Don't think I can do another expansion long grind

[Roxxy]

I loved World of Warcraft all through WOTLK, Cata, Pandaria and WOD and I never thought I would find it annoying or frustrating. Sadly, this happened with Legion. I used to like just being able to log on and do some dailies, a daily heroic dungeon with friends for valour points and the odd night raiding with my guild.

Now the game doesn't feel as free and easy as it used to with the introduction of expansion long grinds. Nowadays you grind and grind and then in the next patch Blizzard resets the grind and you grind some more. I sure did a lot of that in Legion watching that silly little bar move or not move when I clicked on a artefact power token. In it end I felt so stupid and depressed clicking on the token with a 2 second cast and then bar didn't even visibly move. Sure there are ways that allow you to catch up nearly each patch but they still involve grinding and then if you want to keep on being competitive you have to keep on grinding.

I know what people are going to say, I don't have to grind. But of course there is Keen Kevin or Dedicated Dan that is grinding out all evening and if you want to roll with them and don't want to be left behind when it comes to choosing partners in M+ or raid teams then you sort of have to grind to compete and not get shelved.

The whole thing was I enjoyed the casualness of the game, not having to do much to be viable in raids or whatever. I think that Blizzard underestimates the importance of that because people who have grown with the game are now much older and have more responsibilities and can't dedicate time to grinding so much. Plus grinding is not innovative game play, just repeating the same thing over and over and it breeds frustration and burn out. Oh look the harpies need killing the woods again! Some little narrative from someone about it, Same mobs needing to be killed, just did it yesterday and while I was levelling but oh lets do it again for 30th time!

I'm so depressed. I bought BFA with in game gold but I really don't know if I'm going to bother to sub again and play it with this new azurite grind. Sure it's only three circles at the moment but don't you worry Blizzard will be adding more circles to grind as the expansion moves along I'm 100% sure of that. I've been unsubbed for a few weeks now and I feel so free not thinking about all the stuff I have to do in game with the grind.

RNG was another big headache and I'm sure that's not going away next expansion either. Oh look RNGesus gave me another pair of pants this week from the M+ chest with slightly better stats but 10 ilvls lower! Yay not!

I really really want to love WOW again but it's just slipping away from me with all the meta changes, does anyone else feel like that? Anyone else actually quit because of the changes?

[hulkgor]

So... erm... don't?

[Misuteri]

Everyone seemingly tires of the hamster wheel and just throws in the towel. There’s no shame in it.

I got tired of tier sets for multiple alts and PVP sets for multiple alts and dailies, and mount farming, and transmog farming etc.

I don’t need to say it, you get it. Now get going son!

[Galluccio]

Everyone seemingly tires of the hamster wheel and just throws in the towel. There’s no shame in it.

I got tired of tier sets for multiple alts and PVP sets for multiple alts and dailies, and mount farming, and transmog farming etc.

I don’t need to say it, you get it. Now get going son!

Agreed. I still log in from time to time though.

[digichi]

Yea I've had game buds who stuck it out til WoD quit from this (didn't play WoW for those systems and felt too game changing).

Not too susrprising, it is a change of pace for the game. Hopefully azerite in bfa is more passive, and the focus can be more on the talent choices on the gear (as halfway through legion, the talents in your wep didn't matter and the focus was on getting as much ap as possible for concordance and that jazz.)

[SirCowdog]

Everyone seemingly tires of the hamster wheel and just throws in the towel. There’s no shame in it.

I got tired of tier sets for multiple alts and PVP sets for multiple alts and dailies, and mount farming, and transmog farming etc.

I don’t need to say it, you get it. Now get going son!

I think a lot of what the op is expressing is regret that he can't find the will power to play "Fill the Bar" the MMO for another expansion, but also regret that it's what the game has become.

I mean, other than Suramar, Legion had almost zero innovation. There was no mystery or sense of wonder. It was just grinding that bar til it's full, then doing it again. And if BfA is more of the same(which it appears to be) then I really can't say I disagree with the OP.

[Fattypudds]

I certainly wont be doing any part of Pathfinder, some people are ultra casual and just want to do random battlegrounds, LFR, crafting and transmogging, adding unwanted grinding for Azerite is a big turnoff, and gating LFR for weeks is hugely insulting

[oland138]

I'm hoping the BfA changes to titanforging and removing set bonuses will make the grind feel a little better. It really sucks now only being able to upgrade a few pieces.

I kinda hope they make it so you grind azerite per armor piece (where you spend points on it or something), so you can just be done until a better piece drops (rather than having something like concordance).

[Granyala]

Everyone seemingly tires of the hamster wheel and just throws in the towel. There’s no shame in it.

Pretty much.
There is more to life than slaving away at a virtual second job.

[Super Kami Dende]

Legion is hardly an expansion long grind.

[schwarzkopf]

Don't do any grinding OP.

How about you just PLAY each expansion instead?

[Azrile]

I loved World of Warcraft all through WOTLK, Cata, Pandaria and WOD and I never thought I would find it annoying or frustrating. Sadly, this happened with Legion. I used to like just being able to log on and do some dailies, a daily heroic dungeon with friends for valour points and the odd night raiding with my guild.

