Hi Kaivax,
Thank you for this post, and for wording it with an implied acknowledgment towards the errors the team has made, the length of time that has passed with players feeling unheard, and clarity of direction.
This is one of the best blue posts I have personally seen in years from the WoW team. This is more than a good start - major chunks of the problems of systems getting in the way of us enjoying your game are being addressed here. I hope to see more.
Central to that hope, is that I desire for one of the WoW development team’s main mantras for awhile to be “respect the player’s time.” Arbitrary friction with systems that are slowing our natural progress through your game and its content is one of the main issues that my fellow guild members list for their reason to quit a patch instead of play an alt or embark of non-player-power side content.
I know that your team didn’t want to list all of the changes in the first post, but what I am hoping to see added to this list of changes are:
- Additional improvement to hunting specific conduit upgrades. Let me upgrade the conduit I want. The RNG feels bad, even after removing the potency conduits from other specs.
- For mythic+, give us an interesting method to make our key what we want it to be. Honestly, just making that system close to holy Greater Rifts work in Diablo 3 would be ideal, but you could also have other challenges introduced in the game that players can do inbetween mythic+ key nights with a team to go get the key we want to try. Think Mage Tower-lite kind of content that rewards the ability to target a particular dungeon for the key level we have.
- Also for mythic+, can we please get some mythic±only consumable rewards in our end-of-dungeon treasure chests? Playing your game even at a mid-tier level as a mythic+ player requires us to go through a boatload of consumables and it’s borderline impossible to play without resorting to purchasing a WoW token. I don’t think this should be the case. Let us get battle potions, flasks, and food from the rewards chest that are only useable in mythic+ dungeons.
I hope this is a new beginning and I am rooting for you guys.
I wonder if perhaps the Mage Tower could be somehow included in Legion Timewalking. It’s one of the more fondly remembered pieces of sunset content (I would love to do the fights again despite having all 36 appearances) and I think that limiting it to Timewalking would be a good compromise to retain some of its exclusivity.
Though if I’m honest, I think that the design overall should focus more on experiences and less on rewards. No one wants to grind boring content for an hour or more each day just because they feel like they won’t be able to do the content they want to do (raids/dungeons) without it. Now you’re making it the vegetables they need to eat before they have their raiding dessert. Once people see content as a chore to be done, they’ll resent it. This is the problem I think Torghast ran into. I think that Torghast is fine content on its own, but for most people it’s the Soul Ash farm they need to run every week. Even after finishing the legendaries they want, it’s the place to get the materials for the gem slot item from Death’s Advance. They’re not doing it because they want to, they’re doing it because they have to.
I think that rewards have their place, but I don’t think players should ever feel like content is gatekept by other content. The Mage Tower is a fine example. It was difficult content that required a lot of planning and effort, and many people did it solely for the reward, but ignoring it didn’t affect your ability to do any other content.
And maybe perhaps find a way to make content a little more evergreen? Ways that we can do old raids and dungeons at-level even without Timewalking. Would probably help people running out of stuff to do between content patches.
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There’s a few more things that need to be added, even though what is going on here is good (too little too late mind you) I mean BIG TIME, like dead game big time. However maybe if we make it to where conduits can be changed with tomes instead of having to get to your sanctum to move things around along with all of the anima and relics auto filling into those currencies instead of taking up individual bag spaces for no reason that would be another few good moves in the right direction for this dead game that’s gone to the shadowlands. thanks Cyn XD
Conquest and honor increase too?
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I think by “freely switching” they mean you won’t have to do that two week long quest to rejoin one you previously left. Thus allowing you to play one covenant for a raid night, next day switch to your PvP covenant and then a day later go back to the raiding one. Each covenant will still be it’s own thing that you have to develop independently of one another.
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Thank you!
I was expecting these a lot later in the expansion, it’s such a relief to have all these at this stage. Nevermind the toxics, you’re all doing a great job considering the circumstances. Thanks a lot for all your efforts and big respects!
/bow
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Let’s not continue with the Paid Beta Testing. WoW is the most expensive MMO out there right now. Considering its numbers of MOAU’s, that’s not good.
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I’ll be honest here. I do feel nothing about the update. It’s too late and only happening because Final Fantasy 14 is more popular.
10 Likes
I suspect this too.
I hope they look at renown gains though. Even if everything was a 100% renown drop rate (it isn’t as you get ~50).
I don’t really want to run 50 bgs, or 50 dungeons, etc. Just to be “caught up”.
As a general design philosophy they should avoid power gains as a participation trophy (AK/AP, AzeriteP, Renown). If they want to leave it as an open world alternative to M+, PvP, Raiding for power gains… then fine. However, not in addition to. That’s when it becomes a chore.
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Share renown between all covenants, it’s insane to have to grind that stuff for each one.
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This seems to be a recurring theme with every expansion. We tell you we don’t like something, you stubbornly tell us we are wrong, and then a year or so later you relent and fix it.
Next time, try fixing it before it’s too late for us to care.
21 Likes
So I know this will probably not happen but can you please make renown either, account wide or for your highest renown to apply to all covenants for that toon? Because if I have to renown grind two new covenants just to play what’s good in pvp M+ and raid I’m going to yeet my pc out the window.
Yeah, but renowned is pretty easy to get now a days. I have a friend who switched covenants recently and he is already within a few of the current cap. And with how easy it is to get anima, the only real hold up on rebuilding your next covenant will be souls.
By why should it even be a thing it’s not fun this is not a job it’s a game it should be fun
6 Likes
Why do you do this? Constantly. Whenever the player base tells you about a bad system, when you do decide to listen to feedback, you always feel the need to follow it up with “Oh this wasn’t a problem for the majority of players, only a small bit of players were vocal about this. But we’re still going to change it!”
“We sacrificed gameplay in a video game so that the in-game systems made a little more sense from a lore perspective (in our heads).”
lol
14 Likes
It’s good that you’re changing this stuff now, but OMFG is it frustrating for everyone that it took until now for you to acknowledge what we all knew since beta! 
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It’s good to know that you guys actually can read feedback from players and good to know that you guys at Blizzard decide to ignore feedback from player completely.
Seriously? The whole “protest” of “Pull the ripcord” had a very strong motive. All the beta feedback had a very strong reason.
You guys at Blizzard simply climbed up on your ivory throne and decided what would be “fun” for the players rather than listening to what was really fun for the players. Now they are in this mea-culpa posture.
It is sad to know that in every expansion of wow, because of the stubbornness of the developers, players can only have a full experience when the expansion is already halfway through, because it is certain that the development team will remove many of the restrictions that players have been reporting that they don’t work as well as the devs think. Hopefully this is a learning experience and make them more humble and know how to give in when reading feedbacks and not only when the game is bleeding and nothing that is released makes this bleeding stop.
19 Likes
make renown shared between all covenants
shame it took so long for you to listen to the people who actually pay to play this game but i guess better late than never
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Extremely cautiously optimistic. The PvP gear changes in particular sound good, but a lot of Shadowlands sounded good before we got to slog through the hellscape.
Though if everything does end up good, here’s hoping it’s actually learned from for the next expac.
It has never been hard. Just time consuming.
Back during comp stomp, running 35+ bgs just so you could get to renown 35 was mind numbingly boring.