Don't think I can do another expansion long grind

[IceMan1763]

I disagree that it used to be far more accessable, in vanilla and tbc the amount of farming for mats and buff pots scrolls etc was near enough a part time job. Not to mention attunements. Today you just focus on an elixer, potions and food buffs, runes were added because it had become too simplified, in wod you got all your raiding mats from garisson (a system i actually loved if i am honest) legion is almost the same but instead of guaranteed its now rng based shoulder enchants that give you the mats or you just buy them.

Gearing was also tier based, you originally needed to be geared from previous tier to get into next tier.
In legion due to titanforging you can actually outgear a raid before even entering it.

I don't agree that mythic is the same difficulty as heroic lk,i agree with the sentiment that mythics now require more than time and effort but this is down to complexity of mechanics and quite often poor design. Some mythics are incredibly easy and some are actually pretty complex but most of them have more mechanics amd stuff to deal with overall. The difficulty has increased over the years but it's not a good difficulty increase, it's just been increase of one shots, decreasing the time between mechanics to the point they overlap now.

Most of the hardest bosses in old expansions were hard simply because blizzard would overtune some bosses, fights were not properly bug free, lack proper optimising of classes as not everyone used EJ or spreadsheets etc. And ofcourse addons were not as advanced as they are now, as blizzard opened up more api options for boss mods they increased boss mechanics and their complexity, timings etc to compensate.

Mythic raiding is far more accessable than previous heroic raiding in my opinion. Back in the day losing someone to poaching was devestating, almost crippling or even lethal to a guild. Now if your main tank left your guild tomorrow you would maybe call 1 raid before you got a replacement or just had someone step in on their alt.

I didn't say it in the one you quoted, but I have said frequently on this forum that WOTLK was successful in part BECAUSE it did away with exactly the kind of grinds you're describing in TBC and Vanilla that have now been reintroduced (in a slightly different format) in Legion. I didn't play TBC or Vanilla much partially because I dislike those exact features you're comparing to new Legion features. I like to compare what I feel and many others feel was a true high point for this game, and that was Wrath.

Did you actually try 0 lights when it was relevant content or Heroic LK when he first came out? They weren't riddled with bugs... they were just plain difficult and complex fights. Cata heroic bosses were INFAMOUS for one shotting tanks... especially at the start of the expansion.

I do agree that poaching was devastating... one of the best ways to get Heroic Rag down in Cata was to poach Warlocks so you could stack the legendary staff... it happened to my guild, in fact. I think that was a fault in the way Blizzard viewed and granted ownership of that staff though, not the raiding environment as a whole. In my opinion, a legendary weapon like that was a guild based achievement and the weapon should have stayed with the guild if the player moved on to a different guild. This may seem weird to some because that wasn't how it worked and it's hard to imagine it working differently, but I think changing ownership to guild based and only allowing one legendary weapon to be active within the instance would have been better for the raiding community and for the health of the guild community.

I think you're very much exaggerating about how quickly you could replace a Main Tank for a serious Mythic raiding guild. You could maybe poach one or grab a geared one from a failed guild, but that's always been true in every expansion. Trying to replace that main tank a couple raid tiers in with a fresh 110 would take some serious time investment.

[Soluna]

snip

And what exactly stops you from stopping the grind? I literally have 75 traits on my artifact and I still have cutting edge.

You just keep trying cause you don't have the ability to compensate, therefore you keep grinding to make up for it.

[kary]

I didn't say it in the one you quoted, but I have said frequently on this forum that WOTLK was successful in part BECAUSE it did away with exactly the kind of grinds you're describing in TBC and Vanilla that have now been reintroduced (in a slightly different format) in Legion. I didn't play TBC or Vanilla much partially because I dislike those exact features you're comparing to new Legion features. I like to compare what I feel and many others feel was a true high point for this game, and that was Wrath.

