So, item levels are getting spiked for no reason. Again.

[huth]

It's like you were working the past 10 years to finally have 1mil on your bank account, only to have the government give everyone 900k for free. How would you feel with your 1mil then? Yeah, sure, you could go on and work another 10 years to have 10mil but when you reach those 10mil, the government will give everyone 9,9mil for free.

Why would anyone work (or play the game)? Why should the money feel special?

You had that money long before the others did. That you didn't use it effectively isn't their fault.

The gear felt special because you got it before it became available to everybody. Which is actually something that does happen in the real world, luxury goods becoming more broadly and cheaply available.

[RoKPaNda]

Fix it no but make people a hell of a lot more likely to stay subbed yes. You don't have to stepping stone there isn't a rush to the top unlike now where gear gets completely reset. Freaking norm drops mythic level gear.

Not really no. People are more likely to stay if they have no content to run? Raiding was always a niche activity, and everything below raiding was easily finished very quickly. The longest lasting non-raid content was rep grinds that lasted a few weeks at most. If dungeons didn't get updated they wouldn't get run, if world quests didn't get updated they wouldn't get run. This is how the game is, and I assure you it's better this way. Nobody is unsubbing because have more content that's worth running. You think if they ran WQs and hit a wall at below raid item levels they'd ... what? Keep playing just because? Of course not.

Ok cool so why vannila and rbc retained players far more than curent game with acessible content? Your logic doesnt make sense becouse you say things are not in better state even tho people are quiting left and right complaining about exact things you say were bad for the game. I thino you dont underatand psychlogy behind exclusive content.

Attuments were fun just badly implemented. But Blizzard instead try to implement them better they just removed them completly, becouse why bother to be creative right?

This is a huge misconception that people wearing nostalgia goggles have. People quit in large numbers during vanilla and bc as well, it's just that it was a newer game and a much easier sell, and people were constantly streaming in to replace them so we didn't get to see that in the sub number reporting. The number of people coming in was greater than the number of people going out until cata, that doesn't mean that huge numbers of people weren't leaving. There's a blue quote somewhere about that from the MOP era I believe.

[MoanaLisa]

People don't seem to be understanding that a major purpose of the item squish was to allow the devs to reinflate ilvls like this.

True. Expansions, which are moving to look more and more like stand-alone games, can reset every time there's a new one if they like. That allows a steeper progression curve overall in addition rapid catchup mechanics.

[Gourmandise]

True. Expansions, which are moving to look more and more like stand-alone games, can reset every time there's a new one if they like. That allows a steeper progression curve overall in addition rapid catchup mechanics.

If I remember correctly, Ion said something like they develop expansions like they're their own standalone games now, so it's not surprising.

[kubaje]

You had that money long before the others did. That you didn't use it effectively isn't their fault.

The gear felt special because you got it before it became available to everybody. Which is actually something that does happen in the real world, luxury goods becoming more broadly and cheaply available.

That would be the case if it actually took 10 years, which it doesn't. Resetting the value of anything every 3-4 months doesn't work. Neither in WoW nor IRL. People grind to that max ilvl, they don't get it on day 1, so they basically only have the advantage for like 1-1.5 months.

You can see that's not enough, otherwise people would give a shit about their items.

[Kushana]

The OP has a point in that things are quite different now than they were in Vanilla/BC, but they have tinted their disapproval by only looking at the value of long-lasting gear. Let me present a different meta.

As many have pointed out, the driver for all of this is the new raid tier. New raids, new gear, new gear requirements. That's the same. What has significantly changed since Vanilla/BC is that Blizzard now provides you with many ways to get geared for current content. In Vanilla/BC, there was one route to higher difficulty raids, and that was to run lower difficulty raids. So established guilds progressing in advanced raids like AQ40 or even BWL regularly also ran the lower raids like AQ20, Onyxia (Tier 2 hat!) and MC to gear new guildies who couldn't be carried. The loot drop rates didn't help.

