The 8.3 experience

[cptaylor38]

So, I started playing this game a little before Burning Crusade came out.

I took a break mid legion and missed out on things like the mage tower and undercity/darnassus stuff. I quit around then because I got tired of how dependent everything in game was on world quests and the mission table. It just got really annoying trying to progress certain story parts but having to wait on 1-3 day missions to complete, wanting to unlock hidden artifact skins but constantly waiting on more missions, and wanting to progress my character but knowing on my alts it was going to be a pain due to artifact power.

So, I came back a few months ago, wound up grinding out the rest of Legion flying that I never got to finish because I quit before the broken isles was released, got BFA flying, and have unlocked everything but Mechagnomes.

I can definitely see why people don't have as much interest in this expansion, and in truth I really just got tired of everything being so dependent on ilvl. Even pvp you can't enjoy unless you have max ilvl, and with the current combat system it really just boils down to bending over if you don't.

I was excited about this patch, because despite knowing that it wouldn't have that much content, thought it would at least be a great way to gear up my alts and get a little more enjoyment.

But after having spent time in this patch I'm just wondering what's the point?

You do an assault, get some 430-440 piece of gear from the cache, which seems to be a 3 day cooldown I guess? And you get a currency that you need 10,000 of just to enter some instance that in itself is pretty vague. I guess the entire point of this process is just to get some upgrade for a cloak that will be replaced by a blue or green next expansion? I mean, sure, that's the same with every expansion, but it's like it's the focal point of this entire patch? To upgrade one cloak, with the main benefit being to counter negative effects of some new unnecessary gear that has some additional procs?

I just don't get it. I failed two visions tonight, despite having done a bonus and Thrall last time, on my demon hunter, because I don't even understand the mechanics of this stupid instance? What, you take damage, you lose sanity, and that's it? Enjoy farming 10,000 more coalescing visions? I was literally just doing it for a chance at another piece of gear as I don't give a shit about the cloak, but I don't even know why I'm bothering with that because the first vision I did with the bonus and Thrall didn't give me a single piece of gear due to some presumable bug with the patch. The sad thing is, these are probably the most interesting parts of the patch and something I would consider trying to do better and improve at and repeat, but it's so much of a boring hassle trying to get the resources to enter it that I'd rather just not bother. I'm assuming this is because of the cloak upgrades? Because of the supposed loot that drops from bosses (and doesn't right now)?

And if you don't do those, what are you supposed to do? Keep farming the same dungeons for the next 10 months that you've been farming for a year? They didn't even bother to add new dungeons with this patch?

The quality and design of this game has just gone drastically down hill, and whatever desire I had to constantly try to improve my character and get the latest gear no matter how tedious the journey is just not there anymore, especially when the content itself isn't enjoyable.

They've gotten so stingy with resources that they've created, (and I there are a few who might disagree) tier sets that look like questing greens or dungeon blues as they did with Nazjatar...

And instead of adding a new zone they've decided to reuse Vale of Eternal Blossoms, Uldum, Stormwind, and Orgrimmar by essentially emptying all existing npc's, plopping in a few raid assets, and changing the skybox.

I don't even want to pursue any of this crap on alts, because 1. I don't want to bother attempting to get essences. 2. I don't want to do the long quest, even if parts are skippable. 3. I don't want to constantly travel back and forth to these out of the way zones.

At least Uldum has a portal, but Vale? You really couldn't add a portal to Vale?

I'm sure there will be a dozen white knights rushing into defend the game, but I honestly don't know how you can't see the vast difference in the quality of this patch to what we've had before.

I think the large part is that I'm just tired of the game in general, despite trying to rekindle some interest in it. But it just feels like it's became this systems-driven, auto-pilot, grindy in ways it shouldn't be, slow motion train wreck.

Aside from the typical mythic+ and raiding elitists, the community and interaction in the game seems to have improved from what it was when I left. So to that, thanks to everyone that was kind in game. I hope you find enjoyment out of this, but for me it just feels like whatever soul this game once had has been completely ripped out.

