"But it's optional!"

[Lucetia]

You're not refuting that it's a boring ass grind, you're affirming that it's a boring ass grind. Yes, it's boring, but it's optional.

Or you know people are telling you that "It's optional". Just because people say that doesn't mean there's any hidden meaning. It's exactly what they say. Stop trying to force your view into it.

Some people see some things as perfect while you may see it boring. Heads up, not everyone will share your point of view so stop trying to force yours into other's when they tell you something.

Games should be fun. It's really not hard to figure out. A video game being boring is a flaw, not a feature. It would be great if people didn't pretend otherwise.

Just because you find something boring doesn't mean I can't find it fun. Just because I find something fun doesn't mean other's can find it boring. I could find it fun sitting there spamming every single World Quest every day and you might find it boring. Does that make your opinion on it boring more valid than mine?

[StationaryHawk]

I hope you understand that you're not going to convince anyone otherwise by making a thread strictly to rant about it.

[Deleted]

Or you know people are telling you that "It's optional". Just because people say that doesn't mean there's any hidden meaning. It's exactly what they say. Stop trying to force your view into it.

Some people see some things as perfect while you may see it boring. Heads up, not everyone will share your point of view so stop trying to force yours into other's when they tell you something.



Just because you find something boring doesn't mean I can't find it fun. Just because I find something fun doesn't mean other's can find it boring. I could find it fun sitting there spamming every single World Quest every day and you might find it boring. Does that make your opinion on it boring more valid than mine?

Everything you are saying is true. What some find boring others find fun.
But we are avoiding the issue at hand.
People spaming in threads: "but is optional, lolz"
As if it being optional disregards any other opinion of the matter. Ignoring things like sometimes it's the optimal route to take
...but is optional...but is optimal...but is optional...but is optimal...
Entire threads go around this.

[Magistrate]

Gods. I am so tired of seeing this bandied about as if it were the end-all be-all of counter arguments.

It's not a counter argument. It's an affirmative defense. If you're on trial for murder and you say, "Yes, I killed them but here's my reason," that's an affirmative defense. You're admitting to the charges but saying it's acceptable because of something. In WoW and other MMOs, "it's optional" is an affirmative defense.

"This grind is so boring!"

"It's optional!"

You're not refuting that it's a boring ass grind, you're affirming that it's a boring ass grind. Yes, it's boring, but it's optional.

Literally everything in the game is optional. The problem is there's different levels of optional. Leveling is optional, but it's the only way to unlock content. Artifacts are enitrely optional, but they're also one of the primary focus points of the entire Legion expansion. You don't have to use them. But they're not as optional as say a vanity mount that takes months to grind out.

"It's optional" is a really dumb, meaningless, and hollow thing to say.

Pointing out that something in a video game is boring or takes too long is a perfectly valid criticism. Games should be fun. It's really not hard to figure out. A video game being boring is a flaw, not a feature. It would be great if people didn't pretend otherwise.

Could you give some concrete examples so we can look at this not in the abstract? I don't think broad answers work well.

I think a flip side of this issue, too. The same group that complains a facet of the game is grindy and doesn't like the "it's optional" response don't also accept the reality that there are many people who like many of these kinds of things, or find a different kind of enjoyment out of them, so that whole aspect gets cut out:

1. I don't like x feature of this MMO, therefore it's grindy and I don't want to do it.
2. Then don't do it, it's optional.
3. You can't say that like it invalidates all criticism. It's obviously terrible and no one likes it.
4. I like it.
5. That doesn't count.

- - - Updated - - -

And no expansion has required as much "not raiding" in order to raid optimally as Legion. The issue isn't that there's some stuff you have to do outside of raiding, it's that the amount is extremely overwhelming(and it's very repetitive and easy)

I'm not sure I've experienced the same as you. I haven't by any means been pushing AP grind or anything, and I've had no problem getting into heroic raids for each tier so far.

[Tradu]

What? You had to gear up and get AP, the rest was a line of quests that were easy mode. You didn't have to do much else. Wasn't really much work.

In previous content mostly, you had to top up on food, potions, flasks, reagents, and soulshards for some.

Felt like more work than just having to chase AP which has become easy-mode and calculated to only need to go to lvl 75.

Yeah, "only" gear up(including legendaries) and get AP. In addition to all the stuff from post-TBC expansions. And again, yes, now AP is "fine", for most of the expansion it was not.

[SirBeef]

So what you're saying is you've never done any of the hard content in the game, where stuff like artifact traits and legendaries do make a difference.