Burning Crusade was the same, but over time Blizzard has given players steadily more routes to get into current raid content. Assaults, Warfronts, WQs/Emmisaries, LFR, Mythic/Mythic+ dungeons; there's now lots of ways to get into raiding. And even if raiding or PvP or Mythic+ isn't your thing you can still get to Normal-to-Heroic level gear over the course of a raid with diligent solo stuff, just a lot more slowly than the raiders.

It's a perfectly legitimate progression model, and I, for one, don't miss having to run new guildies through content that I am tired of. Last weekend we were trying to convince some friends to come back to Alliance to raid with us. They'll be able to have fun with us on week 1, rather than grinding through Kara, Gruul, and SSC to join us in BT.

[MoanaLisa]

If I remember correctly, Ion said something like they develop expansions like they're their own standalone games now, so it's not surprising.

I've been thinking about this lately. Conceiving expansions as standalones allows them to ignore most continuity issues from one expansion to the next. Classes: temporary. Class skills/legendaries: Temporary. Content: Temporary and irrelevant once used up. I could make a subjective case that this might be hurting the overall game more than the advantages. To wit: Most of the criticism of BfA is expressed in "It used to be like this and why don't they go back to that." That misses the point. Developers who imagine that each expansion is more of a stand alone game are very likely to make most old concepts irrelevant. That extends to content and now apparently even to patches.

WoW is still at heart a raiding game and if you're not raiding (as most aren't in any organized way) the game just sweeps you along on all of its changes while concepts like "the world" and "RPG" no longer apply. Catchup mechanics are specifically designed to do two things: 1) Make it easy to qualify for a raid spot in the newest raid and 2) for non-raiders the progression pace is breathless and more or less constant.

It's a profound shift in thinking and explains much.

[Forogil]

except he did not have 4 dificulties, he had 1. while there was the "challenges" he did not drop higher, and higher, and higher gear the more dragons you left alive, he just gave MORE gear, and specific gear.

Well, yes, and no.

Sartharion gave more loot with dragons alive, but also better loot.
Not 4 different variants, just 2, and combined with 2 sizes it doesn't make 2x2=4 but sort of 3.
Same with Flame Leviathan.

I sort of recalled it, but couldn't find it in game after squish.

However, http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Sartharion seems to list how it was: 10-man 200, 10-man with 2-drakes 213, 25-man 213, 25-man with 2-drakes 226.
Similarly http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Flame_Leviathan 10-man 219, 10-man 4 towers up 226-232, 25-man 226, 25-man 4 towers up 239.

And as we all know OS3D, especially 10-man, was a hard encounter at launch - but was zerged by pugs during WotLK.

[Roxxy]

That would be the case if it actually took 10 years, which it doesn't. Resetting the value of anything every 3-4 months doesn't work. Neither in WoW nor IRL. People grind to that max ilvl, they don't get it on day 1, so they basically only have the advantage for like 1-1.5 months.

You can see that's not enough, otherwise people would give a shit about their items.

Exactly, first it takes time to gear up all in itself through raiding and then don't forget there are guilds like mine that take quite a while to down the end boss on heroic mode. I think we downed heroic g'huun half a month before the ilvls spiked. I was at 376 on my main and then all my alts caught up within a week or two after that. I was just left gobsmacked.

[Th3Scourge]

Having spoken to him, literally ilvl does not fucking matter, as he has said. (No mention of lvl ANYWHERE)

To be fair, Mike didn't say anything of the sort (no mention of him saying ilvl does not fucking matter)

If I was to sum up the root cause of the issue in one word it would be: Scarcity.

ilvl is a symptom of the sick system. The flooding is the main driver but ilvl contributes to this.

If we're going to stick with LK as the examples. In one week, you could run one raid lockout per difficulty. At launch that was Naxx, OS, EoE (and I think Vault? Can't remember if this was at launch) with two modes 10 man and 25 man, offering two tiers of the same loot (can't remember if there were any special drops in 25 man). That was it. You were competing with up to 24 other players for your loot, to get your tier sets etc. Loot was unique because it was more scarce.

And you were done for the week. Profession gear mattered because it was harder to obtain raid-tier loot. The loot was also more unique because of the scarcity and often had power procs or on-use abilities on trinkets that would stay with you for most of the next raid tier as well.

