I thought the same thing.
When they first announced how alt-friendly SL was going to be; I figured essences would be account-wide in 8.3 for sure.
Huge surprise they’re not going that route. #sadtimes
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I fixed the OP. It’s called misphrasing. And everything I said has been confirmed in interviews. MMO-Champ’s Mega Post they posted today has all of it as well if you’re too lazy to google.
Oh boy, someone hasn’t been paying attention to Shadowlands end game systems.
I’ve lost track of how many “The Most Alt-Unfriendly Thing Ever” award recipients we’ve had over the years.
I am glad they addressed it and I support their stance. Essences are character progression and shouldn’t be account wide. They mentioned that they are looking at reducing the requirements in the future, so that will be some help.
Essences are about the only thing left to grind out in BFA. AP is a joke these days, gear has been a joke the entire expansion.
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I wish they realized their mistakes after all the negative feedback during the numerous beta and ptr stages.
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I think they realize putting your face in a fire is more fun than playing BfA. Shadowlands will not feel familiar to BfA.
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BFA was one of the most alt friendly expansions we’ve had sorry.
And when Shadowlands hits, you bet your left thumb people are going to call it “alt unfriendly”.
Yeah I haven’t been really negative about BFA, but when I heard the features in Shadowlands and how alt friendly is looks to be… I realized hitting 120 is all I need to do on my alts. Maybe get some mogs, but that’s it. I’ve never experienced an expansion announcement motivate me to do less in a game I enjoy playing lol.
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but we have to live with it until it comes out yet they have a major patch where they could implement it and since their alt friendly tone in shadowlands reflects their current ideologies why would they not add this in?
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Oh boy, someone needs to stop stalking me on the forums just to make snide remarks cause that’s harassment and I’m not against reporting it via ticket/CS forums.
Yes, I have and it is a very alt friendly system. I even explained why in the OP based on the interviews. They will put alts in a “Catch Up Mode” to help them catch up, letting us gain our covenant talent points through world quests (which GASP we can start doing at 50 instead of 60) and other things, rather than the grinding like we had to on our mains.
Soulbind system? GASP You can gain anima as you level from 50-60 on your alts. Thus, you catch up on your alts. It’s almost as if they literally explained that as well, and it’s also in the OP.
If you’re referring to the Legendary System, they haven’t went into detail on that system yet at all in general, just vague details. So of course we don’t know what they plan to do for alts with that. But considering they have made specific changes to every other endgame system specifically for alts, I have zero doubts there will be some sort of system in place to help new players and alts catch up.
It’s almost as if YOU haven’t paid attention to any of the interviews or somehow think the Legendary System is the ONLY endgame system that matters, and think the fact we have no information about alt catchup for it despite the fact we have barely ANY information on it means there won’t be alt catchup for it.
So stop. The topic exists for a reason. Shadowlands, so far, unless they change what they’ve announced will be the most alt-friendly thing they’ve ever put out.
Yet they will not budge on Essences for some reason.
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lol, me replying to a thread doesn’t mean I am harassing you. I probably make 100 or so posts a day and if a couple are replying to you well guess what it doesn’t make you special.
Did you miss one of the main features of Shadowlands is that tower than you will have to do on each and every one of your alts ?
How is this different than artifact power, which you also gain as you level your alts ?
More than likely because blizzard learned most the people playing retail just reroll millions of Alts for some weird reason
That’s why I think shadowlands will be good and much better than bfa
He’s not stalking, he’s just the one person who apparently only does essence unlocks as his form of content. He seems to be worried that without essences he’ll have nothing to do anymore (what was he doing before 8.2? who knows 
) so he’s in every thread about it trying to poop on people when they suggest paring it back.
I don’t like account wide stuff and so a poster who most often makes threads wanting account wide stuff is going to see me in them.
It is really premature to say an expansion is going to be alt friendly when we know so little about it.
I’ll be honest - I find most of your posts on the subject to be confusing because it seems like you argue things people aren’t really saying. That said, I still don’t think you’re wrong for enjoying the game a certain way and I really do try to see where you’re coming from.
Edit: here’s a little food for thought. What you said about Ion’s comment on flying, that if Blizzard keeps adding annoyances then eventually people will hit their limits and do something else… That’s how other people feel about essences.
I don’t take what people say at face value so for some people that might be confusing.
