Mass burnout.

[IceMan1763]

but it is - there is a lot of people who are glad to play 20-30 hours a week - and in past they couldnt because they were out of htings to do on main and had to do it on alts - now you want to limit them just because you dont have this kind of time which is not fair

if you want to play casualy do so - milions ofp layers do - find a guild that shares this mindset and then you magicaly dont "have to" do even a single mythic + thats week - if you claim how many people want this same as you do finding such guild should be piss easy eh ?

finally for first time since forever playing wow hardcore way means exackly that aka puting in effort intead just being good at arcade elements such as rpg should be.

WOW was a success when it was moving away from the EQ/Korean style of MMORPG. It won't rediscover success by going back to that formula now, it will just fail dramatically as we are seeing unfold right before our eyes.

And I can choose to just not play the game and play other games, which is exactly what I've done and millions of others are doing and will do moving forward.

You "hardcores" can crack nuts for squirrels for the next 2 years in order to "progress your character" and show how "skilled" you now are. Have fun.

[Grimnakh]

WOW was a success when it was moving away from the EQ/Korean style of MMORPG. It won't rediscover success by going back to that formula now, it will just fail dramatically as we are seeing unfold right before our eyes.

And I can choose to just not play the game and play other games, which is exactly what I've done and millions of others are doing and will do moving forward.

You "hardcores" can crack nuts for squirrels for the next 2 years in order to "progress your character" and show how "skilled" you now are. Have fun.

You have no evidence outside anecdotal evidence from squeeky wheels on the forums and a few manchildren that have popular youtube channels and streams of any kind of WoW is failing claim. . Being "hardcore" like us means clearing some of the overgeared raids at 30 mins or less each, Herioc NH, doing 1-10 mythic + a week, your weekly Dal quest and stack up 3 emmissary quests at a time and do the double credit ones as able, maybe do lfr if you still dont like your legendaries. All that should take about 10 hours. Grats, youre "hardcore" at 10 hours played a week.

[kamuimac]

WOW was a success when .....

here compeltly different discussion though - wow was succesfull ofc but it wasnt because of raiding - barely anyone raided in vanilla and tbc yet it was ultra succesfull , we could argue for hours why was it so - whether it was because it had 0 competition at that time cause other game looked like crap and had shit gamplay compared to it, whether it was simply good time for mmorpg etc etc but its poitnless - we have 2017 now not 2004 past will never return

if you look at other mmorpgs that are coming to west in last 2 years nearly all of them are asian grinder type mmos , and they are fairly succesful at least in asia , did it ever for a second occured to you that devs in blizzard are not raiding zealots only proffesionals who have a job to do and that job is bring blizzard $$$$ no keep few basement dwellers happy.

who knows maybe all those people leaving from blizzard will be a milestone and 8,0 will be even more grindy to not fall back behind competition ? only time will show

[david0925]

In previous expansions raiding maintained raiding. You obviously needed to do 5 mans and solo content at the beginning of an expansion since there were no old raids to fall back on, but after that outside of grinding for maybe a rep or two, or an item or two, for perhaps 2-3 weeks, you can basically just raid only and maintain your character.

This isn't the case anymore for legion unless you are extremely lucky. Before 7.2 you will need to grind to 54 because the harder parts of NH has that in mind. After that you will still need to build up your BLP for legendary unless you already have all of your BiS (which can be more than 2 since some are situationally good). Combining that with the unlimited Titanforge system, which I understand is a low chance, and you give people a sense of lack of progression for doing hard content. Of course that's going to burn people out especially after wiping a week on a progression boss taking a toll mentally.

I am completely in support for character progression outside of raids, but the current model is very convoluted and makes Mythic raiding extremely undesirable unless you are truly in the mindset of beating the hardest encounters with very marginal gain. I personally still enjoy Mythic raids but am emphatic about why people quit.

I also don't understand why these kind of conversation always have to turn into (Mythic) Raiders versus non-raiders.
1. Mythic/heroic (when it was hardest) raiding has always been the least rewarding system since its inception if you look at it in terms of reward versus time spent. I think most mythic raiders understand that, so don't make it look like Blizzard has catered to the mythic raiding crowd because that's not the case

2. Now, if your argument is that Blizzard spends too much development on raiding for endgame over additional 5 man and solo, then I agree. However, this is not catering to Mythic, but just raiding in general.

