This feels like the worst content drought that we ever had

[TickTickTick]

Help! I'm surrounded by strawmen!

It would be so much better if you focused on why you disagreed with OP than talking about what nefarious "people" are doing. Your post is unreadable.

Why? Because it makes too much sense? I've spent too much time on these forums to know that people like OP (and you, apparently) can't be discussed with. Instant retaliation and refusing to acklowedge a basic human behaviour.

These posts appear literally every expansion. Why should people who can't understand that it's a perfect chance to take a break be taken seriously? Do these people really have nothing else going in their lives besides playing WoW and complaining about it?

Look, I'm enjoying the game still. But when I no longer enjoy it, I'll just take a break. This is, because my life isn't boring and miserable. While people like OP, in 10 years when nothing of it will matter anymore, will only remember their time being spent on something they dislike.

Your choice. I choose to enjoy what I'm doing. You do you.

[Tradu]

Then why dedicate an entire major patch to the selfie cam if it doesn't improve or worsen the game?
We didn't even get the backgrounds that came with it till Legion/BFA

It does minorly improve it for people who care about it. That patch also had garrison invasions, pretty sure, so this "selfie camera patch" meme is stupid anyway.

[Kehego]

Please don't compare pre-Cata raids to LFR / post-Cata raids. It's something entirely different as the newest tier always devaluates the previous tier. This wasn't the case in Classic, TBC and even WotLK. The other things you've listed are true but raids post-Cata were never as lasting as the ones before the introduction of LFR / multiple difficulties.

wotlk totally devalued every tier before it, are you dumb

[Accendor]

Do you think you might feel this way because you liked what you saw in the Shadowlands reveal?

I actually disliked what I saw in the Shadowlands reveal and I mean I disliked it A LOT.

[Tradu]

Essences/corruption were the things done in BfA right for sure. Balance at launch maybe not so much but it's fun and gave you something to do. That is again subjective. But content drought is CONTENT drought not "things which I specifically like to do" drought. WoD had nothing outside of PvP or Raids. We have that in BfA, plus m+, islands, warfronds, visions and assaults.
I mean running a multistrike frost mage was fun, but it did not reduce the content drought after I have farmed the raid to death.

Corruption is a good concept that's poorly implemented. Same thing for essences. Most things in BfA, really. The entire idea of a "content drought" is pretty dumb anyway, or at least the expectation that it'll ever be avoided. The end of expansions will always be a long stretch with the same things to do, so if you don't enjoy them, you're going to be bored. For me, having good raids, good classes and maybe some 5man content on the side is enough to keep me playing, because that's honestly all I care about.

[Accendor]

I've been playing BFA since closed beta too,

Just to be clear: I didn't mean BfA closed Beta, I mean WoW closed beta.

[Kehego]

Corruption is a good concept that's poorly implemented. Same thing for essences. Most things in BfA, really. The entire idea of a "content drought" is pretty dumb anyway, or at least the expectation that it'll ever be avoided. The end of expansions will always be a long stretch with the same things to do, so if you don't enjoy them, you're going to be bored. For me, having good raids, good classes and maybe some 5man content on the side is enough to keep me playing, because that's honestly all I care about.

Lol there's nothing wrong with the implementation of essences; people are just lazy.
or are you saying that iTshOUl Db eOn a venDoR?

[Accendor]

Essences/corruption were the things done in BfA right for sure. Balance at launch maybe not so much but it's fun and gave you something to do. That is again subjective. But content drought is CONTENT drought not "things which I specifically like to do" drought. WoD had nothing outside of PvP or Raids. We have that in BfA, plus m+, islands, warfronds, visions and assaults.
I mean running a multistrike frost mage was fun, but it did not reduce the content drought after I have farmed the raid to death.

No, both of them are terrible. Corruption is basically the worst system that they ever have implemented, its on pair with bfa launch Azerite Armor.
Not only do kiss/course systems suck in general (but thats only my personal opinion of course), the gear is way, way, way to powerful and there is no way to reliably acquire it. Look at freakin Infinite Stars and Gushing Wounds, its just completely out of hand.
If there would be SOME way to influence what you get or reliably farm it (e.g. corruption reroll tokens for corrupted momentos) it would be... "ok" and not "the worst system in wows history"

Essences were ok, but they have the usual rented power problem and to be honest, I am really sick of this concept.

