Nathria isn't hard, your loot just hasn't caught up yet. Morgan Day interview

[Cazze]

"Out of control"

I suppose if you subscribe to the stupid thought process that you have to drip in gear to keep players engaged.

"Out of control" is when you can get higer ilvl than the raid before it even opens.

I would rather have hard raids that give less loot but more potential upgrades than only to have a trinket and/or ring to look forward to.

[Toppy]

Is that related to the equally huge brain thought process that it's okay to be max geared in two weeks then quit the game because there aren't any rewards left to earn?

I suppose theres no middle ground then? Either drip it in to the point of frustration or bury them in it.

Mind you, giving people a great deal of gear in the past hasn't really led to people quiting either. Chasing the ilvl isnt that great of a carrot compared to cosmetics, mounts, titles, and general prestige. Ilvl is one of the worst ways to keep players. Its why I'm a bigger fan of there being very little gap in ilvls during a tier. If there was only 5 ilvl difference between lfr, normal, heroic, and mythic then nothing would really change except there'd be fewer gaps for people to get into the content they want to.

[Drusin]

I get the sarcasm but people didn't quit Cata en masse so it's really questionable that you'd have this take. (Attrition was likely about the same as prior expansions, there was simply a lot fewer new/returning players.) Also, unlike Cata, there are still multiple avenues to gear up in SL that didn't exist back then. In early Cata you had Heroic dungeons ... and that was it. (Maybe you could count the weekly raid, too, but that's a stretch.)

I disagree

[Semune]

Its been a major problem for ages with MMO in general. An over focus on raiding when raiding is a thing that a very small minority of people do in every single MMO.

Whether or not a small amount of people do it is irrelevant. That's actually not true anymore but even if you're correct, having an "end goal" is -absolutely vital- and it should be the primary focus because it is the final "carrot on a stick".

If you think that raiding isn't that important, imagine WoW without raids, the subscriber count would be virtually nothing. I would go as far as to say that raids are by far the single most important content and there's nothing else that even comes remotely close. Even for people that don't raid.

[Toppy]

Whether or not a small amount of people do it is irrelevant. That's actually not true anymore but even if you're correct, having an "end goal" is -absolutely vital- and it should be the primary focus because it is the final "carrot on a stick".

If you think that raiding isn't that important, imagine WoW without raids, the subscriber count would be virtually nothing. I would go as far as to say that raids are by far the single most important content and there's nothing else that even comes remotely close. Even for people that don't raid.

No its still very much true. Its a small minority of people who raid normal and up. Even less who are past that. Smaller scale content is always vastly more popular. In any MMO.

Nor did I say raids should be gone, only that they get way to much attention.

[Fadewind]

Whether or not a small amount of people do it is irrelevant. That's actually not true anymore but even if you're correct, having an "end goal" is -absolutely vital- and it should be the primary focus because it is the final "carrot on a stick".

If you think that raiding isn't that important, imagine WoW without raids, the subscriber count would be virtually nothing. I would go as far as to say that raids are by far the single most important content and there's nothing else that even comes remotely close. Even for people that don't raid.

Problem with the current loot system is that the stick is too long. Yes the carrot is there, but if I spend hours a day trying to get gear to drop in heroics and get no upgrades or just "side-grades" to what I have (as in I'll have rings drop when I already have both rings at heroic level and both are better for my class), then why would I want to try anything else?

By the time I sit through my daily queue for heroics, I have my daily calling done. I don't really care to go into the Maw for the 2 dailies there. After spending 15-30 mins doing daily heroic, I maybe, MAYBE can possibly have 1 piece of loot. If I queue again, that's an hour to an hour and a half for maybe one piece of loot.

I didn't get any currency to obtain other loot due to crappy RNG. The AH doesn't have any upgrades that I can afford for my time if they did exist (trinkets) or just aren't a higher ilvl than I have. A week of doing heroics and not able to even have enough of an ilvl to get into LFR. It's an awful experience to spend hours and hours working towards gear. And make no progression.

