When is a good time to buy WoW SL and play?

[arkanon]

As a basically fresh player you will have hundreds of hours of content. And I am not even counting Raiding, M+, rated PVP...

There are very few entertainment options where you get so much for so little, so its worth it.

And in a week or two there will probably be a discount...

Not convinced SL has "hundreds" of hours of content excluding group content. And my argument remains the same - the quantity means nothing if the quality is a problem. And second to that, even the quality of the content means nothing if the class design is not enjoyable. That, obviously, is subjective.

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Don't listen to the clown show of negativity.

SL is fantastic, especially if your playing through it casually and experiencing the content for the first time.


Most of the issues with SL are the irregularly slow pace of new content release due to covid and the end game systems being annoying/generally bad ideas for the min/maxing mindset of the community. But the actual content that is there is really fun imo. 9.1.5 is coming out soon and is fixing the majority of issues with the systems. Hopefully 9.2 and beyond will be back to the normal content pacing.



If you only plan on playing for a month or two especially, it is 100% worth it. Experiencing the zones the first time is really fun. I would wait for a bit though if I were in your position. There will definitely be a sale either when 9.1.5 releases or during black friday and by that point 9.1.5 will be out.

Interesting how many of the "pro SL" people automatically insult anyone who doesn't agree with them. Why would you automatically call anyone who's doesnt like SL a "clown"?

[klaps_05]

9.1.5 fixes most of the systems in the game.
9.2 ptr will show if blizzard actually listened based on the design of the upcoming power grinds in 9.2.
If by 9.2 launch the design of the power grinds is still like at start of SL, then wait for 9.2.5.
Repeat until the PTR shows blizzard has finally learned how to make proper power grind systems.

[arkanon]

9.1.5 fixes most of the systems in the game.
9.2 ptr will show if blizzard actually listened based on the design of the upcoming power grinds in 9.2.
If by 9.2 launch the design of the power grinds is still like at start of SL, then wait for 9.2.5.
Repeat until the PTR shows blizzard has finally learned how to make proper power grind systems.

And then back to square one in 10.0 - "trust us, it's a great new system, you just havnt seen the final version!"

[Th3Scourge]

SL is fantastic, especially if your playing through it casually and experiencing the content for the first time.

I actually can't think of a worse time to be a casual player. There's nothing to do.

Story is dogshit tier
Zones are disconnected and terrible
Covenant campaigns are tedious and lack any meaning or investment due to the story being possibly the worst in wow history
Korthia is a joke of a zone
torghast offers no compelling gameplay, no reason to try different strategies and no reason to replay beyond the bare minimum to get the rewards
transmogs are homogenised and uninspired
It's now world of reskinnedmountsandpetscraft if you're a casual player that likes to collect shit

If you wanted a good casual experience, you are about 2 expansions late. Legion gave you:

class order halls
unique class campaigns for every class
legionfall/argus campaigns
class order hall mounts
artifact weapons and artifact skins available through a wide variety of content
mage tower
some of the best class transmogs of all time
decent zones and lore
An entire max level zone, storyline, progression and payoff in Suramar - possibly the best zone ever created
Actually felt like Warcraft

[Relapses]

I actually can't think of a worse time to be a casual player. There's nothing to do.

Come on man, there isn't a universal definition of casual. Some people might consider themselves casual yet still play 2-3 hours a day.

The rest of your post is disgruntled Legion fanfiction. You do know there's Legion timewalking in 9.1.5 right? :^)

[Alexeht]

Never. This game was killed by Blizzard with all SJ BS while they were harassing people sexually IRL

[Th3Scourge]

Come on man, there isn't a universal definition of casual. Some people might consider themselves casual yet still play 2-3 hours a day.

The rest of your post is disgruntled Legion fanfiction. You do know there's Legion timewalking in 9.1.5 right? :^)

Generally, casual means you don't participate in scheduled content on a regular basis.

And for current casuals, there is fuck all to do. You can try to defend it all you want, but for someone who did play casually for basically all of wod, legion and half of bfa, SL is absolute dogshit.

[loras]

I have played Warcraft before but a long long time ago.

I have fund memories, but recently heard you can play high elves and that SL is a very fantastical place to experience.

This will happen from patch 9.1.5 so I’m thinking of purchasing the game.


I’m not sure it is worth the price tag though plus a monthly subscription. Does this game ver go on sale?

Is it worth trying this out even if for a month or two? I couldn’t find anywhere that sold
It cheaply but here maybe in winter?

I don’t think I’m attracted enough to pay for game +sub, but maybe a half price or 75% discount.

Is it worth it?

