Legion ended up being a repetitive grind

[Lei]

Again, method, world first method, their main tank/raid leader is at 36/38 respectively.
If they havent been grinding, why have you?

You legit don't *need* AP past the first 5% increase, which is easily attainable atm.
Casual mythic? My guild is the definition of casual mythic, playerbase is 28+ years old generally with jobs/families. Entire raid is 35+ and most are raidloggers. Unfortunately people actually like playing the game so they level keystones (not farm maw for AP) and get AP there as well.

You do not have to farm anything.

Have you seen the final boss interview with them? Because I have, and Sco specifically said that they didn't require the FURTHER AP grind (means they DID grind it, but they've stopped at one point) because they didn't want to get burn out before Nighthold. He also did say that the bosses in ToV were designed to have the first "bonus" trait, and when they did get that, it was so much easier for them.

[Hubbl3]

Again, method, world first method, their main tank/raid leader is at 36/38 respectively.
If they havent been grinding, why have you?

You legit don't *need* AP past the first 5% increase, which is easily attainable atm.
Casual mythic? My guild is the definition of casual mythic, playerbase is 28+ years old generally with jobs/families. Entire raid is 35+ and most are raidloggers. Unfortunately people actually like playing the game so they level keystones (not farm maw for AP) and get AP there as well.

You do not have to farm anything.

Well, the first 5% prior to HoV release required putting many hours into it. But other than when you are competing for WFs you didn't need to invest the time at all. One of my alts is not even at 3 golden Perks yet, but I've been constantly doing AK with him, so he is already on level 22. When I ever like to play him again I'll have 35 traits in no time. Without putting any more into him as logging in every few days to get the next level AK rolling.

[KaPe]

Again, method, world first method, their main tank/raid leader is at 36/38 respectively.
If they havent been grinding, why have you?

Because they have like five alts to keep up with? Wasn't this mentioned in their interview? Sure, they could get 54 with one character, but then it turns out that a different one is needed and 10% behind. And I'm pretty sure they saw it as fairly grindy. People who would pretty much fit a typical definition of "no life hardcore raider" (no offense ) see it as grindy.

[Deleted]

Again, method, world first method, their main tank/raid leader is at 36/38 respectively.
If they havent been grinding, why have you?

You legit don't *need* AP past the first 5% increase, which is easily attainable atm.
Casual mythic? My guild is the definition of casual mythic, playerbase is 28+ years old generally with jobs/families. Entire raid is 35+ and most are raidloggers. Unfortunately people actually like playing the game so they level keystones (not farm maw for AP) and get AP there as well.

You do not have to farm anything.

Said raid does 4 split raids on mythic EN & ToV weekly. They grind something else, and you can be more than sure that they'll enforce 54 traits for their DPS. Also helps that you've 3 weeks with AK25 until mythic Nighthold opens, on top of a sanguine+overflowing week for EU.

[Hubbl3]

Said raid does 4 split raids on mythic EN & ToV weekly. They grind something else, and you can be more than sure that they'll enforce 54 traits for their DPS.

Yes, you can do the grind in WoW, and that was always the case. But it is not required for anything, other than competing with the world hardcore players. And no one besides the top 10 guilds does that. YOu can clear everything else, in a proper amount of time, without doing every single Chest, farming +9s, doing splitraids or doing anything else than 1 HC/Mythic raid per week and pushing +9/12 (that's 2 M+) and getting the chest whenever you feel like it and nothing else. If thats a grind and not just playing a game you enjoy I dont know at what time WoW was any different.

[Deleted]

Yes, you can do the grind in WoW, and that was always the case. But it is not required for anything, other than competing with the world hardcore players. And no one besides the top 10 guilds does that. YOu can clear everything else, in a proper amount of time, without doing every single Chest, farming +9s, doing splitraids or doing anything else than 1 HC/Mythic raid per week and pushing +9/12 (that's 2 M+) and getting the chest whenever you feel like it and nothing else. If thats a grind and not just playing a game you enjoy I dont know at what time WoW was any different.

But thats not how the game works. Maybe you can find 1 guild out of 100 who dont require all of this.

Of course can clear anything you wish for by doing the absolute minimum, but it wont get easier. And if you slack, you'll be most likely kicked out of your raid team. Thats how it works. No one is talking about a world 3000s raider being required to farm LFR and what not to compete for heroic boss kills.

[Akka]

Correct, Vanilla was an even more unbalanced piece of shit then Legion will ever be.

Arh arh, what subtle and original humour we have here !

Nah, can't be. I'm pretty sure every single one of those posters grinded Felwood, Blasted Lands, Onyxia/ZG buffs, Dark Runes, farmed resistance gear and flasked in every raid. In their spare time, they personally reached Rank 14. After all, there were so many hardcore raiders in vanilla and hundreds of guilds have cleared Naxx. It's only natural we have dozens of players still posting about it after ten years. People wouldn't lie on the Internet.

Yeah, the amount of Vanilla experts we have on the forums seem proportionnally inverted to the age of the game

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So whats the difference between a grind and playing the game? Because if you just play the game, at some point you are going to have all Artifact Weapons at 54, and all Factions at exhalted, and 2 Legendaries, and so on.

