Why is anima so rare?

[Cosmic Janitor]

Soon there will be a player drought so.

Gating anima income buff behind renown would have been the easiest and most elegant solution, just like souls are gated behind renown, rather than patches. Castle Nathria done, Denathrius is dealt with? -> which renown level is that? -> more anima comes in every so often. Makes sense.

I mean if we strictly go by the lore then there should only be anima left in places where the jailer's forces intrude or in places where he and his allies (mostly Denathrius) have hoarded it. Since no souls get into the shadowlands anima should become even more scarce besides the aforementioned sources, yet miraculously we still find alot of it each day for grinding mind-numbingly boring WQs. So the whole lore angle is complete and utter bullshit in the first place.

Walking past these giant anima containers and just letting them sit there while filled to the brim is already kicking the lore and visual story telling with feet. Not to mention how the random covenant trainees from the callings put down containers full of it as well, just so that we can detonate them; rare resource for sure. Then there is the fact that CN of all places drops by far the most pathetic amount of anima of all possible sources, short of getting nothing at all (unless you run it multiple times, then that is the case as well), despite being lorewise one of the most abundand anima sources left. So I personally think that approach doesn't hold much water to begin with.

All that aside, as you said and even Blizzard admitted with the maw, it's still a game and should be fun. Currently the grind to unlock things to do is everything but. Especially since you know they will add catch-up for these things later. It becomes less and less appealing to start playing the game from the beginning tbh, since all the artificial gating disrupts any natural flow. In legion I was giving them the benefit of doubt as they clearly needed to learn how to finetune their alternate proression systems first. But after corruption in late BFA it's clear that all this has method.

[Lei]

I mean if we strictly go by the lore then there should only be anima left in places where the jailer's forces intrude or in places where he and his allies (mostly Denathrius) have hoarded it. Since no souls get into the shadowlands anima should become even more scarce besides the aforementioned sources, yet miraculously we still find alot of it each day for grinding mind-numbingly boring WQs. So the whole lore angle is complete and utter bullshit in the first place.

Walking past these giant anima containers and just letting them sit there while filled to the brim is already kicking the lore and visual story telling with feet. Not to mention how the random covenant trainees from the callings put down containers full of it as well, just so that we can detonate them; rare resource for sure. Then there is the fact that CN of all places drops by far the most pathetic amount of anima of all possible sources, short of getting nothing at all (unless you run it multiple times, then that is the case as well), despite being lorewise one of the most abundand anima sources left. So I personally think that approach doesn't hold much water to begin with.

All that aside, as you said and even Blizzard admitted with the maw, it's still a game and should be fun. Currently the grind to unlock things to do is everything but. Especially since you know they will add these things later. It becomes less and less appealing to start playing the game from the beginning tbh, since all the artificial gating disrupts any natural flow.

Agreed.

For the bold part: I'll be honest, I was "tricked" with people saying how amazing and different this expansion will be compared to BfA and Legion, so I jumped right in from the start. Was a huge mistake. I don't mind ALL of the gatings, renown gating fine, campaign gating fine, covenant gear upgrade gating fine, but what they are doing with anima is just horrendous.

[ashblond]

It is very smart to design something as the center of the expansion while players don't have the resource to unlock it.

All those features will never be experienced so players can't complain how bad they are.

Blizzard loves player drought.

[Grimbold21]

All the anima quests, genious.

Must we really pretend we aren't talking about anima?

And yes, it sounds like a horrendous task. Lets not forget these are not the kill 1 mob WQs we had. These take a long time and you will have to take your ground mount and flight path through the zones.
Honestly the weekly 1k is enough torture.

Jesus has blizzard spoiled people or what

[huth]

You keep talking about how much you can get per week/day without address the fact that people are talking to you about not wanting to grind WQ's every day for weeks.

Yes you can get decent Anima income, if you grind yourself into boredom and burnout. That's the whole complaint, we don't want to grind daily's every day for weeks to unlock basic convenant features and buy a cosmetic item because its mind numbingly boring and after 2 expansions of mindlessly boring grind people are sick and tired of it.

