The amount of complaining on is starting to get quite silly.

[Biggles Worth]

Garrisons could have been made guild wide, fixing the "alone" problem. Island Expeditions could have been made around exploration, triggering different scenario options to progress. Warfronts could have been made in an Epic Battleground style, where PvP players fight at the front while PvE players gather ressources and build the base to support PvP players.

Just because you lack creativity and are unable to understand different opinions (since you don't like other groups of people) does not mean that your opinion is right.

Aint that the truth.

[LostLocket]

Too many people are entitled, too many people complain about the slightest inconvenience and when a real/big one happens they act as if life is over.

I LOVE the folks who like to say "Now I'm FORCED to do blah blah blah". No one is forcing you to do anything, you are forcing yourself. If the guild you're in requires you to do stuff you dislike you should either suck it up and do it since you want to be there, or find a new guild where you don't have to do content you dislike. MMO Champ, WoW forums, Reddit, where ever you can voice your opinion you can be damn sure there will be tons of negativity from people.

I mean all their arguments stem from them being slowly bullied out of the difficulty they enjoy. I know I can't enjoy heroic raiding myself with how utterly trivial it is to me at this point after doing CE for a decade...

I don't understand why the ever increasing grinds are something that is just embraced by the lfr community. I think it stems from them being desperate to one up anybody but it is very hard to argue that creating busy work from trivial content is a good direction from the game.

[prwraith]

There is actually nothing wrong with doing that. You seem to imply this is ironic and therefore doesn't have its place.

Not ironic...but it's been done. About a thousand times a day.

[Tesshin83]

I think of the WoW Content Creators that criticise the game, Preach is still one of the most objective ones. Yes, he will say that the current system will not work and can't release in this state, but in the same video will try to calm the viewers down by ensuring them that the system will be fixed and to have faith in Blizzard to spot the obvious problems (see his video about the different amount of time you will have to wait for the soulbinds to unlock 3 potency conduits and racial discrepancy).

But to be frank, why should he or the community be forced, in the current state of the beta, to be optimistic? Why should we pretend that everything will work out if we have precedent that it won't? I understand that the constant negativity is taxing, especially in the current environment outside of the game with Covid etc., but if there are obvious problems which should have been fixed months ago and aren't 1 month before release, then we as the community have to point that out.

If you look at the current systems and problems on the beta, then you don't need someone like Preach to see that it's broken, it is just basic game knowledge and experience from previous betas and systems like azurite. Just open the Soulbind trees on Wowhead and go through them. Every player, from casual to hardcore, will see problems with it. It is a mess and currently it seems that Blizzard stopped working on them after the initial nerfs 4 months ago.

I don't want to say that you can't be optimistic about the game, that's your prerogative. There are things you can look forward to in SL like the Raids, the story, the design of the zones. But when it comes to the gameplay and the systems, there are problems and with blizzard's current track record, these problems will persist until late into the expansion despite already being known now.

I disagree with this post to be honest on the fact that Preach is objective. He sees the game on how it can fulfill his needs and what he wants from the game. And he doesn't ever admit to my knowledge that the playerbase play the game from other reasons that he does, or even I does. Most people don't care about 10 percent plus minus i balance due to covenants or conduits etc. He does and thats ok.

I have played the game for 15 years and my theorycrafting skills are slightly above average and have looked at the covenants and the soulbinds and conduits. I dont see it as a mess at all.

Do I see balance no? But that is not and should not be the goal either.

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There’s so much complaining about complaining. Something has to be done!

Its almost as bad as complaining about those who complain about complaining.

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The amount of complaining is commensurate with the amount of badness sustained in the game design. As the badness is sustained over time, the average level of dissatisfaction rises. It's not rocket science.

This is based on subjective opinions though and then assumed to be objective facts because most people assume people play the game for the same reasons as thet do.

[LordVargK]

Can I ask how you rate "only tolerable" on a scale from 1 (playing genital jousting for 20 hours) to 10 (Skyrim/OoT or whatever game you see as the pinnacle of gaming). I get the sense that anything below 6 is "dogshit, hot garbage, intolerable" etc in the eyes of many gamers nowdays and to me that's an extremely toxic and unfair assessment.

I think you forget something: WoW is subscription based. If the game is not enough fun for me, I simply stop playing and paying. So at a certain point I can't tolerate having to pay for the game. That's my definition of tolerable here; tolerable equals worth my money. If the game is not tolerable, it's by no means dogshit. But it's simply not worth paying for. And I think it is fair to ask for a game to be of superior quality if you have to pay a monthly fee for it, since there are plenty of other games that don't ask this of you and are still supported by the devs. So yes, if I would rate a patch lower than 5/10 I am not willing to pay for it. That's not toxic and unfair. It would be if WoW was buy to play, but it is not.

