One of the big problem with WoW nowadays is the lack of sense of progress

[Dizson]

The real problem with WoW nowadays is that your progression feels more fake than ever. You never feel strong, you never feel like you achieved something, only your ilvl increases which only let you do the same content on a more "difficult level" with few added mechanics and bigger numbers, and even if you do those, you will be afk sitting because you can't take advantage of your hard earned gear anywhere. Everyone just feel the same, everyone is equal etc. The catchup mechanism adds to this, why bother farming things when someone can do the same in 1 week that you did for months like farming Azerite, and I don't think the current WQ, Island Expedition, Warmode, Mythic+ daily for months is so fun that it's worth subbing for. The outside world scales, gear in PvP barely matters It's a repeated cycle but in the worst way. At least in vanilla, tbc, even wotlk, your character felt unique because everyone had so many different build/gear, when you get one piece of upgrade you felt like you are better now, you felt accomplishment. You went out and you felt strong.
On a side note the different difficulties of dungeons, raids totally ruins the immersion for me. There is no such thing as a big bad enemy, who is powerful, I just do some raid finder and kill the big bad guy like Gul'Dan in 1 min taking 0 dmg. That's why raids like MC Ragnaros, Onyxia felt partly epic.

[Hitei]

The real problem with WoW nowadays is that your progression feels more fake than ever. You never feel strong, you never feel like you achieved something, only your ilvl increases which only let you do the same content on a more "difficult level" with few added mechanics and bigger numbers, and even if you do those, you will be afk sitting because you can't take advantage of your hard earned gear anywhere. Everyone just feel the same, everyone is equal etc. The catchup mechanism adds to this, why bother farming things when someone can do the same in 1 week that you did for months like farming Azerite, and I don't think the current WQ, Island Expedition, Warmode, Mythic+ daily for months is so fun that it's worth subbing for. The outside world scales, gear in PvP barely matters It's a repeated cycle but in the worst way. At least in vanilla, tbc, even wotlk, your character felt unique because everyone had so many different build/gear, when you get one piece of upgrade you felt like you are better now, you felt accomplishment. You went out and you felt strong.
On a side note the different difficulties of dungeons, raids totally ruins the immersion for me. There is no such thing as a big bad enemy, who is powerful, I just do some raid finder and kill the big bad guy like Gul'Dan in 1 min taking 0 dmg. That's why raids like MC Ragnaros, Onyxia felt partly epic.

Pretty insightful and original points, thank you for bringing these to our attention.

[Dizson]

Pretty insightful and original points, thank you for bringing these to our attention.

No problem, I hope others feel the same.

[Louz]

The real problem with WoW nowadays is that your progression feels more fake than ever. You never feel strong, you never feel like you achieved something, only your ilvl increases which only let you do the same content on a more "difficult level" with few added mechanics and bigger numbers, and even if you do those, you will be afk sitting because you can't take advantage of your hard earned gear anywhere. Everyone just feel the same, everyone is equal etc. The catchup mechanism adds to this, why bother farming things when someone can do the same in 1 week that you did for months like farming Azerite, and I don't think the current WQ, Island Expedition, Warmode, Mythic+ daily for months is so fun that it's worth subbing for. The outside world scales, gear in PvP barely matters It's a repeated cycle but in the worst way. At least in vanilla, tbc, even wotlk, your character felt unique because everyone had so many different build/gear, when you get one piece of upgrade you felt like you are better now, you felt accomplishment. You went out and you felt strong.
On a side note the different difficulties of dungeons, raids totally ruins the immersion for me. There is no such thing as a big bad enemy, who is powerful, I just do some raid finder and kill the big bad guy like Gul'Dan in 1 min taking 0 dmg. That's why raids like MC Ragnaros, Onyxia felt partly epic.

You, sir, win the internets! Upvoted and subscribed!#FireBobbyKotick

[Dizson]

You, sir, win the internets! Upvoted and subscribed!#FireBobbyKotick

Thank you I guess we are on the same page then.

[Dizson]

I wish wow had as much sense of progression as MMO-C forums seem to give some people

#Chaud4ActiCEO

Yeah Blizzard sure really read this forum to get ideas sometimes.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

It kinda sounds like you just don’t want to progress and just want to do lfr then blame the game for it.

[Dizson]

It kinda sounds like you just don’t want to progress and just want to do lfr then blame the game for it.

No, I don't want to do LFR, I want to do content that is well built up instead of doing the same thing 4 times and then you can't even be proud of your mythic gear because the value of it so bad.
It's like in Dark Souls, it's okay if you beat the game, but nobody gives a shit about NG+. Same in WoW hurr durr you get higher ilvl that nobody really cares about since it's just a number you can't do anything useful or unique with... I'm not going to farm azerite just to see 1-2 new mechanics per boss and higher numbers. It's a shit game design. When people killed Ragnaros, Onyxia, or did Naxx, that was something worth grinding for and being proud of, and you felt unique doing it. These bosses also carried some epicness because of it, now you kill Gul'Dan a big lore character in LFR in 1 min without taking damage. Just how stupid it is.

