Rise of Azshara Experiences So Far

Community General Discussion
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Thanks for the clear and unambiguous response!

I am going to go ahead with the purchase, but mainly it will be for the boost. I have 7 at 110 right now, and 5 others at 60-70, which I continue to level. The only toon I have that is not at least 60 is Monk, which I don’t have one at all, so… it will be worth it to me just for that alone. I plan on continuing what I’ve been doing: leveling alts, tmog runs, old content, completionist stuff on my main, maxing out tradeskills, etc, and I will just add pathfinder as an additional occasional thing I work on.

I hear you about the content; I’m not going in with high expectations at all.

601

well i did all the quests i could find including the wq emissary and barely hit friendly so now im guessing no more rep again till emissary is up again which means it will probably take me a decade to get revered just so i can fly. 15 days left on my sub so if i can fly in those 15 days i think im gone perm this time. if your gonna be a major dick about flying every expansion then F ya. have your stupid game. ill go play others

also the neck is stupid as f. i dont want another lame butt min plus cd that will never hit my bars. it goes in the trash can with every other stupid min + cd in the game.

EDIT cause i forgot the absolute most important complaint about the neck :confused: cant believe i forgot it cause its been my complaint since day 1 and that is why even bother doing anything to improve the neck at all or spend time on it since your just gonna abandon it at the end of expansion on us like you did with artifacts. so im pretty much like f it. just huck the stupid thing now at the start. theres no point in it at all since its only here 1 expansion

then theres the retarded mount equipment. another thing i have absolutely no interest in but hey…thanks for ruining my water strider for your stupid new design that belongs in a trash can

thats how i feel about it. you asked so i responded

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602

Nazjatar looks exactly like a reskinned Argus. The terrain, the shape and textures of the landscape is the same. The only difference is it’s a little easier. I’m truly disappointed in Queen Azshara’s fabulous, Old God devised kingdom. It’s cramped and fractured. After all this time, shouldn’t it be a glorious underwater palace like in Vash’jir?

I was expecting a submerged Suramar, I got a damp Argus lite.

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time gating has nothing to do with lore or anything else.

Time gating exists because the vast amount of decision making is based on the ‘time played’ metric.

You nailed it. They need to stop dealing in metrics and start dealing in actual game-play. It’s ironic. WoW was created as a response to Everquest and Sony’s stupidity, and yet in many ways they’ve practically become the new Sony. They need to fix their version of “Shadows of Luclin” quickly. I could almost quote Tigole word for word here and replace Sony with Blizzard, but I won’t.

There is no player good will left on most of these issues. People are angry and justifiably so because most of us know they are capable of better, and are sick of being lied to like as if our Developers were hack politicians.

  • -Fix the Jellyfish Quests
  • -Fix the Candy Crush stuff (make it so it’s X number of matches = done. Not matches in a row.)
  • -Make Experience by Unshackled / Ankoan able to be attained by any world quest.
  • -Increase the occurrence of Nazjatar events.
  • -Add more World Quests.
  • -Do all of this within a month’s time.

-(Optional but a idea): Work on expanding Nazjatar with a few more zones that are inside the water wall, or do something about the enviroment. Seriously. Why the hell does Vashj’ir feel more like Nazjatar, than Nazjatar?

This feels like the shore zones for WC3 where Maiev was on islands. THIS is what Island Expeditions should of been. Get a clue here. Pandering to whiny twits that hated swimming was bad and you destroyed a important lore zone with that pandering.

It’s on you to fix this, so make it work by just redoing the Sea Legs buff or some crap. If people whine, that’s their problem. Zones should be represented right, not altered for those who lack the brains to handle 3 dimensional battlefields.

Rip off FFXIV if you need to for a design that is acceptable to people to hate the swimming in Vashj’ir. I mean who the hell cares? Underwater zones are a staple of RPGs!

How in the heck did you miss the mark so wildly on a zone that everyone has wanted to see since Warcraft III? This whole water wall thing could of worked, but it was a bad idea without more areas that were underwater. Instead it feels like stupid, lazy, pandering designs to a collective of players who already bailed for other titles. Your die-hards who give a damn about the lore are about all you have left now.

This is not Nazjatar. It doesn’t even feel like it. (Sure hope the Raid does…)

But all of this? All of this misses probably the most important thing that has led you to this outcome. Blizzard. I’ll say it slowly, because I want it to be understood. This is what is pissing me off. If I am like other players here, it is also probably pissing them off as well.

