Yeah I was the same was looking at guides left and right because I didn’t know exactly what I needed
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I used to play DotA a lot.
In a 4 hour session I would probably get 5-8 games in and most them (at the time) were decided by leavers and throwers (mid or quit). In a typical queue session I’d get maybe 1 good, close game a night. Then I realized that playing 4 hours to get 30-40 minutes of good, enjoyable gameplay just wasn’t worth it and I quit.
WoW suffers from the same problem. No one LOGS IN to farm renown or gold to buy legendaries or to do Torghast or grind Anima or Conduit upgrades. People LOG IN to PvP/Raid/M+. That’s it. Three reasons that people walk over to their computer and log into the game.
Any player power system that is not a part of those 3 things is a chore and a reason NOT to play the game. When I say “a part of those 3 things” I mean if the player power system isn’t something I can participate in by exclusively doing 1 or all of those 3 things, it should not be in the game.
In previous expansions, like MoP and WoD, these ancillary systems were more palatable than they are now because the specs themselves were FAR more enjoyable to play and those systems took up a smaller fraction of my playtime than they do now. Doing dailies all day back in MoP wasn’t as bad for me because I really enjoyed the specs I played to do them like Feral/Demo/Shadow but doing dailies in 2021 is nothing but a chore because the specs themselves are far more shallow, unfun and boring.
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The thing with WoW is that most people don’t even really get to play much. It’s a bunch of chores to sit in LFG then have the group blow up after a loss, then another chunk of time in the clunky finder.
Whereas League I punch a button, get into a game within 2 minutes. Is it nesscearily going to be a good, even match? No, but it’s still letting me in.
The other neat thing about these periods was that you could basically just level through the new zones, then hop into battlegrounds and then eventually rbgs/arena. Minimal learning about systems, chores, etc.
Obviously not everybody loved the honor/conq grind, and plenty of people botted during those eras because it was widely available, but still. The path of progression was at least very clear.
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pretty much this
idk how to say it in words so numbers will do, but basically lets say players are happy with 100 work but blizzard starts with demanding 200 work and then lowers it to 150 work which suddenly feels like 100 work even though its still more work
i think blizzard design mentality is very distasteful and very ingrained in their culture by now
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Even discounting legendary powers/torg grind/conduits/renown grind/gold grind, gearing a fresh character through pvp is awful. Having 20k health and getting globaled by anyone and everyone every bg for a week until you have a full set of honor gear fully leveled is dogsh*t. I main Alliance and made this character Horde on a server with no gold. Have done only pvp to gear. There was nothing fun in the gearing process.
Also arena on a new character is miserable. My friend (also on a new character) did some 2’s. We were put at 1900 mmr facing fully geared players while we both had like 38k health. We won some but that was only if one of us wasn’t one shot in the opener. I haven’t done much pvp this expansion but mmr this time around seems disgusting. We hit 1300 rating with our mmr being 1800+ the entire time. Neither of us are really motivated to keep going when we only face players with similar gear like 1/15 games. We aren’t good or very experienced at pvp this expansion. Why isn’t mmr capped within like, 100 points of your actual rating? My impression from gearing a fresh character through pvp is that it’s not worth it to keep going.
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If you keep practicing you can beat these teams. Gear does help, sure, but with the right skills you can get to 1800 no problem. Avoiding the one shots just involves you using your kit to not get one shot.
For example: When a WW monk rushes in, leg sweeps you, pops his clones, you should probably trinket, root everything, disengage away and kite the monk until it is time for your go.
I will concede that shadowlands PvP is the most unbalanced and over tuned season I have ever played, but also funnily enough the highest rated I’ve ever gotten, but also the most I’ve played in rated PvP probably ever. It takes a minute to learn, but once you do the games become longer and more satisfying.
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I figure that wow plain doesn’t try to appeal to new players. The ~2 million people that still play are majority veteran players that will go through whatever hoops set before them. Make sure that there is plenty to keep these wow addicts busy, whether it’s fun or not.
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This
#10 characters
But, but, what about increasing Playtime Metrics?
~ Ion
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This needs to be shared everywhere.
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The thing is, if we didn’t have to spend so much time gearing and grinding systems, we could do something called “Actually play the game”. 
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Member when they had pve trinkets disabled in pvp and stat templates…well now they have the wow token so they’ll never make the game accessible to people who just want to log in and compete
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I blame Rextroy for making a mockery of the scaling system. The man disrespected it so bad that they just straight up deleted it.
He just kept finding ways to break it over and over
The sad thing about videos like this, is these streamers (completely well-intentioned) don’t realize that the developers and people they’re reaching out to, are LONG gone. Ghostcrawler and whoever was before him, those people are gone.
Wow was taken over by judeo-corporatism years ago. The era of developer feedback and response ended years ago. Pvp vendors are a perfect example of how it’s going to be moving forward.
They listened to the players and brought back vendors, but with a twist: more time gating. You used to go from questing greens, to bg blues and then to arena purples. It still goes that way, but with much less impact. You don’t feel the difference when you upgrade you gear by 4 item levels (or whatever it is).
They’ll listen, but there will always be a twist of how they can stretch the content out
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Please think of the shareholders. This isn’t about the gamers.
OP, I had to re-post this in the General Forums to get your post more coverage. Because it’s a real problem, and I legit feel so bad for the Pally…
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yep. barrier to entry is MASSIVE right now if you didn’t do all this stuff from the start. sucks. lost alot of friends playing over this
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Ven really nails it in that vid. There’s no way most people just starting or coming back to the game have any real chance of competing without dozens of hours of work.
Most folks just won’t bother.
Poor game development ideas and the requirements of all these convoluted borrowed power systems are absolute trash for the long-term health of the game.
It discourages new players and stops old players from returning.
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What baffles me, and I’m sure everyone else, is how they don’t understand, (Or don’t care) that if the game is more accessible for new/returning players, and obviously veterans or whoever. People will be willing to waste their time playing because it’s fun.
No chores = more time playing the game on MULTIPLE characters.
More characters = more time spent in game leveling and in turn, more end game content being cleared / engaged with.
More time spent in game = “happy shareholders” and corporate clowns.
Idk maybe I’m too low IQ to understand their massive brain reasoning for alienating large portions of the community in droves, for the sake of metrics. Instead of having a fun game that isn’t too grindy that will keep people playing because it’s enjoyable at all levels and all content
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I’ve asked the same question and what I think is, they realize people who have alts aren’t as “invested” as a player with one character. A one-toon player is most likely, more likely to spend money on their character to stay ahead in the rat race.
So they make the game a completely un-alt friendly rat race in order to bottleneck everyone down to playing one toon.
Every expansion players complain more and louder about it, yet every expansion the time-gate and rat race gets worse.