When did WoW convince itself Raiding is the only thing that's important?

[Argorwal]

Wrath had very low barrier to entry to gear up from dungeons and BGs. It had a ton of reputations that were pretty extensive. Tradeskills had a lot of depth. There were 16 dungeons over the course of the expansion. Wintergrasp was fantastic.

The dungeons were easy I agree, and also pre-made only until the final patch which the modern player base seems to hate anything premade.

PvP gear had rating requirements on most slots so always surprised to hear people talk about how casual it was. If even had 2 tiers of rating requirements for weapons.

Wintetgrasp really depended on the server, some servers had factions that never won all week.

ICC gearing is basically what Shadowlands is based on, it paved the way. 3 pre made raid difficulties/gear, 13 item level gaps between difficulties, last boss dropping 7 item levels higher.

I guess the difference is back then people felt 251 ICC10 gear was “good” and now the equivalent which would be 226 is absolute trash

[Lorgar Aurelian]

If you genuinely don't understand the difference between getting BiS and getting sockets, I don't really know what to tell you. It's just an obnoxiously dishonest point to contend with, just uselessly contrarian for no reason.

they aren't the same but they are both obviously rep progress.

Tell me you are insanely out of touch without telling me you are insanely out of touch.

I suppose it's possible i am out of touch with the absolute bottom of the barrel of "causals" if you can even call them that.

If you think "Let's have 50 quests but they are randomly strewn around every day" and "Let's have 50 quests but localize them more" are so radically different that one costs way more money, I once again have nothing to add as it is again useless contrarian garbage that isn't worth taking seriously.

if you think the only difference is rather the quest are localized or not then I also have nothing else to add because you must be trolling as you already pointed out the further differences in a earlier post but are now pretending that there the same other then being localized.

Except they wouldn't ever have to do it.

Man if you want to talk about being out of touch this is a prime example. You haven't had to do any of the similar things from legion onwards that hasn't stopped people from forcing them self's to then complaing on mass.

[Bramickias]

How didn’t Wrath focus on raiding?

It didn’t even add a new zone in any patches, and only 1 patch even had world content at all.

Wrath classic is going to be a raid loggers wet dream just like TBC classic is now.

How long until you realize that every version of the game, beside Legion and BFA, is a "raid loggers wet dream"?

-------------------------

Vanilla was a bit less focused on raiding, since leveling was the major timesink of the vast majority of players.
With leveling taking a lot less time, TBC became largely focused on raiding. That insane attunement chart is proof enough of them trying to direct everyone towards raids.
WotLK doubled down on it. Raiding wasn't the end goal anymore, raiding THIS CURRENT TIER was everything the game was about.
At the end of Cata then went even further with LFR, meaning everyone would see the raids, no more excuses.
Everything's been exactly the same until Legion and the introduction of M+, finally giving some endgame related stuff to do outside of a raid.

Frankly, right now, the game is as far removed from the "raid or die" mentality as it ever was.

[Argorwal]

How long until you realize that every version of the game, beside Legion and BFA, is a "raid loggers wet dream"?

-------------------------

Vanilla was a bit less focused on raiding, since leveling was the major timesink of the vast majority of players.
With leveling taking a lot less time, TBC became largely focused on raiding. That insane attunement chart is proof enough of them trying to direct everyone towards raids.
WotLK doubled down on it. Raiding wasn't the end goal anymore, raiding THIS CURRENT TIER was everything the game was about.
At the end of Cata then went even further with LFR, meaning everyone would see the raids, no more excuses.
Everything's been exactly the same until Legion and the introduction of M+, finally giving some endgame related stuff to do outside of a raid.

Frankly, right now, the game is as far removed from the "raid or die" mentality as it ever was.

100% agree.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Never happened. Its just the players who recycle that mentality, some times subliminally.
Raids have always told the story and been the focus of development time, but there has never been more to do outside of raiding than there is right now. Partially because it just keeps adding more and more on top of what is still there from before.

[Ethas]

Because getting epic items while playing coop game feels rewarding. Even for average joe who ever done Normal. And the Race to World First is basically a World Cup for everyone. I don’t see your point and I completely disagree with Asm on this. If he thinks FF is how MMOs should be done I’m glad WoW developers ignore his feedback. Because FF and other asian mmos are just bad cashgrabs.