[Nitros14]

Yeah the game is pretty terrible now.

That's why I quit to raid the content in classic I missed because I started raiding in BC.

[deenman]

Yeah the game is pretty terrible now.

That's why I quit to raid the content in classic I missed because I started raiding in BC.

thats kinda crazy to me,for all bfa's issues,raiding isnt one of them,the idea of playing classic FOR the raids versus bfa is kinda insane to me

[Mojo03]

Ya, it’s a garbage fire. Who knows what happened internally. Feels a lot like they got pressure to focus on SL instead of 8.3, but had to do something for it.

This game might actually, genuinely be on the way out with this weak expansion, garbage fire patch, and SL currently looking mediocre AF.

[cptaylor38]

Ya, it’s a garbage fire. Who knows what happened internally. Feels a lot like they got pressure to focus on SL instead of 8.3, but had to do something for it.

This game might actually, genuinely be on the way out with this weak expansion, garbage fire patch, and SL currently looking mediocre AF.

You know, I think that, but it is amazing how many people are still content or vehemently defending this game despite its current state. I don't know if they're new and didn't get to experience what some of the rest of us have experienced so they have nothing to compare it to, or if the general design of the game just appeals to them for whatever reason.

So I still think it will be around quite awhile. They have great marketing, and they're great at adding in a few things here and there to reel people back in, like allied races, even if it's only for a short amount of time until they remember all of the other flaws and reasons why they left.

They're also still really good at pushing out expansions, even if they don't always have the best premise. I definitely don't have high hopes for Shadowlands, but I do think it will be better even if just for the sake of gaining some of the interest back that they lost with this.

[kaintk]

i've played like 2 hour, trying to do bugued quest, missing object that not respawn , etc..

story was boring, man, i was with them since wow alpha, and its sad to see they dont know anymore how to entertain us, its just boring blabla bla quest, go seek that, go kill x mob, always the same

i've fear that shadowland will be the same boring shit with an attempt to do a good story

[Nitros14]

thats kinda crazy to me,for all bfa's issues,raiding isnt one of them,the idea of playing classic FOR the raids versus bfa is kinda insane to me

You could raid log up until Legion.

Then they added all sorts of bullshit tedious grinding you had to do to raid.

Run a million M+ for various reasons. Constantly obligated to log on and do dumb world quests for artifact power. Constantly obligated to log on and do weekly busywork. The grinds never end.

Also the loot is a disaster. Benthic gear RNG festival takes up a bunch of slots. At least you can fucking give the items that drop to the people who need them in classic.

In classic there's a little bit of work to do outside of raid but it doesn't take long and generally you only have to do it once.

BFA raids were alright. I did get cutting edge G'huun and Jaina but the problems with BFA raiding are outside of raiding mostly.

[Wyrt]

thats kinda crazy to me,for all bfa's issues,raiding isnt one of them,the idea of playing classic FOR the raids versus bfa is kinda insane to me

Well, for me the barrier for entry of BfA raiding is just too high. You need to level the neck, level the cloak, get all the right essences, get the right azerite traits, and get the right corruptions. It's just too much, especially as someone who stopped playing in 8.0 and then came back for 8.3. Just the list of all the things I need to get done to catch up for raiding is just insane on top of the normal gearing that is to be expected.

[Bumbasta]

I liked the enormous questline for the cloak, feels like quite a lot of content. The assaults are not static and shift everytime, making it dynamic as well. Also, islands expeditions, which I already enjoyed doing, now have a more realistic chance on the mount with the caches. I'm basically playing more than I have ever this expansion.

I'm looking forward to the raid to open and to really make choices to what corrupted gear set-up is best to use.

[cptaylor38]

My issue with 8.3 is that I wish I could play Horrific Visions all day and I can't. The gameplay there is compelling for a solo player. But you can only play them a few times per week. I wish there was a way to continue playing them with significantly reduced or even no rewards just for practice.

