Didn't know WoW's state was this bad

[dope_danny]

Its going to be interesting years from now to see if the introduction of the wow token will be notable in the same way the blood plague was notable.

[White Goodman1]

I still cringe very hard, when I see someone wearing shirts like that, when it's all about playing video games. They are so proud being top of their game. Good for them. I still can't compare it to someone wearing some football shirt. They have looong road ahead of them to be taken seriously.

[Soon-TM]

There is a lot they do not tell us, they have clearly made changes to how the tokens scale up in price behind the scenes. All I am saying tokens directly impact the amount of people that would want to use them so that they do not have to pay per month by making it really hard to obtain them now, they want that 15$ a month. When the token was launched I though it would be good but I can see it has had many negative ripples that effect some of the core game design in negative ways. People can say conspiracy or whatever but you have to look at it from a deeper standpoint. Tokens indirectly bled into the game design of WoW and they have no way to remove them now without pissing a ton of people off so they have to design anything that makes players gold around them.

I think that Blizzard's stuborness about pathfinding for flying may also tie directly to this tokens issue. If flight was available right from the start (as was the case all the way from BC to MoP, i.e. just before tokens were introduced) after paying a relatively hefty sum of in-game gold, people buying gold via tokens would have a massive advantage over those farming gold through ordinary means. Especially now that BfA has introduced warmode.

EDIT: inb4 HURR DURR CUMSPURACY THEORY LUL. Of course it may be not the only reason, but it's certainly food for thought.

[kamuimac]

Where do you think the gold comes from when people buy items crafted by professions?

ddo they buy them anymore though ?

i mean sure raiders do but do you honestly belive that joe average is buyinh anything from AH when gold has striaght monetary value atm ?

i kinda doubt it .

[IceMan1763]

This dev team has ZERO foresight. There was a thread on this very site when the Master Loot changes were announced which predicted this EXACT scenario.

Link to thread (started 3/18/2018... well before BFA even released and almost 50 pages long):
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-Master-Looter

Quotes:
"I don't know if anything can be worse than Legiondaries, but I actually agree with you that it will be really bad if they ONLY remove ML with no other associated changes. It doesn't really solve split raiding completely, it actually just makes it even more inaccessible and exclusive to WF guilds, in my opinion. You would get a situation where split runs would still happen at the highest level, they would be less lucrative, but the advantage would still be there. Next you get the arguments from mythic guilds with the dev team over when you can trade an item and when you cannot. That will be loads of fun! After that you get drama when guilds try to effectively regain ML by trying to force trades among their raid members.

I really hope the dev team has the foresight to see this nightmare scenario and realize that, whatever they do, they can't ONLY remove ML. I worry about a dev team that approved randomly distributed Legiondaries though. Any team that would approve a design decision like that just doesn't have much common sense left, in my opinion."

"This doesn't stop split runs at all though. All it does is change the item level required of alts. Before, it was common to have plenty of undergeared alts. Now, all of your alts will be required to have a certain item level so that they can trade their personal loot acquisitions to the appropriate people. Can't wait for that."

"Trading of BOP items needs to also end or they will have created this exact nightmare scenario... ML is technically gone but WF guilds like Method will still attempt to split run on some level as you describe. Sadly, they will have only succeeded in making split raiding harder and even more exclusive to guilds like Method who have the time to do it. Split raiding needs a death blow, not a bandaid.

In addition, guilds will attempt to force trades among their players if new trial/raider Bobby got the best DPS trinket but 2 year vet Billy doesn't have it yet."

I bet no WOW dev even read a page of it. And yes, I know it's not WOW's official forums, but I'm 99% sure similar posts were made there that also went unread and unacknowledged. This dev team is far too arrogant to admit they need serious help designing the game at this point.

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Just because one guild goes beyond everything to achieve a world first kill (who the fuck does 75 dungeons in 2 days), doesn't really mean the game is bad. People will always find a way to exploit and or circumvent a system. That's exactly what Method has been doing.

Blizzard is tuning bosses around this type of behavior though and they have since at least Legion. When Blizzard acknowledges the behavior in their tuning, it means the system design is bad.

[MoanaLisa]

I bet no WOW dev even read a page of it. And yes, I know it's not WOW's official forums, but I'm 99% sure similar posts were made there that also went unread and unacknowledged. This dev team is far too arrogant to admit they need serious help designing the game at this point.

I would rather the developers spend their time on stuff that affects everyone instead of spending much of any time on edge cases like the topic of this thread or split runs or any of that. I have no idea why developers really think that ML needed to go away other than the years of complaining about how ML was abused in pugs. But nearly everything you wrote about barely has any relevance to 1 in 10 players. I suppose not paying a lot of attention to mythic raiding loot systems could be seen as arrogant but it's stretching the point.

