Is Blizzard actively trying to kill the raiding scene?

[adamzz]

Devilsaur Shock-Batton would like a word with you. (trinkets in general, rolling for UAC in the relinquished casino is another outlier)

That's how it is currently, nothing points to it being the same in BfA. Also, one item doesn't make your whole character stronger. A few pieces of your gear won't be able to titanforge, so the only way to get them at high ilvl is to do mythic raids.

[Aoyi]

You know, I love raiding. I only raid 2 days a week regularly now, but I still do it every week. This expansion, though, has me hating my tier bonuses more than ever before. Every week, I get something in my weekly chest that's a 935, 945, etc. I get excited for a minute until I sim it. Nope. My tier bonus is still 1.1% better. Guess I'm still wearing that 915 tier piece because the 930 hasn't dropped for me while this shiny 945 sits in my bags. Its the same every week it seems.

I'm okay with removing tier bonus for the reason I mentioned above, but I don't ever want them to stop making sets. I like collecting new transmogs in raid. I know the set pieces aren't always BiS for stats, but I can still collect the look. I don't ever want another tier 9 where they simply make 1 set for each armor type and call it a day. If they do that, I'll be pissed. I'll probably still raid because I like the challenges, but I'll be annoyed if my shaman looks like a hunter because the artists got lazy.

[Deleted]

that will never happen, but i must say it would be funny

no, it would be rather stupid to design a system that is only used by 2% or less of the player base....

[Deleted]

You know, I love raiding. I only raid 2 days a week regularly now, but I still do it every week. This expansion, though, has me hating my tier bonuses more than ever before. Every week, I get something in my weekly chest that's a 935, 945, etc. I get excited for a minute until I sim it. Nope. My tier bonus is still 1.1% better. Guess I'm still wearing that 915 tier piece because the 930 hasn't dropped for me while this shiny 945 sits in my bags. Its the same every week it seems.

I'm okay with removing tier bonus for the reason I mentioned above, but I don't ever want them to stop making sets. I like collecting new transmogs in raid. I know the set pieces aren't always BiS for stats, but I can still collect the look. I don't ever want another tier 9 where they simply make 1 set for each armor type and call it a day. If they do that, I'll be pissed. I'll probably still raid because I like the challenges, but I'll be annoyed if my shaman looks like a hunter because the artists got lazy.

the "themed style of gear" what Ion talked about probably will be in the range of WOD LFR gear. and all the good looking gear (mythic / unique characters style) will drop in the blizzard store for just 20 bucks a set.

(i hope this will not me the case... but thats usually how things get catered to people.. "dont worry it will be okay" "oh did we forget to mention that?" just look at Battlefront2: "ok guys we reduced to cost of the character to 15k" ... and every newssite that wrote about BF2 was announcing "they changed it!" and a few ours later it gets clear thatthey forgot to mention that they also reduced the ammount of credits you earn trough playing so the only thing they did was lowering the number not the actual complains. and i checked and only a few sites where writing an update for the article or a new article to point it out.)

5man content or even 3man content is way more attractive for blizzard. people can spend hours farming m+ and islands while there is a big steppingstone for rading or even worse in mythic raiding. be geared, be avivable, apply to guilds socialize with unknown people etc instead of jumping in with a few of your friends and grind some pvp, m+ or islands which is way faster to setup and has way more uptime potential (blizzard cares mostly about MAUs now and comparing active people in raids to m+ will show them that they maybe should move away from raiding.)
i wouldnt be surprised if stroycontent will be slowly moved into the 5man content.

[Talvindius]

What a fun tinfoil helmet thread, same as that other one where "Mythic plus killed the raiding scene."

1. There's 0 merit to these threads, it's all incredulous speculation with no proof of anything, just rambling and minge relating to how Blizzard is changing something instead of keeping everything the same for every expac, something they say they actively don't do.

2. Raiding is the main endgame content. It's the culmination of story arcs within WoW and serves to drive story above anything else. There would be no feasible reason to kill the raiding scene and even though they may have made it harder in Legion with the "mandatory" AP grind they certainly didn't prevent world 1st guilds from downing bosses in a week or less.

3. Changing tier sets is GOOD. Read what Watcher said in the interview where it was announced.

"There's more customization we want to express through the new Azerite system. I think class sets have changed a lot over a years of World of Warcraft. Back in the day, these 8 piece sets you would put together over the course of 6 to 8 months raiding a zone, where now the smaller sets and so many more sources of gear, it's very common to get 2 or 4 pieces at the start of a tier and it actually kind of locks down those character slots, it limits your choices. It feels like more of a drawback than a strength at this point."

