First before all the negativity: I’ve spent a lot of time playing this mode, particularly the first weekend, and overall it’s been fun.
The actual content:
This is maybe the most disappointing part. I did get a lot of nostalgia hits while playing, but in the end… I could just do this content on my regular characters. Remix provides incentive, but the actual content is the same. When it first got revealed, I was expecting it to actually be a “rerun” of MoP but with wacky powers, including letting people who missed the Barrens campaign and legendary questline experience those. The content, mind you, not the limited time rewards. One thing I do have to point out here as a positive is the ability for people to unlock access to the Ordos plateau without having done the legendary questline. That’s great, content shouldn’t be removed so giving access to people who missed it is fantastic.
Leveling early:
I’ll be honest, it didn’t really feel any different to how I remember doing Pandaria with heirlooms feeling. The quests are the same, I’m not some superpowered god (outside of brief level windows where scaling was messed up), I could just do this in Chromie Time. I’m sure it’s faster, especially now that you actually get a decent amount of %XP threads for your cloak, but that’s about it.
Scaling:
I think that’s the biggest thing this mode has highlighted: scaling things to your level is an absolute mess and it doesn’t work properly. Level 10s or 20s being the strongest characters in the mode until you reach max ilevel is absurd (funny, sure, but it shouldn’t be a thing). I don’t think there’s a good solution to it, but I really don’t like scaling content. When you level up, things shouldn’t match you. That mob in Jade Forest should be an insect under your boot once you come back from Krasarang Wilds.
Whackamole nerfs:
The first week or 2 felt really stupid. Every time a new spot to farm power was found, it got nerfed. The compensation was frankly a joke. People who were ahead (and some who really weren’t) got their cloaks slapped down a bit, but kept all their bronze and ilevel (which is correct, nobody did anything wrong other than the instance lockout exploiters). This is something I touched on here as well: [Retail][Grinds] Exploit Early, Exploit Often - #31 by Tradu-laughing-skull
There was also very little to no communication about any of this or what the “intended” pacing/goal for the mode was. This felt really bad, especially as somebody who spent basically the entire weekend playing what I imagine was the “intended” way. I did every achievement apart from some raid ones and 2 reps. Then after I did all of that, the rewards got buffed and the things I hadn’t yet done much/at all (the mob grinds) kept getting nerfed. It never felt like there was a plan either, just a constant state of panic about whatever the most recent Wowhead article was.
Shared currency
Upgrading and cosmetics sharing a currency feels incredibly bad. Upgrades are also incredibly expensive.
Scrapping:
Why do we have to scrap? Why don’t things just vendor for bronze?
Gems:
The UX here is pretty bad, and addon devs did a much better job within the first weekend. Having to use a spell to unsocket the items one at a time any time you get a new item feels unnecessarily clunky.
Getting carried vs playing “natty”:
The experience of Remix is completely different depending on whether you get carried by people who grinded early or play “normally”. If you get carried (or have the gear yourself I suppose), you get to speedrun raids and power up pretty quickly. If you play on your own or with groups that aren’t juiced, you will struggle to do the raids, let alone in a timely/efficient manner, meaning you power up slower and stay behind. This sucks, and is a consequence of not catching the bronze grinds in time (and then nerfing them with poor compensation)
Tinkers and gems:
These are almost all incredibly boring and take away from actually playing your spec. You press random buttons, and the RNG fireworks kill everything for you. That’s not really what I want from a WoW game mode personally. I want to play my spec and maybe have the spec altered. The boot gems are the exception to this. They’re really neat. The idea of borrowing spells from other classes is very neat and I would’ve liked to see more of that for the other gem slots instead of generic damage procs that you ignore basically all of. They might be neat as a gearing puzzle on paper, but then you end up so powerful with endgame gear that it doesn’t actually matter anyway.
Super stats:
This is just me, I know, but I really don’t like having insanely high stats. The game doesn’t feel good with like 150% haste or whatever. 30%ish passive haste is where all non-energy specs feel the best to me (energy specs at 0%), and maybe up to 70-100% with CDs at most. In Remix you very frequently end up 200-250%+ and the game just doesn’t function at that point. Spell queueing, hasted CDs etc all turn into an absolute mess.
The legendary cloak toy:
Fantastic. The only complaint I have is that it doesn’t work in Shadowform, it simply won’t trigger. You can enter Shadowform with a proc active and it’ll stay until it’d naturally fade, but you can’t get a new proc.
Catchup:
Bronze should have a mechanic akin to artifact knowledge, where the later you are in the event, the more bronze everything gives. This also offsets all the silly early grinding shenanigans and acts as a safeguard in that way.
EDIT: forgot this one:
Plan:
What is the expectation for this event? Because I don’t think it’s healthy to tune the rewards around players logging in daily every day of the event in order to get all the cosmetics. At the moment it feels like the options are: have gear already/get carried and do daily raids (you’re done in like 2-3 weeks of playing), do daily dungeons/scenarios/LFR wing (takes you daily play for the entire event) or spam leveling alts to cash in the 40k (now you don’t really get to experience the big power fantasy side)