3. Content drought (most noticeable in WoD) is not caused by raiding, both raids and non-raids suffered from lack of content in WoD.

[Grimnakh]

In previous expansions raiding maintained raiding. You obviously needed to do 5 mans and solo content at the beginning of an expansion since there were no old raids to fall back on, but after that outside of grinding for maybe a rep or two, or an item or two, for perhaps 2-3 weeks, you can basically just raid only and maintain your character.

This isn't the case anymore for legion unless you are extremely lucky. Before 7.2 you will need to grind to 54 because the harder parts of NH has that in mind. After that you will still need to build up your BLP for legendary unless you already have all of your BiS (which can be more than 2 since some are situationally good). Combining that with the unlimited Titanforge system, which I understand is a low chance, and you give people a sense of lack of progression for doing hard content. Of course that's going to burn people out especially after wiping a week on a progression boss taking a toll mentally.

I am completely in support for character progression outside of raids, but the current model is very convoluted and makes Mythic raiding extremely undesirable unless you are truly in the mindset of beating the hardest encounters with very marginal gain. I personally still enjoy Mythic raids but am emphatic about why people quit.

I also don't understand why these kind of conversation always have to turn into (Mythic) Raiders versus non-raiders.
1. Mythic/heroic (when it was hardest) raiding has always been the least rewarding system since its inception if you look at it in terms of reward versus time spent. I think most mythic raiders understand that, so don't make it look like Blizzard has catered to the mythic raiding crowd because that's not the case

2. Now, if your argument is that Blizzard spends too much development on raiding for endgame over additional 5 man and solo, then I agree. However, this is not catering to Mythic, but just raiding in general.

3. Content drought (most noticeable in WoD) is not caused by raiding, both raids and non-raids suffered from lack of content in WoD.

Mythic/old herioc raiding has never been the least rewarding activity, its the end of the diminishing returns/slower progression curve, that generally is the only realistic way for players to get the very best gear in the game (which you cant compare to the speed of making gains in lower progression content)

As far as guilds go with 100's of wipes on a single boss goes well, theres always going to be a small group that really want to push the limits and go for world first or close to it, but most guilds will get it done later without anything close to that many wipes after others have put out guides, and theyve geared more/progressed more and its not such an exceptional skill cap. Some people mosey on into these guilds because they know someone and the content just started to be on farm and get absurd rewards for the amount of work theyve done, not to mention paid runs.

[InfiniteCharger]

Start thread "Grind is only in your head". I guarantee that it will spread like wildfire.

But seriously, I noticed that:

- if content is too easy: "WoW is too casual, every scrub can finish this, bring back Vanilla."
- if content is too hard: "Guilds are falling apart, is this end of WoW?"

- if you can get all rewards quickly: "Nothing to do, Blizzard is lazy"
- if it take some time: "Too much grind, Blizz, we are burned out."
- if it is unpreditable: "Fucking RNG fest! This is not Warcraft, this is RNGCraft"

I ask many times: what is your definition of grind? For me this is doing something (for long period of time) that I HATE (or hate doing this countless times) to get reward that I WANT. I don't like PVP, so Prestige levels are grind for me (and still I have some choice to avoid grind by doing Warden towers).

But AP is no grind at all, because when I log in I can choose what activity I want do that day. If I would hate all: questing, dungeons, raids, PVP - there is literally no point playing WoW at all. People that were doing only mythic+ are like children, that were eating only chocolate and now they are sick of it. It's better for community, if that kind of people would just burn out and left the game, to be honest.

And there is no "middle ground" between "nothing to do" and "grind". If I can max everything after 4 months, I will have nothing to do after 4 months. If 6, I will have another WoD after 6 months. Now I always can progress my char, when I log in, and most important I can choose from different activities. And I know that every paragon point is just a bonus, not pernament like regular traits. I wish that AP would also come from things like transmog runs, because it too take some time, but imagine how "hardcore" would approach that situation.

The problem with your argument is that it implies that the only way for people to play is the way YOU play. Some people are kids who have plenty of time to dedicate to a game.

