How are you enjoying Dragonflight so far?

[Gaidax]

Yeah, my strategy with the profession system so far has been to touch nothing. It's overwhelming, not super intuitive, and there is minimal forgiveness for "mistakes." Some things like this in games I will just impatiently yolo but this one has instead just been choice paralysis. I will do nothing.

WoW professions needed an overhaul and on paper they might have been a good job but I don't like that I feel like I need to meticulously research outside of the game what I am doing there because if I fuck up, it's fucked up for good. If I was a person who intended to spend a huge amount of time on professions and could count on getting everything, fine, but I'm not.

Honestly, they could let us retalent and just put a longass cooldown on it (like... once a week or something). Even the promise of the ability to respec in a future patch would probably be enough, but as it is, I don't want to touch anything.

Well I did touch proffessions, but mostly because I did do research. But even with this research - nobody even knows what actually will catch long term, especially for odder proffessions like Engineering.

I do think proffessions are practically 9.0 covenant system rearing its ugly head again. Maybe even worse, because you are hard locked and there are a ton of one time spec points you get that you ain't going to get back once you commit.

I guess in a typical Blizzard fashion - they will probably address it in 10.0.5 or 10.1 with some sort of respec.

[Chickat]

Why does the content need to be gated behind reputations? That's my issue and it's been my issue for years now. There's just no need for this to exist, let me do the content that is there without forcing me to grind reputation for factions I do not care about. Mostly talking about the main campaign here.

I mean you have this very nice (but short) leveling main story in DF and then everything comes to a halt because you need to grind reputations - the first time for the 4000 rep and then it all of a sudden completely stops and you don't even get another quest until you supposedly increased your renown ranks? Uhm... excuse me, this is outright terrible. There's not much to complain about DF right now, but this is such a weird outlier for bad design choices.

Because most of it is unlocked after only a week of dailys anyways, and then its unlocked for ever on alts. That is a complete non issue. There are no Ap grinds. Some content should be staggered imo. Expansions of old also did this ith rep gates like the Isle of Thunder, Molten front etc. Its standard mmo design. Its super quick and more forgiving than most other times in WoW. if you arent willing to grind rep for 1 week, then maybe WoW isnt for you anymore. You dont even have to do it. Why grind to unlock more world content if you dislike world content in the first place? Raid log? Pvp log. If none of that sounds appealing then its time to find a new game.

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I think i enjoyed Shadowlands so much that anything else would wither in comparison.

The zones are generic and boring and feel very similar.
Dragonriding was fun at the start but now it's just annoying.
Professions have become unnecessarily convoluted, heck even farming nodes has become more annoying as well even.
And to top it all the story leaves me completely uninterested.

Really dont see it but okay. Just know you are in the vast minority when it comes to like Shadowlands.

[Garymorilix]

They won't. This whole idea about how people will get bored, because they don't have weekly chores to do is just false.

BfA and SL had all these chores and people still quit these expansions very very early on, because most people cba to do (and pay for it) stuff that is not fun and will often just give up.

WoD was WoD, because they cut about half of the content they originally intended to release for this expansion and none of the little endgame content had any structure or design to it whatsoever. And even then, people got tired of WoD by the time 6.1 was announced, which was about the same amount of time when people got tired of all these other expansions after WoD.

Also one question: Were MoP, Cata, Wrath and TBC also WoD 2.0 or what should these be called?

Yes.

People already have nothing to do in Classic WotLK (same was true for Classic BC and Classic) after they did the raid for the week.

M+ is okay, but I prefer having some alternative time-sink content in the game that I can do besides M+ or raiding that still gives me current expansion progress feeling.
We currently have nothing like that in DF.

[Chickat]

I love it, the dragonriding is really fun and the story seems interesting so far. Raze the Stormbringer is a awesome villain and one of the strongest so far. Her primalist bolt attack could probably one shot all the past villains with the exception of Nzoth since it took a huge amount of pure Azeroth energy in order to kill him.