I'd say the chief difference is in how connected the activity is to the game world. Legion is too much into meta and mechanism, what we "do" is very removed from the world the game is supposed to happen into.
Vanilla, on the other hand, was much more straightforward, with much less artificial mechanisms, and the goals to reach were more integrated.
As such, Legion feels like "gaming the system", while Vanilla felt more "acting out in the world to fight evil".

Also, Vanilla farming wasn't endless nor completely random. It was progressive and with clearly-cut goal. Legion is just a casino.

[Vuagnon]

I think I'll have to let my sub run out this time if they can't find a way to make mastery more useful for ret. 885 ilvl items keep dropping that only downgrade my overall dps. 885ilvl items are worse than 860 ilvl world boss drops. This must be a christmas joke. My patience has run out.

[Hubbl3]

Also, Vanilla farming wasn't endless nor completely random. It was progressive and with clearly-cut goal. Legion is just a casino.

If Legion is a Casino then I'm really lucky. Because I've done far more progress per time investment in Legion than in Vanilla.

[Akka]

If Legion is a Casino then I'm really lucky. Because I've done far more progress per time investment in Legion than in Vanilla.

You're completely and utterly missing the point. I'm not talking about grind results, I'm talking about immersion.

[Hubbl3]

You're completely and utterly missing the point. I'm not talking about result, I'm talking about immersion.

Doing the same WQs for 100 times or killing the same mobs 1000 times for Rep in Silithus is both pretty immersion breaking. In both cases you're basically wiping a nation out just to prove your worth. And I know that you're talking about Vanilla, but when you add TBC (the most loved addon!) into the mix with Spaceships and Biodomes and so on the immersion is shattered, because WTF!

[Akka]

Doing the same WQs for 10 times or killing the same mobs 1000 times for Rep in Silithus is both pretty immersion breaking. In both cases you're basically wiping a nation out just to prove your worth.

No it's not at all. The latter feels much more connected to the world, it doesn't have fifty layers of meta-mechanisms getting in the way of immersion, it's not as weirdly illogical, it isn't an organized daily routine that pop up and makes you use the same flypath on automatic.

I'm not going to say it requires more thoughts or is less going through the motion, but it has a more definite goal and it disguise a good amount of repetition with the illusion of making a difference.

[Propainn]

Oh - now we quote "the same quests every day" as more appealing...ok

Your right, the same quests that actually serve a purpose are so much worse than pointless irrelevant quests alternating every other day or 2.

Hell, make them alternate every day or 2 as well to get your fix of bounties, because this is D4.

[BananaHandsB]

"Forced", kind of realised it was another pointless whine fest at this point.

Sounds to me like someone is just finally tired of WoW and nothing wrong with the game itself. Also, we haven't even reached the first tier sets yet, and already jumping to conclusions. Absolutely pointless whine thread.

The sad part is myself and many others still love mythic raiding but are completely bored of everything else. Problem is if I don't do everything else, I can't be a mythic raider. Past expansions you could put in your time up front, then simply log in for raid and, for the most part, avoid the rest of the stuff you've grown bored of and still be competitive. To be a mythic raider in this expansion takes so much more outside of skill and it's making an already small community even smaller. In the end, outside of pvp, the only really challenging part of the game I find is mythic raiding. I also find it the only fun part. It's a shame I have to engage repeatedly in such boring, trivial content at a scale far different than past expansions in order to enjoy the real challenges this game has to offer. And I don't mind grinding some...I don't mind some RNG...it's just gotten out of control. No longer can one simply enjoy their niche if they are a mythic raider. Overwatch gets my time now.

[kary]

Said raid does 4 split raids on mythic EN & ToV weekly. They grind something else, and you can be more than sure that they'll enforce 54 traits for their DPS. Also helps that you've 3 weeks with AK25 until mythic Nighthold opens, on top of a sanguine+overflowing week for EU.

But they don't.
Noone enforces 54 traits lmao.
A girl that raids in my guild is at 45 and never farmed AP outside her regular play schedule. And she has several alts at 35+
Don't conflate playing a lot with grinding.

Split running EN/ToV isn't hard once it's on farm. 45m for ToV tops, 1 hr tops EN.

3 hrs a day from people who actually like playing the game is a grind? Lmao plz. Most shitters here do more than that easy. I know I do.

[Deleted]

But they don't.
Noone enforces 54 traits lmao.
A girl that raids in my guild is at 45 and never farmed AP outside her regular play schedule. And she has several alts at 35+
Don't conflate playing a lot with grinding.

Split running EN/ToV isn't hard once it's on farm. 45m for ToV tops, 1 hr tops EN.

3 hrs a day from people who actually like playing the game is a grind? Lmao plz. Most shitters here do more than that easy. I know I do.

Are you slow? There's no point grinding AP now 5 days before AK25 and with the next raid being 4 weeks away. They'll do their chores, just like anyone else. They spend time grinding something else currently. And honestly, no one knows how specs will finally look like in 7.1.5 - this alone is a valid reason to not spent their AP items yet.

