New major problem with current direction of development

[WowIsDead64]

The maw is just poorly designed in general. Its a place that actively discourages you from participating not just because the design is shit and theirs no God damn mounting but because it literally punishes you by stacking shitty obstacles in your way as you progress. Whoever thought it was a good idea was on crack.

Dunno. My guess - it's their "learning good things from Vanilla" thing. Overall flying removal was about replicating TBC's 5000k gold farm, i.e. "earning" flying. And Maw is about not having ground mount at start, like it was back in Vanilla. Jailers' Eye is just soft cap mechanic, like one Visions had. Everybody hated this mechanic in Visions, because Visions were intended to be about exploration, not about trying to rush things as fast, as possible. And yet we have it again. I guess, it's too hide lack of actual content in this location. I wouldn't have anything against it, if it wouldn't be mandatory.

P.S. Currently I experience two problems with two covenant campaigns. In Maldraxxus I have 3rd medium opened, while not having 2nd medium. How can it be? May be that's because I've skipped that quest in covenant sanctum? Another problem: I've opened two covenant chapters in Revedreth, but I don't see any quests in covenant sanctum, that would allow me to start them.

[MatPandaZ]

Player interaction is up higher than ever. The player retention is higher than ever for this point in a new expansion. You have the problem, the majority doesn't.

- - - Updated - - -

Visions were intended to be about exploration, not about trying to rush things as fast, as possible.

Visions were never intended to be about exploration.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Flying is going to be really strange in SL. I mean you are still going to have to FP though Orbie to travel between zones right? The zones are heavily littered with FPs so you can almost just land within seconds of where you are going. In the end I think it's only serious value will be to travel to WQs that are less useful than ever? Maybe shorten travel time to an instance by a few seconds? I think it's gonna be werid.

[crusadernero]

The problem with current development is the game has moved away from being an MMORPG.
The game is now esports and Diablo Style of running dungeons/raids and that's it.

That's why I'm on the path of Classic -> TBC -> Ashes of Creation.

Removing Closed Servers really killed wow.
While the game can now provide more quality of life and instant queue tactics it completely ruined what it meant to have a "World" to escape to.

Its not great for those who want to play for over a long period of time, years even. Its great for those that dont really care staying subbed though. Sub up, clear and play current content, unsub. Why stay subbed? seen it all. good catchup mechanics comes late in each xpac. Whatever there is of story is completed in short time, if not even hours.

I guess what keeps people playing over long period of times is either guild/friends or they are just hooked on collecting stuff.

[Hexme]

The thing is this game doesn't reward you for logging in anymore or gives you a desire to play the game. The amount of timegating has gotten out of control.

-You can kill all 10 bosses in the raid and get 1 piece of loot or none
-You can kill 25 mythic+ bosses and only get 1 or 2 pieces of loot
-Rewarding players 35 anima for no loot is a god damn slap to the face
-Covenants need a better catch up mechanic, specially for people that are now 2nd guessing their choices
-WQ rewards are still mediocre at best, even with the "upgrades"

PvP is actually decent this expansion finally so that's a plus

[jsj]

Unsubbed here precisely because of all the timegating shizzle. Not interested in being spoonfed several Torghast floors a week with a few things to do inbetween.
Already did the Keystone master and got the Curve. Current WoW experience is miserable to veteran players to say the least. If you're new player, however, things might be brighter and more pleasant.

I am also an veteran player and expect the curve soon. I'll maybe stay and tank the alt run after that. Or unsub. But i have in no way or form been content short or bored the last few months. I raid 2 nights and I find time to do my callings and other pve content. As a steady hobby wow is neither boring or expensive. If you don't play 24/7, the current content is more than enough to play 8 to 16 hours a week. If i had an alt or did m+/pvp/mythic raiding i could easily double that amount of hours but been there, tried that.

As a veteran and knowing many more who are loving this expansion, i would like to point out that a lot of us don't agree with "Current WoW experience is miserable to veteran players to say the least"

[LemonDemonGirl]

Funny thing, but when I reached 8th chapter in Maldraxxus, I realized, that it had it's own quest, instead of some generic Maw placeholder. And while it also had some "stealth" elements, at the same time it had much better design, than that Maw nonsense. Dunno about Venthyrs, but it really looks like, that Maldraxxus is the most complete zone and covenant campaign. Everything else is just incomplete.

