This expansion's contents are either "not rewarding" or gated !

[Aphrel]

So wait, you expect m0 loot from WQs? in week one?

i expect to be able to progress my fucking covenant without arbitrary invisible walls stopping me. seriously, fuck gating.

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Have you considered the possibility that the game is not just designed for the players that do all the content available in a day?

Gear from Renown will be just the thing for the players that start playing the game over the new year and generally don't really care for farming dungeons or raids. Surely they also deserve to have the game be fun?

You can't necessarily design a game to just be catered to those that play it all the time, otherwise those that don't would forever fall behind.
Not all players gear in dungeons all day. Not all players go through Normal raids the first week. Not all players are done levelling within a week.

And of course there are alts, for those the Renown gear will be perfect. You famr up loads of renown with the catchup, and in return you don't have to farm a load of dungeons to gear up.

there an easy solution, remove the time gatings. There, its done. Players can now sprint away until they reach the content that IS designed for them, mythic+ and mythic raids being the two big ones.

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Yeah, maybe you should quit. It seems like no matter what they do you're going to complain. I'm no Blizzard apologist, but damn man, you're complaining about everything.

For every reaction theres an equal opposite reaction xD Your an apologist, regardless of how bad shit gets your just gonna suck it up. Im sure i can go buy you a stuffed animal then take a dump on it and mail it to you and youll be like "oh, its a little dirty but its still a stuffed animal and i love it"...

I want the game i played on beta, you know, the game where shit is actually unlcoked so it can be played rather than the skeleton of a game we get on release.

[owbu]

considering there wasn't any gambling nor infinite grinds i doubt he experiencing any withdrawal

okay, I can see how you can lawyer me out of gambling (excessive RNG is not TECHNICALLY gambling).
How on earth can you say that BFA didnt have infinite grinds, when there is plently of dev commentary on how they are moving away from infinite grinds now :>?

[korijenkins]

Are you serious right now ? What were you expecting ? The game is supposed to be played for months, it's always been like that. The fact that it's even possible to get legendaries that easily or that early in the expansion is still a large upgrade from before with long grinds, gated quests, etc. Just be patient.

What they want is the option to grind or not grind without it being necessary.

Blizzard has two methods atm (which aren't that). One, you grind endlessly and if you quit you fall behind. Two, you don't grind endlessly but you have to wait for an arbitrary amount of time before you can access what you want.

Both of those methods are designed around keeping people subscribed for as long as possible. What's ironic is that by abandoning the former method (used pretty much from Classic-MoP) in favor of the two current ones, they lost more subscribers by driving away their loyal playerbase.

In BFA and Legion, they used the "grind endlessly" method. In Shadowlands so far it seems to be the "arbitrary amount of time" method.

[Rucati]

there an easy solution, remove the time gatings. There, its done. Players can now sprint away until they reach the content that IS designed for them, mythic+ and mythic raids being the two big ones.

Then you end up with classic where you grind 15 hours a day for a week and then raidlog the rest of the patch because there's nothing to do.

Time gating is fine, it allows you to play multiple characters and actually play the game for more than a week. If you want a game where you can play through the whole thing in a week and then never touch it again there's hundreds of single player games for that. MMOs are not the genre for you.

[kaminaris]

okay, I can see how you can lawyer me out of gambling (excessive RNG is not TECHNICALLY gambling).
How on earth can you say that BFA didnt have infinite grinds, when there is plently of dev commentary on how they are moving away from infinite grinds now :>?

Neither was excessive RNG, i can also math you out of this because you know, I actually know how much percentage gain it was.

First of all, neck was HARD capped till 8.3, so it wasn't infinite. That is a fact.
Second, nothing is ever infinite because time is there to stop you (and hard caps)
Third, softcap did work, even if you farmed like madman you would at best +5 ilvls vs people who actually have self-control. And that was about 2.5% of dps increase.

I know that some people have issues calculating efficiency but it really wasn't hard math.

And dev commentary is just jebait because people are actually stupid to believe some pretty words.

