No reason to return if you haven't already been playing

[Soon-TM]

Lol, "minimal grinding". 1-55 in Wrath was a shit ton more time investment than any individual allied race takes.

Lolno. 1-60 levelling was nerfed to hell and back in 2.3, and 3.0 classes were able to steamroll anything in the old world, even in crap gear. So, no.

[rrayy]

This is a true statement. I was super excited to play a Z troll. I was ready to pay to swap my hunter. I was ready.

I am no longer subbed (got bored) and do not plan on coming back when Z trolls finally do drop, some day.

- - - Updated - - -



I'm not sure I agree with you on this. The design for WoW is to "earn" the right to enjoy playing WoW ... every three months. It's an outdated model.

Earning a cool mount from a raid or pvp achievement is awesome and rewarding. "Earning" a high enough iLvl to be granted admission to the rest of the game feels empty -- especially when all that you earn is made pointless in the next patch. This is exponentially worse for PvP.

It's 2019. Blizzard can do better. Problem is... they aren't interested in making the game as good as possible. They are interested in making it as profitable as possible.

Handing everything to you on a silver platter for nothing does not a good game make. No point in playing the game at all if everything is handed to you

BTW, I have never had to earn the right to enjoy playing WoW. I have enjoyment every moment I play it. That is your entitlement talking.

[Boricha]

Yeah i preferred attunements or difficulty-gating to outright time-gating. I haven't had to deal with Allied races that I didn't already have unlocked long before release, but I'm not currently playing so I suppose it may happen if I return in the future.

[Druitz]

no reason to return becauae of allied race? rly? you dont even need them. ita more like cosmetic reward for those who earned them. racials? a lot of old racials are better than allied race racials like shadowmeld in pvp.

i just hope they will never give something like alied race or pathfinder for free.

[Methodd]

You could only get rep off trash until you hit revered. Once you hit revered the only thing that gave rep were Majordormo Executus and Ragnaros for 500 each. To get to exalted from revered, you had to run MC 21 times. Since you could only run it once a week, it took you a minimum of 21 weeks to get from revered to exalted. That is the most extreme time gate in the entire game and still in there to this day though they changed it to spread the 1000 rep over all bosses instead of just the last two.

I guess you can go with this, but if I remember right you don't get any rewards from being exalted. So technically you aren't getting time gated from anything.

[Jibjub]

Handing everything to you on a silver platter for nothing does not a good game make. No point in playing the game at all if everything is handed to you

BTW, I have never had to earn the right to enjoy playing WoW. I have enjoyment every moment I play it. That is your entitlement talking.

I don't think you understand my argument. Gear is not "earning" anything. Your numbers goes up, the bad guys' number goes up ... it's an illusion of reward.

Cool mount and cosmetics can be rewards. But gear you just get by playing enough. You didn't really EARN anything. Unless by "earned" you mean "played a lot" then I can go along with you.

At the end of the day, fun should be the reward. If you cannot enjoy WoW without getting an item that makes you do a little more damage, then you probably don't actually like the game. When I played tetris, I didn't to earn shit to feel like my time was worth it. It was a fun game. It SOUNDS like you like the little dopamine hits that your brain gives off for "earning" stuff.

I am not talking about welfare epics. And I'm not sure where your idea of entitlement came from. Maybe its a kneejerk response you give when people disagree with you? I am talking about an entire paradigm shift where Blizzard stops realizing on tricking your brain into thinking you like the game (with gear and AP power and that garbage) and instead they started designing a fun game that people WANT to play for the fun of it and not for the shinies.

[Hitei]

Lolno. 1-60 levelling was nerfed to hell and back in 2.3, and 3.0 classes were able to steamroll anything in the old world, even in crap gear. So, no.

I am well aware of the nerfs. Even including them, 1-55 was far more time spent playing a second character you didn't need than any allied race unlock is.

[Claymore]

To be clear; new races are *NOT* a "reward", because you don't magically get a choice to convert an existing character over to them. You A) have to pay money for a race change (which currently also bars you from getting the Heritage armor), or B) have to start a new character from scratch, thus completely undermining any previous effort put into an existing character (maybe this is less of an option if you're new to the game, and don't already have one of every class).

It seems to me that Allied Races have kind of a hodge-podge of different, competing design elements, and for me, it's just not working. And this is particularly problematic for players who aren't currently playing, because not only are you already behind the curve, but if you had any interest in one of the new Allied Races, then you're hell-and-gone from being able to play one.

[CritFromAfar]

Grinding reputation can be a chore, and can be monotonous, but in the long wrong people feel a greater sense of accomplishment when they actually worked hard to earn their reward rather than doing hardly anything and being rewarded for it. (Also, people love bragging about the ways they find to cheese these things. It makes them feel smarter.)