Beyond that, the rares drop nothing of value and I am sure I will stop doing the dailies as soon as I hit exalted. There just isn't enough content. I actually like the story and feel they managed to partially redeem Uldum from the mess that was Cata.

Agreed. Personally I think they should have added a dungeon version with reduced ilvl's or something. Make them not a hassle to enter if you want to try them out, practice, maybe have a CHANCE at loot. But instead they've chosen to ruin it by making it centered around cloak upgrades.

Hell, they could have added a brawler's guild style vision challenge where you fight random bosses and don't have to kill 5000 pointless mobs.

I don't know. It's just all of it really. It's just so overwhelming even trying to play because where there used to be simple gear progression and ilvl, there's now a million different things you have to worry about and none of them make the game feel anymore rewarding to play. They're just random damage or stat procs with minimal visual effects and once you've got them all, you get to do the same content you just did a week ago with less gear but with more notches on the damage meter. I guess that's kind how WoW's always been, just not to this mindnumbingly annoying extent.

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I liked the enormous questline for the cloak, feels like quite a lot of content. The assaults are not static and shift everytime, making it dynamic as well. Also, islands expeditions, which I already enjoyed doing, now have a more realistic chance on the mount with the caches. I'm basically playing more than I have ever this expansion.

I'm looking forward to the raid to open and to really make choices to what corrupted gear set-up is best to use.

I did enjoy Island Expeditions, honestly. It's really just killing a bunch of mobs over and over again, but it was kind of relaxing. My biggest complaint is how many dabloons it takes to buy anything. I might try one or two to night to see if I get a chance at a mount or something as they've supposedly had their drop rate increased, but 150 dabloons when you're lucky to get more than 5 from a run is a little too tedious for me.

[Cosmic Janitor]

My issue with 8.3 is that I wish I could play Horrific Visions all day and I can't. The gameplay there is compelling for a solo player. But you can only play them a few times per week. I wish there was a way to continue playing them with significantly reduced or even no rewards just for practice.

Beyond that, the rares drop nothing of value and I am sure I will stop doing the dailies as soon as I hit exalted. There just isn't enough content. I actually like the story and feel they managed to partially redeem Uldum from the mess that was Cata.

The limiting impression is something I got as well from the visions. I hope they take note for Torghast and don't overly limit it like that as well.

[deenman]

You could raid log up until Legion.

Then they added all sorts of bullshit tedious grinding you had to do to raid.

Run a million M+ for various reasons. Constantly obligated to log on and do dumb world quests for artifact power. Constantly obligated to log on and do weekly busywork. The grinds never end.

Also the loot is a disaster. Benthic gear RNG festival takes up a bunch of slots. At least you can fucking give the items that drop to the people who need them in classic.

In classic there's a little bit of work to do outside of raid but it doesn't take long and generally you only have to do it once.

BFA raids were alright. I did get cutting edge G'huun and Jaina but the problems with BFA raiding are outside of raiding mostly.

agree with the grind being bullshit and benthic gear wile good in concept,the way they had you aquire it was lame,but i was refering to just the raiding itself,and you dont have to do all the grind,in legion we got curve every tier and personaly i played fairly chill,i didnt even have my bis legenderies until tomb of sargeras,but as much as i enjoy classic outside of raiding,i simply couldnt bare to do MC for weeks and weeks,maybe ill come back for naxx as i never did that at 60 and the wrath version was just a joke

[Cosmic Janitor]

With how linked Torghast is to a progression system (legendaries) I'm afraid they might limit it as well.
With legion they made the decision to allow one style of gameplay to have infinite loot (M+). They need to either allow the other styles to also have infinite loot or look hard at M+ rewards.

I had hoped that they just limit the rewards (progression wise) and still allow us to keep playing it (maybe for cosmetics and fun).

