Preach on the broken gear treadmill

[justandulas]

The price for a gear reset is never to high. The alternative would be the uncatchable gear deficit most MMO's got.

You don't want to AP grind your neck each tier? How about Player A is 2 years ahead of you and keeps playing at 2, 3 or 10 times the amount each day you can spare.

Whats more worse, 1 hour a week to keep up with the "HUGE AMOUNT OF AP GRIND" or no gear/ap resets every tier?

I don't think that's what he meant. I think he meant the azerite rings/traits themselves are boring and didn't get exciting. That blizzard should at least replace azerite gear with NEW azerite gear/traits.

He wasn't asking for an EVE online situation, i don't think. I took it more as an azerite gear rewarding the SAME abilities you got 6 months ago on lesser azerite gear; not the neck grind. Just how boring/repetitive it is to receive the same exact traits all expac long.

[Ange]

I took it more as an azerite gear rewarding the SAME abilities you got 6 months ago on lesser azerite gear; not the neck grind. Just how boring/repetitive it is to receive the same exact traits all expac long.

In that case it would be even worse to ask for something we just watched fail in LEGION. You want broken legendarys back with RNG for months/years of playtime? It worked out for 2 months till everyone screemed for a nerf of the "good" legendarys because the whole system was stupid with RNG.

Azerite is the nerfed-legendary system we got a middle-solution for the broken system KaPe seems to ask for.

Thats not even half a year ago, people should at least remember the mistakes from the last expansion. ^^

[justandulas]

In that case it would be even worse to ask for something we just watched fail in LEGION. You want broken legendarys back with RNG for months/years of playtime? It worked out for 2 months till everyone screemed for a nerf of the "good" legendarys because the whole system was stupid with RNG.

Azerite is the nerfed-legendary system we got a middle-solution for the broken system KaPe seems to ask for.

Thats not even half a year ago, people should at least remember the mistakes from the last expansion. ^^

I just don't think we are gonna see eye to on this topic, and that's ok.

I personally loved the legendary system in Legion. Legion was my favorite expac since WOTLK, no doubt about that. You truly felt powerful. And they nailed the legendary system towards the end being able to target whichever you wanted.

I'd personally take exciting legendary's, with a flawed RNG system.. than this static azerite gear that's all too samey, and TBH, boring because of it.

Just my 2 cents though, and if you disagree that's cool too. I'll just always taken broken fun, over perfectly balanced boredom.

[Gaidax]

In that case it would be even worse to ask for something we just watched fail in LEGION. You want broken legendarys back with RNG for months/years of playtime? It worked out for 2 months till everyone screemed for a nerf of the "good" legendarys because the whole system was stupid with RNG.

Azerite is the nerfed-legendary system we got a middle-solution for the broken system KaPe seems to ask for.

Thats not even half a year ago, people should at least remember the mistakes from the last expansion. ^^

It's ok you are talking to a person who can take failed concepts from previous expansions and try to sell them as pinnacle of game design while in same breath shit on systems that existed forever as if they are some sort of new thing that apparently destroys WoW.

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I just don't think we are gonna see eye to on this topic, and that's ok.

Of course you don't see eye-to-eye with people, because you try to push a total hogwash, tiptoeing around your idol youtuber.

[justandulas]

It's ok you are talking to a person who can take failed concepts from previous expansions and try to sell them as pinnacle of game design while in same breath shit on systems that existed forever as if they are some sort of new thing that apparently destroys WoW.

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Of course you don't see eye-to-eye with people, because you try to push a total hogwash, tiptoeing around your idol youtuber.

You are borderline delusional. I've stated, many times, that i'm not a big preach fan. I'm not even subbed to the guy, i just agreed with this one video. I've only corrected someone who mistook him for HeelVsBabyface.

You are very hostile to pretty much everyone in this thread who disagrees with you. If we don't tow the company line 100%, you attack us. For Days now you've been trolling this thread with very little to add other than "you are bad for not liking BFA" and tossing insults.

You need to grow up, you are the most immature person i've seen on MMO champ in some time.

[lockybalboa]

So to summarize, this fat turd is just qq-ing about not being allowed to be a special snowflake. "I am mythic raider only I am allowed to have good gear. The game should only revolve around snowflake raiders like me. Others can fuck off. Boohoo M+ players can't eat my cake. The cake's all mine boohoo~~"

[Mightytasty]

I mean I'm not going to go through and find each and every thread about him here, do a search function here if you must. They are often made here trust me it shouldn't be a hard find lol. Looking at his videos on his channel I can find several negative videos about BFA right off the bat. Granted BFA isn't exactly WoW's best expansion to date, and I guess when your youtube career is solely about WoW, it's bound to happen.

Fair enough he is nothing like the heelvsbabyface guy, but I would call Preach the 'diet coke' version of heel. Bellular and Taeliesan (idk how to say his name) are the main 2 I would say that are positive about WoW more than others.

