When did WoW convince itself Raiding is the only thing that's important?

[Kehego]

A big unmentioned part of this is that they need to come up with better nerfing mechanisms over time. Some of these conversation feel like 2006 where your guild would reclear something and see a notable dps increase because of the gear they got in that run. in 2022, anyone outside of Hall of Fame guilds who puts in a reasonable amount of effort is effectively capped or near capped on gear long before they even get to the progression boss.

Like think about Sludgefist, who was basically the Patchwerk of Nathria. For HoF guilds, reclears and stuff really mattered just like in the old days, because they were on him in the first month. By the time most guilds who killed him did kill him, gear wasn't even a factor. They had probably already been extending their lockout for weeks if not months at that point.

imo that's a big issue that never really comes up here. People talk all the time about mythic raiders and gear yet never mention that most mid-tier + guilds end up extending non-stop for literally months, never even rekilling many of the bosses because it's not worth the time. No one is playing for "gear" for a huge portion of the patch.

Yes, if your guild took 3 months to get a sludge/painsmith kill, and everyone is mostly around 252, there's zero point in trying to get a rekill over just pushing forward.

gear only gets you so far.

[RoKPaNda]

FF14, Guild Wars 2, SWTOR, Destiny 2.... I mean I can keep going...



LFR drops 213. That's a whopping 3 ilvls higher than regular mythic dungeons. Once you have mythic dungeon gear, which takes very little time especially if you supplement with a world boss piece and a handful of other easy things to grab quickly like a legendary, world quests are going to drop higher gear than LFR.

Again, you wildly underestimate how fast the gearing is.

- - - Updated - - -



For the eightieth time, you think my argument is that gearing is too fast because I geared too slow. It is nonsensical on its face.

Ahh yes the magical world where drop rates are 100% and you actually get good gear on the one time you can get loot per Mythic 0 dungeon each week. What's your motivation here exactly? You claim that WoW is designed in such a way to cater to the uber hardcore (lol) over other players, but then you're saying that playing like an uber hardcore player will trivialize the gearing path of someone who isn't going to play that way AND you're inventing scenarios that don't happen. Even if you had the most loaded dice in the universe your scenario of getting fully geared from M0 isn't going to fly.

But lets stay in this magical place that you've created where you run M0 dungeons and you get this gear and now you're roughly on par with LFR. So you've done the absolute bare minimum and you've somehow managed to get to this point where you're roughly equivalent to the automated PUG difficulty of raiding. For some reason you've no lifed the shit out of the game in order to run enough heroic dungeons to get accepted into these M0 dungeon runs and then you've run 16 m0 dungeons (The most you can be eligible for loot for in a single 7 day period) - At this point you've spent at least a full day of your life /played playing SL at cap and you've gotten the most extraordinary loot luck in the history of ever and you're still not QUITE at the level of the tourist mode. This is too fast for you? How much of an investment do you think it should take to get to that point timewise? lol.

So now what do you do? Well the same thing that you'd do in every other MMO, you ask yourself if you want to do a higher level of content and then you either do it or you do not. The game isn't forcing you to do it, the game doesn't even encourage you to do it. In your games you listed, all of which I've played mind you, when you do the easiest content to the point where you've gotten everything possible from it do you not still have the make that same choice? Of course you do. If you don't like that you're probably playing the wrong genre of game.

The overwhelmingly vast majority of players don't raid Mythic. Normal and Heroic are both puggable difficulties from pretty much week 1 of their releases (depending on tuning.) - The average player doesn't even max out their character for the difficulty that they have chosen to do in any given tier. The average player isn't no-lifing WoW. WoW is not responsible for the things that you force yourself to do that you don't enjoy. This game has issues but that certainly isn't one of them. If you don't like certain content, don't do it. If you're not in a competitive raiding guild I promise you not one person gives one singular fuck if you choose to not do content that you don't like to do.

I mean you can't have it both ways dude, either the game has way too many mandatory time consuming chores or the game is over too fast.

