I am well aware you arent based purely on your suggestions.
Considering that they are constantly making raiding less useful in gearing.
They are constantly making it easier to get high end rewards.
Why do you think Blizzard is catering to the high end? They definitely dont get more content.
Why? As long as access to the BIS gear does not trivialise the integrity of group content (i.e is not usable/powerful in raid/M+/PVP).
I have played on both sides on the fence, one of the worst feelings about playing wow is that no matter what you do… no matter how good/bad committed/uncommitted you are your chances of success are either gated or reliant on other people… weather that is being in a raid team with players of (much) different skill levels or by gear being in content modes you do not engage in (PVP essences in BFA or other PVP items being BIS for PVE or just having the best gear being in group content only).
I really dont understand why letting players enjoy the game and work towards BIS gear ruins/cheapens or otherwise degrades the game… its a very toxic gameplay design. I understand achieving the highest levels of success in the game should be rewarded (which is where cosmetic rewards should be allocated not power rewards).
Its a character/gear progression game.
From day 1.
Making gear acquisition trivial is a huge reason for people to quit. Nothing to work towards. Get your BIS. Unsub until next season.
None of that changes with changing gear acquisition. If you have BIS gear instantly…guess what. You are still reliant on other people.
You arent suggesting people work towards BIS gear.
You are suggesting everyone gets BIS instantly.
You just want to make the rewards pointless. I get it.
You dont do this content anymore, so now you are absolutely fine with destroying whats been a cornerstone of the game since day 1.
As opposed to all the addons on screen, and those telling you when to move, interrupt, etc…
Or like the mechanics of the encounters that are figured out and guides created on PTR? 
But just ignore the point of the post that he said…
Incase you missed it.
i’m sorry you kept dying in that +4 brackenhide. practice makes perfect! keep at it. don’t give up.
Actually there is something sort of:
Because from this we can derive what people find the most interesting and fun, including different types of classic content
So… the hilarious part is that raiding in classic is more popular than it is in Dragonflight, but that’s probably just because there’s not much to do endgame-wise on Classic considering that “Classic Era” and “Classic Raiding” are identical, and when other forms of content related to Classic you find a significant drop of interest unless its about the Classic “hardcore” servers
So, people go to classic for Nostalgia but the folks who stay are the ones who stay because they find tank’n’spank an engaging form of raiding:
In all honesty though if folks are having fun, that’s all that matters … but I seriously don’t get this superiority complex that folks praising Classic has - its quite weird all things considered
I’m not ignoring the point of post, I’m pointing out that “difficulty” of retail compared to classic is a laughable point to make given the knowledge that the public has about classic content at this point.
Can I have your gold?
People are crapping on the OP for being a troll, but honestly, I vibe with his statement. Well, sans the “that’s why I play Classic” part.
I would LIKE to raid in Retail. It’s by far the most interesting PvE Content the game offers.
But there’s no REASON to. At all. No, an OP Trinket or “Very Rare” status item or 2 does not make up for literally the entire rest of the raid being outclassed by faceroll spam dungeons. (Even if you consider them to be equal difficulty, it still remains that there is no lockout and much less coordination needed to get the best rewards out of them)
Especially if we’re not talking at the absolute highest level. I’ve never been a Mythic Raider outside of like SoO. I’ve never pushed M+20s. I was an AotC/Heroic Raider and I stick to M+10 thru +15 depending on the season if I participate.
Non-Mythic Raiding gets clapped by M+ much more than Mythic Raiding does. M+ gives you everything you need for low and mid tier gearing without a lockout.
Which turns low and mid tier raiding into this mess where you just spam M+ for a couple weekends first and then go in with Heroic-level gear before you even start progression, making it a complete joke. I realized that back in BfA after I dropped my dedicated Raid Team to focus a bit more on M+ for the first time.
I burn out on spamming dungeons MUCH faster than I burn out on repeating raid encounters. There is (or used to be) more progression involved in Raiding than Dungeons. Pushing the keystone another level doesn’t feel the same as getting that next boss down for the first time.
But I can’t bring myself to raid seriously, because M+ is so tightly wound around it now that it’s not enjoyable in the way it used to be.
At this point I want Raid Gear, PvP Gear, and Dungeon gear to be completely separate from each other, in the same way PvP Gear is vs Other gear now. Then maybe I wouldn’t feel so bad about Raiding, because M+ wouldn’t be a part of that equation. It doesn’t feel worthwhile as things are now.
Play SoloQueue as a healer, u wanna quit twice!
Because rewards need to be commensurate with the challenges overcome to obtain them; that’s been RPG Design 101 since the early 1970’s. The man who created role-playing games wrote about this at length.
I’ve cited that poll and even have it bookmarked. It does not pass the test for “valid” since votes are not unique and forum participants have not been shown by a statistical test to be representative of the total population (it’s very likely a skewed sample).
Now, had Blizzard sent this poll by email to a random sampling of active subscribers and implemented a one-time use URL that could only register one vote, (so people can’t just share the URL to others that didn’t get an invite or use the URL to vote multiple times) then that would be a valid poll to provide much more useful inferences than the poll they put up on the forums. The current poll isn’t useless, it just should be assessed with the knowledge that the sample is not unbiased from a statistical perspective relative to total population of active players.
Yeah, I don’t get it either. It’s like they have to put something else down so that their preference is superior. Maybe they want more dev time devoted to Classic than Retail or it’s just an ego thing or recapturing this old feeling that “old raid should matter, everything else should be a lower-reward side-game.” 
Like I said, play whatever you like better! But why dump on those that don’t like what you do like? 
You didn’t qualify, but that top-end M+ vault slot is comparable to mythic raid. I don’t think it matters and your point is right, but somebody will argue about it. Those complaining about a lack of lockouts for M+ fail to point out that the best you can get from spamming M+ is heroic 5/5 (441) gear which is heroic raid equivalent, not mythic raid.