It's not so much that it's gated so much as Blizz took something that was automatically given previously and made it so that it's not automatically given anymore, and it's not even for that big of a change/reward, either.

As to what they were thinking or why they did it, I have no idea. I don't like the dance moves of the newer races, though.

[Wildberry]

How are people still defending the Allied Race system? It's bad on a foundational level.

Any system which puts players in a situation where they either:
A.) Do the content on a character they don’t want to play, in order to do it all over again on a character they do want to play
B.) Hand Blizzard money

is a bad system. Period.

[msdos]

Comparing attunements and resist gear to arbitrary time gating doesn't make sense to me.

Back then, the guild would help you do attunements, so it wasn't an issue whatsoever?? The MC attunement was a simple lava run through BRD, you just needed the knowledge. The BWL attunement was just complete UBRS. Onyxia attunement was guild tailor???? Also we could bid on the resist gear with DKP or buy it with gold and you could buy it on the AH....

So no, not comparable to time gating whatsoever, unless you were just not a hardcore raider, then yeah, all that might've been rough.

[Whistl3r]

Omg Blizz stop making me do things to get rewards!

[Wildberry]

Omg Blizz stop making me do things to get rewards!

Yeah, players should put in effort to progress to the character they want to play, rather than put in effort to progress their character.

Great priorities!

[Whistl3r]

Yeah, players should put in effort to progress to the character they want to play, rather than put in effort to progress their character.

Great priorities!

you're unlocking something. My main I played for most of vanilla I really don't play anymore apart from to farm materials for my new mains professions. Same shit.

[Zantos]

With blizzard, it's only when they make sense apparently. So if they decide a story rework for the next patch is in order and they don't make sense anymore then bam pushed back again despite being an "expansion feature"

Honestly the kul'tiran / zandalari release is the biggest blunder blizzard has made in a while, that they don't see this is shocking.

They locked in the time frame now. They wont go back

These are also allied races. Just cosmetic for the most part. It gives you something to do in the game at max level.

[clevin]

Was editing to finish the post but it certainly did.

Quickest example is always attunements but those were also a small storyline so never felt as such to the majority but lets be honest, those werent as bad.

Thorium Brotherhoodrep is the same reasoning as allied races for the OP, you had to run MC how many times before the recipes became available?

Of course talking 2005, where we didnt know better to and everyone was horrible so they went the safe way since we didnt know better, and many similar examples.

TO me the main difference between something like Thorium Brotherhood and the rep for the allied races is that one gets you some nice recipes and the other unlocks things that were promoted a major features of the expansion (go look at the BfA page on blizzard.com and you'll see the allied race image with Zandalari and Kultirans literally front and center).

Now... neither are required to experience the rest of the content so in that sense both are optional... but they don't feel equivalent at all in terms of impact on the play. One allows you to craft a few sought after things. The other is your actual character's core being.

[Wildberry]

you're unlocking something. My main I played for most of vanilla I really don't play anymore apart from to farm materials for my new mains professions. Same shit.

Yeah, you're farming materials to progress your character.

That's a bit different from a system which puts players in a situation where they have to do content on a character they don't want to play, only to:
A.) Redo said content on the character they wanted to play all along
B.) Give money to Blizzard.

Putting in effort to progress your character is good. Putting effort in to progress to a character you actually want to play, in this format, is bad.

[hyphnos]

This is the biggest issue I have with Allied Races and how they are unlocked. They require a huge time-sink just to unlock the ability to start a new character, something that in the past was a compelling new feature included with expansions.

I really wonder what prompted Blizzards to design so much content around Rep grinds? Because as far as I'm aware, almost everyone hates grinding reputation.

Because their bosses want playtime up and apparently locking stupid ass races behind rep grinds generates hours played. I really doubt that this scheme will hold up long term because it will just wear people out. I fully expect that race unlocks will eventually be sold in the store and the excuse will be withholding the cultural armor and the unlocks are now "tool old" or some such crap.

Honestly I'm shocked they haven't done it already.

[Casperite]

MAUs padding, nothing more, nothing less. And yes, having 2/5 of the available races (after 8.1.5) unavailable for brand new players must be extremely offputting for them.

All of the allied races would be unavailable to brand new players. And how many brand new players are there really at this point in the game? My guess is not many at all, definitely not enough to justify this old arguement against how allied races are unlocked.

[Queen of Hamsters]

The assumption is probably that people logging in actually want to oh I don't know... play the game?
The forum "community" merely represents a tiny minority. The constant anti-WoW saps an even smaller one.