I think wow needs to remove alternative progression or fundamentally change it.

[Krakan]

Youre deluded, ICC was the peak of GEARSCORE ---- If you were in blues you would never be invited, what planet are you living on.

WOWs Gear Path has been a thing since classic, you had to grind fire gear for MC frost gear for Naxx...
TBC epics meant something, and you needed those epics to even have a chance of completing BT
Wotlk was probably a tad easier, epics were more freely available but the normal (WotLK LFR) still required you to have at least the 10 man mode gear from the prev raid.
id go on but the point is clear if you think what we have now is hardcore you need to have a real hard look around.
Literally welfare Epics EVERYWHERE.

If you want to Do Endgame with the big boys -- git gud

I think you missed my point.

[msdos]

TBC epics meant something?? Wut?? TBC had a literal badge vendor and we used to just farm Mechanaar for high end gear. TBC literally started welfare gear lmao... Smh.

[Saltysquidoon]

http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/201...-will.html?m=1

You cant though eventually essences would crush you. Likely corruptions to.

Corruptions come from gear, in fact, at the start of 8.3 it was possible some lfr shitter got some lucky infinite stars corruptions and was annihilating far superior players on the meters.

Secondly, was this 10,000-year-old blog post the point of this thread? People clear mythic raids with all blood DKs and all mages, Prot pallies are soloing raid bosses. People do this nonsense all the time, that doesn't make it the intended or accepted way to play.

Further, you're missing the point. In a raid of equally skilled players, if they're all in TotGC gear and you're in blues, it doesn't matter if you could theoretically clear the content you're still being carried. That's the same as today

However, are essences and ap grinds bullshit? Yeah sure, they also won't be in shadowlands.

[Krakan]

Corruptions come from gear, in fact, at the start of 8.3 it was possible some lfr shitter got some lucky infinite stars corruptions and was annihilating far superior players on the meters.

Secondly, was this 10,000-year-old blog post the point of this thread? People clear mythic raids with all blood DKs and all mages, Prot pallies are soloing raid bosses. People do this nonsense all the time, that doesn't make it the intended or accepted way to play.

Further, you're missing the point. In a raid of equally skilled players, if they're all in TotGC gear and you're in blues, it doesn't matter if you could theoretically clear the content you're still being carried. That's the same as today

However, are essences and ap grinds bullshit? Yeah sure, they also won't be in shadowlands.

What I meant is a lot of corruptions scaled in strength with ilv and if you jumped from only raid to only raid it would be unlikely you would have a decent set.

My point was you didnt need the amount of grinding trivial content in the past you do now

[Great Destiny Man]

Corruptions come from gear, in fact, at the start of 8.3 it was possible some lfr shitter got some lucky infinite stars corruptions and was annihilating far superior players on the meters.

Secondly, was this 10,000-year-old blog post the point of this thread? People clear mythic raids with all blood DKs and all mages, Prot pallies are soloing raid bosses. People do this nonsense all the time, that doesn't make it the intended or accepted way to play.

Further, you're missing the point. In a raid of equally skilled players, if they're all in TotGC gear and you're in blues, it doesn't matter if you could theoretically clear the content you're still being carried. That's the same as today

However, are essences and ap grinds bullshit? Yeah sure, they also won't be in shadowlands.

The blog post doesnt actually show them clearing ICC anyway. As far as I'm aware Undergeared were never actually able to get past 8/12 (https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-gt-Chronicles)

[Krakan]

The blog post doesnt actually show them clearing ICC anyway. As far as I'm aware Undergeared were never actually able to get past 8/12 (https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-gt-Chronicles)

My bad then I thought I recalled them clearing... still 8 kills isnt shabby.

[Great Destiny Man]

My bad then I thought I recalled them clearing... still 8 kills isnt shabby.

The point is it wasn't like it was the standard play. The laziest you had was people farming PvP gear and artificially inflating their GS with stamina gems.

Going in ICC 10 with blue levelling gear was far from common.

[Halicia]

Grinding is present in subscription MMO's, because the only way to create content fast enough to keep people paying every month is to have some hamster wheels in there somewhere.

*THAT BEING SAID*

After how many !@#$ing years of raids, I think there's more gameplay in raids alone to satisfy anyone coming into the game for the purpose of raiding, so grinding in non-raid content shouldn't be necessary on the design level.

[Kokolums]

Now? Now the game has gone down a extremely anticasual mindset and I can't really grasp why..

WoW isn't anticasual. The game is set up that casuals can gear up like crazy if they buy gold via the WoW token and then buy carries. If you want to be casual and gear up like crazy for FREE then you are screwed. However, if you dedicate yourself to learning how to farm gold, you could play wow as a gold farm simulator and then once in a while buy a carry. Although that probably no longer qualifies you as casual.