Definitely wouldnt one shot the Jailer, Argus, Nzoth, Cthun, Yog etc. I dont think it would even one shot villains like Azshara or Kiljaeden. It didnt even hurt Alexstrasza and shes almost powerless. It just stunned her. Its not as powerful as you think.

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I would say this is easily one of the worst if not the absolute worst as far as leveling goes, only rivaled by MoP and Horde side BfA and possibly the disjointed Cataclysm, but the return of WoD style PvP gearing makes up for a lot with me. Other than that though I feel like I was clearly not the target audience, since I have no interest in the aspects of WoW getting focused on, and the lighter hearted tone of DF just does nothing for me in general. The lack of Torghast replacement sucks, I never had a problem with the AP grinds, and I have zero interest in things like professions and cosmetic rewards, and never have been into organized group PvE, so I suspect that outside of PvP, I will run out of things to do extremely quickly.

MoP leveling bad? Hard disagree. Imo the leveling is better than any expansion since WoD. Legion had more to do because of all the artifacts, but the zones were small theme parks.

[OwenBurton]

I keep watching, but keep not seeing anything that'd make me want to actually come back and play. I'll have a look at the raid race, too, but I kind of doubt that it'll sway me.

I haven't played yet either, although in the near future, when circumstances improve and I get a working gaming computer again, perhaps I will seriously consider returning. I was heavily disillusioned by Shadowlands, quite honestly, the entire story and plotline was horrible.

Dragonflight might NOT be the best either. But at least most people seem to regard it as somewhat of an improvement compared to the last expansion's crazy and overcomplicated mess. o_O

[Chickat]

The point is you can get to max lvl only doing the zone campaigns. Side quests are optional.

Plus most side quests give more rep than world quests. You can do 1/4th of them through level up and then do the rest to get a few reknown levels at end game. The side quest storys are arguably better than the main zone storys too. Dwarf Dragon sit and listen anyone?

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Yeah, my strategy with the profession system so far has been to touch nothing. It's overwhelming, not super intuitive, and there is minimal forgiveness for "mistakes." Some things like this in games I will just impatiently yolo but this one has instead just been choice paralysis. I will do nothing.

WoW professions needed an overhaul and on paper they might have been a good job but I don't like that I feel like I need to meticulously research outside of the game what I am doing there because if I fuck up, it's fucked up for good. If I was a person who intended to spend a huge amount of time on professions and could count on getting everything, fine, but I'm not.

Honestly, they could let us retalent and just put a longass cooldown on it (like... once a week or something). Even the promise of the ability to respec in a future patch would probably be enough, but as it is, I don't want to touch anything.


I've actually had several friends complain they finished the entire campaign by 68-69, and they had to go back to do side quests. I don't know how aggressive they were at doing the bonus areas when they were in that area for a main quest, but I think probably you may need to at least do a little extra stuff or a dungeon or two also.

I love the new prof system, but I agree a long CD or high gold cost option to respec would be nice, and is probably something they will add in a patch.

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its too early for this anyways. most xpacs are well liked in the first few months. so the data means nothing.

Did you miss the So far part of the question?

[Gaidax]

Imagine farming 15 renown, aka 37500 rep by 25 rep tokens (by 15 for the other factions) from chests. (That's anywhere near 1000-1500 chests, per faction, as wqs and other rep sources are very limited) You can see the thought process of the devs in the reward pacing. At renown 18 you get an ilevel 389 pair of legs. Centaurs give ilevel 389 at renwon 24. So here you can see the roadmap they were thinking.

I liked your post because it's a lot of what I felt, but this in particular is true.

I am currently in a farm mode, just because we have guild competition for ilvl before M+ hits and I also want some specific recepies. Currently at 12/10/7/10. And I look what's given down the road in this gargantuan renown farm - the ultimate reward gives you a mat to increase equipment level to around Heroic raid ilvl at 25 renown for a single item.

And I am like - are you fucking kidding me Blizz? By the time I'll hit 25 renown even with one of these, let alone all 4 - I'll be rocking full set mythic raiding gear or at the very least most of it.

