WoW is 99 % instance-based content.

[Tekkommo]

Ah, now I see the problem. What I wanted to say was that you could ignore dungeons and still get to Exalted by only doing the PvP quest. Grinding dungeons for rep was the usual and most efficient way, of course.

By a long shot.

[Jastall]

A 340 weapon is a joke in BFA. Let's be honest. Even at launch it was a joke. You will change it faster than you can say "epic" unless you don't play the game at all or are terribly, terribly unlucky. There was nothing better than Blacksmithing weapons - even only the 1/3 version - before Karazhan, not even in Heroic Dungeons which would be roughly the equivalent to Mythic Dungeons.

But it's simply two different game concepts that you can hardly compare IMO. Yes, we are still questing, doing dungeons and raids but the game mechanics and overall approach of the game has changed drastically.

TBC had linear progression with only two (practically one at endgame) difficulty for dungeons, one difficulty for raids and PvP. Acquiring new gear would take a lot longer but also last you a lot longer through the whole expansion. Whereas BFA got practically endless difficulties for dungeons (M+) and four difficulties for raids plus various other sources for high ilvl gear (Warfronts, WQs, Titanforging) and you are changing gear more often than your underwear.

Well then you were happy with WoD which allowed you to create up to Heroic raid (IIRC) quality gear and weapons by farming metals and such, if that's so important.

And a slower gear treadmill is still a gear treadmill. The details have changed, the base concept is the exact same. Plus if you wanna use that argument, one could get a good Arcanocrystal in Legion and have it last for a long time. As Fury Convergence of Fates was my BiS from Nighthold till the BfA pre-patch.

[IIamaKing]

You level in the regular world, then once max level you pursue higher gear in instances. It's always been like that.

This, it just used to take longer to get from level cap to "raid ready" imo.

[Roar-Powah]

There is no open world in WoW anymore, it's all CRZ and sharding now. No need to interact with your local server community anymore, or interact with anyone in the open instanced world.

[Flaks]

While we're definitely missing things like wintergrasp, world quests have done a lot for open world content. I just wish they'd finally accept defeat and start merging servers cause I hate the jarring CRZ where I see a character while I'm playing once and never again unless I invite them to a group.

[huth]

I'm sorry for the lack of examples. The thread was really not meant to be a Vanilla vs Retail thread. The goal was more to discuss if Blizzard could utilize the potential of Azeroth better. I should have used phrases like "used to be better..". My bad.

Then you completely failed at properly conveying what you wanted to discuss. Not to mention that you start off on an incorrect premise. We have more open world content now than we had back in Vanilla and TBC, where there was basically nothing once you finished the finite leveling quests.

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There is no open world in WoW anymore, it's all CRZ and sharding now. No need to interact with your local server community anymore, or interact with anyone in the open instanced world.

As if you had interacted with them all that much before CRZ and Sharding. WQs had a much bigger effect on meeting other people in the open world than either of those.

[Kaver]

Then you completely failed at properly conveying what you wanted to discuss. Not to mention that you start off on an incorrect premise. We have more open world content now than we had back in Vanilla and TBC, where there was basically nothing once you finished the finite leveling quests.

It was a mistake. I'm sorry. My bad. Hopefully you can forgive me #SecondChances

I want to discuss how the open world can become more attractive to the players who currently just raids and do mythic+ dungeons. World Quests are neither fun, challenging or rewarding so many people don't do them. There is nothing challenging to do in the open world and you don't really need to grind anything to be a mythic raider.

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While we're definitely missing things like wintergrasp, world quests have done a lot for open world content. I just wish they'd finally accept defeat and start merging servers cause I hate the jarring CRZ where I see a character while I'm playing once and never again unless I invite them to a group.

I agree. World Quests were initially a big step in the right direction. But currently there are no reasons to do them if you're not a new player. They are not really fun or engaging and they don't give you any rewards which justifies a grind. In Legion you at least had the Legendaries to justify the emissary grind. I'm not saying that was optimal at all, but we are not going to grind boring content if we don't get a nice reward

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Farming mats for raid consumes, the only thing a high end raider would do back in the day.

But that was 14 years ago. I would love to imagine that a game company in 2018 would have a bit higher ambitions. Azeroth have so much potential and the current world quest system is just not engaging if you're not a new player.

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To be fair, I'm usually watching a Twitch stream or Youtube while doing said content.

I'm all for more challenging open world content. But you need to carefully consider what you're asking. For example, all these people who farm up herbs/ore. How much more of a chore would this be if the stuff you needed was in the middle of Mythic strength mobs.... I'm aware it often worked this way in Vanilla, and a lot of people really crave this experience... But a lot don't too.

But that's also brings us to another topic: "Do the world feel dangerous and exiting?"

I think this is an important aspect to engage people in the open world. If we go watch Twitch or Youtube while doing content, then it's pretty obvious that the content is not engaging.

[Deleted]

I find it very unintuitive that they didn’t do more with world pvp. It seems they just thought creating War Mode is enough...

Would have been a perfect opportunity to re-introduce some pvp objectives we had in some previous expansions in each of the 6 zones to create some real brawls around the world. It just seems lazy right now. Like BfA in general.
Portals and instances break immersion

[vsb]

It started in wotlk with group finder which teleported you into dungeon. Well, may be in BC (if I'm not mistaken) where summoning stones and flight allowed most people to avoid traveling to the dungeon. As more and more people got used to the fact that world does not need to be traveled and teleports are everywhere, developers were pushed to more instanced content.

How to make world more meaningful? Well, developers started to work on in Legion, where you have to travel to dungeons and continuing to improve situation with BfA, where you have to finish emissaries chests (requires a lot of traveling), you still have to travel to M+ (and they are even more important than ever), war mode. As more people will experience WoW open world, it'll slowly move to some gold middle, I guess.

