There is NO ilvl difference between 8/8M raiders and 0/8 M players

[Leodric]

I was wondering how long the "you're part of the minority" would be put forth. You have no way to validate how many people put emphasis on gear so honestly it's a vapid comment.

Considering getting gear is still the hugest part of WoW and back then was even more since there was basically no content besides raiding at the end game it is. When we look at the sub numbers and Blizzard introducing LFR you will see a steady decline since then.

Sports professionals NEED to stand out which makes the comparison rather baseless.

You can also take hobby football leagues where players don't get any money, it's the same thing.

I've already told you game quality is subjective. I don't know why you keep trying to convince me otherwise.

It is, I agree on that, but your game losing players steadily is a very big sign of declining game quality.

[Onikaroshi]

Because socket > ilvl? Come on guys...

You realize I was responding to someone saying that if they're "still 385 after 10s of mythic kills it's their fault" right?

[rohoz]

What am I reading , why did wow peak in expansions where you couldn't get gear from everywhere possible then?

wow peaked when you could get gear from the vendor

sad, really.

[Great Destiny Man]

Considering getting gear is still the hugest part of WoW and back then was even more since there was basically no content besides raiding at the end game it is. When we look at the sub numbers and Blizzard introducing LFR you will see a steady decline since then.

I thought we were done with bringing up sub numbers showing game decisions are bad? Or do you just want to keep throwing that up only when it's convenient? Honestly I'd prefer if you make a stand rather than non stop yo-yoing with this one.

Whether you consider getting gear the hugest part of WoW, the current dev team doesn't agree with this to a gear exclusivity point of view. I'm sure you'll spin this back to sub numbers though :P

You can also take hobby football leagues where players don't get any money, it's the same thing.

You specifically brought up exposure for footballers, where does exposure factor in to hobby football leagues?

It is, I agree on that, but your game losing players steadily is a very big sign of declining game quality.

And definitely not a sign of age of the game and changing playerbase. No siree, that has no effect.

[Onikaroshi]

wow peaked when you could get gear from the vendor

sad, really.

That vendor gear took a lot more effort and time then people give it credit for.

[Bhorin]

What's funny is more people quit during Vanilla/TBC than have quit in BFA.. the major difference is not everyone had tried the game at that point and people were joining faster than quitting, but now people are mostly only quitting (i.e. less people new to the game joining). Stop pretending like no one unsubbed during Vanilla/TBC or that people are only unsubbing due to the raid gear structure it's a desperate and foolish argument.

[brbshower]

It is absolutely pathetic to see that people with no Mythic progression what so ever (or at best Taloc/Mother in pugs) have the exact same ilvl as my main that progressed trough Udlir and now counts 44 mythic boss killed actually sitting at 385 ilvl. I also see that with my alts, my DH is 384 and rogue 385 ilvl, both are not even close to have the same time and effort invested of my main.

Truth is, Mythic raiding will only give you gear a little bit faster in this game, but at the end of the day: Blizzard is just throwing Mythic ilvl gear to everybody and for no reason. Just for the sake of everybody being equal, even if you don't do shit in this game they want you to be as geared a hardcore player.

This was already the case in Legion but in BFA this issue has just been so inflated it's seems like a parody. This game has gone to pure shit in every way possible it's fucking pathetic.

It's been like this since Vanilla. Or excuse me, TBC. New tier comes out, gear level goes up, naturally people progress. WTF else do you want?

[Leodric]

I thought we were done with bringing up sub numbers showing game decisions are bad? Or do you just want to keep throwing that up only when it's convenient? Honestly I'd prefer if you make a stand rather than non stop yo-yoing with this one.
Whether you consider getting gear the hugest part of WoW, the current dev team doesn't agree with this to a gear exclusivity point of view. I'm sure you'll spin this back to sub numbers though :P

I didn't see any arguments besides "no it's not" from your side, I think it's funny that you say that about the yo-yoing , talk about irony.
How do you know they don't agree upon this? Since nearly every content you do throws gear on you. Even standing AFK in a war front is giving you high-tier gear.

You specifically brought up exposure for footballers, where does exposure factor in to hobby football leagues?

