What does “competitive” mean in this context?
People that raid casually and do +15s are likely full BIS by now, but they are hardly “competitive”
I feel like there’s a lot of blurring the world first/MDI/AWC players with players who just enjoy raids/m+/etc and that isn’t accurate
I’ll give you this. In fact, Dragonflight looks to actually be a return to form for WoW so it’s almost like most of the things I’ve said in this thread have proven to be true in that maybe Blizzard’s focus on endgame content was detrimental to the game.
What you can’t seem to comprehend is that I’ve given two avenues of approach. They can either give better gear, or they can just make their game all around better. I don’t care either way, but you’re so focused on wanting to discuss the gear part that you’ve failed to notice any other part of my argument.
If your game is only about gear, then yes, you should give that gear out to all content avenues. If not, then it’s fine to keep that gear attached to the hardest content. Not a difficult thing to comprehend here.
Like, you do know that there is a reason why WoW’s design philosophy is referred to as the “three pillars,” right? It’s because that’s all WoW has to stand on. It has absolutely nothing else substantial for other players, and that is the problem.
I love this because your idea of a meltdown is presenting logic and reason to you that you can’t refute. Your entire argument is just ignoring half of mine and calling me deluded.
Swing and a miss, it’s not just a metric of time. Your opinion is in the extreme minority.
Content difficulty is part of what determines the classification
Casual....................................Hardcore
LFR.........Normal.........Heroic.........Mythic
Item level low............................Item level high
When you have to cheerlead yourself while pretending I haven’t been “refuting your points,” you know it’s not looking good champ.
I’m just not interested in a 150+ reply back and forth like you’ve already gone through in this thread.
Good luck finding a new game.
They did that in MoP (already existing cloud serpent models),
WoD (already existing cloud Gronn models),
Legion (Valarjar Stormwing), and
BFA (proto-drake reskin).
I would expect they would do that for Shadowlands, if not in Dragonflight.
It would be disappointing if they didn’t; I would agree with you there.
You mean Rank 1? That’s not easy to obtain. Its a very well deserved permanent title.
I mean, in an expansion or two, you could get that reskin when you solo the Mythic version at level 200 or whatever.
Part of the “cool factor” is that its not easy to obtain.
I used to think Tier 13 was cool. Well now I don’t, because everyone can easily obtain it.
I still think Tier 3 is cool. Why? Cause you either had to play hardcore in Pre-Wrath, or play the Black Market.
I mean, you’ve certainly refuted them. As for whether or not they were effective… well…
I’ll be here whenever you want to try again and actually engage with my points instead of ignoring them. Until then. 
M+ is not aimed at your typical casual MMO player in my opinion.
My main MMO is ESO, and the sheer amount of content available that doesn’t involve speed running dungeons and raids is just amazing. ESO would have probably dethroned Wow if they fixed their terrible combat. The fact that ESO has a huge player base despite its terrible combat is a testament to how amazing the rest of their game is.
These threads would never exist here, if the developers didn’t pigeonhole everyone into one of their 3 skinner box pillars of endgame.
WoW sort of always had this problem since the beginning. This is why many players used crafting to fill that void, but the game slowly made crafting more and more irrelevant all to appease raiders.
WoW has a content problem. The 3 pillars they relied on these years to keep players engaged isn’t cutting it anymore.
Raiding in MMOs has lost it luster, probably why M+ is so popular, but M+ is a terrible system for a MMORPG as well. It creates a ton of toxicity and actively works against the spirit of inclusiveness that made WoW so popular to begin with.
WoW needs alternatives to just M+, Rated PVP and raiding. They need alternatives to just creating Timeless isle’s over and over again
as well. The entire endgame has just felt extremely stale for a very long time.
I actually don’t think M+ is a terrible system. I just think how it’s implemented is terrible. If it were just a scaling difficulty system, it’d be fine, but the added timer and the inability to move to a higher difficulty when you fail that timer creates a toxic atmosphere and works against teamplay, which is the entire point of group-based content. When you fail, it no longer becomes “how can we approach this better?” but “who do we shift the blame on for not timing this key?”
But in general, I agree with you. I think their reliance on the three pillars has made it pretty clear that Blizzard does not care about the content that exists below these three pillars, and that has made for a worse game. Kind of a shame to see so many people in this thread work against the idea that this content shouldn’t be made better.