Did you actually try 0 lights when it was relevant content or Heroic LK when he first came out? They weren't riddled with bugs... they were just plain difficult and complex fights. Cata heroic bosses were INFAMOUS for one shotting tanks... especially at the start of the expansion.

I do agree that poaching was devastating... one of the best ways to get Heroic Rag down in Cata was to poach Warlocks so you could stack the legendary staff... it happened to my guild, in fact. I think that was a fault in the way Blizzard viewed and granted ownership of that staff though, not the raiding environment as a whole. In my opinion, a legendary weapon like that was a guild based achievement and the weapon should have stayed with the guild if the player moved on to a different guild. This may seem weird to some because that wasn't how it worked and it's hard to imagine it working differently, but I think changing ownership to guild based and only allowing one legendary weapon to be active within the instance would have been better for the raiding community and for the health of the guild community.

I think you're very much exaggerating about how quickly you could replace a Main Tank for a serious Mythic raiding guild. You could maybe poach one or grab a geared one from a failed guild, but that's always been true in every expansion. Trying to replace that main tank a couple raid tiers in with a fresh 110 would take some serious time investment.

Cata bosses oneshot people who didn't know how to play, as a side note. People were in the mindset of doing heroics in dps gear from wotlk, and never attempted to adapt to the new meta.
And also, no. You can gear a tank to tank mythic in about 2-3 weeks right now. Fresh 110. That's 3 caches, 3 clears of heroic on ML. More than enough to start mythic as a tank.

[IceMan1763]

Ranking guilds do what is needed to get an edge, they always have and always will. The game is worse off if it is designed around sparing those players a grueling (yet self-inflicted) experience though.

Exactly, ranking guilds will do anything for an edge, something Blizzard devs should keep in mind when they design their game because what ranking guilds do affects Mythic raid tuning, which spills down and affects all levels of tuning eventually.

Serious question for you... if a Blizzard dev came up with a way to make Mythic raiding less grindy and more skill based, like it used to be, which didn't affect the way you played the game at all, would you want them to make the change?

[Vesoha]

I disagree that it used to be far more accessable, in vanilla and tbc the amount of farming for mats and buff pots scrolls etc was near enough a part time job. Not to mention attunements. Today you just focus on an elixer, potions and food buffs, runes were added because it had become too simplified, in wod you got all your raiding mats from garisson (a system i actually loved if i am honest) legion is almost the same but instead of guaranteed its now rng based shoulder enchants that give you the mats or you just buy them.

This ^^

And that is putting it nicely it. Would say we used between 6-12 hours 3-4 times a week raiding MC BWL before it was on farm, and it was pretty hard curve to get it on farm considering there was 98% blue gear outside of raiding, and back then it was itemized horribly aswell. And then came the felwood farming the fire res farming and all the other ways you could improve your chances, it was more like a fulltime job at times. As a warlock I also had to farm shards, but it was nothing compared to the hardship of tanks who did not always have the gold to pay armor repair costs because you did not have much gold and finding time to farm it and as a tank with no other specs (unless you paid for respec, which would defy the purpose of respeccing) it was hard to farm elites, todays survivability for tanks was not nearly the same back then atleast till you got a full set of epics which very very few players had (before ZG).

Yes there is still grind in legion, but it is a different grind. after so many years wow is a well oiled machine and you can get a group and do a dungeon just by a click, no 15 man UBRS where you spent the first hour getting a group in chat, with healers or tanks or others leaving or going afk, then having to actually travel there and get people to go there or get summoned, no summon stone just warlocks, and then the dungeon took its time and was not a walkover, 50/50 if you actually got through it, and then 3 hours had passed and most likely the other 14 had either ninjaed or needed on the same item as you needed and you could start over.

In the end there are more games out there than you can play in a lifetime, if wow is not your thing anymore or if you feel it is changing in a direction you don't like then quit, it is just a game. On the other hand ask yourself what you would do if they did not have a endgame grind in wow, why bother playing then, if the endgame did not evolve and set new higher limits with each patch, then how long before you would quit anyway or just end up using it as an expensive chatting service.