7/11 Mythic currently, I log on pretty much only for raid nights outside of initial leveling for new expansion content. Haven't run a mythic dungeon in over three months. Most of my raid team logs on only for raid nights and maybe a night or two more during the week. Our philosophy is that WoW is just a game, we are here for fun. Nothing is required other than showing up ready and prepared for raid by knowing the fights. You don't need to play daily to enjoy the game and participate in hard content.

[Tradu]

Legion has given you less stuff to prepare than in the past.

In no universe is that true when all the stuff from previous expansions is still there with more added on top.

[Armourboy]

It's perfectly valid in some cases.

Like people crying about flying mounts but using them anyway.

When were artifacts claimed to be optional? They are a key feature of Legion.

Aside from that, I've got nothing to say. Actually, I'm not fully sure what your point is. Do you mean to say something needs to be changed because you don't like it?

Also, Isn't 'boring' subjective?

Do you mean you just want everything handed to you without doing anything?

I think his point is is that it's complete BS that Races are being locked behind not only max level characters, but then also a Rep grind on top of that just to be able to play the original Race you wanted to play to begin with.

Generally speaking, I have zero issues with Rep grinds, they gotta put something in the game for people to kill time on otherwise you would never log in ( see WoD). However, when it comes to Races, you know something you choose from the very start ( kind of feel this way about hero classes too ), it is kind of BS to basically tell someone that they need to play a pretty decent chunk of the game before they even have the option to play it.

Now if WoW was a F2P game where they use micro transactions and you could purchase it and this was a free way to get it, aight you know what, not sure I can sympathize much. You know what you are getting into with those things. But with WoW it's all paid up front ( content wise anyways) so forcing you to do this kind of crap just to play the actual character you want to play is rather...well it's a garbage way to get people to stay subbed while there is a lull in content at the end of the expansion is what it is.

Look AP, Legendaries, all that crap, you knew what you signed up for if you are a hardcore raider, you will get zero sympathy from me on that front. You know going in you are going to be forced to do some god awful mess that most players wouldn't even consider doing to begin with. However, something like a new Race could get people to come back and play, or maybe a new player thinks one of the new elves are cool and finally decides to jump on board. Now they have no choice but to essentially play the game on a character they don't want just to get to one they do want, and that's not even optional, there is no other way to get it.

So TLDR: Specific Races are technically optional, but should you be forced to play a Race you are not interested in just to grind and unlock the actual Race you wanted to play when you logged on to make a character? Personally, its a bad place for " optional ".

[Hctaz]

Since this has ALWAYS been the case for optimal raiding, since Vanilla... you knew going in that “raiding” would require a lot of “not raiding”... or if you started in Vanilla, youve known for 13 years or so, and had many opportunities to walk away.

Except it hasn't. To get into raids prior to Wrath, you needed to attune yourself to them. This was the "big grind", but once it was done then it was DONE. It would take a month at most to get the dungeon attunements to then get the raid attunements and then you were done. The attunement quests that followed the initial release of both TBC and Vanilla were either much shorter/easier, or were an entire server wide effort so that nobody could go inside of the raid until everybody on the server could.

What else was there? Gold for consumables? Yeah so? Farming for gold was a very non-linear situation unlike the grinds in Legion. You could always farm the mats for whatever consumables you needed by hand, or you could trade your way to gold and then simply buy the consumables required. Fishing, mining, or just mobbing for rare loot were all options. It started to be more common from Wrath and onwards, but guilds who were serious about raiding would generally supply the raiders with whatever consumables they deemed necessary.

It also generally required significantly less time to be "optimal" than it did now, especially when you consider farm bosses. A guild who is serious about raiding and who has a limited amount of gold would not waste their food, pots, and flasks on bosses that no longer needed them. There were plenty of bosses who didn't require you to use consumables to succeed, and guilds wouldn't waste their money on these bosses after they've become farmable. The only time consuming aspects to raiding were acquiring very specific resistance gear, but that isn't nearly as bad. You generally wanted to farm dungeons and raids for gear anyway just like today. Getting a new piece of gear is exciting. Getting a 5 item level higher version of the same gear you've been getting since day 1 in Legion is significantly less exciting. Farming invisible currency that you pop into your weapon that then gives you a .1% damage boost is not exciting at all.

The point is that the grind was NOT always in the game for raiders. From Wrath until now, you could very feasibly log into the game solely to raid and then leave the game alone if you wanted to. That made it infinitely more fun. All of the content outside of raiding became optional to you, and you could pick and choose whatever you liked to suit your needs without being worried that you would lose you raid spot.