Stats were more distributed and curbed your power levels, forcing you to make trade offs for hit, defense, ArPen etc which led to more choice and character investment.

Now loot is available from everywhere, its value is diminished, can tf to the point of being mythic raid-quality and this is where the ilvl problem comes into it. Blizz now has to increase the stats budget of every item available to keep the progression going. Now we've gone from Naxx 200 ilvl at base difficulty to ICC Heroic 25 284 ilvl for a total of 84 ilvls in the entire expansion, to LFR 340 to Mythic BoD 415, 75 in one tier. We only have 4 stats outside of our mainstat, no baseline sockets, no reforging, nothing outside of the ilvl matters now.

[Forogil]

I've been thinking about this lately. Conceiving expansions as standalones allows them to ignore most continuity issues from one expansion to the next. Classes: temporary. Class skills/legendaries: Temporary. Content: Temporary and irrelevant once used up. I could make a subjective case that this might be hurting the overall game more than the advantages. To wit: Most of the criticism of BfA is expressed in "It used to be like this and why don't they go back to that." That misses the point. Developers who imagine that each expansion is more of a stand alone game are very likely to make most old concepts irrelevant. That extends to content and now apparently even to patches.

Well, on the other hand they originally designed WoW as its own stand alone game.

And the alternative of just adding on the previous game wasn't working - for instance the attempt at just adding more talents to the existing talent trees; the problem was people could then reach the good stuff from two trees at the same time. They tried to fix that by requiring people to fully commit to one tree first, but that didn't really didn't scale well either, and it wasn't really the old system either.

- - - Updated - - -

Now we've gone from Naxx 200 ilvl at base difficulty to ICC Heroic 25 284 ilvl for a total of 84 ilvls in the entire expansion, to LFR 340 to Mythic BoD 415, 75 in one tier.

Hmm..
Uldir LFR 340, Normal 355, Heroic 370, Mythic 385
BoD LFR 370 Normal 385 Heroic 400 Mythic 415

I get that to two tiers, not one. If they continue like that the 3rd tier will bring the difference to 105. So, there are higher differences - but not so different as some claim.

[Spiffums]

Path of Exile does seasons too. They call them leagues. Once the league is over, your character and stash are moved to the default league and in the next league you start completely fresh.

If WoW adopted this model people would collectively lose their marbles, but it'd be interesting to me since I'm used to it. Maybe the game needs something like that. It needs a lot of things.

No one would sign up for the next season.

Ilvl increase is for people to get into the next raid. How many "Time to re-roll!" memes/threads have we seen? This is why they do it. This time around it just seems more organic for some reason.

[Th3Scourge]

Well, on the other hand they originally designed WoW as its own stand alone game.

And the alternative of just adding on the previous game wasn't working - for instance the attempt at just adding more talents to the existing talent trees; the problem was people could then reach the good stuff from two trees at the same time. They tried to fix that by requiring people to fully commit to one tree first, but that didn't really didn't scale well either, and it wasn't really the old system either.

- - - Updated - - -


Hmm..
Uldir LFR 340, Normal 355, Heroic 370, Mythic 385
BoD LFR 370 Normal 385 Heroic 400 Mythic 415

I get that to two tiers, not one. If they continue like that the 3rd tier will bring the difference to 105. So, there are higher differences - but not so different as some claim.

From one tier to the next. If we follow the same logic, we can assume that 8.2 will have a further jump to 490 and 8.3 to 565

[Cronzee]

HAHAHAH it has been like this since WOTLK when they started multiple difficulties per tier .. you want this gone?? have one HARD raid difficulty like BC and it will be gone.

If i remember right your ilvl went from 187"normal dungeon" ilvl to 277 which was heroic LK and a little higher on few items.

The jump here is from ilvl 300 which is normal loot to 385 and with the release of next tier its 425 so the over all ilvl incress is as much as lk had in the whole expansion vs 1 raid tier now.

[Carnedge]

Ilvl has always increased with each new raid tier since the beginning of WoW... yes. But not to this degree.