[Alanar]

I liked the enormous questline for the cloak, feels like quite a lot of content. The assaults are not static and shift everytime, making it dynamic as well. Also, islands expeditions, which I already enjoyed doing, now have a more realistic chance on the mount with the caches. I'm basically playing more than I have ever this expansion.

I'm looking forward to the raid to open and to really make choices to what corrupted gear set-up is best to use.

I have done it on3 characters now.. cant say its a lot of concent, but it sure eats your soul away..

[deenman]

Well, for me the barrier for entry of BfA raiding is just too high. You need to level the neck, level the cloak, get all the right essences, get the right azerite traits, and get the right corruptions. It's just too much, especially as someone who stopped playing in 8.0 and then came back for 8.3. Just the list of all the things I need to get done to catch up for raiding is just insane on top of the normal gearing that is to be expected.

dont you have a guild?i also stoped playing after uldir,came back now,the neck levels catchup is very high you get there fairly quick,and my guild will take me to hc and m+,ill be fine until myth is out,the old essences shouldnt take more than a month max,also if you have friends just ask em to help you in visions,the corruption gear is pretty sweet

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I had hoped that they just limit the rewards (progression wise) and still allow us to keep playing it (maybe for cosmetics and fun).

honestly the way i would fix m+ is make the gear from it have bonuses just in dungeons and outdoor,wile the raid gear have bonuses for the raids and outdoor,thefore it becomes the intent they have for them to be 2 different gearing paths,but not make you feel like both are a must do

[Wyrt]

dont you have a guild?i also stoped playing after uldir,came back now,the neck levels catchup is very high you get there fairly quick,and my guild will take me to hc and m+,ill be fine until myth is out,the old essences shouldnt take more than a month max,also if you have friends just ask em to help you in visions,the corruption gear is pretty sweet

No, I don't have a guild because the one I was in died at the start of the expansion. So I need to catch up with all this shit so that I can start trying to find a guild.

And from what I see corruption gear is "If you don't get Infinite Stars have fun being benched."

[Denizly]

I can definitely see why people don't have as much interest in this expansion, and in truth I really just got tired of everything being so dependent on ilvl. Even pvp you can't enjoy unless you have max ilvl, and with the current combat system it really just boils down to bending over if you don't.

PvP uses stat templates, there's a small difference between u and a guy with better gear, need at least 20-30 ilvl difference for you to notice it, and right now with new patch everyone has around the same (within 10 ilvl diff) ilvls, the random gear tokens u get are on par with last raid.

But after having spent time in this patch I'm just wondering what's the point?

Are you having fun with whatever you're doing / plan to do? If yes, great, if no, leave. It's always been that easy.

You do an assault, get some 430-440 piece of gear from the cache, which seems to be a 3 day cooldown I guess?

Catch up gear, you'll outlvl it with the raid, it's sole purpose are alts and under-geared mains. Each patch had the same thing so you don't have to raid previous raid tiers to catch up.

And you get a currency that you need 10,000 of just to enter some instance that in itself is pretty vague. I guess the entire point of this process is just to get some upgrade for a cloak that will be replaced by a blue or green next expansion? I mean, sure, that's the same with every expansion, but it's like it's the focal point of this entire patch? To upgrade one cloak, with the main benefit being to counter negative effects of some new unnecessary gear that has some additional procs?

What's vague about it? Go in, kill the big skull on the map, ez. Later you'll have to go deeper, but you got a buffed cloak and console upgrades for that.
The cloak is needed for the raid, without it being "good enough" you'll die fast on last 2 bosses.
Corrupted gear is a replacement for titanforging and set items, you gain an affix and a detrimental stat (corruption). Cloak and essences counter corruption cuz at higher lvls of it there are some rly bad stuff happening to u.

Every peace of gear will be replaced by a green next xpac, always been that way. Gear is the main motivation for most ppl to play the game and do harder content, and yes they are aware it'll be replaced.
There needs to be a useful reward to motivate you to do content, gear has always been it, plus the occasional mount / pet / toy / achie.

