I’ve looked at my soulbinds and, yeah, some of them do fall into that wrong choice. I don’t think that’s acceptable, but I also don’t think the right answer is to just open up everything so those wrong choices can be ignored and left in the dirt.
This pretty much applies to everything you brought up, so I’ll just leave this post there: Blizzard should be held accountable for their design failures, not given a free pass to leave things in a crappy spot because they can be ignored outright.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. How likely are you to die in the Maw? How much of a slog is it to get back what you lost? I don’t mind some punishment for failure, but if it’s too much we can agree it’s a problem.
I’m not sure about it breaking design philosophy, because it’s certainly much less punishing than current Visions.
You’re highly likely to die in the maw unless you’re very cautious. It operates much like a GTA wanted system. The more you do the more wanted you get the more things will be attracted to you. You cannot fly. I think even ground mounts are restricted. You cannot change gear except at a few safe locations… yeah you’re going to die probably a lot.
It can be both. Some really want to love this game and enjoy it’s PVE and it’s still one of the better games, but there’s still glaring flaws which cause people to quit or at least really long breaks. And one is alt friendliness which has been diminishing since MoP. That’s one reason why XIV is booming as much as it is and a solid secondary option.
The game doesn’t have to be dead for it to have decisions people don’t like. It can just upset people. PVPers stuck around even after they’ve been kicked around and that’s simply because there’s not really a game like this nor has carried on the legacy as long with all the years of achievements they’ve amassed. I wouldn’t say they’ve been at odds with the community since day 1, but it has rolled downhill since wotlk for a lot of people.
The biggest issue with this system is that we know blizzard is TERRIBLE at tuning and some abilities are super restrictive and we’ve never really had one that’s so restrictive that you are halted by how you can even play your class with people liking some of one covenant and parts of another. Abilities feeling bad for some specs, but great for others, but two are even on different covenants than what you want for RP/aesthetic/theme reasons. People also have 0 faith in blizzard for properly tuning this and for good reasons. They’ve done a terrible job at it for awhile.
It’s not just numerical at this point. It would be like choosing between Celestial brew, guard and Chi torpedo, you can only get one. And your favorite one from an aesthetic / lore PoV is the one with microbrew. It’s just not as fun as the others.
They are making you choose between aesthetics and gameplay and people dislike that.
Its simply a matter of sunk cost Sam.
“My friends are here.”
“my mogs”
“my mounts”
Let alone that the reason WoW is successful has little to do with the quality of the product. Vanilla WoW was straight up hot garbage in how rushed it was, but because every other MMO was draconian by comparison, people went to WoW.
They rode the wave of success because of it, and as a result, they’ve become so burdened by it they can’t make another WoW MMO.
At the same time, it also means player’s don’t want to leave.
Yep, then I’ll tentatively say not a fan. Without actually playing in it, I hate how punishing Visions are, and it feels like more of the same.
Some people dislike that. I’m interested in how they’re tying the various systems together, to include aesthetics, RP, and gameplay. If they fail they fail, and I consider it a relief that they do have a backup plan in that event. I don’t want them to have to use that plan, but I do think it’s a good thing that they’re aware and planning for the possibility of failure. That is ground Blizzard hasn’t seemed to tread before.
I mean… By comparison, it wasn’t that bad. It had flaws, but it was a very fun game. Just because something isn’t a sparkling diamond doesn’t automatically make it poo.
I don’t disagree. I think the declining subs agree with your point, but they did continue growing up through… MoP? I just hesitate to agree with “They’ve always been terrible”, because growth doesn’t indicate a horrible company.
The community has always been terrible, even during that growth, though. They/we’ve never liked anything, as a whole. I would be very interested to see what happens with the new MMOs currently in development, too. If those torpedo the playerbase, you’d certainly be proven right.
As someone who played many, many, many MMOs of the time?
Vanilla was not a good MMO, BUT, it was easy.
Effort beat quality in this case.
WoW DID improve, but its never been some super amazing MMO.
WoW will never die just because its well…a juggernaut. It has been so successful that EVERYONE has palyed it at some point or another, and so they have reason to comeback.
WoW will die only if Blizzard makes a dramatic choice like the permanent removal of flying.
Why?
Removing flying would invalidate the collection of mounts players obtained. It would attack the “sunk cost” aspect. They’ve been picking at it with pathfinder, which is incredibly stupid.
I don’t think so. I think back-to-back expansion flops, with competition on the rise, could have many friend groups deciding to go to something else, which is the same way WoW originally came to power. If Shadowlands fails, I think that will be the end of WoW-- maybe not enough to shut the servers down, but even Rift is still going iirc, and that game is functionally dead. I could see them falling to that tier if they don’t absolutely blow it out of the water. I know that I, at least, will be gone if they don’t.
I could talk about how fun Rift was for a while, Aion too. Unfortunately, like you said, WoW was already a juggernaut by then, and all my friends were here. To that point, though, all those friends are long gone now, and there isn’t much of a community to feel tethered to-- at least for me. WoW is carrying itself on its content alone at this point, and I’ve been sorely disappointed with that in this xpac.
Indeed. But that should come as no surprise. They released azerite gear after being told repeatedly it was bad, and sadly, apparently didn’t learn from that.
I can stick with one covenant. but THIS is the sticking point for me.
I want dungeon hop in DPS and solo as restoration. I WILL NOT be healing in dungeons.
Im not going to be stuck in feral or balance for a week just to run a few dungeons, so this hopefully isnt accurate or if it is theyre not STUPID enough not to change it.
If it is true…yeah…someone needs to be looking for other employment, Id say…WORST DECISION EVER.
honestly…this game just keeps going more and more into the abyss with these TRASH systems. Maybe it is time to call it good and unsub and go play my ESO accounts.
I never understood the big deal about no flying though. I got plenty of areas to fly through lol, and i couldn’t fly all of my days in vanilla wow back in 2005, and world pvp was amazing back then.
Im certainly not going to act all entitled about it, threatening to quit if the devs get rid of flying for a while. While i don’t like pathfinder, I can do without flying in certain areas. It is fine for me. Majority says it isn’t fine though. That is the problem these days.
Vanilla wow had a ton of broken systems in place. People like me just didn’t care. Now it is all about end game and hyperbalance nonsense. I feel that wow could make a comeback with shadowlands though, but with the fanbase wow has now, where everyone just threatens to quit over everything now, maybe not.
Im just hoping i can quest through the original vanilla pre death wing zones of eastern kingdoms and kalimdor while leveling up from 1-50 in shadowlands.
I don’t feel like I’m being forced to choose covenats in contrary to my interests.
My problem is if the story is going to be good and I’ll be able to have fun with blizzard’s narrative.
I have 2 rogue ( H & A ) and 2 warlock ( H & A ) that will go to Aedenweald, even if I your benefits are not good because I liked these covenants.
I have 2 warrior arms ( 1H & 1A ), 1 WW monk ( A ) and 1 mage frost ( A ) that will be in Bastion. Period.
Having to choose something will only be a suffering for those who are howling for 1% more on something and uses this to justify recruiting one class and spec over another and fears it is something of the same stingy scrutinize that prevails being carcinogen in this game, maintained by the players themselves who are now afraid of losing 1% or 10% compared to the colleague next , because it is only worth what the dps meter indicates.
And if the nomination is smaller, he’s someone smaller.
