Shadowlands is secretly shaping up to be a Super-8.3

[Krakan]

Will have to see how the tuning pass goes... I have my doubts it will be pretty though.

[Powerogue]

It sounds like you just hate World of Warcraft and should quit and play something else.

You haven't even touched it yet and already despise it.

[Verdugo]

It sounds like you just hate World of Warcraft and should quit and play something else.

You haven't even touched it yet and already despise it.

And you sound like someone who will love it no matter what.


You haven't even touched it yet and already love it.

[Krakan]

It sounds like you just hate World of Warcraft and should quit and play something else.

You haven't even touched it yet and already despise it.

I mean if you enjoy the harder content it's tough to be excited by the amount of busy work they keep on insisting on jamming I to the game.

I can understand it if you enjoy the content but why make ever more time sinks for endgame?

The entire alternative progression systems could of been comfortably confined to world content.

[Accendor]

What this post tells me about you:
You are bad at doing basic mechanics in visions and therefore rant like crazy.

You could have socketed all you gear months ago and be done, if you do your simple 4 runs a week. And I don't really get how progression is actually a bad thing? WF guilds cleared the content with FAR less gear sockets etc, so all this is by no means mandatory at all. This is just you wanting things but not actually doing anything for it.

Learn the difference between hard and annoying please. If i was bad at mechanics I would neither boost people through m+ nor be 11/12m.

[Huzzaa]

Preach' latest video illustrates perfectly on what's wrong for most of us at the high end.

I agree with him 100% and would rather have the progressions system pre-ToT or ToT levels, back. That was in MoP.

Thunderforging had a purpose, the 2 level 4-ilvl upgrade on gear was cool as well. All the RNG-fest $hite afterwards, can ... yeah.



Preferably without any forging, Thunderforging would serve 0 purpose now. (Titanforging, warforging, whateverforging).

[Powerogue]

And you sound like someone who will love it no matter what.


You haven't even touched it yet and already love it.

Undecided is an option.

[crakerjack]

I find it kind of funny how perceptions can vary so greatly. Here I am, an altoholic with every class at max level and am excited for shadowlands because I can play my alts and not worry about grinding azerite, essences, cloak and corruption. As far as I'm concerned, there's only anima to grind and reputations have ALWAYS been a thing in WoW. Not to mention they said alts will be able to pick a covenant right off the bat instead of having to play through each one like we'll do on our mains. IMO shadowlands is 1000x more alt friendly than BFA and we still don't have all the details either.

BFA was plagued with grinds and the best it got was 8.1 when azerite was the only grind. I ran more alts through BoD than any other raid simply because there wasn't any roadblocks for my alts. Then essences came out and that was a pain in the ass to farm r3 on more than a couple alts. Then cloak/corruption came out and I was already fed up with the game to bother with that amount of RNG. Gear is becoming gear again and shadowlands is shaping up to be a super alt friendly expansion.

I just don't get what you're looking at when you think it'll be the opposite or just as bad a 8.3.

[temple1906]

I find it kind of funny how perceptions can vary so greatly. Here I am, an altoholic with every class at max level and am excited for shadowlands because I can play my alts and not worry about grinding azerite, essences, cloak and corruption. As far as I'm concerned, there's only anima to grind and reputations have ALWAYS been a thing in WoW. Not to mention they said alts will be able to pick a covenant right off the bat instead of having to play through each one like we'll do on our mains. IMO shadowlands is 1000x more alt friendly than BFA and we still don't have all the details either.

BFA was plagued with grinds and the best it got was 8.1 when azerite was the only grind. I ran more alts through BoD than any other raid simply because there wasn't any roadblocks for my alts. Then essences came out and that was a pain in the ass to farm r3 on more than a couple alts. Then cloak/corruption came out and I was already fed up with the game to bother with that amount of RNG. Gear is becoming gear again and shadowlands is shaping up to be a super alt friendly expansion.

