Is this expansion really that grindy?

[Felpacino]

Yesterday, there was a thread here called: "Is Blizzard schizofrenic?" Besides his mindless points, he mentioned artifact power and honor points being grindy. Just like WoD, leveling is great, zones are great, but when you hit 110, the grinding starts? In WoD, we had Ashran for the PvP grind. Garrison for PvE grind. So, did they give us grinding again in different forms?

I haven't bought Legion yet, so enlighten me please, because I want to buy it.

[masterhorus8]

It's an MMO, there's always grinding of some sort.

[Felpacino]

It's an MMO, there's always grinding of some sort.

Is it repetitive though?

[masterhorus8]

Aside from repetitive being part of what a grind is, this is probably the least repetitive content for PvE grinding that the game has ever had, via World Quests. Instead of it being the same set of dailies every single day, there are TONS of them that are cycled through throughout the day. I cannot speak for PvP as I don't do any of it.

[Deleted]

I'm only level 104 but I love the expansion so far, I don't think there will be too much of grinding later in the expansion.

[Typhoria]

Is it repetitive though?

Its basically quests, dungeons, pvp, and world events.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Doesn't feel grindy to me. Feels like there's more fun stuff to do than I can get to in the time I have available for play, and all of it rewards artifact power so no matter what I'm doing to have fun it all works out.

[Deleted]

Is it repetitive though?

its grinding behind grinding on top of grinding

[Deleted]

Depends.

At high level/Top raiding level the grind is korean tier, because there is no cap on the AP, which can make people feel like they need to run billions of dungeons to stay competitive.

For the average casual i think the game is fine, they will take it at their own pace.

[Felpacino]

Aside from repetitive being part of what a grind is, this is probably the least repetitive content for PvE grinding that the game has ever had, via World Quests. Instead of it being the same set of dailies every single day, there are TONS of them that are cycled through throughout the day. I cannot speak for PvP as I don't do any of it.

I mostly do PvP and I just saw this thread: http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20748736252

"Early on we obtain Artifact Power via questing, world quests, dungeons, etc.

However, it will become viable in PvP if you start researching Artifact Knowledge in your Class Hall.

Artifact Knowledge has 25 levels, taking about 5 days to research per level."
That has to be false, otherwise it will take us for 4 months to be fully ready for PvP. Also, we'll need to grind our Artifact powers too. That doesn't seem to be appealing tbh.

This looks to be the death of the alts in this expansion, but I can't be so sure either.

- - - Updated - - -

its grinding behind grinding on top of grinding

Grinding I played in Silkroad was grinding from every hole.

[Marston]

This looks to be the death of the alts in this expansion, but I can't be so sure either.

Not sure, maybe in the beginning, but I doubt later on. You quoted yourself the artifact research. Just imagine that after a few weeks your main has Research level 5 and an alt doesn't need 5 days per research but only 1-3 for the first 5 levels. So you get artifact power quicker the longer the expansion goes on.

[nekobaka]

I was initially worried a bit along with my limited experience with beta. Overall on the PVE side I would say the expansion is not that grindy. I still do not care for grinding the artifact levels as it is not compelling character progression aspect for me along with not fun when playing multiple specs. I no longer do PVP while some of the commentary I can see the issues players do raise concern over poor RNG having a large negative influence on players enjoyment.

[MoanaLisa]

Is it repetitive though?

Is it repetitive like Mists was repetitive? No, probably not although I haven't done anything with world quests yet as I haven't finished leveling. According to them they've got something like 1000 quests in the world quest system (some of them repeats of when you were leveling) so that that sort of repetition is less of a problem. You might go a very long while before seeing a lot of repeats with world quests.

Others in the thread though are correct: It's an MMO and there's rarely a one-and-done slant to things. If you enjoy playing the game for its own sake it shouldn't be a problem. If you are all about getting everything done as quickly as possible then maybe not.

For my money the entire attitude expressed as "I can't possibly do anything until everything is completely maxed out" is a problem. Artifact leveling starts off rather quickly and slows down the further you get into it.

