The Grinding - BFA vs WOTLK

[Hctaz]

Also. thinking back on Wrath:
I came into WotLK with three max level toons: druid(main), lock, and hunter. At the beginning of Ulduar I started running out of things to do, outside of raiding (and raiding wasn't nearly as accessible as it is today). So, out of boredom I started leveling alts. Leveling alts was fun, I enjoy playing the various classes, but, the point is, again, outside of raiding, during Wrath, I ran out of things to do. This will most definitely not be the case during BFA.

I can come up with plenty of criticisms about BFA, too much to do is not one of them.

But too many things to do IS a problem for raiders. I understand you're a casual player so it's different but like... just no. There are definitely better ways to implement features like this without also including the hardcore playerbase. I think the point OP though is to show the difference between the philosophy of WoW back then vs now.

The grinds were mostly optional with a very few rep rewards being a mandatory thing you needed to do. To this day, I've never even finished the Argent Tournament dailies. That's still content I could technically go back and do to do this day for something. The difference with that and Legion/BfA is that these World Quests you do to progress your character are all 100% meaningless as soon the expansion goes away while content like the Molten Front or the Argent Tournament remains content you can do forever.

I think they just handle player power increases incorrectly. I'm all for you being able to do your own content to boost your player power, but why does your content and your power also need to affect my power as a raider? And subsequently why should MY content be useful for your content? What if solo content made you better at completing solo content?

[callipygoustp]

But too many things to do IS a problem for raiders. I understand you're a casual player so it's different but like... just no. There are definitely better ways to implement features like this without also including the hardcore playerbase. I think the point OP though is to show the difference between the philosophy of WoW back then vs now.

The grinds were mostly optional with a very few rep rewards being a mandatory thing you needed to do. To this day, I've never even finished the Argent Tournament dailies. That's still content I could technically go back and do to do this day for something. The difference with that and Legion/BfA is that these World Quests you do to progress your character are all 100% meaningless as soon the expansion goes away while content like the Molten Front or the Argent Tournament remains content you can do forever.

I think they just handle player power increases incorrectly. I'm all for you being able to do your own content to boost your player power, but why does your content and your power also need to affect my power as a raider? And subsequently why should MY content be useful for your content? What if solo content made you better at completing solo content?

Think you quoted the wrong person. None of that counters or talks to my point:

I can come up with plenty of criticisms about BFA, too much to do is not one of them.

[BeepBoo]

Nostalgia is sting in this one. At least the catch up mechanics work. If you were behind at any stage in WotLK it was a lot more grindy. A solo player today can get ready to raid in less than 2 weeks. I went from 110 to 444ilvl with good esscences and LVL 72 neck in that time.

BfA is far superior than WotLK when it comes to catch up.

Catchup in WOTLK was vastly superior in that you would join your raid group, you'd get carried and tossed literally everything from non-progression bosses, and you didn't have to worry about anything else besides actually getting that piece of gear.

"solo" raid readying wasn't a thing, because pug raids weren't a thing.

I wish I PvE'd in the pre-legion expansions. If what people are saying here is true, I would've been a lot more open to the hardcore guilds without these inhumane grinds.

This is literally the reason I gave up. I don't want to have to spend a ratio of 5:1 garbage content:raid content. "but you don't HAVE to spend that much time!!"

1) I'm only interested in orange parses, so yes, I do.
2) Even a ratio of 1:1 is pathetic. I'd stomach 0.1:1 anything-but-raid:raid time ratios AT MOST.

[Daedius]

I like working towards a guaranteed goal without some RNG bullshit, multiple layers of it no less, that is utilized to increase the MUA so well demonstrated with these fucking Paragon Caches for example.

Give me WotLK's model over Legion+BfA combined any day. I like to get done and move on, not get stuck in a fucking perpetual loop that gets worse over time when new content comes around and you still haven't gotten what you wanted because of low % RNG.