Well, it is his thing the last 2 months i respond to anything, he cant accept his experience isnt the correct one no matter how much he tries to make it, that isnt my problem.

Does the game have problems ? Yes it does, but only if you cant accept its not what it is and you are trying to play Skyrim in it.

Has the game changed into a seasonal game if you dont push content? Yes it has.

How is that bad exactly? How is it better to repeat the same 3 dungeons for 400 days to farm irrelevant gear thats 2 patches behind, better than the new system, especially if you call yourself "Casual" and you want to pretend you have a life, to feel superior for not having pixels, and calling others names for having pixels, like it even fucking matters who has the pixels.

I'm starting to see your point here, it's very difficult to argue with someone who just makes things up to try to prove a point because their favorite outrage streamer said it.

But in BfA and SL we have ilevel scaling in the world, such that the LFR gear now still feels terribly weak in world content and you are, indeed, compelled by that to seek out greater gear in order to get that sense of powerfulness. And that greater gear can only be found in the manual group content.

Errr that's not really how the scaling works, this is like a complaint from the SL beta. If you're in a full set of LFR gear the world content is still pretty faceroll.

[Tyris Flare]

Yes, if your guild took 3 months to get a sludge/painsmith kill, and everyone is mostly around 252, there's zero point in trying to get a rekill over just pushing forward.

gear only gets you so far.

Right, and this includes almost everyone who raids mythic at any level (guilds 300+2000+). Which makes it pretty unsatisfying and not the great long-term nerfing strategy for content that it used to be.

Also kinda cuts against a lot of the narrative here that people only raid for gear. Most guilds who prog the raid are barely getting anything from it after a point, especially in a patch without raid specific gear like dom sockets.

[Soon-TM]

I have grown weary of being told I should concern myself with people playing a video game they don't enjoy and should actively destroy said game in hopes they might force themselves to play longer.

I would rather a less insane idea if you could please.

You can try to accommodate those "people playing a game that they don't enjoy" or just let them go. Common sense points at the former option, which as a matter of fact is what Blizzard has been trying to do since at least MoP.

Now, their success rate in this particular area has been... Less than stellar, because they simply don't understand what casual players want. They hit gold with MoP, arguably with Legion too - but it seems to have been sheer dumb luck, since they promptly nerfed the most casual friendly parts in the next expansion.

[Sucralose]

You can try to accommodate those "people playing a game that they don't enjoy" or just let them go. Common sense points at the former option, which as a matter of fact is what Blizzard has been trying to do since at least MoP.

Now, their success rate in this particular area has been... Less than stellar, because they simply don't understand what casual players want. They hit gold with MoP, arguably with Legion too - but it seems to have been sheer dumb luck, since they promptly nerfed the most casual friendly parts in the next expansion.

The common sense point was the latter not the former... you can't keep a player who plays a game for a self fulfillment simulator while keeping it a video game for the rest of the playerbase. It isn't 15 years ago people who want time consuming easy content will go to games without a sub to get it.

[Kehego]

Right, and this includes almost everyone who raids mythic at any level (guilds 300+2000+). Which makes it pretty unsatisfying and not the great long-term nerfing strategy for content that it used to be.

Also kinda cuts against a lot of the narrative here that people only raid for gear. Most guilds who prog the raid are barely getting anything from it after a point, especially in a patch without raid specific gear like dom sockets.

Most people who raid, raid to complete the raid (at varying levels of success)
if you just want itemlevel to jill off to, you can just do your penance keys and wait 15 weeks and hope you dont get too many duplicates. Even without tier/dom sockets.

[NineSpine]

Ahh yes the magical world where drop rates are 100% and you actually get good gear on the one time you can get loot per Mythic 0 dungeon each week. What's your motivation here exactly? You claim that WoW is designed in such a way to cater to the uber hardcore (lol) over other players, but then you're saying that playing like an uber hardcore player will trivialize the gearing path of someone who isn't going to play that way AND you're inventing scenarios that don't happen. Even if you had the most loaded dice in the universe your scenario of getting fully geared from M0 isn't going to fly.