Yeah, the Night Fae campaign just seems like a disjointed mess to me

[angrys13]

The thing is this game doesn't reward you for logging in anymore or gives you a desire to play the game. The amount of timegating has gotten out of control.

-You can kill all 10 bosses in the raid and get 1 piece of loot or none
-You can kill 25 mythic+ bosses and only get 1 or 2 pieces of loot
-Rewarding players 35 anima for no loot is a god damn slap to the face
-Covenants need a better catch up mechanic, specially for people that are now 2nd guessing their choices
-WQ rewards are still mediocre at best, even with the "upgrades"

PvP is actually decent this expansion finally so that's a plus

*Gearing through PVP

PVP itself is a shitshow.

[Th3Scourge]

6 sockets are not optional

Yeah, they kinda are. You'll get CE without them

[Soon-TM]

Yeah, the Night Fae campaign just seems like a disjointed mess to me

The problem with the NF campaign isn't (imo) tied to in-game issues, but rather to the overall poor writing. All the other three covenant campaigns deal almost exclusively with SL-related issues, but the NF one looks like it is frantically trying to "fix" (more or less) some of the most glaring plot holes from BfA, while at the same time trying to tie into the main story of SL. Ysera, the Drust, rogue Loas, WTF... It's just awful in my book.

[Zyky]

3) What is effective solution of this problem?

Make the game fun, stop creating a game that's designed to milk out playability and not designed to be enjoyable. There's a reason players spent large amounts of time playing Vanilla-Mists when none of them had grinds to the extent of the last few expansions. People can say "it's because those people got older and got lives" but that doesn't excuse that the game isn't really fun with grinds like what we've been getting.

[LemonDemonGirl]

The problem with the NF campaign isn't (imo) tied to in-game issues, but rather to the overall poor writing. All the other three covenant campaigns deal almost exclusively with SL-related issues, but the NF one looks like it is frantically trying to "fix" (more or less) some of the most glaring plot holes from BfA, while at the same time trying to tie into the main story of SL. Ysera, the Drust, rogue Loas, WTF... It's just awful in my book.

I think they should've just left Bwonsamdi out of it imo. He just feels really out of place there. In fact, I think they could've just had it that the Loa are reborn somewhere else other than Ardenweald

[Garymorilix]

I think they should've just left Bwonsamdi out of it imo. He just feels really out of place there. In fact, I think they could've just had it that the Loa are reborn somewhere else other than Ardenweald

Nah, Bwonsamdi is fine, Ardenweald is out of place on its own.

They just really wanted to add another Night Elf/Elune/Val'sharah bullshit to the game as they always do, especially after night elves were nuked (thank god) in BfA.

Ardenweald should have been the Other Side in full, with Mueh'zala being the "Denathrius" of this expansion: guy who betrayed his purpose and now we kill him yada yada and replace him with Bwonsamdi.
We could then nuke the whole Winter Queen and Elune bullshit from the zone and keep almost everything else while making it look like an actual Warcraft afterlife rather than fckin pixies and disney centaur creatures.

This way we could also have a more interesting Revendreth storyline rather than Suramar 2.0 with almost the exact same aesthetic rather than just replacing "arcwine" with "anima".
Denathrius would have been a much more interesting ally than generic posh villain.
And they could have kept the Dreadlord thing as an "act of betrayal" for like 9.2 or something. It still would have worked.

This way we would also have Mueh'zala as the last boss of the first tier who is a somewhat established character already instead of literally killing a Death Titan after 1 cutscene of meeting him.

[Xath]

Yeah, they kinda are. You'll get CE without them

You can get CE lying on the floor dead every fight. If you think that 96 worth of secondary is optional you are not someone I want to raid with.

[WowIsDead64]

Flying is going to be really strange in SL. I mean you are still going to have to FP though Orbie to travel between zones right? The zones are heavily littered with FPs so you can almost just land within seconds of where you are going. In the end I think it's only serious value will be to travel to WQs that are less useful than ever? Maybe shorten travel time to an instance by a few seconds? I think it's gonna be werid.