And no, 45 traits is what I've currently. And I never missed a cache since release and always do all AP world quests, on top of being Prestige 3 and 400 mythic+ dungeons done.

ToV with 4 splits is: 4x 60-80 minutes ... and no, EN is far from 1hr/split. They still need two full days á 5 hrs to clear their farm (as shown in their streams, btw).

[Heladys]

Grinds are what MMOs are. Legion does it comparatively elegantly. You think otherwise? Take your rose-colored nostalgia glasses and go back to Vanilla. Call us in six months when you get your Argent Dawn shoulder enchants.

[Varaben]

I definitely don't consider doing one dungeon a day a grind, for starters.
But if that's your take, everything will be a grind.

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I definitely don't consider doing one dungeon a day a grind, for starters.
But if that's your take, everything will be a grind.

For me, grinding begins when/where the entertainment takes a backseat to the goal. When you're doing things ad-nauseum for a drop or currency. Doing 1-2 dungeons a day because you like dungeons isn't grinding(to me), but sitting down and saying "im not gonna stop doing x until I get y," or "i'm gonna do a for b" is grinding.

But as I said, things like Suramar questing aren't a "grind" because it's a series of different quests that tell a story. Doing each dungeon once at the end of your zone questline isn't a grind.

I think players want rewards and incentives to do content until they get exactly what they want. Now they feel forced to do a certain type of content. I mean if content X gives 1 legendary per week and content Y gives .9 legendary per week, some players (maybe most?) feel forced to do content X. They may even feel manipulated into doing what Blizzard wants them to do (and complain on the forums). But Blizzard is just trying to reward players as fairly as possible. Maybe content Y is slightly easier than content X, so it gives slightly less rewards.

It all makes total sense that rewarding players for doing content will work, but then we see what we are seeing in Legion. I'd like to see a WoW expansion with no gear grind, all dungeons give the same gear level (no RNG upgrades) as raids with no escalation over time. You might see different items with different stats and set items (with visual changes, no set bonuses), but the gear power is the same. New raids/dungeons drop new gear, but not more powerful gear. Now once you've got that base level of gear, you're just playing to have fun.

Blizzard doesn't have to worry about scaling or balance because they can assume a certain level of gear. Players don't feel forced to run content because they already have the max level gear. This would obviously turn some players off, but to others, they might feel liberated from the gear treadmill and run dungeons or raids for fun. It would make raids easier to balance too, so hopefully they can spend time making more interesting encounters or maybe just MORE encounters.

I dunno, it won't ever happen that way, but it's interesting to consider.

[Deleted]

Grinds are what MMOs are. Legion does it comparatively elegantly. You think otherwise? Take your rose-colored nostalgia glasses and go back to Vanilla. Call us in six months when you get your Argent Dawn shoulder enchants.

Funny that WoW classic became only popular because it wasnt such a grind fest like its competition during that time. And no, ever since classic end this game didnt require as much time as it does now.

Maybe read some posts before you post next time.

[harruin]

The point is, the grind while hard at start ended once you got exalted or revered (most patterns and valor items required revered, only few things required exalted like a ring / neck epic quest reward). The black prince rep was automatically done while grinding these dailies (mobs giving rep were related first to golden lotus dailies and in TOT to the isle dailies).


And the relics are nothing to dismiss, if a dps spec has a trait that is worth 24 ilvls on a relic in comparison to a non-dps trait and the only relic with such a trait comes from specific mythic+ it creates endless farm scenario. Blizzard constantly tries to tell us we should go for ilvl upgrades and then creates systems where math doesn't support their line of thinking. Not looking forward to 7.2 "double trait" relics, I dread another zero-pre-thought nightmare where they just throw random stats together.

But the grind does have an end. Once you hit AK 25, you're going to be maxing out AP relatively quickly just doing general raiding and dungeon runs. Well before 7.2 hits.

Everything is self-inflicted. The question is only: does it exist and does it give you a benefit / advantage? If yes, you can either "self-inflict" it upon yourself or be lazy and see how your guild reacts.

You could be lazy in MOP as well, you didn't have to be an enchanter, you could get an enchant from someone else (contrary to wotlk hodir rep that sold you THE enchant not the pattern), bah, you didn't have to buy valor gear you could just wait for raid drops, you didn't have to get your bonus roll coins if you didn't farm dailies for charms, etc. If you wanted the legendary you could form party and leech rep while others farmed the mogu and so on.

But are we talking about being prepared now or about being lazy? Lazy people run ungemmed, unenchanted, never use flasks, food or pots. I don't think those people worry about any grinds, preparations or burnout.

I'm saying now the game lacks the feeling of "I'm done, finished, completed, I can rest with the feeling of job well done".

There's a difference between being lazy, and running 3-4 hours of mythic+'s a day hoping for a warforged version of something that's +5 ilvl higher or an item drop that you know has an incredibly low drop rate. Usually Blizzard would protect you from yourself, but this time they let people loose and I guess it's backfired.