GM’s been telling me to keep posting in forums so here I am.
The crafted axes of Annihilator and Nightfall have been removed from the game when no one asked them to be removed. No notice ahead of time was provided this was going to be done, I didn’t even find out until a few days ago when someone told me that the axes were no longer in the game who then linked me to an article that was published on the launch day of phase 4.
Usually when I start a new season of Classic, I set out to focus on one character and to accomplish a certain aspect of WoW that I hadn’t yet before due to my limited time to play. This season, I set out to do high level blacksmithing, and more specifically to get exalted with Thorium Brotherhood and be one of the first crafters of Nightfall on the server. I researched everything that I would need, made alts and invested in the bag space I would need to house the 6000 ores while I waited for P4 to launch, I made a spreadsheet/google doc to ensure I had everything ready. I even began reaching out to other guilds via Discord letting them know I’d be going for being the first crafter and would have enough mats to sell a few of them outright, planning on making a lot of my P4 gold that way or even trading them for Sulfuron Ingots to work my way towards making Sulfuras for myself.
After phase 4 had launched, after grinding Thorium Brotherhood to exalted by turning in over 6000 dark iron ores, I came to find that the item wasn’t available from the rep vendor. “The TB Mace and Sword recipes were there, but why not the axe?”, I thought. I had submitted several in game tickets to GM’s who told me that Plans: Nightfall not being available from the rep vendor in the Grim Guzzler was a BUG and asked me to submit bug reports, which I have. I have reached out to Aggrend on Twitter, I’ve reached out to your new account @Warcraft. No response from any of them unsurprisingly. It’s been slowly settling in how much time was wasted on this and I’ve wanted to unsubscribe and also never invest in a season of classic wow again.
Your reasoning for removing these axes was, “These items tend to lock players into being little more than buff-bots and heavily negate the players own gameplay”.
Did you ever think about the players that planned/wanted to use them? In a Season of Discovery mindset, I struggle to understand why you’d remove the endgame of Axesmithing Mastery UNANNOUNCED that requires exalted with Thorium Brotherhood rep because you feel like it “locked” players into being more of a support DPS role? I’ve never heard of players complaining about this, and literally all they’d have to do is NOT use Nightfall or Annihilator. And if this matters so much to a guild for speedrunning purposes, then that’s a “sacrifice?” someone needs to make amongst MANY others like taking the time getting so many world buffs, something I’ve heard FAR more complaints on from players feeling “locked” into to have a successful experience playing, but world buffs weren’t removed were they?
sarcasm They better remove the Black Qiraji Battle Tank mount, Scarab Lord title, and the opening of AQ world event. Would hate to “force” an ENTIRE server into feeling “locked” into a more supporting role donating their time/resources into gathering for the war effort, killing endless bugs just so a few people could benefit. I bet no one ever looks forward to that event. sarcasm
You removed a niche part of the game, sure. But had you at least announced it ahead of time, people would have avoided wasting their time investing in it and could have gone another route. But instead you said nothing and let players find out for themselves while even your GM’s were spreading misinformation while asking for further input from the player to get the “issue” resolved.
The straight removal of this was the wrong way to go. Literally not telling the community ahead of time made it even worse for those who grinded the rep.
No one is forced to use world buffs, yet guilds still do it religiously of speed running/optimization matters to them, no one forces players to have all applicable flasks/food/consumes and yet players and entire guilds do this because they decided that’s what matters to them. Imagine taking out any endgame aspects of alchemy, leatherworking, tailoring, enchanting, etc that required a rep grind and devs NOT announcing it at all for the same reasons as Nightfall.
If you’re in one of those speedrunning/hardcore guilds and you’re not necessarily enjoying farming for your flasks/consumes or world buffs, well then Bliz should just take those things out of the game with this kind of logic. I can’t imagine someone being in a HC guild for very long if they complained about having to do that sort of sacrifice.
I WANTED to fill the niche support DPS role with these weapons specifically because I know my DPS doesn’t measure up to the other big pumpers out there. So having me wield these weapons is much better for our guild because the DPS loss is minimized while maximizing the DPS of the others. That’s strategy, that’s gameplay, that’s giving player choice. By removing this, you feel like you removed “locking” players into using it, but now you’ve locked arguably the same size group of people who planned on using Nightfall into doing something else, but only after their investments were wasted.
In the future, I suggest that you at least let people know ahead of time that you’re removing part of the endgame and not letting people figure it out for themselves after wasting their time, gold, etc. At least have your GM’s provide accurate info.
Please put Nightfall back into the game, it’s an iconic weapon from the game and players should be free to use it if they wish. Here are links to other threads with other players expressing the same thing:
dumb and unnecessary change. Especially since they didn’t even bother adding a replacement to axe smithing (not that I want them to, they wouldn’t do a good job, just put nightfall back). It really is ridiculous the pet projects they come up with. Nobody was worried about muh nightfall pigeonholing players or whatever.