[Lochton]

Took me about 2 days to get to 930 ilvl lol, however I will say if you despise dailies like I do it's like ripping your fingernails out with a rusted knife.

That is true but others take them blazing, either connected with something they need to do anyways. Besiddes, WQ's has made it much easier to manage than having to search out hubs. And yeah, gearing now is a joke.

- - - Updated - - -

In no universe is that true when all the stuff from previous expansions is still there with more added on top.

What? By now you have an alchemist or most people does. Materials are easy as hell to get. If you don't, it is cheap as hell on AH. Gold is easy to come by.
Food is easier to make, takes less materials and you get more food out of it the better you get.

I can prepare for a whole month of raiding (That is 12-15 nights of 3-4 hours) in an hour or two. Couldn't do that back then. It is sadly true, as things has been streamlined. The ranking of potions, flasks and food does that you can obtain more for less.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, "only" gear up(including legendaries) and get AP. In addition to all the stuff from post-TBC expansions. And again, yes, now AP is "fine", for most of the expansion it was not.

Previous statement in the comment should be taken into this. You are having it much easier than before. AP was a standard breeze and that is even easier now.

[Tradu]

What? By now you have an alchemist or most people does. Materials are easy as hell to get. If you don't, it is cheap as hell on AH. Gold is easy to come by.
Food is easier to make, takes less materials and you get more food out of it the better you get.

I can prepare for a whole month of raiding (That is 12-15 nights of 3-4 hours) in an hour or two. Couldn't do that back then. It is sadly true, as things has been streamlined. The ranking of potions, flasks and food does that you can obtain more for less.

And how is any of that different from previous expansions? Consumables have not been a time consuming or expensive issue in the time I've played(post-TBC). Legion is the same in that respect, but has legendaries, AP and M+ gear in addition, which the previous expansions did not.

[Kagthul]

20+ hours a week?
Either you were doing something horribly wrong, or your memory is just shot to shit.
Feel free to start up a character on Nostalrius/Elysium and come back to me on that.

About all we're going to agree on, apparently, is that you're a delusional fool.

You do recall that for a huge part of Vanilla, flasks did not last through death. . Flasks could take 30+ individual mats, that spawned at a vastly reduced rate from what you see now on live and were shared and frequently camped.

Again, clearly you either did something wrong in the past or your memory is just all kinds of wonky.
Vanilla didn't require you to run one instance over 700+ times because otherwise you were doing a lot less damage, aka early Legion MoS AP farm.

Neither did Legion, unless you were in a top .01% raiding guild. Which you aren't. Nor were you inflicting that much extra damage. The math is simple, and doesn't support your bullshit.

Vanilla didn't require you to spam the living shit out of all the instances, raids, even stuff that you vastly outgeared and had no use out of, just to have a small chance to get an item that would vastly increase your damage.

Neither did Legion. Nor did any of the Legendaries "vastly" increase your damage. Hyperbole just makes you look more stupid.

Vanilla didn't have a "base" system that required you to farm resources for a good few months to get all of your followers up and running.

Neither did Legion. Ive got 5 110s. 3 of them i leveled strictly through Invasions after those became available. None of them took more than a week of casual play to get "up and running".

EDIT; something that's even better to consider is that, by just grinding Tyr's about an hour or two a day, you had enough gold to literally buy the mats you required and save you time.
Time which apparently was 20+ hours a week.

... average mob drop was about 10 silver. Average stack of a single mat (of which you often needed 3-5 different mats for pots of flasks, so a 5 stacks of mats for ~10-15 flasks, which you'd eat in an hour of attempts) ... 40-50g. Yeah. You're delusional as shit. We've already well established that.

I want to unlock Highmountain Tauren.

Okay.

Finishing all the quests in Highmountain puts me at about 0/12000 Honored.

Sure. Haven't done the math, but seems about right.

I've got to reach Exalted before they unlock. So I've got to earn 33,000 rep with Highmountain to unlock them. Okay. Fine. But the main way to do that is WQs...that give 75 rep each.

Uhhh... no the fuck it isnt. The main way to do that is rep token Order Hall missions. I see where your problem is - you've got a fundamental failure to understand the most efficient way to get what you want.

Which is 440 Highmountain WQs. At only 5-7 per day...that's about 3 months of solid daily grinding.

There's more like 8-12 a day, + the possibility of invasions (which count towards that rep, and the finish of the Invasion gives 1500). But, sure, if you were doing it by the most inefficient means possible.

And that's for one of the four allied races. You've got to repeat that arduous grind for each one.

