TL;DR - The majority of this expansion’s content rewards are pointless and aren’t engaging.
Over the past couple of days, I’ve been trying to pinpoint why I sit in Boralus outside dungeoning/raiding when things such as WQs, Invasions (which are just WQs really), expeditions, and warfronts exist (I know their instanced as well, bare with me for a sec).
Putting the argument of how “engaging” they are aside for the moment, a huge reason why people don’t do the content is that the reward system is terrible.
We do world quests for what? Reputation sure, but what about after that? To earn AP that no one likes grinding or to earn war resources to get bonus rolls and table missions? It’s useful for brand new 120s for the gear, but they’ll quickly outgear the gear rewards. Gaining reputation for the epics has been pointless since day 1 of this expansion because you WELL outgear it by the time you hit exalted, even more so now.
We do expeditions for mounts and AP (again, no one likes grinding)? You can grind dubloons but all they give are toys and a few mounts.
We do 1 warfront solely for the gear reward, then what? What’s the point of doing it again until the next rotation? Maybe for some commendations but just like the dubloons, you just get some toys and mounts, and a ring.
There is no real goal to shoot for while doing world content. Grinding trivial currency for trivial rewards doesn’t drive player engagement. I’m not saying mounts and toys are bad things, but they definitely don’t get me excited to log in every day. There needs to be a major shift in Blizzard’s reward philosophy for this expansion and going forward.
If you’re already at the raiding/M+ level, the world content shouldn’t appeal to you. Otherwise it would need to be far more difficult than it currently is, to offer a reward in similar value to what you get from the content you are still doing. And if it was that difficult to be worthwhile for raiders, then casuals and/or lower geared players wouldn’t have a chance.
Plus we all know the argument from players who do not want the outside world content to scale to their gear.
WQ’s and emissaries are a good way to gear up new 120’s, when they offer gear rewards. I get new 120’s from iLevel 280 to around 350 or so with nothing but WQ’s and emissaries, and the occasional warfront quest.
Once your iLevel is above 370 or so, then WQ’s do not offer worthwhile gear rewards.
Everything in this game has a “break point” where what that content offers is no longer useful to you. So you see no further usefulness for that content. But you are not the only one playing this game. There will always be someone who has use for it.
World content should almost always appeal to you. What do you do with your sub time outside of your scheduled raid days? That point is even more important knowing most players are casual.
Not everyone has to log in every day to make their $15 monthly tithe justified. At some point you reach a plateau of content, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If content doesn’t exist for players to occupy their time – that’s a problem. If players decide not to occupy their time with existing content – that’s a choice.
Hang out in Boralus and shout “MAGA” in trade chat. It really stirs the hornets nest. Oh, you’re talking about away from the cities… I don’t know. Ask me when flying is implemented.
At some point a character should progress to the point it no longer needs endless grinding outside of raids. This was a much requested change to world content from Legion. So, working as intended, working as specifically requested by the community.
Yes, there always will be a point where you plateau, but it takes barely any time to reach this plateau in the current game. The philosophy of an MMO should always be to be able to occupy as much as your time as possible while still being engaging and purposeful. Blizzard isn’t fulfilling that, and that is why everyone is leaving or left.
World Content is repeating what are largely leveling quests with no progressive story elements ad nauseam for months on end for a limited variety of reward items several of which rapidly lose any reward value.
Azerite is incredibly boring as it’s only use is unlocking extremely boring passives or unlocking the same passives over and over on higher item level gear.
Reputation has fixed stopping points depending on what your end goals are: Revered for Pathfinder, Exalted for cosmetic items, Paragon after Exalted if you consider that worthwhile.
War Resources build up faster than you can spend them due to a limited number of missions where the vast majority reward Azerite and Reputation
Gold is extremely gated via World Content to push Token sales
That just leaves gear, which rapidly hits item level benchmarks and is overwhelmingly repeats and/or the same item slot with a different name and slightly different cosmetic color.
I completely agree. If the rewards included getting something like justice/valor points, then I could see some point in doing the content. I can use the currency I got to work towards better gear and possibly mounts/toys if they wanted to implement that too. Doing content that rewards currency similar to justice and valor points would never be a waste of time as you’re always working to character improvement.
No they aren’t, the expansions content is fun and I find them to be as engaging as the world content of the past.
No the shift needs to come from players like you. Those who feel that if they don’t find it fun it shouldn’t exist. You don’t represent the playerbase. Just because you don’t have fun doing outdoor content (don’t do it then?), doesn’t mean others don’t find it fun. Blizzard doesn’t need to conform to your tastes.
But would a valor/justice vendor be the end in a world with war-/titanforging and random upgrades (+ secondary stats or +socket) ? The point of a vendor is seeing exactly what you want and buying it … so vendor gear would have to be flagged to not WF/TF or upgrade at all. And therefore it would ultimately be inferior to other sources of gear.