[Dakara]

Imagine if we only needed to farm the Azerite gear without needing to be concerned with the neck level to use it (early BFA).
Imagine if essences were an extension of Azerite traits, adding another ring to 8.2 gear.
Imagine if Heroic Visions could be done daily (or even indefinitely) without requiring farming up of a currency... but the rewards were capped to a weekly limit.

I don't think BFA's systems are inherently bad, it's the grind in order to utilize them that's the real concern.

Using WOTLK as an example, during ICC, my guild (25 Man Heroic) also ran weekend Alt runs in 2x 10 man teams. They needed a Tank, so I no-lifed my DK over a few nights to get up to speed... in the same way you might spam M+ today, I spammed Heroic Dungeons. Both the new Icecrown ones and all the old ones for Badges of Justice? Volor? (cant recall) to purchase some catchup gear.

However, unlike BFA, I didn't also need to grind out neck levels to utilize Azerite traits (pre 8.3) or time-gated essences. And that's also another major flaw with BFA. When I geared my DK tank in Wrath, like I said, I no-lifed it for a few days just spamming dungeons (iirc, there was a weekly cap on one of the currencies so I probably did it over a reset). I wasn't limited by time-gating mechanics like we are today for essences or an AP grind for neck levels.

[Kumorii]

Pretty sure they meant that in order to be competitive (e.g. DPS meters or PVPing), you need to do everything to maximize azerite and gear acquisition. In vanilla and TBC, there wasn't as many methods to gain these sorts of progression and the methods there usually had lockouts.

For casual play, this doesn't matter. For hardcore/competitive, it does.

That's the case for entire wow history and literally every game out there that has a competitive branch. You have to do anything you can even if it's miniscule power difference.
For majority of players it's rarely matters.

[IceMan1763]

I wish I PvE'd in the pre-legion expansions. If what people are saying here is true, I would've been a lot more open to the hardcore guilds without these inhumane grinds.

It was that way. In Cata, I was in a top 100 guild with a (strict, no raid release increase) 12 hour schedule per week. How? You didn't really need to gather character power outside of raid, especially after the initial leveling/dungeon gearing. There were a number of guilds who competed with 30 hour per week guilds on much shorter schedules with players primarily who had day jobs, families, etc., but were very skilled and capable. We organized strategy through our guild forum to maximize our raid time.

It's possible there are guilds competing at that level now with short raid schedules, but there's two primary differences:
1) Those players are spending far more time outside of the raiding schedule to keep up with AP and all of the other sources of character power.
2) The high end raiding scene has basically died since the Wrath/Cata era

If you check WowProgress through the Wrath and Cata era and compare it to today, FAR more people were raiding then, especially at the hardest difficulty. That's not surprising considering the huge decline in subs, obviously, but the point here is that raiding was more accessible and fun then (but still had very hard encounters, in my opinion).

For those of you who say that era of raiding was easy, bosses like Yogg no lights, Heroic LK, and Rag would like a word with you. To this day they're still included frequently on lists of the hardest encounters ever. Also keep in mind those fights required 5 more people to participate than now, making coordination inherently more difficult than today's raids.

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That's the case for entire wow history and literally every game out there that has a competitive branch. You have to do anything you can even if it's miniscule power difference.
For majority of players it's rarely matters.

People like you ALWAYS leave out that prior to Legion (primarily), the "anything you can" [do to power up your character] part was LIMITED. Now, it's INFINITE.

Do you know the difference between those two words and see how the difference is distinct and important when comparing an expansion like Wrath to today's WOW? I don't really expect you to answer because the fact that you ignore this makes me think you never even played Wrath.

[Hctaz]

I wish I PvE'd in the pre-legion expansions. If what people are saying here is true, I would've been a lot more open to the hardcore guilds without these inhumane grinds.

If this is a serious, non-sarcastic post then you just made my entire day, sir.

Yes, the grinds were NEVER THIS BAD. I started raiding hardcore in Wrath myself. Went through MoP, quit in WoD, and came back in Legion. Guild finished Argus US 64th and was the 2nd 8 hour a week/2 day raiding guild to clear the content in the world afaik.

