Time works differently in the shadowlands
Loot was slow before, it wasn't boring and raids weren't overtuned because of the top .01% of guilds complaining about not having a challenge. So gear was a reward for fun content, raids are not fun now when you have dozens of mechanics overlapping terribly in the illusion of "difficulty" when it's all about getting a good pull where things line up better. Even in WoD when Warforging was at it's prime, gear wasn't required for killing bosses, ever since Legion they've been tuning raids around having the gear instead of making the raids enjoyable and making the loot a reward. Loot used to be a reward for doing the content, now it's a required tool to get the kills, big difference.
I would be collecting anima happily but they really overpriced the cosmetics and underpriced the anima/WQ ratio. Anima is what blocks basically every "casual" content, both in activity and "fluff": santum upgrades, collections etc. Almost everything in this expansion feels stupidly overpriced time, effort/yieldwise. PvP gear upgrade, drops, everything. It's like wow has turned into a shitty korean mmo.
In b4 "wOw aLwAyS hAd GrInDs"!
Last edited by Lei; 2021-03-20 at 10:14 PM.
I dabbled in Legion briefly at the end, but I'm only really subscribed for Classic / TBC ... i wouldn't have picked up BFA or SL otherwise (albeit with tokens).
Last time I seriously played -- meaning raiding heroic and arena comps -- was MoP. So the present trend in WoW really holds nothing of interest to me.
What I like is continual progression through an expansion; constant resets eliminate any interest in challenge for me. Raiding is meaningless with so many levels of progression, with the the top tier being utterly inaccessible to someone of my dedication and skill level.
I have 250+ mounts and pets, most of which are meaningless to me post-Wrath. Transmog has ruined the game as everyone looks gonzo super powerful, where i really can't even tell what raid tier gear came from or how hard it was to achieve.
So the 'progression' offered is mostly meaningless collectibles to the casual players.
Feels the same since legion from my perspective. Though I guess they found a way to bring the grind to everyone not just raiders. I like to think its because of how much the forums applauded it being applied to raiders that they did it.
I know its just to get people playing longer though sadly.
I've thought of going back to tbc... my memory has it as the best expansion but after classic I am a bit wary of it. Ive changed even if the game hasn't. After a decade of knocking out heroic raids then mythic when mythic was a thing and a dozen CEs I worry that what I found enjoyable will simply be trivial to the point of boredom now.
But loot isn't suddenly less rewarding now, with being as slow as before Legion/BfA. It is just as rewarding, but you personally think it's less rewarding. I am sure many think as you do, acknowledging that, but other people, including me are glad they made this change because loot DO feel rewarding again, gear being obsolete for the last two expansions.
CN is overtuned compared to the intro raids the two latest expansion, yes. But CN being overtuned compared to some of the other raids the last years isn't a bad thing. It's just that people are so used to be able to overgear and overpower from grinding AP the last two expansion that makes it feel like this, because skill matters more now seeing the rental power is a lot less significant this time around.
https://www.youtube.com/@DoffenGG
Gaming and WoW stuff
You may not have used it, but others still frequently bring it up. Even in this very thread. Like you said, people are attached to it. Even if the very idea is dumb (you wouldn't necessary kill WoW even if you did everything better) it is still a concept that will not die. So yeah I think it is worth noting that none of these MMOs are WoW killers, but they do several things better than WoW and players can and will move to them either temporarily or permanently if WoW doesn't perform as well as they want.
It's because this expansion has nothing to do outside of Weekly goals which can all be done on Tuesday. It's boring, it's not very rewarding, and just not fun. People have other games, also farming on classic to get ready for TBC is something a good bit of people are doing also. It's just not in a good spot right now overall.
This thread is awful close to a "WoW is Dead/Dying" thread, but I've opted to live it open for constructive state of the game discussion. But the weapons-grade takes and infighting need to settle down. Be civil with one another going forward.
"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Way to ignore how WoW was changed into basically self sustaining model with... cata I would say? (the end of wrath with the first ever store mount, the sparkling pony). Wow is raking in a HUGE amount of money from paid services alone. And then there's the token (boosting), mounts, pets etc. Do you think wow would be "this alive" without these? If you think about it, wow doesn't even need to make too much, or too good content because the services alone can make enough money for it to be relatively healthy (read: hugely profitable). They have embraced the cyclical player bullshit to the max. Even the content release pacing and its quality/quantity was directly adjusted to it. For wow to be "healthy enough" they just need to give the playerbase "something to chew on for a while" while they spend their money on boosting and racechange and mounts and pets that brings in the REAL money.
Before the store and the token, wow had to be good to attract players and give quality content for them in hope for them to stay subbed. With token and a store mount every 6 months and with other services they don't rely on the playerbase anymore. WoW grew another leg to stand on, in fact, it can carry the whole thing alone between expansions. Sell the most expac boxes every 2 years (which actually happens time after time after time ) -> MT services will/can carry in between.
When Ion - I think - first ever said in WoD "There's better way to gauge player engagement than subs", when we got the tokens, is when Wow actually changed foot from relying on playerbase to relying on MTs. That's when we got the shitload of store mounts too and they stopped announcing sub numbers. It all clicks together.
Anyone thought that selling mounts and pets and tokens would result in a better game with more budget and care and love? Hahhahahahaha.
Last edited by Lei; 2021-03-20 at 10:58 PM.
The way I see it is because:
1) CN is stupidly overtuned. Even AotC groups were wiping on Inerva or Denathrius, at least before the last wave of nerfs.
2) M+ was castrated. It went from a completely alternative way of gearing your toons to a whack-a-mole thing that you only do to have more options in the weekly vault.
3) PvP is mandatory if you want to gear your character at a decent pace. However, it's a 1-shot fest even worse than the "good ol' days" of Vanilla or the first two seasons of WotLK.
4) Zones are small, hard to navigate (except Maldraxxus), and brimming with mobs if you ever dare to wander 5 inches astray from the road. World quests are long, tedious and all over the place, the effective deletion of FMW is just rubbing salt in a wound. Speaking of which, flight paths take way too long, especially since they drag your ass to Oribos first before sending you to your actual destination. Imagine if you had to go to Dalaran first just because you needed to travel from, say, Aszuna to Val'sharah.
5) Maw and Torghast: I honestly don't know how could anyone think that this would be novel, original content. Especially since you have to rerun the latter on every single alt, it's even worse than the 8.3 legendary cloak acquisition. It also doesn't help that many legendary powers are a shameless ripoff of Legion.
I already explained why because loot then was just extra for killing the boss, now loot is required for killing the boss. Yes loot made the bosses easier, as they should, but it was also possible to kill the bosses without having to grind for weeks hoping everything dropped for everyone on your roster. Now several times over the last few expansions we're punished for having too much gear: few examples being: Denathrius, Xy'mox, Za'qul, and Mistress Sassz'ine. Loot should be a reward, not a requirement. When it's required and you're forced to be lucky so that your guild can progress it makes it feel less rewarding and less fun.
Example of what I'm talking about: Most top 100 guilds killed Heroic Sinestra 25 with some members still in blues from heroic dungeons, that wouldn't be possible today.