And I get that previous expansions had that same feeling once you were geared and you were going for titanforging. The difference is that bad RNG with fewer gear drops means that content can become unavailable to even access versus not needing every piece of gear in a raid.

[RoKPaNda]

I mean of course Blizzard thinks everything is fine, because that's what they always think. I don't think CN is too hard by any means, I mean PUGs are still smashing Heroic CN buuuut it is tuned tighter than previous first tiers.

[Relapses]

I suppose theres no middle ground then? Either drip it in to the point of frustration or bury them in it.

There is a middle ground and it's what have currently. Between WQs, M+, PvP, raiding and the weekly box, the amount of loot in the game isn't greatly reduced from prior expansions. Players don't want to admit that though, so they use anecdotal experiences to help make it seem like extremes on either end of the spectrum are the norm. I think most players do like the sense of "beating" the game by achieving the highest ilvl they can and whenever loot drops are diminished this can feel like more of a chore than a foregone conclusion; but I think this has more to do with players adjusting to the way loot works in this expansion (it's different therefore it's bad) versus the prior two where TFing was a thing.

[Elkfingers]

Problem with the current loot system is that the stick is too long. Yes the carrot is there, but if I spend hours a day trying to get gear to drop in heroics and get no upgrades or just "side-grades" to what I have (as in I'll have rings drop when I already have both rings at heroic level and both are better for my class), then why would I want to try anything else?

By the time I sit through my daily queue for heroics, I have my daily calling done. I don't really care to go into the Maw for the 2 dailies there. After spending 15-30 mins doing daily heroic, I maybe, MAYBE can possibly have 1 piece of loot. If I queue again, that's an hour to an hour and a half for maybe one piece of loot.

I didn't get any currency to obtain other loot due to crappy RNG. The AH doesn't have any upgrades that I can afford for my time if they did exist (trinkets) or just aren't a higher ilvl than I have. A week of doing heroics and not able to even have enough of an ilvl to get into LFR. It's an awful experience to spend hours and hours working towards gear. And make no progression.

And I get that previous expansions had that same feeling once you were geared and you were going for titanforging. The difference is that bad RNG with fewer gear drops means that content can become unavailable to even access versus not needing every piece of gear in a raid.

If most of the loot you're getting are sidegrades then that's a great indication that you should be doing more difficult content because you're clearly starting to outgear the usefulness of heroics.

Have you considered starting a group for M0 runs? After that you could form groups for M+ content too if you're after better ilvl rewards. Genuinely at the moment it sounds like you're using inefficient methods to gear up - assuming that gear is your aim. If you just want to run heroics and lfr then that's cool too, but if your goal is gear then you have to do the content that has the best potential for dropping upgrades.

Heroics and lfr don't reward great gear because they don't need great gear to be overcome. Bottom line, if you want better gear then you need to be doing gear-appropriate content.

[Relapses]

Heroics and lfr don't reward great gear because they don't need great gear to be overcome. Bottom line, if you want better gear then you need to be doing gear-appropriate content.

Short term, yes. Long term the Weekly Vault will actually give most players gear far better than the content they're currently clearing.

[Fadewind]

If most of the loot you're getting are sidegrades then that's a great indication that you should be doing more difficult content because you're clearly starting to outgear the usefulness of heroics.

Have you considered starting a group for M0 runs? After that you could form groups for M+ content too if you're after better ilvl rewards. Genuinely at the moment it sounds like you're using inefficient methods to gear up - assuming that gear is your aim. If you just want to run heroics and lfr then that's cool too, but if your goal is gear then you have to do the content that has the best potential for dropping upgrades.

Heroics and lfr don't reward great gear because they don't need great gear to be overcome. Bottom line, if you want better gear then you need to be doing gear-appropriate content.

I'm BARELY geared enough to do heroics. My complaint isn't that I'm hardly finding upgrades. It's that when I started to do heroics (which took a fucking week because my trinkets and weapon were such low ilevel that I couldn't queue, and yes, that's AFTER trying to get items to drop and not having luck with World Quests) that any upgrades I found were hardly better than the items I had.