[IceMan1763]

Cata bosses oneshot people who didn't know how to play, as a side note. People were in the mindset of doing heroics in dps gear from wotlk, and never attempted to adapt to the new meta.
And also, no. You can gear a tank to tank mythic in about 2-3 weeks right now. Fresh 110. That's 3 caches, 3 clears of heroic on ML. More than enough to start mythic as a tank.

You think I was talking about Heroic DUNGEON bosses? Wow dude you're out of your depth here just bow out of this conversation now while you're still behind...

[Queen of Hamsters]

Exactly, ranking guilds will do anything for an edge, something Blizzard devs should keep in mind when they design their game because what ranking guilds do affects Mythic raid tuning, which spills down and affects all levels of tuning eventually.

Serious question for you... if a Blizzard dev came up with a way to make Mythic raiding less grindy and more skill based, like it used to be, which didn't affect the way you played the game at all, would you want them to make the change?

Mythic raiding is just as skill based as it always was though, no amount of "grinding" will compensate for a bad player. I know this as a "Mythic tourist", so surely someone at your level should...

[MrHappy]

the problem is that what you want out of the game does not coincide with how you want to play it.
My wife is casual. She did few dungeon runs but mainly she pet battles, does the holiday stuff, likes to do BG's. Did questing. Especially going back to previous expansion to work on loremaster if missed. Doesn't really care for artifact weapon or alts. If playing alts to get a holiday mount or pvp. She likes to go back and get various achievements. For a casual player she's usually in top 10 Achieve points in no matter what guild we go to. Not the biggest marker but still that's a lot of work by itself. But it's how she wants to play the game.

I like raiding but atm can't find time so paused at 4Mythic bosses down and currently i'm not looking for something else because i'm having fun leveling an allied race.

Now dear OP you CAN just play the story, do few warfronts to see if you like them. Maybe do few dungeons, LFR if you want to see the raid story and play the game how you want. You want to go collect the mounts you missed. Work on rep for older faction for achievements. Whatever floats your boat.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that you like to acquire power in the game. You like seeing big numbers, big damages and generally be a bad ass. I get it. I totally do. It's awesome seeing yourself in top 5 dps competing for the top.....but that takes work....that you DO need to grind the power levels and grind the gear.

you have a contradiction of terms. What you want out of the game is different than how you want to play it.

I think you need to re-assess what you want. Do you want to be top dps in your raid group or do you want to just collect X Y Z and enjoy your time with X Y Z activity.

You don't have to grind, but you do need to ask if you will enjoy this game via other means.

[kary]

You think I was talking about Heroic DUNGEON bosses? Wow dude you're out of your depth here just bow out of this conversation now while you're still behind...

You had to be talking about heroic dungeon bosses, because tank damage wasn't even really a thing in cata (I tanked early cata) unless you had no idea how mitigation/playing the game worked, or you tried to tank bastion in greens.

Maybe if you were super tryhard and wanted to 2 heal 10 man raids before you got fully geared

[ornichi]

Hey hey they are the cool guys not giving the greedy evil Blizzard real money, they are our heros! #tokenisnotmoney

/s

"Hey boys, look at me! I am not a mindless sheep like y'all, I prefer to mess with in-game auction Rain Man style, cuz I am smart and don't waste my money on stupid game. Cya loosers"

Edited:

PS: read it with Papa Franku voice.

[Soon-TM]

Cata bosses oneshot people who didn't know how to play, as a side note. People were in the mindset of doing heroics in dps gear from wotlk, and never attempted to adapt to the new meta.
And also, no. You can gear a tank to tank mythic in about 2-3 weeks right now. Fresh 110. That's 3 caches, 3 clears of heroic on ML. More than enough to start mythic as a tank.

