There is no way Blizzard will give up AP as a reward

[Zoldor]

This is the difference between player thought and designer thought. The system might stick around, I'm willing to bet in some form, but I doubt we keep these exact weapons going forward. Who knows, but all this really is, is the paragon leveling system come to life they talked about in Cata (path of the Titans).

The system itself could easily show up again in another way. Even a true Paragon leveling system, where we find titan power and to unlock more we have to grind some kind of AP system, go to our little spot and put points in. We could end up with another piece of gear system. Or we could even end up with all new weapons. It wouldn't be hard to keep this system as it is just a leveling system outside the basic leveling structure.

I see the weapons going away so that they can rebalance or make class changes going forward. The Weapons either lock them in, or you have to re-level there are a various issues with carrying the weapons over into the next expansion that are easily solved by simply removing them and restarting us on a new paragon path.

[darkwarrior42]

I think Blizzard is having trouble differentiating "You have no choice but to do this" and "Here are your limited options, pick some to do" with "Players really enjoyed this!"

Part of this is a community problem though. WoW players in particular seem very prone to considering content either mandatory or worthless, with very little room for anything between the two.

[Sting]

AP system can go fuck itself. Take away AP, what's left of Legion? It's WoD levels of content that only feel relevant because of the AP grind.

[Alvito]

Whatever way they go I hope they don't confuse people grinding AP as fun content. Much like the Legion assaults many do them only because of the reward not because it is super fun. Don't get me wrong grinding AP isn't much different then valor or badges in the past it just becomes too much at some point and is prohibitive of running alts and way worse for new players.

[kaintk]

i dont have anything about the ap , the big mistake of legion was that hw was not alt friendly at all, draenor was perfect, leveling to 100, a few day of farming to have decent stuff and you could go to another alt, in legion you have to spend weeks to be 'decent' and even afer that, you feel you have to farm and farm again , wi th the garnison thing and ap farming, i really hope that if ap dont die in the next expansion, it will be more friendly to your alt..

[Thetruth1400]

Part of this is a community problem though. WoW players in particular seem very prone to considering content either mandatory or worthless, with very little room for anything between the two.

I'll agree with that, but when you put something like AP as a reward in literally everything; world quests, dungeons, raids, class hall tables, etc. and then go "Okay, you need 900 trillion AP to max your weapon, have fun!" that isn't really debatable as something mandatory. It literally is mandatory to progress, no matter what you're doing to get it.

That aside, sure, when you reach AK 50 you're going to be earning 55,200,100% over none, but it's still a long, mandatory trudge that we have to do to advance our weapons, unlike expansions past where you just did the content you felt like and could progress based on the gear maxes of the areas you choose to do.

[emilylorange]

Every expansion had rep.

Cata had Valor and Justice Points. They even brought them back for WoD. So every expansion had grinding.

Eh no, not really. At all. But you're getting into semantics.

"Grind" implies an undesirable activity done with no other purpose than to obtain, for example, a reputation.

IE running shit for Coilfang armaments or marks of sargeras long after any other reward from BC dungeons are relevant to you because you fell just short of what you need for your key.

LK had rep, as did Cata, but none of the activities required to get it weren't rewarding in other ways.

You needed Sons of Hodir for your shoulder enchant but you also got zone lore and sweet sweet gold for the effort. Also tabbards meant for most reps you were running useful dungeons while getting rep as an afterthought for helm enchants (or do I have those reversed IT WAS 2010 OK)

You needed Earthen Ring for badge gear but you also got badges and decently rewarding dungeon drops while working towards it.

[Deleted]

OP why don't you do a toxx clause? If you're so certain we're getting artifact weapons next expansion I'll ask for my account to be permabanned if it is. If we don't get it then you can get your account permabanned?

Put your money where your mouth is if you're going to talk shit whilst ignoring the evidence otherwise it's just weak trolling.

Seeing as you've not responded you clearly don't have any confidence in what you're saying are are spouting shit, otherwise you've missed an oppertunity to permaban me.

Troll detected. Troll noted.

[Nuba]

they're idiots, they'll just go ahead and copypasta diablo 3 paragon system straight into the next xpac

[darkwarrior42]

I'll agree with that, but when you put something like AP as a reward in literally everything; world quests, dungeons, raids, class hall tables, etc. and then go "Okay, you need 900 trillion AP to max your weapon, have fun!" that isn't really debatable as something mandatory. It literally is mandatory to progress, no matter what you're doing to get it.

