I'd say quite a bit of the levelling is good. Val'sharah is, at least to me, overall better than any levelling zone to date (because it's the whole Emerald Nightmare xpac axed like hell and squeezed into one zone). Just don't tell anyone, I'm mostly playing the unrelenting hater here.
For me it's mostly unrewarding and unsatisfying.
I stopped liking the AP ramp up very soon tbh. Too quickly did my best AP tokens start yielding a single pixel on the bar.
Repetitiveness itself doesn't have to lead straight to boredom. Sunsong Ranch was as repetitive as it can get. I loved it. Panda dailies were repetitive AF, I didn't hate them at all. Timeless Isle was repetitive. I did like it.
I wouldn't say that. They do change more than any other grind content so far, some are not even of the Kill-N-mobs-gather-M-items format, you have Kirin Tor puzzles and squirrel catching after all. Trick is, so many of them have no noticeable reward of themselves and involve a considerable amount of travel without flight. Ripping bounties off RoS had a potential, but the only ripped half of the thing and forgot the basics: reward has to be desirable vs efffort, travel to quest location cannot be a trial of patience, any mobs that aggro and won't let go should yield some reward for killing. In WoW you only get noticeable reward from some dailies. When I log in, look at the emissary and see that half the quests are yielding 80gp or something like that, I just don't bother. After all, one BoS is 3 roses 105gp each without the taxi, navigating the shitty terrain, circumventing or needlessly killing all the trash on the way.
It used to be just heroic for us plebs and challenger mode for tryhards. Not too horrible, frankly. What's really bad is that to progress beyond +10 you need a dedicated group setup. Not so fun any more.
I wouldn't really call it a mess. It is a disgrace, but don't fool yourself into thinking it was supposed to be any different. If it was, the current system would never make it past PTR.
Again, I'd rather say unrewarding and unsatisfying. I can play them, there's just no chance in hell I can make them strong. Not main-strong, just strong.
I was extremely relieved to hear it was SV that lost its range. Not sure how I would take this kind of "change" to beast mastery.
Well it IS relevant to me. Currently got ENHC on farm, moving onto Helya. It does keep some of the charm so far. Why do you consider raiding irrelevant?
Disagree about LK. LK was when levelling was made considerably more bearable than in Olden Days. I heard many stories and felt thankful that my own experience seems much more humane. The first epic I saw was from Blackrock depths I think, so not too bad really. I also recall wasting all my badges on a PvP set because I didn't know better and then the steady if sparse stream of said epics from heroic dungeons. Speaking of which, I did run 3 difficulties: HC5, ICC NM and HC. Still, I did like that format considerably better, since no matter if I ran a bunch of ICC5 HCs, Argent Tournament dailies or whatever, there was always some relevant reward for them.
Wow!wow! If you got facts buddy, bring them forth. You are just as anecdotal.
I talked about my experience and my experience is vinculative. It directly affects wether i pay to play this game or not. Not your comments. If you think the sky is falling, show me why my experience is different from yours. Until then you got no basis.
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I claimed my experience not others. Mr I dont have evidence of random queues either.
My evidence works for me. It affects me. Until i experience the drama you are trying to sell me, that will be my statement.
It happened IN WotLK. Also, WotLK didn't add two millions sub, it stayed flat up to Cata release - TBC ended with 11,5 M, WotLK ended with 12M after Cata was announced.
My empirical experience in WotLK was that there was a MASSIVE flight from veteran players and a MASSIVE arrival of new players. It certainly seems confirmed by how WotLK is now flagged as "best X-pack", and when you dig you notice that it's because most people playing today started then and after.
There a multitude of issues that are the reason WoW isn't as successful as it once was, there is potential obviously for it to be great again because the huge amount of subscriptions that happen at the beginning of every expansion. People want to play, there is just nothing that seems to hold them to play.
If I had to pick 3 things that have happened that have hurt the game, they would be:
1: Server Transfers - Letting people Server Transfer was a cool idea, and a great way to make money for blizzard, but it destroyed servers and the relationship people on those servers had with each other. I play on Zangermarsh (a pretty crappy server) and in this expansion and last expansion, the top 8/10 guilds have transferred off to one of the top 5 servers around, if you are on a big server - that's great, but anyone on a smaller or medium server probably has the same issue.
