TL;DR
The Shadowlands endgame is only suitable for the hardcore playerbase because it was tailored to suit their desires as players, their time available to play, and their personal biases regarding loot. Game developers must immediately adjust their recent philosophy regarding loot acquisition and bring back Welfare Epics if they want WoW to regain its massive popularity (in terms of retaining a high number of subscribers and attracting new subscribers).
Facts that impact everyone should matter more than the feelings of the overprivileged few
Sometimes it can be hard to accept facts when they contradict our feelings and ideologies. And sometimes we cannot understand why other people would detest what we enjoy, or find difficult what we find intuitive.
So when I argue that Welfare Epics are good for the game as a whole, and that the elitist gearing systems of Shadowlands only serve to frustrate and exclude the average WoW player, it may be an intellectual challenge for you to look outside of your own experience and try to base your opinions on facts, rather than try to fabricate facts based on your opinions.
Make no mistake, I am not advocating for the removal of anything that hardcore players would enjoy, I am simply asking for the re-inclusion of accessible content and/or systems whose mere existence seems to bother hardcore players, despite the fact that these hardcore players have the time, skills, and social networks to participate in other content that is not only better tailored to their desired level of challenge but also provides the best access to character power.
Game developers and hardcore players are only harming the game if they continue to deny the truth and push away any facts that contradict their own delusions or contradict the elitist agendas that they are trying to promote.
Treat WoW as a game again
Note, I did call WoW a “game”. For most players, WoW is a game and not a job. It is not the basis of their social life either. They log in when nothing pressing is happening in real life, and they may not know in advance when that will be. And they might not have friends online at the time. But more than likely, they will want to progress their character or account in some meaningful way each play session.
One hour of unscheduled play a day means no progression through three pillars of Shadowlands endgame content
If you only have one hour to play on a given day, for example, an authentic raiding experience would be out of the question, especially given the time of day and lack of notice.
You could try to find a group for a Mythic Plus dungeon. Even if you are lucky and are not rejected due to your spec, low item level, or lack of experience, the experience may not be enjoyable if you feel that you are being rushed along by the timer and your teammates, or if you are ridiculed for failing to follow specific mechanics or shortcuts. Then, in Shadowlands chances are that you will not receive any loot from the chest at the end, meaning that you had an unpleasant experience with nearly no reward.
There is also rated PvP, but it is hard to find a PUG that is willing to accept you at odd times of the day depending on your class/role, experience, and current rating. Even if you are lucky and get into the arena or battleground, you could be stunned and burst down by experienced, geared players before you even have a chance to react, and the YOLO-type PUG groups are more likely to lose, meaning you do not gain any rating, Conquest, or other tangible progress for that day.
The monetary and reputation gains from Callings are appreciated, but World Quests are not a reliable method of gearing because the item level of the gear is capped at an extremely low level and based entirely on your current average item level. (Renown thresholds that increase World Quest rewards only raise the cap, rather than automatically boosting the actual rewards.)
Main expansion features of Torghast, legendaries, and anima are failed potential for casual players
Torghast could potentially be something that you do, but it is more punishing and time consuming for undergeared characters (anima powers and soul remnants effectively scale off of your base power level rather than simply adding power), and to make matters worse, it does not offer any power progression system. You may eventually be able to craft a legendary if you are willing to farm the soul ash for it and the recipe from the content that drops it, but even so, you may not have enough gold to buy the base item, and legendaries offer nowhere near as much raw power as they did in previous expansions.
You could also do various activities in pursuit of anima for cosmetic rewards, but the steep costs of the covenant sanctum upgrades and the rewards themselves could mean months or even years of grinding, and some rewards become unusable if you change covenants later. Some of the mounts also have a very low chance of dropping, meaning you would have to waste your limited time killing rares every day on multiple alts to have a significant chance of obtaining them. And most covenant-related cosmetic rewards are bound to a specific covenant, so you would have to grind out separate rewards if you have alts in multiple covenants.
How could Welfare Epics help keep players subscribed to WoW?
Blizzard does not publish official statistics on numbers of subscribers and completion rates of different content, but all available evidence and common sense points to the conclusion that average and casual players do not participate in higher end raiding, rated PvP, and Mythic Plus dungeons, while nearly all players participate in more accessible content such as World Bosses, World Quests, and unrated PvP.
If it is made so that any player can over time can acquire competitive (Normal raiding power level or above) gear over time through solo-able, queue-able, or otherwise accessible open-world or instanced content, they will be able to experience power progression, and have a reason to keep playing the game or experience the current expansion through characters of a different class, race, or faction. Progressing in power by doing content and experiencing the strengths and weaknesses of different classes are the hallmarks of any engaging RPG (as opposed to an action or collection game).
