Conflicting visions of the future

[aceperson]

I don't like BFA, I didn't think it was fine but Legion had the same massive grinds. I think you misinterpret what the point of what I was saying is. BFA at it's core is Legion, Shadowlands at it's core is Legion. It's why the game feels so damn stale, it's been stuck in the same cookie cutter for 4-5 years now.

There are some things I enjoy of each but I can't help but feel it's falling off. For the first time in my 14+ years of playing, I haven't even touched 9.1. It's seriously the first time I haven't done this after being subbed more or less consistently for over a decade.

i'm there with you. i haven't touched the game since january and i don't plan on touching it for the rest of sl. i did seem the misunderstand what you were trying to get across. legion does share similarities with bfa and sl but i'd still say that legion is quite different. with artifacts, you didn't have to regrind AP each tier to reuse the traits though you did have to grind each weapon. probably the biggest difference is the class design. legion artifacts were made around how the spec played. so as you progressed your artifact, the spec felt more and more complete. this eventually led to the incomplete shells people experienced at the end when the traits were taken away. then bfa tried to replace customized artifacts for each spec with generic traits with azerite gear.

you could certainly make a comparison between legion and bfa/sl but i'd argue that bfa and sl are just poorly designed versions of legion. though legion does still hold hate with me for destroying ranged survival and giving us a clunky mess of random abilities to replace it...

[ZenX]

The difference between Legion's Artifact+Crucible as opposed to BFA and SL was it was more deterministic. You only had the hamster-wheel overdrive for the 3 weapon relics with the other slots being the same as it was before with every patch starting in WotLK. With BFA, it got kicked-up a notch with Azerite Armor which felt like a chore while still being manageable as loot was abundant. With Shadowlands it got weird. What was supposed to be the endgame progression with the Conduits doesn't feel like it with the power-ups not feeling worth the effort and the whole system feeling like a great slot machine.

At this point, the changes that we see seem to be catered more towards leashing-in the min-max crowd and the ones who would try to burn themselves while punishing those of us who are content with taking their time with their gameplay. For the latter, i don't think there will be a way to curb or satisfy them. But for the min-max crowd, just make the mythic part of the game harder the first 3 months of release where players entering the raid scale to a template and break the template after the duration.

[Nzx]

I want to play the game again, and I'd like to play my alt druid, but the concept of starting at ~20ish renown and 190ilvl with one legendary just isn't appealing at all. I could take two weeks off work and play 16 hours a day to catch up, but only 10 of those hours at best across the entire week would actually add any value to my character because of pointless, arbitrary time gates. I am sick and fucking tired of Blizzard telling me how long I can play the game per day/week/month and continue to progress, so I simply stopped playing.

[Azerate]

Why do you think your review is relevant in any way if you've not played Shadowlands (Per your own admission)? Why do we keep getting this kind of shit on this forum? Why is it normalized in wow community for people to "review" the current state of the game by looking at people's online reactions to the game rather than playing the game?

you could certainly make a comparison between legion and bfa/sl but i'd argue that bfa and sl are just poorly designed versions of legion. though legion does still hold hate with me for destroying ranged survival and giving us a clunky mess of random abilities to replace it...

You've been here since 2015. Legion was released in 2016. That means you've been playing wow for 6 years and 5 of those years you've hated it. Why are people doing this? Are you a masochist?

[deenman]

I mean, We've had the last two expansions just be Legion cookie cutter. There really wasn't any reason why people hated BFA but loved Legion, they are the same expansion with minor system adjustments.

not exactly,azerite were not like artefacts

azerite had the entire no trade issue for a time,they also simply felt like a downgrade from what the artefact was

azerite armor had the very annoying aspect of not being able to use a better item until you got more ap,that just feels wrong

you had to keep farming the same azerite with bis traits every new patch

the artefact weapon felt like an old school skill tree almost,just pshyologicaly alone that system was superior

and the cosmetic benefits of the artefact was also huge,we know players LOVE them their cosmetics

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the game has had one since it launched in 2004. the gear is the end game progression. the content should be what makes people want to play for longer. gear worked all the way through wod. it was legion that started the decline with artifacts and super common legendaries. notice how the more end game progression the game gets, the worse off it is? content > progression. progression only does so much.

why was wod seen as bad?was the raiding not good?was the world and zones and questing not good?wod had awsome tier sets,they even had to nerf how tier sets worked after wod,it also had some of the best QoL changes in a long time

heck even the warforge system in wod was completly fine with its +6

[mysticx]

One thing Blizzard *really* need to do is get rid of the "Items you hand in for currency"-stuff, like anima and that research stuff in Korthia, the amount of bag clutter is ridiculous, also because each token size (5 anima, 35 anima, 250 anima) is a different item, and most of the token sizes have different items too.

