Why does SL feel like end of expansion time?

[Kyranna]

For me SL is quite good, not on the level of some past expansions, but still good.
What is required to enjoy it fully? I couldn't tell you. I enjoy questing, levelling, doing dungeons and raiding. I can do these activities and have fun, from LFR to heroic raiding (depending on the char I'm playing). I don't care about a lot of features in game, mind you: PvP, adventure table, pet battles to name a few, but what's left is good enough.

I always enjoyed the last months of an xpack because I had time to do everythinbg I wanted on several characters, SL is giving me a bit of this right now, so for my playing style it's perfectly fine.

The main question should be: why do you need to play wow every day for several hours?

[crusadernero]

Overall problem is with time management. Despite of being casual, I just hate, when I could play more today, but I've run out of things to do. Or I can't play right now, because group is required and it's not prime time. That's, why I prefer to always have "backup" unlimited content, like leveling. Or being able to do the same content on several alts. Like one world boss isn't enough? I have 4 alts and can kill 4 world bosses a week. But content in Wow is way too quantized and this "quantum" is way too large. I.e. if you start doing something - then you need to complete whole thing, otherwise it's useless. It's also useless, if it takes too much time to complete. For example, it would be great to level new alt for just 20 minutes a day. But 20 minutes is what? May be 2-3 quests? And how many quests are required? Hundreds? If you'd do 2-3 quests a day, it would take months to complete. It's too long and unrewarding. So, you don't even notice, how you start to play more. More, than you want. And it starts to hurt your health.

Its even worse when leveling alts. People say SL is "alt friendly", but its not. If you have completed most content on your main(geared up decently, ran torghast for soul ash, done lots of maw quests, covenant campaign, WQs++ and THEN decide to reroll class, you gotta do it all over again.

Remember - At this point a 190 legendary is not considered good enough, so you gotta farm Torghast over and over and over and over again. The longer this current version of SL last, the worse its going to be to get a character geared up and ready to go at 60.

I have lvld several characters to 60, only to park them straight away. My last character, a Druid, is parked at level 56. I know whats facing me at max level, and I cant be bothered with it.

At this point, following Blizzards plans for content patches, people shouldnt bother subbing up until the last patch of each xpac. Then you get to see all content and get decently up to standard compared to everyone else.

[Jamais]

Its even worse when leveling alts. People say SL is "alt friendly", but its not. If you have completed most content on your main(geared up decently, ran torghast for soul ash, done lots of maw quests, covenant campaign, WQs++ and THEN decide to reroll class, you gotta do it all over again.

Remember - At this point a 190 legendary is not considered good enough, so you gotta farm Torghast over and over and over and over again. The longer this current version of SL last, the worse its going to be to get a character geared up and ready to go at 60.

I have lvld several characters to 60, only to park them straight away. My last character, a Druid, is parked at level 56. I know whats facing me at max level, and I cant be bothered with it.

At this point, following Blizzards plans for content patches, people shouldnt bother subbing up until the last patch of each xpac. Then you get to see all content and get decently up to standard compared to everyone else.

1 main and 2-3 alts are more then managable, and healthy. Anything beyond that is at your own accord. I've already said this, but this game can't support being a UI where you can pick between 10 alts, expecting them all to be on equal footing (much like MOBAs). It was always designed with you having a MAIN, which is why terms main/alts exist in the first place.

[Kallisto]

Dunno, but for FFXIV covid didn't cause this much of a delay even though Japan was the second country hit be covid and the dev team had to coordinate with the overseas localization teams. Hell, they had to find a new voice actress for the english team since the original died (back in 2019 but still they had to get a new one now). It caused one patch to be delayed by about a month and a half and one feature from 5.5 to be moved to 6.1. All of which was communicated to the playerbase. Now either Yoshida is much better at crisis management than Ion, or there is something else at Blizzard we don't know about. Oh and 5.3 (the delayed patch) included old world flying. And guess what? It wasn't a planned feature. The devs did it in their free time because they thought the players would like it.

It might also be that as a nation Japan actually acted swiftly and responsibly to covid early allowing for a swift transition. While the US early reaction was criminal.

As with communication to the player base I have seen both Yoshi and the wow dev teams point out similar things but get different responses. Yoshi pretty much telling people to take breaks cause the game will always be there gets praise. Wow dev saying they make the game based around players taking breaks got them panned.

