If you go back far enough, what actually killed retail was lack of endgame content and the flipflopping of flying in WoD. From the peak at Wrath, there was a steady decline through Cata and MoP, but WoD pretty much halved the subs before Blizzard stopped reporting the sub numbers.
If Classic is to have any effect at “saving” retail, then retail needs to be different and better polished than Classic. I mean why would anyone want to play both games when they’re the same? This way, people who prefers the Classic style can play Classic while people who prefers retail’s style plays retail while many other play both. Because they would be different experiences.
I already wore junk, as a mismatched rodeo clown in Vanilla. I already did that until my guild had MC on weekend scrub farms, so I got the prophesy set on my priest by default.
Ilevel is the most important, for the content I do. So yeah, it is easier to get “good gear” in retail (for me, for what I do.)
I’m AOTC and raid mythic, and there’s a very, very good chance I play less than you do in a typical week – as do most of the people I play with. About half the raiders I know anymore raidlog.
Not everyone can afford to block out a couple chunks of time and reliably get there, sure. But unless you’re one of those crazy WF guilds, the actual time spent is really not that much. Doubly so for this xpac, and quadruply for 8.2 in particular, since the itemization is so hosed there aren’t really a lot of places to get upgrades that aren’t already on a weekly lockout or gated by 20 minutes or less of pearl farming.
I would prefer a middleground between current WoW and classic in terms of gearing. Don’t want to have to reclear everything just to gear an alt, but I also don’t like how every piece from every dungeon is a purple, despite the ease of clearing. If Normal Raid ilevel was where purples started, I’d be happy.
Not the case for players who do not make gear acquisition their drive to play the game.
For people like me its not the gear, but how we use it. I get a few upgrade and go back to solo legion raids for example. Faster run times on the bosses I know I can beat one goal. To shave time off.
then its go see a boss who gives me issues and see if I can drop their butt finally. WHy I have a hunter collecting up benthic when not leveling the space goat paladin. I am down to just 3 bosses to finish night hold solo. One day it will all be done.
yeah you can kill the nazjatar world boss and have a top quality piece right away, back in BC people woudnt invite you to Doomwalker unless you were good.
No. It’s not just that. It’s the Great Pruning, Talent Trees being completely neutered, flying being locked because the developers don’t like it, the HoA system which is a tedious grind and supposed to replace four system when it lacks the ability to cover even half of those systems, and a laundry list of other reasons.
These are the people who keep posting that even though they used to say they did hard content for the camaraderie and the challenge, actually it was really for bis gear. And now that bis gear is not a 100% guarantee (although it really never was) they say there is no reason to play the game.
Currently 439 here, I highly doubt someone with a few hours of playing will catch up to me.
HOWEVER, I do think it’s to easy to get gear to get into content you’re not ready for skill-wise, which is why from +4s to +7s puggin there is hell because some people don’t know what an interrupt is.
Wait what good gear are we talking about? Most of the stuff that you get is junk. It has wrong stats, good luck finding any thing beyond the five same traits on azerite gear and top it off people yell at you if you dare get lucky. I had people spit on me because i had one piece of titan forge.
Here what most stats look like. 420 gear
crit 20
haste 17%
mastery 40 %
versatility 10-19%
If that good stats then we all in trouble. Added insult most of that do to enchants. Imagine without.
My main is a demo lock at 425, never stepped in a raid except LFR, and that’s what my stats look like, except that my versatility is in the single digits and haste is pushing 19%. I think I’m at the soft cap now, and it’ll take me months to grind up to 430.
I don’t really care about BiS, I just want to solo elites and rares - which I could do now with a couple of exceptions in Najzatar.
And if I ever wanted to raid, I would think at my ilevel, I would probably do ok in heroic. And I think that’s the point - not to blindly funnel people into raids, but still be able to raid if you want. It’s a far cry from vanilla and BC, where if you landed in the middle of the expansion, you had a very difficult time getting into raids.
Well retail’s not been killed but I see your point. I do think it’s a little sad that no one really knows the name of specific gear off the top of their head. They’re all just blurry texts with ilvl#s.
Back in vanilla, people knew the names of Ashkandi, Sulfuras, Drake Talon Cleaver, Obsidian Edged Blade, Hand of Justice, etc etc. You could say them and people would know; or people would say “aw, I wish I could have __________”
Now, we just say “my weapon is 395. I need at least a 415” with no real iconic value to those weapons or other items. Mounts are maybe like the only items now that people know by name, and even then, only some of the truly iconic ones like Ashes of Al’Ar or Invincible.
Part of this is definitely the many avenues to get gear, but also I think the current content-types. Items have the same exact name regardless of ilvl or where it was obtained. And, apart from tint changes, they look the same too (barring the mythic gear sets which lately have been quite ugly and unremarkable imo)
