So, how does this look any different than WoD going into Legion?

[BeepBoo]

Mixing up your xpacs there buddy.

Azerite was BFA, legendaries were Legion. Same with the NLC - was in Legion, and wasn't together with Azerite.

Azerite and Crucible weren't Legion though......

Netherlight Crucible was absolutely legion. RE: Azurite gear, you're right. It was the original "AP" I was thinking of: Artifact power.

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Oh for sure. The point was just about the fact that sometimes a small but very active/loud part of the playerbase affects how everyone plays the game.

The only amicable way you get permanent power progression while also having a difficult content scene is to make that progression somehow not apply or matter in the hardcore scene, which I'd love for them to do. But, when it comes down to it, I don't want to have to compete with Mr. NoLyfesGrinder who has uberpower because he plays the easiest part of the game 24/7 in addition to raiding. I don't WANT tp play wow that much. I want to raidlog and still be able to get 99th percentiles. I've played the bitch part of the game enough and just have zero desire to do anything that isn't new, novel, or competitive. I have the skill required to get those parses. Stop making me treat the game like a job just to stay on that edge.

[loras]

I am not making judgments here. I think almost every customer niche for WoW is valid and should be offered content. Just saying that the idea that legion was bad at launch is valid but only from that very limited perspective.

How so?
Trying to please all tends to please none, and some niches are more pliable than others, as is what i mentioned in the earlier post.

And judging by reception it's clearly not the worst move to disregard this particular niche calling stuff bad.

[BeepBoo]

How so?
Trying to please all tends to please none, and some niches are more pliable than others, as is what i mentioned in the earlier post.

And judging by reception it's clearly not the worst move to disregard this particular niche calling stuff bad.

They have the ability to please all, they just need to segregate their progression systems by activity, but that's too much work for them (lol). Give overworld casuals infinite progression. Just turn it off in raids/arena/m+.

Also, if we're going this way, let's go back to the actual roots of the game. Nothing pisses me off more than when a company changes its target audience. "But things need to change for games to stay relevant!" No they fucking don't. Monsterhunter has been using the same basic unchanged formula since it's first release and people still flock to that. You can stay true to your origins and be plenty successful. Wow's origins are as a leveling experience that funnels you into grouped endgame activities of increasing difficulty.

[loras]

They have the ability to please all, they just need to segregate their progression systems by activity, but that's too much work for them (lol). Give overworld casuals infinite progression. Just turn it off in raids/arena/m+.

Also, if we're going this way, let's go back to the actual roots of the game. Nothing pisses me off more than when a company changes its target audience. "But things need to change for games to stay relevant!" No they fucking don't. Monsterhunter has been using the same basic unchanged formula since it's first release and people still flock to that. You can stay true to your origins and be plenty successful. Wow's origins are as a leveling experience that funnels you into grouped endgame activities of increasing difficulty.

Looking at classic WoW the casuals have always been the main target audience though.
Group content fair enough, but casual as fuck.

Personally though, i don't see how tunnelling unwilling people into groups improves the game, even back then it worked poorly.
Make it optional, don't bother people, that shit works.
Some might have a little more trouble getting a group that way, but honestly those usually a big part of the reasons others prefer to avoid them.

[Zorachus]

Blizzard has no intention of releasing Dragonflight this year 2022 LOL Not happening, and they know it. They only said that to get pre-orders sold and 6 months subs back.

Mark my words, come Oct/Nov time, Blizzard will announce "A delay" and the new date will be like March / April 2023, which is the original launch date to begin with.

And yes, Legion was the best expansion of the past 5+ years, no question. Was better than WoD, better than BfA, and hands down better than Shittylands.

Of the last decade I say only two great expansions; MoP and Legion, rest were filler B-team expansions.

[BeepBoo]

Looking at classic WoW the casuals have always been the main target audience though.
Group content fair enough, but casual as fuck.

They have casual modes that are even easier than vanilla raids now, though. The difficulty sliders don't impact the casuals at all. Back then, you still had hard walls of progress where you had to step up the difficulty, and loot was much much rarer.

Personally though, i don't see how tunnelling unwilling people into groups improves the game, even back then it worked poorly.
Make it optional, don't bother people, that shit works.
Some might have a little more trouble getting a group that way, but honestly those usually a big part of the reasons others prefer to avoid them.

I'm okay with this, I'm simply turning the argument I quoted on its head "hurr durr the competitive crowd is irrelevant and we should ignore them in favor of overland casuals who want to mindlessly grind and get stronger because they're the core audience!" No they aren't, and no they weren't. I don't care if they're the LARGEST audience. They were never who the game was designed around.