By definition M+ dungeons are designed and were promoted as a way for people to get increasing rewards from running the same dungeons repeatedly on increasing difficulty. That implies a grind because in order to get to a higher level keystone you have to run the previous levels, which means grind. The operative term here being that grind implies doing the same content over and over.

This is as designed by Blizzard not something being done outside of what was designed. It was designed to promote grinding, because like people say MMOs are all about the grind.

[Grimnakh]

The problem with your argument is that it implies that the only way for people to play is the way YOU play. Some people are kids who have plenty of time to dedicate to a game.

By definition M+ dungeons are designed and were promoted as a way for people to get increasing rewards from running the same dungeons repeatedly on increasing difficulty. That implies a grind because in order to get to a higher level keystone you have to run the previous levels, which means grind. The operative term here being that grind implies doing the same content over and over.

This is as designed by Blizzard not something being done outside of what was designed. It was designed to promote grinding, because like people say MMOs are all about the grind.

Level up your keystone to a high level and next week it will start close to 15 again, the grind youre talking about doesn't actually exist.

YOU are not forced to do anything YOU dont want to. YOU want other people's options taken away to make YOU feel better about not doing the content.

[Yunaqt]

You "hardcores" can crack nuts for squirrels for the next 2 years in order to "progress your character" and show how "skilled" you now are. Have fun.

That squirrel invasion was nuts, get it?

- - - Updated - - -

By definition M+ dungeons are designed and were promoted as a way for people to get increasing rewards from running the same dungeons repeatedly on increasing difficulty. That implies a grind because in order to get to a higher level keystone you have to run the previous levels, which means grind. The operative term here being that grind implies doing the same content over and over.

This is as designed by Blizzard not something being done outside of what was designed. It was designed to promote grinding, because like people say MMOs are all about the grind.

Don't find them that grindy, usually I have a 11- 12 key in my box each week, 2 or 3 dungeons later your 15 is done. usually I just do them casually on the weekend with friends and talk sh*t on discord.
Did a +19 Arc this week so will have a 15 key in my cache ready to go when i get home.

I do still do a fair few extras as it's my go to pass time instead of previous expansions variation of "Laps of Dalaran" Since it's so easy to just open LFG and jump in a dungeon at whatever level.

[david0925]

Mythic/old herioc raiding has never been the least rewarding activity, its the end of the diminishing returns/slower progression curve, that generally is the only realistic way for players to get the very best gear in the game (which you cant compare to the speed of making gains in lower progression content)

As far as guilds go with 100's of wipes on a single boss goes well, theres always going to be a small group that really want to push the limits and go for world first or close to it, but most guilds will get it done later without anything close to that many wipes after others have put out guides, and theyve geared more/progressed more and its not such an exceptional skill cap. Some people mosey on into these guilds because they know someone and the content just started to be on farm and get absurd rewards for the amount of work theyve done, not to mention paid runs.

Right, that's basically my argument that it is the least effective way of progressing your character, but still the only way to progress pass heroic gear. I just want to point out that the game has never "catered" towards these raiders, and if people want to argue otherwise, provide an argument for it.

The "getting things done eventually" is a very arbitrary argument and I can't really argue for or against it. If we take things a bit far, you can probably 10man current mythic next expansion. Most mythic raid guilds aim to clear current tier withom current patch if possible. For those that don't reach it they might delay it (i see quite a few 2/3m guilds go back and faceroll Helya, for example). I actually think a lot of raiders, now in their late twenties and early thirties, are really disciplined with their playing, but what ends up happening in this expansion is basically like this

Before: I have 12 hours a week to play, I schedule 9 hours a week to raid and then use the other 3 hours as backup for whatever activities i want to do.
Legion: I have 12 hours a week to play, but I have to grind AP for 6 hours a week just to keep up (this is only assuming you're doing World Quest OR Mythic plus to gain AP), so now I need to play more, or i can only raid 6 hours a week and have no time to do anything else, and this isn't even taking into consideration of accumulating kill points for legendaries.

So throw in all the extra time investment or risk being gimped if you choose not to, and then you look at base mythic gear being obtainable in heroics or lower, albeit on a much lower chance, and you're basically taking something already with questionable time investment versus time ratio, and then further increase the time investment and arguably reduce the return, and of course you will burn people out. This is happening across all levels of mythic guilds.

