Hey guys, recently I thinking about getting in to wow, and wanted to get opinions of the current players. Little about myself is I started in “Mist of Pandaria” and really enjoyed it, I continued till about halfway of “Warlords of Dranenor” where my guild fell apart.
This year with excitement of classic I got some game time and enjoy the social aspects but thought the games was a little slow compared to retail. After taking a break and planning to comeback after Blizzcon if there was a cool announcement, But now I have a craving to go back but don’t want to deal with all the bad stuff I hear, just want to hear the public’s opinion.
(Note have not upgraded either)
Dude,
People love to complain. We fought a revolution for free speech. What kind of speech? Complaints. Humans aren’t truly happy unless we have something to be unhappy about. You will always get the “bad stuff” no matter how good it really is.
In addition to WoW, I’ve played Guild Wars 2 very in depth and Final Fantasy 14 to a much lesser extent. I’ve also tried ESO and years ago played another, now defunct, MMO called Marvel Heroes. I have some knowledge of how WoW stacks up against other games. By no means an expert though.
The neutral
- WoW is average for a game of its type as far as how polite and well mannered people are. I’ve seen better and oh my god, so much worse.
The good
- WoW has more tools to allow casual players to do the content, like Group Finder (so much better than some other games I’ve played), multiple levels of difficulty to every dungeon.
- WoW has a decent end-game with its raids, mythic+
- UI customization - if there is something that annoys you about the UI, there’s an addon to fix that.
- The story in each xpac is really in depth.
- Questing in general is very smooth, even in earlier content, compared to other games I’ve played. I spent a lot of time in wowhead early on reading user comments on how to complete quests (mostly because I didn’t bother reading the quest text) but compared to FF14 and GW2 the quests were engaging.
- Warmode (open world pvp). It has its glitches (sharding), but I do love killing Horde Scum in the open world. Horde and Alliance are enemies (or were until a few weeks ago). It feels right that “Battle For Azeroth” allows me to kill or be killed by my enemy at any time.
The bad
- While WoW pvp is OK, it significantly underperforms for end-game gear progression compared to Mythic + and Raiding. To get the equivalent of Mythic+ 10 gear in rated pvp is extremely difficult and time consuming and you only get gear if you win. Yet, Mythic 10 keys are way easier to get people to do and to complete and get rewards for, and it doesn’t require timing the dungeon, just finishing it. If you are doing any kind of pvp, you’re doing it because you love it.
- WoW is not alt-friendly in the latest xpac. Heart of azeroth neck requires you to grind a huge amount of “Artifact Power”. To unlock world quests to do this grind each alt must still complete a large chunk of the story, which is exactly the same again and again.
- Crafting is awful. There are a relatively small # of useful items and some of the absolute best items are soulbound when crafted. It limits your ability to utilize alts as crafters and to gear alts as well.
- The emphasis on gear for progression instead of permanent account-level benefits or character-specific skills doesn’t feel good to me. All that gear I spent working on legion and upgrading in legion, in the trash. And the same will happen to every BFA azerite piece and the neck. It will get trashed. And the end of bfa, my character will be nearly identical to the way it was at 110 if I looked at them naked. No extra skills or abilities. Nothing to show for 2 years of “progression”.
And finally
- 120 fricking levels.
Obviously I’m playing WoW. I really do like it. I took a 5 month break and decided to come back “just to get bfa flying” (in case I really liked 9.0 it would be useful) and I’m still here even though I put in a huge investment into Guild Wars 2 and had every intent on switching back the moment I got BfA flying.
The forums are toxic and dominated with negative posts because people know Blizzard is reading and they want stuff changed/fixed. 95%+ of WoW players don’t even post. Unhappy players are more likely to post to push for improvements.
Most satisfied WoW players never post on message boards. They have no reason to complain here. I would ignore the negativity and try the game yourself.
My most relevant advice to you would be to stick to your one character - put yourself out there in PuGs - do some networking and find players that suit your personality and playstyle.
Tinker mentioned WoW pvp is not very good. Well, it’s light years better than FF14 or ESO pvp, and there is a ton more pvp content. Rated and unrated battlegrounds and arenas. So many battlegrounds. Open world pvp.
She also mentioned BFA is not currently friendly to Alts. The essences introduced in June caused this issue for the harder difficulties in raids / mythic + dungeons.
That said, you don’t need to grind essences or neck levels to enjoy all the content. You can still do LFR, the easiest queable raid difficulty with no essences. Normal difficulty with minimal essences. You can still run lower to mid level mythic + dungeons with minimal essences. You can still do all the content in all the zones without essences or neck levels. You can still do warfronts, island expeditions with little gear.
In sum, you can have tons of alts like me, one of every class, and do all the content. It’s only Alt unfriendly if you want to push higher raid difficulties and mythic + dungeons on your alts.
Lastly, I’ve been playing FF14 since 2013 including Shadowbringers this past summer. WoW still has 10X more end game content. There is so much to do here compared to other mmos. WoW is hands down the best mmo Overall and your missing out if you don’t come back and try it.
The consensus is the six original BFA zones are very good to great with topography, music, and questing. Almost everyone enjoys leveling 110-120 the first time.
Hey Tinker you raised a lot of good points, I appreciate your input, thank you so much for the insight!
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To clarify,
My point wasn’t a comment on the enjoyment of PvP or its state. It is at least OK. I like it and I’ve tended to play classes/specs that are way out of meta. Not everyone likes it though.
My point is that PvP (rated or unrated) as a means of acquiring end-game gear underperforms pve activities by a huge margin. IMO you can acquire better gear for less effort and with less skill in pve. You can still acquire great end-game gear through pvp, but it requires much more time and effort and skill.
I did a trial recently with FF14, I will not say the gameplay not there because I have not played enough to say. I will say that I can’t gel with the look and artstyle of the game and that something thats gonna linger on my mind.