So thats it?

[RobertMugabe]

i find myself still having legion fatigue. we just beat a universe-sized threat in sageras. king mechagon and even azshara seem puny by comparison. i just cant get into the story. and that makes it very hard to care about 8.2. it feels more and more like we should never have beaten and jailed sargeras. legion needed a different ending.

Yeah same here. TBH Legion's ending would've been fine if it was WoW's last content ever... like, I srsly expected that after we've finally beaten the Burning Legion (the main antagonist of this franchise) and became gods that WoW would just end and they would then reveal an entirely new MMO game (either something totally different or WoW in the future I dunno)

[Linri]

This is Argus, Timeless Isle, and Tanaan Jungle type content, which doesn't really interest me.
I've completely ditched End Game PvE for the time being, being a PvPer this doesnt really bother me.. I am excited for the wave of baddies that return to the game with each new content patch, as it provides me with enjoyment killing them.
I have not played 8.2 yet (even though it came out yesterday), I don't really plan to.. but maybe that will change!

[Dizson]

It's not about that, it would have been epic if we had the greatest enemy invade azeroth or whatever, instead its another we are in conflict again after many many years. It makes no sense, it destroys character development and its just a poor idea. It just feels less after Legion, feels like a weaker enemy or what not which makes no sense. It's not even save azeroth, but save azeroth from ourselves, but we have no control over our actions, its fucking stupid and bad story writing and I have no clue how could Blizzard write something like this. We know that there is something bad going on yet we still support Sylvanas, we have no choice, we kill many alliance people then suddenly somehow everything is redeemed and Sylvanas is the bad woman.

[erifwodahs]

I think I wasn't as old and bitter back then as I am right now.

At the same time it is all down to the amount of grind. Yes you had to do dailies, but how much time it took you to complete a daily cap? If you take a look at chore's list in BFA, you would quickly notice that previous grinds were nothing. You have around 10 worldquests in every zone, you have islands to do, warfronts, conquest, weekly event, m+ and raiding on top of it. Not to mention you kinda need to farm mats since everything costs crapload of money.

If you want to keep up with high end raiding, we are talking about 6-8 hours every day spent on grind. And lets not forget about beautiful design of titanforging bullshit that forces you to farm millions of m+ just to get that 325 tf trinket that is absolutely required for your class to be somewhat competitive.

It is a major issue when game begins to feel like work and quite frankly that is how I feel about BFA. I have played through wotlk and have played through MOP you mentioned and even with all the grind that was there, I still enjoyed game. Now I simply do not, not when mundane tasks take 95% of my playtime.

Final thought to consider - previous expansions actually had a finish lane to their grinds. Once you hit exalted or bought the items you need, you were free. Now we have paragon chests and ever refreshing world quests. There is no end to your misery - keep working peasant or fall behind in the rat race.

What do you call high end raiding, mate? because what you describe sounds like world top 100 stuff. For me, world top 500-750, casual it's like do your weekly cap for AP, do some m+, I push keys for fun. Roughly 20hours/week is more than enough to be raiding, later in the patch is more like 12hours, including raid time. Been there done that this, last and in other exps.. And no, you are not required 425 trinket for your class to be somewhat competitive, please give an example? I will provide you 10 logs back with that class with different trinkets being somewhat competitive.
You can't lock something good behind a grind, because people moan if you do. When you don't lock it behind something to progress, people moan too, because "it's too easy". If you lock it behind skill based stuff, people start yelling "elitists" everywhere, if you give them weaker options of the stuff, then "elitists" start yelling about their achievements being devalued. You see where I am heading?
I agree, in the past the was an clear end to the grind - BiS gear. I loved that, I kind of hate tforging. But.... I kind of don't care about it too much. There is base ilvl which is ez to get, after that it is nice, but not required. I feel sorry for competitionists

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[Thetruth1400]

Again, the design philosphy of making everything easy rears its ugly head. If I was a WoW dev these days, id be pulling my hair out trying to appease the current player base.

-Make content thats hard so it lasts a while - players whine its too hard and they can't do it

-Make content thats easy so players can do it - players whine they finish it too quick and have nothing to do

WoW is fundamentally broken at a design level. The playerbase they have attracted is one that is impossible to please in a MMO setting.

