This is the real gameplay loop of warcraft: The game is too difficult such that 1% to 5% of players no life the game and actually make some progress. These players then sell runs (raid/m+) or wins (PVP) to average players who buy tokens off the AH. Blizzard is making a ton of money off these token sales. This is by design.
Then there is so much greed in this game $32 for a race change? There is no technology required for this. It is literally switching a single value in the code, for example race = “orc”, to race = “undead”. This is not a 32 dollar job. It is less than 10 lines of code to “automate” the process.
This game is oppressively difficult, such that, at 221 ilvl I am having to kite in 14/15s especially on weeks with bad affixes. These dungeons reward 207/210 gear. If I was doing these dungeons at 207/210 ilvl, and the rest of the group was at the same. These dungeons would be nearly impossible on some weeks. (I did start 14s around 207 ilvl, but again I no-lifed the game).
15s should drop gear, that will allow me to make 15s easy. Also, the fact that raids drop 233 BiS gear for M+, but drops it so rarely that only some people will ever have access to it is really bad design. This means that your position on the M+ ladder is largely dependent on your access to raid loot, and luck. Bad design.
I have bought a new macbook air, and I am playing through some of the many games I bought but never even played yet.
I don’t think I would ever come back to warcraft after this experience but this is what it would take:
The game must reward equal ilvl loot from all three endgames (raid, m+, pvp). The most power M+ gear must drop from M+, the most powerful raid gear must drop from raid, and the most powerful PvP gear must drop from pvp. The gear must drop often enough that you are not forced to do other end game content.
DELETE DAILIES, stick to weeklies. Make weeklies flexible, like, you can do world quests, pvp, raids or you can do M+ but either way you get the same weekly rewards.
Have generous catch up mechanics, sort of like how conquest is rn for PVP, but for everything in the game, so that I can take a week or two off from the game, if it is grinding my patience down, so that I don’t feel forever behind.
The gameplay should be the reason I feel compelled to log in, not doing (dreadful) dailies for sockets, or torghast for my legendary.
To be honest, my favorite part of this game is M+, and the dungeon design this time is really bad. The theme of most of the dungeons feels too similar, and the themes aren’t great, it looks like a game made for china, not warcraft. Like the angel designs look like an asian mobile game. The dungeons are just so “grey” I don’t know, but they don’t inspire hours of play. I can’t say I like any of them. They all feel like King’s Rest from BFA, in how they punish you. Everyone hated KR, now we have eight kings rests.
