Because, at least as far as WoW is concerned, the devs are unimaginative when it comes to content. We are equally to blame for allowing hunt for three rares for an hour to be content intended to last 8 months.
WoW forgot a long time ago it was supposed to be a rpg game and designed everything around raid or die and now mythic +. Subpar storytelling and too many narrative beats happening outside the game has basically given us a situation where a large portion of the player base doesn't care anymore.
So now instead of improving and innovating, we get borrowed power to justify reputation rng related grinds in order to grind dungeons and raids.
Well titanforging helped casuals progress slowly over time to get past artificial ilevel barriers set by other players (it's what finally allowed me to raid again in Legion. No more of that BS "we're demanding you have the ilevel that drops from this raid to do this raid"), which was of course the exact same reason said other players hated it.
IDK what they were thinking with corruption though, it seems to contain none of the benefits of titanforging but all of the downsides. I just shrug and don't worry about it that much since parts of it keep getting nerfed/buffed and it'll be out by Shadowlands.
imo you are 100% correct.
but that said, i have the simple answer for you: because its cheap.
it MAY looks complex to us, but in reality its just database entries and a few programmers. on the other side, content, real content, involves gfx team, designers, creators, quest team, must fit into different things, more stuff influences and is linked with more other stuff, more testing....
complex gear systems, loot drops and some character ui is just... scalable. and therefore cheap. creating content, foremost contest with quality, is expensive.
this is the simple truth. believe me, i am in such a business since 20 years.
what blizz do is investing least possible to milk most out of it. systems like corruption are ideal for that. or what do you think is the reason the „real content“ part of 8.3, in what corruption gear system is „embedded“, is uldum, eternal blossom, stormwind and orgrimmar ? do you see what they all have in common ?
because once you get the gear you're "done" with that tier. Having these random titanforging system makes you have to keep running them to get the actual top tier reward thus increasing the amount of time you have to stay subscribed and playing that content. Activision is all about the monthly subscriptions so they'll do whatever they can to milk as much subscription time out of as little actual content as possible.
Back in Vanilla, once you got your gear from MC, BWL, AQ... you were done. You kept raiding because of your guild, but once you were done for that week, you can actually stop and play an alt or help others out. Now you're never truly done unless you got all titanforged gear or maxed out all AP points.
How is that a bad thing tell me please? I've felt more satisfaction from getting Rank 14 in a 16 year old game than getting 70 neck (quit before 8.3), you never get a sense of accomplishment in current WoW, theres always a grind a useless grind for +2 stats and being blessed by RNG. Even if you want to play an alt you have to grind your ass off for more non satisfactory progress.
Don't even get me started on the RNG in every single aspect of the game, being "done" as you put it is a good thing believe it or not. Oh and btw, I was one of the guys that actively hated on Classic until I gave it a go, until I saw a BiS list until I got my gear cause I saw a end goal that I can work for. Whats my end goal in retail? Sure you can get max Neck level, cloak level etc, but in regards to gear? Azerite RNG (or farm forever), other pieces of gear RNG on wether you get the Corruption you wanted, then you want a socket all the good stats, whats the point?
I'm definitely not even gonna login retail or purchase Shadowlands if this trend continues, tone down RNG, give me the player some end goal to reach. I want to raidlog, or just casually do shit content with friends, now I can't, I'm forced on a tread mill that I can't escape or I'll fall behind
A system like TF or Corrupted gear has to exist as long as M+ is around. Until M+ is abolished (which it definitely won't be) we have to have a system like this in place.
The main issue though is that instead of them unsubbing and coming back in the future, they get so fed up with these BS systems that they unsub and never play again because of the bad taste it left in their mouths.
The Essence system had potential to not suck but then they made it so grindy for alts. A simple fix? Rank 4 unlocks Rank 1 of that essence on your alts, rather than just looks pretty. But if you quit because you were expected to grind through to get Rank 3 for a bunch of essences multiple times because you had multiple spots to fill in a raid group, it could absolutely lead to burn out and people being fed up with the BS systems, especially after the grindy nightmare of Azerite before the Essences. And then they release something like Corruption which is so very very worse? Those people would look at the result of Corruption and never play again.
Better to let folks take a break and want to return in the future than make a ton of BS crap systems that give them "endless" things they need to keep grinding and make them quit to never come back.
Titanforging helped hardcores progress not casuals. If your sinking enough time into the week to constantly farm titanforging your likely playing a lot more then the guy who just raids six hours a week and maybe farms for two more.
Remember its hours played not skill that makes one hardcore.
As if we don't AFK on capital or anything still
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The problem ain't gear being grindy, the problem is the rng having rng inside the rng, of the other rng, that makes rng be the whole thing that matters.
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Also titanforging is gone, but you still have a chance to have a corruption, a CHANCE, and it sims better a 440 with corruption than a 460 without it. Just for that, that is titanforging right there. You have bis gear, with a chance of being corrupted, if it does with a OP corruption you won't even change it soon. Cause you want the damage of that.
So all in all i feel like titanforging ain't gone yet and corruption is another and worsr titanforging.
And even worse is that you never know how much corruption it can bring on a tier 3. If you're lucky, even on that you have the tier 3 without much corruption, giving you oportunity to use even more corruption items that will make you "stronk" as hell.
The more you have rank on cloak even, the more corruption you can get without affecting you and having all those "titanforges" mascaraed as corruption.
Blizzard NEVER saw the removal of RNG as something to counter RNG. They love RNG, they want RNG, they never thought for a single second to change the level of RNG in the game. They removed titanforging on the premice of "some dudes get higher ilvl they don't deserve", not the ilvl issue is gone but a million more problems arise.
Also no, the bland stats are boring as all fucks dude, it was shit in 2004, shit before in other games, and still shit today. Things were slightly interesting with multistrike in the mix, some masteries are actually fun (most are boring), in general it's pretty brain dead in terms of RPG elements in this game. While there is a lot of things going very bad with corruption, the core idea of extra effects we have to manage through a risk/reward kinda thing is pretty interesting. It's just a shame it's not balanced, not tested, 3 more layers of RNG we never needed/wanted, and designed by people who don't play the game so they don't know what's simply not fun.