Agreed. They alienated their old core players, the ones who were willing to put in time and effort in exchange for the "give me my quick reward and let me see everything now!" crowd, which created a neutered version of the game where everyone sees everything, and nothing but token things like mounts and pets are the "rewards" now since everyone else is almost fundamentally the same, just with time being the difference between Hardcore Raider A and Casual 20 minutes a day player B.


That aside, after doing the quests in the two new zones, I felt the same way as OP; "Is this it?" I felt like my options were pretty much grind or run around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to find the rares, which are actually rare again. All I can say is, I hope the raid and dungeon breathe some life into the game, because the zones themselves are fairly meh.

[VTerpsichore]

8.2 drops wait two weeks for anything other than the same old heart grind and a new place to do very boring dailies??

Thats it? you post a thread and complain about blizzard, and we have to reply to the same old boring thread?

See you in two weeks to complain about raids!

[Lurker1]

8.2 drops wait two weeks for anything other than the same old heart grind and a new place to do very boring dailies??

Yep welcome to a expansion not a new game instead were you expecting WoW2???

[Exkrementor]

sorry you expected something amazing from blizzard.

Ha, common mistake nowadays.

[Amotea]

Well, heres a different way to look at it. Remove all time gating. The better players finish things without too much hassle, the.....not so good players have to invest more time and effort. It would require a slight adjustment for difficulty, sure, but it worked in the past, it works in other games, i see no reason it wouldnt work here. The gating is the issue. Because they create daily caps on things, they need EVERYONE to be able to easily complete all the tasks in the gated time slot.

Remove the gating, remove the need for everyone to be able to quickly complete it in a certain time frame. I agree completely that there are fundamental design philosophy issues at play.

"good" players would be more focused on raids / pvp / m+ or whatever their rostered content is - thats where the difficult content has always been. If some semi pro mythic raider wants to spend 27 hours in front of his comp to unlock flying on day 2, i just dont see any issue with that at all.

Worked before? When did wow have non timegated outdoor content that lasted more than 1-2 days, ive played since EU release and never experienced this :/

[arkanon]

I think you opinion would likely change if the raid required neck 55-60 to be able to down bosses.

And if they removed the gating, they would have to tune the bosses that way so it isn't too easy for the people who farmed AP.

I almost got to 53 last night, so I'd be cool with it, but most wouldn't.

Why would a boss require a certain neck lvl to down it? Blizzard have never done anything like that in the past, why would they suddenly start now? What a strange point to make,...???....

[Djuntas]

Took me like 8-9 hours of play today to fully do all my daylies, all quests, all rares I saw up + the loss AH play and more...Long day. Good enough content.

[arkanon]

Worked before? When did wow have non timegated outdoor content that lasted more than 1-2 days, ive played since EU release and never experienced this :/

All of Vanilla. All of BC. All of Wrath with the possible exception of the argent tournament which had rep limitations. Content gating is a new thing, even for Blizzard. There have been natural limitations in the past - daily quest limits was the first iteration i can think of, and obviously gear requirements and attunements, but until recently, never just anything near the extent that it is now.

Honestly, i couldnt care less when you started. You are miles off track here.

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Took me like 8-9 hours of play today to fully do all my daylies, all quests, all rares I saw up + the loss AH play and more...Long day. Good enough content.

8-9 hours? how are you spending 8-9 hours when most are reporting 1-2?

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In some ways, yes. But how would that be achieved?

In raids, they have done it before with a gradual buff applied at regular interval. They could reintroduce that but would mean removing the multiple difficulties.

Dungeons would be a bit more difficult to apply and with the mythic+.

In outdoor quests, I am not sure even how it could be done. A gradual nerf to the mobs?

I would be interested in knowing in which other games does this and how since I do not play other games that suggested they have this feature.

Why would the mobs require nerfing?> honestly, the mobs in the world scale. They dont need to be touched at all.

As far as other games that do it - MOST other games do NOT having gating, because they do not have subs. This is the unique thing about wow - they seem to have dug themselves into a howl where they feel the need to "force" (they are not forcing anyone, but they are making it difficult to avoid) people to remain subbed for 2+ months, instead of creating content that makes people WANT to stay subbed or forget about the sub altogether because they are enjoying the game.