For me, shadowlands didn't change a thing, and actually I have more work now as I will have to touch world quests again.
Renown is exactly the same as azerite power and anima is exactly the same as resources.
But now instead of chosing where I would stop, I have to stop where developers intended for me to stop.
(and my stop in BfA was damn fast, faster than shadowlands will ever be)

Considering i had so low amount of resources during entire bfa i had to buy coins for gold, you get the idea how much you could ignore the "grind" that just didn't exist.

[Chromell]

What I'm getting from the OP is that they wanted top tier gear from... the mission table? Are you decked in Mythic 0 gear to be complaining about the table? Also, wanted the legendary on week 1? I guess 2 weeks is too much time for some people.

As for the Maw, it's supposed to be difficult. You'll earn a mount you can use there (assuming you put the effort or get carried into it).

As for the Transportation Network, it's entirely your fault for not reading properly.

Yes, you are missing other content. Raid and Mythic+ aren't there yet. What it looks to me is that you wanted to do absolutely everything the game has to offer the very first week, burn out, then complain that there's nothing left to do in the game. Have you tried leveling an alt?

[haiyken]

What they want is the option to grind or not grind without it being necessary.

Blizzard has two methods atm (which aren't that). One, you grind endlessly and if you quit you fall behind. Two, you don't grind endlessly but you have to wait for an arbitrary amount of time before you can access what you want.

Both of those methods are designed around keeping people subscribed for as long as possible. What's ironic is that by abandoning the former method (used pretty much from Classic-MoP) in favor of the two current ones, they lost more subscribers by driving away their loyal playerbase.

In BFA and Legion, they used the "grind endlessly" method. In Shadowlands so far it seems to be the "arbitrary amount of time" method.

It's obvious these methods are designed to keep people subscribed. I know it's tiring to hear the argument "Blizzard is a company and they want us to play their game as long as possible" but it's just that. The goal is to create systems that keep the players engaged with the content over a long period of time to stay subscribed. And the game as always been like that, with varying degrees, with patches and new content release regularly.

The gating is only here as an extansion of that. Personnally, I think it's fine. It feels less overwhelming and give me something to look forward to. This type of staggered content release was already here in MoP in one of the first content patch (Alliance and Horde on the beach), with a campaign questline unlocked every week. What we have in SL is an evolution of that.

While I can understand why people are upset about time gating some of the content, I think it's insane to be that upset during the first week of the expansion. The idea of "What they want is the option to grind or not grind without it being necessary." is immediately invalidated by the "necessary" part. If there is a shred of playerpower behind this grind, it will be labeled as mandatory and will be done to the extreme. If the grind gives nothing to the player, it will be labeled as "not rewarding" and ignored altogether. There is no win-win situation here. (Some) players are so extreme in their view of what is mandatory do to and why, that it's impossible to create something satisfying. Blizzard decided to balance this with gating, making it possible to have really meaningful grinds without burning up people. It's not the optimal solution but it's one.

[NineSpine]

They sort of are, because people take the opportunity from no time gating to over play the game and whinge about grinding.

It's a little weird to respond to only one sentence I said and ignore the rest when the rest contains the actual point I was making.

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No you can't. At least not realistically. Make it too long, most people aren't going to even bother.

Weird how the game managed to have millions and millions and millions of players when the design worked that way. Weird how classic is designed that way and has been a massive success.

[schwarzkopf]

It's a little weird to respond to only one sentence I said and ignore the rest

When your first statement is factually incorrect, then the only rational assumption is the rest of your argument revolves around that first statement and is therefore not worth replying to.

If you led with an error, then proceeded to correct that error - I apologise for not continuing.

[NineSpine]

What they want is the option to grind or not grind without it being necessary.

Blizzard has two methods atm (which aren't that). One, you grind endlessly and if you quit you fall behind. Two, you don't grind endlessly but you have to wait for an arbitrary amount of time before you can access what you want.

Both of those methods are designed around keeping people subscribed for as long as possible. What's ironic is that by abandoning the former method (used pretty much from Classic-MoP) in favor of the two current ones, they lost more subscribers by driving away their loyal playerbase.

In BFA and Legion, they used the "grind endlessly" method. In Shadowlands so far it seems to be the "arbitrary amount of time" method.

