It seems the motto for wow is “If you don’t get it now, just wait.”
Why did we go from expecting players to think “Wow the grind to rank 14 is insane and while the gear is good, I don’t think my priorities are that.” to
“The grind to rank 14 is insane and unfair because I really want that gear but don’t want to change my priorities.”
It happens with leveling,
It happens with gold,
It happens with rep,
It happens with gear.
While catch up mechanics are vital to the game and give new players/alts opportunities to be valuable in team environments, those catch up mechanics shouldn’t include gutting old grinds that previous players decided were worthwhile in the grand scheme of things.
The main problem with the Retail mindset is grinds only matter for cosmetics. Your power level and ability to game are constantly being reduced, changed, and altered artificially to keep player engagement.
Got BiS? Good, you get to replace all those pieces in a few weeks when the next phase comes out.
Figured out your rotation? Good, you get to learn a completely new one when you blow up the current meta just cause.
A timeless game can have long grinds because players will see an investment in those decisions. I love this game but had to change my mindset to a “spend” mentality versus an “investing” one because the game offers very little value to those that make opportunity cost.
TLDR; If you’re ever unsure about a grind, just wait. Blizzard will hand to you eventually.
I mean, SOD is being designed with retail principles, so it’s not exactly unexpected.
The ‘journey’ has been intentionally nuked by Blizzard, in both leveling investment, personal economy, and any particular faction.
I promise you, they are going to nerf the R14 grind at least one more time before we reach that stage in SOD, because people will do the grind to R11 or something and start absolutely wailing.
It’s a retail fun server, nothing more. Still can’t uncrown the king.
The whole argument for streamlining grinds too because “its seasonal”… what exactly is every rendition of this game? There’s always an expected end of phase looming, we’re always in season.
They will slippery slope this into whatever Classic+ abomination they make and say “It was popular in SOD so we’re adding it”
If you made a game based on what is popular, instead of what makes a balanced and goal-filled game, you end up with garbage arcade ‘MMO’ games that require no choices, no investment, and let you easily amass a horde of 50 alts.
Yeah. That’s what I love. I don’t know if you played original vanilla, but having a level 60 alt was quite rare for most people then. You knew people by their character AND class.
Nowadays you know people by their name, but the class is now detached because all of us have 5+ alts easily.
Even in Era, where boost meta has taken over, it’s alt city. Only SOM and original vanilla avoided boost meta. SOM because it was blocked, and vanilla because we didn’t know enough to boost on a large scale.
Those were good days. I was considered crazy by my friends for having three level 60s, but my first level 60 took me a very long time to reach because I was so obsessed with WSG I would never go level.
Sure did, played it around in 2019 too and it still had a similar sentiment.
Working for that one toon was an investment in itself. If you saw someone running around with multiple 60s at the beginning of the game you may have been jealous but at the same time you know instantly how much time and effort that dude put in to get to that state of play.
You may be jealous of the reward, but not the requirements. And I think that’s very healthy in an MMO. It gives you the opportunity to reconsider your position at any time should the grind still exist. Do I spend the time now working on this toon, do I work on an alt, do I farm gold/consumes?
If Blizzard sees a situation in which a player will more than likely have to decide between A and B, they’ll just give them both at a certain point.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the next season they just made a Hero Class that once you hit max level you could change into any class of your desire. Cause why would anyone want to play the game, you know?
the “long time to get to keep for a long time” mode just really isn’t worthwhile.
The idea is that if your friends wish to join you in SoD and haven’t already, they’re not spending Phase 3 trying to get to get to Level 50 to have 2 lockouts of ST left to experience raid progression. That only compounds further with Phase 4. The same thing applies to Rep Grinds.
But why isn’t it worth it? Because players will feel they don’t get to experience the whole game without those things?
You’re always behind and if you take a break at all. Come next phase does Blizzard need to hand out content to you and your friends incase you all want to do something over the summer?