Notice how there wasn't much of an argument here. No facts or anything, just you rambling and hurling insults.

But lets stay in this magical place that you've created where you run M0 dungeons and you get this gear and now you're roughly on par with LFR. So you've done the absolute bare minimum and you've somehow managed to get to this point where you're roughly equivalent to the automated PUG difficulty of raiding. For some reason you've no lifed the shit out of the game in order to run enough heroic dungeons to get accepted into these M0 dungeon runs and then you've run 16 m0 dungeons (The most you can be eligible for loot for in a single 7 day period) - At this point you've spent at least a full day of your life /played playing SL at cap and you've gotten the most extraordinary loot luck in the history of ever and you're still not QUITE at the level of the tourist mode. This is too fast for you? How much of an investment do you think it should take to get to that point timewise? lol.

There is covenant gear, professions, legendaries, world boses, and mythic 0. Between all of these, it was trivial in 9.0 to get to the point where world quests were dropping LFR or higher level gear, and at that point it is extremely low time investment to gear up.

But you know, we can also live in this weird, overly aggressive fantasy world you constructed where mythic0 is the only source of gear.

So now what do you do? Well the same thing that you'd do in every other MMO, you ask yourself if you want to do a higher level of content and then you either do it or you do not. The game isn't forcing you to do it, the game doesn't even encourage you to do it. In your games you listed, all of which I've played mind you, when you do the easiest content to the point where you've gotten everything possible from it do you not still have the make that same choice? Of course you do. If you don't like that you're probably playing the wrong genre of game.

This is the sort of thing people who have never bothered to play another MMO or similar game say. WoW is the only game that works like this. Other games don't tell you to fuck off if you don't want to do organized, difficult content.

The overwhelmingly vast majority of players don't raid Mythic. Normal and Heroic are both puggable difficulties from pretty much week 1 of their releases (depending on tuning.) - The average player doesn't even max out their character for the difficulty that they have chosen to do in any given tier. The average player isn't no-lifing WoW. WoW is not responsible for the things that you force yourself to do that you don't enjoy. This game has issues but that certainly isn't one of them. If you don't like certain content, don't do it. If you're not in a competitive raiding guild I promise you not one person gives one singular fuck if you choose to not do content that you don't like to do.

People don't do the content they don't like. Then they quit, which is why normal people have quit WoW at alarming rates while you guys sit here and defend insanely poor game design because of some weird ego trip.

I mean you can't have it both ways dude, either the game has way too many mandatory time consuming chores or the game is over too fast.

Weird how every other major MMO has found solutions to this but WoW can't. But as usual, the wow no-lifers play one video games, refuse to play anything else, and assume the failures of WoW are some intrinsic fact of nature, something nobody can possibly solve, while those of us who play other video games just stare puzzled at them, like someone who insists cars can't possible be faster than the horse and buggy because their lack of imagination and experience dictates how the universe works.

[Argorwal]

A big unmentioned part of this is that they need to come up with better nerfing mechanisms over time. Some of these conversation feel like 2006 where your guild would reclear something and see a notable dps increase because of the gear they got in that run. in 2022, anyone outside of Hall of Fame guilds who puts in a reasonable amount of effort is effectively capped or near capped on gear long before they even get to the progression boss.

Like think about Sludgefist, who was basically the Patchwerk of Nathria. For HoF guilds, reclears and stuff really mattered just like in the old days, because they were on him in the first month. By the time most guilds who killed him did kill him, gear wasn't even a factor. They had probably already been extending their lockout for weeks if not months at that point.

imo that's a big issue that never really comes up here. People talk all the time about mythic raiders and gear yet never mention that most mid-tier + guilds end up extending non-stop for literally months, never even rekilling many of the bosses because it's not worth the time. No one is playing for "gear" for a huge portion of the patch.

