The unspoken messages of Shadowlands: Calm down. Play with friends, or solo.

[Pohut]

lmao source

He doesn't have one. He pulled it out of his.... you know.

[Nadiru]

Don't forget, Mythic+ interest is buoyed right now because you have to do it to get your chest each week. In Shadowlands that isn't true, so I actually expect M+ considerations to fall considerably, perhaps even to the point of "these guys have their own niche and thats fine but you should just make an M+ tailored alt for it if you want to grind that content"

[Omedon]

Don't forget, Mythic+ interest is buoyed right now because you have to do it to get your chest each week. In Shadowlands that isn't true, so I actually expect M+ considerations to fall considerably, perhaps even to the point of "these guys have their own niche and thats fine but you should just make an M+ tailored alt for it if you want to grind that content"

This is such an understated point and I wish I’d thought to bring it up! Hell it deserves its own thread which I may write when I get tired of this one or it plays out completely!

The move from “mythic weekly chest” to “weekly chest” populated by the sum of weekly activities is so, so crucial and I can’t believe this detail gets buried everywhere!

[Pury]

"You will be fine in everything an covenants will allow you to be even better at something, so cool!"

Did you hear something like that too? But we all know it doesn't work that way at all.
It is going to be "You will be fine in one thing you choose and sub-optimal in everything else".
It going to feel soooo bad. The "we told you so, Blizztards" shitshow is going to be epic, can't wait

[Popokolara]

Overzealous tryharding is killing mmos, or at the very least making them way less fun for 90% of players.

The top 1% were always doing this, even 20 years ago, but now that people can make money from videos/guides/websites, it all trickles down to the kinds of players who have no business playing, or even trying to play, like the 1% do.

I don't have a good answer. If there is some way a new mmo can suppress information about the meta, i'd love to see that. Or devs who change their game so damn often, that it's nearly impossible to keep up.

Wake up and stop being a baby trying to blame those who achieve because their existence constrasts how much you dont want to try( which is fine btw, casual is a choice not wa sin). Those who act like jerks are not the 1% but the mediocre mass. Stop blaming the abstract elite out of insecurity.

Supress info on the meta? Are you serious? Are you really that selfish and delusional that you want people to not understand what they are doing so you feel safe?
You have some real issues to solve for your life to work out man, get some help.

[GringoD]

I offer the same source that is used to argue the contrary.

Okay, what's a competitive environment? Probably mythic raiding, high pvp and high mythic+ or something, right?

Let's look at wowprogress: 9200 guilds cleared the first boss. With extras we probably have around 200k characters successfully setting foot into mythic Ny'alotha.
Raider.io tells me that only 200k characters even managed to clear a +20 in any time, probably overlapping with the raiding population. The only other figure is for M+15 in any time with 2 million characters, but whether that's competitive is questionable.
Finding something about arena is a bit harder I think. Arenatracker lists 70k arena matches in the last 7 days, probably with a lot of the same people playing. So about 10-20k active players? There's bound to be more at the start of the season.

I'd ballpark the number of people who are regularly in a competitive environment at a generous 500k.
Now, how many people are playing wow right now? About 4 to 5 million?
I think you really need to hammer home that M+15 is a competitive environment for your statement to work.

[goldlock]

Okay, what's a competitive environment? Probably mythic raiding, high pvp and high mythic+ or something, right?

Let's look at wowprogress: 9200 guilds cleared the first boss. With extras we probably have around 200k characters successfully setting foot into mythic Ny'alotha.
Raider.io tells me that only 200k characters even managed to clear a +20 in any time, probably overlapping with the raiding population. The only other figure is for M+15 in any time with 2 million characters, but whether that's competitive is questionable.
Finding something about arena is a bit harder I think. Arenatracker lists 70k arena matches in the last 7 days, probably with a lot of the same people playing. So about 10-20k active players? There's bound to be more at the start of the season.

I'd ballpark the number of people who are regularly in a competitive environment at a generous 500k.
Now, how many people are playing wow right now? About 4 to 5 million?
I think you really need to hammer home that M+15 is a competitive environment for your statement to work.

I mean its a dumb argument to have. On one hand trying to get into a mythic +5 is a competitive environment. On the other hand other people only consider mythic raiding or pvp a competitive environment.

[TheLucky1]

Grateful i have a 2 day CE guild that won't give a damn if we need to progress 1-2 ID's longer because not everyone has the perfect covenant.

I can just sit there all expansion eating popcorn until i die of diabetes while you guys give each other shit over 5%~ instead of playing and enjoying the game together.