[Gracin]

I was the first to 110 in my guild, by about 8 hours so I was questing through dailies already while they were still leveling. Here is the first thing I said to them about dailies, and honestly even after a few days I still hold to it.

"I'll admit, you will eventually be bored and tired of doing dailies, but that will come long before you will be bored of doing the SAME dailies."

Basically, the way the system is set up now you always have a nice variety of dailies to do. There will eventually come a point where yes, you have done a specific daily 15 times already, but with the randomness of it that 15th will likely be several months down the road. Compared to the old way of dailies, where the 15th time was the 15th day. None of them are overly challenging or time consuming, and their rewards can be fairly basic(gold) to quite important(AP).


The only issue I can see with the new random daily questing, is with reputation. I think it hurts the viability of reputation gear/items with how limited you are to gaining reputation. I'm not asking to rush by reputation content, I'm asking for a little more consistent day to day reputation so those items have some use before they are swept away by raid loot.

[Yassy]

Yesterday, there was a thread here called: "Is Blizzard schizofrenic?" Besides his mindless points, he mentioned artifact power and honor points being grindy. Just like WoD, leveling is great, zones are great, but when you hit 110, the grinding starts? In WoD, we had Ashran for the PvP grind. Garrison for PvE grind. So, did they give us grinding again in different forms?

I haven't bought Legion yet, so enlighten me please, because I want to buy it.

There is a significant difference in Legion in terms of grinding. Traditionally, if you're grinding rep your reward is just rep. If you're grinding for experience, your reward is primarily experience. If you're grinding gear, you're reward is just gear. If you're grinding for gold, your reward is gold, etc.

Legion did something fantastic whether it was intentional or not. If I'm grinding Suramar rep, I can target additional rewards as well. So I do a world quest which rewards a piece of gear I need, additional artifact power, profession rewards, etc, in addition to getting Suramar rep. So it adds a lot of variety to what I'm doing due to so many player objectives can being obtainable in multiple ways. A lot of this is a product of world objectives and artifact power which is basically a max level experience bar. Both were really good ideas.

Despite the fact that player progress feels slower than in previous expansions, I havnt felt burnt out yet. Since whenever a type of content gets repetitive I can jump to another kind of content to spice up what I'm doing.

I've said for a while that WoW and MMO's in general needed to get rid of linear streamlined character progression and move towards something like a web progression model.

[Felpacino]

Not sure, maybe in the beginning, but I doubt later on. You quoted yourself the artifact research. Just imagine that after a few weeks your main has Research level 5 and an alt doesn't need 5 days per research but only 1-3 for the first 5 levels. So you get artifact power quicker the longer the expansion goes on.

This might work for PvEing, but I doubt that it'll work for PvP. The expansion will be over when you'd finish 5 classes' artifacts and honor ranks.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

The grind goes quick. I'm already at a point where my main is set until next reset.

[Thelxi]

Yes it is extremely grindy at 110, far grindier than WoD and even MoP. However you can still keep up casually, as Blizzard values your subscription more than your actual time investment. For example artifact power gains increase hugely the older your character is. And of course you can just wait for the next patch and take advantage of all the shortcuts that will inevitably be added eventually.

[Felpacino]

You choose your world quests which are all over the world with different objectives every time. No daily time limits (world quests end in 2-3 days) there are always some new popping up but once you have 4 per faction theres a CD (some will pop in 3 days others in 1 but you can still do individual quests for no extra box)

Its grindy but not senseless like "do 20 quests here 20 there 20 next zone etc" like was in MoP. You can skip all and just focus AP quests. Then come back later finish the 4th and get extra box.

Your pace is mostly dictated by you. More rigid is the class quest and Artifact Knowledge (very long CD) which should be done asap.

So:

World quests (the new dailies) very lenient and optional

Class order Hall quest and AK: Asap

Heroics: Daily CD.

Much less grindy than MoP

Well, a daily quests is a normal quest if you do them only once, but would that suffice?

[mistahwilshire]

No. It isn't. Alot of stuff people are grinding right now is pointless, as if you just played 1-2 hours a day and did your world quests you'd end up in basically the same place by the time raids open. A lot of you will find that this 2nd and 3rd week before the raid opens you don't have shit to do.