I just don't get it. I failed two visions tonight, despite having done a bonus and Thrall last time, on my demon hunter, because I don't even understand the mechanics of this stupid instance? What, you take damage, you lose sanity, and that's it? Enjoy farming 10,000 more coalescing visions? I was literally just doing it for a chance at another piece of gear as I don't give a shit about the cloak, but I don't even know why I'm bothering with that because the first vision I did with the bonus and Thrall didn't give me a single piece of gear due to some presumable bug with the patch. The sad thing is, these are probably the most interesting parts of the patch and something I would consider trying to do better and improve at and repeat, but it's so much of a boring hassle trying to get the resources to enter it that I'd rather just not bother. I'm assuming this is because of the cloak upgrades? Because of the supposed loot that drops from bosses (and doesn't right now)?

Cloak update comes from the quest from Wrathion, you get it when you do your first vision, and you get another after each time you complete it. No quest, no item to upgrade cloak. Gear drops are random, ur guarantied one per week, then it's rng.
You "win" the vision by killing Thrall, nothing else. If you lose sanity before he dies, you "lose" the vision and the cloak upgrade item won't drop in chest. If you do the side areas, you get a bonus chest per area, rewards in it increase if you kill Thrall.
Till ur cloak is lvl 5, all you gotta do is pop in and get Thrall. From lvl 6-11 u gotta kill Thrall and a ez side zone. 11-16 thrall, ez side, hard side. 16+ all sides + thrall.

Don't stress farming the 10k things u need for visions, just do assaults and dailies. IF you do all dailies and both assaults each week, you will get over 30k of those, giving u 3 visions a week, you can hard farm the 4th one if you rly want, but there's no need.

And if you don't do those, what are you supposed to do? Keep farming the same dungeons for the next 10 months that you've been farming for a year? They didn't even bother to add new dungeons with this patch?

True there's no new dung and that sucks. And yes you'd be farming them anyway if you care about min maxing. IF you just care about being "up to date" with gear, do the raid on whatever diff u can, and a single +15 dung, don't even need to time it.

The quality and design of this game has just gone drastically down hill, and whatever desire I had to constantly try to improve my character and get the latest gear no matter how tedious the journey is just not there anymore, especially when the content itself isn't enjoyable.

They've gotten so stingy with resources that they've created, (and I there are a few who might disagree) tier sets that look like questing greens or dungeon blues as they did with Nazjatar...

If you're a raider, rejoice, you are getting objectively the best raid ever (according to streamers, content creators adn top tier guilds who tested it).
Gear acquisition is the same as always, do the raid. Everything else is catch up to mythic raid. World quest / dailies /assaults have a cap on how high their ilvl. Visions got a cap too, but we don't know how high yet, but it's most likely corrupted. M+ at lvl 15 gives gear that's 5 ivl above HC raid, and the weekly chest gives mythic raid ilvl gear.
Only difference is that there's no more titanforging, so what ivl u get that's the one you'll always get. Corruption is the new bonus if your interested in it. If not, you can cleanse all items and ignore it. It's irrelevant unless ur trying to min max.

The raid sets look amazing, unlike the ones before.

And instead of adding a new zone they've decided to reuse Vale of Eternal Blossoms, Uldum, Stormwind, and Orgrimmar by essentially emptying all existing npc's, plopping in a few raid assets, and changing the skybox.

Can't argue with this, it was lazy.

I don't even want to pursue any of this crap on alts, because 1. I don't want to bother attempting to get essences. 2. I don't want to do the long quest, even if parts are skippable. 3. I don't want to constantly travel back and forth to these out of the way zones.

At least Uldum has a portal, but Vale? You really couldn't add a portal to Vale?