Stop. Using. Corporate. Time. Played. Metrics. Stop. Time. Gating. This is probably your last chance before you see a mass exodus again, that makes WoD look like a small ripple in the pond.

You will find little good will or sympathy from your players at this point. You know what will win them back? Action, not dialogue. Did you really think we’d settle for business as usual after the crap-show that was WoD, and the fun that was Legion?

We expect better, because we know your capable of better. Most players? At face value they perceive they are being lied to about things like the 415 weapon. It doesn’t matter if I believe you folks in saying it was a bug.

The real problem and issue here is that you have lost your players good will and faith. Those players won’t excuse you anymore from doing your duty to make the game “they” (not you) want to play. If your interests and the players interests aligned, then more people would believe you to be gamers. I don’t think most people think that now however, because as I said before, the good will won during Legion is exhausted.

My closing advice is this. If you truly want to fix this mess, understand that only actions will get you to a better tomorrow now. You made a beautiful zone. I adore it. But it missed the mark on what players expected from Nazjatar. Subverting expectations a little? That’s fine. Too much and you wind up with scenarios like what happened with Star Wars / The Last Jedi.

I really hope you can pull it off and make it out of this mess your in right now, because Warcraft deserves to succeed. Some people might say “It’s 15 years old…” But I say “So what?” I would argue that it most certainly could compete even today. But it needs to go the right direction, not the wrong one.

Last but not least. LISTEN TO FEEDBACK. All of this I’ve outlined? Guys… it was discussed on the PTR months ago. I mean Devs…? Please understand I am NOT trying to be critical of your work here for the sake of scoring forum points, and I am not trying to “stick it to the man”.

I genuinely love you guys and respect your efforts. I’d be happy as a clam if I didn’t even have to post because I was just that content with the game, and there was a time in WoW when I was. But what happened in Nazjatar? It is a perfect case of: “You think you know what we want, but you don’t”.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/nazjatar-has-the-hallmarks-of-a-trainwreck-waiting-to-happen/198185

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Shout out to the Art Team great job as usual. Loved Mechagon. The Game designers however come on more world quests same stuff over and over. It’d be nice to see something different eventually.

Please more towns like Rustbolt loved that place, makes me want to be a Gnome.

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Gameplay still doesn’t feel very engaging. Mobs are too easy, and the lack of meaningful player interaction, despite everyone being in the same zone, just doesn’t seem right. Also, the mob density in Nazjatar seems a bit too high, which makes it difficult to just run around and explore.

I like the new Heart of Azeroth abilities, and the story is fine. The art is great as always, but I think Bliz should reevaluate World Quests, as I think they are overused.

Overall, I’d say the game still lacks life.

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I was having a good time with the new content, warmode can be a bit oof but still fun.
Then this morning I saw the Crimson Tidestallion and rushed to get all the mats but when I got back it was gone and now I am really salty because of that. Bunch of gold wasted for nothing.

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LOL, thats gonna suck. More grind.

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Nazjatar and Mechagon are gorgeous zones, the world team did a fantastic job at the look and feel of the zones and should be proud.

Unfortunately, the amazing art and design are overshadowed by flaws with the core systems. Until these are fixed, it does not matter how well the game looks.

Azerite Neck
I know we’re probably stuck with this system until the end of the expansion, but I feel like people are tired of ‘the grind’. Doing arbitrary quests to earn enough resource to unlock a slot so you can use something you earned in another part of the game, is not fulfilling or good gameplay.

I feel a better alternative would have been to get rid of the azerite grind and unlock the essences by just letting players play the game, the way they want to play it. Forcing people to do content that is not enjoyable (world quests, island expeditions, raids, pvp) does not make for an enjoyable game play experience.

Being More Alt Friendly
If you’re going to insist on maintaining the current neck system, it would be nice to see the item level become account wide. It would go a long way to know that progress on my neck is shared and all of my toons are working towards a singular goal.

Class Design
It doesn’t matter how good or engaging the new quests are. If your class is not fun and engaging, you’re less likely to enjoy playing and less likely to be engaged.

I won’t add any more than that, I’m sure you can look around the forums and find dozens of posts by people a lot smarter than me who can articulate this far better than what I can.