That said, I'm absolutely willing to meet half way: make their dumb desires have no impact on my content and have my desires have no impact on their content. Live and let live. You cannot have an infinite power system and ALSO have that allowed in high-end content without there being at least some expectation to achieve it. Destiny 2 probably does this the best out of any game that has "infinite grinds." Certain activities are power-capped (usually all the competitive ones or hard ones like master raids).

[Echocho]

WOD didn't have covenants

[jeezusisacasual]

Legion killed my desire to raid by allowing me to get equal gear to those who raid so it was always better and i think that more avenues should be facilitated to have competing end game activities to allow us who want to just drop in for 45 mins to have a chance at getting gear equal to those who raid or high level or whatever. My biggest gripe is that they need a hook to keep you playing after you get your KSM or whatever goal you want to get.

WoD was absolutely terrible because it was a raid or quit style of game in a changing gaming landscape mmo's of yesteryear are dead and gone and thank god for that, pick up and play should be the goal going forward akin to lobby shooters instead of long form mmo centric gameplay. More Dota 2 less WoW from 2006.

[Velerios]

This but also WoD wasn't as bad as people make it look imo, as well as I believe it didn't deserve it's fate. It needed more attention and content that was cut cout of it and glued to Legion to make it seem "all that much better" but it was all at the expanse of WoD.
Didnt liek it.

It was actually worse. If you think that WoD was better, you really need to check your glasses; seems to be too rainbowy. WoD was worse in every aspect, even shadowlands was far far better. There was 0 to do in WoD, only to check your garrison mission, that's all.

It's always the same; people are looking more favorably about an expansion and forgot how it sucked back then when it was live. WoD hat around 0 solo content, instead we had followers that played WoD for us, that's it.

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Agreed, I really disliked Legion until 8.3.

8.3 was BfA, not Legion.

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On launch, Legion was terrible for hardcore players. For everyone else, it had an insane amount of content and some of the most beautiful cosmetics the game ever had. Casual players who just wanted something to do when they log in, F&F and Heroic raiders who want a raid that is challenging but not frustrating, collectors who want beautiful mogs and mounts, people who love the lore and were handed insane amount of fanservice, altoholics who actually had significant chunks of completely new content to do every time they rolled an alt. All those people had reasons to love Legion from day 1.

Jep, legion was sadly the last expansion blizzard created for 99% of the playerbase instead of the 1% hardcore-one. Suramar is still one of my most favorite zones: it was the first time that i felt some kind of adventure in WoW at all; it was the contrast of having wilderness untouched for thousands of years with night elf ruins while having a brizzling shal'dorei city on the corner of it.

Competitive players absolutely had every right to trash it; never before did we have an xpac where if you lucked out on the first two legendary drops in the grind you were completely out of the competition (especially for some specs whose best performing spec was entirely defined by a legendary) since even if they rerolled they'd never catch up with AP. By 7.2, well before the vendor, the vast majority of competitive players would now have at least one of their two BiS legendaries and the AP grind was far less important and most of the specs worked beautifully (a few really did not work properly until all the way to 7.3, I think feral was one of those?)

Legion random drops were bullshit, no question. Still i think that legion is a better template than BfA or SL together. We need more zones like suramar and less of the other stuff.

[loras]

They have casual modes that are even easier than vanilla raids now, though. The difficulty sliders don't impact the casuals at all. Back then, you still had hard walls of progress where you had to step up the difficulty, and loot was much much rarer.



I'm okay with this, I'm simply turning the argument I quoted on its head "hurr durr the competitive crowd is irrelevant and we should ignore them in favor of overland casuals who want to mindlessly grind and get stronger because they're the core audience!" No they aren't, and no they weren't. I don't care if they're the LARGEST audience. They were never who the game was designed around.

That said, I'm absolutely willing to meet half way: make their dumb desires have no impact on my content and have my desires have no impact on their content. Live and let live. You cannot have an infinite power system and ALSO have that allowed in high-end content without there being at least some expectation to achieve it. Destiny 2 probably does this the best out of any game that has "infinite grinds." Certain activities are power-capped (usually all the competitive ones or hard ones like master raids).

Such as? As stated classic WoW kinda blew that myth to smithereens, it was never about skill.

And that kinda reinforces the point that it is exactly them for which WoW has always been designed.

Which is not to say that i am in favor of continueing to do so; i agree that grinding and other repetition should not be encouraged, but neither should mandatory grouping. Both might be old core parts of WoW, but that does not mean they are good ones.