I think a lot of the negative reaction to timegating isn't because of the actual timegating. I think it's because Blizzard loads the community up with such a ridiculous amount of foreknowledge about what is coming that it makes the timegating feel artificial. If you look at a game like Destiny, there is tons of timegating and it doesn't seem to engender this type of negativity. I think this is because Destiny is incredibly opaque about what is coming. Often they release things we didn't even know were going to exist. The seasonal activity is supposed to advance this week and we have no idea what that means. New missions? New ranks? New bosses? Nobody really knows. That creates a positive sense of anticipation, rather than this negative feeling of being held back.

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When your first statement is factually incorrect, then the only rational assumption is the rest of your argument revolves around that first statement and is therefore not worth replying to.

If you led with an error, then proceeded to correct that error - I apologise for not continuing.

If you think "I ignore the arguments for any point that I immediately read as untrue" you have a fundamentally broken way of figuring out what is true or not.

[Cazze]

It's a little weird to respond to only one sentence I said and ignore the rest when the rest contains the actual point I was making.

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Weird how the game managed to have millions and millions and millions of players when the design worked that way. Weird how classic is designed that way and has been a massive success.

Woaaa, you make it sound like it had billions of players and now has 10 ppl playing(9 if you quit). IT's not like today there are a lot of popular games or anything. When exactly did the design work that way? Even in wotlk you had gated emblems, only shadowmourne comes close to the thing you are saying but this is no factor at all. And yeah, trying to argue using classic/tbc... It is pointless to tell you why such archaic, 20 year old designs won't work as you just spout classic that classic this when you can't think of anything else.

Btw classic success has nothing to do with all content being available from the start. What is even more funny is that, if content hadn't been paced artificially for classic, it would most certainly be deader than your arguments.

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Both of those methods are designed around keeping people subscribed for as long as possible. What's ironic is that by abandoning the former method (used pretty much from Classic-MoP) in favor of the two current ones, they lost more subscribers by driving away their loyal playerbase.

What is ironic is you totally forgetting how gated those expansions actually are. Frost emblems, VALOR CAP. Especially pandaria was timegated out the ass. - valor cap, reputation, even the legendary quest was timegated as hell (earn 3k valor). You had 2 gates on valor gear, valor itself and reputation. But sure you could grind as much as you'd wish, totally. Oh and and classic? 2-3 pieces of loot for 40 players per boss, once per week. Totally not gated amirite

[Stormbreed]

Interesting... i think its by far the worst expansion week 1 ever. After day 2-3 im sitting in AH making sure my useless legendary base items are first in line to sell(for a loss, just to recover some gold unlocking next rank as no one is paying even 15k for rank 1 items) as there is nothing else to do. Log in, do couple of WQ for daily and some maw... done for the day. Its new expansion and it should be exciting and all and i want to play it more... but instead im more bored than last months of BfA.

WQs became useless outside of anima farm day 1 already, as they dont scale well and there is no titanforging. Torghast was done with cap hit day 2 as its nothing but ash chore. Professions offer absolutely nothing outside of extremely small demand for legendary base items that are useless outside of actually being made into legendaries as they have no stats or anything meaning no one actually needs them, especially lower ranks and outside of bis/best pre-raid slots. 99% of crafted stuff is just there so you can get skill points to craft legendary base... and then that has terrible demand. Im done with professions day 3 or so... and i started doing them on day 3. No bop gear for yourself, no gear for sale... just terrible state.

BfA was better week 1 if for nothing else than WQs scaling/titanforging and much better professions... even with expulsom.

Yeah no kid, a week and everyone but you thinks this is the best expansion since WOTLK.

Enough content for 2 characters to do all week. If you only want to run one, you can grind out some pre raid bis or focus on rep.

[Shedaar]

I can't believe some people really think the BFA/Legion systems were better than SL one.
SL one is the best "moderate-time invested needed" WoW expansion since I remember and I enjoy it thoroughly.
I actually leveled 3 characters and I'm now catching up on gearing/renown etc., and it's been a blast doing it without thinking that I'm not farming some AP or other stupid sh** and falling behind on my main

[Sezh]

There is white color "legendary" base gear in AH and sells for 200,000 gold.
It has no stats on it

Do you expect me to buy that?

