I’m just glad that in Shadowlands gear is just gear again, nothing extra attached to it (although I do hope for PvP gear stat). However I dislike that I need to regrind my class perks again, I think getting full character at level cap is just better. Class customization through content is really something that belongs to action RPGs not WoW I think, because you kind of forced to compete with others by doing some arbitrary activity that you might not like to do.
Legion had the most organic character power progression, because you just earned AP from whatever you were doing, and eventually everyone kind of came to the same end. They just needed a hard weekly cap to prevent endless grind feeling. And a little bit less jarring transition to BFA when it all got dropped.
Character customization is a dangerous word in WoW, because ultimately there is always the best customization, and if it’s locked behind a certain content that you don’t necessary like to do, you kind of enticed to do it against your own will.
“You think you do but you don’t”, that quote alone indicates all you need to know about blizzards ideology in regard to design. They think they are smarter than you, and in some ways they are, but overall they aren’t any smarter than their playerbase which is hilarious.
They serve a useful purpose, and they should stay. They just shouldnt be the only thing.
And several of the non-alchemy professions do need a pass to make them more appealing, definitely. At least if we want to continue asserting that professions mattee and that leveling them is more than a waste of time and gold.
I’d like that.
Intrinsically? Nothing. But it gets stale. Fast. Consider a game like Diablo II, another Blizzard property. Its a great game, it hadnt recieved changes in years, and people still play it. You can sustain hardcore fan interest this way, but you’re not bringing in anybody new, and the active playerbase is far, far below what it used to be when there were updates and expansion(s).
People already play legions of alts because they get bored of playing just one class. Without new toys to play with, people are going to stop coming back. New content can help in some respects, but I dont think its enough by itself. We will get the opportunity to see this when the prepatch hits and gives is about a month with new content, but no new abilities. I personally expect to see a huge surge in engagement that dies off rapidly.
Thats a non-starter. Changing the way the core game works with the foreknowledge that it will isolate significant portions of the playerbase is a wretched move for a for-profit business. I can understand why you would want that, but its not going to happen. There are improvements to be made that might actually be adopted.
I wouldn’t say no new abilities. I think it’s fair to rework specs on a rotation. But the constant wiping away of de-facto all spec power and play is just not sustainable and leads to the situation we’re in with covenants. We need to carry forward without redoing everything every single time.
You do realize Vanilla and BC had way worse grinds right? Remember needing to grind gold to just get a mount and then your epic mount? Remember needing to grind Argent Dawn rep to get attuned or spend even more time paying it by gold. Remember the grind in BC for Scryer or Aldor?
The list goes on so “It’s Glory” had worse things.
I am curious about your thoughts regarding leveling in this hypothetical new world. Without some power to wipe away, how would the charcters progress in a new expansion? Or would you simply rather they not, and we add new story/dungeons at current power level only?
Primarily? Gear and story, I’m tired of expac specific gimmicks. It’s why I hate covenants so much. Blizz is selling it as if it should be something permanent… but we all know it’s not because they’ve said they won’t do that and they deliberately went to borrowed power because they refuse to add more.
I get they don’t want to add more… but then stop adding and removing more. It’s just frustrating.
Covenants are better especially after seeing a few comments in this thread. I completly understand why blizz ignores ppl and just carries on with what theyre doing.
Instead of massing and min maxing stats we are min maxing abilities.
We get choice of skills instead of skills determined by blizz.
its all well and fun but it wont happen my man, im tellin ya now so you dont get frustrated and upset when the inevitable happens. what youre saying has been said a million times before. blizz doesnt care. thats why they dont even hang around on the forums anymore except to delete threads
theyll just do what they want to do, like they always have
Gear is not borrowed power. Borrowed power just goes away when a new expansion comes along. Gear is upgraded. It isn’t “borrowed” just because it will one day be vendored.
If borrowed power were analogous to gear, it would mean we get to use the powers from our covenants in the next expansion until we decide to start using the new system. Or that we could have used the Heart of Azeroth until we had an upgrade in Shadowlands. Not only does it feel like a rip-off every expansion, it feels clunky in terms of story/character development - Our heroes are just power hobos that spend all this time seeking great power and then just ditch it. We never seem to put old tools to use. Doesn’t make much sense. You can get rid of that feeling by getting rid of borrowed power or make the old borrowed power systems work again but you have to choose which you can use or you end up like Tony Stark trying to use the infinity gauntlet.
The issue with borrowed power is that it feels finite. It is given then stripped away. Compare that with gear upgrades where you are excited to get a new piece, and it is gradually upgraded.