Is this expansion really that grindy?

[KrazyK923]

There's a difference between a grind and a gate.

A grind is fine if its done well. Gear grinds are fine, they're a base function of the end game.

The problems lie when the game forcefully stops you from progressing somewhere and makes you just wait to do it later. Suramar's entire story is this.

I'd say a grind that is done kind of poorly is the upgrade from Normal to Heroic dungeons. Its just the exact same thing slightly harder. This is why I'm hoping mythic+ actually makes the hard dungeons interesting. Heroics should have added a mechanic or more to every boss fight, like they used to do. That on top of the even further increased difficulty and mechanics that Mythic+ offers makes Dungeons actually feel like an alternative to raiding, right now it definitely does not.

[MyndZero]

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.

A few of mine I've had like 3-4 days running now. I don't think the variety is as much as blizzard said it would be to be honest.

[artam]

Personally, can't wait for this period to go away and to finish Mythic raiding progression, so I can return to my laid back routine. I never played this game to spam quests and dungeons. I like raiding and big group, very difficult content. I like wiping 200 times and finding new strategies, learning each and every detail of that encounter. Farming repetitive stuff was never my thing, unless it's for DPS/speedkill ranking or something like that.

Realize that you are part of the 5% to 7% of the playerbase, and you just got WoD, that aimed at that king of player, and was a total failure.

People can hate, casuals, LFR, weekend players, pet farmers, altoholics, etc but at the end of the day, they pay the game bills.

[Deleted]

Hahahaha this is FAR from grindy ... sure, when you get to 110 it seems like there's so much shit you gotta do, but there's a limit and you don't have to do it all. There is so much things to do, because people want different ways to progress your character, not because you have to do all of it. Oh and if you say you need to max everything in first few days because you're the 1% Mythic raider, well, then sorry to say, but you're not the majority. You don't need that last few more % dmg on one skill to be able to clear a normal or heroic raid.

[Gracin]

A few of mine I've had like 3-4 days running now. I don't think the variety is as much as blizzard said it would be to be honest.

Oh I've had repeats also, my question to you is how often are you playing during the day? I don't mean total hours played, but are you getting online every few hours?

[Crruor]

Let's say you did all the zone quests. Did every dailies once, since doing a daily once doesn't mean that it's daily to you. Did all the class hall quests. Did all the heroics. Did your artifact quests. What's left? Chasing rares, finding treasures, farming artifact power and farming honor points. So, the real content runs out quickly. By quick, I don't mean quick. By quick, I mean that it takes 1-3 weeks to do those. Hell, some people even finished them all under 7 days, but forget them.

In 15 days, the PvP season starts. People will want to get to lvl 50 as fast as they can. Meanwhile, they need their artifact talents too. Extra grinding for the PvPers.

The people who'll top the charts will be the ones who grinded. So, after you enjoyed the leveling, you have to rush about getting artifact power. Plus honor points if you're a PvPer. Even WoD wasn't like this. Wait, I immediately regretted that. Both are grindy in their own way imo.

Even if you don't rush, you have to be playing constantly. That playing will only serve to your main. You'll have time to deal with your alts after months.

Firstly, fuck alts. If you are a pvper you should play your class, not whatever is fotm, everyone having everything super easily is bad for the game.

Secondly, the honour farm is way more fun then it is in all other seasons before that, you actually gain abilities/traits while leveling, this makes it so much more rewarding, especially since the first talent row goes super fast (you gain your first 6 talents in the same time you had to spend to grind a mainpiece of gear in wod i think). And you dont really need to get to the max level if you dont need the talent there, for example WW monks only need 31 (or 28 if you arent an orc).

And the artifact, you arent forced to power level it at all, the difference is overall not that big if they are 2 or 3 traits ahead of you, each trait usually gives 5% of extra damage to one ability. And due to how it increases they really wont be many trait ahead of you unless they seriously no life it, which at the start of the season isnt that big a deal, by the time the ladder actually gets important youll be pretty much equal to them, despite having /played 100s of hours less.


Every season before that was as or more grindy in terms of pvp. Also, i really dont see it as a bad thing that you are supposed to play the game instead of going afk after having farmed honour gear after dinging till the season starts.