And it does not help that most of these 25 renown levels on the road there are filled with absolute trash. And yes cosmetics do look horribad, guess fashion is a little outdated in Dragon Isles, like by 10k years or so.

[Chickat]

leveling was actually not awful but dragonriding is a cheap cop out to actual flying and their phasing system has been a headache but overall its off to a decent start

I do think they should add a 500% flying mount option for people and release it at the start. Its not as fast as dragon riding, but a nice middle ground speed, and a lot faster than current flying mounts. Charge 50k gold or something insane for it. There are situations in which i want to just afk fly somewhere, but i suppose thats what flight paths are for. Still it wouldnt hurt to add. They cant make it faster or as fast as Dragon riding or it breaks the system.

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Cautiously putting it in the "one of the better" bracket. Not much to do right now besides leveling alts after doing the m0 world tour on Wednesday (EU).

Plus points:
-fun to play new class
-flying (in its own new way) from day 1
-no alternative power grinds

What I don't like/hate:
-professions in their entirety. I still believe that quality ranks and "specializations" are the dumbest idea they had. Can't wait to pay 5-50k+ a pop for max quality pots/flasks/enchants/gems if I want to be relevant in Mythic raiding or the weekly m+ farming.
-the announced changes to m+. The scaling changes are fine imo, but being forced into doing 20s ontop of the scaling changes to be relevant in Mythic raiding sucks.

The mythic+ changes are good. Raiding was pointless in SL. You could gear tier in M+ and the gear was too easy to get compared to raiding. Now its more balanced. If you cant do a 20 then you arent good enough to raid mythic raids anyways, therefore settle with the high heroic loot from +15s. theres nothing wrong with that. Games need to offer a challenge to players for the high end or theres nothing to strive towards.

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Right now it's pretty good, but I doubt it will hold for long.

It seems lo me like it's WoD, just there is mythic+ this time around, so that's something.

Personally, I'm fine with that, beung raidlogger that I am, but I don't think this will hold for casual playerbase. There is only so many hunts you can do, dirt piles to turn and dragon to fly around before interest wanes.

Theres a lot more content than WoD launch? How could you say its WoD? This is the reason Blizz were afraid to remove AP grinds. Certain people like you need to have something to do 100% of the time.

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So as the days go by the expansion as a whole starts to get clearer and clearer.
World quests are (or rather would have been) in a need for some liftup. Reward tuning. Something. This is just. Bad. You open your map and world quests give nothing. The rewards for me are ilevel 340 greens, some Primal Chaos that I'm not touching because professions are convoluted as hell (also it comes from treasures), there's a 100 gold wq, doesn't worth it. (went out to farm treasures yesterday, in 5 mins I got more raw gold from vendor trash - inb4 they nerf it ). I have some offspec low ilevel greens up as wq rewards, not doing those, because why would I?
Did one hunt, got my epic reward bag for the week. Just like on the beta, this is not really compelling gameplay. The epic bag can drop a mount, my husband got it, so guess I have to keep doing this.
Did a dragonbane keep. Again, not seeing myself doing it again, so I'm guessing there's a mount and toy and pet in the reward chest that "encourages" you to farm it.
Wrathion and cobalt assembly reps are group farms... I think that's the next I'm going to tackle. Theres the crafter reputation, and then the renown ones, which you have to do wqs for, or farm treasures with a 5 charge shovel for 15-25 rep relics. I mean...
I went and did the cataloging intro + wq, which was cool. Once at least.
I'm renown 10 with the dragonscale expedition, 8 with the centaurs, 6 with the tuskarrs, and 9 with valdrakken.

There is one tuskarr wq up in Azure span atm. 75+100 rep in 5 mins. But then that's it. Dragonscale expedition wants to give me an ilevel 376 gloves at renown 12. That's a LOT of treasure farming for sure - to get it while it matters at all. I guess an ilevel 176 pair of gloves won't matter in 1-2 weeks. But then only treasure farm is your only option. A LOT of treasure farming. (1 token gives 25 rep, chests contain 1-3, 1 renown is 2500 rep. soooo do the math). Now I'm doing the dragonscale flags that give 250 rep each. Will see where it puts me. And it will push my weekly rep quest.