That said, I would rate Legion's 7.2.5/7.3 patch 8/10 and BfA's 8.3 7/10. Add 1 or 2 points to that, because I had fun with my guild. The "only" in "only tolerable" is not meant as a "just tolerable" but as a "those are the patches that made the game worth paying for". Before that the game felt more like a chore than a game and I don't pay 15€ a month to do chores.

Bottom line is: WoW has to have one of the highest qualities among games to be worth it's subscription cost. I played shitty games, because they were free to play. But I would never play a mediocre game, if I would have to play a subscription cost.

[Delekii]

This is based on subjective opinions though and then assumed to be objective facts because most people assume people play the game for the same reasons as thet do.

This is true and meaningless in equal amounts?

People complain when they subjectively are annoyed at something about the game. When more people complain, more people are subjectively annoyed at something about the game. Whether or not they think they are being objective is neither here nor there; it is objectively a fact that more people feel they have something to complain about. Ergo; the game is becoming objectively less fun for the population on average. This is especially true is the absolute population is declining at the same time.

[Rensons]

I blame Blizzard. I`m only here complaining because i cant be on pre-patch testing my toons.

[Unholyground]

The problem is when you are constructive and try to find solutions people shit on that too, so there really is no winning OP.

[Niwes]

I know if I get any response to this it will most likely be a lot of backfire because I am basically attacking a portion of the community, however this has starting to get very frustrating. I have been thinking a lot on this subject lately and I first thought it would come nothing good out of adressing it, but increasingly I feel the need to push back against this sillyness. I love this game so much and I would love to come on here to talk about awesome things, but I find myself very distracted by negativity which doesn't hold any water, most of the time.

So what am I really talking about? Well first of I need to mention that have high-functioning autism and that is somewhat relevant because I despise people as a collective (not in their individual components of course, I love spending time with certain people). Watching people from a distance behaving in groups is very interesting to me and something that always worries me. People have a tendency to rally behind negativity, not just in gaming but in general. Thats why we have riots and people march. Though some marches have good intentions and outcomes.

There is also this concept of content creators and the fact that negativity and controversy attract more attention. This feeds into this feedback loop which is very addicting to content creators. This is a huge factor of what is driving this negativity and the complaining and its speaks against its validity. Also, coming with negativity or critisism in general, not just regarding to World of Warcraft, have a tendency to make you appear as a more intelligent and sophisticated person. If you are complaining about something, you show that you have put effort into things, analyzed and made up your intelligent conclusion. Though this is hardly the case. On the other hand, if you are positive about something, you are just this somewhat ignorant gullable person who accepts anything at face value and probably is very forgiving and naive. I would say that is most often not the case at all.

So back to my autism thingy and how I don't like people in groups. When I see people even in a minority behave in a certain way I have a tendency to go the opposite direction and wonder why they are behaving in such a way. What is the reason behind it.

Evaluating the common complaints recently I find that 90% of the time they have no real proper reasoned arguments behind them and frankly if I might be so bold, say that they seem coming from posters that haven't made up their own arguments, but following a script. The sentences are formulated the same way and if there are more arguments behind it, it sounds equally the same. Now, that itself doesn't make an argument wrong. People could be posting from a script like mindless bots and come with accurate information. This just doesn't seem to be the case about issues related to recent issues people discuss.

Now, I know its provoking for me to reduce most opinions down to people just parroting others statements or like posting from a script, however that is how it appears to me and I am still open to a nuanced discussion around critisism from people who have put a lot of thought into their own arguments. However that is not what I see most of the time, though it happens from time to time.

Also I can watch a youtube or streamer with a lot of followers, and lo and behold, the next day I see people write exactly the same complaint, word for word in comment section on youtube and even here. I even saw many comments yesterday on Youtube to a specific video adressing class balance and people were writing "Oh I was so hyped for Shadowlands, but after watching this, I can't play this expansion after all" People will ACTUALLY accept a youtubers subjective opinion on something as gospel instead of trying the game for themselves.

I am going to adress the most recent complaint, but there are many of them like "BFA was garbage", "Covenants will fail". I would say both these statements are exaggurated and false. And the reality is far more nuanced. So I will only adress the most recent one for now.

The newest thing to complain about now is what has been refered to as "borrowed power". This has always existed, though at a lesser extent. We used to borrow legendaries and set bonuses from tier sets, leaving them behind as we went into new content. The argument is that Blizzard should stop making these systems and move them into talents and abilities and even spend more time working on balance.