I didn't have a complete set of items for my main dungeon spec. I did solo stuff as feral but preferred to do dungeons as balance. In order to pad my ilvl to even do heroics, I had to equip feral trinkets (aka ones that had proc effects for increasing agility). I was getting armor and ring slots dropping, but not trinkets nor weapons for balance. World Quests were always popping up for feral trinkets.

That's a terrible fucking excuse for Blizzard's poor design. I wasn't even fully geared from level 80 dungeons. When I'm spending hours everyday trying to get a basic fucking set and making no progress, it's awful. The solution shouldn't be: "I need to go do content that is two ranks above what I need in order to get a full set at level 80. Which is reliant on random people accepting an invite for someone barely geared for this content and hoping they don't inspect my gear and kick me for fudging ilvls."

[tomten]

lots of text

You're trying to argue if those decisions are right or not, maybe they are, maybe they aren't but they're not decisions made on a whim out of thin air. They are based on facts.
All you're saying are your own assumptions.
My and your opinion is irrelevant. Its also the opposite of "facts". Blizzards opinion, based on their data, is that there was to much loot and I happen to agree.

[lordjust]

Its perfect like it is now, back to older ways. Why I like Shadowlands, it is modern WoW with a twist of the old. It was way too easy to gear up in Legion and BfA and I am glad they went with this.

But it is worse than in "the old days". Back in classic, BC or WotLK we had more options for getting loot. Sure the bosses droped like 2-4 items for 40 players in classic but you also had good items for rep and from crafting. In BC and WotLK you also had good items from rep, heroic dungeons, crafting and marks.

Today we have the raid, m+ and the weekly vault. M+ gives less gear than dungeons back in BC and WotLK, rep items are like ilvl 190 and the upgrade tokens for crafted gear aren't in the game yet. Back then we had options. We could run heroic dungeons every day with relevant loot from every boss and an epic piece from the endboss. We had crafted gear that was on the same level as raid loot (even if it hadn't the best stat distribution) and we had raid level loot from reputations.

At the moment it's really slow and it isn't fun to do the raid and like 6 m+ and get no item at all apart from some anima, gold and maybe a conduit. There are no back-up solutions to get some gear progression. Do the raid, farm m+ and hope you get a slot from the vault that you need an upgrade for. It's a big time investment with little to no return which feels like wasted time. In classic you got at least a meaningful amount of gold from the bosses but 13 gold and 35 anima from a raid boss isn't meaningful in any way when world quests give like 200 gold and 100 anima.

[Doffen]

But it is worse than in "the old days". Back in classic, BC or WotLK we had more options for getting loot. Sure the bosses droped like 2-4 items for 40 players in classic but you also had good items for rep and from crafting. In BC and WotLK you also had good items from rep, heroic dungeons, crafting and marks.

Today we have the raid, m+ and the weekly vault. M+ gives less gear than dungeons back in BC and WotLK, rep items are like ilvl 190 and the upgrade tokens for crafted gear aren't in the game yet. Back then we had options. We could run heroic dungeons every day with relevant loot from every boss and an epic piece from the endboss. We had crafted gear that was on the same level as raid loot (even if it hadn't the best stat distribution) and we had raid level loot from reputations.

At the moment it's really slow and it isn't fun to do the raid and like 6 m+ and get no item at all apart from some anima, gold and maybe a conduit. There are no back-up solutions to get some gear progression. Do the raid, farm m+ and hope you get a slot from the vault that you need an upgrade for. It's a big time investment with little to no return which feels like wasted time. In classic you got at least a meaningful amount of gold from the bosses but 13 gold and 35 anima from a raid boss isn't meaningful in any way when world quests give like 200 gold and 100 anima.