[crakerjack]

I think what's hurting 8.3 the most for me is the fact that I still have to grind essences on alts. I didn't make it far into 8.3 before I started burning out. I like to play every class at max level, but having to continue to grind out essences on my 8th, 9th and onward alt is incredibly deflating. I just want to hop on an alt and do content without feeling like part of my toolkit is missing. There's still an azerite grind, cloak grind and gear grind. I just don't get why they're forcing people to grind essences when that entire system will be gone when the Shadowlands pre-patch comes out. There's literally no rational reason out there for players to have to grind essences. I'm utterly sick of having an urge to play one of my alts, but then being restricted for no reason. Hell, the covenant abilities will be account-wide for all alts to use once you've unlocked them once.

It's all about MAU's and they fear people won't play as much if they remove the essence grind. Reality is, I'm sure more people would play if they just removed it.

[Garymorilix]

Oh I can and I'll tell you why.

It's very easy to create an illusion of the game sucking hardcore, because people who enjoy the game typically don't waste their time going to forums trying to persuade people that their opinion = fact. If they did then - trust me - an outside person coming to this forum would think that BfA is a great game to play. But as I said, they aren't doing that.

But on the other side we have a bunch of people with no realistic suggestion that could please more people than just the ones complaining. They keep complaining, then they keep playing (cause they are "invested" or "want to see the game they once loved be "enjoyable" again" which are laughable excuses for multiple reasons), then they keep complaining again, then they keep playing, reading other people's complaints inbetween which serves as a fake confirmation that they are right.

There are so many hobbies. So many people throughout the world enjoying what they do, and not doing what they are not enjoying. Yet in gaming community, and WoW specifically, people feel the urge to let literally everyone know how they dislike the game they continue playing. I would love it if someone much smarter than me would make a study on this phenomenon. It's not a simple form of addiction, although there are many similarities.

And let's not even get started on the people who just find pleasure in complaining about anything. These people are everywhere and it's inevitable there will be some in gaming community too.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to discuss this topic. To trade arguments between sides. There's always something valuable to learn. But you won't get it from people taking their negativity to extremes, talking emotionally and calling you "blizz fanboy" whenever you disagree with them. The title itself shows how OP has no idea what's going on at the end of each expansion, and no amount of fake "I play since beta" / "I'm veteran player" talk will make it otherwise.

A self-respectable, mentally healthy person would just take a break. Not the WoW haters though, no. They gotta complain, they gotta play, and they gotta pay for it. Really interesting phenomenon.

I think the problem is that these players still live in the past.
"But back then in Vanilla it was better" - Classic releases, it's heavily out-dated and slow so people bail.

I think the situation will be much better once we have Classic WotLK.
People will see how empty that game was compared to today's WoW and probably shut up.

[Gank Sinatra]

I'm guessing OP started in Legion.....

[Garymorilix]

I think what's hurting 8.3 the most for me is the fact that I still have to grind essences on alts. I didn't make it far into 8.3 before I started burning out. I like to play every class at max level, but having to continue to grind out essences on my 8th, 9th and onward alt is incredibly deflating. I just want to hop on an alt and do content without feeling like part of my toolkit is missing. There's still an azerite grind, cloak grind and gear grind. I just don't get why they're forcing people to grind essences when that entire system will be gone when the Shadowlands pre-patch comes out. There's literally no rational reason out there for players to have to grind essences. I'm utterly sick of having an urge to play one of my alts, but then being restricted for no reason. Hell, the covenant abilities will be account-wide for all alts to use once you've unlocked them once.

It's all about MAU's and they fear people won't play as much if they remove the essence grind. Reality is, I'm sure more people would play if they just removed it.

You can easily earn one rank3 essence on an alt just doing every emissary/assault/vision/whatever on the first day you log on it.
The rest comes easily as you do content.
Which begs the question: what content do you even do on those alts that you need the essences for? Cuz if you did content you need essences for you would already have those essences.