As a raider in Wrath you would hit level 80 and from there? Well you would do dungeons of course for gear. The starting experience in terms of running dungeons for gear is basically the same since the titanforge cap at the start of Legion and BfA was really low until the raids actually released. The difference though was obviously that you didn't have to farm for AP in Wrath. So you can just subtract all of that AP world quest bullshit out of the gameplay loop. There were some pieces of reputation rewards that you could unlock gearwise, but it wasn't really much better than something you would find from doing a dungeon anyway, plus the raids were decently easy at the beginning and dropped way more loot than in Classic WoW so gearing up yourself by running heroics with guildies and then going into Naxx for purps was basically all you had to do.

Also reputation could be earned INSIDE OF DUNGEONS by wearing a faction tabard corresponding to whatever rep you wanted to get. So you could usually bust out the rep that gave you an epic weapon reward just by farming for some ilvl 200 blues from heroic dungeons.

There was also one mandatory rep you had to grind by doing dailies, but it was a quick experience. I think it was something like 8 daily quests total. You needed to do this rep because it gave you the best.. shoulder? I think? enchant in the game for the entire game which was BoP. You could also build rep by just farming mobs in the respective zone and collecting badges to turn in. I honestly really miss the days when just... grinding on random mobs was an effective way to build rep while also giving you a decentish income of gold to spend on consumables. That was it though, and it didn't take months of grinding daily world quests just to hit exalted either. Each quest gave a sizable chunk of rep reward so much so that you would basically get as much if not more rep from doing 8 daily quests as you would for doing an entire emissary mission. Which doesn't sound that great since you're comparing doing 4 world quests to doing 8 daily quests, BUT YOU DONT HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE EMISSARY TO HAPPEN! You got this bonus every day which shortened the grind immensely.

You also didn't have to farm reputation with every faction over the span of a month or so to unlock flying either. You could just buy the damn thing lol.

The other major aspect of the grind that people talk about is in reference usually to gold farming. You needed a lot of gold for consumables, enchants, gems, flying, etc. The thing with that though is that it's completely variable and is something you can do on your own time. I think this reason is the main reason why people think there is more to grind now than ever before. It feels like a chore you have to log in to do daily instead of popping in a few minutes here and there until you're raid ready with all the gold you need.

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People like you ALWAYS leave out that prior to Legion (primarily), the "anything you can" [do to power up your character] part was LIMITED. Now, it's INFINITE.

Do you know the difference between those two words and see how the difference is distinct and important when comparing an expansion like Wrath to today's WOW? I don't really expect you to answer because the fact that you ignore this makes me think you never even played Wrath.

I mean... it also wasn't LITERALLY ANYTHING... Like I want these people to break this down for me and start showing me SPECIFIC EVIDENCE to support this statement.

There were a lot of things you could do to increase your player power, but it was generally diverse enough to where you could basically pick and choose. Some rep gave you gear, some rep gave you enchants, some gave you recipes. But a lot of the reputation grinds really boiled down to like... needing one person on the server or guild to finish it so that your guild had access to these things. It wasn't like every single person had to grind out this thing because it made your character 1% more powerful.

They also fail to mention how it was possible to target specifc things as well. Do you need a new 2 handed weapon and could use swords but had no gold? Great. Ebon Blade gives a basic 2 handed sword. Got gold or resources? Awesome. Titansteel Destroyer saves the day with a better 2 handed mace. Or you could farm both if you wanted? Rep first to get the gear to farm gold more easily to get the gear. But it was your choice. Maybe all of this is irrelevant anyway since your guild can clear Naxx already and you just farm dungeons, then Naxx, then move on.

Nowadays it's like... HMM... better hope that there's a world quest with a ring or a trinket and then it titanforges up 15 levels so it's better than my current piece. Better keep farming AP because I need that 1% boost from the next level. Gotta grind out Benthic Gear and pray it both rolls a socket and then also rolls my stats on it. Why was Benthic Gear random? Why did it have some abilities that were better than others for raiding? Why are sockets random and not something you can add on? It just doesn't make sense to me.