So you want everything handed to you, requiring zero effort from your part.. While at the same you complain about there being too little to do.

What is this content that you would enjoy? Can you describe what kind of content can be designed by the devs that takes long time, but doesn't take any time at all, is engaging, but not challenging in any way whatsoever, and also incredibly rewarding but at the same time cannot require you to have earned it in any way?

[bloodwulf]

Its amazing. You got whiners like OP who complain there is not an endless grind to do at day 1, then you got the top end community who are celebrating being able to take days off without missing out, and feeling like the amount of content is sufficient. I personally love that i was able to level an alt in week 1 and complete all my objectives on both without feeling pressed for time.

[NineSpine]

Woaaa, you make it sound like it had billions of players and now has 10 ppl playing(9 if you quit). IT's not like today there are a lot of popular games or anything. When exactly did the design work that way? Even in wotlk you had gated emblems, only shadowmourne comes close to the thing you are saying but this is no factor at all. And yeah, trying to argue using classic/tbc... It is pointless to tell you why such archaic, 20 year old designs won't work as you just spout classic that classic this when you can't think of anything else.

Btw classic success has nothing to do with all content being available from the start. What is even more funny is that, if content hadn't been paced artificially for classic, it would most certainly be deader than your arguments.

20 year old designs won't work except.... it's working. Classic was significantly more successful than expected and has had zero servers shut down or merged thus far. To argue that the design "doesn't work" because of an arbitrary number of years passing is childish.

But hey, I've only got 17 years of experience working as a game designer so what the hell do I know about game design?

[Cazze]

20 year old designs won't work except.... it's working. Classic was significantly more successful than expected and has had zero servers shut down or merged thus far. To argue that the design "doesn't work" because of an arbitrary number of years passing is childish.

But hey, I've only got 17 years of experience working as a game designer so what the hell do I know about game design?

17 years and you can't see how the content roll out helped classic tremendiously? That's sad, if anything. Like, the thing you said works in classic, doesn't even exist in classic? Are you that blunt or are you purposefully ignoring that?

What else from classic works so well that isn't in the main game? I bet you can come up with something, spin up some things, pls, it is amusing. Especially coming from a 17 year dev(lmao).

Also, classic was a success. I didn't even disagree here. In the end,barring the hardcore classicists, most people returned to bfa(regarded as the shittiest expansion). So yeah, tell me more about the success of classic.

[loras]

you can fly directly.

but yes, i hate how i cannot seem to grow in power on my own. why not give SOME gear drops in torghast? maybe paid runs where you have to start a special run which rewards something due to a drop you farmed earlier. or extra objectives like in horrific visions. as of now, one can only grind torghast for followers which leads to more successful adventures but those do nothing for the player power.

no, instead i can only run dungeons. and i get only a few gold in 80% of the time. no anima, no real reputation, no cosmetics, nothing dangling in front of me convincing me to queue again. just 20-30 minutes of pain for no gain.

and don't get me started on renown. i hate formulaic gating like this where i can google in which week which renown rank is possible..

Maybe don't go for pain in a videogame.
Do it because it's fun, or don't do it at all.

[Clawsout]

This best expac week one in along time usually your rushed to do everything

[HitPoint]

This best expac week one in along time usually your rushed to do everything

THIS.

Sure, certain systems are gated to prevent "rushing/grinding" but this is the most content we've ever had in a long time week 1. BFA week 1 was literally a joke, we had what, islands, m0, and a half-assed war campaign? Now we have covenants, rares galore (most are farmable), torghast, tons of mounts/cosmetics, m0, actual decent WQ, daily chests, daily quests, alts are fun to level this time thanks to the new thread of fates system (completes campaign for you automatically and unlocks covenant at 50-51).

You seriously want everything in 1 week huh but then complain there is no content. I guarentee you blizz will lessen some of the gating as time goes on as they have done in the past to help people catchup for the late bloomers/alts.