Bellular releases more videos critical of BfA than Preach and it’s not close. I would consider Preach one of the few Blizzard “defenders” as he always seems to be taking their side when he is a guest on other shows. He’s pro-LFR, for example, and he gave a TON of praise to Legion. BfA isn’t cutting it for the majority of the player base and you are in denial if you think it didn’t hurt the brand for ActiBlizz.

[Daevied]

These ppl following wow rant youtubers makes me remember flatearthers lol

[ivus00]

Always the Preach on... whatever. Preach knows much less than he thinks he does. Every week the same story

[Gaidax]

You are very hostile to pretty much everyone in this thread who disagrees with you.

I have very low bullshit tolerance. There is "disagree" and there is "sprouting total loaded BS". Your "arguments" fall into latter part.

When you take things that existed in WoW since forever and try to spin them as some sort of "look what BfA did to me!" thing, that's simply a load of poppycock.

"Gear is +10 stats, I have multiple difficulties of same boss - damn you BfA for destroying raiding as we know it". Except this was a bloody thing since forever, it's just that you somehow now decided to crawl out and screech about it.

There are genuine things one can discuss about BfA, for example GCD or class design or IE/Warfronts not being up to snuff or questionable story/lore, but that? Really now?


Though seeing your post history, damn... no wonder you really spent a looong time utterly shitting on the game, so I guess it's a habit. A hobby at this point.

[justandulas]

I have very low bullshit tolerance. There is "disagree" and there is "sprouting total loaded BS". Your "arguments" fall into latter part.

When you take things that existed in WoW since forever and try to spin them as some sort of "look what BfA did to me!" thing, that's simply a load of poppycock.

"Gear is +10 stats, I have multiple difficulties of same boss - damn you BfA for destroying raiding as we know it". Except this was a bloody thing since forever, it's just that you somehow now decided to crawl out and screech about it.

There are genuine things one can discuss about BfA, for example GCD or class design or IE/Warfronts not being up to snuff or questionable story/lore, but that? Really now?


Though seeing your post history, damn... no wonder you really spent a looong time utterly shitting on the game, so I guess it's a habit. A hobby at this point.

I just happen to prefer Legion's legendary systems over Azerite armor, and i prefer older WoW systems to current.

I'm excited for classic, but haven't been hostile to those who enjoy BFA. I've said we just like two diff styles of the game, and we can agree to disagree.

[Gaidax]

I just happen to prefer Legion's legendary systems over Azerite armor, and i prefer older WoW systems to current.

If you mean Artifact there then yes, Artifact is better than Azerite, especially due to story and mechanics of borrowed ability and talents. I can see what they wanted to do with Azerite and concept was good (you choose what you want, instead of static), but execution is very lacking plagued with issues both balance and availability.

Old WoW systems and I assume Vanilla are a decrepit mess that has no right to exist in 2019 as simple as that, nonetheless I am glad they introduce Classic, just so I won't have to hear this rose tinted BS any longer in MMO-C. Yes realistically I will still hear it from die-hard Vanilla flagellants, but I do have hope those will be mostly locked to their stasis chamber autoattacking Ragnaros forever.

Rest of your stuff is just fluff, I won't address.

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P.S. And I sure as hell hope you mistakenly said Legendary instead of Artifact, because if you think Legiondaries were a good idea... I don't know what to say.

[justandulas]

If you mean Artifact there then yes, Artifact is better than Azerite, especially due to story and mechanics of borrowed ability and talents. I can see what they wanted to do with Azerite and concept was good (you choose what you want, instead of static), but execution is very lacking plagued with issues both balance and availability.

Old WoW systems and I assume Vanilla are a decrepit mess that has no right to exist in 2019 as simple as that, nonetheless I am glad they introduce Classic, just so I won't have to hear this rose tinted BS any longer in MMO-C. Yes realistically I will still hear it from die-hard Vanilla flagellants, but I do have hope those will be mostly locked to their stasis chamber autoattacking Ragnaros forever.

Rest of your stuff is just fluff, I won't address.

Fair enough. This is the most reasonable post you've made in this thread. I appreciate it.

I was talking about the RNG of legendarys and how fun they felt vs the neck and azerite armor of today, but the artifact weapons also felt much better and much fun to get and power up than the neck. I also agree that i see what they were going for with azerite, but it missed the mark. The rings should have a more "legendary" impact so to speak. We lost much more powerful abilities from our legendary's and artifact weapons in Legion and got them replaced with abilities that aren't even a fraction as good. It doesn't feel good as a player.

When you play an MMO or an RPG, IMHO, i should always feel more powerful as i level up or get to a new expansion. BFA was the first time i actively felt vastly weaker going from Legion to BFA (not just the number crunch) and it just doesn't feel good as a player. Not only did the GCD slow me down, but i lost a ton of abilities/power and gained what feels like very little from a gaming perspective.