Yoshi points out that with the stat squish farming old stuff will be difficult people are OK with mostly. Blizz state it and they're attacked for even doing a squish and things being more difficult. So while people in ffxiv are OK with Yoshi stat squish response meaning he won't have to find ways to fix it. Wow dev team has to find ways to fix it because "getting gear to help" was treated as an insult. Even though in the end it was the same response.

[Jamais]

I mean if the game wanted to move away from catering to no lifers they could gut the time sink systems.

Because the time sinks in SL are supposed to be expansion-wide systems. I don't know why that is hard to understand, or why is their goal of keeping you subbed such a scandalous thing. It is a sub based game, ofcourse they want you to stay subbed...to expect otherwise it plain naive. We are hitting 4 month mark in SL, and i have all my covenants features, except mission table, maxed. I have amassed more then 80k anima playing quite casually, going only for WQs which reward anima, and doing weekly objectives which reward it. (pvp weeklies, dungeon quests, wbosses). I didn't even raid or do m+. But I didn't do it during 2 weeks, because i knew it would be unreasonable to do so, and impossible as well.

Basically, if i wanted to unsub now, i could, and i wouldn't miss anything else. I've done my goals for the expansion, and now only do casual pvp for fun and finishing the last update.

[crusadernero]

For me SL is quite good, not on the level of some past expansions, but still good.
What is required to enjoy it fully? I couldn't tell you. I enjoy questing, levelling, doing dungeons and raiding. I can do these activities and have fun, from LFR to heroic raiding (depending on the char I'm playing). I don't care about a lot of features in game, mind you: PvP, adventure table, pet battles to name a few, but what's left is good enough.

I always enjoyed the last months of an xpack because I had time to do everythinbg I wanted on several characters, SL is giving me a bit of this right now, so for my playing style it's perfectly fine.

The main question should be: why do you need to play wow every day for several hours?

I dont think people are anymore. People are unsubbing left and right. I checked my friends list before my sub ran out, and there was no one online the last days. On my BLizzard launcher, only 1 person still logs into wow during the week. Sure its all anecdotal evidence, but this reminds me so much of WoD. LOTS of people playing at first, then BOOM everyone is gone.

Most people clearly play this game on and off. New patch, sub up. When people feel "done", they unsub and wait for next patch. Blizzard clearly are happy with this, or else they would double down on creating proper content that would last. It probably helps on revenue having sub, wow token, pets, mounts, and more in the cash shop. They dont need masses of players staying subbed.

[Zantera]

Don't really feel much difference to how it's been in other expansions. Still raiding few nights a week, outside of raids there's activity in guild for keys and weekly events. As usual you have the apes of the community leaving 2 weeks after expansion/patch comes out (only to appear when the next one comes) but that is more of a positive than a negative in my eyes. Even if it's less people playing the game than on expansion launch for example, you know it's the people you actually want to play with and have interactive encounters with and not the ones who will jump to the next thing as soon as they can.

[crusadernero]

1 main and 2-3 alts are more then managable, and healthy. Anything beyond that is at your own accord. I've already said this, but this game can't support being a UI where you can pick between 10 alts, expecting them all to be on equal footing (much like MOBAs). It was always designed with you having a MAIN, which is why terms main/alts exist in the first place.

oh I know that we are supposed to focus on one main character, but for several years Blizzard has gotten us used to playing alts and get them to a somewhat relevant gear level. I've learned from my mistakes of leveling alts and just stick to 1 character each patch cycle and unsub after 1-2 months every time. Im done bothering with other classes.

Probably for the better.

[Wangming]

It might also be that as a nation Japan actually acted swiftly and responsibly to covid early allowing for a swift transition. While the US early reaction was criminal.

As with communication to the player base I have seen both Yoshi and the wow dev teams point out similar things but get different responses. Yoshi pretty much telling people to take breaks cause the game will always be there gets praise. Wow dev saying they make the game based around players taking breaks got them panned.

Yoshi points out that with the stat squish farming old stuff will be difficult people are OK with mostly. Blizz state it and they're attacked for even doing a squish and things being more difficult. So while people in ffxiv are OK with Yoshi stat squish response meaning he won't have to find ways to fix it. Wow dev team has to find ways to fix it because "getting gear to help" was treated as an insult. Even though in the end it was the same response.

Also true. The community is quite different. Sure there are bad apples and the official general discussion forum is quite negative (the english at least) but overall the playerbase is less toxic to each other and there is a friendly relationship between them and the devs. There are frequent live streams, blog posts and sometimes Yoshida even just logs in to his character to hang out with players. It's harder to treat him as a shallow businessman who is disconnected from the game and the players.

