Pretty much every time this has happened in the modern game (say since Legion) it’s been widely panned.
They have been using these recycled content loops now since Legion pretty much. For some reason, they think MMO players love grinding the same crap over and over again. Everything they design, has this design mindset. Look at delves, they will milk the 13 delves to the cows come home, champoning it like it is the some amazing MMO content, meanwhile, other MMOs have had systems like this 10 years ago.
Blizzard needs to shift the game away from devoting all these resources to their raid content. Modern MMO players want flavor in their games, they want an immersive world that is full of cool activities. All the content outside of raids and dungeons is an afterthought in this game.
The world content patches in DF is some of the worst MMO content I have ever seen put out.
The onl reason WoW survices today, is its art style, nostalgia, and it is the best tab target MMO ever made. The combat in the game is top notch. The rest of the game has been stale for a long time.
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All this was was a barrier to entry and time block for players. Blizzard wants people, even the more casual of players, to be reaching max level and doing relevant stuff to them. For some that’s raids, for some that’s PvP, for some that’s crafting, for some that’s dailies and quests/completion.
I don’t feel like there’s any more meaning to my character having to grind out every level of crafting from Vanilla to BC to WOTLK in WotLK Classic than in having every expansion’s crafting separated. It’s just crap to get through to get current, no more, no less.
Same for leveling, which is why every single expansion after WOTLK did some amount of either reducing XP required or crunching levels down. At first Blizzard just increased XP gains to speed people up through old content, then they did a number crunch and leveled all expansions off into similar brackets, and now they basically just lay train tracks down behind the new expansion so that people joining in can level in the second most recent expansion and catch up.
You wanna know what’s not fun? Trying to get somebody to play FFXIV with you and explaining that they’ll either have to skip the story and leveling (bypassing a lot of genuinely good content and story) or sit through hundreds of hours of content to get where you are.
Seasons are no different than a new tier of raiding, just applied globally to all current content instead of just raiding. BC to some extent and WOTLK fully entered into higher levels of gear per tier, but never increased the value of gear from most of the world content or dungeons, outside of adding a new bracket of dungeons that bypassed the first tier and a half of normal raid gearing.
Unless you’re telling me you’ll go into Wrath Classic and compete with people in full ICC gear while you’re fully geared from Naxx? WoW has run on a per-tier gearing system for a while. The main difference now is people can actually catch up without spending time grinding through previous tiers in the same expansion.
It does matter. Crafted items are fairly valuable, consumables are still valuable, certain professions still make unique items that people want. I’d argue more professions have value now in DF than they had overall for a long time.
It does, unless you’re saying the economy would continue to function without a constant material intake?
It does, as a process. Leveling was an experience in Vanilla in part because Vanilla had a more limited endgame focus. People don’t really need to spend months at low levels anymore though, the game has changed and participation in max level content across the board, in casual/midcore/hardcore is much higher.
10.2.7 is an extra season. It brings all three raids and the dungeons into a similar item level bracket because it’s a shorter filler season. Blizzard didn’t pretend this was going to be anything but a filler season.
This game is 20 years old. Did you think it wouldn’t change?
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Do you know what MMO is?
“massively multiplayer online” is the answer. Gear has nothing to do with it.
If the game is online and features millions of players, it’s an MMO. There are plenty of MMOs out there that do the same thing. Just look at Neverwinter, for example.
The whole point is to focus on that gear during the expansion, spend time upgrading it and making it stronger. It’s supposed to give you something to do until the next xpac hits.
So, unless the gear is suddenly playing the game, yes it’s still an MMO no matter what they do with said gear.
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Sorry but this is just not true. One is new content, the other is just tweaking numbers.
When I say crafting doesn’t matter I mean as soon as the next expansion happens. Whatever you did is totally wiped out. I get that will happen to some degree but by doing away with needing previous content progression instead of compressing it, the RPG feel goes away and it feels more like a drop in game, with less progression feeling. I think that was a mistake and makes leveling current content for crafting mean less and less the closer you get to the next expansion.
I continue to hope that the slide they have been going on of more recycled content, grind, and lack of any continuity ie no evergreen content would reverse yes. First 2 expansions didn’t do that, then cataclysm came along and the game went sideways corrected a bit and then started the slide again. I was hoping for more corrections, but instead they feel like they are just going more Diablo.
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You can’t reach people like this, this is your typical Blizzard forum poster, just gaslights anyone that doesn’t agree with them. People that say the game has always played the same way, are just flat out crazy.
I’m sorry, but retail WoW vs older versions, the games are completely different. The developers talk about this all the time from their own mouths, yes the people that make the game.
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The seasonak nature helps the game to not be too overwhelming for newcomers or returning players to reach endgame.
For me, in the past It felt bad that gear and player power would reset or be meaningless in future expansions, but recently, it honestly doesn’t bother me nowadays.
I played a mmorpg for a while with evergreen endgame, meaning every expansion was relevant. On paper thats really cool, but in practice you have really weird stuff where to properly gear your character you need to complete content of several different places in weird ways.
Of course, this isn’t what OP is talking about exactly.
I think it is important that every season comes with permanent rewards, some with limited time, some without. And what matters to me now is if the season is fun to play or not.
There are plenty of MMORPGs that are much less seasonal than WoW. They also have far less players.