[Calfredd]

now you kill Gul'Dan a big lore character in LFR in 1 min without taking damage. Just how stupid it is.

You sure that was LFR?

[cparle87]

No, I don't want to do LFR, I want to do content that is well built up instead of doing the same thing 4 times and then you can't even be proud of your mythic gear because the value of it so bad.
It's like in Dark Souls, it's okay if you beat the game, but nobody gives a shit about NG+. Same in WoW hurr durr you get higher ilvl that nobody really cares about since it's just a number you can't do anything useful or unique with... I'm not going to farm azerite just to see 1-2 new mechanics per boss and higher numbers. It's a shit game design. When people killed Ragnaros, Onyxia, or did Naxx, that was something worth grinding for and being proud of, and you felt unique doing it. These bosses also carried some epicness because of it, now you kill Gul'Dan a big lore character in LFR in 1 min without taking damage. Just how stupid it is.

Less stupid than less than 1% of players even seeing Kel'thuzad or Kil'jaeden BECAUSE there was only one "either you can do it or you can't" difficulty. Blizz flat out told us that the budget for the raiding department was getting slashed pretty heavily because it wasn't making up for the investment to even make the raids with the number of people who were seeing them. Look at Cataclysm. The entire first tier complete reused the art assets from other places; half of the second tier was removed and the other half was, again, reused assets entirely; and the third tier was also completely recycled. Lo and behold we get LFR in Dragon Soul, and things begin to turn around quite quickly with the variety and quality of raids in MoP.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

No, I don't want to do LFR, I want to do content that is well built up instead of doing the same thing 4 times and then you can't even be proud of your mythic gear because the value of it so bad.
It's like in Dark Souls, it's okay if you beat the game, but nobody gives a shit about NG+. Same in WoW hurr durr you get higher ilvl that nobody really cares about since it's just a number you can't do anything useful or unique with... I'm not going to farm azerite just to see 1-2 new mechanics per boss and higher numbers. It's a shit game design. When people killed Ragnaros, Onyxia, or did Naxx, that was something worth grinding for and being proud of, and you felt unique doing it. These bosses also carried some epicness because of it, now you kill Gul'Dan a big lore character in LFR in 1 min without taking damage. Just how stupid it is.

You don’t need to do lfr or even normal, you can easily go right into heroic then into mythic just howYou have always been able to since heroic versions were a thing. If you are going though lfr or even normal before heroic that’s soly on you and your guild not the game.

[Alkizon]

just a remark
While you aren't deep into discussion... don't forget difference between progress and content. It’s not that I want to blame someone who have already written, but I just don’t want it to turn into yet another skirmish of emotional opinions based on lack of information.

and now... go on

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Less stupid than less than 1% of players even seeing Kel'thuzad or Kil'jaeden BECAUSE there was only one "either you can do it or you can't" difficulty. Blizz flat out told us that the budget for the raiding department was getting slashed pretty heavily because it wasn't making up for the investment to even make the raids with the number of people who were seeing them. Look at Cataclysm. The entire first tier complete reused the art assets from other places; half of the second tier was removed and the other half was, again, reused assets entirely; and the third tier was also completely recycled. Lo and behold we get LFR in Dragon Soul, and things begin to turn around quite quickly with the variety and quality of raids in MoP.

I don’t quite get what your trying to say about cata raiding both the first tier and the second had a fair amount of new assets. First tier has new golems new hydra updates Nef and ony and new sinestra, If you looked at the interos there are Proabbly a lot of new stuff in them as well. Then you have fire lands which was filled to the brim with new stuff with almost every boss being new and only really the trash being things from other places which is comparable to most raids.

[PuppetShowJustice]

You sure that was LFR?

I mean, you can queue for Gul'dan LFR in Dalaran. By yourself. And kill him ultra fast. And his mechanics don't even phase you at 120. So yes?

[Mightytasty]

They should split end game raiding into two modes; Progression and Seasonal.

Seasonal:
-Enter the current season’s newest raid instance and toggle Seasonal mode
-Upon the first time entering the instance you will receive a set of gear of appropriate iLvl
-Gear upgrades are only active within that instance. Every guild is on a level playing field. Outside (Progression) gear cannot be worn. Seasonal mode will remember what you were wearing if you exit the instance and go back in.
-Outside of the instance, your gear changes back to your Progression gear
-You can progress through the current Season’s raid’s 3 difficulty levels: normal heroic and mythic
-New seasons begin 3 weeks after Progression to not interfere with Progression world first. This means there will be two world first races each tier: Seasonal rewarding skill and Progression rewarding more time investment & outside grinding.