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oh I know that we are supposed to focus on one main character, but for several years Blizzard has gotten us used to playing alts and get them to a somewhat relevant gear level. I've learned from my mistakes of leveling alts and just stick to 1 character each patch cycle and unsub after 1-2 months every time. Im done bothering with other classes.

Probably for the better.

Personally I think you should always have at least two characters (one horde and one alliance) to get the full story. In fact Legion pretty much required you to have one of each class to see every order hall story.

[Echocho]

the silent majority picks whenever covenant feels "cool " to them.

problem with wow : those forums and streamers/youtubers is that so many people here think that you average person does like hc raiding and m +10 when relaity is only like 5% do those - while majority maaaybe picks up flowers for WQs .

and then when game is designed solely for 5% its natural "silent majority" leaves.

nobody sane will play this game loner then 2-3 weeks when its in current state.

you level up , do some dungeons , lfr catch up to renown and then you can unsub because there is nothing to do for you in game.

you can go to FF14 and have fun there - because there is plenty to do as casual player there.

for example - can someone explain me the reason why hc dungeons dont drop like 50 VP to incentivise peopel to upgrade their armour ? why VP upgrades are locked behind +5 difficulty which only very low % in game does ?

this is what is killing wow - catering only to hardcore playersbase.

Yup and since the sites that track covenant choices conveniently don't store data older than a month the minmaxers can look at the data and say "see everyone is minmaxing!", well duh everyone who didn't has been unsubscribed for a lot longer than that.

The data showed like 7 million active characters in the last month. That's incredibly low in such an alt friendly expansion. We could be down to below 3 million subs maybe even below 2.

[Electric Lighter]

Yup and since the sites that track covenant choices conveniently don't store data older than a month the minmaxers can look at the data and say "see everyone is minmaxing!", well duh everyone who didn't has been unsubscribed for a lot longer than that.

The data showed like 7 million active characters in the last month. That's incredibly low in such an alt friendly expansion. We could be down to below 3 million subs maybe even below 2.

Feels like coping from the sounds of it... much like how people in that thread tried to invent new versions of min maxing like "they just read guides" to try and keep the narrative going that the average wow player just picks up shiny things thoughtlessly.

If anything good came out of the covenant system is we can now put this tired old argument that the average wow player just drifts through the game like a mindless zombie to rest.

[Greyvax]

It's because there has been very little information about 9.1. Also, 9.0.5 introduced a half assed valor system and is actually worthless because we would have to re-grind for the gear we already had in order to upgrade it (no thanks).

Also, outside of CN and M+, there's little enjoyable things to do.

[TheFirstOnes]

Huh... you want me to lay it thick huh?
Go check when the .1 patches came out, or even how long there is between .2 and .3 patches. They are often shorter than what we are seeing here.

We know covid cause the working from home transition which is not as efficient as having everyone in one place causing delays in production across the whole market. We know some Blizzard devs left to new studios, which has caused some turnover of resources.

If you are expecting them to come out and admit the obvious, you don't really have realistic expectations. They never said WoD content was cut or delayed either, yet it was. There are some things that are obvious. You have to make an effort.

Unless you are in denial... Then whatever. Your problem. I'm not here to convince you of anything. The evidence speaks for itself. If you want to pretend these aren't real, then it's your choice. You don't have to ask me for official sources that will never be shown to us, or you'd know about them already.

I heard somewhere that they quit WoD midway cause they had no idea what to do with it.

Also, COVID's pushed Blizzard as a whole back. I doubt SL's development is going to be hindered all that much. I've already explained how they could still fit in the next couple patches.

"We know some Blizzard devs left to new studios, which has caused some turnover of resources." Since when has it caused turnovers? Developers have left since fuckin 2014, yet WoW's been going on for awhile now.

[ArkantosChampion]

This expansion is to boring

[Klingers]

I think it's fair to say that this expansion has lots of steam left... When they actually shovel some bloody coal in the boiler.

By this point in Legion and even BFA we had a .1 out. You might be able to blame COVID to a large degree, but the patch cadence this expansion sucks. Really. Sucks. I think they have another 3 months or so before they run into some really serious problems.

[NordWitcher]

I heard somewhere that they quit WoD midway cause they had no idea what to do with it.

Also, COVID's pushed Blizzard as a whole back. I doubt SL's development is going to be hindered all that much. I've already explained how they could still fit in the next couple patches.

"We know some Blizzard devs left to new studios, which has caused some turnover of resources." Since when has it caused turnovers? Developers have left since fuckin 2014, yet WoW's been going on for awhile now.