GL getting accepted in any non-guild group with such... astringent requirements. Even your guild is making you a favour by accepting you in such lousy gear. Unless you get ridiculously lucky with TF/leggos

I mean procedurally generated random content. It’s just you playing against the fruit machine. There’s no end to it, no larger purpose other than spending your time logged in and satisfying the part of your brain that gets kicks from repeating a task for a tiny reward.
You believe you can win, but you can’t because you’re running against a machine

I see. Thanks for clarifying

[kary]

GL getting accepted in any non-guild group with such... astringent requirements

Was talking about mythic raids, not 5mans. The topic was replacing a tank for raid progression with a fresh toon.

You can faceroll 15's on non tyrannical weeks pretty handily right now. And for tyrannical, any dungeon that isn't maw or hov is possible.

[Deleted]

I really really want to love WOW again but it's just slipping away from me with all the meta changes, does anyone else feel like that? Anyone else actually quit because of the changes?

Legion had almost zero innovation. There was no mystery or sense of wonder. It was just grinding that bar til it's full, then doing it again. And if BfA is more of the same(which it appears to be) then I really can't say I disagree with the OP.

mythic+, worldquests, artefacts, (amount and diversity of legendaries,) PvP templates, honor talents, prestige, token conversion (BNET balance), scaling (!) ...

the design priorities accessibility, diversity and replayability evolved the vanilla Meta (meaning base game hasnt changed ever since*) to a new era.
i could write articles on Broken Isles verticality, Legion reward density, lore cohesiveness, the belle epoque of detaillism, Legions innovations revamped the gameplay.
As every innovation is experimental, so did some systems fail the audience expectation, but most succeeded after recalibration (to be user-friendly):
the AP grind ended with the endless shitstorms on Nighthold requiring arte lvl 53, also AK-Knowlegde. the diversification of the parallel progression system (which infact is gear - aka endgame progression) will continue in BFA with all the lessons learned (from Legion, users dont like to grind to be adaquate for raid). Azurite may find some other (new) critical deficites along its introduction, but it wont be "grind" (so no need to elaborate on given the topic is "BFA - another xpac long grind").
this shift in parallel progression design upgraded alt gameplay, (pre 7.2 LEgion was deemed alt-unfriendly by the userbase) and enhanced via catch-up (havnt played 11 alts post Tomb, but all r arte lvl 72+ just via missions and occasional emissaries and WQ freebies), esp. the gear tokens (Broken Shore, Argus) and new incentives (gold mission army).
i ll stop here on elaborating Legions innovations (due topic and my gametime):
if everyone and his mum has a personal alt-army for gold missions where is the grind? at least there was sufficient playtime to establish 12 order halls... u dont have alts if ur main needs to grind?

*kill XP-bags to be able to kill bigger XP-bags to be able to kill biggest XP-bags. Raph Kostner, UO, SWG

[Deleted]

I didn't say it in the one you quoted, but I have said frequently on this forum that WOTLK was successful in part BECAUSE it did away with exactly the kind of grinds you're describing in TBC and Vanilla that have now been reintroduced (in a slightly different format) in Legion. I didn't play TBC or Vanilla much partially because I dislike those exact features you're comparing to new Legion features. I like to compare what I feel and many others feel was a true high point for this game, and that was Wrath.

Did you actually try 0 lights when it was relevant content or Heroic LK when he first came out? They weren't riddled with bugs... they were just plain difficult and complex fights. Cata heroic bosses were INFAMOUS for one shotting tanks... especially at the start of the expansion.

I do agree that poaching was devastating... one of the best ways to get Heroic Rag down in Cata was to poach Warlocks so you could stack the legendary staff... it happened to my guild, in fact. I think that was a fault in the way Blizzard viewed and granted ownership of that staff though, not the raiding environment as a whole. In my opinion, a legendary weapon like that was a guild based achievement and the weapon should have stayed with the guild if the player moved on to a different guild. This may seem weird to some because that wasn't how it worked and it's hard to imagine it working differently, but I think changing ownership to guild based and only allowing one legendary weapon to be active within the instance would have been better for the raiding community and for the health of the guild community.

