Dear Blizzard PLEASE, I beg you, from my little ole gaming heart to improve this.
I’ve had this happen countless times, where I switch mains mid expansion. And in a way I never get to finish an expansion because of it.
In dragon flight the class and spec I wanted to play was great in S1. Then things changed in S2. The content I could do at a high level began to shift and then that S1 spec couldn’t keep up and this character would now be benched.
So, I was like, I’ll swop to my mage because its strong in S2. I play that well and with more items account wide this should be EASY! Correct? NOPE, WRONG!
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I heard renown was account wide so I thought when I hit max level I would have those renown levels on this character. The answer is “NO.” So, I had to began grinding renown all over from day 1. Now I’m not maxed on either my s1 main or my S2-S3 main. But if I add that renown up plus other alts I would have more than maxed renown. Thats not account wide. Thus, main switching during an expansion is almost fatal for achievement progress. I want to play another character in s4, maybe a healer, but I feel adding another main will just make this all worse.
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I discovered that individual check mark progress towards achievements like Sojourner still aren’t shared. So, if I wanted to complete those I had to go back to my S1 character.
Why isn’t that progress shared? If an achievement is complete then its account wide but before that happens, the individual aspects of many of these achievements are not.
3. Questing has become a nightmare. I picked up one part of the main storyline on my mage but not sure where I am on it. I also see yellow question marks all over my screen when I go to the main city, many for chains or parts of chains I’ve already completed on my s1 character. If I’ve completed a quest line on another character why can’t the color show as a faded “red” (i.e. a different color on an alt). And then the ones I didn’t complete on my s1 character would show as yellow. That way I would know to choose a quest line I haven’t yet done on my previous main for a new experience, or further completion. I would also avoid repetition by not choosing the faded red quet exclamation points. This would be LIFE CHANGING.
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As I already said, now for S4 I want to play a new character but when I get to max level I know I’ll be even be more overwhelmed with yellow quest indicators all over the city. But I’ve completed those on my previous main??? RIGHT? Yet, the sight of them on my alt will just make me feel incomplete. Does that make sense? Thats why I think already completed quest lines should appear as a faded red or another color. Just to give us some relief.
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Dragon racing individual parts aren’t also account wide. I got very confused when I went back to my s1 character to finished “A world awoken” and saw that I needed gold in some races. I knew I completed gold on that course, but I did that part on my s2 character. I found this out when I checked what race courses were complete and on what toon. But I was missing more on this s2 character. So, I went back to the S1 and redid the races to get some of the gold achievements. Crazy right? It’s dragon riding, why would I have to get gold again on a particular course? Why wouldn’t that gold win count towards the overall advanced gold achievement, regardless of what character I was on???
I typically main swop 3x an expansion, so I rarely even get to complete all storylines and many of the achievements. If I add up individual progress towards these achievements most are technically complete. I stand by this game design thought. “I am not my character. I am this WoW account,” soo all progress towards a reputation should count towards one progress bar, every achieve, each part should count towards the account. I hope war bands fix this. Because this issue creates an overwhelming feeling.
My progress is split between essentially 3 mains over 4 expansions, more from prior ones. I don’t know where to start or what to do when I login. I thought to myself, “I’ll use this main to finish pandaria, and this main to finish BFA.” I like main swopping because it gets boring on one character. But because of how the system works, I’ll never feel complete.
Now I’m finishing the world awoken quest line on my S1 character and friends are wondering why I’m not on my current main so I could que for content while I farm those achieves. Well, I can’t do that. I’m stuck either only doing achieves and I can’t even began to start a world awoken on my s3 main, as it would take forever. I don’t want to have to redo what I’ve already done.
I know that class tuning is part of wow, and it creates diversity. It’s normal when something is stronger one tier, and gets benched the next. I get that. Mages were great S2, now are average. Thats part of WOW, and it’s fun to level. But once we reach maxed level we look at our renown bars, the overwhelming yellow quest indicators popping up, and we have no clue where to even start if we even wanted to finish the story line on the new main. And sadly, it doesn’t work that way anyways.
I’ve been asking for these items to get fixed since legion. When I post on the forums I usually get people saying, “everything is account wide.”
No, it’s not. and I’d be happy to make a video of how awful it is to main switch and what it leads to.
It leads to player attrition. What blizzard does with overturning, and under tuning creates engagement, but then leaves those players swopping mains stranded in the game. I have friends say that they “I got gladiator, title and CE, but no clue what to do now.” They stop playing and want the Taiven mount but have no idea even where to start. Well, they switched mains 2x and it would take a scholar, and a game dev to tell them what they need to do to actually feel complete.
The achievement system is the best part of WoW, but it needs to be bound to the account and all progress, even 1 point of rep, and every rare you take down, every climbing quest, every dragon race, needs to contribute towards a main goal.
Thanks to whatever dev read this. Thank you to whatever management approved these changes. The lack of action on this is leading to your attrition during EVERY expansion. I believe that 100%.
Whether players all realize it or not, I know this is part of the reason why many feel wow is too complicated. Why they feel overwhelmed without knowing what quest to start, what to pick up or what to do to complete an expansion. And once a player ends up in the end game cycle of m+, raiding etc, we all know if thats all they do it’s just a matter of time before they stop logging in.
I don’t need engagement statistics to prove this. I can see it from the activity of the 200 friends I have who play this game.