Class Identity
Ion touched on Class Identity in his 8.2 video and I wanted to mention the importance of set armor to class identity. One of the highlights of any new expansion or raid was looking at the new armor sets for my class and all of the other classes.

I would encourage Blizzard to bring these back, if possible for the last raid, but definitely next expansion. The set pieces were so vital to class identity and many sets made each class instantly recognizable.

Make Main Stats Matter
Whatever comes next after BFA, make main stats matter again. This expansion has been worse than Legion when it comes to getting upgrades. The azerite traits are so powerful that loot 15 item levels above what is equipped can be a DPS loss without the correct traits.

Let Players be Players
This goes to the wider issue of influencing how players consume the content and play the game. This includes time gating of quests, locking rewards behind needless reputation grinds and other methods to influence how players consume content.

I’m not saying rewards should be easily obtainable; flying should be something you earn and not just pay gold for. However, Pathfinder 2 is predicated on two reputation grinds - which Blizzard determines what the maximum rep cap is each day.

My preference is to put the control back to the players by letting them earn the reward by playing the game how they want to play it. If someone wants to grind it out in 3 days by spending 16 hours a days farming X … let them.

World Scaling
There needs to be a better solution, one that is more thought out than the current implementation. I’m all for scaling, particularly when leveling; however, at max level there needs to be a limit at how much of the world can scale with you. Without it, there is no sense of achievement or accomplishment. If we’re the powerful heroes that we’re supposed to be, there should be some amount of power creep. The mobs in Nazjatar are a great example of scaling gone wrong, non-elite mobs need to be balanced better.

Warmode / World PVP
For complete transparency, I have not done any significant amount of PVP since vanilla, but did level with warmode and had a very uneventful leveling experience… So I am by no means an authority on this and my comments should be taken with a BIG grain of salt.

  1. Faction imbalance - I’m not suggesting a server merge, but there needs to be a better system for grouping people who do want to participate in world pvp. I do not know if this is feasible, but doing away with servers all together and start doing more zone/cluster based balancing.

  2. Safe Zones - I know people are going to hate on this, but having some sort of safe zone or limited immunity timer around quest NPC’s to prevent ganking and camping, similar to what happened during the Essence Quest unlock in High Mountain… I’m sure some people might be more inclined to quest with Warmode on

  3. Engaging - This is just me babbling, and I’m sure purists will surely shout me down - but if the act of pvp was arcade like… be it hit counters, death counters, different music. Just throwing it out there…

These are my thoughts. Like I said, I feel 8.2 is overshadowed by other issues that impede or limit the amount of fun some of us are or are not having.

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609

I feel the same. I’ve been gone since the beginning of BfA, and honestly I have no idea what’s going on.

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Building on my previous post, a couple more things I recommend Blizzard work on immediately.

1.) A Alternate way to get Heritage Armor for Allied Races. Leveling is NOT fun.
2.) More Invasions at locations on Azeroth. Battle for Azeroth feels like Battle for Island Kingdoms.
3.) A promise that going forward Flight will NOT be handled by “Pathfinder”.
4.) World Quests respawn faster / more “Zone” themed stuff like Nazjatar happens regularly (every 20 or so minutes).

Do those four things? You’ll see subs rise. It’s not a case of “We told you so.” Or even “Players were right / Developers were wrong”. I don’t care about any of that frankly speaking at this point. It’s a case of “Do we want WoW to survive?”

I am sorry but I do believe things are “that” dire now.

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I feel the same. It just doesn’t make any sense to have everyone in the same zone but not interacting whatsoever. The gameplay just feels so stale, the objectives arbitrary, and the progression so meaningless.

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So, some of the HoA relics can only be obtained through BGs, some can only be obtained through rated BGs and some can only be obtained through the cancerous garbage that is m+. There should be alternate ways to obtain each relic, or very simliar relics added to compensate those that do not participate in certain activities, unless it is PvP specific, which I can see only obtainable through PvP related activities.

Okay, ActiBlizz/devs, I am already quitting after I get pathfinder finished, but come on! If you really didn’t want me to come back, why didn’t you just send me a fracking memo?

Semper Fi! :us:

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One more addition to this thread because I feel it is important both to players and also to me. As I said before, Nazjatar while beautiful does NOT feel like Nazjatar at all. Rather it feels like you folks at Blizzard listened to players who irrationally hated Vashj’ir and designed with that in mind.