Hmm that’s interesting. Basically every “social” or “casual” in my guild (that would call themselves that much) pretty much runs lower M+ (lower relative to “high end” keys) exclusively as their end game content. That, and farming legacy content.
My guild has been around since early Vanilla, for some context
I actually disagree with this - these threads always exist for every game on every platform that has enough of a following for a discussion board. Since day 1 of the GD there are always dissatisfied parties voicing complaints.
I don’t know why you think it’s to appease raiders? I’m a raider and I loved crafting.
I feel like people kinda just pick that as a scapegoat.
Well duh, because this is the only content really available for everyone. If you love WoW, you will just sweatlord through this content.
I bet if you polled your guildmates and ask them if they would sacrifice M+ or a raid tier for good player housing or crafting systems that were good, I wonder how many of them would jump at that?
Do you play any other MMOs Ddzz? Honest question here. I find that a lot of WoW only players don’t really know what they’re missing because they don’t get to experience what good MMOs are providing their players these days.
Blizzard has fallen behind a lot the last 6-8 years. Probably why they bought an entire studio and put the devs on the WoW team lol. They have a content creation issue big time.
Think about this real hard, why would they basically neglect crafting since MoP basically?
I’ve played a ton (used to play OG Maple Story like crazy, played Wild Star, ESO, Warhammer, BDO, FlyFF, FFXIV, and Star Wars) but never enjoyed them long enough to dive deep into like WoW. Personally, all the stats/simming/strategizing/etc of WoW are what keep me interested and no other game has been able to capture that.
I genuinely just don’t see the connection to raiding. What raiders were clamoring for the removal of professions?
Why would they be mutually exclusive***?
Why are you creating 5 posts to reply? Just quote me and reply to my post in 1 post my dude.
Because, at the moment, the developers only develop for this content, so yeah the rest of the game suffers because the developers can’t develop a variety of content.
Because I’m on my phone and multi-quoting in one reply is irritating as all hell. But I’ll work on it just for you.
I don’t think there’s proof of this at all. They put a ton of resources into Island Expeditions, Warfronts, Covenants, etc all of which were very anti-raider. The problem is what casual content will work for the masses is very hard to narrow in on. Conversely, WildStar had the best housing system in any game ever other than the bloody Sims but obviously that wasn’t enough to capture a casual audience like raids to for raiders.
If everyone can’t complete it, people get mad.
But if everyone can, it’s too easy and boring.
You’re basically asking Blizzard to punish one of its most loyal player bases to favor another. Doesn’t make sense.
To be fair, everyone who is not a RPer or achievement hunter does not play the game to the fullest anyway.
But generally, I think a lot of people play MMORPGs for the open world aspects. The idea of sharing an open world with other players is what draws many of us in, so I feel there is an obligation on Blizzard’s part to emphasize the open world part of the game, and they have failed to do that for awhile now.
World quests are cool, I guess? I certainly thought they were interesting at the time they were added, but they’re more or less autopilot activities that can be done in less than an hour.
Personally speaking? I don’t have any evidence for this, but I don’t think the drop in subscription numbers from the start of the Cataclysm expansion was coincidental. For me, Cataclysm was the start of them focusing less on the journey to the endgame and the open world. And I understand how that sounds considering Cataclysm’s stature as a revamp of the open world, but I think the open world design before and after that expansion were different. I felt that you interacted with the open world differently, and not necessarily for the better. There wasn’t much of an open world experience in zones. It was all streamlined and there were very few quests that led you off the beaten path. For the first couple times leveling, it was fun, but the more I played, the more it became clear the mechanisms they put into place. It was clear this was not an effort to remake the world but an effort to drive players towards the endgame even quicker.
Contrary to popular belief, I thought Warlords of Draenor had the most rewarding open world experience in recent memory. So much of that world was littered with cool quests and fun activities and secrets (secrets and activities that rewarded you with fun items, not anima/AP/azerite). Not really sure why they dropped that open world design.
You’re always going to have people who complain, but I think the question here is to what extent? I play a lot of other MMOs and frequent their forums, too, but I never see complaining to such a degree that it takes up a major chunk of the forum’s page. I also don’t see such discontent with the game so widespread across multiple forums the way I see it with WoW’s forums, subreddits, etc. etc.
Define loyal, because I think loyal is really subjective here. Some people might say it’s those who experience all the content the game has to offer. I would say it’s those who have played from the very beginning or have played this game for a long time. Those people don’t necessarily have to have experienced all the content to be loyal.