I would advise against it, i've played about two months but somehow this expansion didn't do it for me at all.

If you want to try it i would advise waiting until the last patch, as by then the issues might be fixed.

[Zyky]

Never. It's a trash expansion. It's not worth the money to purchase the expansion or the monthly sub. I wouldn't even come back if they offered free game time to return.

[ippollite]

oooh, thats also an interesting point. Isnt the new classic plus servers coming in a month or two? It definitely adds some value to the standard wow sub. Sure, its not gonna pull in the same numbers as classic wow (or even maybe 10% of them?), but its fresh servers and a new lockout/catch up release timeline. (that sentence got away from me).

Point is, we get a THIRD type of game (or system) for one sub. Honestly, I get that 9.1.5 isnt really that big of a deal for players who've stayed sub throughout, but if you never played shadowlands and are returning to the game, theres just a crap load of stuff to do. And if you run out, you can always level up in TBC. And if you get bored of that, then classic plus is on its way as well.

[Zantera]

Saying there's no content is just outright false. If anything you could argue Legion/BFA/SL have had more content than ever and the old days of 'raid or die' in Wotlk or Cata for example are long gone. If you don't like the content that's fine though, I'm not trying to advocate that Torghast or Island Expeditions are masterpieces or anything. Having options is nice though, this was something that was really lacking 10-15 years ago.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Here's something else to consider. Ghostcrawler says that most people list their reason for quitting is that they "no longer have time," but let's take a step back and look at the whole picture here. When a new expansion first launches, you MAKE the time to play the shit out of that expansion. People take work and school off to play the hype. As the expansion wears on over the first few weeks, that calms down. As the expansion gets older, some people just quit because the newness has worn off. Let's also consider raiding. There are "those people" in raids who, when a new tier comes out, they will move their entire life around to make your raid schedule. At a certain point (whether your raid team hits a wall or starts farming the entire raid) those people will start showing up late. This happens gradually more and more as time drags on. Eventually, they start missing raids, making excuses as to why they can't make it. And eventually, they just quit.

People MAKE TIME for things they want to do unless they absolutely just cannot make that time. When they don't want to make time for that activity, they stop doing so. Early WoW made me want to rearrange my wife to play it and raid. Cata and onward had a steadily increasing effect of just making me not want to make time to play it. It's not that I COULDN'T make time, it's that I didn't want to. Sometimes I'd convince myself and others that I couldn't make time, but the reality was that I didn't want to. I was bored with the game. It was utterly boring to play.

So I would stop playing WoW so much because I "didn't have time", but the reality was that nearly anyone can make time to play an MMO, and people will bend over backwards to make time to play a game they want to play. That's what people used to do with WoW for months on end. Now? That honeymoon period of every new expansion lasts maybe a month, and patch honeymoons last a week or less.

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I love everything about this post. Thank you.

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I'm not trying to explain away the losses or hand-wave the poor state of the current game; I'm simply asking for you to be realistic with your comparisons. When a video game is five to six times more popular than its closest competition it seems pretty unfair to shit all over the former because the latter is just now starting to become a more legitimate competitor.

As an aside, I do concede that that Shadowlands seems uniquely disliked on discussion forums like this but I firmly believe that has more to do with social media programming and propagating negativity about the game. Keep in mind that this not a defense of the game. The game has flaws and a lot of those flaws are the reasons the game is less popular now. My issue is with the hyperbolic "WoW's dead, {x game} is the savior," takes. (There are people who non-ironically refer to themselves as "WoW refugees" which I find frankly hilarious.) Imo, these kinds of takes do little to move the discussion along and often waste the time of people who are simply trying to discuss ways to improve the game. (Yeah, I know it's not my job to police the boards and this often nets me sweet three week vacations but I'm not going to censor my opinion even if I know it's an unpopular voice.)

Another thing to consider is the fact that subscription business models have two very important factors and online discussions only ever seem to care about one of them: Attrition and new player generation. People talking about the game are naturally going to focus on the former but I think the latter is just as important (if not, more important) to think about when talking about the state of the game. People move on from WoW all the time but it's still a massively popular game which means that there are new people just starting their WoW adventures (or old players returning to experience it again, like the OP). A lot of changes that are unpopular with veteran players may have been at the behest of new players who felt overwhelmed by the old systems. Is it fair for Blizzard to listen to one group or the other? We can debate that endlessly but I doubt this community will ever reach a consensus on that front. Further, Blizzard has never released either of these figures so when the topic of subscriber levels comes up we're really just looking at numbers and guessing the context of them.