[Kumorii]

People like you ALWAYS leave out that prior to Legion (primarily), the "anything you can" [do to power up your character] part was LIMITED. Now, it's INFINITE.

Do you know the difference between those two words and see how the difference is distinct and important when comparing an expansion like Wrath to today's WOW? I don't really expect you to answer because the fact that you ignore this makes me think you never even played Wrath.

Holy assumptions... I don't think me replying will even do any good with your head so far up your own ass...

Lets assume I did leave it out on purpose, good on you, you called me out. Lets assume for good measure I didn't know the difference, all to make you feel better. Now you've explained it to me.

Guess what my response is? The same, you can read my quote again.
Infinite is irrelevant because MAJORITY of players don't NEED that infinite progression to do CONTENT. Only the COMPETITIVE will do so, which is a minority.

[IceMan1763]

Holy assumptions... I don't think me replying will even do any good with your head so far up your own ass...

Lets assume I did leave it out on purpose, good on you, you called me out. Lets assume for good measure I didn't know the difference, all to make you feel better. Now you've explained it to me.

Guess what my response is? The same, you can read my quote again.
Infinite is irrelevant because MAJORITY of players don't NEED that infinite progression to do CONTENT. Only the COMPETITIVE will do so, which is a minority.

Fair, but my counter would be that competitive is such a small minority now BECAUSE of infinite. For those players, it's VERY relevant. Also, I would say that even those who don't necessarily NEED to do it can get drawn in to the allure of easy grinds for character power. Until they burn out and quit.

High End raiding was more skill based and inclusive prior to Legion. Although the invention of split raiding did precede Legion and didn't help. However, I think the dev team has been woefully inadequate at trying to address the split raiding problem. I feel like there are simple solutions they ignore for some reason.

For example, why not template any raid piece below mythic from the current raid tier to below mythic of the previous tier? This would only be for Mythic difficulty. If you don't see what I just did there, I made every piece from the current raid, except those acquired in Mythic, virtually worthless at the top tier. Certainly not worth split raiding for. Instead their attempted fix for BFA predictably made things worse and split raiding a practice only the highest end guilds could do.

[Kumorii]

Fair, but my counter would be that competitive is such a small minority now BECAUSE of infinite. For those players, it's VERY relevant. Also, I would say that even those who don't necessarily NEED to do it can get drawn in to the allure of easy grinds for character power. Until they burn out and quit.

Competitive is such a small minority ever. If we talk about competitive min maxing on high levels. However, competitive raiding have just gone up in WoW. It's getting bigger and bigger with guilds doing broadcasts, livestreaming etc etc... you can't say that the competitiveness have been hurting due to "infinite" grinds (even though there aren't any) when it's just grown.

High End raiding was more skill based and inclusive prior to Legion. Although the invention of split raiding did precede Legion and didn't help. However, I think the dev team has been woefully inadequate at trying to address the split raiding problem. I feel like there are simple solutions they ignore for some reason.

I've just seen the complexity gone up in raid mechanics in general. Not every fight is more complex but the trend is that they become more and more skill based rather than if you had enough stats to beat it. In general it's 1-2 bosses in a raid that checks your gear by being a DPS race, most of others is doing mechanics while maximising your dps...aka skill.

For example, why not template any raid piece below mythic from the current raid tier to below mythic of the previous tier? This would only be for Mythic difficulty. If you don't see what I just did there, I made every piece from the current raid, except those acquired in Mythic, virtually worthless at the top tier. Certainly not worth split raiding for. Instead their attempted fix for BFA predictably made things worse and split raiding a practice only the highest end guilds could do.

Sure, if you want to fix split raiding. I never made an argument of it. Neither for or against. I would never participate in it and I would say even that is for a minority of players. I wouldn't mind if they that. I think itemisation needs fixing absolutely, nothings perfect. Split raiding doesn't change my position that WotLK had worse grinding due to the content you indulged in doing the grinding. I've gone over this in thread already however.