Argussian Reach i assume for Lightforged, Nightborne for Nightborne, and.. Army of the Light for Fail (Void) Elves? Okay. Well, my point above still stands (rep token missions); however, for Argussian Reach and Army of the Light... youll get exalted just doing the quests you need to do to fully unlock the Argus World Quests. AND some of those world quests grant 2-4 250 rep tokens.

200% every rep token mission, even for reps you've already got exalted... because the 200% reward is a random 1500 rep token (or 750 for Nightborne, Army, or Reach). In a given week, just with 5 110 toons doing Order Hall rep token missions, my main gets 2-3 of the Paragon boxes PER REP, PER WEEK (they're BoA).

If you have even two characters, youll be exalted with all the reps on both characters in just a week or two.

Before we get into the "BUT I NEEDZ DA ORDER HALL RESOURCES MENG, SO I HAB TO DU WERLD KWESTS WHICH SUCK" - nope.

Just do any Order Hall quest that gives Blood of Sargeras as a reward, and 200% it. You get 12 Bloods. And 1000 OH resources. And then you can turn the Bloods in for OH resources. You never have to go farm WQs for resources. Ever. You dont even need to log in unless you need to exchange Bloods for Resources, you can just use the app.

I play less than 5 hours per week right now. I log in on each toon long enough to do the Greater Invasion boss, the Broken Shore World Boss (if up), the 3-invasion weekly, and the fuel weekly (the fuel weekly is usually completed just by doing the 3 invasions and greater invasion), and then do whichever 3 Emissaries happen to be up - usually. If its a particularly time consuming one (usually because the WQs that day aren't clustered well enough or are the time consuming ones), ill just skip it.

Just doing that, and using the app to send followers on missions, i get enough of the rep tokens that all 5 toons are exalted across the board, and my main (i just send all the rep tokens to him) gets 2-3 of the paragon boxes per rep per week. AND i make enough gold to pay my sub and clear another ~400k a month. And all of my toons are ~940-945 iLevel, and ive never set foot in a raid the entire xpac, except for LFR Gul'dan -once- for the Nightborne mount. Take that back. I did LFR Xavious for Herbalism or Alchemy, once. I barely remember it.

5 hours a week.

And, my artifacts are all close to 75 on all 5 toons as well. Not quite there, but since i literally never run instances, only do about 8-12 WQs a week on each toon, and the occasional AP token OH mission (when not doing gold/blood/rep token missions), that isn't bad. My main is ~74, and my alts are all at 72-73.

Yeah, "they're optional", but so is every race except humans and orcs. You could even argue that most classes are optional. Yet all the other races are freely available and only the two hero classes have gates, one being a level 55 character to unlock dks (which has been removed) and now the dhs which require a level 70 character. But leveling is the bare minimum gameplay. Having races unlock after a months long rep grind that's locked behind a max level toon with friendly rep with four factions is fucking stupid.

I don't know if you were around when Belfs, Draenai, Worgen, Goblins, and Pandaren were released, but damn...those were some fucking grinds to unlock. I mean...oh, wait. No, there wasn't a grind.

That's my specific complaint. But it's a general problem with WoW and other MMOs. Getting to play with the neat and interesting stuff shouldn't require a months long part-time job just to unlock. Yeah, it's a part of the genre, but it's a shitty part of the genre. I like playing WoW, especially the non-grindy bits; but the grinds are getting worse and worse, yet some fans are cheering this on. WTF?

In no other genre will you see fans say anything remotely like: "It's so boring." "I know, isn't it great!" Yet we get that all the time.

It doesn't. An hour of research, tops, would have solved all these issues for you. Path of least resistance and all.

[Lochton]

Yeah, "only" gear up(including legendaries) and get AP. In addition to all the stuff from post-TBC expansions. And again, yes, now AP is "fine", for most of the expansion it was not.

Not experienced legendaries to be a demand until mythic raids. If you have them, it is great but have seen HC raiders without one.

[Tradu]

Previous statement in the comment should be taken into this. You are having it much easier than before. AP was a standard breeze and that is even easier now.

No, it wasn't. It is now and it was during the end of NH. Going into EN, ToV and NH it was not a "breeze".

[sionus]

Gods. I am so tired of seeing this bandied about as if it were the end-all be-all of counter arguments.

It's not a counter argument. It's an affirmative defense. If you're on trial for murder and you say, "Yes, I killed them but here's my reason," that's an affirmative defense. You're admitting to the charges but saying it's acceptable because of something. In WoW and other MMOs, "it's optional" is an affirmative defense.

"This grind is so boring!"

"It's optional!"