This is absolutely a huge issue/change that doesn’t get talks about enough, and in my view it mostly is caused by how easy/fast/good mythic+ is for providing great quality gear to an entire raid.

For fun I was looking at guild kills on wowprogress and after about world 150, every guild I checked had their 1st mythic Sylvanas kill before their 2nd painsmith kill.

That happened in CN too after council.

The days of reclearing to make your raid team stronger, killing early bosses to power up for later bosses, feeling a sense of progression to your raid with every weekly raid, died with Legion. Now it’s kill the first 4-5 a few times then lockout extend for 3-4 months until the end.

[potis]

I'm starting to see your point here, it's very difficult to argue with someone who just makes things up to try to prove a point because their favorite outrage streamer said it.

Not sure who thats targeted too or trolling but generally some people seem to be lacking basic game knowledge and they are screaming dear murder for things they dont understand.

I really can not understand how anyone claiming they are a casual with a life and not addicted, to dislike this version of WoW where its literally made for them to be played that way.

I hated Legion, i hated BFA, despite playing them, because i enjoy my main to be up to par with the game, and those god damn expansions had you logging to farm irrelevant AP stuff, i might not be done gearing ilvl wise in the 3rd week like Mythic raiders that clear the first 5 bosses the first week of the Mythic release, but the system allows me to reach them a few weeks after thanks to M+, and HC raiding combo and SL was even made to literally farm things for 1hr/week, and then everything else is up to you, the -must do- things, are literally 1 hr per week.

The same literally happens all the way down to LFR, but basically its easier to refuse to do M+5, instead of M+0 and complain about the game it seems.

[Kehego]

This is absolutely a huge issue/change that doesn’t get talks about enough, and in my view it mostly is caused by how easy/fast/good mythic+ is for providing great quality gear to an entire raid.

For fun I was looking at guild kills on wowprogress and after about world 150, every guild I checked had their 1st mythic Sylvanas kill before their 2nd painsmith kill.

That happened in CN too after council.

The days of reclearing to make your raid team stronger, killing early bosses to power up for later bosses, feeling a sense of progression to your raid with every weekly raid, died with Legion. Now it’s kill the first 4-5 a few times then lockout extend for 3-4 months until the end.

that's when your guild is shit and can't get repeat kills on difficult bosses

[NineSpine]

Not sure who thats targeted too or trolling but generally some people seem to be lacking basic game knowledge and they are screaming dear murder for things they dont understand.

I really can not understand how anyone claiming they are a casual with a life and not addicted, to dislike this version of WoW where its literally made for them to be played that way.

I hated Legion, i hated BFA, despite playing them, because i enjoy my main to be up to par with the game, and those god damn expansions had you logging to farm irrelevant AP stuff, i might not be done gearing ilvl wise in the 3rd week like Mythic raiders that clear the first 5 bosses the first week of the Mythic release, but the system allows me to reach them a few weeks after thanks to M+, and HC raiding combo and SL was even made to literally farm things for 1hr/week, and then everything else is up to you, the -must do- things, are literally 1 hr per week.

The same literally happens all the way down to LFR, but basically its easier to refuse to do M+5, instead of M+0 and complain about the game it seems.

Any answer yet for why the WoW world firsters could not win the world first race in FF14 despite having six months of practice beforehand?

[Argorwal]

that's when your guild is shit and can't get repeat kills on difficult bosses

Any guild past world 150 is “shit” then according to you?

[Araya]

WoW was STRONGLY modeled after Everquest, which while having other things to do, the people that came over from Everquest only cared about end game (see Tigole, Foror) and so those are the area's that for a very long were the primary focus of most things, and to this day WoW excels in the raid department while effectively ignoring everything else and as a result I would say the general preconception is that end game >>>>>>> everything else even if it isn't completely true anymore.