If you still don't get why it's happening you're just being dumb. This is a GOOD thing.

[Deleted]

What a fun tinfoil helmet thread, same as that other one where "Mythic plus killed the raiding scene."

1. There's 0 merit to these threads, it's all incredulous speculation with no proof of anything, just rambling and minge relating to how Blizzard is changing something instead of keeping everything the same for every expac, something they say they actively don't do.

2. Raiding is the main endgame content. It's the culmination of story arcs within WoW and serves to drive story above anything else. There would be no feasible reason to kill the raiding scene and even though they may have made it harder in Legion with the "mandatory" AP grind they certainly didn't prevent world 1st guilds from downing bosses in a week or less.

3. Changing tier sets is GOOD. Read what Watcher said in the interview where it was announced.

"There's more customization we want to express through the new Azerite system. I think class sets have changed a lot over a years of World of Warcraft. Back in the day, these 8 piece sets you would put together over the course of 6 to 8 months raiding a zone, where now the smaller sets and so many more sources of gear, it's very common to get 2 or 4 pieces at the start of a tier and it actually kind of locks down those character slots, it limits your choices. It feels like more of a drawback than a strength at this point."

If you still don't get why it's happening you're just being dumb. This is a GOOD thing.

1. just a coincidence that so many hardcore guilds stopped rading in legion. (the addon that is so good as everyone says).
2. story can easily be moved into 5man content (what i think will happend over time now).
3. yeah so locking down 3 slots now with the same balance issues is somehow better.. not to mention that they probably will move all the good transmogs into the blizzardshop now because its just cosmetics. and the theme of the raids and dungeons will drop WOD LFR style gear.

[Trapped]

There is 10man raiding. It's called normal and heroic. Heroic is on par with most 10man encounters that were available. Sure, there were some outliers, but in general, 10mans were a joke compared to today's mythic.

Please, please, please, don't call today's normal and heroic 10-man raiding. Its 10-30 man flex, and in most cases, you're gimping yourself if you only bring 10 people. Also, I'm not talking about the difficulty of Mythic vs the old 10-man. I just don't enjoy being in the larger group sizes, but to each their own.

[Talvindius]

1. just a coincidence that so many hardcore guilds stopped rading in legion. (the addon that is so good as everyone says).
2. story can easily be moved into 5man content (what i think will happend over time now).
3. yeah so locking down 3 slots now with the same balance issues is somehow better.. not to mention that they probably will move all the good transmogs into the blizzardshop now because its just cosmetics. and the theme of the raids and dungeons will drop WOD LFR style gear.

The business of top end raiding guilds is beyond most of us. It always has been extremely stressful and knowing that many of those guild quit isn't a shocker. Legion had a ton of power gating with AP and AK to keep casuals and hardcore players closer, people who defied the design philosophy were additionally stressed with extra grinding. Boo hoo, that's their choice and they felt the burn of it.

The rest of your post is pointless speculation. "They'll move transmogs to the blizzard shop." Nice analysis bruh LOL.

[Daffan]

Don't worry in BFA you will be able to get Mythic raid level gear from world quests.

[Steelcryo]

A lot of people don’t enjoy progression raiding for gear so they’re just offering other ways to play. Now the main arguement against this is people thinking the best gear should only be awarded to Mythic level raiders which is bullshit. Anyone should be able to get the best gear playing the way they enjoy. It also gives people who don’t enjoy progress raiding all the time the chance to help out. For example my guild has its own Mythic raid team as many gulds so but there are occasions where people can’t attend. So having geared people who can help fill spots once in a while is really useful.

Overall the more fun ways there are to play that give enjoyable rewards the better it’ll be for the health of the game. Why limit rewards to content only a fraction of your player base enjoys? The only people that see this as bad are people who only care about their epeen being better than everyone else’s tbh

[Deleted]

The business of top end raiding guilds is beyond most of us. It always has been extremely stressful and knowing that many of those guild quit isn't a shocker. Legion had a ton of power gating with AP and AK to keep casuals and hardcore players closer, people who defied the design philosophy were additionally stressed with extra grinding. Boo hoo, that's their choice and they felt the burn of it.