Flying is very important. I do Revendreth campaign now and it's Suramar 2.0 navigation hell, where anti-daze is 100% mandatory. Flying will help a lot there. Plus Maw, where avoiding overtuned mobs is very important, I said before. But Maw isn't going to have flying. And it's problem. It should become 100% optional then. Not mandatory for leveling + mandatory for campaign, that is base xpack's content and can't be avoided. It's easier to avoid whole game, i.e. stay unsubbed.

[tacoloco]

Flying is very important. I do Revendreth campaign now and it's Suramar 2.0 navigation hell, where anti-daze is 100% mandatory. Flying will help a lot there. Plus Maw, where avoiding overtuned mobs is very important, I said before. But Maw isn't going to have flying. And it's problem. It should become 100% optional then. Not mandatory for leveling + mandatory for campaign, that is base xpack's content and can't be avoided. It's easier to avoid whole game, i.e. stay unsubbed.

I don't think the maw will every have any kind of transportation aside from what they offer now. Rifts, the torghast mount, etc. The main point to the maw seems to be to make it as painful as possible.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Flying is very important. I do Revendreth campaign now and it's Suramar 2.0 navigation hell, where anti-daze is 100% mandatory. Flying will help a lot there. Plus Maw, where avoiding overtuned mobs is very important, I said before. But Maw isn't going to have flying. And it's problem. It should become 100% optional then. Not mandatory for leveling + mandatory for campaign, that is base xpack's content and can't be avoided. It's easier to avoid whole game, i.e. stay unsubbed.

I will be upfront with not referring to flying as important or not important in any which way in my post. Because it is coming so its pointless to debate that point. I doubt the Maw will have flying. You never know they might throw more floors into the deal and add one in but end of the day its all speculation so it doesn't really matter. But I have my doubts.

Now what I did say is flying is going to be strange. Because it will be take a FP to a zone, fly, then if you want to switch zones get on a FP to go to orbo and then to the zone you want to, then start flying again. That is all. If you need to interject the rest of your points here I ask you do it on your own accord and not backboned upon my statement.

[Naiattavain]

well i don't like my sub rogue anymore so i unsubbed and i feel better than playing the game. playing warcraft on my rogue makes me feel terrible. its blizzards problem.

[Caerule]

I don't get this entire thread. Sure, the Renown thing has a catch-up. So you can catch up to the story campaign and the rewards in days or weeks, rather than months. Making it a little easier for alts or players coming in late to catch up to current content.

And if that was all this expansion offered, it might be valid to criticize it. But it's like 10% of what the game offers in the total experience. You would really have to be playing only specifically for the Covenant storyline and nothing else, or ignore the rest exists, to feel this way.

I mean it's not even all of the Covenant, as you'd still need months of gathering souls and anima to catch up on that progress. Then there's the gearing, the reps, current PvE content, The Maw and Torghast, and a lot more you wouldn't get to experience about the game, if you're not subbed.

So yeah, if all you're here for is the Covenant campaign, by all means take a break till the next patch. But if you're actually interested in literally anything else that the game has to offer, that's something you're still denying yourself. I really don't think the one catch-up mechanism the game has right now is that bad at all. At the overall population of the game's playerbase, I think a strong case could be made for it overall being seen as a positive benefit even. Something new every week, but not completely screwed if you miss a week.

[WowIsDead64]

I will be upfront with not referring to flying as important or not important in any which way in my post. Because it is coming so its pointless to debate that point. I doubt the Maw will have flying. You never know they might throw more floors into the deal and add one in but end of the day its all speculation so it doesn't really matter. But I have my doubts.

Now what I did say is flying is going to be strange. Because it will be take a FP to a zone, fly, then if you want to switch zones get on a FP to go to orbo and then to the zone you want to, then start flying again. That is all. If you need to interject the rest of your points here I ask you do it on your own accord and not backboned upon my statement.

Ah, you mean famous Oribos trips are here to stay? Yeah. But we had the same thing back in Cata, when switching zone meant going to capital city and using portal. Flying will still bring some improvements. Remember? SL doesn't have whistle. This means you have to go through all that mobs and obstacles on your way back to FP. At the end it's anti-RP. Because in true RP you would kill all mobs on your way to WQ, so your way would be clear on your way back. Doing it again on way back - is strange quirk of MMO games, that is taken from Metroid-like games and was initially limitation of NES consoles, because 2Kb RAM wasn't enough to store mob states, so they were taken from ROM, i.e. constantly respawning.