Depends where you are from. I live in Austria, nearly each couple of village have their own football league. It does give you exposure to people playing infront of all and winning.

And definitely not a sign of age of the game and changing playerbase. No siree, that has no effect.

It does have an affect on it, if you would have carefully read my posts, I said twice already that there are other factors as regarding sub loss.

[MoanaLisa]

That vendor gear took a lot more effort and time then people give it credit for.

Yeah, it did. But it was deterministic and that appealed greatly to the "WoW is hard work" crowd. It was a good system. You could choose to do that or not. Apparently people don't enjoy RNG bonus rolls which means that Blizzard should simply eliminate them.

It's been a little surprising that everyone wants progression locked at some BiS levels with no room for anything better. Very happy that I could not give two fucks about any of that any longer. Just playing and accepting whatever happens is much, much better than either grinds or desperately praying for some low-chance RNG proc that everyone apparently presumes they deserve.

[Onikaroshi]

Yeah, it did. But it was deterministic and that appealed greatly to the "WoW is hard work" crowd. It was a good system. You could choose to do that or not. Apparently people don't enjoy RNG bonus rolls which means that Blizzard should simply eliminate them.

It's been a little surprising that everyone wants progression locked at some BiS levels with no room for anything better. Very happy that I could not give two fucks about any of that any longer. Just playing and accepting whatever happens is much, much better than either grinds or desperately praying for some low-chance RNG proc that everyone apparently presumes they deserve.

I'm not going to argue with you because we have already established we view the game in two different ways. Just going to say that BiS was great because you could go in knowing what you wanted, get it after a couple of months of raiding and be done for the tier, take a break til next tier, whatever. Now you can never break, it's one tier to the next, to the next, to the next and it burns people out. Though it's not all TF and WF fault, it's AP grinds and such too.

But yea, Emblems were a much better system. You didn't really need to grind if you didn't want to, you'd eventually get it just by playing the game.

[Luchanka]

Someone here needs to feel like a special flower, attention seeking much? pathetic indeed.
It has been 4 months or so since the raid releases, ofcourse players will be able to catch up with Warfronts, M+ Chests etc since there is only up to 385 you can get in Uldir. How dumb can one be?

[Great Destiny Man]

I didn't see any arguments besides "no it's not" from your side, I think it's funny that you say that about the yo-yoing , talk about irony.
How do you know they don't agree upon this? Since nearly every content you do throws gear on you. Even standing AFK in a war front is giving you high-tier gear.

My arguments are about my own experience, not trying to pull raw sub data and trying to make it fit a narrative. If I went by raw sub numbers MoP was a worse expansion than Cataclysm, so let's have that sink in a bit shall we.

Also that's not what irony means :P

Depends where you are from. I live in Austria, nearly each couple of village have their own football league. It does give you exposure to people playing infront of all and winning.

I'm not sure how many times I have to repeat myself here. Even if hobby football leagues were playing for exposure (which is a laughable concept) it is not a tangible reward like gear is. This is not a suitable comparison in any way, shape or form.

It does have an affect on it, if you would have carefully read my posts, I said twice already that there are other factors as regarding sub loss.

No you keep pointing to sub numbers as "a big sign" while dismissing the effects of age and changing playerbase as having significant effect on the game. I have carefully read your posts each and every time but you fail to come up with any compelling argument beyond "look at the sub numbers!".

[MoanaLisa]

Now you can never break, it's one tier to the next, to the next, to the next and it burns people out.

See, I would disagree with that. This thread is all about how easy it is to take that break and catch up later. Aside from that, we don't disagree as much as you think. It is sometimes very startling to see people posting stuff here about how in thrall they are to capturing every single RNG bonus and can't stop until they either do or burn out. I agree it's unhealthy. I also think it's unnecessary and a sign of a socially very sick raiding community. Playing the game until you burn out is a sign that personal priorities need realigning.

[Onikaroshi]

See, I would disagree with that. This thread is all about how easy it is to take that break and catch up later. Aside from that, we don't disagree as much as you think. It is sometimes very startling to see people posting stuff here about how in thrall people are to capturing every single RNG bonus. I agree it's unhealthy. I also think it's unnecessary and a sign of a socially very sick raiding community.