[Tradu]

Lol there's nothing wrong with the implementation of essences; people are just lazy.
or are you saying that iTshOUl Db eOn a venDoR?

There's a lot of things wrong. Acquisition is an easy place to start, obviously. They should've worked like they do for alts from the beginning, including for mains(with differently tuned acquisition rate). Corruption should be on every item that drops from any source.
Then there's the essences themselves, which are awful. Basically none of them are interesting. There's Vision, CnS, Lucid and a couple of tank/healer ones(Strength of the Warden, Vitality Conduit) which are decent, the rest are generic, uninteresting extra CDs with no interaction with your other abilities. They should've all been spec specific and have interacted with your kits.

Corruption, same shit. There's Ineffable Truth, Glimpse of Clarity and arguably Racing Pulse which are interesting, the rest are shit. Avoidant and Siphoner should never have existed based on Blizzard's own admission of how having both utility and DPS legendaries share slots/drops was stupid. The damage procs reduce the impact of good play and massively favor a few specs with poorly designed azerite(Havoc, Destro) or base mechanics(Fury). The stat% corruptions at least reward skillful play, but they're still just passive stats.

Both essences and corruption homogenize classes much more than any change Blizzard has ever made in the past, which a lot of the hypocrites on these forums should be up in arms about. They also reduce the impact of good play by giving you a stupid amount of passive damage. They, along with azerite, also contribute to the massive flood of random stat/damage procs, none of which are individually strong enough to be played around. They should consolidate procs into a few big ones(think the proc on the legendary cloak this patch) that are actually powerful enough for you to play around.

[Kehego]

There's a lot of things wrong. Acquisition is an easy place to start, obviously. They should've worked like they do for alts from the beginning, including for mains(with differently tuned acquisition rate). Corruption should be on every item that drops from any source.
Then there's the essences themselves, which are awful. Basically none of them are interesting. There's Vision, CnS, Lucid and a couple of tank/healer ones(Strength of the Warden, Vitality Conduit) which are decent, the rest are generic, uninteresting extra CDs with no interaction with your other abilities. They should've all been spec specific and have interacted with your kits.

Corruption, same shit. There's Ineffable Truth, Glimpse of Clarity and arguably Racing Pulse which are interesting, the rest are shit. Avoidant and Siphoner should never have existed based on Blizzard's own admission of how having both utility and DPS legendaries share slots/drops was stupid. The damage procs reduce the impact of good play and massively favor a few specs with poorly designed azerite(Havoc, Destro) or base mechanics(Fury). The stat% corruptions at least reward skillful play, but they're still just passive stats.

Both essences and corruption homogenize classes much more than any change Blizzard has ever made in the past, which a lot of the hypocrites on these forums should be up in arms about. They also reduce the impact of good play by giving you a stupid amount of passive damage.

account bound character power? Lol. goes against pretty much everything they stand for, which is why at this point when all the important progression has finished, they could do that. Essences are 4 trinkets, you're overthinking it.
Damage procs arent interesting to you. Everything will never be of equal value to everyone.

[Tradu]

account bound character power? Lol. goes against pretty much everything they stand for, which is why at this point when all the important progression has finished, they could do that. Essences are 4 trinkets, you're overthinking it.
Damage procs arent interesting to you. Everything will never be of equal value to everyone.

I never said account bound, although that's also something I would've liked to see(think Kanai's Cube in D3, a game they're clearly big fans of copying). The point was that you shouldn't have to farm 50k(now 30k) honor in BGs to get the best M+(or raid) essence. That's completely absurd. There should've just been a currency that you get from every source(at a properly tuned rate for every activity, which is the one thing that's still not great about the current situation) that you could spend to buy any essence you wanted.

Random damage procs are objectively not interesting. They don't affect your play. They just randomly happen and give you damage for no reason. If your argument is "but cool spell effects!!!!", they could've just used the spell effects on things you actually influence.
We already had 2 trinket slots before which they were struggling to fill with interesting effects, so essences were unnecessary if that was their goal.