And i'm sick and tired about people calling anything requiring a modicum of effort a "grind" and wanting everything to be a participation prize. If what little play is required to get the necessary anima is to much for you, then the content isn't meant for you. You cannot make everything available to everybody.

It's not like you necessarily have to do it at fastest rate possible, either. You'll just have to live with getting the rewards later in that case. You're constructing an issue that does not exist here, and the only person you have to blame for playing more than you want to is yourself.

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Jesus has blizzard spoiled people or what

Yes, although they realised their error. Their main problem now is everybody whining about them trying to fix it.

[volstadt]

Well I am in the middle of the pack here I suppose. I agree, that people shouldn't expect rewards for 'not doing content'. And that Covenants are mostly optional, QOL, flavor things.
But then again, only WQs = content?
I mean, quite a portion of players have their jobs and personal life already, and probably can't afford to play more than 2-3h a day while keeping a somewhat healthy life-balance. So this average player will have to choose what content is he/she supposed to do to 1) have fun, 2) feel rewarded, 3) feel any kind of progress.
And then comes the effort:gain:fun ratio. Subjective for everyone, of course, but still:
Raids:
Effort: on average 2-3h 2-3x a week
Rewards: RNG based loot drops. 35 anima per boss (max. 385 per difficulty, max. 1155 not counting LFR); weekly lockout; Great Vault RNG fiesta
Fun: Subjective, but overall 'endgame' content so considered universally most interesting
M+:
Effort: on average 30-45 mind per run of 10+ (might not be accurate on that, but I suppose somewhat close to that)
Rewards: RNG based loot drops. 35 anima per run; farmable; Great Vault RNG fiesta
Fun: Subjective, for me it's fun as it doesn't require huge undertaking and organization like raids, and doing it with good mates is great
PVP (not done pretty much any so going to mostly assume based on what others said so far):
Effort: Arena I guess 2-10 mins max per run, BG I guess 20-40 mins depending which one
Rewards: Honor, Conquest. Probably some anima per run; farmable; Great Vault RNG fiesta; other stuff like mounts etc.
Fun: Wasn't my cup of tea but considering it this expac, probably is fun
WQs:
Effort: Claimed to be up to 1h daily (anima only)
Rewards: On average 600-800 anima daily (with some bonus up sometimes)
Fun: Subjective, for me - not at all

So an average casual player, can achieve weekly:
1. Up to ~800-1000 anima from raid (probably won't clear all 3 difficulties in 3 days just yet; not considering LFR)
2. Around 1300 anima from M+ if not raiding and ONLY doing M+
3. Probably get also something around this worth of anima if doing ONLY PVP
OR/AND
4. Get around 7k anima if doing 1h anima WQs daily

See the issue? Balancing seems out of place, and an average "casual", who would raid twice a week, do maybe 4 M+ for GV, try some PVP and get Torghast runs sorted if needed, would be left with something like 4k anima weekly tops, with maybe some spare time to run a few WQs or run legacy content, farm herbs, do social stuff.

And then comes the guy/gal who feel like 1h of daily grind of WQs is nothing and if someone doesn't want if = he wants a reward without work. I get that, if you invest time you can get more anima. So wouldn't all be happier if you could invest the same time you invest now BUT ALSO get more anima from other content like raids, M+, PVP? So you would be gaining eg. 7k from WQs and another 7k from other content weekly? You would still be long ahead with unlocking everything if you choose so (hell let blizzard change the cap from 35k to 100k), but other players with more limited time won't feel like they are forced to do WQs INSTEAD of other content to be able to unlock anything at all. Because that feels like the waste of time.
If 1 WQ is 35-140 anima, for as some claim 2 mins, let one M+ be 100-200 anima depending on level. Let one raid boss drop 100-200 anima depending on difficulty.
Let people choose the content based on fun, not based on "I want that unlocked, so I have to do it no matter I hate it". If The rewards were MEANT to be earned with WQs, they would be awarded this way directly, or anima wouldn't be awarded anywhere outside WQs.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Rewards: RNG based loot drops. 35 anima per boss (max. 385 per difficulty, max. 1155 not counting LFR); weekly lockout; Great Vault RNG fiesta

Unless they changed it recently, then no, you only get 35 anima per boss kill, no matter what difficulty, per week. At least in the past that ment a whopping 350 anima/week.