That aside, sure, when you reach AK 50 you're going to be earning 55,200,100% over none, but it's still a long, mandatory trudge that we have to do to advance our weapons, unlike expansions past where you just did the content you felt like and could progress based on the gear maxes of the areas you choose to do.

True, AP is probably a poor example of that in it's current form. I think the problem would be, if you scale back where you get AP and keep the traits in their current form, everyone would feel compelled to go after AP. If you made the traits weak enough that people didn't feel compelled to go after AP, then I don't think all that many people would care about it at all.

I don't think AP is necessarily a bad idea in structure, but as an endless grind I dislike it, and AK was terrible.

[Flurryfang]

Hmm the succes of the artifact in Legion will proberly lead to the making of a system in the expansion after Legion, which mirrors the artfiact system...

They have found their solution to one of their big problems and with more tuning and more time, they can proberly make it even better then it is now. As OP have said, i would not be surprised if we got something like the artifact in the next expansion, so that the AP system can be carried over.... I would actually be surprised if they did not do this.

[Firann]

They could use AP the same way Everquest uses alternate advancement pounts. Other MMOs have similar max level grinding stuff.

The issue is how do you treat it so that you dont HAVE to have specific AA points or you are useless. Rangers for example in EQ were REQUIRED to have at least EQ and AM (endless quiver and something else i cant remeber) or they couldn't raid.

[Deleted]

You cant trust anything these assholes say.

Everyone at blizzard especially the Q&A guys lie their asses off SO hard.

[Wildpantz]

The max lvl progression that ap gives will stay for next exspa for sure. The artifacts is gonna get depleted by killing or inprision sargeras then we get a new one. NO WAY they want to deal with titan/war forged melee weapons.

[Softbottom]

I don't mind AP; I find AK retarded though. By raising the value of artifact traits you are compensating the gap by giving players AK to make the gap smaller. The amount of AP needed should just have a very small difference from one to the next and not have AK to begin with. I like the idea of empowering a weapon with AP but AK just seemed unnecessary.

[KrotosTheTank]

Things to consider though. AP has been widely and wildly unpopular. Especially in 7.2 when they moved the goal posts.

Prove it. I'd postulate that only those who don't understand math think it's "especially bad" in 7.2.

Did you know that it takes nearly 3x your lifetime AP in a weapon to get another 4 traits? Only 4! Think about that when a player who just plays what he wants to and that's it, no stress, is at 60 traits and a try hard grinder who loves to push AP is sitting at...say.. 68, 9x the AP. The difference between 68 and 60 for most classes is measurable but not game changing, hell someone did a sim for Fury warr atm and those 8 traits would result in .8% more dps. WOW. Grind if you like to of course, but don't act like it's the same as Pre 7.2 when just getting one more trait (a 5% cost increase vs the 30% now) gave more than that .8%.

Did you also know that unless base AP rewards grow or they add AK beyond 50 that it's literally impossible to get all 101 traits? You'd likely die of natural causes before you could grind it. There's going to be a natural compression from the lowest to highest of players in the few weeks/months following the acquisition of AK50, because without the boost, the DR on AP gained gets steep, FAST.

Just treat trait 52 as the new 54 (pre 7.2) and leave it at that. You'd have to be in a coma to not hit 52, assuming you're current on AK, before 7.2.5 when Tomb releases. At soonest people expect ToS to come out in over 30 days, that's 6 more AK. That 6 more AK means you're getting AP 483% faster than you are today. That means that if you take the effort it took you to get your most recent trait, and spread that over the next 5 days, you'd STILL get 6 more traits before ToS.

People need to stop blowing AP and traits out of the water, we. are. not. in. the. same. system. as. pre 7.2. If your guild is mandating ridiculous traits (58-60+) then they have poor leadership and you should leave, because the gain isn't worth killing your guild over, not even remotely close, the math just isn't there for it.

I'll agree with that, but when you put something like AP as a reward in literally everything; world quests, dungeons, raids, class hall tables, etc. and then go "Okay, you need 900 trillion AP to max your weapon, have fun!" that isn't really debatable as something mandatory. It literally is mandatory to progress, no matter what you're doing to get it.