Ion and his team is right with this decision but they will still lose to the community consensus, you'd think the 0.2%~ of players it would actually really affect over server rankings/top 10 would just be gone with the wind not influencing the general consensus, sadly there are too many idiots that think they would be held back by their covenant choices when in reality it's just their missing skill echoing that sentiment like sheep.

I've played enough starcraft and league ladder to know where this will go... "my macro/micro/mindet is not bad it's just that protoss/terran/champion xyz is op and holds me back! im offended!"

[goldlock]

Grateful i have a 2 day CE guild that won't give a damn if we need to progress 1-2 ID's longer because not everyone has the perfect covenant.

I can just sit there all expansion eating popcorn until i die of diabetes while you guys give each other shit over 5%~ instead of playing and enjoying the game together.

Ion and his team is right with this decision but they will still lose to the community consensus, you'd think the 0.2%~ of players it would actually really affect over server rankings/top 10 would just be gone with the wind not influencing the general consensus, sadly there are too many idiots that think they would be held back by their covenant choices when in reality it's just their missing skill echoing that sentiment like sheep.

I've played enough starcraft and league ladder to know where this will go... "my macro/micro/mindet is not bad it's just that protoss/terran/champion xyz is op and holds me back! im offended!"

Well good to see at least one person likes azerite armor.

[klogaroth]

Really? For me the message was - multibox four characters of the same class, then set up teams for each covenant at cap.

[Zenfoldor]

BFA sucked. Really, really bad. I don't care how casual they want to make it, just make it better. Fix it.

[Malix Farwin]

Found this little gem that sums up peoples reservations about the system:

https://i.redd.it/wy1lc3sz52c51.png

The above is why people are concerned and they will/should be concerned even if the system ultimately becomes exactly as they want because it pushes Blizzard to get it right. As it stands currently on beta it isnt what they said it would be.

[Kokolums]

blizzard is serving us garbage in all of their latest or upcoming releases.

heartstone content is miserable
overwatch 2 is a scam, not even worth calling it a dlc
diablo immortal... diablo immoral more like it.
heroes of the storm abandonment and atrocious updates since then
BFA imho worst expansion wow ever seen and worst product blizzard ever made until War3 Refunded came out
Shadowlands so far having lovely zones but problematic and uninteresting mechanics like covenants along with poorly thought out class changes.
Warcraft 3 Refunded... biggest scam in the history of AAA game titles.
Starcraft 2 feeling borderline abandoned with overwhelming number of bugs in COOP being left in for months and multiplayer balance/meta being boring and stale AF
Even Diablo 4 which had a phenomenal cinematic with Lilith is miserably failing in its gameplay and mechanics reveals, massive disappointment.

Blizzard today is worse than EA or Bethesda has ever been.
From one of the most successful and renowned game companies down to the most disgusting failures in such a short time...

WoW is one of the most expensive non-card PC games a player can play, costing both the expansion price and monthly subscription.
Blizzard has to make WoW phenomenally good and well designed to be even remotely worth all that cost.

These days many smaller development teams are releasing phenomenal games and charging less than 20$ for their entire product which offers tens if not hundreds of hours of gameplay on their first playthrough.

I think the saving grace is that, if you play the AH just a little bit, or do some nominal gold farming, the entire catalog is free to play. Its not hard to amass more than the cost of a WoW token, and then slowly build up Blizzard balance until you have the balance to buy the next xpac or even other titles like Diablo 4. To me, that is the selling point. All of it is actually free to play.

Like at the moment, if you do a full clear of the Hellfire Citadel raid from WoD on all 3 difficulties, that's 10k gold. Do that 16x in a month and you've got more than a WoW token. That's 4x a week. And if you do that, the entire Blizzard catalog is free.

[Hinastorm]

Wake up and stop being a baby trying to blame those who achieve because their existence constrasts how much you dont want to try( which is fine btw, casual is a choice not wa sin). Those who act like jerks are not the 1% but the mediocre mass. Stop blaming the abstract elite out of insecurity.

Supress info on the meta? Are you serious? Are you really that selfish and delusional that you want people to not understand what they are doing so you feel safe?
You have some real issues to solve for your life to work out man, get some help.

I'm simply stating reality. You can deny reality all you want.

Not sure why you think that makes me some raving crazy person. Sounds like you're the one with issues.

[Aristai1723]

After years of playing on various different levels (never top end) I found the perfect guild for my play style and just like the op I couldn't worry less. There will be raid spots independent of my covenant choice because we are a bunch of Rp nerds with dozens of alts and a semi competent raid that gets curve every tier and never bothers with mythic because we know better.