I think you're very much exaggerating about how quickly you could replace a Main Tank for a serious Mythic raiding guild. You could maybe poach one or grab a geared one from a failed guild, but that's always been true in every expansion. Trying to replace that main tank a couple raid tiers in with a fresh 110 would take some serious time investment.

I loved wrath as well, yes i did do hard modes in wotlk and i absolutely loved the way hard modes were done in wotlk and i really wish we went back to that type it was fantastic. My memory of actual fights is not as great 10 years on but honestly i do not think that fights were truly harder back then. Well designed yes, but harder than some of todays mythics? Pre ring shenanigans mythic archimonde for example is a stark difference in difficulty compared to wotlk fights.

Like i said i very much do enjoy the easier raid mat system and i very much so loved the complete easy mode passiveness to get them that was in wod, the free potions for example, i actually got to use potions on pretty much any boss even on trivial stuff because i was overflowing with them, it was no longer a case of i farmed or paid gold for these so i am only saving them for raiding.

Replacing tanks and such i do not think its an over exaggeration, it is pretty easy to replace people now, between the tools available to actively find good tanks, cross realm, faction change, server hoping etc it is very easy to replace someone, whether its an equal replacement or an improvement is not guaranteed ofcourse but it is by no means anywhere near as big an issue in wow now.

That part in bold though, wow that is actually a fantastic idea. It could even have saved drama by rotating who got to use it etc.

- - - Updated - - -

mythic+, worldquests, artefacts, (amount and diversity of legendaries,) PvP templates, honor talents, prestige, token conversion (BNET balance), scaling (!) ...

Mythic + = challenge mode dungeons 2.0
world quests = daily quests 2.0
legendaries = draenor perks 2.0
artifact = legendary ring with class balance bandaids thrown in
pvp templates = i will give you this is new but it was terrible but was essentially just pvp gear 2.0, you no longer play your character, you play a premade one with some % modifiers depending on your ilvl, you no longer have trinkets, legendaries or set bonuses either.
honor talents = taking talents you already had or your class should have had baseline and giving you them back as honor talents with some generic ones, your pvp trinket and i concede maybe 4 or 5 unique ones is hardly innovation
prestige, we calling this innovation? it's literally call of duty leveling

They gave you everything you had in wod that everyone apparently hated but made it a bit more shinier and gave you overly generous rewards for it, it's not innovation, it's wod 2.0, with more rng to keep you redoing the exact same content you hated doing in wod because now you have a chance to get an even more generous reward.

[Onikaroshi]

They gave you everything you had in wod that everyone apparently hated but made it a bit more shinier and gave you overly generous rewards for it, it's not innovation, it's wod 2.0, with more rng to keep you redoing the exact same content you hated doing in wod because now you have a chance to get an even more generous reward.

Not really, WoD didn't have anything to grind for on a daily basis. There was zero reasons to do dungeons, challenge modes had no rewards. There was no dailies, sure some could argue a couple here and there, but nothing worthwhile. The legendary only required at most 1 day of work a week, the quests were kind of cool but at the end of the day it was just another boring, generic, legendary, and probably the worst one ever introduced (a on use that counted for all of them of the type? come on).

WoD was a laughing stock if you wanted something to log in for besides your 1 to 2 days a week of raiding. M+ alone raises Legion miles over wod, it has actual rewards.

[Deleted]

Not really, WoD didn't have anything to grind for on a daily basis. There was zero reasons to do dungeons, challenge modes had no rewards. There was no dailies, sure some could argue a couple here and there, but nothing worthwhile. The legendary only required at most 1 day of work a week, the quests were kind of cool but at the end of the day it was just another boring, generic, legendary, and probably the worst one ever introduced (a on use that counted for all of them of the type? come on).