I just don't get what you're looking at when you think it'll be the opposite or just as bad a 8.3.

The problem is mostly at the high end of the spectrum. High end players are going to need to have multiple characters of the same class because it looks likely (based on past boss designs) that certain Covenant abilities will be better on a per fight basis. Preach gives a good example of this, like if you need to DPS adds that spawn you'll want the ability that lets you teleport to the add. But then on the next fight if everyone has a DPS boosting ability it shortens a tough boss phase. Things like that. Having 4 characters of the same class with different covenenants isn't HORRIBLE compared to BfA's issues but it is pretty lame. On top of that the top end players will likely have to constantly re-farm the runes for their soulbinds since they get destroyed upon changing. Since they will likely be needing to change soulbinds regularly in Mythic that is going to be a huge pain in the ass for them.

None of these issues are a problem at all for lower level players. In fact, if you don't push Mythic hard then this expansion looks pretty great. It looks much much better than BfA and Legion in that regard. But for the high end players these systems are deeply troubling. I know I won't be pushing Mythic content again until Blizzard stops with this nonsense.

Don't forget too that this is the LAUNCH state of SL. They could very well tack on grindier systems in future patches like they did with BfA.

[Nuba]

I totally agree with Preach, thats my exact problem with the game and why I made this thread. If all those dumb trillion systems were open-world-only they would still be cool, people would still grind them but the game wouldnt be shit because you cant do instanced content without doing all the dumb grind
the dumb grind gatekeeping content is the issue, it existing by itself isnt a problem.
Thats why 8.3 is the worst patch ever made by Blizzard: because it adds tons of gatekeeping that stops you from doing whatever it is that you want to do in the game, arbitrarily and on a way that didn't exist before in the game

[Krakan]

Why do we care about the conditions of high-end raiders?

Because destroying a part of the game for other people seems kinda shitty?

[temple1906]

It makes blizzard less money caring about those folk. The more time they put into their progression process, the more advertising they get.

It makes Blizzard less money NOT caring about them. It's literally the opposite. Making things work well for the high-end raiders does not detract from the experience of everyone else, it in fact makes everything smoother for EVERYONE. The solution here is to change how talents work and not more borrowed power that requires complex systems. This is a change that would positively impact every player while keeping all of the cool thematic stuff of any given expansion or patch. WoW has been bleeding subs for a while now and it is because their progression systems have been such a chore to go through.

[kaminaris]

Why do we care about the conditions of high-end raiders?

We don't and blizzard shouldn't either.

The thing is, real problem will be for maybe top 100 guilds while everyone else will be fine as they were fine up until now.

But people on lower tiers tend to overestimate their ranks thinking they are high end raiders and that 1-2% will somewhat make them unable to progress.
And that is pure bullshit.

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WoW has been bleeding subs for a while now and it is because their progression systems have been such a chore to go through.

WoW is bleeding subs because it's in decline product lifecycle, not because of some <insert imaginary argument> here.

[Krakan]

We don't and blizzard shouldn't either.

The thing is, real problem will be for maybe top 100 guilds while everyone else will be fine as they were fine up until now.

But people on lower tiers tend to overestimate their ranks thinking they are high end raiders and that 1-2% will somewhat make them unable to progress.
And that is pure bullshit.

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WoW is bleeding subs because it's in decline product lifecycle, not because of some <insert imaginary argument> here.

It's has a rather extreme knock on effect. You can complain that heroic raiders won't allow in certain specs all you want but that part of the game is never really going to go away at this point.

I never really get the whole declining product life argument...shouldn't runescape be suffering the same effect as it is the older game rather then having slowly growing subs and making up most of Venezuela's economy.

We can argue about why wow bleeds subs all day I would say it's more to do with it massively overhauling its game every expansion in am attempt to capture a larger audience rather then service the one it has.

[kaminaris]

It's has a rather extreme knock on effect. You can complain that heroic raiders won't allow in certain specs all you want but that part of the game is never really going to go away at this point.