I know some people can be apathetic and say "oh it doesn't matter, Mythic raiders are only a super minority and even if they all quit nothing of value would be lost", and perhaps they're right, but I am skeptical on player retention if Heroic Gul'dan were to be the hardest boss in the game.

[Grimnakh]

Right, that's basically my argument that it is the least effective way of progressing your character, but still the only way to progress pass heroic gear. I just want to point out that the game has never "catered" towards these raiders, and if people want to argue otherwise, provide an argument for it.

The "getting things done eventually" is a very arbitrary argument and I can't really argue for or against it. If we take things a bit far, you can probably 10man current mythic next expansion. Most mythic raid guilds aim to clear current tier withom current patch if possible. For those that don't reach it they might delay it (i see quite a few 2/3m guilds go back and faceroll Helya, for example). I actually think a lot of raiders, now in their late twenties and early thirties, are really disciplined with their playing, but what ends up happening in this expansion is basically like this

Before: I have 12 hours a week to play, I schedule 9 hours a week to raid and then use the other 3 hours as backup for whatever activities i want to do.
Legion: I have 12 hours a week to play, but I have to grind AP for 6 hours a week just to keep up (this is only assuming you're doing World Quest OR Mythic plus to gain AP), so now I need to play more, or i can only raid 6 hours a week and have no time to do anything else, and this isn't even taking into consideration of accumulating kill points for legendaries.

So throw in all the extra time investment or risk being gimped if you choose not to, and then you look at base mythic gear being obtainable in heroics or lower, albeit on a much lower chance, and you're basically taking something already with questionable time investment versus time ratio, and then further increase the time investment and arguably reduce the return, and of course you will burn people out. This is happening across all levels of mythic guilds.

I know some people can be apathetic and say "oh it doesn't matter, Mythic raiders are only a super minority and even if they all quit nothing of value would be lost", and perhaps they're right, but I am skeptical on player retention if Heroic Gul'dan were to be the hardest boss in the game.

I dont think mythic raiding should go away, and dont think Blizzard doesnt need to pay special attention to the crowd, but I also think 20 hours a week is a reasonable ask for people doing the hardest content, and I dont think the current mythic raid should ever be easy with even all the bis gear you could reasonably be expected to be able to get within the first 2 months. I also dont think there should be a gear wall, the progressive nerf of the content by having slow increases in progression thru diminishing returns systems is the perfect way to do this without nerfing the content directly each week. That way how early you got it down really means something and high end players can continue to be challenged week after week until the next tier or expansion is out. At this point since AK was increased and TOV was a miniraid anyway the fairly easy path to max traits again seems like a completely reasonable ask for people expecting to compete at the highest level of the game. If some people cant do that because of RL thats the decision they made, or that life outside the game made for them, and they cant blame Blizzard for that and Blizzard shouldnt cater to the 12 hour a week crowd and make a joke of the endgame like its been in many past instances where they did allow that. If you turn each boss into a gear wall that has to be scaled over to get the upgrades needed for the next wall while having the content be initially difficult enough to provide the best players with a real challenge you would either have to nerf the bosses week after week directly or have only 1/1000-1/10000 players kill those bosses in the current tier which seems much too restrictive.

They got the balance right, people just need to get their minds right about how to think about their spot on the ladder. Some wont be able to accept that theyre just not mythic raiders anymore, and will quit, and thats ok. This system is far better for the lifetime health of the playerbase. The old system might have felt more completable and fulfilling to those guys, but theyre often the ones who unsub between raid tiers when theyre easily defeatable, so theyre(12 hour mythic raid crowd) not even consistent subscribers a lot of the time.

That said legendaries were poorly implemented with some recently and future large improvements.

[l33t]

WoW is too old. At this point of time we (my guild) have lots of people who cancel their sub and stop playing, but mostly because they are a veterans of WoW, playing since vanilla/BC/WoTLK, and they are simply tired as hell playing same game for a decade. I kinda feel the same as well...