And then the rewards. Remember how they showcased covenant armorsets in shadowlands? And how cool they were? Now you get a generic frog green cape at some renown level. Or some bad, normally questing gear/throwaway looking weapon. I shit you not, when I went to claim my renown reward I thought it's a joke.
It feels like there's no "substance". I don't miss borrowed power, holy shit I really don't. But then what's left? They, yet again, """""forgot""""" to work on substance for the outdoor content, but now even the rewards look underwhelming. Farm chests, zereth mortis style. What? At least you are utilizing the flaghsip of the expansion: dragonriding.
I really dislike renown system. I mean I get it: It's cheap asset, carried from shadowlands, with lame WQs it was low effort low investment - but from a player's pov: low quality, low enjoyment. Scattering the rewards required the most effort I imagine.
My problem is not that there's nothing to do. There's plenty to do. Just nothing seems worth to touch.
Imagine farming 15 renown, aka 37500 rep by 25 rep tokens (by 15 for the other factions) from chests. (That's anywhere near 1000-1500 chests, per faction, as wqs and other rep sources are very limited) You can see the thought process of the devs in the reward pacing. At renown 18 you get an ilevel 389 pair of legs. Centaurs give ilevel 389 at renwon 24. So here you can see the roadmap they were thinking.

Still couln't unlock my first ancient Waygates. People are suggesting 3-4 different things(pre-requirements) from the beta...

You are going about this the wrong way. The only reason you need to do anything rep grind wise is if you want the cosmetics. The gear is for casuals who dont raid, pvp or do dungeons to get overtime. Its not meant for you. If you dont care about cosmetics, then yes the game is lacking content.

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Yes.

People already have nothing to do in Classic WotLK (same was true for Classic BC and Classic) after they did the raid for the week.

M+ is okay, but I prefer having some alternative time-sink content in the game that I can do besides M+ or raiding that still gives me current expansion progress feeling.
We currently have nothing like that in DF.

So you want Ap grinds back?

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I liked your post because it's a lot of what I felt, but this in particular is true.

I am currently in a farm mode, just because we have guild competition for ilvl before M+ hits and I also want some specific recepies. Currently at 12/10/7/10. And I look what's given down the road in this gargantuan renown farm - the ultimate reward gives you a mat to increase equipment level to around Heroic raid ilvl at 25 renown for a single item.

And I am like - are you fucking kidding me Blizz? By the time I'll hit 25 renown even with one of these, let alone all 4 - I'll be rocking full set mythic raiding gear or at the very least most of it.

And it does not help that most of these 25 renown levels on the road there are filled with absolute trash. And yes cosmetics do look horribad, guess fashion is a little outdated in Dragon Isles, like by 10k years or so.

They are not intended for you. Are you guys the ones who ran 5000 Maw of souls too? Thats not healthy. Your intended content is M+ dungeons, pvp and raids. The only people that should be grinding rep are the people that like cosmetics. If you dont, then stop. Its not healthy to grind that much for some legs you will replace in 2 weeks.

[Lionwoman]

To be fair that's not saying very much.

Well it's still a 5-day-old expansion. So there is not much about to say yet.

[Gaidax]

Theres a lot more content than WoD launch? How could you say its WoD? This is the reason Blizz were afraid to remove AP grinds. Certain people like you need to have something to do 100% of the time.

I think I just said that I am a raidlogger - another WOD is fine by me.

What I am trying to say that vast majority of what is offered by Dragonflight is absolutely mundane and not even worth the hassle it asks from you to do. It's practically apexis + the useless part of garrison all over again. You farm that shit until you're blue in the face and what do you get? Some lame mogs and pets? You become better at the hunt, as if you don't demolish it already the moment it unlocks? Your piles of dirt give you more bfa war supplies?