[Adam552]

not having any anima issues here, but probably because I do the PvP quests/dailies.

[Zenfoldor]

I think they want that extra time played early on in the xpak.

Also, because I believe we will get some relief in the form of flying mounts soon.

Flying mounts will be enormously game-changing in these zones. The lack of a bird-whistle this xpak has truly reduced quality of life, but I also believe that is by design. I think they want flying mounts to be a gigantic functional organic gameplay upgrade that can prevent the need for some of the more obvious catch-up mechanisms.

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Well, we're coming up on 2 months into the expansion and I still haven't gone past level 2 on my covenant, so I'm missing out on a ton of content. That content is admittedly optional in terms of player power, but I would like to see it. Just not enough to grind anima. Also there are tons of cosmetics with each one costing thousands of anima which I'll probably never buy unless anima rewards are pretty drastically increased. It's a shame that covenant advancement, the expansion's biggest feature, is gated behind a grueling AP grind.

Again this is still a huge improvement over past expansions because it's all optional, no player power. And it's a fantastic improvement that anima has a hard cap after which you literally don't care about it at all. These are good things. But it could be better.

Yeah, I've also refused to grind for any currency this xpak. I haven't played as much as usual either. Sometimes if I feel something is just too much, I won't do it at all. I don't think it has directly reduced my power(well maybe a little) but it has demotivated me to play other parts of the game, which definitely hurts my player power.

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Jesus has blizzard spoiled people or what

I think other games have spoiled people. Just having an arbitrary/generic grind isn't good enough anymore in a game. The grind itself has to be fun. Other games have figured out ways to accomplish this...even some other Blizzard games.

[rhorle]

You keep talking about how much you can get per week/day without address the fact that people are talking to you about not wanting to grind WQ's every day for weeks.

Because it isn't grinding in order to get it? And if people don't want to play a little bit of the game in order to get rewards then why do they care about the Sanctum upgrades? Because the entire reward from them are cosmetics or things to do in the world. If you find the game mind numbingly boring then maybe quit? Because it sounds like it isn't for you.

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If 1 WQ is 35-140 anima, for as some claim 2 mins, let one M+ be 100-200 anima depending on level. Let one raid boss drop 100-200 anima depending on difficulty. Let people choose the content based on fun, not based on "I want that unlocked, so I have to do it no matter I hate it". If The rewards were MEANT to be earned with WQs, they would be awarded this way directly, or anima wouldn't be awarded anywhere outside WQs.

But if you don't find world content fun why do you want to unlock more world content in the Sanctum upgrades? Because that is what you are working to unlock. Cosmetics and World content. It also isn't a 600-800 anima from World Quests. There is 1,050 up right now. That amount might vary by around 105 anima because one of the WQ is from the Anima Conductor. The rest are region wide and it is typical for the day. You can also do the Maldraxxus arena each day for 105 anima.

[Schizoide]

Yes you can get decent Anima income, if you grind yourself into boredom and burnout. That's the whole complaint, we don't want to grind daily's every day for weeks to unlock basic convenant features and buy a cosmetic item because its mind numbingly boring and after 2 expansions of mindlessly boring grind people are sick and tired of it.

Exactly right. Grinding isn't fun for me. If it is for you, have at it.

I'm skipping those systems entirely-- if anima gain isn't greatly increased, this expansion will end in 2 years and I still won't have my covenant upgraded.

It's great that all that stuff isn't linked to player power so they don't feel mandatory. It's perfectly fine to skip them, it won't actually hurt you. Good stuff. But you know, it still sucks that I won't see a major part of the expansion.