[GreenJesus]

Also, don't forget: spring is here. It's almost 20°C now in Belgium, it's perfect weather for outdoor sports/meeting up with friends. People won't put up with being cooped up indoors running raids/dungeons when it's getting attractive to spent time outdoors.

That isn't a good excuse since most people raid night time.

[Heathy]

i've logged in less the last couple weeks ill log in to raid but i don't see the point of grinding this close to 7.2

I mean i'm already 900 equip there isn't much point in going gunho and farming like crazy for minor upgrades when the next content patch is a couple weeks or so away.

I'm a little burnt out but i think i'm just interested in seeing more raid content this expansion. the inbetween stuff isn't as fun for me. nighthold is fun but its already starting to get a bit stale. gief more boss fights.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

7.2 makes any progress made now practically worthless. There are several massive QoL improvements, and they're dicking around with the primary progression system with yet another time-gate. They still aren't doing anything to fix the problem of AP distribution for people who play multiple specs on 1 char (they even know the solution, they just refuse to implement it). Artifact appearances are still locked behind ridiculous grinds, and they're on a per-character basis instead of account-wide.

[Brewhan]

At least part of the burnout is because Blizzard isn't artificially capping AP every week.

They are in a total lose-lose situation. Either they play it how they've been, and people burn themselves out (no AP cap, so you can play and play and play). Or they create artificial caps and people complain about being "forced" to hit the cap every day/week/month and decry blizzard for their "money-grabs" by timegating content.

You just can't help people from themselves.

Another aspect of this is the lfr/norm/heroic/mythic system. Repeating the same content on various difficulties is going to create burnout every time. Instead of providing "choice" as this looks to be, it creates burnout. Combine this with the war-forged system, and you incentivize people for playing multiple difficulties, accelerating burnout.

I agree in a sense I mean if there was a AP cap each week you could hit it all in one day or take a week. Kind of like how we used to have the valor weekly cap we could run 7 dungeons or just 1 a day. Then I think it changed to where you actually could only do one each day which kinda sucked but oh well.

If AP was capped weekly and LFR/normal items had a limit of titanforge proccing on itself I'd be pretty happy. Limit titanforge to +15 on LFR/normal/heroic difficulties leave it for mythic to 925 and also any of the top important things in that current patch cycle. I mean i've run a normal mythic dropped 840 boots and have it titanforge +50 ilvl up to 890... little outlandish and was kind of upset when that happened not excited because I felt I shouldn't be awarded that gear on my 4th alt that I'll never really play. It gives that alt the false illusion it's more powerful/important than it actually is.

If we didn't have to repeat old/brainless content (LFR/Kara nightbane runs/ normal/mid tier M+ for AP) things would be more enjoyable. We still do them because of OP titanforge proc chances and legendary BLP. I don't think that is how blizzard planned for the playerbase to react and do all easy mode content to help you get increased chances of actual good loot but thats what top raiders decided to do so the typical casual /sheep like many of us just followed their suit.

[Heathy]

then you get a repeat of past expansions where the first and second wave of players farm the content and the third wave have no one to run the content with because everyone has progressed past it.

having the 5 man content stay relevant through titanforge rolls is the only thing keeping them being run. if you could get the best version of an item from one run your not going to run that content again. thats not good game design, not when you want ppl to run the content multiple times with different ppl.

the problem isn't with the game having rewards for doing content the problem is with ppls self control. if you can't stop yourself from playing a game because 'I MIGHT GET 5 MORE ILVLS NEXT TIME' you should go see a psychiatrist.

I like running 5 mans but i haven't had to farm them to death this tier, its nice having the ability to get upgrades from content you've already ran multiple times. its an option not a mandatory expectation.. knowing the difference is key.

you say things would be more enjoyable if you only had to run the content once, I on the other hand feel quite the opposite, the content is fun to run when there are reasons to run it. the main reason being gear upgrades. I quite like karazhan but i would like it less if i were only able to gear up alts and not actually get anything running it myself. if items couldn't TF, i would have probably stopped running it by now, and if ppl wanted boosts or help, that would be 'oh really i have to run a dungeon that gives me nothing to help this guy'. how does that equate to a more fun longer lasting 5 man content. oh yeah, it doesn't.