Then they throw at you some garbage items that will be outdated long before the vast majority of playerbase even hits the required renown level. Who in Blizz thought of this?

I'll tell you what will happen - people will simply decide it's not worth the hassle (which it really isn't, aside from some recipe or two if you even care) and move on to other content... which is like WOD - raids and dungeons and that's it.

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You are going about this the wrong way. The only reason you need to do anything rep grind wise is if you want the cosmetics. The gear is for casuals who dont raid, pvp or do dungeons to get overtime. Its not meant for you. If you dont care about cosmetics, then yes the game is lacking content.

So you practically described WOD right there.

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They are not intended for you. Are you guys the ones who ran 5000 Maw of souls too? Thats not healthy. Your intended content is M+ dungeons, pvp and raids. The only people that should be grinding rep are the people that like cosmetics. If you dont, then stop. Its not healthy to grind that much for some legs you will replace in 2 weeks.

Hyperbole does not really help your case. There is a healthy number between 0 Maw of Souls and 5000 Maw of Souls and it's the number I and many others ran.

Right now what you have is 0 Maw of Souls and if you want anything more - well fuck you very much then.

[Lei]

You are going about this the wrong way. The only reason you need to do anything rep grind wise is if you want the cosmetics. The gear is for casuals who dont raid, pvp or do dungeons to get overtime. Its not meant for you. If you dont care about cosmetics, then yes the game is lacking content.

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Maybe it wasn't clear from my post but I am an outdoor player/collector nowadays in the game. Stopped raiding when the bullshit uncapped borrowed power and the rng legendaries came in Legion. I hate m+-es and the whole toxic part of it with a passion. But I am a maximalist and a competitor by nature, so I had to choose between my sanity/mental health or putting down raiding. As the years went by, I simply got used to just not raid. One by one I started to cut out parts of the game from my playing habit. I used to have 3-4 raiding characters from wrath, with legendary cloaks in mop. I was raiding 4-5 days a week on different alts and roles, even realms. I loved raiding.
The only thing that keeps me in the game is collecting, achieves, and outdoor content. It's purely sunk cost fallacy I'm well aware.

Also, casuals, or call them whatever you want, still go to LFR. And LFR ilevel is around the same ilevel you get from that twentysomething renown. Logic says the devs imagined people getting to twentysomething renown before LFR opens up. I don't know. By the looks of the pacing now, that's an interesting thought.

[FelPlague]

Well I did touch proffessions, but mostly because I did do research. But even with this research - nobody even knows what actually will catch long term, especially for odder proffessions like Engineering.

I do think proffessions are practically 9.0 covenant system rearing its ugly head again. Maybe even worse, because you are hard locked and there are a ton of one time spec points you get that you ain't going to get back once you commit.

I guess in a typical Blizzard fashion - they will probably address it in 10.0.5 or 10.1 with some sort of respec.

You do know you will eventually get all the talents right?
Like seriously...
This feels like the people at the start of legion who demanded to be able to respec their artifacts for free.

[Gaidax]

You do know you will eventually get all the talents right?
Like seriously...
This feels like the people at the start of legion who demanded to be able to respec their artifacts for free.

Of course I know, because it's Blizzard and because inevitably as usual they will introduce the skips, the convenience and the reasonable usability to their new pet system. Pull the rip cord and all.

Except maybe just once - they could have pulled that rip cord from a get go, instead of waiting for x.1.5 or some such yet again

--

Also, just for once - lay off hyperbole. I don't think people here asked to be able to respec professions for free. There is a reasonable happy middle road between "for free anytime" and "you're fucked, son".

What's with people here... it's not black or white. By all means put a meaningful cost and cooldown on it, but do allow it even if it's bloody once per 3 weeks or some such and you sacrifice some skill points for it.

--

Lets start with this excercize:

Would the game die if people would be allowed to reallocate all their proffession points once per month?

And follow-up question - so why the fuck are we not allowed to do so?

[Garymorilix]

So you want Ap grinds back?