[Kehego]

Any guild past world 150 is “shit” then according to you?

seems good, sure.
doesn't matter the ranking tbh, if your guild got cucked on painsmith long enough for you to not at least get the KT skip for sylvanas progression, your guild isn't that great

[Argorwal]

seems good, sure.
doesn't matter the ranking tbh, if your guild got cucked on painsmith long enough for you to not at least get the KT skip for sylvanas progression, your guild isn't that great

I literally cannot find a single guild that killed KT 4 times before killing Sylvanas on wowprogress.

Early guilds didn’t have 4 weeks between KT and Sylvanas, and…still early but not as early…guilds just extended after Painsmith.

Can you find me one? If your guild did it then it should be easy to find.

[Kehego]

I literally cannot find a single guild that killed KT 4 times before killing Sylvanas on wowprogress.

Early guilds didn’t have 4 weeks between KT and Sylvanas, and…still early but not as early…guilds just extended after Painsmith.

Can you find me one? If your guild did it then it should be easy to find.

This is absolutely a huge issue/change that doesn’t get talks about enough, and in my view it mostly is caused by how easy/fast/good mythic+ is for providing great quality gear to an entire raid.

For fun I was looking at guild kills on wowprogress and after about world 150, every guild I checked had their 1st mythic Sylvanas kill before their 2nd painsmith kill.

That happened in CN too after council.

The days of reclearing to make your raid team stronger, killing early bosses to power up for later bosses, feeling a sense of progression to your raid with every weekly raid, died with Legion. Now it’s kill the first 4-5 a few times then lockout extend for 3-4 months until the end.

I was replying to the "extend 3-4 months"
Most of the sub 200 guilds didn't just sit on painsmith and extend, which is my point. Yes there's a point where Sylv prog > reclears for gear, but there's 2 vastly different metagames going on. Looking at my guild, which is us 100 but world 240-260, there were 2 extends.

3 months of extends are 12 weeks at least. No "good guild" is extending for 12 weeks.

[T-34]

You just make stuff up. No one is asking to be carried and no one is asking for rewards to be given out for free.

Sure thing dude.
All this talk about "gatekeeping" and "toxic people who kick me because I refuse to do my best" has nothing to do with wanting to be carried.

[RoKPaNda]

Not sure who thats targeted too or trolling but generally some people seem to be lacking basic game knowledge and they are screaming dear murder for things they dont understand.

It was because you had said about not wasting my time with that other guy who is moving goalposts so fast he's making a sport out of it. lol. I'm fully in agreement on pretty much all your points.

[Tyris Flare]

I was replying to the "extend 3-4 months"
Most of the sub 200 guilds didn't just sit on painsmith and extend, which is my point. Yes there's a point where Sylv prog > reclears for gear, but there's 2 vastly different metagames going on. Looking at my guild, which is us 100 but world 240-260, there were 2 extends.

3 months of extends are 12 weeks at least. No "good guild" is extending for 12 weeks.

Doesn't really matter if they are "good" or not, what matters is that it is most people's experience. We're talking about everyone outside of a few thousand people.

I'm not sure what the solution is without destroying M+, which would be a colossal mistake since it has the highest participation of any endgame content by far. Even in this patch, where dom sockets were massive and only in the raid, the experience of the average mythic raider is still extending for huge periods of time and not killing bosses.

Seems like something the devs shouldn't be happy about

[Kehego]

Doesn't really matter if they are "good" or not, what matters is that it is most people's experience. We're talking about everyone outside of a few thousand people.

I'm not sure what the solution is without destroying M+, which would be a colossal mistake since it has the highest participation of any endgame content by far. Even in this patch, where dom sockets were massive and only in the raid, the experience of the average mythic raider is still extending for huge periods of time and not killing bosses.

Seems like something the devs shouldn't be happy about

The devs shouldn't be happy that they made a fight that you can't just overpower with itemlevel and had to get good to pass? idk about that chief

Most raids had a cockblock boss. SLG. Council in AEP. Rastakhan onward in daz. Fetid devourer into Zul in Uldir. Maiden and onwards in tomb.