[The One Percent]

ddo they buy them anymore though ?

i mean sure raiders do but do you honestly belive that joe average is buyinh anything from AH when gold has striaght monetary value atm ?

i kinda doubt it .

gems. enchants. potions. flasks. plus the raw materials to craft those.

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Name one profession where you can make enough gold without busting your ass to be able to afford a token currently?

What does that have to do with the question I asked?

- - - Updated - - -

You do realize that if it was easy to make gold through professions, this would be true for all players, driving the price of the token up?

No, he doesn't understand how the token works at all.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Lol. Yes, what goes on with the 0.1% of the 1% of the playerbase reflects upon us all, amirite?
When we had Legion's mission table gold generation, the whinge went: "Blizzard rewards no-lifers who can keep many alts for gold generation to sell more tokens!!!! Greedy GREEDY!!!"

Now they're somehow fudging the economy over in the opposite direction because... they want to sell more tokens? Wut?

[Marrilaife]

How long till Blizzard will fix this economy and game ruining behavior?

Method spent millions on buying titanforged BOEs, what's there for Blizzard to "fix" since they were the ones to put BOEs in the game, and put titanforge mechanic into the game, therefore encouraging people to do exactly that, buy gear.

I'm really sorry for these people. They waste so much time and get nothing out of it. That is really sad.

They actually get real life money from streaming. The people who are "wasting money" are people who are paying subs and donating to the streamers, as that's where money comes from.

Also from sponsorships, but companies get advertisement value out of that. Every method video has sponsors on it.

Lol. Yes, what goes on with the 0.1% of the 1% of the playerbase reflects upon us all, amirite?
When we had Legion's mission table gold generation, the whinge went: "Blizzard rewards no-lifers who can keep many alts for gold generation to sell more tokens!!!! Greedy GREEDY!!!"

Now they're somehow fudging the economy over in the opposite direction because... they want to sell more tokens? Wut?

Best part is even with legion having gold growing on the trees (= mission table) 90% of the wow playerbase was still too lazy to pick that low hanging fruit, otherwise the token price would have been over a million before legion ended.

Name one profession where you can make enough gold without busting your ass to be able to afford a token currently?

You should never be able to "afford a token without busting your ass", that would mean token value is too cheap because everyone can afford it easily therefore gold buyers are getting scammed because they're getting worthless amount of gold for their 20$.

Now why can't you make any decent amount of gold with professions even with putting work into it? Well blame the deflation due to cutting all the casual gold out of the game. Casuals don't have gold = they won't buy stuff. Whales might have gold, but they're only interested in specific things, and there's few of them, so the volume of sales is low. When people had lots of free gold laying around, you won't believe what kind of random rubbish sold on ah. I remember watching a video where a guy bought cooking ingredients from Dalaran vendor like peppers, butter, olives, etc. and put them on AH for stupid prices, they still sold even though they were available in unlimited quantities on easy to access vendor.

[Hedleyazg]

How is this a reflection on the game? This is a reflection on their determination on getting world first. They didn't have to do any of that stuff they just chose to do it to get a leg up.

[NED funded]

Alchemy. /10ch

How are people making gold with Alchemy?

The prices of flasks are all fucked up only being barely profitable with procs. Pots I guess? But the profit won't net you 120k a month unless you craft a crazy amount of pots.

When it comes to gold making, I find that enchanting, inscription and the three gear crafting professions are the best. Engineering if you can be bothered to do the Pandaria farms.

[quite an expert in wow]

This dev team has ZERO foresight. There was a thread on this very site when the Master Loot changes were announced which predicted this EXACT scenario.

Link to thread (started 3/18/2018... well before BFA even released and almost 50 pages long):
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-Master-Looter

Quotes:
"I don't know if anything can be worse than Legiondaries, but I actually agree with you that it will be really bad if they ONLY remove ML with no other associated changes. It doesn't really solve split raiding completely, it actually just makes it even more inaccessible and exclusive to WF guilds, in my opinion. You would get a situation where split runs would still happen at the highest level, they would be less lucrative, but the advantage would still be there. Next you get the arguments from mythic guilds with the dev team over when you can trade an item and when you cannot. That will be loads of fun! After that you get drama when guilds try to effectively regain ML by trying to force trades among their raid members.

I really hope the dev team has the foresight to see this nightmare scenario and realize that, whatever they do, they can't ONLY remove ML. I worry about a dev team that approved randomly distributed Legiondaries though. Any team that would approve a design decision like that just doesn't have much common sense left, in my opinion."