Common misconception caused by the infinitely negative casual crowd who never actually experienced such a thing.

"AP Grinds" - both referring to Legion and BfA I assume - only affected the very hardcore mythic raiding crowd.
Literally anyone below that could just play normally and not be affected by it at all.
I know, I was there.

So, to answer, yes, I would.
Because top 100 Mythic guilds already grind whatever they need right now too.
Whether it's AP, Professions, pigs in the forest or fucking pet battles, if the activity gives an edge they are already grinding it. Makes no difference for 99% of the playerbase.

[Gaidax]

Common misconception caused by the infinitely negative casual crowd who never actually experienced such a thing.

"AP Grinds" - both referring to Legion and BfA I assume - only affected the very hardcore mythic raiding crowd.
Literally anyone below that could just play normally and not be affected by it at all.
I know, I was there.

So, to answer, yes, I would.
Because top 100 Mythic guilds already grind whatever they need right now too.
Whether it's AP, Professions, pigs in the forest or fucking pet battles, if the activity gives an edge they are already grinding it. Makes no difference for 99% of the playerbase.

Ditto.

That person thinks the moment there is AP, then apparently everyone and their mothers has to run "5000 Maw of Souls".

Someone needs to lay off Twitch/Youtube for a bit, methinks.

[FelPlague]

Of course I know, because it's Blizzard and because inevitably as usual they will introduce the skips, the convenience and the reasonable usability to their new pet system. Pull the rip cord and all.

Except maybe just once - they could have pulled that rip cord from a get go, instead of waiting for x.1.5 or some such yet again

There is already skips, every week the amount of spec points things you can find increases, so that way if you are behind you can find tons of them all at once.


you gunna cry about them pulling a ripcord, actually look to see if they have not already pulled that fucking ripcord...

[Darkeon]

A pretty good start. Do not regret waiting for initial reviews though.

Whether it's a worthwhile experience in the long-run, however, remains to be seen. A lot of their expansions had good starts and then fell flatter than pancakes.

[Lei]

Ditto.

That person thinks the moment there is AP, then apparently everyone and their mothers has to run "5000 Maw of Souls".

Someone needs to lay off Twitch/Youtube for a bit, methinks.

Aren't you fatigued the slightest? From the same grind over and over and over again? Babying something for 2 years only to throw it away and start again in the next expac? We've been doing this since WoD if you think about it with the ring upgrading.
I didn't participate in AP grind but if someone were to tell me that there's a new artifact to level up, I'd immediately unsub, uninstall, and never look back.
Imo there are things that can be evergreen content, or can be elongated, but some things need to be kept fresh, or players will tire out. I don't mind shitty content if it's quickly over. But if someone wants me to farm something for years, then that shit must be good.

[Gaidax]

There is already skips, every week the amount of spec points things you can find increases, so that way if you are behind you can find tons of them all at once.


you gunna cry about them pulling a ripcord, actually look to see if they have not already pulled that fucking ripcord...

I am not "crying"... I bet you're one of the people who also fought tooth and nail to preserve 9.0 covenant system too.

It's really simple - there is no need for these artificial cockblocks in WoW - a lesson Blizzard should have already fucking learned 10 times over.


Let people respec without ifs and buts. The end.

I fucking know x.x.5 will fix it, it always does - but maybe just this once, new era of WoW and all, they could have let people fucking have fun instead of putting weird ass cockblocks that should not really even be there.

[MightyWarrior]

Enjoying it so far. I really enjoyed levelling due to the story, zones, music, graphics, and just general feel of the world being so large and alive. It's nice to have lots of side content. Endgame is a lot of fun, outside of dungeons, raiding and pvp, there is so much optional stuff to do and its really enjoyable. I'm glad that we are back to being adventurers again. This expansion, to me, feels like a sequel to Wrath and Cataclysm. I am in love with it. I just hope I feel the same way in a few weeks. But so far, it is in my top 5 expansions. Wrath, Dragonflight, Legion, MoP, Cataclysm.