[Dracullus]

The problem with your argument is that it implies that the only way for people to play is the way YOU play. Some people are kids who have plenty of time to dedicate to a game.

By definition M+ dungeons are designed and were promoted as a way for people to get increasing rewards from running the same dungeons repeatedly on increasing difficulty. That implies a grind because in order to get to a higher level keystone you have to run the previous levels, which means grind. The operative term here being that grind implies doing the same content over and over.

This is as designed by Blizzard not something being done outside of what was designed. It was designed to promote grinding, because like people say MMOs are all about the grind.

Quite opposite. Only some mythic raiders here thinks that they are center of universe, in the past with cap systems and "game will do all chores for you" in Warlords they could easily grab all rewards outside raids very quickly. But rest was left with nothing. Now all kinds of people can play the game and it's rewarding for everyone. No cap = lot of choices what to do every day.

To be honest, many people here thinks that they are center of universe, that's why we have for example "remove LFR! no, remove mythic!" threads, when I see room for every difficulty. Couple weeks ago someone started thread: "how you would improve WoW" and 90% posts instead of new ideas was all about removing stuff.

And, what? Leveling mythic keystones are grind too now? It take like 2-3 dungeons max (and you very likely won't repeat any dungeon) to get back to 15 right? And you don't need to start from +2, you can just use friend key to catch up.

Seriously, I didn't see any consistent definition of "grind" here so far, like I said: everything that take time is called "grind" here.

Honestly, I see two choices for mythic raiding:
1) Go PVP route, after completing heroic difficulty (+ maybe all achievements from raid) you can access to mythic raid with predefined stats. Rewards could be titles, transmog and Blizz could finally support world first race.
2) Make Mythic loot +10 from Titanforge cap with static stats and no warforge, but only 1 piece drop from boss (RNG exist because we have loot shower, so casual can get loot quickly, but it take time for hardcore to find perfect loot piece).

I think 2) would be much better solution, I don't think any player would have problem with titanforge stoping at heroic raid difficulty and it could help better tune mythic raids and give raiders some sense of reward for clearing content.

[Raelbo]

Except you're kinda wrong. The original design goal for the heroic content (now renamed Mythic since WoD) was for the players who put above average effort into the game.

I am not wrong because the game evolved since the design of the original heroic content. Sure, it may have started as content tuned for "above average" players, because at time the gap between average players and the best players wasn't that big. But player competition has resulted in a continuous process of raising the bar.

The escalation of content difficulty (and the effort required to beat it) is in direct response to players putting in more and more effort to the competition in order to try and beat each other.

The tuning of Mythic raids has nothing to do with where the game designers think the top end players should be, it's based on where those players actually are. If all the mythic raiders of the world agreed tomorrow to limit their time investment towards progression to say, a paltry 20 hours a week, then the tuning of Mythic content would soon de-escalate to a level manageable with that kind of time investment. But this will never happen because there will always be a guild willing to go over that time limit in order to get ahead in the race, which means that if you want to win, you have to be prepared to work harder than anyone else out there.

You can blame the game designers all you like but it remains the playerbase, and the obsession of winning at all costs that is responsible for the escalation of top end content. You guys aren't competing against the Blizzard game designers, you're competing against each other, which means that ultimately it doesn't matter what systems Blizzard has in place, you will find a way to put in more effort to leverage an advantage.

If you don't like putting in that kind of effort, the solution is simple. Swallow your misplaced sense of pride and recognise that you are no longer the top player in this game, and start playing the game the way you enjoy it instead of playing it to beat everyone else in the world.

[Jyggalag]

i am actually in a 99 5 days raiding guild ! but Nice try.

5 days a week to make top 100 and you honestly think you're an authority on the subject? Are you serious right now?

Ok well since I've been in a 3 day/week top 35 guild that must make my take on it > yours. Now take your head out of your ass for one second and try to imagine how any guild who raids 2 or 3 nights a week would be able to compete for a top 100 spot with the insane amount of grind in this expansion (WITHOUT LOGGING IN ON OFF DAYS)

[Deleted]

Like... c'mon I raid twice a week, my guild is 7/10 Heroic NH. I killed gul'dan heroic in a PuG and I am 898 equipped. You don't need to try hard to feel satisfied with the game.

just sayin..