Just give us the damn anima/research, i understand it's more flavourful this way, but frankly, the after a few days, the only flavour of this mess is sour...

[muto]

One thing Blizzard *really* need to do is get rid of the "Items you hand in for currency"-stuff, like anima and that research stuff in Korthia, the amount of bag clutter is ridiculous, also because each token size (5 anima, 35 anima, 250 anima) is a different item, and most of the token sizes have different items too.

Just give us the damn anima/research, i understand it's more flavourful this way, but frankly, the after a few days, the only flavour of this mess is sour...

You'd think they would have learned from Legion, but apparently not. Maybe give them another 7 months, and they might figure it out.

[mysticx]

You'd think they would have learned from Legion, but apparently not. Maybe give them another 7 months, and they might figure it out.

Especially now there are two similar systems running at the same time, combined with the "Vendor trash in lieu of gold", my bags are pretty much constantly a mess!

[kranur]

FF14 this, FF14 that, FF14 great .. go play FF14 then?
Nothing I hate more than people going "This game does so much better than WoW" ... why the fuck are you not playing that game instead and keep crying about how bad WoW is?

[Chakah]

Right now the below need to happen or we are going to watch WoW die a slow death and it really does hurt to say this:
. Borrowed power systems need to die. They cannot continue after this expansion. After 3 expansions of this it can no longer be justified. It was a stupid way of dealing with ability bloat and REMAINS a very stupid mutated horrible abomination way of dealing with ability bloat.

This should bend your brain..... 'gear' is a borrowed power system. Class sets and set bonuses that 'everyone' wants back are simply an earlier incarnation of Azerite armor. The game was simpler back in vanilla, and so class sets had a lot more passives and simply abilities, but there ya go.

Its all borrowed power... and
'Always has been'

[Aliven]

I dont really agree on the power system thing

the game needs some form of power progression path for endgame,it just needs to be better than what they have done until now

there is a reason legion was more liked than wod,and it wasnt just because it had an extra raid and mini raid

Legion was liked at the end, with all the catch ups in place. Before that it was actuall nightmare of a progression. Legendaries which could make or break your spec. Need to not only focus on one class but on one spec. If you get nerfed then have fun rerolling.

Legion was "good" at the end.

Sound familiar?

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The difference between Legion's Artifact+Crucible as opposed to BFA and SL was it was more deterministic. You only had the hamster-wheel overdrive for the 3 weapon relics with the other slots being the same as it was before with every patch starting in WotLK. With BFA, it got kicked-up a notch with Azerite Armor which felt like a chore while still being manageable as loot was abundant. With Shadowlands it got weird. What was supposed to be the endgame progression with the Conduits doesn't feel like it with the power-ups not feeling worth the effort and the whole system feeling like a great slot machine.

At this point, the changes that we see seem to be catered more towards leashing-in the min-max crowd and the ones who would try to burn themselves while punishing those of us who are content with taking their time with their gameplay. For the latter, i don't think there will be a way to curb or satisfy them. But for the min-max crowd, just make the mythic part of the game harder the first 3 months of release where players entering the raid scale to a template and break the template after the duration.

Legion was liked despite it systems not because of them. General consesus on the crucible was "sooo why it is there? it is uninteresting and boring but mandatory".

People did not liked legion because of artifact power, legendaries, crucible and artifact weapons. They like it for the story, for focus on BL, for nostalgia surfing and for focusing on class identity (order halls). And M+, which was actually a breath of fresh air in this dead ecosystem.

And lo and behold, only those pitifull systems went on. I cant speak for others but i dont give a flying fuck about faerie dead realm on my rogue. But i do gave a crap about fellow rogues.

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FF14 this, FF14 that, FF14 great .. go play FF14 then?
Nothing I hate more than people going "This game does so much better than WoW" ... why the fuck are you not playing that game instead and keep crying about how bad WoW is?

We are. And we see that it is better. So we want wow to also be better, because we have a proof it can be done. Broad the horizons, dont be idiot.

[deenman]

Legion was liked at the end, with all the catch ups in place. Before that it was actuall nightmare of a progression. Legendaries which could make or break your spec. Need to not only focus on one class but on one spec. If you get nerfed then have fun rerolling.

Legion was "good" at the end.

Sound familiar?

i didnt mention legenderies,those were a clown fiesta specialy in the beggining,if you were unlucky you literaly got completly fucked progression wise if you wanted to push it early on

i was refering to azerite vs artefact as those are the 2 systems that need comparing in this scenario

[Aliven]

i didnt mention legenderies,those were a clown fiesta specialy in the beggining,if you were unlucky you literaly got completly fucked progression wise if you wanted to push it early on

i was refering to azerite vs artefact as those are the 2 systems that need comparing in this scenario

Artifact power or artifacts? Because those are separate systems.