Anyways, i'm happy to agree to disagree i'm not out here pushing any agenda that my opinion is right and yours is wrong. I support you liking BFA and encourage it. same for everyone who is, i just personally prefer classic and it's more EQ style of gameplay/gear progression. There's no right or wrong here, i like classics MMORPG mechanics and you like BFA's ARPG systems.

Not a big deal to like different things, but i hope 8.2 kicks ass and beyond for BFA players like yourself and have a nice day. I'm out

[Raone]

Logging every day to do the same repetitive World Quests in order to keep re-learning the same skills you had just a few months earlier is sooo much better.

Except A) they are getting rid of this because they even said its bad in its current form, and B) It has nothing to do with the gear treadmill, so why mention it?

[Low Hanging Fruit]

That's heelvsbabyface. Don't confuse the two. Preach is rarely negative, and even when he is, there's a silver lining.

No kidding. I mean it is one thing agree or disagree with his points. That is fine. But to claim he is a core of negativity is just laughable.

[Chickat]

Legion is the 3rd-4th most beloved expansion behind WOTLK and TBC. It is held in high regards, especially with mythic raiders and high end gamers. MoP has also aged well because most people feel their particular class played the best during that expac (not for me, but i get the argument)

WoD was generally considered the worst, by far, until BFA. BFA has taken that crown and ran so far ahead with it, WoD can't ever catch it.

Even the most positive youtubers like Bellular, who if you cut him his blood will literally spell out blizzard on the floor, has been honest that BFA is pretty FUBAR.

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vanilla was 10000x the game BFA is. Classes played better. we had agency. Gear MEANT something. the world felt big and alive. social bonds were real and not just LFR. And, most of all, it was an mmo RPG.

There's no RPG mechanics left in WoW. if there are, where are they?! Vanilla WoW was inspired by Everquest. Current WoW has more in common with Diablo 3. BFA is an ARPG at this point.

Can you tell me exactly why BFA is worse? It has inifitely more to do than WoD. Classes play worse but thats it. Everything else in the game is better.

[kamuimac]

Can you tell me exactly why BFA is worse? It has inifitely more to do than WoD. Classes play worse but thats it. Everything else in the game is better.

Because asmongoloid and preach said so. And blind sheeps followed the hate

[Chickat]

Because asmongoloid and preach said so. And blind sheeps followed the hate

Ill agree that its not great, but BFA honestly has more to do than any WoW expansion ever besides Legion. MoP was good too, but daily overload.

In terms of class design its probably the worst, but content wise its up at the top even if it is Legion with a BFA skin and worse classes.

[Lawlhero]

Classes play worse but thats it. Everything else in the game is better.

Yeah, the main thing you do the entire time you play the game the focal point behind power progression plays worse. Kind of a huge deal. Nice part about WoD was it was the last time where you could do all that was required and called your character "Done", before they introduced non stop power gains, a shift in design philosophy, players wont play the game for the game, they will only play it if they can get numerical gain out of it.

[Statius]

In early 2009, shortly after WotLK had been released, I made a long rant on the WoW forums regarding what I perceived as the casualization of WoW. Now I don't remember the entire rant (which is probably a good thing), but I do remember the last paragraph because in the years that's followed it has haunted me somewhat relentlessly. Anyway, here it goes.

I miss the scepter of the shifting sands quest chain. And I don't care who gets to raid who or if the rest of the community suddenly went hardcore and thereby achieved far more than I ever could. But I miss the journey. I crave the journey. For without the journey, the reward means nothing.

Truly I couldn't care less about being a special snowflake. To me, that's not what this is about. It never was. And yes, of course, Vanilla was simpler in many regards. If you compare Molten Core to even normal raiding nowadays, yes, obviously the later is infinitely more complicated. But I think what some people loved about Vanilla (and indeed what I loved and still love about Vanilla) is that feel of being on a journey.

And that's what I think Vanilla did so very well. Why? Because in Vanilla there was always unbeatable content out there. There was always something to aspire to. The game was what you made of it. At least for the great majority of the people. Sure there were some catch-ups mechanics too, but truly if you wanted to raid Naxxramas (which mind you less 1% completed back in the days), you had to put in the work.

Ya know you started a new character at level 1 and you were a nobody and the lore and the quests you got reflected this. But slowly you grew more powerful, you got some gear, you did some dungeons and over time (Hell for some leveling could last months), you made your way to sixty and then you started raiding and it was all atop of another. You went through ZG, you went through MC and again, slowly, tediously, you progressed further and further up that ladder.