To clarify: I am not in favor of infinite power grinds at all, but i am much less in favor letting people hit a wall in terms of gear progress.

The practical halfway solution would be to allow both ways; either you gear up by luck (current system of drops) and/or skill (pvp rating, pve difficulty slider) or you grind your ass off for it, or you do a combination of the two. But you shouldn't lock any of that behind a hard requirement for skill or a grind, as the former shifts the playing field excessively and encourages the population at large to not join you in that activity (thereby bleeding the game dry) and the latter discourages people in general but huts hardcore players excessively because they can't help themselves.

[Accendor]

Legion is a very mediocre expansion that got hyped up posthumously. It started some of the worst trends in WoW's development that plague the game to this day and it only looks good by comparison because they allocated some of WoD's ressources to prop up Legion.

It looked good in comparison because it simply was the best of the best 4 expansions and it is not even close.
Like seriously, WoD stopped the discussion which expansion was the worst, because everyone agreed, ok, its WoD. Then they released 2 expansions with BfA and SL that did so much damage to the game, that we actually have a discussion again, which of the three is the worst and WoD is not winning this discussion as clearly as it should

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It was actually worse. If you think that WoD was better, you really need to check your glasses; seems to be too rainbowy. WoD was worse in every aspect, even shadowlands was far far better. There was 0 to do in WoD, only to check your garrison mission, that's all.

It's always the same; people are looking more favorably about an expansion and forgot how it sucked back then when it was live. WoD hat around 0 solo content, instead we had followers that played WoD for us, that's it.

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8.3 was BfA, not Legion.

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Jep, legion was sadly the last expansion blizzard created for 99% of the playerbase instead of the 1% hardcore-one. Suramar is still one of my most favorite zones: it was the first time that i felt some kind of adventure in WoW at all; it was the contrast of having wilderness untouched for thousands of years with night elf ruins while having a brizzling shal'dorei city on the corner of it.



Legion random drops were bullshit, no question. Still i think that legion is a better template than BfA or SL together. We need more zones like suramar and less of the other stuff.

Bro, stop this narrative that the game is designed for the hardcore players. It really, REALLY is not. Neither regular mythic raiders nor world first raiders are happy about his things are for the last few years.

All you do by spreading that narrative is to devide the playerbase, when you should actually just stand together because Blizzard is the bad guy here.
Hardcore players are not streaming stealing something from you, just because there is m+ and a raid every patch. Those things can easily be developed indepentendly from all other content.
Not creating other content is Blizzards choice.
If the game was designed for hardcore player, covenants would never have made it to the game, not even in their current iteration.
Also, ask a wf raider how much he likes splitruns.
Besides all that: also hardcore players like to login and just do stuff. Raidlogging is boring as hell. Cutting casual content is hurting them as well.

Long story short: Blizzard is screwing us all over and it's a calculated choice, stop blaming other players please.

[neescher]

Jep, legion was sadly the last expansion blizzard created for 99% of the playerbase instead of the 1% hardcore-one.

How exactly was SL "created for the 1% hardcore playerbase" though? Which of the major features are you talking about?

Covenants? Yeah, 9.0 covenants really were tailored toward the hardcore players, everyone loved them. The fact you couldn't easily change covenants in .0 was specifically made to hinder hardcore players from playing the game hardcore. It was purely made for immersion and lore, ie. stuff that many casuals care about, but almost no hardcore player cares about. Same with Soulbinds and Conduit Energy.

Torghast? Hardcore content right there. Hardcore players loved having to go to Torghast twice a week.

The Maw, Korthia and Zereth Mortis? Open World content made for more casual players, and then slapped a weekly quest on it to make it semi-mandatory for hardcore players.

Covenant Sanctum Features? Those hardcore players sure loved the Ember Court, and running around the open world with their abomination finding ways to customize it.

Mission tables? Anima farming for pets/mounts/transmogs? Treasures/Rares in open world? World Quests? Alll made for the 1%.

You would probably argue that dungeons and raids are "created for the 1%", and I'd counter that argument by saying an MMO *needs* dungeons and raids in the game, and with the very very very low difficulty of LFR and normal/heroic dungeons, raid/dungeons are made for everyone equally. Sure they need a little more time for tuning the harder difficulties, but that doesn't mean the expire expansion was made only for hardcore players.

This has been one of the most casual friendly expansions in the history of wow, I don't get that whole "blizzard only cares about the 1%" argument.


Blizzard made some choices *because of* the 1%, but almost exclusively all of those choices were made to actually harm the hardcore players, and most of the time that also harms the casual playerbase too. Still doesn't mean they made it "for the 1%"

[Fitsu]

I mean, the people that are complaining aren't game devs. There gamers who think they're game devs, they have no idea how real development cycles work or the inner-workings of a company but they get gaslighted by random forum posts and roll with it.