The people who say things about taking a break and catchup later aren't really in the competitive scene then, most top 500 guilds are setting (rather stupid, yes) AP level requirements for BoD. It's the raiding scenes fault yes, but it's also partly the games fault for changing in a way to reward more play time.

In the lower end you can often take breaks, but for some people, like my wife and I, taking a break means our guild died.

[Great Destiny Man]

The people who say things about taking a break and catchup later aren't really in the competitive scene then, most top 500 guilds are setting (rather stupid, yes) AP level requirements for BoD. It's the raiding scenes fault yes, but it's also partly the games fault for changing in a way to reward more play time.

Those in the top brackets will always get every edge they can to ensure their top spots, that's never really changed. Whether the game encouraged them to or not, they'd still be grinding their asses off with something. Outside of the top 500 it's fairly relaxed due to the fact that eventually the AP catchups will kick in and make sure everyone has a decent chance of getting it.

Hell I took AP farming extremely casually since I hit level 30 and I'm already at level 36. Once AP catchups kick in again then I can slowly acquire the outer rings of heroic/mythic azerite pieces (and even then, the effect of the defensive ring and the +5ilvl one is fairly minor).

[MoanaLisa]

The people who say things about taking a break and catchup later aren't really in the competitive scene then, most top 500 guilds are setting (rather stupid, yes) AP level requirements for BoD. It's the raiding scenes fault yes, but it's also partly the games fault for changing in a way to reward more play time.

I'm not a big fan of people blaming the game or Blizzard due to their own inability to know when to stop. I understand it. It's why I preach a lot about it here.

In the lower end you can often take breaks, but for some people, like my wife and I, taking a break means our guild died.

I sympathize with this. During the years when I was raiding we were lucky to have a very corporate (in a good way) as opposed to military style of guild management. Responsibilities were spread around and for the most part the guild survived fairly well because of that when people took breaks. Same guild from late BC, through Wrath and then through T11. Cataclysm broke the back of a lot of things, the guild scattered and I stopped raiding after T11.

To this day though relationships from that guild still exist and our once-a-week casual M+ group is usually a majority from that time.

Nice chatting with you in a sort of non-confrontational way. It's OK for people to disagree. I would rather talk with people than argue. Best regards.

[Onikaroshi]

Those in the top brackets will always get every edge they can to ensure their top spots, that's never really changed. Whether the game encouraged them to or not, they'd still be grinding their asses off with something. Outside of the top 500 it's fairly relaxed due to the fact that eventually the AP catchups will kick in and make sure everyone has a decent chance of getting it.

Hell I took AP farming extremely casually since I hit level 30 and I'm already at level 36. Once AP catchups kick in again then I can slowly acquire the outer rings of heroic/mythic azerite pieces (and even then, the effect of the defensive ring and the +5ilvl one is fairly minor).

At least they made the +5 slightly better now as opposed to JUST 5 ilvl

[Great Destiny Man]

At least they made the +5 slightly better now as opposed to JUST 5 ilvl

I guess, but if you're outside the top 500 bracket there's still little reason to go overboard with AP grinding just to get it.

[Onikaroshi]

I guess, but if you're outside the top 500 bracket there's still little reason to go overboard with AP grinding just to get it.

Even then, there isn't. Because you're not going to hit anything valuable reasonably. I've heard of some guilds asking for 40... which doesn't even hit anything and will just burn people out. You can get both class rings on mythic gear with 33, 38 will get you the 3rd ring. But that's assuming you even GET mythic azerite gear the first week of mythic.

[rohoz]

That vendor gear took a lot more effort and time then people give it credit for.

no, no it didn't.

It was a catchup mechanic using easy-to-acquire currency

It's always fun doing easy content to get mad strong.

- - - Updated - - -

At least they made the +5 slightly better now as opposed to JUST 5 ilvl

the+5 always increased the potency of the other traits, it just didn't display it in the +5 ring.
Your main traits always got a damage increase due to the itemlevel increase.