[Jastall]

Wrath had very low barrier to entry to gear up from dungeons and BGs. It had a ton of reputations that were pretty extensive. Tradeskills had a lot of depth. There were 16 dungeons over the course of the expansion. Wintergrasp was fantastic.

I mean at entry Wrath has lots to do I guess, discounting the copy-pasted ultra easy Naxx. But the dungeons only reward Badges are and are a total faceroll, the only really good thing from rep is the SoH shoulder enchants if memory serves, and tradeskills may "have depth" but they don't contribute that much to power. Casual activity in Wrath nets you some mediocre Badge gear that doesn't fit every slot. Want to get that GS up and don't like PvP? Raid, bitch.

[Coniferous]

It's not just that the focus is on raiding, it's on an incredibly small number of raiders and even then it's very boring without better progression for most of them at the bottom of the ladder. Look at the kill timing from:

https://progstats.io/tier/28-sanctum-of-domination

For most bosses, the number of guilds killing them peaks in October and then drops precipitously. There are maybe 2500 guilds who are gonna kill Sylvanas, which is like 50k players. And after a few months, no one new is even trying to progress into mythic at all.

Now compare this to Dragon Soul. Yes, I know Dragon Soul was a bad raid, but it did one thing right - it got much easier as time went on. Dragon Soul was released in November, and in July (8 months later), there were nearly 2000 guilds who killed Madness for the first time. I literally pugged CE Deathwing just before prepatch and I was a significantly worse player than I am now. It had the zone buff that made it easier and allowed guilds who weren't good enough to progress.

Meanwhile, today, I have a buddy in one of those barely cutting edge guilds (sometimes not, depends raid to raid). They spend about half of each tier on a giant extended lockout, slogging through the raid one boss at a time, hundred attempts on this boss, fifty on that one, etc. If you raid 3 hours a night and wipe every 10 minutes, that's 18 attempts, so a 100 attempt boss is 2 and a half weeks of wiping.

When I think of my best times raiding, I think of going in to a fresh instance, powering through the earlier bosses we mastered, getting a bit more powerful as we go so that the hardest boss is a bit easier each week. That, to me, feels like progression. Doing 40 attempts on a boss and saying, "yes, we got to phase 3!" isn't. And yes, we weren't super hardcore but we progressed every week, and yes, the zone buff helped us significantly because we just aren't as good as the top 20k players that they design the raid for now.

If my buddy's guild gets cutting edge this tier, they'll probably stop raiding. They haven't done some of the fights in months, and they barely beat most of the later bosses.

This is just a worse raid design. They need some sort of self nerfing mechanism for mythic, whether it's a zone buff or whatever, because most people just stop playing the game because the current design doesn't include enough progression for most players.

People here will snarkily say "well that's what heroic is for". Heroic progression takes a month, maybe 6 weeks, then your character is hard stuck unless you join a mythic raiding guild and start slowly slogging through.

So again, Dragon Soul you had significant progression happening 8 months into the raid. SoD's progession is basically non-existent at this point - you had about 100 guilds kill Sylv in the past month, which is 2000 players (and 1/20 the number of guilds killing Deathwing in month 8). This is because they used to significantly nerf content as it went on - with gear, with zone buffs, legendaries, valor upgrading gear, you name it - and now they just leave it as is, designed for the very top mythic guilds who are good enough to clear it every week, while most players just hit their ceiling after 6 weeks or so and give up.

Edit: One thing to add is how encounter design affects this as well. The last raid I really did was Nyalotha, and I (obviously) cleared heroic fairly early on. When mythic cross realm opened I also quickly did the first three and then once I got in with a guild as a pug and did the fourth (and maybe the fifth, I don't remember). Then I looked at the encounter design for Xanesh - and 5 minutes later I knew I was done. I had massive corruption on my gear, insane throughput, but it was pointless. I was never going to be in a stable enough group capable of handling the fight, it was just too scripted. 5 sets of three interrupters rotating, specific order to do everything, yeah, no.

[Soon-TM]

Because FF and other asian mmos are just bad cashgrabs.