Sure the raids were not that epic compared to today's standards, but they felt epic because the path to actually raiding them was a journey all unto itself. I always like to compare it to LotR. Sure, we all know Frodo should have just used those damn eagles, but honestly, what kind of story would that have made? And yes, I'm sure that there are people out there who might have done all of these things for no other reason than feeling superior and what not. But I can assure that there are people (like myself) who did those things because they cared about the journey.

And alas, that journey is just not what it used to be. And yes, this is hardly news. In some ways, the release of the first very expansion invalidated that journey to some extent (to at least be reset with every expansion) and then further on in patch 3.2 we've got an additional reset between patches.

When people talk about gear exclusivity as a motivation for raiding, I've often seen it interpreted in a kind of greedy way, as if some elitist jerks thinks gear should be made special and inaccessible to other people simply for the sake of pride and egoism. Again the special unique snowflalke strawman. But to me, at least, the subject is not really the gear itself, but rather how the accessibility of gear contributes to undermining the aforementioned journey.

Going back to Vanilla, if you wanted to raid AQ40, you had to raid at least some of the previous raids. It was as simple as that. Apart from some catch-up gear here and there, the journey was still intact or if you prefer, the journey was linear. And because of the distribution of gear was itself also relatively scarce, you had to raid those previous raids not once, not twice, but many, many times before you were even remotely ready to step into AQ40.

Imagine if you were a new guild who just started playing WoW in the summer of 2006. You had to level up and all the while leveling, you dreamed of one day being able to raid AQ40 and kill C'thun. When you visited Stormwind or Orgrimmar you saw people standing around in epic gear and you heard stories of epic battles in dungeons far away. And then finally you hit 60, but that didn't mean you could raid AQ40 and just waltz in and kill C'thun.

It wasn't that the raid had not been released yet. It wasn't because there was some artificial timelock or anything like that. You just weren't ready for it. But you wanted to be. Sure you wanted the gear, but you also wanted to have the experience. I mean for crying out loud, it's an entire raid and you haven't seen it. Imagine how much hype there is nowadays when Blizzard releases a raid? Well in this case, the raid was there, but in order to raid it, you had to work your way up to it.

And there's the motivation. There's the journey. And those are the things that contributes to making the raid amazing even before you've started raiding it.

Preach understands this and I sympathize with what he's saying. But, ya know, I'm not blind to the fact that not everyone feels like I do. People this game for a variety of reasons and some couldn't care less about the journey that I describe and some in turn finds it in other places. Myself, while I in so many ways prefer the journey of Vanilla to the kind of journey (or whatever it is) that we have today, I do still play retail and I enjoy it, in part because I've learned to find the journey in other places, like mounts and, of course, achievements.

But that still doesn't change the fact that what I still crave and what I think a lot of us who loved Classic crave is that we want a world. In truth, I remember that's how WoW was first presented back in the day, not as "a game, but a world." It was just kind of there and it was what it was. Unlike today, it didn't feel as if every single patch, dungeon or raid was delivered for the sake of the individidual's player maximum enjoyment.

We were more like some kind of sub-species scrawling around on a rock of molten lava and every now and then some celestial god (Blizz) would throw down a meteor at us (a patch or a raid) and then, in the spirit of 2001, we would scramble around it, tryin' to figure out what the Hell it was.

Obviously I could go on forever about why I love the journey of Vanilla, but if I were to pin point one more reason before I go, it would have to do with the lore. Again everyone are always talking about epics and item level and what not, but one of the reasons why I truly loved the feel of the journey was because it contributed to making not just the raids themselves, but also the lore villians so much more intimidating.

I know in terms of power, Argus is, of course, infinitely stronger than Kel'thuzad and yet, I have to be honest with you, to me, Kel'thuzad is just so much more intimidating. Compared to recent years, where Archimonde was in statistics easier to defeat than Gul'dan, I think Vanilla succeeded in many ways not only because it created a journey in terms of systems, but also because it connected that same journey with the actual journey through lore, which again, like the former, was not a handhold experience with neat little cinematics, but again, was what you made of it. Anyway, enough's enough.

Now in terms of the topic at hand, I see where Preach is coming from and while that would be an improvement (because don't get me wrong, gear for the sake of gear is a factor and yes it does matter - that too is a kind of journey) I honestly think that the more viable solution would require not making preivous raids redundant whenever a new raid is released.

Of course, if it were up to me, I'd remove the first three of the four difficulties, introduce attunements to all raids and (it goes without saying) remove any reward from anywhere outside of either raiding or insane repetive grinding that could come anywhere near the item level of even the easiest of raids (at least this early on this expansion), but, ya know, I'm not naive. I know fully well that that is just a pipe dream.

And so I'll just end this seemingly endless thread with a quote from that original 2008 thread. The only other part that I still remember.

But ya all know, and Blizzard knows, that an old dog like me still hang around. So bring it on, through the good and the bad, the rain and the storm, I'm pressing on.