My friend, who is in the Army, just got back from an extended field duty. He gets to spend the next 7-8 months home going to school.
We got really excited because he get’s to play games with all of us again. He logged into wow. Last time was at the start of 8.2.
He was playing his Brewmaster. Realized he had to finish the nazjatar quest line, no biggie right? … he got through al that and the 8.3 intro ad started looking up his best essences and things in 8.3.
He realized he would have to log in every day for at least the next month or so and not only do the 8.3 dailies, and the visions, and farm corrupted gear and such… (which he was expecting)… but also the mechagon and nazjatar reps, and the old raid, for his bis essences.
took him 3 days over the weekend to say"nah, this si complete garbage" and the quit the game for good.
Blizzard really messed up with this “you have to do 8.2 farming crap”. Super alt and returning payer unfriendly.
they should have never made essences locked behind rep grinds.
I personally wont touch another alt. i worked a lot to make this my new main and honestly… forget doing it again.
Except he doesn’t need to get BIS whatever, just to play the game.
By definition, if you don’t have the time for that kind of time commitment then you play a different way.
Is it YOU guys pressuring him to catch up and have BIS everything? Way to be bad friends! You guys could play with him anyway.
All he HAS to do is whatever is the requirement to have horrific (honorific? What a strange spell checker…) visions start (if he wants to do that.) Then catch up on the cloak, which is pretty fast (when Org, anyway.) I was stuck at rank 5, in stormwind, now caught up to rank 8 (the cap) this week =D
I do realize it is daunting, even if he doesn’t think he needs “BIS.”
You also don’t really “need” corrupted gear.
You can’t really leave the game for an extended period, then come back and instantly catch up to play with elitist/exclusionary people doing raiding and M+. So yeah, quit or switch gears I guess =/
ok i’m not trying to defend blizzard because I feel like the system is flawed and needs to be revisited, but i made this char the friday before nyalotha came out and already got a lot of essences.
but yeah it sucks. I had to do a lot and play all day farming and grinding for a few days.
so let me get this logic straight… You and your friend decide to join and play a MMORPG, a genre whose core gameplay mechanics are centered around grinding and effort, but complain or quit over grinding and the effort required… yeah…
Actually I do because I see leveling an alt at all “alt unfriendly.”
At any point I’m playing an alt, I’m not really having fun I’m just realizing that I’m going to got through the same leveling and gearing grind I already did on my main and why wouldn’t I just play my main since it’s already geared. It wouldn’t matter how easy it was.
I’d feel that same way if essences were account wide because the bottom line is I don’t see any of Blizzard’s content as entertaining enough to do more than once for very long. So I’ve played the same rogue since BC.
If you sim all your essences with Raidbots or SimCraft, you will see that your best non-pvp is only marginally lower than the pvp one. Just because Icy Veins says it’s best in slot doesn’t mean you can’t do extremely high dps without it.
Yeah I don’t even remotely care about being “the best” enough to bother with simming. If a piece of gear looks like an upgrade, I equip it and move on with my life.
Oh I’m aware. I’m using the new execute one now because it’s fun. Couldn’t care less whether it’s anywhere near BiS for me.
Essence farming definitely isn’t great or enjoyable content. Either as a catch up or on an alt.
TBH I’m still confused what Blizzard think was so wrong with gearing up in early expansions like Wrath or MoP. You did stuff if you wanted rep, but largely speaking you did high end pvp or raiding (or now mythic+) for gear. You wore gear. Nice. If you ran out of things to do you could work on an alt, do some pvp, craft gear, farm resources or run old content.
Which… was fine. More than fine.
I agree with mythic+ as an idea as it keeps the dungeons relevant for an entire expansion and gives people 5 man content. The rest? The dailies, the essences, the filling the bar on your neck or artifact weapon etc etc. Not so much. I mean… did anyone really cry out for these mechanics? Has it actually made the game better for anyone?
There’s definitely an argument to be made that there wasn’t enough solo content back in the day for people to do. A lot of players don’t raid or 5 man mythics (or arena etc) so need something to do. But… mindless grinding and a treadmill of catchup loot seems pretty poor content and not really worth 15 bucks a month.
That is EXACTLY what I am doing. Sometimes you just get into the race to late. (Well at the end of an expansion is way too late) My goals are getting my alts to 120, getting them to 120, making some gold, getting my professions up, do stuff I normally don’t do. I have never been much for high end content anyways. As Shadowlands closes in I will decide which toon I am going to main and break from one of my 2 guilds I have (bank guilds) then find a guild that I feel I will fit in with. Than go from there. Start at the starting point with everyone else not when everyone else is about to cross the finish line.
However yes your are right there are some many things I can do in the meantime, it’s kind of nice not feeling the pressure of doing what the game dictates.
You guys could play with him anyway.