmill wasn’t removed. The reward was brought in line with the difficulty of the treadmill.
Solo players do have the option to do the harder dungeons. They are not physically prevented from joining groups. They choose not to do those dungeons knowing that this has always been a multiplayer game.
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Whoopsy, did you forget about Legion and BfA?
Around the time that SL was nearly finished being developed was when WoW devs started officially specifying that the three endgame pillars were raids, M+, and rated PvP.
Ion himself even said that open world players needed to “graduate” from WQs and do other content. Part of the three pillars and Great Vault concept was to oust open world gearing as a legitimate endgame, even though it had already been established as a progression alternative at that point.
Ion’s team made a deliberate decision to oust the open world as a pillar starting in SL, but in DF they are attempting to finish off open world gearing once and for all.
(Note how one can logically or objectively argue against Normal raid iLvl from WQs, so they have to say something preposterous like “BiS Mythic iLvl from WQs” to give their argument more weight.)
You could reach max level in Vanilla WoW without stepping foot in a dungeon or grouping up to do the elite quests.
Maybe the back of the WoW box shouldn’t have mentioned solo adventuring—and maybe the early expansions shouldn’t have provided so much open world content—if the WoW devs never wanted to accommodate a massive audience.
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