Sometimes a little inconvenience is a good thing, and you as Developers are totally within your bounds to say: “No. This is what our lore says on this zone, and we will NOT bend / change this area into a land zone / undersea zone because “you” disliked it.”

I realize this could be applied to my preference for a underwater Nazjatar as well ( and maybe that’ll showcase that I’m not really trying to influence you one way or the other ). If you ‘absolutely’ have to have Nazjatar above ground, that is something I am alright with.

The main thing I’m saying is that I just don’t want to see zones that Blizzard has in the lore radically changed from what they are, to something else because a small and vocal minority whined about X thing, thus preventing what a lot of others loved never become a thing.

We do need underwater Zones, and I think Nazjatar should be totally underwater. However… since it’s released, that part of the damage is done so I’ll focus instead on solutions.

You could salvage the underwater Nazjatar situation if you were inclined, with a radical but completely warranted change up to things that would be on par with what happened to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms in Mists of Pandaria.

I suggest that in 8.2.5 you have Queen Azshara lose her composure and collapse the water walls as she sees her Empire being cut up by players. Expand it with a couple new zones since the walls of water no longer block (use Fatigue to denote zone endings), and about 20 more world quests across the zone.

As for how players survive? That’s easy enough. Have Neptulon / Ra / Gral show up and bless players to give them a means to continue travelling underwater. Players would be anchored to the ground, but flying / swimming mounts would function as Flying Mounts (if you completed Pathfinder 2). That Gas Bladder item that allows the Swimming Mounts to fly?

But beyond everything else, the same rules would apply to the zone as now, so the people crying about 3d enviroments would have no leg to stand on (though I think their point and hate of Vashj’ir was ridiculous to start).

I guess for my part, the best way I can describe my frustration is thus. I am deeply saddened and disappointed; that instead of doing something bold and daring, you chose to play it safe and did not give players a true undersea Empire Zone, as befitted the Naga and their lore; …simply due to ignorant and lazy players who were irrational about one of the few amazingly gorgeous zones from Cataclysm.

I can only hope you realize this and do something to change that in a later patch. Players don’t mind mistakes. But we also need bold solutions to the pratfalls that face this zone guys. It’s alright to experiment and fail, but please learn from the mistakes before we all lose what we care the most for here; namely WoW being made the best it can be made.

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I’m having a decent time so far, getting demounted as clothy could be looked at a little. I was kind of shocked that nazjatar was still destroyed. I was expecting to see some atlantis style architecture seeing as the more power sorcerers in the world have been in this city for thousands of years more or less isolated.

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Is there no option to skip the intro quest lines for Najzatar and Mechagon for Alts? I don’t want to go through all that for each one. Need a skip, like talking to Jaina in SW Harbor, or Khadgar in Broken Isles in Legion. There seems to be a distinct lack of focus on alts this expansion. I could go into other examples, but you did specifically ask about the new stuff.

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616

So far it’s ok. Little underwhelming start with shards only having like 25 players on them. Really hoping we get more alt-friendly mechanics for players to quickly get all their alts caught up. Thinking about something like 150,000 azerite power or whatever the grind is just feels really bad when I think of all the alts I wish I could enjoy this expansion with.

Also I just finally got on my druid and I got a 385 piece of azerite armor from the intro quest and I definitely need heart of azeroth levels to unlock all the traits. I was under the impression this was not happening anymore in 8.2 with azerite gear rewards from now on and we just got all the traits as soon as we equipped the armor and the AP grind was shifting to unlocking slots on the heart forge.

Overall some very dark and looming shadows over a fairly fun and good new patch that I hope get fixed. More catch-up mechanics please. More alt friendliness please.

OMG I forgot the most important thing of all…

WHERE IS MY BEE MOUNT BLIZZARD? Seriously this is not cool. Not cool at all. I have Bumbles, I am ready to go I have literally been waiting for this for months and months. Not happy about the Bee mount not being in the game or whatever you need to do to get it not being available at the start of 8.2 when we were told, we were getting it when we got flying.

Well flying is here, and there is no Bee mount. Not impressed.

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Had the wrong character selected when I wrote that, probably confuses things a bit :slight_smile:

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I am slightly more tolernt of your existence since you are a DK.

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“IT LOOKS LIKE THE SHIP FELL INTO THE WATER! DON’T WORRY, WE’RE SENDING A RESCUE PARTY!”

Ship falls as the crew is screaming