PvP is totally set for casual play. You can login whenever you want and solo queue for BGs. You could join a casual PvP guild that just queues up for BGs with whatever guildies are online at the time.

Probably what OP wants is a dungeon system that is pass / fail and awards top loot. M+ is not that because of the timer. You not only have to clear M+ but do it in time. Maybe offer an untimed m+ system where you can set the difficulty from 1 to 15 and then when you manage to kill the last boss, you get crappy loot BUT you can buy a coin for 50k gold that then can be redeemed for loot equal to the difficulty completed.

example:

1. walk up to untimed m+ portal in Stormwind.
2. select m+ 15 for Waycrest Manor.
3. Enter portal and your group gets taken to Waycrest Manor +15.
4. Clear the dungeon (no timer involved)
5. After Gorak Tul dies, a vendor pops up and offers to sell you a coin for 50k.
6. Buy coin and take it back to Stormwind.
7. Talk to untimed M+ vendor who offers you gear for the coin.

[Kokolums]

That's mostly not what progression is about in wow anymore. It's, I'm 465 item level but I need the mechagon essence, so I have to go there. It's, let me get a few extra echoes for another expedient rank 3 so i'm going to run lfr on my 475 character. That's what "alternative" progression is - it's stuff that isn't tied to character gear level or power that gives upgrades in return for investing time. It's lame because the difficulty is not tied to the character power level.

I VERY much disagree with on that one.

Diablo 2 had a gearing system that was unrelated to character power level and that made it incredibly interesting. Some of the best items could be found in the starter areas, others mid game, others at end game. Diablo 3 took the approach you advocate and it was a huge mistake. They streamlined the gearing and that made it incredibly boring in the process because you were stuck in the very very absolute end game trying to find better stuff instead of playing the ENTIRE game trying to find stuff.

Your idea is absolutely terrible.

[Argorwal]

I mean you can have that with mythic plus alone but I can't see how things like essences or a million daily quests are compelling.

I would argue that each expansion shouldn't have more then 10 total daily quests rather then reusing leveling content.

- - - Updated - - -



Have to grind... I'm not sure I agree with that... you could grind but you could simply jump from content to content if your skills paid the bills.

Torghast is already being gutted power wise because people complained how hardcore visions were...

Your looking at the wrong camp for your woes. The raid logger does not care what you do they just want to raid then vanish. The guy doing dailies for 40 hours a week or whatever non raiders do wants to dominate the guy playing for 3 hours.

If you were ok taking your heroic 5 man geared guy into Sunwell of your 232 ICC heroic alt into 25H ICC then the current system is more than fine if not better for quickly bringing in alts.

[Krakan]

WoW isn't anticasual. The game is set up that casuals can gear up like crazy if they buy gold via the WoW token and then buy carries. If you want to be casual and gear up like crazy for FREE then you are screwed. However, if you dedicate yourself to learning how to farm gold, you could play wow as a gold farm simulator and then once in a while buy a carry. Although that probably no longer qualifies you as casual.

PvP is totally set for casual play. You can login whenever you want and solo queue for BGs. You could join a casual PvP guild that just queues up for BGs with whatever guildies are online at the time.

Probably what OP wants is a dungeon system that is pass / fail and awards top loot. M+ is not that because of the timer. You not only have to clear M+ but do it in time. Maybe offer an untimed m+ system where you can set the difficulty from 1 to 15 and then when you manage to kill the last boss, you get crappy loot BUT you can buy a coin for 50k gold that then can be redeemed for loot equal to the difficulty completed.

example:

1. walk up to untimed m+ portal in Stormwind.
2. select m+ 15 for Waycrest Manor.
3. Enter portal and your group gets taken to Waycrest Manor +15.
4. Clear the dungeon (no timer involved)
5. After Gorak Tul dies, a vendor pops up and offers to sell you a coin for 50k.
6. Buy coin and take it back to Stormwind.
7. Talk to untimed M+ vendor who offers you gear for the coin.

More I want to get rid of the time gates that started in legion with artifact power and simply got worse.

[Krakan]

I wonder when that "lionshare" was...I mean..I raided the hardest difficulty and I never, ever was able to level an alt and bring it to the main raid just like that..."after a week or so". And most definitely not in TBC with the atrocious attunements that were personal and needed rep grinds at the core.

Sure, it was easier to raid in WotLK for alts and I pugged Naxx on them or had them in ICC 10 man groups...but definitely not the "hardest" raids and they definitely needed to get their badges and gear....never happened within a week ^^

I don't really get why people jump to the current tier or bring up expansions that clearly didn't allow that... is it a effort to distract from how weak their points are or just the usual internet nitpicking rather then being productive?