The only thing i dont like is how a lot of important traits are locked by the artifact, 30% of max life healing every 25 seconds for example is huge for ww monks and that will take some time to unlock if you went the ST damage route.


But the game feels amazing at the moment, id very much reccomend to buy it. Even if it turns to shit like wod after 1 month, that one month is well worth the money.

[Sunnydee]

Its not really that its grindy, More "Hey gonna take a while lvling up via questing, then when you hit 110 you need to do more quests, to unlock mandatory quests.

Basically> QUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESTS!!!

[Relapses]

This is definitely the most grindy the game has been since TBC. I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing yet, I generally have a lot of fun even when I'm grinding so I'm tempted to say it's better for the overall health of the game. I can, however, see myself getting burnt out before the expansion is over. Time will tell.

[Dekkers]

World of Questcraft

[mrpopos10]

My feeling is that this xpack is unwelcome to the 75%'ers - meaning not the super duper hardcore, but the people that play just a lot. The hardcore will blow through this stuff like usual, but the others who are used to catching up at a decent pace will be frustrated perhaps.


Me personally, as a necessary casual, I like it a lot. There's so much to do and I have so little time to do it, that I Just focus on a few smaller goals and dont even attempt to do everything. Yesterday I played for 5 hours (longest stretch ive played since legion) went from 108.5 to 110. Finished up my reputation (Sarumar) to get the world quests, did 2 of the world quest sets (2 out of 3) then I spent the rest of the night getting my Underlight Angler! It was really fun and I look forward to getting on tomorrow.


Im loving this expansion.

[druenos]

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.

Artifact research only applies to that one character, each alt has to do it's own artifact research and you can only do that once you are at 110 and have done all the pillars so yeah, this expansion i think they want to kill alts, they already said they dont like people having alts

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Grinds are good tbh. It keeps things flowing thoughout an expansion and gives you something to look forward too. Each grind has stages and steps in it that give you small rewards at milestones with the bigger prizes at the end. Of course grinds can be taken to far and obviously some people cannot control themselves and will go insane endlessly grinding themselves into a hole. Mostly because they are attempting to play with a world first / 18 hour a day streamer mentality when they aren't in the world first race / an 18 hour a day steamer. That is more a problem with self control which really isn't the games fault. Eventually these people will either burn out and quit or realize it isn't that important to be on the bleeding edge of all these grinds. What matters is putting in a little work each time you log in and finding a place that is confortable with you at that pace. This pace is different for everyone and will likely change thoughout the expansion. Find your place and people within that place that are playing with your same mentality. These places will exsist.

[satimy]

Pretty much. My sub already runs out in two weeks and I'm just done.

Suramar is a terrible zone filled to the absolute brim with all of the awful time sink styles from WoD shoved into every corner.

That and my class being dogshit is why I'm out.

Suramar being bad isn't a function of people not giving feedback, either. There were and still are (You can see the beta forums still) tons of feedback about how Suramar is just a gigantic fucking time gate and it was all ignored. Which just proves, to me, that this was its intention the entire time.

Couldn't agree more suramar sucks and so do hunters

[Mad_Murdock]

You can complain all you like, but without any basis for comparison it's a bit silly.

Do we need to reference horse and buggy if we want to complain about air travel? Do we need to compare air travel from the 1950s to complain about it today?
A tiny cramped plane with no leg room and poor AC is a tiny cramped plane with poor AC, despite what it was like 10 years ago.

I get the basis of what you're saying. But I don't think we need to compare WoW to other more grindy MMOs to say whether aspects of WoW are more or less grindy. MMOs have to evolved to stay relevant, and depending on who we talk to MMOs are having a tough time. People want to play the game and do things because it's fun doing them. I don't know where the happy balance is, but I imagine we'll see in the next few months whether the majority of players like or dislike the new model.

so yeah, this expansion i think they want to kill alts, they already said they dont like people having alts

I don't believe they ever said they don't like people having alts. They have done a ton of things to make the game alt-friendly. They have catch-up mechanisms in place for legion that will make alts level up AP faster.

They have said they don't like people having alts to have all the professions to avoid using other people's professions, and they don't want it to feel mandatory to have all the professions. It's a tough balance sometimes, I personally consider "my account" my main and not a single character, but I started in the FPS arena and it is a bit strange to say pick one type\class and that's all you can ever play.