Progression:
-The default
-Basically vanilla progression, each raid has one difficulty and newer Tiers are harder than previous
-LFR is now a tourist mode, showcasing every available raid with rewards 15 iLvls lower than Tier 1. All LFR gear from each raid is the same iLvl.

[Cracked]

What if this is an elaborate social study on how the society would look and feel if people were more equal?

[elynos]

not sure what you mean by feeling accomplishment. feels the same as always for me but with more to do.

[sam86]

u are wrong in 1 big thing, it isn't fake, we ARE regressing, when u had more spells and power and talents and abilities in wrath than in BFA, that is a big sign of f8cked up state we are in now, does anyone EVER liked prunning ? did i miss the single guy who couldn't wait to lvl to lose more abilities and powers in RPG ? to lock away and never have again abilities he had sometimes for years like hammer of wrath or even simple healing in dps spec ?
of all things in wow that ever happened (yes even counting LFG), pruning is the only thing i yet to find someone who supported it, pruning is universally hated, yet actiblizz stood their ground on it, don't talk or even mention it, act like it is beloved and move on, even if that feature is literally the only thing i can name that everyone in entire game history is hated since day 1 and no one wants it
BFA comes after legendaries reworking talents, artifact active and passives, it made me feel the weakest since ever

tldr: it isn't 'sense', it is fact, we are regressing, bfa the so-called 120 lvl u have regressed way worse than even TBC era, maybe only vanilla had fewer abilities/spells for some classes (warlock had sh8tload of curses for example that i doubt bfa outnumber his number of spells, yeah they were situational but that is literally RPG, 2-3 core spells and many situational)

[Echocho]

The real problem with WoW nowadays is that your progression feels more fake than ever. You never feel strong, you never feel like you achieved something, only your ilvl increases which only let you do the same content on a more "difficult level" with few added mechanics and bigger numbers, and even if you do those, you will be afk sitting because you can't take advantage of your hard earned gear anywhere. Everyone just feel the same, everyone is equal etc. The catchup mechanism adds to this, why bother farming things when someone can do the same in 1 week that you did for months like farming Azerite, and I don't think the current WQ, Island Expedition, Warmode, Mythic+ daily for months is so fun that it's worth subbing for. The outside world scales, gear in PvP barely matters It's a repeated cycle but in the worst way. At least in vanilla, tbc, even wotlk, your character felt unique because everyone had so many different build/gear, when you get one piece of upgrade you felt like you are better now, you felt accomplishment. You went out and you felt strong.
On a side note the different difficulties of dungeons, raids totally ruins the immersion for me. There is no such thing as a big bad enemy, who is powerful, I just do some raid finder and kill the big bad guy like Gul'Dan in 1 min taking 0 dmg. That's why raids like MC Ragnaros, Onyxia felt partly epic.

Agreed. The only reason (for the vast majority) to join a guild and tackle more difficult versions of the same content they're already doing is the gear advantage. The problem is that it's a short lived advantage that doesn't really matter in the end.

Let's say you were a mythic raider in 8.0 and got a full set of 385-gear, 8.1 completely invalidated all that progress by offering 385 gear from world quests. What took you months to achieve is now available to everyone at a fraction of the time and effort.

What's worse is that it's pointless gear, it only really affects your performance in the multiple difficulties of dungeons and raids. The outside world scales to you, other players scale to you. What's the point in progressing your character?

A good start would be to only have catch-up mechanics to catch you up to the entry level content (normal raids) which in this case would have been iLvl 355.

I also think that you should be incentivized to continue progressing at your chosen difficulty when a new tier comes out. It doesn't make any sense at all for normal BoD to offer upgrades over heroic Uldir for example, at the most they should be equal. Being "forced" (because of gear upgrades) to start off every tier by clearing the raid at a trivial difficulty kills the sense of progression.

[Armourboy]

Less stupid than less than 1% of players even seeing Kel'thuzad or Kil'jaeden BECAUSE there was only one "either you can do it or you can't" difficulty. Blizz flat out told us that the budget for the raiding department was getting slashed pretty heavily because it wasn't making up for the investment to even make the raids with the number of people who were seeing them. Look at Cataclysm. The entire first tier complete reused the art assets from other places; half of the second tier was removed and the other half was, again, reused assets entirely; and the third tier was also completely recycled. Lo and behold we get LFR in Dragon Soul, and things begin to turn around quite quickly with the variety and quality of raids in MoP.

There can be a middle ground, the design doesn't need to be one extreme or the other.