The problem is we have 4 different difficulties of a raid now and they have to design rewards of the entire game around that.

The only thing that can stop this is to get rid of LFR and Heroic raid modes. Tune Normal and Mythic to be stepping stones for each other. Give normal mode a “LFR” queueing option, but don’t tune it down at all and get rid of the god mode buff you get from wiping.

You cut the scaling literally in half by doing this.

[Echocho]

Ilvl has always increased with each new raid tier since the beginning of WoW... yes. But not to this degree.

The problem is we have 4 different difficulties of a raid now and they have to design rewards of the entire game around that.

The only thing that can stop this is to get rid of LFR and Heroic raid modes. Tune Normal and Mythic to be stepping stones for each other. Give normal mode a “LFR” queueing option, but don’t tune it down at all and get rid of the god mode buff you get from wiping.

You cut the scaling literally in half by doing this.

I don't understand why they don't just add 10 to every difficulty when a new tier comes out. That way <insert difficulty here> raiders can keep raiding their difficulty of choice and not have to clear it at a trivial difficulty first. Adding 30 iLvls to every difficulty invalidates everything that came before and you can now potentially find upgrades from a difficulty two levels below the one you're actually doing, what kind of madness is that!?

[Critical92]

The itemlvl jump from start to end of an expansion was smaller before the 4 difficulty implementation and no one can deny that.

At the moment all you did in the first raid is nullyfied (also thanks to the new azerite ring). In like wotlk going from naxxramas into ulduar your gear still had value there. And that was without titanforging. Now wq's and that stuff will give you uldir mythic item stuff.

The real culprit of these inflated itemlvl raises is titanforge because in itemlvl ranges of 185 to 284 for a whole expansion, it would not feel special, but proccing from current normal 355 to 380 it is. Mythic items can't even titanforge. Now you see for which difficulties titanforge was implemented and the side effect is an higher itemlvl across an expansion.

[MoanaLisa]

Well, on the other hand they originally designed WoW as its own stand alone game.

I don't think that's quite true. Vanilla WoW was designed with BC and Wrath expansions in mind. They knew that's where they wanted to go. They knew what story they wanted to tell. I think they had some very definite ideas about that across that whole series of expansions and while their plans were flexible I think they had a roadmap.

After that it's been a mish-mash of sometimes good and sometimes terrible with every expansion increasingly disconnected from what came before until we are where we are now.

[Pua]

I don't think that's quite true. Vanilla WoW was designed with BC and Wrath expansions in mind. They knew that's where they wanted to go. They knew what story they wanted to tell. I think they had some very definite ideas about that across that whole series of expansions and while their plans were flexible I think they had a roadmap.

After that it's been a mish-mash of sometimes good and sometimes terrible with every expansion increasingly disconnected from what came before until we are where we are now.

It’s vital to remember that Ulduar is when the original team was taken from Warcraft, and they were replaced across the board.

It’s no mystery why Ulduar was the first, and last, of its type; with the new raid design leader claiming that it was too difficult to repeat. All of the other changes, since that point, have been thanks to the loss of the game’s best developers.

[Daffan]

Blizzard Motto

"Must increase welfare and add power spike to make casuals feel happy, MUST ASSIMILATE PLAYERS"

It's a short term happiness spike, Blizzard is psychologically manipulating people to f33l good for 5 minutes. You get your welfare, feel good and then it slumps hard because you know it means nothing (as next welfare will obsolete it) and you run out of content. GG retention.

Rewards from the original Battle for Azeroth Launch World bosses will remain at item level 355 to stay on par with Uldir.

Oh yeah. They are keeping Uldir relevant guys! No welfare from those pesky world bosses!

Welcome to World of WarCraft that has been like this for 15 years.

Dude...the ilvl goes up every patch. It's been that way since the start of the game. Since BC you had catchup or welfare gear to kinda get around the fact you don't want to run old raids on your alts to gear them up and shit. It's not meant to stay relevant. It's been that way forever. You're out of touch OP. Looks like all that gear you paid to get carried through doesn't matter anymore and you'll have to buy it again.

https://i.imgur.com/pGKDZ09.jpg