M+ wouldnt need to be touched at all. It is already a sliding scale of difficulty from M+0 up, so there is absolutely nothing that needs changing.

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The patch definitely isn't game changing and it couldn't be. I can't believe there are people out there who srsly think a mid-tier patch should give as much as an expansion.

That being said though, the patch itself is pretty good. IMHO it's easily the biggest patch they've added to the game in years (or ever)

Who is asking for as much as an expansion? there is a lot of real estate between 1-2 hours of content and an entire expansion. Dont be disingenuous.

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Considering the OP made a post on such a fan site, you could presume, that he would know. I guess something like ToT or Timeless Isle would drive OP mad. Two zones is not enough. He wants expansion pack I guess.

Again, who said anything about an expansions worth of content? Such a strawman argument. No one is mentioning anything about an expansion worth of content. Dont be so silly.

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I'm okay with phasing. Makes my life less stressful since I can't play 24/7. It also leaves time to other games and stuff which is a nice way of not geting burned out. Their official reasoning is on point, imo! It might net them an extra sub while at it but that's fine.

I can understand why it's frustrating if you can and want to play 24/7.

There is a big gap between wanting to play at your own pace, and playing 24/7. Some people feel like Blizzard is dictating their playtime, and that is the issue.

[Grimbold21]

The most positive thing coming out of this for me was the early taste of flying with the jet pack in Mechagon. Nearly cried...

[Zephire]

There is a big gap between wanting to play at your own pace, and playing 24/7. Some people feel like Blizzard is dictating their playtime, and that is the issue.

Yeah, it's true that there's a big gap. I just put out the extremes. And I get what you're saying. Got to be a balance and it's a really difficult thing to balance I think. You don't want a burned out player base nor do you want to dictate everything.

[ShimmerSwirl]

Fixed that for you, i have my doubts about how cost-effective it really was when ActiBlizz changed it so utterly...

The game had 11 million subscribers with that model. It worked.

[mysticx]

The game had 11 million subscribers with that model. It worked.

Yeah, and that was how many years ago? 10? Gaming (and gamers) have changed since then, did Blizz ever mention how many people ever saw the inside of a raid in Wrath? (I remember the "1% saw Naxx40" quote, but anything about Wrath?)

I'm just saying that a company doesn't do a 180-turn on accessibility and gearing if they don't think there's money in it, so if the old model was the source of WoW's success, why did they change it?

[Gasparde]

Oh my, and here I was thinking that they'd just scrap the AP farming neck grind system mid expansion and come up with something entirely new for a random mid expansion patch. People who still held their hopes up for BFA to change after like 8.1 were hopelessly naive. Mild spoiler: 8.3 ain't gonna change shit either. If you're not into pet battles or Bejeweled be smart and wait till 9.0 before wasting further money on this cash grab of a game.

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Classic, TBC, and WOTLK all did the above with varying degrees of success at different times. Even Cata had some of it. I love MoP, but I noticed a lot of world mob/encounter design really started slackening at that point to where it felt like world mobs were just target dummies. It got exponentially worse in WoD and since.

In what world did random world mobs ever have an engaging design in WoW? A single mob randomly casting a spell once in between its 200 0-counterplay autohits isn't engaging - and that's the most 'engaging' outdoor mobs in this game have ever been.

[buffolone]

You people would complain it's too heavy if a gold bar was handed to you.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ this

[Ohforfsake]

Gonna wait for all the gating and nerfs to grind to happen before resub. Was actually waiting for worgen model update, but that did not happen yet...
As far as "content" goes, I don't even care, all I did in game was picking up all the achievements, pets and mounts I missed during all the history of the game. Group content burnout is fatal and does not cure with time anymore. Used to be among top progression but at some point realised how pointless a time waste it is. All your crazy achievements mean nothing come next patch, and every xpack everything resets to the ground. All I've got from 15 years of game that differs me from this newbie is vanilla epic mount. So, yeah.. Who cares.. Apathy... Hopefully 9.0 leaks are true and this game will get a total reboot.

[unbound]

This might be a shocking concept for you, but I enjoy WoW AND I enjoy other games.

This might be a shocking concept for you, but the vast majority of gamers don't enjoy WoW and play other games instead.