Well spoken. Amazing how many folks in this forum can’t grasp this straightforward concept.
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The Pathfinder grind was meant to happen naturally as you played the game, but now that WoD, Legion and BFA are no longer current content, Blizz needs to greatly reduce the requirements to get flying in those expansions.
WOW has always been a grind. The question is : Is the grind fun ? my opinion only the end game grind has not been fun for this expansion for the most part
I argued that in order to achieve the pathfinder achievement, you must do all the dailies and explore all the areas that you would use flying to do. Or allow me to put this a different way.
Old content should be relevant and engaging, however, even if it was still as it is people would still explore and quest in these areas, as they do in the older areas that you can still fly in, for many reasons, mounts for example.
I play mostly where I can fly, even if it’s old content that is not nearly as engaging and end game content, and I happen to see a lot of other people flying around in these areas. I feel that the lack of end game content, or the lack of challenging content might be a small factor. However, considering the number of people that are flying in areas of old content, and the lack of people flying where the achievement is a horrible grind and the content is at least more challenging is telling. It’s what I have experienced during my progression as a new player, and seems to hold true.
Flight does reduce the amount of time to get from one place to another, at the very least it does not come with the requirement to run through a maze of passes that may or may not lead to where you want to go. The design of the terrain, the map, was created to make it seem that the world is larger than it really is. It’s more like a Star Trek NG Holo play on making it seem like you are traveling a long distance when you are really not going anywhere. Flying circumvents that frustration. I feel a lot more people would explore the areas in the previous patch, if we were able to fly without such horrible grind as a requirement to do so.
Flight impacts everything that isn’t instanced. As a new player leveling content is challenging. You are only considering what I have stated from a veteran point of view, you might perhaps think instead of new players that keep the money flowing into the coffers that pay the people who are developing content for you. Maybe if the flying grind was more reasonable new players wouldn’t leave the game so quickly.
I subbed during a sale for 3 months, and very glad I didn’t sub longer because honestly, all the content that remotely interests me I will finish before then, and I will ignore the content that comes with the requirement to grind in pure frustration. I want to spend my entertainment dollars on fun, not frustration. So instead of worming my way through a terrain that was created to make it seem like the world was larger, and in doing so is incredibly frustrating I will leave the game once my sub is up, and not look back. It’s a shame really, it could be so good and wouldn’t take much to make it so but it seems the developers have become lazy in a way that cannot be reconciled or that they have focused to much on making content that is frustrating to players, in order to sell more convenience.
I clearly stated I am a new players, and offered a view through my eyes so that perhaps there might be a better understanding why new players are fleeing the game, and maybe even why veterans are quitting. I am certainly not being disingenuous, I am being thoughtful and have taken the time to explain my points in good faith. This is a complaint to be sure, but a complaint that is constructive.
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WoW’s grind is pretty much on the low end of MMO’s with grinds.
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This has been the design of the game for 17+ years, I know delusional people think pressing w in the barrens for 30 minutes was “content” but you can just press w for 30 minutes in shadowlands.
The game has always been designed around end game content. Every activity, every gate, every attunement, every quest was designed to get you into instances.
This isn’t some modern problem that the 9000iq GD 5heads have figured out. It’s the 0 iq GD clowns took 17 years to figure out.
Another barrier I feel to enjoyment is that the game grinds are per character. It wasn’t bad at the beginning when it was just for gear and reputation but adding that plus all the systems they have added I feel puts off players from playing alts because they don’t want to grind again on a different character.
If they went back and made everything account wide except gearing your character, then I feel more players would play alts.
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Endgame focused design is not the same as endgame insisted design. The World as an experience has not continued to evolve in an engaging way in the same way that dungeons and raids have, because the game’s direction has not been capable of fathoming that people are looking for more out of their time in game than just boss mechanics and time limits. What is the last “innovation” introduced to open world content (hint: they were all in Legion, and they weren’t groundbreaking)?
Automated cross-realm grouping, server sharding, and largely unrestricted server transferring has nuked any sense of community from orbit (apart from guilds, and even those a shambles with the dwindling player counts and dead servers). What world content there is remains predictably formulaic and insisted upon by systems that prioritize keeping a player in a hamster wheel instead of providing a roster of activities that warrant engagement based on fun.
In short: the world is effectively dead, the communities are effectively dead, and even the parts of the game that deliver a worthwhile experience are arbitrarily connected to the content that is effectively dead.
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The world has never been more than a waiting room for instances. Please stop with the delusions.
tldr i didnt read your post BUT I grinded 10-50 between 2 days of random dungeons this week on a dark iron dwarf paladin
You’re hired. When can you start?
Player participation and engagement with the actual history of the game disagrees with you, but feel free to keep repeating that as if it is a compelling argument. You couldn’t prop up the game with 17 year old design, but if emphasis on broader casual content had kept pace with the emphasis on raid-or-die the game would be in a far better place.
MMORPGs should reinforce community wherever they can, but WoW has done the opposite. Turning player interactions into transient passersby at nearly every point isn’t a recipe for success if in-game community is a goal. Without those connections, the appeal of the genre evaporates for people who place value on something beyond collections, achievements, and difficulty.
go try lost ark endgame and see what a stupid grind is compared to wow
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legion - shadowlands has had more casual content than classic → wod combined. Proven by classic vanilla and tbccc and soon to be wrath. With literally nothing to do outside of… wait for it… wait some more… raids.
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Wow reinforces communities just as it did 17 years ago. You are voluntarily choosing to ignore the social aspect of the game if you can’t see it. Aka anti social people.
Again turn the nostalgia down, calm yourself, and objectively take a look at the history of wow.
Every… single… objective… we have had has been put there to get us into endgame. Everyone. The social side of wow has always been player made.
That content hasn’t evolved. The closest thing world content has seen to innovation in well over a decade is World Quests (which are basically just a more convenient presentation of dailies) and Invasions. We are still rehashing Timeless Isle every patch cycle. That leaves you with stagnant quest design absent any appeal that server communities might have offered.
Even as barebones and basic as the content was by today’s standard, original WoW, TBC, and WotLK offered activities that were new/engaging enough to merit pursuing on their own. And if they weren’t (and they were—raiding statistics re: player engagement made that clear as it became the impetus driving Blizzard to start designing in such a way that they did insist on getting players into Raids more often) that still isn’t a justification for not fleshing out casual content in a way that makes it more enjoyable.
Game systems either reinforce or work against communities, and WoW mostly does the latter. Guilds are pretty much the only holdout from old design that still bring that to the table, and even those are imploding and migrating at alarming rates since at least BfA. You need familiarity or some measure of permanence to build communities on, and server shards, server transfers, cross-realm groups, etc. only provide transience in terms of player interaction. Worse yet are things like keystones that actively cultivate antagonistic atmospheres at worst, or exclusionary (raider io) behavior at best. We even got to see this play out (and quickly die out) in real time with Classic servers due to the hands-off approach to server migrations and faction imbalance.
You should apply to blizzard seeing as how they are hiring because your powers to create realities that have never existed is outstanding.
Would help with the lore atleast.
Lazy, condescending responses. Neat. Have a good day/night.
Hey friend, you can twist reality all you want to justify your biased hatred for something that doesn’t exist at all while paying for said thing.
It’s your life. 
i mean, for those who hate the grind, just go try some other games, grind is a core concept of mmos, some grinds can be fun, others are plain boring