Why do we keep some many old (and not prestigious) aspects of the game either locked behind a gate or take a ton of effort to accomplish? What purpose does it serve - especially since we have a trend of making “classic” servers for previous expansions for those who want to progress through that content again?
I am going to discuss some examples. There’s definitely a lot more than what I’ll list, but I don’t want to write a dissertation on this just yet as I’d prefer it to be a back and forth discussion.
Ordos & the Ordon Sanctuary. HUGE issue. You absolutely cannot access this area unless you got the MoP Legendary cloak on your account when it was current. Why is this area being gatekept just because some people happened to not play back in MoP? I can understand if it was removed or there was nothing over there… but there are literally achievements IN THE GAME still that require you heading over there (yes, achievements, not Feats of Strength like usual removed content) and doing things. This has been brought up so many times on multiple platforms. Please allow all players access to this area, so that those who didn’t play in MoP can still experience that content and obtain related achievements.
Legion Raids. As of right now, if you go back and do Legion raids either solo or with a group, the loot thankfully drops as Legacy loot, but tier sets are funky. Instead of getting a Prot, Conq, or Vanq token, we get ~actual~ class sets. Druid helms will drop instead of a Vanq helm token, Monk boots will drop instead of a Prot boot token. Why? I still raided in Legion and even though we could still switch between Master Loot and Personal Loot, TOKENS would drop instead of the armor pieces. I know this because as a warlock, I’d trade back and forth with the priest or paladin in our group for tier tokens. We need to have tokens back for this. Content is from 2016. Zero reason to make the armor sets elusive or a pain in the rear end to obtain.
Allied Races. I’m a little torn on this one because I can see justifications for both sides of this argument… but a lot of the requirements for Allied races include a rep grinds and completion of a quest from a previous expansion. I personally didn’t mind doing them, but I did them during current content when I had to grind rep and storyline anyway. I don’t know how much of a purpose it serves to keep these in place. Why limit new players on their character choices, or make them feel forced to place a race they don’t particularly love just so they can grind away at the requirements to unlock that character at a later time?
BFA Flying. Hello, old content, my old friend. Zero reason to have a grind behind letting people fly in old zones. Let people fly.
Flying in general. Let us do it once we hit max level, just like we could in Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King (sorta… 77 is close enough), Cataclysm (at 60 when cap was 85), and Mists of Pandaria.
Argent Tournament. An honorable mention: a lot of capped daily grind and no real reason why other than to have kept daily content going back in Wrath. Maybe make it easier to unlock all possible dailies and faster to grind. This has been around a long time and doesn’t need to be so gated. It’s less daunting for people to get Invincible than it is for them to think about the grind and unlocking all the pets, armor, rep, and mounts involved in the Argent Tournament.
Yeah the two grinds for Part 2 Pathfinder are a huge timesink for old content. I was surprised certain SL achievements required you to go back to Mechagon or other content, the disparity in timesink for them is huge between flying and not flying.
Not having the Pony Bridle be account-wide is frustrating, I use the bank access of that all the time even to this day. If I were to ever go alliance I’d have to re-grind it too… ugh.
I don’t know if this is actually true, but I haven’t really tested this. The world boss and the square area in front of it is not possible to enter, but iirc there are no treasures in there, and the rare that spawns there can be summoned at the altar in the northwest of the isle. You can use gliders or otherwise fly and walk around the central area to access the treasure chest and rares that are outside of the square. Is it kinda pointless to gatekeep this anyway? Probably.
Yes, give us flying for older expansions. The pathfinder achievements can give us more flight speed or something instead.
So… I don’t necessarily agree with the idea that all/some old factions should be grindable just because they are old and not current content. As they are not current content, the quests are trivial to complete even if they might be time-consuming. And since the rewards now are only cosmetic, you might actually be expected to put in that work. That being said…
Make rewards account-wide so we don’t have to do these grinds on every character, thank you!