[deenman]

Artifact power or artifacts? Because those are separate systems.

artefact weapon ofc...thats what needs the ap,thats the direct comparison to azerite

[Aliven]

artefact weapon ofc...thats what needs the ap,thats the direct comparison to azerite

Artifacts were better because they were tight ecosystem - you could always use a weapon, even at zero artifact power. In the contrast you could not use azerite armor because you necklace was to low.

Also, the weapons got great lore and nice skill tree to unlock, on top of giving more raw stats and ilvls.

The only downside was that they needed heavy investment and kinda locked you into one spec for long period of time. Simple solutions would be to make it easily switchable from one artifact to other. You lose all investment in A weapon to power B weapon. So switching specs would not be an issue. Ofc blizzard loves torment players and call it some buzzword like "meaningfull choice", so that never happend and will never happen in the future.

On the other side we had necklace which was good for the entire class but again, locked actual items which were bad without unlocked powers.

Overall i say they were both abysmall systems only made work by the end of the expansion and fun to interact with.

[loras]

So I am typing this as a long time fan who checks in on an MMO that has not played since Shadowlands started. I guess this is my review of what I see is going on. Right now WoW has been around for 17 years so you have multiple people who have played through several different versions of the MMO.

You have a lot of people who played in the pre Ion era that can micro analyze every statement he makes and compare it to the good old days neglecting to mention the downsides of those days. As one of those guys from the Wrath days I can sympathize with some of his arguments against systems that encourage no lifing for a month then taking a break until the next raid cycle. On the other hand I can see he is just making crap up.

Also on the other hand you have this post Ion era where he see's the old school style as out dated and too easy to burn through. One statement Ion constantly makes about pve vendors is "Well when you have those you can pick a date on a calendar to optimize and that removes the surprise factor". If you ask the above group this sounds incredibly stupid but to new people post Ion era it makes sense.

Right now the below need to happen or we are going to watch WoW die a slow death and it really does hurt to say this:
. Borrowed power systems need to die. They cannot continue after this expansion. After 3 expansions of this it can no longer be justified. It was a stupid way of dealing with ability bloat and REMAINS a very stupid mutated hhorrible abomination way of dealing with ability bloat.

. Timewalking needs to be reworked from the ground up. I am old to remember when Blizzard took Rifts transmog system make it INFINITELY better and created an entire new game loop at end game for players. It is time to look at FF14's and improve upon it. For gods sake use the 17 YEARS worth of content you have.

. Darkmoon fair needs to be made PERMANENT and expanded exponentially. Everything under the sun needs to be added. Jumps puzzles, minion battles and whatever else someone can throw against the wall. Expand it to point people have hours upon hours in this place where people can do it for hours and not even think about endgame.

. Admit that the faction war is over. If you are Oceanic then being Alliance is not that bad but everywhere else it is a nightmare. End the god damn faction war because you lore explains it and the players no longer care. YOU LITERALLY ARE RETCONNING TBC to end it to deal with the massive queues. You are actively making the lives of people playing Alliance a horrible experience by not addressing this.

. Start community events. The FF14 devs and community get praised and I am honestly confused because outside of game design they are really silent. Even the latest 14 hour event is purely catered toward their Japanese audience. Get Josh or hire some with the sole job of tackling the general forum toxic wasteland. Send some poor bastard in their to post generic responses or actual responses but someone need to do some type of feedback. Kaivax is just too limited in his ability to respond. UNLEASSH THIS MAN.

. Steal something else from the FF14 devs THAT IS LITERALLY AN ACCIDENT due to spaghetti code. The FF14 community seems to think that the in game store is not IN GAME because the devs care and you have to leave the game to get to the shop. In reality it is just because the Login server is disconnected from how they link the game server. it is complicated code talk for just an outdated designed. Blizzard needs to take the in game shop and just put it on the web site.

. The patch cycle needs to be SERIOUSLY changed. Keep the raid content for 9.1 but 9.0.5 should have been Korthia, Maw changes ad Torghast changes. This creates the illusion that patches are faster then they really are. Other MMO's do this. Nothing stop Blizzard.

. Find currencies, achievements and whatever else and make them account wide. FF14 is kicking you in the nuts right now with this idea. I remember way back when WoW players laughed FF14 players when they talked about having everything on one player. These were the days when the biggest complaint about alts was ACHIEVEMENTS!!!!!!

So blow me off as some FF14 andy or whatever but I want to see WoW succeed.

(Written while drinking A LOT of Vodka so excuse my typos lol)

I can pretty much smell the vodka over the internet, but some of these are good points.