WoW and FF14 are the highest subbed games by far, and their content is extremely seasonal. It’s done because it’s the most successful at keeping players subbed.
Getting geared in 2 months and having nothing to do for 22 months isn’t as exciting as it sounds. The only people that want that are those that don’t want to play much if at all in the first place.
There was a time in this game my reply would have strongly argued against yours … I’ve played nearly since retail release . But taking a few seconds to think on it o can’t really argue against it. It’s definitely an mmo. I think if your standard of hat and rpg is very loose / basic you might say it’s an rpg. But the rpg vibe for me is feeling weak as time goes on.
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So we got no new content from 10.0 to 10.2? No new overworld content, no new areas, no new raids, no new factions/renowns? The only thing we didn’t get “new” of was dungeons outside of the 10.0 release, but their reusing of older dungeons has more than suitably handled that problem.
Leveling current crafts always became less relevant the closer you got to a new expansion. Materials and products typically lost value as time went on and more people got access to them.
Per-expansion professions is the only reason somebody doesn’t have to backtrack through every single iteration of a profession to become current. This game is too old and too big to actually expect people to do that anymore.
You’d need to elaborate past using buzzwords for me to actually have interest in replying to this.
Random, but thinking about it, and this line specifically made think of it.
It would be nice if 11.0 and 11.1’s ilvl change wasn’t that steep at all.
Maybe that would help the open world not feel so dang easy once you get some gear. It’s honestly my least favorite thing about the game these days
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How exactly am I gaslighting anybody?
I said that the difference between what we call a “season” now and what was a “patch” or “tier” from Wrath onwards is mostly a difference in choice of name. It’s easier to explain “we’re in Dragonflight Season 4” than telling somebody we’re on Tier 30.
Yes, they are different games. I don’t get why people think modern Retail would be more like the game was 20 years ago. The game changed and adapted, and some older versions of the game exist and are playable.
I don’t think it should be the same game. I think it should be better, and have more RPG elements, not less. I think it should have more of a feel of having a character you built up, not less. I think we should get more per expansion in terms of content not more rehashing and more grind.
Yes it is different. A lot of those differences are good, and a lot of them are bad.
I don’t think this term really applies as I think it is a bit excessive but it does feel like you are trying to not discuss the issue and instead just saying it changed get over it, or blaming people for not understanding change happens. It’s not straight up gaslighting but it is not debating the topic either.
Hi RPGs means role playing game, not BIS gear from raids. Hope this helps.
I mean, plenty of players still have their “built up” characters. The difference is that you don’t have to drudge through old content to play in the current expansion and content anymore. It was a necessary change, and along the way certain sacrifices were made, but some sacrifices weren’t made. I guess it depends on what you mean by “built up” in this case.
Dragonflight has had plenty of content across the board, it just forces people to do a lot less of it than other expansions in the past 4-6 years did. It reminds me of FFXIV in that regard a bit, where you can technically do current endgame without unlocking much side or extra content, but there’s plenty of that content to do.
Grinds, maybe renown or certain recipes? That aspect actually reminds me a lot more of the older iterations of the game where it felt like you were jumping through hoops for specific recipes or novelty stuff.
That’s a fair point, and if what I’m saying comes across that way I apologize. My intent is more explaining my point of view on the content and similarities/differences to older iterations of the game. I won’t claim to be an authority on anything, because perception is an individual thing.
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Fair enough, and no worries, just sounds dismissive.
I am not saying they didn’t need to change things. I think you have to compress and in some ways throw out necessity of old content. I just feel like they went too far, and turned it too far into a drop in game not an RPG. I think a middle ground of far less previous content giving you something for the new expansion would make more sense.
Hell even a you now start in the last expansion if you are a new player and do that every time would make a lot more sense.
On the side of content though they need to manage it better. We have 9 expansions and 3 of them only have 3 raids, with every other one having 5 or more. Those 3 are Draenor, Shadowlands and Dragonflight. Fairly well considered 2 of the worst, and one that is sort of a mixed bag. Dragonflight is a good expansion but they really fumbled the .1 .2 and the missing of .3 for me.
Couple that with increased sharding, the removal of old crafting leveling in Shadowlands (I think), and no need to play the old story and it is just too far.
Crunching is necessary and good, but going full bore nothing old matters I think just loses a lot of good stuff that that makes it feel more alive and lived in. That plus over use of seasonality outside of pvp just feels bad.
Hope that makes sense, not trying to say crunch is outright bad…it is necessary. Just that too much makes it feel less like an mmorpg and more like just an mmo which really makes my title dumb haha.
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Agreed.
But I would rate the world content of DF higher if they were not so bugged or teleported into another shard while you are engaging with a world boss.
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Kara gear in BC stayed relevant as entry level well beyond a “raid tier”
In fact PVP honor weapons seaosn 1 and 2 were also considered entry level well into the late stages of BC expansion.
So NO it has never always “been this way”.
On elitist jerks website back in the day they had an entire list of entry level gear for the end of BC and it included a lot of gear from “season 1” aka “first raid tier”.
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The game had a level of permanence back in the day, you could keep some items from past raids and bring them into newer ones. Being reset with each expac launch took about 5-7 levels into the new bracket for the greens to actually start replacing things if you did have gear of any kind from the previous expansion.
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