Face it, we see the attempted mixture of both in Shadowlands.
We can see where they tried to add the long-term grinds, four factions (Covenants), and so on.
I could have told you this was a bad idea from the start for several reasons. In fact, I’ll list them.
Classic and TBC rep-grinds actually had some meaningful unlocks - such as proper itemization, recipes for professions (which were actually useful), in BC heroic dungeons, mounts, and so on.
Now, people enjoy these things in those expansions - and actively do them. Do you know why?
There’s an actual sense of reward with them. It’s not just the egg-timer conundrum, there’s something they want and they can grind endlessly to get it (without artificial time gating).
For the eras they were in, it was normal. Any old Everquest players? Yeah.
There was actually heart in the game and how it went forward. The designers of Classic and Burning Crusade knew the game they were making, who they were making it for, and what their goals in mind were. From the art of the day, to the systems and improvements from Classic to TBC, and so on - the devs showed they listened (at least a bit).
Look at the dungeons, raids, and so on - some of them are outright huge. Raid mechanics weren’t, well, a huge thing, but you got 40 of your friends together and people still stood in fire (good times).
AddOns helped, but weren’t absolutely required for everything - besides threat meters.
These bits make Classic and TBC fundamentally unable to work with Retail’s designs going forward.
In Retail, the difference is this:
Go, go, go - is the mentality. If you’re not first, you’re last. You’re El Diablo, the Fighting Chicken (points for reference).
Dungeons have to be designed for an e-sports crowd. There’s no time to make them large and spanning, with little hidden nooks, crannies, rewards, and, sometimes, herbs, nodes, and treasures to find. Speedy Gonzales and their 2k+ IO score needs those scoreboards.
Raids are tons more mechanics than actual boss-fights now. The skill cap has gone up for an increasingly aging player-base. Deny this all you want - the mechanics now compared to Classic and TBC are flat INSANE. Raids have been made the end-all, be-all. The mechanics PUNISH you for going with your friends - especially if one can’t keep up as the skill-cap for each raid just keeps going up and up in some wild attempt to hold World Firsts back like some kind of psychotic competition that never should have happened.
AddOns are ABSOLUTELY required to play Retail now. Game developers should not be designing their game and player survivability around third-party creations. If someone has to go to a site and download no less than 3-4 AddOns that you, yourself, have not made in order to play your base product - something has gone wrong in design and development.
Again, find a chill group of people and go at your own pace if it matters that much to you. Mechagone and Return to Karazhan were huge dungeons with all sorts of cool stuff, and we’re able to be done on mythic plus.
Yeah, and that’s what makes them fun. Nothing is fun or interesting about doing patchwerk style fights over and over again. Mechanics make the fights interesting, unique, and fun.
Mythic plus has taken that title
Only if your friends can’t do mechanics
Players have always always always relied on add-ons. Since Vanilla. And what add-ons do you think are absolutely required?
Sounds like you like classic. Go play that snoozefest.
This is the problem. They need to ban addons and make a playable game for people. Anyone with a brain should be able to go into a dungeon or raid, engage with a boss, and learn and adjust to the mechanics in real time. You shouldn’t have to go to a website and read an instruction manual on how to play the game and you shouldn’t need an addon to tell you when to press buttons and what to press.
This exactly. I never understood the fascination that people have with the “race” - and especially never understood why Blizzard designs the game around a supposedly unofficial event that still barely lasts a week no matter how hard they try to overtune bosses and mechanics - but it’s well past its use-by date now.
Falls into the “easier said than done” category for many people.
Give me some examples of mechanics that you think are over the top. None of them are that bad or hard to understand or execute. Especially on LFR/Normal mode.
There’s a difference in relying on and having utility and being mandatory.
You need AddOns to keep track of timers, distances (because some AddOns can actually have an arrow and a miniature map pointing out proximities), and so on.
Do you think for a second that Method, Limit, or any of the top guilds could accomplish their feats without AddOns? They’ve made third-party content MANDATORY.
Yes, because they’re the best players in the world. But these add-ons have existed since the very beginning anyways. They’ve always relied on these add-ons because they’re useful tools.
The truth of the matter is it’s a moot point, because every single person has access to these add-ons. They’re not exclusive. Every single person is free to utilize these tools whenever they want