I have no way to prove it, but my feeling is a most people aren't willing to grind their fingers down to the bone for cosmetic crap. I bet Blizzard's metrics show that the vast majority of players are pulling in roughly 1500 anima per week.

[rhorle]

It's great that all that stuff isn't linked to player power so they don't feel mandatory. It's perfectly fine to skip them, it won't actually hurt you. Good stuff. But you know, it still sucks that I won't see a major part of the expansion.

If you find the choices you make suck then make a different choice. Stop trying to play a victim. It also isn't perfectly fine if you also think it sucks at the same time. You don't have to grind your fingers down to the bone. In an hour of play today I deposited 1,230 anima. I did one pet battle WQ, 9 Anima WQ, Two crafting WQ, 1 epic gear WQ so I can DE the crystal, and the Maldraxxus arena daily.

In an hour. Started in Oribos and used my HS twice because the third time I still had 4 mins left for the last zone of WQ. An hour of play give or take based on your own personal speed is not grinding to the bone. How hard did you hyperbole when there actually were mind numbing grinds in the game?

[KaPe]

Game Devs: There's a great anima drought. As we fight back the forces of the jailer, you restore balance to the Shadowlands and make it not drought.
Players: wHy SO wiTtlE ANimAs?!

Players: We raided the place that was hoarding the Anima before it was sent to Jailer and defeated the guy responsible for it. Also, this place had so much of the stuff that it attracted a huge devourer that we have killed. Another boss was throwing anima bottles around like candy. They were draining Kael'thas of it. And yet, everything drops 35 anima.
Intrinsc: DoeSN't MaTTer, ThErE iS a GReat ANima DroUght.

Players: Also, if there really is so little anima, why does everything cost so much? Thousands and thousands to change armor color? Shouldn't vendors be grateful for much less? Or is it merely a pocket change for them - in which case, it's not much of a drought, is it?
Intrinsc: I'm going to pretend stick to my "lore" explanation even though it doesn't make sense.

[PixelFox]

Last week I finished the Covenant campaign stories, unlocked the last tier of Covenant gear upgrades, and upgraded the few pieces of the Covenant set I'm wearing and after that I had 157 anima left. I have unlocked the four Covenant features only to the first level. It seems impossible that I would ever acquire the 80,000 or whatever it will take to upgrade everything all the way, so I simply gave up on the whole process lol.

[Omedon]

My mind wandered into the headspace of this topic again today and since it's still going I'll share the perspective I've adopted regarding the logistical anima drought (not the lore-based one).

I'm not doing any more 4-digit investitures of anima until I see if the rate is going to increase. I put a LOT of faith into the inevitable long game of WoW, seeing tier sets as "that thing I'll get in 2-4 years, looking forward to it," not going into alts until the catch-up systems are in place, and so on.

That's where we are now, really: Waiting to see how deep the catch-up game is. The pre-flight game is meant for the average player to have one main and to consume all the daily/weekly bursts of content before they reset at their next interval. As soon as they have a second season, and a second tier, they can give catch-up gear that puts an alt easily at the end of the access level of the first tier, and I have a strong feeling that's going to come in the form of more anima and an assumption that anyone new has a fully maxed out covenant set within a week or two or somesuch, to then proceed to the 9.1 phase.

Or they'll come up with another way to get a quick ilvl 200ish on your alts (or the patient main or mains that didn't go in deep on the launch quarter).

The only time it is truly worth it to grind anything is in the expansion tail, when the expansion is fully unfolded and you'll most likely get the most mileage out of said grind.

So, no, fully maxed out covenant sanctums aren't really intended this quarter. Can we get them? Sure. They're absolutely, objectively not worth it. Anima is best taken in at the trickle of the weekly quest, the mission table, and whatever you actually enjoy doing. If that results in "nothing," what are you doing playing?