However, I wouldn’t be opposed to a M+ lockout after you’ve looted 8 pieces of gear (or however many bosses are in the current season raid) in each of the following brackets, because that does seem more comparable to what raiders have to deal with. You could continue to spam M+ for score and more Great Vault slots, but end-of-run loot would be limited.
| Keystone | Raid |
|---|---|
| 2-8 | LFR |
| 9-16 | Normal |
| >17 | Heroic |
You can’t get mythic gear from M+ end-of-run so there’s no row for that. I’d prefer a lockout for M+ like this over an alternative solution like Raid gear only works in Raids and M+ gear only works in Dungeons. Blizzard has always tried to encourage players to try different forms of end-game content and gear only working in the instance-type it was acquired in seem counter to their intent, so unlikely to be adopted anyway. They might consider lockouts for M+ though.
This is the only solution. Blizzard has been trying to make M+ co-exist with the rest of the game since it was added in Legion, and it simply cannot be done when M+ is SO easy and gives SO many rewards and has NO lockouts like the rest of the game’s content has.
Iron Curtain between M+ gear and the rest of the game is the only solution.
Then do it, there’s literally nothing preventing you from doing it unless you make the decision to not do it
So you are saying that PvE gearing should only be allowed from raids … because you want special treatment?
Sorry but PvE is PvE; like it or not, that’s how it works and no - one can’t compare PvE and PvP because they are fundamentally at their core two fundamentally different gameplay loops
If you don’t want to do M+ then don’t do it, of course you’ll limit yourself as to what gear you have available to you and what pace you can get it since you are reducing the different types of PvE content you participate in
Why should someone who does less PvE get just as much gear and character progression than someone who does more PvE content? You want to stick to just raiding then do so, but its a personal limiting factor and nothing else
And this is ultimately the proof where you want to effectively eliminate other forms of PvE from the game - M+ adds more gearing that’s available to you yes, but you can get only ONE piece A WEEK of gear that’s compareable to raiding and that’s through the vault
Yes, M+ adds more gear into the mix and it changes … nothing
PvE is still PvE, the only difference is that it doesn’t take over a month to get a barebone basic set of gear that’s available to you before you can get into more difficult content or even participate at the level you are at but with the later bosses in the raid
I never wanted to raid.
Exactly, people quit when they cannot do that.
I think there are many reasons people quit, otherwise only mythic or AOTC and above would quit (by your logic once they have BIS). I concede some finesse will be needed, you cant trivally acquire BIS M+/Raid gear… that stuff should be earned and I think adding cosmetic affects is a good way of doing that… what about if raid gear had a stat on it that boosted power while in a raid only?
That way you dont get mythic raid geared players in warmode camping/stomping out players in 3-4 GCDs while they are stunned/CC’d. You also do not have to design outdoor content to be inaccessible (the 10M health bosses in zaralak caverns, or the time rifts solo) - or trying to do any forgotten content solo on alts like obsidian sanctum.
I think its the speed at which you acquire the BIS gear - you should have a pathway to work towards it without M+/Raiding… being able to work towards BIS gear over the course of a content patch is a bit different to just getting it instantly (like weekly quests or a vision/mage tower type of system).
Not sure how to respond to this, you are telling me my own intent… ok?
The game is an MMO, when the delta between the top and bottom player is too large it leads to bad interactions (like CC locking 100-0 in warmode) or not being able to kill outdoor bosses solo or the time to defeat LFR/world bosses being extremely high.
The way the game tests players if too reliant on “do you have the gear to beat this” or how long is it going to take you to beat this based on your throughput - thats the issue.
No I really do NOT want to destroy the content, I think its a very nuanced balancing act. Maybe they should have separate “mythic” and “casual” server pools to preserve the integrity? All I know is there is a very large portion of players that are not being serviced by the current game design.
They can. They choose not to. Huge difference.
If its earned in open world…by default its trivial.
100% of open world content is trivial.
So the mobs get designed to be trivial? I mean.
So gearing is now timegated? If you play more, you have no chance at getting better gear?
Well I didnt foresee the plot twist of “making gearing extremely timegated”
How is “remove all upgrades from raiding” nuanced?
Thats taking a sledgehammer to the gearing process.
Unfortunately for you, others already beat you to this line of argument, so Blizzard introduced Korthia and the exact same people saying “we should be able to get better gear, just have it take longer” threw a hissy-fit when Blizzard gave them exactly what they asked for.
See: My entire complaint.
M+ speedruns gearing. No, you aren’t BiS just because of the non-lockout gear, but with current upgrade systems, you absolutely can match Heroic Raid by spamming, even without the Vault.
And speedrunning gearing makes raid progression less interesting, because you don’t have to perfect mechanics, you don’t have to get coordination down perfectly, because outgearing the content before you touch it provides a ridiculous amount of breathing room for mistakes.
No? I suggested that gearing be split by pillar, not that one form gets loot and the other doesn’t.
Power Progression is part of the game. I’ve done the whole “only do content I like the most” thing. 9.1. I joined a raid team again for that tier and ignored Mythic+. And I was perpetually 10-12 ilvl behind literally everyone else that entire time because Raid Gearing does not keep up. It doesn’t feel good. I only kept up because I was parsing orange at the time (bracket, ofc).
Similarly, during Nathria, I raided. I also did some minor M+. You know how much Raid Loot I was wearing throughout that? Basically zilch. Like 2 pieces out of 16 at any given time. That also feels bad.
I like Raiding as an activity, but I like spending my time doing something that’s both fun and rewarding. I don’t hate Mythic+ (I just can’t do it every season because it gets old), but I hate how it makes Raiding feel less rewarding.