This pattern of completely invalidating last patch’s content has to stop. It means there’s so little reason to grind raids and M+ when you know that’s going to be utterly irrelevant in a few months. It also means the latest version of Timeless Isle (in this case, Korthia) becomes completely irrelevant.
Just think of the difference if we had these things:
Conduit upgrades from Korthia expanded from 252 to say 278
You can continue to get sockets from Korthia
Korthia gear can be upgraded from 233 (max) to say 249
The conduit drops in Korthia that top out at 226 could be expanded a rank or two
The socket thing in particular is a problem because there doesn’t seem to be a replacement (yet?) in Season 3.
We go through this invalidation loop every patch (eg Season 1 sockets from Stygia)… Please just stop and don’t make player achievements completely meaningless every 6 months because you’re so terrified players won’t play the current patch.
Then don’t. I’m not saying Korthia should be the only option but players should have some agency about how they improve. Have sockets from ZM and conduit upgrades from ZM. Have the ZM versions be better but give people some choices rather than pushing them down a narrow conveyor belt with no alternatives whatsoever.
While I agree that stuff shouldn’t just be insta-abandoned, I’m good with invalidating Korthia.
Because if they didn’t invalidate the sockets and conduit upgrades, then the meta would be to just add Korthia activities to the To Do list for the week and that sounds god awful.
I remember a time, when you got exalted with a faction, and you used the same enhancements from that faction across the entire expansion. Heck, you could practically get away with using the ones from the previous expansion…
The last thing in the world this game needs is more forced chores. ZM should be the template for endgame zones from now on. Mostly cosmetics and catch up gear.
ZM is exactly the same set of forced chores. Except now instead of Catalogued Research and Archivist’s Codex it’s Cypher of the First Ones and the Enlightened. ZM has its own version of Korthia gear
You still need to grind Korthia if you don’t have 252 conduits AFAIK. The upcoming replacement to give you 278 conduits will I believe require raiding or M+ to unlock, which IMHO is bad that it’s that restrictive.
You mean like how it was done like in Vanilla. You want to do the last tier (Naxrammas) well first you need gear from the previous tier (AQ40) but before that you need gear from the previous raid (BWL) to be able to run that raid. Oh but before that you need to you need gear from the previous raid (MC) to get gear good enough to go into that.
Anyway I personally don’t feel players in general want to grind older content like that to be able to do the current content. There is nothing wrong with content skips. Sure they’ll struggle with mobs in the current content a bit but that’s it.
Many players still go back to Korthia and older areas for Pets, Transmog, Mounts, etc. Things like that will always keep players doing older content and that’s fine as well.
I don’t feel forcing players to do older content for gear, sockets in order to do the newer content is a good thing.
Similar but not quite the same. Vanilla/Classic had catch up raids and gear too (eg ZG). It tended to complement earlier gear than replace it entirely.
I think people are misunderstanding my point. I’m suggesting Korthia be REQUIRED. I think it should exist as a viable ALTERNATIVE. So I’m all for the 226 green drops (which can also be bought for 500 anima) from ZM. Great. Not a problem.
But why can’t we have that AND Korthia gear should be upgradeable beyond 233. Give players choices.
Why would anyone want to do this? Because of the awful way itemization works in modern WoW where tertiary stats and sockets are completely RNG so if you get a good piece of gear you should be able to upgrade it rather than completely replacing it.
True, yeah, BUT…going out to Sons of Hodir quartermaster to get a new helmet enchant for the new upgrade isn’t the same as having to grind out 5k research to buy a socket, man.
This isn’t an either-or situation. We can have Korthia sockets and gear AND ZM gear in parallel so you’re not forced to do both. Player agency is important and this to me is where WoW has completely failed in recent years.
Except ZM is literally nothing like the maw and korthia.
The currency is optional.
No daily grinds.
No conduits/sockets.
An actual world progression system for solo players (cypher and the new gemming system for world gear).
ZM is quite literally the zone players asked for. An endgame zone that you CAN go to if you WANT too. You can be done for the entire week in ZM in like 2 hours. Anyone that hates (other than looks obviously thats subjective) is misinformed that they are forced to be there or an actual idiot.