Blizzard however tends to lean more towards catch up gear and new gear obtained outside of raids instead of making previous gear null.

[Demsi]

I haven't done an IE in months and I'm totally fine. Having to log in once a day without fail to stay on pace for badge tier was dumb. The dungeons may have taken 5 minutes (more like 15 in most cases) but the queue most certainly did not for any DPS toons, and them being easy is not a positive.

Mostly my point being that IE are annyoing and WotlK 5 mans were forgetable and super easy at worst, and i know wich i'd rather have

[Directionalk9]

If Wrath was released today as it was, it would the most hated expac.

[Kayze]

That's the case for entire wow history and literally every game out there that has a competitive branch. You have to do anything you can even if it's miniscule power difference.
For majority of players it's rarely matters.

Oh my bad. I didn't realize you had to do world quests, dailies, island expeditions, and warfronts to grind points for PvE gear progression for the entire the history of WoW, instead of just a dungeon grind and then raiding.

Oh wait, you didn't because these systems are new and it wasn't until the end of Wrath that any catch up systems were even implemented. You're confusing competitive with completionist and have a total distorted view of WoW's history. Check out Classic if you'd like a refresher.

[Laqweeta]

worst part about wrath? waiting months hoping for deathbringers will

Here's the big difference between WotLK and BfA.

That Deathbringer's Will in WotLK? It was an item in sight and could be obtained.

Now imagine that Deathbringer's Will in BfA.

Does it have proper corruption?
Does it have proper corruption stats?
Did it come with a socket?

No? Well then it's not your BiS.

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I wish I PvE'd in the pre-legion expansions. If what people are saying here is true, I would've been a lot more open to the hardcore guilds without these inhumane grinds.

if Azerite gear never existed, TF/WF never made and Corruption was gone, BfA would've been fine (and a toned down Pathfinder, getting a set rep of around 600 per day when you need to go from friendly to exalted makes it look like you'll never get it) but nope, had to appease shareholders first!

PvE in WotLK and MoP was truly amazing. In WotLK your biggest hurdles were making sure *everything* was enchanted and gemmed. That's it, you were raid ready. Find a guild and go to town. Increase your gear score and then find a semi-hardcore guild and make a name for yourself. Wam bam thank ya' maam.

MoP wasn't that much different. It introduced a legendary cape, which was kinda retarded. I would've liked it a LOT more had they made it easier to obtain when the cape was released (having to do LFRs of MSV on patch 5.4 was *not* fun) but other than that, being able to reforge gear meant getting a bad piece of gear wasn't THAT bad, because you could make it work.

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Oh my bad. I didn't realize you had to do world quests, dailies, island expeditions, and warfronts to grind points for PvE gear progression for the entire the history of WoW, instead of just a dungeon grind and then raiding.

Oh wait, you didn't because these systems are new and it wasn't until the end of Wrath that any catch up systems were even implemented. You're confusing competitive with completionist and have a total distorted view of WoW's history. Check out Classic if you'd like a refresher.

Are you sure? I remember after Naxx, OS and EoE, heroic dungeons started dropping the next emblem tier, with the highest reserved for the raids. So when Emblem of Triumph was dropping only in ToC/ToGC, you could earn Emblem of Conquest from heroic dungeons.

Catch ups for Wrath started as soon as the next raid tier was released.

[Marxman]

That's the case for entire wow history and literally every game out there that has a competitive branch. You have to do anything you can even if it's miniscule power difference.
For majority of players it's rarely matters.

Correct. The entire point of the thread is that there is now more mandatory grinding of trivial content (eg world quests) that is "required" to be a hardcore player than at any other point in the games history. That is simply fact, not an opinion.

