ZERO gear updates for open world in Season 3?!

Community General Discussion
1

The mid-season patches of DF Seasons 1 and 2 provided new ways for open world players to grow stronger than they had in the corresponding Season’s base patch.

10.0.5 Storm’s Fury
–Upgradeable trinkets, necklaces, and rings from event vendor

10.0.7 Forbidden Reach
–Upgradeable weapon and armor sets from various activities

10.1.5 Time Rifts
–Upgradeable weapon and armor sets from activities and vendors

10.1.7 Dreamsurges
–Upgradeable weapon and armor sets from activities and vendors

However, the first mid-season patch of Season 3 offers absolutely no gear rewards from the new content and vendor, and the next patch after that seems to be inspired by Season of Discovery or Secrets of Azeroth and will also be implemented in Classic WoW, so it will likely not feature any new gear updates.

10.2.5 Azerothian Archives
(nothing)

10.2.6 Mystery Event
(nothing?)

Is Season 2 going to end up going down as the best DF Season for open world players? We could earn full sets of Veteran and Champion gear reliably from event vendors, as well as a random piece of Champion gear once per week from the Researchers Under Fire event.

Season 3 offers no guaranteed sources of Champion gear anywhere in the open world, despite the fact that we finally have a way to upgrade Crests. Even months later, it’s still just going to be offering 3 completely randomized Veteran pieces from the Emerald Dream, with no vendor to guarantee that you can even complete a set, and with no incentive to farm and upgrade Crests as the months pass on.

Short on dev resources? You don’t even necessarily have to add new content. Add a weekly quest to the Emerald Dream that allows you to earn 1 piece of currency that can be exchanged for Champion gear in your desired slot, similar to how Dreamsurges functioned in Season 2.

We know that open world content is by far the most engaged in content in modern WoW. And we also know that power-related rewards are the biggest motivators for players to engage in content. So it stands to reason that refusing to provide progression for your open world players is a recipe for falling population numbers.

17 Likes
2

that’s where I’m at also.I canceled my sub because of it.I haven’t gotten a real upgrade in a long time now. No point in payin for another year or more to keep getting nothing.
I’ll just dip and wait for the war within to drop. Maybe. That’s a long time away.
Might be playin something else by then who knows.

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3

do you really need more power for world quests? you’re not strong enough yet?

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4

Instead they gave “casual” or solo players follower dungeons.

HMP has a point.

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5

are you suggesting instance gear be only usable in instances?

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6

that would add a cool new dimension to gearing, for sure. specialized gear is missing since like TBC.

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7

Yeah, statistically, the 3 Veteran pieces per week usually end up all being dupes after a couple of months.

A vendor with Champion gear would be nice so that we could not only upgrade our gear, but work on tier set appearances.

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8

Hmm… I went from 430ish ilevel in Season 2 to almost 460 ilevel now.

I found a lot of upgrades in the Emerald Dream. You can also craft up to 463 gear with professions. Plus the item levels from Time Rifts and Dream Surges were both increased in Season 3 (which started with 10.2.0) to start at 424 and increase to 450.

Though, I guess it depends on what your starting point is when looking for upgrades.

2 Likes
9

No one really “needs” power. It’s just a carrot on a stick.

Why do Mythic final bosses and super high keys still drop gear even though you technically can already do the content?

More power means you can solo more rares and elites faster. Some rares in particular are bumped up for Dreamsurges.

11 Likes
10

All my vet pieces are maxed out, the few champ pieces I have only 1 needs 3 upgrades. I bought a hero belt from the AH for 150k not long ago. I got a worse hero belt from the TW raid.
Any crafted pieces I make now are going to be the same or worse than the vet pieces I have.
I’ve hit a wall and there is no way around it.
It’s m+ or nothing at this point. So I’m taking the nothing.
M+ aint as great as everybody say it is.

5 Likes
11

New toons can find plenty of upgrades, but my issue is that Season 3’s new patches haven’t offered any gear updates for open world players that have been here since the beginning.

Why issue 2 mid-season patches like this with open world content but no tangible gear rewards?

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12

You can already get your gear above base level normal raid

That’s pretty good for afk content lol

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13

Wait for 11.0 and delves, that’s all.
I don’t think open world content will give you heroic raid gear soon… if ever.

14

Emerald Dream isn’t that old, though. It’s not like we waited 6 months for 10.2.5.

Let’s be logical here.

… why would it?

15

I’m just going to point out that OP complained at length how bad DF S1/S2 were back when they were current.

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Season 2 offered the potential of full sets of Heroic raid gear for players that did enough world content every week and had saved up enough Catalyst charges for it.

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17

That’s my plan. My sub time runs out in 2 days. No reason to play anymore until then

Dreamsurges did back in S2 they don’t now. The quest say it do, but it dont.

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18

This why Blizz needs to go back to the Legion format of world content rewards. World content players and casuals are the backbone of WoW and not elitist mythic raid loggers.

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19

And maybe the devs decided that was too generous. They knocked crafted gear down a peg in S3 because they said it was too easy to craft your way to 440+ in S2. You don’t think they might have applied the same logic to all PVE content?

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20

Emerald Dream is the newest zone, yes.

But after that it would seem that we are getting two new world content updates that are intentionally lacking in gear rewards, despite the fact that Season 1 and 2 mid-season patches did provide updates to world gear.

Champion gear would allow us to actually use Wyrm Crests once we have fully maxed out our Veteran gear, and we would be able to keep using Catalyst charges to earn full Heroic set appearances.

Conversely, why would a subscription-based game NOT provide power progression and cosmetic rewards through its most popular form of content?

6 Likes