Shadowlands really feels like it will be WoD2. WoD was made in reaction to a lot of raiders complaints and as a result left very little content to do other than raid.
Shadowlands again is another expansion made in reaction to a lot of raiders complaints and so far the content again appears to be aimed at that one group yet again.
No ones needs to keep making alts until they overwhelm themselves - that annoyance is mostly player created. I have 15 120s and if I tried to work on getting essences for them all at the same time I would feel overwhelmed. So I break that down and work on a few characters at a time and the amount of time I have to devote to that daily becomes insignificant.
Man, if that’s what they’re going for then they’ll be in for a rude awakening once raiders figure out that they can’t off-spec because their covenant throughput abilities are only min/maxed for a single spec.
He’s literally acting like the things I pointed out in this thread weren’t directly stated by Blizzard in the interviews.
This is why he annoys me. “THEY HAVEN’T HAPPENED YET SO WHY ARE YOU ACTING LIKE THEY’RE GOING TO HAPPEN!?” is pretty much his attitude.
Can they change? Yes. Will they likely change? No.
At this point, it’s pretty obvious there’s 2 teams developing expansions. These statements are based at the END of the expansion, not the start.
Cataclysm? Alt Unfriendly. I tried so damn hard to play multiple toons in Cata, but it was a nightmare. The Molten Front DAILIES alone were gated by rep, dailies, etc. just as one example. No changes were made to make things easier on alts when I state Alt-Unfriendly.
Pandaria? Alt Friendly. It started extremely alt-unfriendly with rep, but after a 4,000,000 Sub Loss, they literally announced they were making changes to make rep easier for alts, and other alt changes. This resulted in the account-wide +100% rep token, the ability to champion a dungeon once a day for rep, etc. Isle of Thunder was not gated by Rep. Timeless Isle was not gated by Rep. They even included BoA Armor Tokens for you to send to alts to gear them up.
WoD? Very Alt Unfriendly. Garrisons were character specific. Nothing to help you get resources, decreased price for buildings, etc. on your alts. Period. The only account-wide thing in this expansion were the achievements for the rank 3 BLUEPRINTS (that still cost an arm and a leg to buy per toon), and that was because some of them were outright ridiculous that could take 5-6 months to finish. Though the Pandaria questline didn’t either, the Legendary Questline in this expansion was even worse for alts, as barely anyone ran LFR in WoD due to the removal of Tier Gear, Weapon/Armor recolors, and trinkets. So queue times were hours long.
Legion? Alt Friendly. It started extremely alt unfriendly (And even off-spec unfriendly) However, when artifact knowledge kicked in to extremely high amounts, alts became extremely easy to play and it was very fun. The addition of Legion Invasions also made alts extremely fun. Class Hall mount quests made alts even more fun to play and encouraged and rewarded people for playing more than one class. They made the Argus Crucible unlock account-wide when you unlocked it on one toon as well.
BFA? Unless something changes before 8.3, Alt Unfriendly. So far, it’s been rather alt friendly. However, Essences change this MASSIVELY. To the point, as I’ve said, it will be the most alt unfriendly the game has ever been. Essences are a vital part of many classes now, and the game is being balanced around them. I was denied many times as I said because my healer only had Crucible. Healers are extremely nerfed without the Mechagon Rank 3 Essence right now, just as an example, yet they expect us to grind to Exalted (revered in 8.3) on every healer character we have? (and they can say revered all they want, but the amount of oscillators/spare parts we need will still make us reach exalted) No. That is ridiculous.
Shadowlands? SO FAR, it looks Alt Friendly. Unless they backtrack on what they said at BlizzCon, it looks like it’s going to be the most Alt Friendly the game has been.
As you can see, there is a pattern. The game alternates between Alt Friendly and Unfriendly.
Thus, it is pretty easy to infer there are two teams, with different design philosophies. One that alts should be encouraged, and one where they shouldn’t.
The fact that they announced so many alt friendly things in Shadowlands, yet they won’t budge on Essences reinforces this idea. The Cata/WoD/BFA team is alt-unfriendly, and is most likely the team helmed by Ion, who literally last BlizzCon outright told us that he believes players should only play one character, (and is clearly trying to enforce that on us in BFA) and Shadowlands is being made by the friendly team, who is clearly not being led by Ion.