Regarding mythic+, thats the only argument I need to say its a lot easier to gear now than it was in BC. WotLK, maybe closer because there were proper tier and offset gear from several vendors back then, but when it comes to mythic+, you can spam it for gear equal raiding. I can do an 8 now and get normal raid gear, or mythic 12 and get heroic raid gear. Heroic back then is mythic right now, and its just before raid level gear. It was the same in TBC. Not sure how you can say that was relevant loot, but in SL it's not when they work the same way. Mythic dungeon gear serves the same purpose, and it's the same as it was back then.

And I can spam mythic+. With dungeons in TBC you did not get that high gear and then spam the dungeons like you can now. Crafting was better, agree, but with crafting now you make legendaries for instance. And you also got gear from WQ and rep which equals to before lfr item level, which we can compare to normal TBC dungeons. It's deffo not worse than in the old days, but it's closer to it than we had for years.

When it comes to anima however, I agree that 35 from end of dungeon and each raid boss is too low.

[Relapses]

Regarding mythic+, thats the only argument I need to say its a lot easier to gear now than it was in BC. WotLK, maybe closer because there were proper tier and offset gear from several vendors back then, but when it comes to mythic+, you can spam it for gear equal raiding. I can do an 8 now and get normal raid gear, or mythic 12 and get heroic raid gear. Heroic back then is mythic right now, and its just before raid level gear. It was the same in TBC. Not sure how you can say that was relevant loot, but in SL it's not when they work the same way. Mythic dungeon gear serves the same purpose, and it's the same as it was back then.

And I can spam mythic+. With dungeons in TBC you did not get that high gear and then spam the dungeons like you can now. Crafting was better, agree, but with crafting now you make legendaries for instance. And you also got gear from WQ and rep which equals to before lfr item level, which we can compare to normal TBC dungeons. It's deffo not worse than in the old days, but it's closer to it than we had for years.

When it comes to anima however, I agree that 35 from end of dungeon and each raid boss is too low.

In TBC you could easily get stuck farming Heroic dungeons. I know because that was me. I played a Prot Warrior. I couldn't find a guild that needed a tank in T5 content and even though I was an Officer in a guild that had 3 concurrent Kara runs, we still couldn't get very far in SSC. (I don't even think we bothered pulling anything in TK because half the guild didn't even have the normal speed flyer.) I killed the last boss of Heroic Mechanar 83 times before he dropped the epic sword I wanted. I didn't feel comfortable tanking Karazhan until I had it because I was obsessed with TPS and didn't want to be seen as a "bad tank" if I lost threat to DPS. It was a much, much different game back then and I can't see how anybody who can actually remember TBC would say that it was better back then.

[Doffen]

In TBC you could easily get stuck farming Heroic dungeons. I know because that was me. I played a Prot Warrior. I couldn't find a guild that needed a tank in T5 content and even though I was an Officer in a guild that had 3 concurrent Kara runs, we still couldn't get very far in SSC. (I don't even think we bothered pulling anything in TK because half the guild didn't even have the normal speed flyer.) I killed the last boss of Heroic Mechanar 83 times before he dropped the epic sword I wanted. I didn't feel comfortable tanking Karazhan until I had it because I was obsessed with TPS and didn't want to be seen as a "bad tank" if I lost threat to DPS. It was a much, much different game back then and I can't see how anybody who can actually remember TBC would say that it was better back then.

There was a lockout on heroic dungeons back then, you can spam heroic dungeons now as well. Equal now though is mythic and mythic +, the latter you can indeed spam for better gear than heroic dungeons in TBC ever did. I know how it was to be "stuck" to do heroic dungeons in TBC; that was me as well. And I loved it.

It's again time to understand that people have different opinions. I remember TBC very well, its my favorite expansion to date and I probably have 25% of all my playtime in WoW when TBC was current, at least. I did it all. And I think it was great then, I still think it was, and I absolutely love that its close to that again, even though it's a lot easier to gear up now than it was back then because of mythic+.

[Relapses]

There was a lockout on heroic dungeons back then, you can spam heroic dungeons now as well. Equal now though is mythic and mythic +, the latter you can indeed spam for better gear than heroic dungeons in TBC ever did. I know how it was to be "stuck" to do heroic dungeons in TBC; that was me as well. And I loved it.