I never get this WOD part. A lot of people seem to be contradicting their statements. I mean we know that Blizzard works on content months or even years in advance. They have some idea as to where the story is heading. For example, there is probably a team already working on the next expansion inside Blizzard. Now I wasn't around for WOD so have no idea what happened. However, I was wondering, did Blizzard cut content they were working on or just didn't invest a lot into WOD. If anything SL feels more like a "filler" expansion allowing things to happen in Azeroth and set things up. If that's the case, SL is going to be as short as WOD and limited in content.

[loras]

I never get this WOD part. A lot of people seem to be contradicting their statements. I mean we know that Blizzard works on content months or even years in advance. They have some idea as to where the story is heading. For example, there is probably a team already working on the next expansion inside Blizzard. Now I wasn't around for WOD so have no idea what happened. However, I was wondering, did Blizzard cut content they were working on or just didn't invest a lot into WOD. If anything SL feels more like a "filler" expansion allowing things to happen in Azeroth and set things up. If that's the case, SL is going to be as short as WOD and limited in content.

That's an interesting take, and perhaps a positive one.
Like WoD it's an "out of this world" expansion not on Azeroth too after all.

Perhaps it will end, like WoD, with an old villain returning. My hope is that Yogg-Saron resurrects, reveals Maldraxxus to be a chained part of his biomass and the Shadowlands as being tiran-influenced, and tries to use the Shadowlands to take over Azeroth and resurrect the other old gods.

Then the next expansion consists of a resurgent Black Empire, rather than just visions of it.

[Kralljin]

"We know some Blizzard devs left to new studios, which has caused some turnover of resources." Since when has it caused turnovers? Developers have left since fuckin 2014, yet WoW's been going on for awhile now.

It's all just speculation but when only, let's say 5 people / year leave, that's one thing, but when 10 people / year leave, it gets more difficult, disregarding when some senior person leaves that knows their shit and knows how to get it done efficiently, a junior usually can't just magically replace them and work at the same capacity / quality.

Right off the bat, those are just made up numbers, i have no idea how much the WoW Team is affected, if any.
But Blizzard does seem to suffer from a case of brain drain over the last years and we might start to see the negative consequences of it.

However, I was wondering, did Blizzard cut content they were working on or just didn't invest a lot into WOD.

Considering they somehow still stretched WoD for two whole years, it's more the former than the latter.
If it was just intended as a filler expansion from get go, they would've released everything in much quicker succession, rather than have 6.2 happen nearly 9 months after release of WoD and then have a year long content drought.

They just realized during WoD's developement that this expansion isn't coming together and split their resource between 6.2 to finish WoD and to kickstart Legion.
Issue is, a lot of resource went down the drain at this point already.

[TheFirstOnes]

Yeah, I getcha. The issue is that SL's not a filler expansion. Lore-wise, it's arguably the most important WoW expansion next to Legion, and arguably more-so than Wrath.

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So, them pulling a WoD here would be fucking weird.

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That's an interesting take, and perhaps a positive one.
Like WoD it's an "out of this world" expansion not on Azeroth too after all.

Perhaps it will end, like WoD, with an old villain returning. My hope is that Yogg-Saron resurrects, reveals Maldraxxus to be a chained part of his biomass and the Shadowlands as being tiran-influenced, and tries to use the Shadowlands to take over Azeroth and resurrect the other old gods.

Then the next expansion consists of a resurgent Black Empire, rather than just visions of it.

The Old Gods are gone. Sorry you and almost everyone else are still in denial about this. They could return in some way from the VOID! But that's it. Light and Shadow is the likely next conflict we'll have to face.

[crusadernero]

Also true. The community is quite different. Sure there are bad apples and the official general discussion forum is quite negative (the english at least) but overall the playerbase is less toxic to each other and there is a friendly relationship between them and the devs. There are frequent live streams, blog posts and sometimes Yoshida even just logs in to his character to hang out with players. It's harder to treat him as a shallow businessman who is disconnected from the game and the players.

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Personally I think you should always have at least two characters (one horde and one alliance) to get the full story. In fact Legion pretty much required you to have one of each class to see every order hall story.

Yep - thats always been my bare minimum when playing. One in each faction. With that said - This time around I did everything on my alliance character. Besides that I have done covenant campaign with 4 chars total, but only one of my characters are geared and up to date with legendary. Cant be bothered with the rest. Completed campaign on the 3 others, stopped playing them.