[unfilteredJW]

I'll never understand why grind is such a dirty word now.

This.

/thread

[Tatsujin]

This expansion is better than Wrath, Cataclysm (even though this is my favorite expansion cu'z it has some of my favorite bosses and cool Warrior gear, plus Arms Warriors were amazing), Panderia (100% for sure) and WoD. BC is by far the most enjoyable, but Legion seems to be much better than BC because YES there is grind. But the grind is not difficult, it's easier just it takes sometime.

World Quests <3

[Wingspan]

Anything you would rather not do generally equates to a grind if you need to do it for any length of time.

I think the core problem these days is twofold:


1) Those who do the WoW grinds often find that the time spent was meaningless when Blizzard decides to devalue what you spent time grinding for. This can be anything from flying mounts, to gear (sometimes outdated before you can finish the set you were building), to garrison followers, to crafting patterns... whatever. So over the years, the "value" of grinding has shifted in many people's eyes because they realize how flash-in-the-pan most of the rewards can be.

Back in vanilla, I killed about 6,000 mobs for the Timbermaw rep (on various toons), and I can assure you that something like that will never happen again, no matter what they put at the end of it.



2) There are simply too many solid games to choose from out there these days, some of which do not cost a penny to play. So if you find yourself even remotely bored during a grind, you will probably eventually realize that you can duck out and just play another game... until you reach a point where IT makes you grind... and then duck out for another game, until you eventually make your way back to WoW because they patched something and now you no longer need to grind what you were working on.

To be honest, I never did much of this, but almost every real life person that I know to play WoW has done exactly this... so I know it happens.

[Pony Soldier]

When it comes to RPGs, MMOs, and MMORPGs there will ALWAYS be some sort of grinding and there will ALWAYS be repetitive content. That's just how they are. Some people find it fun some don't. If you're really against that stuff then don't bother but if not then get it. Legion, so far, has been the best expansion we've gotten since Burning Crusade. Dare I say it's even better than BC.

Really, EVERY kind of game out there is repetitive and grindy in their own way from video games to board games to sports so it should not be an excuse for people to not play a game.

[Akami74]

PvP has always been Grindy in my view. PvE is diverse due to the wide range of quests. They are still mostly go here and kill this but that's an mmo.

PvP and PvE are only grindy to the hardcore.

Very little is grindy in this game if you're casual, because you can take as long as you want and do it whenever you want. Maybe you won't get into mythic raids, but standard mythic dungeons and heroic raids are easily doable by casuals (assuming they are skilled players). Maybe you won't top the charts in a pvp season, but you can still enjoy it and not lose every match.

Blizzard has put in some nice "catch-up" systems, such as artifact knowledge, to make it so that it's only necessary to "grind" if you want to be in the top. PvP is not necessary to grind excessively unless you want the superficial rewards for prestige.

If someone hates grinding with a passion, perhaps they are wasting their time and shouldn't be taking the game so seriously.

[clevin]

1) Those who do the WoW grinds often find that the time spent was meaningless when Blizzard decides to devalue what you spent time grinding for.

This is especially an issue. If you're not doing something like progression raiding it's silly to spend tens of thousands of gold on crafted gear, to grind a rep when 7.1 will drop new higher level gear, etc.

They started this with the badge gear in TBC but really adopted it in Wrath where they wanted people who came back in the middle of an expansion or who leveled alts then to be able to catch up and raid with their friends. It was an offshoot of the whole LK "Bring the player..." idea. But that led to two things - First, the idea that you can have several highly geared alts and that the game should let you have this without much pain at all and second, the devaluation of current content. They've adjusted, etc but I remember raiding for gear in LK and then the next patch, seeing that tier on the badge vendor...

Now, in the case of raiding you at least get the fun of doing the raid with friends, your guild whatever. Sure, you could have skipped that and got the same gear later but it really was the fun that you enjoyed (I hope...). With solo grinds, that's missing, so you are always cognizant of the fact that the object of you grind needs to either be something they can't just easily make irrelevant (a mount, etc) or you need to have a reason to get that thing (gear) ASAP, i.e. for progression in the current raid.