No one who is a Mythic raider, hardcore PvPer, or high M+ key pusher wants to be doing fucking world quests every day... but you don't have an option if you want to be competitive. That has never been the case before Legion. I basically only played my main on raid nights from Vanilla to WoD. These days, I would have to spend more time grinding non-raid content than I would raiding.

There shouldn't be a dozen hoops to jump through to get to the content everyone actually gives a shit about.

[Kumorii]

Oh my bad. I didn't realize you had to do world quests, dailies, island expeditions, and warfronts to grind points for PvE gear progression for the entire the history of WoW, instead of just a dungeon grind and then raiding.

Oh wait, you didn't because these systems are new and it wasn't until the end of Wrath that any catch up systems were even implemented. You're confusing competitive with completionist and have a total distorted view of WoW's history. Check out Classic if you'd like a refresher.

"instead of just a dungeon"... why do you say that like it's preferable to grind ONE thing? That becomes boring quickly, which is why I got bored of WOTLK since I just did the same dungeons with no real difficulty after the first heroic then it was just a mindless grind.

Also, I only do weekly Islands which means 3 per week, awful 3 islands but done in 20 minutes... now that I am 75 I don't really bother with it anymore because I don't enjoy it.

Dailies are alright atm, I don't need to do warfronts anymore because they don't give me much I do HC darkshore with guildies because it's fun to do stuff with guildies. Mostly just playing around having our own fun in there.
Then we also have Visions which are great, and ontop of that we have dungeons and raids as well...

I think you are the first one that's implying less content is good that i've come across... I disagree. I like MORE content and I chose which content I indulge in. You're entire premise that you "Have to" do everything you hate is just flat out wrong unless you aim to be the top 1%. That's have been the case since day 1 in vanilla. You had to do absolutely everything you could ever do.

Remember how fun it was to do Zul Gurub (I believe) to get buffs to go to Naxxramas and make an attempt? Oh boy that sure was fun mate. In every single expansion if you were to do everything it becomes a chore. Get some restraints if you don't enjoy it.

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Correct. The entire point of the thread is that there is now more mandatory grinding of trivial content (eg world quests) that is "required" to be a hardcore player than at any other point in the games history. That is simply fact, not an opinion.

No one who is a Mythic raider, hardcore PvPer, or high M+ key pusher wants to be doing fucking world quests every day... but you don't have an option if you want to be competitive. That has never been the case before Legion. I basically only played my main on raid nights from Vanilla to WoD. These days, I would have to spend more time grinding non-raid content than I would raiding.

There shouldn't be a dozen hoops to jump through to get to the content everyone actually gives a shit about.

You don't have to do all that to do the content you want to do... I can literally stop doing 80% of the content and still do perfectly well for raiding...
I don't think I've done WQ's since I came back in 8.3...there is no reason for me to do them. I got neck lvl 75 without doing anything at all really, got it 1 week after raid opening.

Everyone keep saying you HAVE TO DO everything without actually give an argument as of why you do.
I was and am a mythic raider... I have no obligation to do all content because I just wanna beat mythic and I don't want to be the top 1%. If you do as I mentioned in the post above, then you had to do EVERYTHING since the dawn of time when it comes to WoW... If you don't enjoy being the top of the top stop trying to get there.

You say it's a fact you have to do WQ's to do mythic raiding...please show me the proof that supports said fact.

[Mic_128]

I miss the grinds having actual ends. I enjoyed being able to do something and finish it in Wrath

[Specialka]

Wotlk was superior in almost every way. Was also when wow had the most subs so that should say something.

Can you list the way where it was superior?

And during Wotlk time, mmorpgs were a trendy game genre. Not so much after, espcially with console market skyrocketing in 2011-2012.

[Globi]

What do you NEED to do actualy?

Farm neck? Until 75

Farm reput? Not necessary except for one essence

Farm vision? Yes, 1/2/4 by week to increase your cloak

Farm cache? Yes to have a proc corrup (RNG)

Farm M+/Raid? Yes to gear up

What else do you need to do? It's a 30min daily. I don't think we can say "there is a lot of grind" actualy