2: RNG becoming interlaced with more and more parts of the game. (It used to just be gear) - now it's almost everything, patterns for professions, herbing starlight rose, world quests, raiding, legendaries, titanforged, ect. -
3: LFR - Much like server transfers, this hurt the need for guilds and people being in guilds to do raids and dungeons, PVP, ect.
We talk about games like LoL, which are "play 40 minutes" and quit, that's basically what wow has become, log in, do 1 dungeon, and 4 world quests in 40 minutes, log out.
/shrug
I left somewhat late in Cata and halfway into MoP and WoD. I didn't leave because of raid content (even Cata had FL) but more of the content beyond raids and they all felt shit in that regard. Cata's was nonexistant, MoP was mass dailies, and WoD was garrisons.
Legion is the only xpac that I feel will keep me in because of M+. I have always been a bigger fan of the 5man content and M+ helps keep that relevant throughout. The PvP stat system is also long overdue.
The wise wolf who's pride is her wisdom isn't so sharp as drunk.
I was subbed throughout WoD. For the past 3 expansions, my brother and my friend (same guild that I have since abandoned) pay for and play the first part of the expansion and the first tier content available. They will probably sub again for a month with the next content release, and so on and so forth.
WoW is and always has been competing for your free time. It doesn't JUST compete with other MMOs.
In my short 30 years of existence I have never had to experience the inability to keep up with certain books, TV shows, movies, and video games... save for the last few years (really since netflix became a huge player in TV shows).
The point is pop culture is difficult to keep up with, and as there is a ton of content out there. This easiest thing to drop is going to be the one thing that tries to keep you from seeing/participating in the rest. WoW has evolved and managed to stay relevant (and profitable) for over a decade, kudos to blizzard. Not many other franchises can say the same.
That's not proof, only a claim.
I agree when it comes to classes (in most cases anyway). And as you say it depends from class to class and expansion to expansion. But yea, in general class gameplay WAS simpler back then, in the way that many times rotations didn't exist or were simple, and the overall number of actually regularly useful spells was low for many specs. If referring to WotLK, as you sey, then yes some classes now are at most as complex as back then, in some cases simpler.
But I think generally the claims are towards the game in general, not class gameplay. Nowadays, unless take the game seriously (ie progression raiding, high mythic plus, etc), you can pretty much pick any new character, level up, do whatever content you like and pretty much choose your gear only by looking at ilvl and still do fairly well. Certainly enough to clear Normal, probably even Heroic raids.
In the past there was more complexity regarding to gearing, talents, stats (including caps, soft caps, etc), resistance, attunements, etc. That's what I think they mean. There was also a much larger skill gap (perhaps not in Vanilla, but certainly at least in WotLK), where a good/experienced player managed to output much more dps than a bad/unexperienced one with similar gear, by maximizing their character, rotation, dots application, etc.
Personally my opinion is this: The game was overall harder / more complex back then (wouldn't be as much if done today due to more addon and external websites support), but current game offers harder optional high difficulty settings.
Last edited by Kolvarg; 2016-12-01 at 07:58 PM.
WoD was fun when it came to gearing and raiding on alts like other posters said especially in pvp.
At least WoD had harder raids than Legion. EN is a joke. Mythic EN is easier than LFR SOO.
Yeaah... for a fan forum one sure gets the idea that people on here don't like the game very much.
As someone who experienced WOTLK, I sure as hell have seen better content since that expansion, so "it has never been as good as back then!!!!111" just comes across as hilariously inaccurate rambling in my eyes.
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Lol, try harder. Progression guilds having an easier time with bosses =/= Mythic raids being easier than LFR. EN is an entry raid, but look at Mythic Helya...
first raid of first tier is always kind of easy.
Anemo: traveler, Sucrose
Pyro: Yanfei, Amber, diluc, xiangling, thoma, Xinyan, Bennett
Geo: Noelle, Ningguang, Yun Jin, Gorou
Hydro: Barbara, Zingqiu, Ayato
Cyro: Shenhe, Kaeya, Chongyun, Diona, Ayaka, Rosaria
Electro: Fischl, Lisa, Miko, Kujou, Raiden, Razor