[Accendor]

I'm guessing OP started in Legion.....

Nice try, but very wrong, as mentioned in the OP.

[crakerjack]

You're absolutely right. I would play more if there were less things to do, and I could focus more on doing the things I like doing - raiding, m+, and scenarios like visions. However, they've added a lot of other things that feel like obstacles that you have to overcome to get to the parts I like.

As I said in another thread, it's amazing to me that they want to maximize MAUs, and horrific visions, which are probably the most well liked new feature in this patch, are gated behind warfronts, which obviously suck. You have to spend more time in warfronts grinding than you get to spend running the vision. It's just not worth the investment for a few minutes of fun once a week. If they removed warfronts and made visions unlimited attempts with a once weekly reward based on best attempt, things would be vastly better!

I could get behind that, but like we concur, it's all about MAU's. The reason alts have to jump through all these hoops is because blizzard knows when they released m+, it drastically changed the pacing of gearing. Back in the ol' days before m+, it took a while to gear up because you were stuck raiding for the most part and if the boss didn't drop your piece of loot, you were SoL. Now with m+, someone can pay for a carry or have a little clique and obtain 460+ ilvl in a single day. They don't necessarily care how many hours you put in, just that you logon atleast once a day.

The biggest issue is that on paper, someone logging on once a day whether it's for 30 mins or just for 10 mins, looks significantly better than the person who dumps hours upon hours into the game for a few weeks and then doesn't play for over a month. That's why blizzard didn't outright make r3 essences account-wide with zero restrictions and the same reason people can't run an infinite amount of horrific visions. They fear people would binge, get their fill of the game and then take a break. It's all about maintaining MAU's so that when it comes to quarterly conferences, they can show their investors that people are still remaining active, even if they only logon once a month.

It's just pathetic when you read the blue post about why they didn't make r3 essences account-wide. They didn't want to remove progression arcs from alts. It's funny because I've never met someone in WoW who loved grinding essences. There's plenty of people who didn't mind it, myself included, but no one has every raved about how amazing it was to obtain them.

[Garymorilix]

As a tank, to get a couple of my best essences, I have to spend 3 weeks capping out island expeditions, and another 3 or so weeks grinding rustbolt rep. This is content that I would never, ever do otherwise, and it takes a lot of time. Then the other one is telling me I need to play a couple weeks worth of pvp, and then there's one that comes from visions.

Of those 4 things, the only one I would still be doing if it weren't for essences is the visions one.

To your other question: I'm currently item level 451, a new character. I'm 10/12 normal Ny'alotha, and I know the other two fights, just have to get in the right pug to kill them. I did my first +10 this week, and probably doing plus 15 in two weeks or so. For my best in slot essences, I currently have 1 rank 2, and 3 rank 1s. To improve three of the four, I have to stop doing the content I want to do and do some other kind of content I don't like. It sucks.

Yes, you do have to do all of that on a Main. Once.

Then you get Echoes of Ny'alotha on alt with which you can easily buy rank3 essences from Mother anytime.

[Tiwack]

Of the usual go-tos, leveling is very potent these days with the double xp buff. Great time to explore the allied races if you haven't already or just dust off and lvl some of your existing alts.

[Kehego]

I never said account bound, although that's also something I would've liked to see(think Kanai's Cube in D3, a game they're clearly big fans of copying). The point was that you shouldn't have to farm 50k(now 30k) honor in BGs to get the best M+(or raid) essence. That's completely absurd. There should've just been a currency that you get from every source(at a properly tuned rate for every activity, which is the one thing that's still not great about the current situation) that you could spend to buy any essence you wanted.

Random damage procs are objectively not interesting. They don't affect your play. They just randomly happen and give you damage for no reason. If your argument is "but cool spell effects!!!!", they could've just used the spell effects on things you actually influence.
We already had 2 trinket slots before which they were struggling to fill with interesting effects, so essences were unnecessary if that was their goal.

In your opinion***

Alts are alts. Put in the time on them or don't play them. I think procs and effects that do damage are infinitely more interesting than procs and effects that give you cdr or stats, and that's what additional effects have always been in the past 15+ years.