Now if you're ambitious and want, say, gladiator or that M+ mount... honestly I'm not the person to ask because I can't relate, and I see those lures as not speaking to me: I don't have a team to do team content, I have no place looking at team content rewards. I can get into groups, but I don't have a team. There's a difference.

So yeah, this quarter's valid anima expenditures IMO are maybe lvl 1-2 of everything from your sanctum, and your armor set if you haven't upgraded beyond it. I for one am not spending 5 digits of any currency on anything while we get said currency in increments of 2-3 digits. There'll be a buff to anima accessibility, even if it's just flight and an understanding that everything in the open world is a given.

The real wrenching catch-up will be at 9.2, when the covenant sets at their max rank aren't relevant even as a starting point any more. For BFA that was benthics. It'll be interesting to see what we get in shadowlands.

[Gorsameth]

Players: We raided the place that was hoarding the Anima before it was sent to Jailer and defeated the guy responsible for it. Also, this place had so much of the stuff that it attracted a huge devourer that we have killed. Another boss was throwing anima bottles around like candy. They were draining Kael'thas of it. And yet, everything drops 35 anima.
Intrinsc: DoeSN't MaTTer, ThErE iS a GReat ANima DroUght.

Players: Also, if there really is so little anima, why does everything cost so much? Thousands and thousands to change armor color? Shouldn't vendors be grateful for much less? Or is it merely a pocket change for them - in which case, it's not much of a drought, is it?
Intrinsc: I'm going to pretend stick to my "lore" explanation even though it doesn't make sense.

To be fair, while we the players kill bosses and do stuff within days/weeks of them being released, the story normally does not move along until the next patch. As far as the game world is concerned Denatrius is alive and well hold up inside the castle until 9.1

[huth]

To be fair, while we the players kill bosses and do stuff within days/weeks of them being released, the story normally does not move along until the next patch. As far as the game world is concerned Denatrius is alive and well hold up inside the castle until 9.1

Actually, according to the story he's beaten already. However, the mistake comes from assuming the anima is now freely available to us.

You're all acting like those anima containers are just free for us to take, rather than being needed by the Covenants to keep things from falling apart. Literally.

[Jastall]

To be fair, while we the players kill bosses and do stuff within days/weeks of them being released, the story normally does not move along until the next patch. As far as the game world is concerned Denatrius is alive and well hold up inside the castle until 9.1

The Venthyr campaign states that Denathrius was defeated before its seventh chapter- the raid on Castle Nathria is explicitly mentioned as ending in success and Kael'thas is free. That campaign also crosses over to the Necrolords one, down to them having the same events occur during the finale, so from there I think we can broadly assume all 4 campaigns take place at about the same time. The story has moved along already, and Castle Nathria should be ripe for plunder.

That said, it may very well be that this Anima would be used to keep the various Realms afloat (especially Ardenweald which is falling to literal pieces, and Revendreth where the lower-class Venthyr are down to obliterating souls in their charge for scraps of the stuff) rather than thrown our way so we can buy inexplicably expensive cosmetics with it. So that part makes sense.

[FelPlague]

In 10 minutes I can get all the souls I'll need.
In 10 minutes, the average time to travel to AND do one world quest, I can get 100 anima.

Slight difference, you might agree?

Hours/day to maintain an AP grind is NOT something I will do.

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In BFA half the world quests were "kill single target". My Mage enjoyed ending them in the opening burst window. But I honestly only did them with regularity because they took literal seconds per quest. If it took hours/day to accomplish the same task, my time is better served else where.

Here is for you and all the others that said it is impossible to do the 1k ap weekly in about 15 minutes.

take 4 minutes off the final time, because server lag killed me and bugged my game, and also i got distracted for about 2 minutes, also cause there was times i stopped doing stuff to type, for some dumb reason i didnt do it while i was hearthing or running. so in the end it ended up being about 17 minutes, but you get the deal, it is very doable to get your weekly quest done in 15ish minutes.

[Oneirophobia]

I'm assuming the amount of anima we gain will increase as the patches roll out. We rescue a lot of anima from Nathria so I would guess that will come up at some point.