Toxic wow players live of the illusion that having the same configuration of a top end player is more important than improving your gameplay. And if you are in that top 1%, I'm feeling really sorry for the hoops blizzard makes you jump through.

[arkanon]

After years of playing on various different levels (never top end) I found the perfect guild for my play style and just like the op I couldn't worry less. There will be raid spots independent of my covenant choice because we are a bunch of Rp nerds with dozens of alts and a semi competent raid that gets curve every tier and never bothers with mythic because we know better.

Toxic wow players live of the illusion that having the same configuration of a top end player is more important than improving your gameplay. And if you are in that top 1%, I'm feeling really sorry for the hoops blizzard makes you jump through.

This happens after every world first race as well - some idiots come out crying about how op X spec is because method ran 4 of them. I see comments like "i am forced to play fire because frost is so far behind!" while they queue for LFR each week. Truth is, all the way through heroic, so long as you play your class well, and are able to achive an acceptable level of performance (tanks not getting gibbed, healers not ooming 30% into the fight, and dps not getting 1 shot by unavoidable mechanics) you can play any spec, any class, with any corruptions and gear you like, so long is it is appropriate.

Do some want to min max and push the limits of their toon even in heroic? Yeah, absolutely, i play with people like that and its fine - good for them!. But there are (or were) plenty of heroic guilds that clear every week with a huge difference between the level of min/max a character has. Its nice, and makes things much easier and faster, but it is not required.

I remember the early tier when method ran a SV hunter and within a few days, most of the hunters i saw around the world were SV. It happened with Spriests blowing themslves up constantly in lfr / normal and even heroic because they tried to play the spec the top 5 Spriests in the world ran during the WF race, without even 25% of the ability and gear of those players.

[Mozu]

Okay, what's a competitive environment? Probably mythic raiding, high pvp and high mythic+ or something, right?

No. Common misunderstanding of the word competitive. The same misconception the other person who tried arguing had.

You can be competitive and not necessarily be good at the game. Competition is a mindset. It's about the constant urge to be better. Taking it back to the basketball analogies used previously: If you and your dad are playing basketball together at a cookout and are both trying hard to win, congrats you're having a competition. That doesn't mean NBA scouts are banging on your door.

Tell you what, try to join any m+ as a non-competitive class with no r.io score versus a competitive one with a high score. The amount of times you get declined (because the majority of the community has a competitive mindset and wants the best) will be hilarious.

I'd ballpark the number of people who are regularly in a competitive environment at a generous 500k.
Now, how many people are playing wow right now? About 4 to 5 million?

Just like to point out that it's so cute when people pull these kinds of numbers completely out of thin air like this to "prove" their point.

[DemonDays]

No. Common misunderstanding of the word competitive. The same misconception the other person who tried arguing had.

You can be competitive and not necessarily be good at the game. Competition is a mindset. It's about the constant urge to be better. Taking it back to the basketball analogies used previously: If you and your dad are playing basketball together at a cookout and are both trying hard to win, congrats you're having a competition. That doesn't mean NBA scouts are banging on your door.

Tell you what, try to join any m+ as a non-competitive class with no r.io score versus a competitive one with a high score. The amount of times you get declined (because the majority of the community has a competitive mindset and wants the best) will be hilarious.



Just like to point out that it's so cute when people pull these kinds of numbers completely out of thin air like this to "prove" their point.

I enjoy being competitive with my shit tier Heroic guild.

I enjoy optimizing as much as I possibly can without insane grind or time devotion.

I don't parse very high, but I like competing on the meters.

I enjoy Heroic Raiding, Mythic+ and a bit of casual PvP.



Covenants look fucking horrible.

[Malix Farwin]

After years of playing on various different levels (never top end) I found the perfect guild for my play style and just like the op I couldn't worry less. There will be raid spots independent of my covenant choice because we are a bunch of Rp nerds with dozens of alts and a semi competent raid that gets curve every tier and never bothers with mythic because we know better.

Toxic wow players live of the illusion that having the same configuration of a top end player is more important than improving your gameplay. And if you are in that top 1%, I'm feeling really sorry for the hoops blizzard makes you jump through.

Imagine thinking people who point out the issues with the system are "toxic wow players", couldn't be me.

[Wuusah]

Toxic wow players live of the illusion that having the same configuration of a top end player is more important than improving your gameplay

And why do you think people who don’t care about optimization of their char will optimize their gameplay?

I read this all the time. “Skill is more important”. “It doesn’t matter as long as the person plays well”.

Buy how do you know a person will play well? What are your indicators for a good player if not a well optimized character and achievements/rio? Why do you think someone who just does whatever will be good? Please explain your logic.