As Shadowlands is currently implemented, the average or casual player is intentionally blocked from achieving Normal raiding power levels, being more than two tiers below the hardcore players with no way to progress the power of their character no matter how many months they play. You cannot deny that such excluded players are more likely to unsubscribe. Torghast and anima grinds provide no gear either, and on their own are not enough of a “game” to keep players subscribed.
Irrational claims of the elitists
“But the best gear should come from the most challenging content!”
—Check your facts. I (and most others) never claimed that Welfare Epics should equal or surpass gear from the highest difficulties of raiding, rated PvP, or Mythic Plus, nor that they should be obtainable faster. If Welfare Epics are so good that hardcore players want to fill in a few slots with Welfare Epics or gear up their new alts faster, then they are welcome to enjoy the systems as well.
“But Covenant armor sets are already too good and obtained too easily!”
—Check your numbers. Covenant armor consists of a maximum of 197 item level gear for 9 slots. Normal raiding loot consists of 200/207 item level gear for 16 slots, with a wider variety of secondary stat allotments. Characters who only do covenant quests will be more than half of a tier below Normal raiding power level, and even if elitists think that is too close to Normal raiding level, casual players themselves appreciate the fact that the extra boost could help them get into more difficult content (especially since premade groups are very discriminatory with regards to item level requirements). If you are a truly casual player, covenant armor sets are a fair reward for finishing your campaign and grinding out all the necessary renown and/or anima. But as it stands now, many players stop at covenant armor because there is no accessible way for them to progress further than that.
“But WoW has always been like this! We have returned to the good times when the hierarchy of gear mattered!”
—Check your facts. In virtually every past expansion before Shadowlands and in Vanilla, there were ways to obtain gear that was equivalent to or competitive with Normal, Heroic, or nearly Mythic raiding power level through queue-able, solo-able, or otherwise extremely accessible activities and/or currency systems. Note that such gear did not typically cover every slot and did not include BiS stats or set bonuses, and such gear typically involved a higher degree of grinding than raiding, or some kind of weekly or bi-weekly cap or lock-out. These options were always in place, and I and other players could plan out and look forward to how we could gear our alts (or even our mains) in each patch depending on what content we were able or willing to do. However, such options were intentionally excluded from Shadowlands.
“But there is no point in raiding if you can get good gear for doing nothing!”
—Check your logic. There are now four difficulties of raiding, where the highest difficulty should still provide more powerful rewards than any Welfare Epic, and in my opinion should additionally provide set bonuses as an additional reward and incentive. If you feel that the activities that reward Welfare Gear are boring, then that is all the more reason for you to choose to do the challenging raid difficulties that you enjoy and that also give better rewards. You do higher difficulties of raiding because you enjoy the challenge and the progression, not just because you think that the gear gives you a higher status, right? If it turns out that most players do not enjoy raiding after all, then the game needs to adapt and evolve instead of forcing players into doing only one form of content because game developers want to justify their traditions or certain development expenses.
“You don’t need Mythic gear for your World Quests!”
—Check your logic. Having better gear ensures that any content involving your character can be completed more quickly, reliably, or enjoyably, especially for certain classes and specs when playing solo. If rewards were not provided just because you do not technically need them to succeed in doing the content that you have already completed, then Mythic Denathrius would drop no loot, Gladiator rating would not allow for that final weapon upgrade, and there would be no Great Vault reward for doing high-level Mythic Plus. Some people have argued that the game could be made so that power is not dependent upon gear at all, but I believe that power progression is an intrinsic part of why RPGs are enjoyable.
“You want Mythic BiS gear mailed to you just for logging in!”
—Stop the hyperboles. Even casual players want to enjoy earning better gear over time, but through more accessible activities. They do not expect the best gear overnight, but on the other hand they want their efforts and time spent in game to mean something for their character’s power level.
“You are selfish and entitled!”
—The same could be said of elitists for demanding that accessible gearing alternatives (which do not affect hardcore players directly to begin with) be removed to validate their efforts and accomplishments in game, at the expense of the game’s success as an MMO in the long run.
Elitists have demanded that they be afforded the utmost character power in all content that they do, and not feel that they have to do any content unworthy of their attention, while demanding that casual players not be afforded even a modicum of character power in the only content that is accessible to them.
(No hardcore players or game developers were harmed in the writing of this post, or would be harmed by said Welfare Epics.)