I am not talking about heroic raiders, but mythic ones.

Runescape is suffering the same effect effectively hitting rock bottom. Their amount of players online is within the error margin.

And because overhauling is the only way to go to stay at relevant level, most people don't care about shit like balance. People care about new stuff.

[Krakan]

I am not talking about heroic raiders, but mythic ones.

Runescape is suffering the same effect effectively hitting rock bottom. Their amount of players online is within the error margin.

And because overhauling is the only way to go to stay at relevant level, most people don't care about shit like balance. People care about new stuff.

I think there are less yolo players then you believe. WoW just isn't really a game that offers players with no desire to progress anything beyond I guess lfr n'zoth.

I don't really understand players who want to make wow diablo and believe that will be successful. The more you move away from what wow was the faster it seems to suffer.

If these alternative progression systems were successful I can't imagine bfa being heralded as anything but the best expansion ever...

[kaminaris]

I think there are less yolo players then you believe. WoW just isn't really a game that offers players with no desire to progress anything beyond I guess lfr n'zoth.

I don't really understand players who want to make wow diablo and believe that will be successful. The more you move away from what wow was the faster it seems to suffer.

If these alternative progression systems were successful I can't imagine bfa being heralded as anything but the best expansion ever...

You will see in couple years people praising bfa. And for me it is the best expansion ever.
And no, the faster you move from what wow was the higher chance of it actually surviving.

[Krakan]

You will see in couple years people praising bfa. And for me it is the best expansion ever.
And no, the faster you move from what wow was the higher chance of it actually surviving.

I mean... people are praising wod now. Not because they liked it but because it was an expansion without filler.

The solution shouldn't be to make worse and worse expansions so the previous one looks better. Ever since wrath with the exception of perhaps legion and the second half of mop has this trend been bucked.

[kaminaris]

I mean... people are praising wod now. Not because they liked it but because it was an expansion without filler.

The solution shouldn't be to make worse and worse expansions so the previous one looks better. Ever since wrath with the exception of perhaps legion and the second half of mop has this trend been bucked.

Not really, there was no exception neither mop nor legion all followed the same trend. And the only exception was wod which was worse solely because there was no content and nothing to do. Meaning people simply want new stuff and anything like systems are irrelevant.

[Tronski]

Why wouldn't they be happy? Dude got randomly powerful and now is way more helpful.

I mean, the only reason to not be happy is... envy, but that is a ugly feeling.

If you were talking about PvP on the other hand or any competitive setting, then yes, it would be tragic.

Some people work hard and never get anywhere. Some people are lucky and get somewhere because of it.

It is not fun to be the hard worker hamstrung by bad luck.

When a game is as heavily gated behind gear as WoW currently is, then you need to make the acquisition of said gear more reliable.

Blizzard has done this wrong for 2 expansions now, just to push reasons to play even more. It is not wrong of someone to expect them to change this course before the game dies because of it. I have no friends left in retail, all because of these shitty metrics to push us to unreasonable amounts of playtime. I'm probably not gonna make any new friends anytime soon either, as I can't stomach the game anymore myself.

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I mean... people are praising wod now. Not because they liked it but because it was an expansion without filler.

The solution shouldn't be to make worse and worse expansions so the previous one looks better. Ever since wrath with the exception of perhaps legion and the second half of mop has this trend been bucked.

WoD was the last great expansion. People just never realized how good it actually was. The contrasts to MoP were just too bug. Mop was fun, Lively and largely unbalanced, which can be fun. WoD was largely the "boring" balanced game the players asked for.

It had everything. Pvp templates, alt friendliness, interesting raids, easy gearing, just enough rng to be fun without breaking the game. Because there were less metrics to push people to play, they ended up feeling they had nothing to do and complained about drought. Well, now they have plenty to do, and now they miss WoD.

The iteration of challenge modes could have been better, and garrisons never should have been a source of pure gold. That the only bad things I can think of.