It's again time to understand that people have different opinions. I remember TBC very well, its my favorite expansion to date and I probably have 25% of all my playtime in WoW when TBC was current, at least. I did it all. And I think it was great then, I still think it was, and I absolutely love that its close to that again, even though it's a lot easier to gear up now than it was back then because of mythic+.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I always had aspirations to do more but it was my first expansion so I just kind accepted my fate as a hardstuck Heroic dungeoneer and did my best to make the most of the time I had in the game. I did actually have fun towards the end when Magister's Terrace was released. It wasn't until ICC that I think I came to enjoy the raiding aspect of the game and that was mostly due to the insane content drought than anything else.

But yeah, I see people upset about not getting loot from their runs and I really question the level of entitlement Legion and BfA must have instilled in the playerbase.

[Doffen]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I always had aspirations to do more but it was my first expansion so I just kind accepted my fate as a hardstuck Heroic dungeoneer and did my best to make the most of the time I had in the game. I did actually have fun towards the end when Magister's Terrace was released. It wasn't until ICC that I think I came to enjoy the raiding aspect of the game and that was mostly due to the insane content drought than anything else.

But yeah, I see people upset about not getting loot from their runs and I really question the level of entitlement Legion and BfA must have instilled in the playerbase.

I also see that, but it's one of the situations where those who do not get loot gets upset and then say its not good enough on forums or are loud. While those who get loot in a normal pace are quiet and keep playing. Anecdotally, my guild notice the scarcity of loot in the raid too, but none here is particularly behind on gear. So no one is actually complaining.

I did not get Deathbringers Will on my Hunter in ICC. I did not get MoB in BT either. It's unfortunate, but its part of the game. Sour? Sure, but to me that's an integrated part of the game, that you just don't get everything you want. People might scoff off this, but muh immersion. It prolonging the excitement for me that I don't have all I want yet, and I know its a chance I won't get it, but I think that makes gearing more interesting because 2 months in I can go into the raid and "hey, today is the day I get my bis trinket!" and find that fun. And I know, some people hate that fact, and I do understand that feeling, but to me, that's a good thing, not bad.

When it comes to the last sentence, I get that. And I think it shows that WoW actually get new players all the time, which is a positive of course. And rewards these days are important for many. I like rewards too, but I like it when it requires a tad bit more than what was needed in BfA and Legion. I did not mind Titanforging, I didn't particularly mind the gear-showering either, I just think this is more fun. To me.

[rebecca191]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I always had aspirations to do more but it was my first expansion so I just kind accepted my fate as a hardstuck Heroic dungeoneer and did my best to make the most of the time I had in the game. I did actually have fun towards the end when Magister's Terrace was released. It wasn't until ICC that I think I came to enjoy the raiding aspect of the game and that was mostly due to the insane content drought than anything else.

But yeah, I see people upset about not getting loot from their runs and I really question the level of entitlement Legion and BfA must have instilled in the playerbase.

No, more like I'm older and busier now and I can no longer efficiently gear up for raids in the limited time I have like I could in Legion and BFA. I don't have time to run double the M+ I ran in BFA to get the same amount of gear. I have a kid and I have a job. I'd never play vanilla WoW with my current lifestyle, sure I liked it in my early 20s but those days are long gone. I didn't want to go back to slower gearing because it doesn't work with my current available time. I'm probably done when I run out of gold for sub if they don't change it back in the next patch. It's too slow now. Two M+, a full normal clear, and one boss short of a full heroic clear. ONE usable piece of loot. And I only have time to do a couple more M+ this week, except I have like no motivation to do so because I know the chance of loot is so low.

[Osmeric]

In TBC you could easily get stuck farming Heroic dungeons.

TBC was quite bad. By the end of it, I told myself that if Wrath was anything like it I'd be done right there. But the devs (or their management) learned some lessons, at least until Cataclysm came along.