Essences u need for most classes from before 8.3:
- vision of perfection (mechagon has a hc version now, so this is ez, u get rank 2 first week, and rank 3 in 2 weeks)
- memory of lucid dreams (from Nazjatar follower daily, takes 11 days to get rank 3, and u do 3 dailies a day... u get rank 2 after 4 days so u can stop there)
- worldvain resonance (from islands, takes 3 weeks of doing the weekly that you should be doing anyway to get rank 3)
- focusing iris (rank 2 from doing a +7 dung in first week, rank 3 from 2 weekly chest if u do +15s or 3 chests if you do +10s)

Every other essence is either crap (Eternal palace one), takes ages (PvP one), not that gr8 (dailies / 8.2 rep). All of them tho are outclassed by the new 8.3 essences that you are passively farming by doing daily / weekly content. Rank 3 of the new essences is wastly easyer to get then rank 3 of the old ones i mentioned, and they scale better. Except blood of the enemy, that ones R3 is gr8 but takes forever in PvP to get, and unless u got it at R3 it's dogshit.

So yh, essences are ez now, as you don't rly need em all, just look up wowhead for your top 5 and get those. For most specs the top 5 are the ones i mentioned to get.


The intro quest is annoying to repeat, can't be skipped and takes 2 hours. Did it on all 4 alts I care about, and did it 1 alt per day cuz it's annoying.

It's been known since the removal of old portals, that the best place to pt your hearthstone is Vale, do that and your time in game will be so much easier.

I'm sure there will be a dozen white knights rushing into defend the game, but I honestly don't know how you can't see the vast difference in the quality of this patch to what we've had before.

I think the large part is that I'm just tired of the game in general, despite trying to rekindle some interest in it. But it just feels like it's became this systems-driven, auto-pilot, grindy in ways it shouldn't be, slow motion train wreck.

Aside from the typical mythic+ and raiding elitists, the community and interaction in the game seems to have improved from what it was when I left. So to that, thanks to everyone that was kind in game. I hope you find enjoyment out of this, but for me it just feels like whatever soul this game once had has been completely ripped out.

You might be tired of it, and that's ok, take it at ur own pace.

Pace of the game is the same (bit faster since the raid/new season start earlier then last few patches), the grind is the same just different flavor. It's not for everyone, but to those who like it it's good enough.

Also, just cuz someone likes what you don't, doesn't make them a white knight. To each their own my man.
Bare in mind I din't mean to flame / hate on you at any point here, just help clear some stuff out, sorry if it sounded different.

[deenman]

My issue with 8.3 is that I wish I could play Horrific Visions all day and I can't. The gameplay there is compelling for a solo player. But you can only play them a few times per week. I wish there was a way to continue playing them with significantly reduced or even no rewards just for practice.

Beyond that, the rares drop nothing of value and I am sure I will stop doing the dailies as soon as I hit exalted. There just isn't enough content. I actually like the story and feel they managed to partially redeem Uldum from the mess that was Cata.

yeah its a real shame what ended up hapening to uldum,with how it was initialy planned out,desert zones are my favorite,when mad max game came out and AC origin i was in heaven

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No, I don't have a guild because the one I was in died at the start of the expansion. So I need to catch up with all this shit so that I can start trying to find a guild.

And from what I see corruption gear is "If you don't get Infinite Stars have fun being benched."

could try finding a more casual/chill guild,plenty of people doing just normal,they rly shouldnt be overly stressed with your power,many people came back for this patch and should be in your shoes looking to do the same,gl

[Alanar]

The 8.3 exp is realy bad.. I am having a hard time enjoying it.
I agree with you op.

[szandos]

I usually defend Blizzard and I still play the game and have fun, but... this patch had a lot less content than I expected. The one fun thing added (Horrific visions) is time gated, which is a big mistake imo. I get that the cloak upgrades should be time gated, but visions shouldn't. Also, the explanations for how visions work and what your goal in it is could be much better.

With the essence grind I can't be arsed to play alts. And I'm not interested in levelling a diaper gnome. Just hoping there's a lot in the raid, though part of me wishes it's undertuned so I can spend some time in other games.