You're not refuting that it's a boring ass grind, you're affirming that it's a boring ass grind. Yes, it's boring, but it's optional.

Literally everything in the game is optional. The problem is there's different levels of optional. Leveling is optional, but it's the only way to unlock content. Artifacts are enitrely optional, but they're also one of the primary focus points of the entire Legion expansion. You don't have to use them. But they're not as optional as say a vanity mount that takes months to grind out.

"It's optional" is a really dumb, meaningless, and hollow thing to say.

Pointing out that something in a video game is boring or takes too long is a perfectly valid criticism. Games should be fun. It's really not hard to figure out. A video game being boring is a flaw, not a feature. It would be great if people didn't pretend otherwise.

You should stop trying to make analogies, because this one is ridiculously bad. Ignoring that part of your complaint, the rest is equally as atrocious. No game is a good fit for everyone. Diablo 3 and others like it for example are endless grinds of the same content, particularly in the end-game. Some people love it, some people absolutely hate it. If you just want to level up once and are happy with that, then the rest of the experience is completely optional. It doesn't mean there is a flaw in the game. You need to grow up and realize that the entire world isn't going to cater to just you, nor should it.

[Violent]

Actually I think it means if you hate it....why are u still doing it.

A lot of people hate life.. Are you advocating suicide?

Or, their jobs.. Stop working and live like a hermit in the woods?

Nope, your counter point is just flawed.

[Armourboy]

Except it hasn't. To get into raids prior to Wrath, you needed to attune yourself to them. This was the "big grind", but once it was done then it was DONE. It would take a month at most to get the dungeon attunements to then get the raid attunements and then you were done. The attunement quests that followed the initial release of both TBC and Vanilla were either much shorter/easier, or were an entire server wide effort so that nobody could go inside of the raid until everybody on the server could.

What else was there? Gold for consumables? Yeah so? Farming for gold was a very non-linear situation unlike the grinds in Legion. You could always farm the mats for whatever consumables you needed by hand, or you could trade your way to gold and then simply buy the consumables required. Fishing, mining, or just mobbing for rare loot were all options. It started to be more common from Wrath and onwards, but guilds who were serious about raiding would generally supply the raiders with whatever consumables they deemed necessary.

It also generally required significantly less time to be "optimal" than it did now, especially when you consider farm bosses. A guild who is serious about raiding and who has a limited amount of gold would not waste their food, pots, and flasks on bosses that no longer needed them. There were plenty of bosses who didn't require you to use consumables to succeed, and guilds wouldn't waste their money on these bosses after they've become farmable. The only time consuming aspects to raiding were acquiring very specific resistance gear, but that isn't nearly as bad. You generally wanted to farm dungeons and raids for gear anyway just like today. Getting a new piece of gear is exciting. Getting a 5 item level higher version of the same gear you've been getting since day 1 in Legion is significantly less exciting. Farming invisible currency that you pop into your weapon that then gives you a .1% damage boost is not exciting at all.

The point is that the grind was NOT always in the game for raiders. From Wrath until now, you could very feasibly log into the game solely to raid and then leave the game alone if you wanted to. That made it infinitely more fun. All of the content outside of raiding became optional to you, and you could pick and choose whatever you liked to suit your needs without being worried that you would lose you raid spot.

So in other words you got real happy you didn't need to play more than 10-12 hours a week

[Lochton]

And how is any of that different from previous expansions? Consumables have not been a time consuming or expensive issue in the time I've played(post-TBC). Legion is the same in that respect, but has legendaries, AP and M+ gear in addition, which the previous expansions did not.

The what?! I guess you had alts for farming or were given it? Vanilla, TBC and Wrath was pricey for consumables, only later on prices dropped and now you have Legion where you can make what you need even easier, and steam lined, and multiple procs - and I'm not only talking about alchemy.

And as for gearing, rather sure it was harder in previous content to get geared if I recall. M+ is a shopping center, AP is a breeze and boosted and legendaries has BLP on, and soon can be purchased if PTR notes goes as they do.

[Kanegasi]

There is no mandatory content. It is all 100% optional. It's a fucking video game.

Incorrect. If a player intends to be a part of cutting edge guilds, many things now become mandatory. The choice to play in a top guild is optional, yes, but not everything that comes with it. If you decide that some farming and other things are optional, you're no longer able to make top guilds an option for you.

[Lochton]

No, it wasn't. It is now and it was during the end of NH. Going into EN, ToV and NH it was not a "breeze".

AP was still a breeze to obtain in EN, ToV and NH. Even easier now. Back in those tiers it might've taken work but you weren't demanded a certain level of AP until later.