The game has been like that since the beginning, ask players how many times they ran Strat. Players can consume content much faster than developers can produce it, so the only business model that works is for the devs to require players to do the content a huge amount of times. Where the game lost me was the tail end of WOTLK where the devs made the grind so systematic and obvious to the point where you can basically calculate in advance how many times you would need to run the content to achieve your goals. It made the grind more obvious to players.

I stopped playing at the beginning of WoD mainly for that reason. It was apparent the leveling content was an afterthought and the ´real´ game began at level cap. In the earlier expansions, leveling was fun, and running alts through the leveling content felt interesting. In WoD, I got my main to cap and then cringed at the thought of either running alts through the content OR grinding my main through very obvious grinds.

[Volitar]

Don't do any grinding OP.

How about you just PLAY each expansion instead?

In Legion its the same thing.

[Azelas]

it happens. Imo if you wanna play BfA take a break NOW. It's perfect, the expansion is done, then you come back for the pre-patch with all the BfA hype.

But yes it's understandable that you got tired. I personally quit midway through Nighthold cuz the 54 trait grind pre-Nighthold absolutely killed me.

[Deleted]

I mean, other than Suramar, Legion had almost zero innovation. There was no mystery or sense of wonder. It was just grinding that bar til it's full, then doing it again. And if BfA is more of the same(which it appears to be) then I really can't say I disagree with the OP.

You seem to have missed the launch; whole communities formed trying to figure out secrets of the expansion... it's the 1st time since vanilla i've seen that happen.

Ergo: there was more mystery and sense of wonder in Legion we ever had with any expansion if you didn't miss the train that is...

[Deleted]

But you really don't have to grind that much. I have two jobs, little time, but still was able to clear everything on normal (except for ToV but i didn't like that raid much). Sure, it might have not been on opening day or even week for that raid. But the raids have four difficulties now. The thing is: if you want to do heroic/mythic, yes, you will have to grind. But that has been the case forever (even worse, in BC you had to grind like hell to even step foot in endgame). So actually, they did cater to people who grew with the game, as you don't have to do weekly +15 M+ to be able to clear normal. You can, but you don't have to.
You either accept your options and set a realistic goal in game for your availability, or get frustrated and quit. It's up to you

[SirCowdog]

You seem to have missed the launch; whole communities formed trying to figure out secrets of the expansion... it's the 1st time since vanilla i've seen that happen.

Ergo: there was more mystery and sense of wonder in Legion we ever had with any expansion if you didn't miss the train that is...

I was there for launch. It was the exact same hype as every launch and it lasted just as long. Which is to say: Not very.

Also, I shouldn't need to point out the flaw with front loading all the wonder and basing it in a hype train. Withholding information from the players until they continue to pay for additional months of sub because unlocking it requires exhausting rep grinds and time gates isn't the same as actually building a sense of wonder. It's just content stretching, which is exactly the source and cause of the fatigue the OP described.

[Auxora]

I think taking it even a notch further, it seemed like Legion had grinds that more often than not ended up giving rewards that were too quickly obsolete. I also agree that the artifact talents weren't handled very well, since early into Legion it became more about just unlocking them all than a strategic choice. The main thing is that the grinds in Legion mostly ended up feeling forced rather than natural (1k Waning Essence for example). A grind can be fun or it can feel tedious like getting groceries off a shopping list at the grocery store...

The big question will be can the devs take current wow and take it 1 or 2 notches closer to great. It's close, closer than it's been in quite a few expansions. What I want to see in BfA is less tedium and more magic that made Kara or SSC feel like it did when it was new, wpvp areas that are as fun as Nagrand was in BC rather than just a few goofy pvp WQ areas thrown in, the feels of the LK and ICC, etc. Sticking a WQ tower in a zone where no one fights isn't really capturing the good times of Plaguelands towers in vanilla or Nagrand in BC. In a lot of ways it's the same issues as Ashran had in wod that Legion had in other areas. It was a great idea and I loved to see the borrowing/nodding to popular wow times like vanilla AV, but then it was tripped up on dull execution.

[Shelly]

You know how that bar just hardly moved at all?

Yeah, that was the thing saying "stop now, you probably won't have fun."

In other words you wouldn't have been behind "dedicated Dan" all that much just playing like you normally play.

All that grind was all in your head. You were doing MORE than enough to be current in artifact level.

I can understand how you are feeling frustrated and worried about the necklace, but since you know that your playstyle is such that you'll grind I'd suggest self-monitoring to make sure that the game doesn't turn into a grind for you.

The problem isn't the system, it's how you reacted to it.

[Lilixer]

The whole thing was I enjoyed the casualness of the game, not having to do much to be viable in raids or whatever. I think that Blizzard underestimates the importance of that because people who have grown with the game are now much older and have more responsibilities and can't dedicate time to grinding so much. Plus grinding is not innovative game play, just repeating the same thing over and over and it breeds frustration and burn out. Oh look the harpies need killing the woods again! Some little narrative from someone about it, Same mobs needing to be killed, just did it yesterday and while I was levelling but oh lets do it again for 30th time!

Except the game is more catered to casual gameplay than it was through the entirety of Wrath, Cata, MoP, WoD which you said you really enjoyed