Once upon a time, you’d see someone wearing something or riding something, and you’d think “man I wish I had that”. It could be a particularly impressive looking piece of gear, a mount, even a title. It was simply a thing you’d hunger for and it would feel incredibly rewarding once you’ve finally earned it.
Over time, as expansions come and go, you start amassing these rewards. Eventually, it doesn’t matter to you so much if Blizz releases some cool new epic mount, because you already have access to a whole lot, and that would just be a drop in the bucket. Same with titles. Same with transmogs. Unless you bring it upon yourself to be a collector, they’re just not going to feel that rewarding.
You then figure you can chase gear, but again, who cares about ilvl? Your uber geared toon will be considered moderately geared next major patch when the bar gets raised. Then it’s just another transmog.
Eventually, you find yourself just playing to see the content, but you have no goals and nothing really compelling you to keep logging on. So you just go play something else that feels both fun AND rewarding.
Still remember seeing this Night Elf Rogue in Shattrath with the Cursed Vision blindfold and both Glaives sitting atop his Nether Drake wearing full tier.
The image is burned into my mind for some reason… Now you can queue up for story mode raids and wear the same type of gear he would’ve had with no real effort required other than patience.
Seeing content used to be its own reward; something to work towards to see more content. The gear was a reward on top of that reward. Now it’s more of a tourist thing and the gear is a little memento to remember it by.
I do wish rewards had more value attached to them but due to the immense amount of ways you can obtain gear at such a quick pace it won’t be the same. Good gear should make you open up someone’s inventory and do some mirin but the only time I do that now is if I see the elite pvp set and that is if I even know what it looks like now.
One way or the other as expansions pass the novelty of getting rare gear or titles will wear off.
I feel like a lot of people aren’t even really attracted by that side of the game anymore, (it just gets you hooked in the beginning,) they just want to enjoy the gameplay itself.
This is more so true of pvp where the actual draw of it is the competition between players. Where the reward is pvp rating, and everyone (in the past at least,) would always end up being equal on gear before the season was too old.
I can see that pve people will usually end up having better gear depending on how good they are at pve, but that’s probably only true if you compare one high end raider to other high end raiders.
I’ve always considered rewards to be a side show anyways, wether I was doing pvp or pve. I actually enjoy playing the game itself, (at least in past expansions,) and I would probably pvp in my favourite seasons of my favourite expansions forever just because the games were fun regardless of titles. Rating sort of makes it more exciting but without the game being balanced and fun there’s nothing.
Like I still remember cata dungeons. They were so insanely fun. None of the gear I got in them mattered. Whatever. It was the gameplay that kept me coming back.
No I didn’t, people like to exaggerate how often this happened. I’ve never cared about other peoples gear. I care about what gear my characters are wearing. Fun is my reward, what others wear or ride has no bearing on that.
Speak for yourself. I still find getting those transmogs, mounts, and cool pets rewarding.
…Some if you guys have a completely different relationship to this game than I do. I don’t really care about what the content is, or what the storyline is or whatever. I want pve healing to be fun and a way to screw around a little on my character. I want those little things that you have to do, those buffs to maintain and cooldowns to watch, to be something that keeps me engaged. I want my pvp to be challenging but balanced. I despise three button rotations and scripted cc-less pvp.
Like I actually enjoy playing the game. (Not really the current version, but yeah,) I could care less which big bad guy is coming in the next expac.
Seeing cool things certainly was a drive for me when I started back in the day. Reason I started raiding was because I saw someone walking around with the deathmantle helmet and I thought that guy was cool as could be.
I always found developers underestimate the value players put on aesthetics whether it be player or environment, even in old games. I remember back when they were tweaking with the transmog system and they talked about the feedback and responses, it was shocking and unexpected to them.
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