WoD was a laughing stock if you wanted something to log in for besides your 1 to 2 days a week of raiding. M+ alone raises Legion miles over wod, it has actual rewards.

Pretty much everything you just said confirms what i said that legion just gives you overly generous rewards for doing the content, the exact same content that wod offered, yes there were things to grind in wod and yes there were reasons to do challenge modes early on and reasons to do mythic dungeons, they again just did not give you the overly generous rewards to keep you doing them over and over like legion does.
You probably were not even aware that wod actually had mini world quests the exact same as legions fill the blue bar crap because they only gave you apexis crystals. This is my point, wod had the same content the rewards just were not worth it, legions are overly generous, that does not mean there was more or less content, it just means you chose to do less of the content. Both expansions have had terrible lack of content, legion managed to disguise this fact to so many because they over reward you for it and of course the fact that its the "cool" thing to bash wod so anything that isn't wod is considered good.

If wod challenge modes offered the same rewards that legion m+ offers or if legion m+ offered the same type of rewards that wod did then you would be not be saying legion has more content than wod, they offer the exact same content, its a case of the reward for doing that content, not a case of legion has more content than wod, because it quite simply does not.

Seriously, if world quests and m+ offered the same type of rewards that wod offered then people would be screaming that legion is wod 2.0 with 0 content, but simply because you get overly generous rewards now you suddenly think that it has more content, it doesn't it has the same amount of content.

For me personally it has even less content because poor raid design, atrocious class design and even further pruning with terrible revamps that have removed the classes i mained or played as alts means i no longer raid until bfa, pvp is now a complete joke so i can't even fall back on pvp now, on top of that the rng on loot that i hated in wod is now increased tenfold to the point EVERYTHING is rng based so i am even less likely to do the limited content there is for a simple chance at an upgrade, i want meaningful progression, things i can work towards, instead it is just rng grind which means there is almost nothing for me to do except sell m+ boosts and some very casual pvp in legion compared to wod where i could enjoy the raids, do my dungeons, sell challenge mode boosts, spam pvp and do all this again with alts because i enjoyed lots of classes. That is a personal complaint and i know others do enjoy their class and even the raids so they do have stuff to do, but the fact i don't allows me to be non biased when i compare the two expansions for what they are, two completely garbage expansions with 0 content in either.

[IceMan1763]

That part in bold though, wow that is actually a fantastic idea. It could even have saved drama by rotating who got to use it etc.

Thanks! I imagine it working like a check out system where guild officers could allow any member to use it for a certain number of hours (like maybe a 12 or 24 hour period). Once that time period expires, the weapon goes back in the "vault" or whatever mechanism is used to store it.

The only hurdle is the mega guilds who genuinely have several independent raid teams that all could have "earned" a legendary. In that case, I think the "one per instance" rule comes into play well and would allow you to have multiple legendaries checked out in a single guild. Maybe each time a group fully completes the quest you get another "altar" which holds the legendary (when not in use) inside the guild hall (which I know don't exist... but they should!!!).

[Heladys]

So don't. Why post about it?

[Roxxy]

Yep, if I lived in America or Canada, 100% probably would have gone on to another mmo but as far as I know wow is the only mainstream mmo with servers in Sydney Australia. I did try elderscrolls when it first came out and it was a breath of fresh air but as I was questing I went to mine a node only for my toon to stand there doing nothing right next to the node while another player ran over and mined it in front of me. I knew then I wouldn't be able to compete with people with low ping in pvp very well at that point. Only real alternative is playstation or xbox over here in Australia and that's not really my cup of tea.

So I was hoping maybe someone from blizzard would read this and maybe realise that some people like it when the game was more accessible and when alts were a real thing. But given the fact that they apparently don't even read their own forums it was a long shot.

[Deleted]

Do life! You'll come back to WoW if you need it.