These systems are a solution to a problem which was rightly complained about. Introducing new talents and abilities over several expansions gave us so many abilities that Blizzard decided to prune them. And we know how that was recieved. Making new abilities based on the theme of the expansion is a way to solve this issue. When it comes to balance then I think according to looking at warcraftlogs, the game has never been more balanced. But people are so obsessed with being optimal in every situation and never being at an disadvantage that even the 3% difference is unbearable to some people.

Another argument is that Blizzard should keep the systems going into new expansions. If that was a good idea then in Shadowlands we would spend 90% of our time in our garrisons, with legendary ring from MoP, having artifact weapons with 2000 Concordance of Legionfall, Azerite Armor with 6 rings, 20 legendary essences, 8 corruption effects, legendary cloak, covenant abilities, souldbinds, crafted legendaries having 90 different passive effects and procs going of all the time and you become this death machine with 140% haste all the time.

I am exaggurating a bit, but you have to see that this is not a good solution. Borrowed power is the best annoying solution compared to the alternatives.

Also I feel more and more sympathy for the developers of the game. They spend 10 hours a day or so, underpaid under bad conditions working on systems they now they must change in the future anyway because feedback from the usual suspects dictates so, just to come home and trying to connect with the community and they read posts that they should be fired and don't care about the game. It's a miracle we even have a game to log into at this point.

I will stop there for now and apologize this was a bit long. I have a lot more to say about this and since I have basically offended half of the people that post here, I guess I will have the opportunity to adress more issues if this is turning out something people are willing to discuss.

what a wall of text. i read the first 10 lines or so and imediatelly lost interest, just for 2 pure simple things:

- for me, this is a way too long and intensive complain about complains in a video game.
- you take this game or this community (or your computer) way too serious for my taste.

this is just my personal opinion. its just not my thread / taste.

but this is not the reason to post here. it adds nothing to the thread. and the thread not attracts me enough to invest time. no, the only reason(s) to post here, are 2 questions that i am curious about:

- what do you expect posting all this ? would do you think could happen here, that is positive for you and improves your life, after posting this ? whats your benefit ? whats the reason ? what you epxect, what happens now ?

- you say you love the game so much. why do you post complains about complains, instead playing your beloved game in the time you waste writing this here ?

these 2 things i dont get and i am curious about.

[Thanatu]

I think that people continue to fail to realize what drives complaints. Its not Blizzard, its not Activision, its the community's love the for the game.

Sure there is things here and there people prefer, or don't want to see, feel should / shouldn't be, balancing issues, bugs whatever, but right now people are stressing because they have devoted in some cases 16 years of their life to this game.

With that they don't want to see the fire go out, they want this to be around for years to come and even the smallest thing now can drive them nuts because they see it as hurting that longevity. Patches like 8.3 that have systems like corruptions I believe have solidified to the community as a whole the game is not in a good spot. They know they don't see their buddy when they log in these days. They don't want a situation in Shadowlands where people are stressing to stay with the game.

Covenants / Conduits / Legendaries / Etc. all lend themselves to be very hard to balance, and with a game/time where people strive to min/max inhibiting people from playing the way they want only to see 10-20% difference as it stands differences in balance people are freaking out. I suspect with that even the smallest things are going to be setting people off right now. They don't want their game to die, and they don't want to start something fresh. They want the days of Ulduar / Black Temple / Cata Launch to be back for them. Outcry of course can be overdone but there is a reason people try to complain so much right now, their faith in this developer is being tested time and time again.

[Fraky]

I disagree with this post to be honest on the fact that Preach is objective. He sees the game on how it can fulfill his needs and what he wants from the game. And he doesn't ever admit to my knowledge that the playerbase play the game from other reasons that he does, or even I does. Most people don't care about 10 percent plus minus i balance due to covenants or conduits etc. He does and thats ok.

I have played the game for 15 years and my theorycrafting skills are slightly above average and have looked at the covenants and the soulbinds and conduits. I dont see it as a mess at all.

Do I see balance no? But that is not and should not be the goal either.

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Its almost as bad as complaining about those who complain about complaining.

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This is based on subjective opinions though and then assumed to be objective facts because most people assume people play the game for the same reasons as thet do.

Yes, his point of view is mostly from the mythic raiding community because that's where has the most knowledge and firsthand experience in. But if you would watch his videos, you would see the constant reminder of his POV and that for more casual players, the things he talks about aren't a big deal. This message is in almost every single SL beta video he has made.
That's why I said in my initial post in this thread, if you want to inform yourself about the current situation in SL and would like to get an opinion from content creators, you should trust and pick the creator that best represents your view on the game. If you want a more casual look on the game, you have people like Taliesin&Evitel, Hazelnuttygames and others that better suit your style.