[neescher]

Such as? As stated classic WoW kinda blew that myth to smithereens, it was never about skill.

It didn't. Wow classic proved, that the playerbase today can easily clear 15-year old content. That doesn't mean, that tons of guilds back than didn't struggle for weeks and sometimes months on bosses like Razorgore, Vaelastrasz, Huhuran or C'Thun. You say "it was never about skill", but it's the opposite. It was never about gear. Classic proved that you could clear this shit in greens. It was all about skill - players 16 years ago just weren't experienced and skilled enough to do it.

I've literally seen guilds break apart because they couldn't kill Vaelastrasz. More than once. So please don't say it's not true. Just because it wasn't the case in classic, doesn't mean it was the same in vanilla in 2005.

[Azerox]

People are just mad at everything these days.
Just ignore them and make your own opinion.
I am very hyped for Dragonflight and it looks awesome af to me.

[Iain]

It didn't. Wow classic proved, that the playerbase today can easily clear 15-year old content. That doesn't mean, that tons of guilds back than didn't struggle for weeks and sometimes months on bosses like Razorgore, Vaelastrasz, Huhuran or C'Thun. You say "it was never about skill", but it's the opposite. It was never about gear. Classic proved that you could clear this shit in greens. It was all about skill - players 16 years ago just weren't experienced and skilled enough to do it.

I've literally seen guilds break apart because they couldn't kill Vaelastrasz. More than once. So please don't say it's not true. Just because it wasn't the case in classic, doesn't mean it was the same in vanilla in 2005.

And to add to this point, people didn't have theorycrafting and guides that give the BiS progression and where to find it. So it meant Classic content was leveraged from both sides. The mechanics were more easily understood and people were raiding with far better gear.

It emphasises that he difference between Classic and Vanilla is knowledge and knowledge is merely freely distributed skill.

[loras]

It didn't. Wow classic proved, that the playerbase today can easily clear 15-year old content. That doesn't mean, that tons of guilds back than didn't struggle for weeks and sometimes months on bosses like Razorgore, Vaelastrasz, Huhuran or C'Thun. You say "it was never about skill", but it's the opposite. It was never about gear. Classic proved that you could clear this shit in greens. It was all about skill - players 16 years ago just weren't experienced and skilled enough to do it.

I've literally seen guilds break apart because they couldn't kill Vaelastrasz. More than once. So please don't say it's not true. Just because it wasn't the case in classic, doesn't mean it was the same in vanilla in 2005.

I've played vanilla myself y'know, bad guilds have always been a thing.
The biggest thing betwern now and then is the "mainstreaming" of internet-based communities, in that sense it may have been harder.

But skill? Your point regarding greens just reinforces that; lenience aplenty, casual as fuck.
But really there is no point in debating this part further, as we've had the chance to see.

[neescher]

I've played vanilla myself y'know, bad guilds have always been a thing.
The biggest thing betwern now and then is the "mainstreaming" of internet-based communities, in that sense it may have been harder.

But skill? Your point regarding greens just reinforces that; lenience aplenty, casual as fuck.
But really there is no point in debating this part further, as we've had the chance to see.

Oh sorry I didn‘t realize it only happened to bad guilds. I‘m sure back in vanilla you cleared Naxx and AQ40 the day it was released, just like in classic. You don‘t sound like a bad player from a bad guild, so I‘m sure you did fine on release day.

[loras]

Oh sorry I didn‘t realize it only happened to bad guilds. I‘m sure back in vanilla you cleared Naxx and AQ40 the day it was released, just like in classic. You don‘t sound like a bad player from a bad guild, so I‘m sure you did fine on release day.

You don't sound salty at all. ^^
But you can always take a look at classic again if you've somehow forgotten what these things actually entailed.
Might be you'll even realise you're wearing rose-tinted glassed.

[neescher]

You don't sound salty at all. ^^
But you can always take a look at classic again if you've somehow forgotten what these things actually entailed.
Might be you'll even realise you're wearing rose-tinted glassed.

Rose tinted glasses? Let’s look at vanilla: Onyxia 69 days. MC 154 days. AQ 113 days. Naxx 90 days.

Classic? Ok let’s look at classic again like you suggested. Everything dead on release day, except MC and Ony because ppl had to level first. Still dead within the first week.

Seriously? You‘re arguing that it‘s „just bad guilds“? Who‘s wearing rose tinted glasses now?