This is all to say that while you're correct in your condemnation of WoW in its current state, I think some of the points your argument relies on are overly critical and fail to consider all of the factors impacting it.

I fully concede there are far more factors than I could possibly ever include in a single post.

As far as "WoW refugees" it's actually an incredibly understandable feeling. Many players feel mistreated by Blizzard, their trust in the company was not returned with quality. And at the same time many who refer to themselves as WoW refugees always say that they felt trapped, like there was so much stuff keeping them from quitting (emotional baggage for the game) and that finally breaking that connection made them feel amazing. As someone who's made that clean break away from WoW, I can say that it is almost an epiphany in how freeing it feels to not feel like WoW is an anchor tied to my ankle that I emotionally felt compelled to continue playing.

[Osmeric]

As far as "WoW refugees" it's actually an incredibly understandable feeling. Many players feel mistreated by Blizzard, their trust in the company was not returned with quality. And at the same time many who refer to themselves as WoW refugees always say that they felt trapped, like there was so much stuff keeping them from quitting (emotional baggage for the game) and that finally breaking that connection made them feel amazing. As someone who's made that clean break away from WoW, I can say that it is almost an epiphany in how freeing it feels to not feel like WoW is an anchor tied to my ankle that I emotionally felt compelled to continue playing.

I think Blizzard's metrics-driven approach misses this. They tweak the game, and people keep playing, so everything is fine, right? But the chains are stretching tighter and tighter, damage is being done that the metrics don't detect. And then they cross a threshold, the players leave, and it's surprised Pikachu face in Irvine.

[Asrialol]

Might as well but it. Worse case scenario; you don't play much or end up stopping quickly.

Also this forum is filled with ex players who for some absurd reason sticks around on a fansite for the game they hate. It's also filled with people who currently play the game but also hate the game. Addiction, basically, which usually doesn't lead to anything pleasant. Asking a question like this here is kinda weird

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I actually can't think of a worse time to be a casual player. There's nothing to do.

Story is dogshit tier
Zones are disconnected and terrible
Covenant campaigns are tedious and lack any meaning or investment due to the story being possibly the worst in wow history
Korthia is a joke of a zone
torghast offers no compelling gameplay, no reason to try different strategies and no reason to replay beyond the bare minimum to get the rewards
transmogs are homogenised and uninspired
It's now world of reskinnedmountsandpetscraft if you're a casual player that likes to collect shit

If you wanted a good casual experience, you are about 2 expansions late. Legion gave you:

class order halls
unique class campaigns for every class
legionfall/argus campaigns
class order hall mounts
artifact weapons and artifact skins available through a wide variety of content
mage tower
some of the best class transmogs of all time
decent zones and lore
An entire max level zone, storyline, progression and payoff in Suramar - possibly the best zone ever created
Actually felt like Warcraft

Mage tower was 10 or so min per class/spec. I don't get why people keep bringing it up as good content.

[Demithio]

This is the first expansion I haven't bought, if that tells you anything. From the looks of it, don't waste your money.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Do you think Blizzard designs/creates the story of expansions to fit into what game mechanics/systems they want to implement?


Or that they try to come up with new/"fun"/engaging mechanics and systems they want to do first, then write/develop the the narrative theme/story of the expansion?


I ask because with how ill received this expansion has been (on this website at least) in terms of both aspects... it makes me wonder why Blizzard missed the mark so badly in both departments in the eyes of a vast majority who feel this way.

[Osmeric]

Do you think Blizzard designs/creates the story of expansions to fit into what game mechanics/systems they want to implement?

Or that they try to come up with new/"fun"/engaging mechanics and systems they want to do first, then write/develop the the narrative theme/story of the expansion?

I ask because with how ill received this expansion has been (on this website at least) in terms of both aspects... it makes me wonder why Blizzard missed the mark so badly in both departments in the eyes of a vast majority who feel this way.

Neither. I think they have business goals (likely metrics related), and the systems are driven by those. The story comes separately, and then they try to integrate the two.

[FoxyAnatoliy]

w8 for 9.1.5 and have your fun for at least a month. The game is worth playing or at least is worth being tried.

[infinitemeridian]

The game is in the worst spot it has ever been, so you should at least wait for 9.1.5. Realistically, if you're set on playing SL, you should wait for 9.2 which will determine whether Blizz listened and actually puts meaningful and fun content into the game.

9.2 has to be on the level of BFA's 9.2 at the bare minimum.

[hulkgor]

90+% of the people who have ever played WoW no longer do, but don't listen to them because reasons.

That's kind of to be expected on a game with a 17 year life-span, with the genre not being as popular as it was, with a lot of other options, no?