With your comment about balance I don't think you read my post in this thread some pages ago. Even if you and a good amount of the community aren't playing to compete against each other, balance in multiplayer games is always important. You can look at the faction imbalance in raiding to see the consequences of yearlong neglected imbalance. While at first only mattering to the raiding community, it evolves more in more to a serverwide discrepancy which leads to terrible open world PvP and ganking, mass server exodus and dead realms. If blizzard would be as negligent with class balance as they were with racials in the past, players would more and more flock to the better classes organically without being forced.
You can observe this to some extend right now with Demon Hunters. Although the newest class introduced into the game, DH quickly rose to the top of the played classes because of its dominance in pvp and pve. Luckily, they will get nerfed in SL after largely being left alone during Legion and BFA which will decrease their numbers hopefully. But if this wasn't the case, other melee specs would be left in the dust in favor of demon hunters (which already happened with WW Monks and DKs).
WW Monks are arguably one of the most fun melee dps specs in the game right now. If your logic would be correct and to the average player fun is more important than balance, they would be at the top. However, this is not observable at all which leads me to believe that even for the most casual, non-competitive players, a certain amount of performance is still required for the enjoyment of a spec.

As most people like preach and players of echo, limit etc already pointed out, the competitive side of the playerbase for the most part won't be effected by convoluted restrictions. It will be annoying, but they will find a way to overcome them and take the necessary time do to so. The average player however won't have this kind of commitment and time and will be severely hampered by them, creating a more toxic environment and unsatisfied playerbase.

At the end of the day, I think we have to agree to disagree on our perspectives on the game and that's fine. But as the more competitive community, it is very tiring to constantly get shafted by changes exclusively targeted at mythic, high M+ or high PvP players that don't matter in the slightest to the more casual players (GCD, Restrictions to gear swapping during M+, Master looter, Borrowed Power systems that play the game for you). That's why we can't be optimistic about the upcoming expansion from a gameplay standpoint because it will be a hassle to jump through blizzards artificially created and unnecessary hoops.

[Verdugo]

Not only should it not be taken seriously it should be moderated. This forum is a product of bad moderation. It corrupts both the valid discussions with actual good feedback aswell as the hype threads that could make this forum great.

I honestly cant fathom why this forum is not moderated better for its own sake.

If you want circlejerk, try wowhead.

[Nuciek]

Too many people are entitled, too many people complain about the slightest inconvenience and when a real/big one happens they act as if life is over.

I LOVE the folks who like to say "Now I'm FORCED to do blah blah blah". No one is forcing you to do anything, you are forcing yourself. If the guild you're in requires you to do stuff you dislike you should either suck it up and do it since you want to be there, or find a new guild where you don't have to do content you dislike. MMO Champ, WoW forums, Reddit, where ever you can voice your opinion you can be damn sure there will be tons of negativity from people.

I hate that because we get those people every day on every slight change. Every little thing that they don't like and suddenly they are "forced" to doing something. And when we get a serious problem like BfA PvP gearing system were every PvPer was forced to PvE every week for duration of whole expansion it can't get a proper attention until half of most popular WoW streamers unite to show that there's a problem.

I disagree with this post to be honest on the fact that Preach is objective. He sees the game on how it can fulfill his needs and what he wants from the game. And he doesn't ever admit to my knowledge that the playerbase play the game from other reasons that he does, or even I does. Most people don't care about 10 percent plus minus i balance due to covenants or conduits etc. He does and thats ok.

I have played the game for 15 years and my theorycrafting skills are slightly above average and have looked at the covenants and the soulbinds and conduits. I dont see it as a mess at all.

Do I see balance no? But that is not and should not be the goal either.

I agree, Preach is not objective. I even think Asmon is more objective than him. Preach is all negative, tries to force his point of view as a fact for everyone and just throws in a random positive sentence to pretend that he's positive. He's not, Stoopzz is someone who is objective, in my opinion.

[Zenfoldor]

<edited to remove negativity>

I'm hyped and positive about Shadowlands now though.

[WowIsDead64]

No its just mob mentality. Its easier to follow a leader and adopt his viewpoints then it is doing some critical thinking for yourself.

Yeah, standard "any Wow critic is stupid" personal attack. What if opposite is also true? When Blizzard say "feature X is ok, because <made up reasons>" and some fanboys parrot this statement? No?

[ClassicPeon]

If you want circlejerk, try wowhead.