Since you brought up tbc ... it was rougher but you could skip around if you rushed kara and had some decent luck with the sunwell dungeon along with pvp to plug some holes. Sure you couldn't skip to the end but you could catch up pretty quickly.

With wrath normal was it's own progression system and you absolutely could hit icc within a week and more then be geared for it.

There wasn't these weird systems we have now where your waiting upwards of a month to get essences.

[WowIsDead64]

When I look at wow's past before and during wod I notice a odd attitude develop over time and slowly it seems to of taken hold of the community. The idea that grinding easy content should somehow be expected if you want to advance your character.

I was always left with the question though ... but why?

I recall how in the lionshare of wows history grinding really wasn't needed if your goal was to simply clear the hardest of raids or bring a new alt to one. You simply did relevant content then joined the main raid after a week or so.

Now? Now the game has gone down a extremely anticasual mindset and I can't really grasp why... if you joined wow now you would be looking at roughly two months of playing regularly just to kite out a new character for mythic or rated pvp. I don't really see how this is acceptable...


So what if going forward we simply made it that all " alternative power progression " just effected the open world and nothing else?

Players would be free to run what content they want without all the weird time gates. Those who enjoy weird time gates would have an edge in world pvp and farming materials.

Seems like a win win no?

My theory: as always, Blizzard allowed players to level many alts back in WOD, but at the end they don't want to design game around fact, that player has access to all classes and specs. Something like split-raids for example. So at some point they decided to change their mind and try to limit amount of alts to 1-2. That's why "endgame progression" system has been implemented. It's win-win thing, as it also gives "infinite" content to those, who play main only. That's it. But for me playing main only is no longer interesting. Slow endless power grind is pointless, you know. And after all that years of playing my alts I've got attached to them, cuz I've invested my soul into them. Not even talking about time and effort. Blizzard just can't take them away from me, sorry. It's better to play some other game, than this crap. And I don't see any radical improvements of this situation in SL. One step back isn't enough for me. I've bought rogue-like game on Steam, tried it and I think, that this genre isn't for me. It's grind in square. You not only need to grind content to find some strategy to beat it. You need to do it every time due to RNG. Fuck RNG. I need guaranteed casual-friendly content, that would have guaranteed support on content-patch-basis. My current choice - sandbox genre. I've already invested enough money into several Steam games and DLCs for them. Blizzard have missed their opportunity. No budget for Wow for this year, sorry.

[Lei]

You mean you used dungeon blues to grind 5 mans for Valor and Justice to buy gear from the ToC vendor for basic 226-232 gear, and then cleared ICC.

Grind... You mean your daily one heroic for the badges? Or you mean finally being able to queue for the ICC catchup dungeons where you maybe grinded normal, but heroics were only one a day (lockout). I don't remember having "random" mode letting you in indefinetly. Once you were locked, you were locked.
I used to have multiple raiding chars up until the end of mop. Even with ignoring reps wher a lot of good gear came from. I could craft for them raid quality gear without going insane.

Are you for real suggesting that essences corruptions artifact power shit, mythic plus grind is the same effort as it was in wotlk? Hahahahahahahhahaha.

[Krakan]

Grind... You mean your daily one heroic for the badges? Or you mean finally being able to queue for the ICC catchup dungeons where you maybe grinded normal, but heroics were only one a day (lockout). I don't remember having "random" mode letting you in indefinetly. Once you were locked, you were locked.
I used to have multiple raiding chars up until the end of mop. Even with ignoring reps wher a lot of good gear came from. I could craft for them raid quality gear without going insane.

Are you for real suggesting that essences corruptions artifact power shit, mythic plus grind is the same effort as it was in wotlk? Hahahahahahahhahaha.

I think you could do randoms a unlimited number of times in wotlk... it's just that if you tried something like 90% of them would be oculus or halls of reflection.

[Lei]

I think you could do randoms a unlimited number of times in wotlk... it's just that if you tried something like 90% of them would be oculus or halls of reflection.

I kinda remember your daily FIRST completed heroic dungeon giving Emblem of Frost (ICC times). So it wasn't really grindable. Unless logging in for a daily roflstomp heroic is considered grinding just like corruptionsessencesnecklaceazeritemythicpluses.

[OFiveNine]

Tbh i'm fine with m+ being a gear treadmill. Everything else is just annoying bloat that essentially makes it impossible to make new alts unless you're playing them as consistently as your main from the beginning

[Kokolums]

More I want to get rid of the time gates that started in legion with artifact power and simply got worse.

2 months is an unacceptable time frame to get a fresh 120 to clear mythic raids in your mind. What is an acceptable time frame to you?

[Krakan]

2 months is an unacceptable time frame to get a fresh 120 to clear mythic raids in your mind. What is an acceptable time frame to you?

Clear? No. Reasonably do well? First half in two to three weeks give or take seems about right assuming the skill level is there.