Borrowed power systems are still overly prominent now indeed, i have no issue in borrowing a little power, but the core of a class needs to be intact and independant of a present new system. In that sense covenants aren't too bad, but they still do not exactly hit the sweet spot.

Full agreement hete on the rework part, honestly Blizzard's almost pure neglectance for their past creations is bizarre. While i do not share the classic fanatics' vision that the past was definitely better i do find that their efforts show that Blizzard is strangely afraid to be compared to their past.

I do not care about darkmoon, at all.

The faction-war-is-over meme needs to die, we're still literally fishing night elf souls out of hell for crying out loud. What we do need however is genuine faction balancing efforts; void fees for changing to the disadvantaged faction entirely, and double them to change to a severely advantaged one.
Not that they'll ever do this as it is their irradiated golden goose; it lays golden eggs for them but sickens them and their game.
Though i am in favor of a "mercenary faction" so to speak, which is to say just allowing individuals to join groups on behalf of any faction for reward by distancing themselves from their faction loyalties (temporarily). Lorewise this might need some more (but not overly much) representation. Of course mercenary mode would need some pretty steep drawbacks as well, perhaps denying them entry to major faction cities and settlements or something.

I do not really care about community events myself, but if done properly the world could feel a bit more alive.

I rarely to never open the shop, so this would not change anything to me, but that in-game browser thing has always been horribly unstable for me.

At present they're sorta doing this already anyway with all the timegating,so yeah go for it.

Fully agreed.

[justandulas]

I mean, We've had the last two expansions just be Legion cookie cutter. There really wasn't any reason why people hated BFA but loved Legion, they are the same expansion with minor system adjustments.

Bfa was like a discount k-mart version of legion. And SL is like a dollar store version of bfa.

[tideki]

I keep reading about how people hate the borrowed powers, but what would be a viable alternative? We can’t keep getting new permanent abilities forever? Or can we? I am not saying I like borrowed powers, I just don’t know what the replacement would be…

[justandulas]

I keep reading about how people hate the borrowed powers, but what would be a viable alternative? We can’t keep getting new permanent abilities forever? Or can we? I am not saying I like borrowed powers, I just don’t know what the replacement would be…

Yes. Every other game does it. An rpg who doesn’t give you permanent character progression isn’t an rpg at all

[Ivarr]

A lot of these ideas don't seem to address the core of WoW's problem. And I know people vary greatly in what they perceive as the core of WoW's problem but I'm quite sure an expanded Darkmoon Faire or reworked Timewalking ain't it.

What I personally see, as the greatest flaw in Blizzard's development model for this game, is the episodic nature of the content they develop. Rather than expanding on the world that already exist, Blizzard creates a new realm with a self-contained story that invalidates everything that preceded it.

Blizzard seemed to recognise this problem in Legion when they introduced world quests. Which went a long way to keeping the Broken Isles alive and vibrant. Imagine how stale this expansion would be after you'd finish the rather short campaign. You'd be stuck in Dalaran as your instance lobby. Also the introduction of order halls was a stroke of genius. Giving each class a sense of purpose and belonging.

It's then strange to see Blizzard creating evergreen content, only to discard it with the next expansion. BfA. There is no technical or narrative reason for Legion world quests to not remain valid throughout BfA. The emissary quests could be mixed in. Maybe at a lower frequency, but players could still end up returning to Legion for some world quests and have that contribute to their Azerite and have emissary reputation convert into one of the BfA factions.

It would mean that BfA would operate at twice the solo end-game content of Legion. Repeat this step with Shadowlands and players now have three times the amount of content. Yes, old content, but still content that diversified the repetitive nature of the current set of world quests available in the current expansion.

And here I already hear people dismay at the thought of playing Legion, BfA and Shadowlands together. But bear with me here. With the added evergreen content, a part of the pressure of Blizzard is now eased. Just like Time Walking gives players some respite in times where they've burned out on modern dungeons. This lower pressure frees up part of Blizzard's development budget to work their way backwards to expansions before Legion.

Yes, Warlords of Draenor has plenty of quests that can be refurbished into World Quests. Garrison missions were already a precursor of the World Quests. Next up is Mists of Pandaria. Slightly tougher, but still not a major effort to cherry pick the most engaging, repeatable quests from that expansion and turn them into World Quests. Cataclysm would be the real kicker as Cataclysm wouldn't just be that expansion's end game but also the two main continents. Imagine that, all continents except for Outlands and Northrend (which would be a bitch to turn WQ but not impossible either), turned evergreen.

Diversity is the spice of life, and there's a motherlode of diversity gathering dust in vast vistas of WoW that are barely visited anymore.

This is where I think the core of Blizzard's design philosophy went astray. They never involved all the hard work they put in before the expansion du jour. When people complain about content droughts that doesn't necessarily mean they want more new content. It simply means they want more World of Warcraft.