Circlejerk what?

Do you feel stricken by this?
Are you one of the people who would be hit by this, and so you lash out in fear?

Otherwise i see no point to your, as per usual, completely irrelevant post.

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Yeah, standard "any Wow critic is stupid" personal attack. What if opposite is also true? When Blizzard say "feature X is ok, because <made up reasons>" and some fanboys parrot this statement? No?

Thats not at all what i said. I've been very clear in idiots being on both sides of the fence. I'm advocating for better moderation on the site entirely. Not casting out wow critiques.
I could probably name you around 10-20 people who with a permaban would just make this site overall a lot better.

[WowIsDead64]

I could probably name you around 10-20 people who with a permaban would just make this site overall a lot better.

That's again standard "If you don't share my opinion, then automatically you're troll and should be banned to make site X better". Overall it's about lacking real constructive counter-arguments to beat your opponent and calling moderators to do it for you, i.e. just mute this opinion. Define this "better" please? It's common misconception. Forums are for discussion. And discussion means having different opinions. If all players here would be fans, nothing would be to discuss. And forum would automatically turn into news board, where we will have 100500 "Great change!!! Can't wait!!!!" under every news.

Greatest example of anti-hating? Removal of flying. Blizzard said "We want immersion". Everybody parroted it. "We don't want you to kill boss before killing his guards blah blah blah". But is no-flying really about immersion? Does Blizzard actually care about immersion, if at the same time they, for example, implement things like CRZ, that actually kills "fantasy world" feeling and clearly shows, that you play broken game - not live in fantasy world? Now it's obvious for everybody, that removal of flying is about slowing players down and making game casual/alt unfriendly. So, wasn't it mob mentality?

[Tradu]

I'd say people who are happy with the game just play it and don't spend much time on the forums praising it.

I actually feel sorry for those nerds that spend hours upon hours on forums complaining about the game they no longer play (or worse - game they pay sub to play).

Why? What's wrong with complaining about the parts you dislike and would like to see changed? That's called "feedback" and is the only real way players have to get those things changed. Quitting doesn't make the game better, it just means you decided that the good parts no longer make up for the bad parts.

[Kumorii]

I am not arguing wow hasn't been successful, The game owes a lot of its success I believe to when and how it came out. I just am getting tired of it feeling like it needs to drastically change all of its core systems with each iteration. I notice you only quoted one sentence in my entire post but the rest sums it up.

It just feels like they are cutting corners more and more as time goes on. Relying on gimmicks more then well thought out devolvement. The core of the game is still solid but I wish a different development team and company held the IP at this point...well not any company or development team but I think you can at least understand my sentiment.

I don't think cutting corners is exactly the right word. Creating new complex systems each expansion while keeping up dungeons and raids developments is more ambitious and requires more work than tweaking some base class abilities and adding a few set bonuses.

They aren't cutting corners but they might be to ambitious to be able to balance it all. I know that people are parroting the "sl is the most ambitious expansion? LOL". They seem to conflate ambitious with it they like it or not though.

[Tradu]

4) History
Again, I think a lot of your arguments are on point. But we also cannot ignore the fact that Blizzard have made some bad decisions throughout the last 3 expansions which they themselves have admitted to afterwards. So when we the players see signs of history repeating itself, it is completely fair and rational to give constuctive feedback. There are multiple cases now of Blizzard saying: "Trust us. It will work on launch" and then it turned out not to work. So when Blizzard currently are saying "Trust us. We will balance it" and the player then are looking back a the corruption system, it's only natural that we get a bit worried.

But I agree that there are "doomsayers" out there who simply wants to insult Blizzard for the sake of it. And overall WoW is a fantastic game. We have to remember that a lot of the people who complain about specific features in WoW only do it because they really love the game. Otherwise they wouldn't care.

This is my biggest issue, honestly. Their track record for designing good systems and balancing them has been really bad for the past few expansions, so there's no good reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. They need to prove to the players that they're capable. Sure, one way of proving that is by doing big, ambitious new systems and nailing those. That hasn't worked recently, so until they actually succeed(at launch, not a year into the expansion), they'll get criticized for that.
The other option is focusing on smaller systems that have a higher chance of success, which is what I'd like to see them do. Take Shadowlands for example, there's no need to have Soulbinds at all. It's adding a huge amount of extra balancing work and the payoff is... a bunch of generic passives/procs. If they focused on just Conduits and Legendaries it'd be significantly easier, because they're (mostly) spec specific, which is easier to tune and allows for much more interesting designs.
Just get some "easy wins" instead of focusing on a huge, risky "big win".