The rest of your post is pointless speculation. "They'll move transmogs to the blizzard shop." Nice analysis bruh LOL.

chances are slim as long as they keep the monthly sub so actually transmog looking like something could still be endgame reward. but moving cosmetic items to the shop or lootboxes and making the game more accessible (free2play or buy2play)... is still not of the table.

its not pointless speculation its possible designdecisions. i never said that these things are a fact. and it seems like you dont understand the meaning of MAUs and how these metrics affect the gaming industry.

[Socialhealer]

Plot twist - the 3 slots affected by Heart of Azeroth will drop only from Raid instances

yeh no helms/shoulders/chests except in raids, seems legit.

[Deleted]

Have you seen the competition out there? So many high quality games to play and time is limited. WoW does not just compete with other MMO's anymore but with all RPG games and they need to do something to keep the cash flow coming. So they decided to adapt towards the biggest market out there and that is the casual gamers market. The casual gamer games for about 31 minute sessions. So they need to make it worthwhile for them to log on in WoW and more importantly pay for a sub.

What kills this market is everytime they log in to do their thing they are miles behind people who play the game religiously and that demotivates them from playing. So Blizzard is implementing ways to close the gap between the casual and the hardcore gamer. This includes the tier sets which are only obtainable through putting in loads of time, yes even in LFR where you end up spending ~1 hour (including Q-time) on clearing a 3 boss wing.

I know what you are thinking "but this might have a negative effect on the Hardcore players", "if the reward is not good enough no one is going to want to raid". This might be true but even so the size of the Hardcore market is nothing compared to the size of the casual market. There will be rewards unique to raiding, but these will probably just be cosmetics/achievements, also a base iLevel that is higher but that really means nothing with the Titanforged system.

NOTE: Casual refers to a player who spends ~31 minutes sessions on playing a game, Hardcore refers to players who spend 80+ minute sessions on a game.

[Fabinas]

This shitty titanforging up till max ilvl from every source has caused this problem, by allowing up to 3 tier set bonuses to be almost mandatory for raiding. 2x 1tier plus 4x 1 tier set.
And instead of getting rid of their frigging failed choice, they expand even more on it, by disabling tier set bonuses, a gameplay mechanic that has existed since Vanilla.

Ion and his shitbag team want to "evolve" WoW to something different. Something that will alienate the raid community in favor of the casual roulette addicted gamers.

Legion has destroyed WoW. No wonder people will return to classic. If it stays like that.

[Talvindius]

Legion has destroyed WoW. No wonder people will return to classic.

From October 4th 2017.

"Currently, [our subscriber number] is around 10.1 million. You know, it’s difficult to say what the future will bring. We have an internal competitor, Overwatch, but it’s possible it’ll get even higher than 12 million. There are plenty of potential takers and there are over 100 million World of Warcraft accounts." -Tom Chilton


Yep, sure is dead. Glad you let us know otherwise I and 10million other ppl would waste our time playing this dead game.

[Veldoranz]

From October 4th 2017.

"Currently, [our subscriber number] is around 10.1 million. You know, it’s difficult to say what the future will bring. We have an internal competitor, Overwatch, but it’s possible it’ll get even higher than 12 million. There are plenty of potential takers and there are over 100 million World of Warcraft accounts." -Tom Chilton


Yep, sure is dead. Glad you let us know otherwise I and 10million other ppl would waste our time playing this dead game.

Pretty sure Blizzard came out and said that wasn't true. Also pretty sure this was from like a year ago.

[Alvito]

just a different way of enjoying the game.

why does raiding have to be the only way to progress ur char?

It doesn't have to be the only. Due to the time invested and often the difficulty gap between it and other content it should provide better things. Look at the current state of the game you can fail your way to victory in a weekly mythic 10 and get at worst a 930 item that has a higher then normal chance to titanforge. Meanwhile some of the heroic ToS and probably all of the mythic ToS take much more effort and give you worse gear in most cases.

[Pull My Finger]

Yeah, sure, they're actively trying to kill raiding. For fuck's sake.

But anyways, raiding sucks and is the least interesting part of the game. It's only right that other areas are getting the attention they deserve.

[Donald Hellscream]

No, I could elaborate but it is hardly necessary since Blizzard is obviously not trying to kill raiding.

[Mamut]

I like tier bonusses but theres one BIG problem with them in current form, its hard to upgrade gear due locked slots. I have so many nontier pieces in my bag that dispaly 15-30% upgrade after simming and yet I cant use them because they would break my set and lower my dps. And I cant really use another slot for tier because other slot is occupied by BiS legendary (shoulders).

So maybe decision to move "set bonusses" to the new azerite system is not that bad idea?