That aside, sure, when you reach AK 50 you're going to be earning 55,200,100% over none, but it's still a long, mandatory trudge that we have to do to advance our weapons, unlike expansions past where you just did the content you felt like and could progress based on the gear maxes of the areas you choose to do.

Wrong, see above. It is not "literally mandatory to progress". If it was then no one would be progressing, as no one will be able to hit the cap without more AK (beyond 50), not even those at the top of the AP ladder atm.

Stop saying mandatory, stop thinking the paragon points are better than they are. Missing a prepot will make a larger difference than an extra few points in the paragon trait. Better gear will WAY outscale any of those traits, particularly ideal Legendaries (which drop more frequently now). Don't pretend like those couple points will outweigh skill. Exorsus killed Gul'dan with average ilvl of just under 905 and that was prior to 7.2 where we all saw a huge boost in output and base stats. Guild's that haven't yet killed him just need to learn the fights or find ways to improve themselves as players (not saying that in a disparaging way). Getting an extra .5% dps from SEVERAL more paragon traits isn't going to win it for them; everything beyond 52 is icing, that's it and in some cases 52 itself is even a let down, and let's not forget all the filler points you put in to get to 52 that we only placed because we had nothing else.

It's. Not. Mandatory.

[xuros]

They haven't.

They have. Ion said that they will make the removal of the Artifacts make sense when they do.

[Saverem]

No matter what they've said, and they haven't even clearly said anywhere that artifact weapons aren't gonna carry over into the next expansion, but even if they had, AP has become too much of a universal reward for them to give it up. It's something they've wanted to do for years. Whatever content you wanna do at max level - dungeons, raids, PvP, quests - you can do it, and get a reward that helps you progress your character over the course of the whole expansion. There is no way they are just gonna let go of that.

I'm gonna copy my other post in here for anyone trying to lecture me on Blizzard having outruled artifact weapons for the next expansion.

I don't mind this. I actually like AP. They just need to balance it so that it's more alt friendly and I'll happily embrace it in the following expansions.

[Deleted]

Eh no, not really. At all. But you're getting into semantics.

"Grind" implies an undesirable activity done with no other purpose than to obtain, for example, a reputation.

Yeah, I know. Every expansion had that.

Do you think everybody liked to do the Molten Front?

Do you think everybody liked to grind rep in Cataclysm or WoD?

Do you think everybody liked to do Ashran?

To state that Cataclysm and WoD had no grinding is outright ridiculous.

- - - Updated - - -

They have. Ion said that they will make the removal of the Artifacts make sense when they do.

Source for that?

[Elbob]

I overall like the AP system. It allows players to log on when they want for as long as they want and be able to progress their characters. I say this as a 10/10m player in a 3night guild that works a full-time job. I also play other games not just wow... You are almost never "behind" in the ap system. All you need to do is keep AK rolling (which can be done on your phone in 2minutes once every 10 days.) My main is currently AL 52 and I have an alt at 47 that I barely play (as in maybe do WQ's on it twice a week, sometimes do invasions, 0-5M+'s a week and if I'm lucky a normal or heroic NH). My alt is also within 10ilvls of my main despite never stepping foot in a mythic raid. This is the CLOSEST alt I have had to my main, powerlevel wise, EVER especially with how little I need to commit to playing it.

The ap system gives you what you take from it. Spending more time is more rewarding but even super casual play keeps you a within a few points of hardcore players because of AK scaling. I have guildies that barely/don't work that only have earned 1-2 traits on me (wooo 400 more main stat from concordance), and they have dozens more hours on this patch alone then me doing nothing but grinding ap. Feeling like you "need" to clear all your WQ everyday to be efficient is a self control problem. This is the first expansion where your rewards and progression are truly a ratio of Skill, Effort and Time regardless of your play-style. There is even HEAVY DR's on time because of AK slowing the growth of hardcore players that have lots of time to throw at the game. (this of course is discounting the titanforge system which I loathe, random upgrades are fine but there should be a ceiling on such a system where you can get a 925 item from a heroic dungeon and effectively spit in the face of every person trying to farm that item on a higher difficulty)

You know what system feels awful. The raid log system... when starting in week 2 of WoD I was already logging on for raid then logging off cause I had NOTHING else to progress my character with. I love being able to log in on a non-raid night and actually progress my chars strength.

TLDR: I like the ap system, its easy to keep alts within a reasonable power level of main and gives ways to strengthen your character no matter when you log on.