"This doesn't stop split runs at all though. All it does is change the item level required of alts. Before, it was common to have plenty of undergeared alts. Now, all of your alts will be required to have a certain item level so that they can trade their personal loot acquisitions to the appropriate people. Can't wait for that."

"Trading of BOP items needs to also end or they will have created this exact nightmare scenario... ML is technically gone but WF guilds like Method will still attempt to split run on some level as you describe. Sadly, they will have only succeeded in making split raiding harder and even more exclusive to guilds like Method who have the time to do it. Split raiding needs a death blow, not a bandaid.

In addition, guilds will attempt to force trades among their players if new trial/raider Bobby got the best DPS trinket but 2 year vet Billy doesn't have it yet."

I bet no WOW dev even read a page of it. And yes, I know it's not WOW's official forums, but I'm 99% sure similar posts were made there that also went unread and unacknowledged. This dev team is far too arrogant to admit they need serious help designing the game at this point.

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Blizzard is tuning bosses around this type of behavior though and they have since at least Legion. When Blizzard acknowledges the behavior in their tuning, it means the system design is bad.

They indeed make some encounters hard gear checks but why is that such a bad thing. Getting better gear is what people want to do anyways.

[IceMan1763]

They indeed make some encounters hard gear checks but why is that such a bad thing. Getting better gear is what people want to do anyways.

You're talking about raid design in general, not this specific situation. It's like saying "some things have salt in them, so why is a pound of salt in my burger such a bad thing"?

In the current paradigm, their tuning is generally out of whack, and has been for two expansions now, because they tune mythic raiding around the behavior of the top guilds, who are essentially exploiting the gearing system. That has rippling effects for every guild doing mythic raiding and can even bleed down into heroic tuning.

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I would rather the developers spend their time on stuff that affects everyone instead of spending much of any time on edge cases like the topic of this thread or split runs or any of that. I have no idea why developers really think that ML needed to go away other than the years of complaining about how ML was abused in pugs. But nearly everything you wrote about barely has any relevance to 1 in 10 players. I suppose not paying a lot of attention to mythic raiding loot systems could be seen as arrogant but it's stretching the point.

Well, maybe this quote will help shed some let on the situation:
"Using multiple raid groups to funnel loot to a set of mains [is] a competitive advantage of the high end, it’s not fun for people who do it,”

That's from Ion himself. Like it or not, the dev team does make changes directed at, or because of, what the top % of players do. I firmly believe they SHOULD do this as well. Designing around players who don't play their characters optimally does not make sense, and the top % will do anything possible to exploit game systems, which should be discouraged through design changes.

[Logwyn]

The question should be if you understand what debt is. They're indebted to players/boosting companies, they took loans of 100m gold and are expected to pay them back, they lent gold, they have to pay back gold, they are very much in debt. What about this concept is not being in debt?

If they did that for some world first then they are kinda dumb..

[Master Factician]

BfA release was pretty awful but it's definitely getting better. Hopefully the next expansion release is fine tuned from the start.

[Soon-TM]

BfA release was pretty awful but it's definitely getting better. Hopefully the next expansion release is fine tuned from the start.

Maybe... I still can't shake the feeling that BfA was rushed as all !#$%, it would have needed 3 or 4 more months in the oven.

[ydraw]

Name one profession where you can make enough gold without busting your ass to be able to afford a token currently?

I buy 3 tokens a month from enchanting and I don't really do anything except DE gear I get from M+ and world quests, and collect the free mats from my mission table followers.

[Naiattavain]

i like high quality games, wow state is terrible right now and this explains a lot. for method to be in 100 million gold debt to people is pretty lame for a guild to progress. blizzard doesn't know what they are doing at all.

[Holofernes]

Name one profession where you can make enough gold without busting your ass to be able to afford a token currently?

crop harvesting. one riverbud goes for 100 gold. one harvest = 400-600 gold.

[Playintrafic]

People been like "OMG 100 millions gold!!! How are they going to find that much gold!!! rawrr"
Im here thinking "Only 100 millions? that's easy... anyone that know how play the AH or make gold on their server can do that, alone, in like 1 or 2 months... so if you put the whole guild at it, it's going to be quick...."

Im pretty shit at it, and I've made 454k in 2 weeks with zero starup capital. So. Yeah. Thats 454k profit, with closer to 900k revenue. On a medium pop.

Just goes to show how terrible some people are at gold. If you have less than 100k on your main, then thats on you. Do something besides standing in stormwind or boralus all day bitching about how there is nothing to do.