A big thing they would do is to remove LFG. People can group up in semiautomatic way, but they should travel on their feet to the instance. But a general population must not get very angry at that change, so it'll take time.

[Kaver]

How many hours a week do you think someone should be required to put into this game to raid? I enjoy raiding that's why i play the game. I do not really enjoy the chores that go with it. If Blizzard can come up with some ideas to make the world something other than a place to do chores I am all for that.

This. This is what I want. To be fair I'm also not looking for more chores.

In Legion and BFA there are 3 types of content I have found engaging, challenging and fun:

1) Raids. More specifically mythic raiding. Very challenging and fun.

2) Mythic+. You're able to scale the challenge level to what fits you and it can be really fun. I'm not a big fan of the dungeons of BFA though.

3) Mage Tower Challenges. When you were around ilvl 900 in Legion, these were really fun and engaging

What I want from Blizzard is some open world content which we can add to this list of engaging, challeging and fun content.

[Heran]

So? Why does it matter? Would you rather have everyone be out in the world, lagging it so much it takes several seconds to turn in quests?

[huth]

It was a mistake. I'm sorry. My bad. Hopefully you can forgive me #SecondChances

I want to discuss how the open world can become more attractive to the players who currently just raids and do mythic+ dungeons. World Quests are neither fun, challenging or rewarding so many people don't do them. There is nothing challenging to do in the open world and you don't really need to grind anything to be a mythic raider.

The problem with the open world is that it is open, so the challenge pretty much has to be tuned to the lowest common denominator. Other than that, you're essentially falling to "i don't like it, therefore nobody does". For something not many people supposedly do, i rarely come to a WQ to find nobody there.

[Kaver]

The problem with the open world is that it is open, so the challenge pretty much has to be tuned to the lowest common denominator. Other than that, you're essentially falling to "i don't like it, therefore nobody does". For something not many people supposedly do, i rarely come to a WQ to find nobody there.

I just think a company like Blizzard have the resources and brain-power to make an open world experience with something for everyone. I never go out into the open world because there is nothing fun for me and there are no rewards for me. And I think a lot of players feel the same way. I just lock on, say hello to my guild, do some mythic raiding, and log off

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So? Why does it matter? Would you rather have everyone be out in the world, lagging it so much it takes several seconds to turn in quests?

I don't think that would happen my friend. I don't think anybody likes lagg

[Byleth]

If we go watch Twitch or Youtube while doing content, then it's pretty obvious that the content is not engaging.

Or maybe the Twitch stream is just that good. :P

[Deleted]

Like the end-game of every other sucessful mmo.

GW2 is the only one that has end-game in the world as well with meta events. I wish WoW had that (i guess Warfronts are close), but this is nothing new.

[Steelcryo]

Weirdly the biggest thing I miss in terms of day to day world content is daily quests. At least with dailies you had lots of people in the same area doing the same task and even sometimes socialising and grouping up just for the fun of doing quests with other people.

Now with world quests it's everyone everywhere, not talking and only joining groups to zerg content before moving onto the next world quest. There's no continuity, no reason to group up and communicate and stay as a group for a while. Daily quests had the benefit of being in one place, making the world feel more alive and usually the daily quests were new the first time you did them, not just recycled quests you already did while leveling. I don't think anyone has ever finished leveling and thought "You know I'd love to do that exact same content again at end game".

On top of that I miss Wintergrasp, that was fucking awesome. We need more areas of the world like that. I thought warfronts would be a great chance to have open world content in warmode but they decided it needed to be instanced yet again.

[Aquinan]

Way to dance around and not answer a question. You know..by ACTUALLY telling me what things there were that you enjoyed and not be all vague

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Fair enough if that kept you happy :P (but the flasks were for raids, right?) :P

Questions was what kept me busy, not whether i was *happy* doing it :P

[Grump]

Had a long reply I typed out and lost because it wouldn’t post and had to refresh page. Anyone who says vanilla was lvl 60>endgame 99% time in instances, you didn’t play vanilla. Anyone who did progression raiding fresh content for server firsts could come with a very long list of why you spent far more time in the outdoor world than you did in instances, and not only in vanilla but at least in TBC and WotLK also. Not going to retype but players who don’t make garbage posts talking out of their ass end about things they don’t know because they never did them, know this is true.

[Volardelis]

Even the outdoor content is "instanced" from other outdoor content. You can't fly from Northrend to the Eastern Kingdoms. You can't even fly from Darkshore to Azuremyst Isles without having to go through a loading screen at some point.

[Roar-Powah]

As if you had interacted with them all that much before CRZ and Sharding. WQs had a much bigger effect on meeting other people in the open world than either of those.

I've found guild members, found guilds to join, traded and formed up groups in the open world and CRZ / sharding took that away. No one wants to group, no one talks anymore and no real friendships are make anymore. You cannot trade, you cannot recruit players and you all ways see herb and ore nodes disappear, you see players disappear and reappear, what a shit system. It's a illusion and nothing more, everyone around you might as well be NPCs. I don't even know anyone from my server from MoP/WoD, i never ran into anyone from my connected realms in the open world.

When i was playing BfA (and even a lot in Legion) I stopped seeing people from my own server, even tho the realm status was "High", shit even in The Great Seal i was seeing CRZ for a few weeks. Sorry, but these systems are very anti community and there is a reason why no one wants it on the classic server, and it's the reason i stopped playing this single player game.

CRZ and Sharding have made WoW a lot more instanced in the open world than it use to be, which cannot be good for any mmorpg.