If XIV and other, unnamed Eastern MMOs are "bad cashgrabs", what does that leave for WoW, where you can legally swipe your credit card and get instant access to some of the most prestigious achievements, titles and (with any luck) the best gear in the game?

[Argorwal]

It's not just that the focus is on raiding, it's on an incredibly small number of raiders and even then it's very boring without better progression for most of them at the bottom of the ladder. Look at the kill timing from:

https://progstats.io/tier/28-sanctum-of-domination

For most bosses, the number of guilds killing them peaks in October and then drops precipitously. There are maybe 2500 guilds who are gonna kill Sylvanas, which is like 50k players. And after a few months, no one new is even trying to progress into mythic at all.

Now compare this to Dragon Soul. Yes, I know Dragon Soul was a bad raid, but it did one thing right - it got much easier as time went on. Dragon Soul was released in November, and in July (8 months later), there were nearly 2000 guilds who killed Madness for the first time. I literally pugged CE Deathwing just before prepatch and I was a significantly worse player than I am now. It had the zone buff that made it easier and allowed guilds who weren't good enough to progress.

Meanwhile, today, I have a buddy in one of those barely cutting edge guilds (sometimes not, depends raid to raid). They spend about half of each tier on a giant extended lockout, slogging through the raid one boss at a time, hundred attempts on this boss, fifty on that one, etc. If you raid 3 hours a night and wipe every 10 minutes, that's 18 attempts, so a 100 attempt boss is 2 and a half weeks of wiping.

When I think of my best times raiding, I think of going in to a fresh instance, powering through the earlier bosses we mastered, getting a bit more powerful as we go so that the hardest boss is a bit easier each week. That, to me, feels like progression. Doing 40 attempts on a boss and saying, "yes, we got to phase 3!" isn't. And yes, we weren't super hardcore but we progressed every week, and yes, the zone buff helped us significantly because we just aren't as good as the top 20k players that they design the raid for now.

If my buddy's guild gets cutting edge this tier, they'll probably stop raiding. They haven't done some of the fights in months, and they barely beat most of the later bosses.

This is just a worse raid design. They need some sort of self nerfing mechanism for mythic, whether it's a zone buff or whatever, because most people just stop playing the game because the current design doesn't include enough progression for most players.

People here will snarkily say "well that's what heroic is for". Heroic progression takes a month, maybe 6 weeks, then your character is hard stuck unless you join a mythic raiding guild and start slowly slogging through.

So again, Dragon Soul you had significant progression happening 8 months into the raid. SoD's progession is basically non-existent at this point - you had about 100 guilds kill Sylv in the past month, which is 2000 players (and 1/20 the number of guilds killing Deathwing in month 8). This is because they used to significantly nerf content as it went on - with gear, with zone buffs, legendaries, valor upgrading gear, you name it - and now they just leave it as is, designed for the very top mythic guilds who are good enough to clear it every week, while most players just hit their ceiling after 6 weeks or so and give up.

Another side of this is the reason guilds can even extend so much is because of mythic+ still providing 246/252 gear to the entire raid every week without killing a single raid boss.

[MoanaLisa]

If you can get the same currency doing easy content as difficult content, players will just spam the easier content ad infinitum to farm the currency.

The post I was responding to mentioned a weekly cap so your 'ad infinitum' comment is irrelevant. Besides, what's the problem with choosing the difficulty level that works best for you if rewards scale with difficulty?

[Glorious Leader]

If you can get the same currency doing easy content as difficult content, players will just spam the easier content ad infinitum to farm the currency.

Who gives a shit who gives a fuck? I mean what you're baidcslly saying is the developers currently privilege on group of players over another. Which is true but its why the game is in constant free fall. Constantly having to dictate who gets what based on petty concerns that some people will abuse the system and eschew harder content.

[azka]

I seriously cannot understand this logic. I've raided before, I'm sure most of us have, but I wouldn't say it's the be all end all of a video game. It's just a minigame to do with more players at the end of a character's leveling career. Where and why did this become the main focus of the game? I was watching Asmon's video last night and I think he brought up a good point--which is that the reason so many players think Raiding is the only thing that matters is because when WoW was coming up the content creators that were promoting WoW were all from the high-end/semi-high-end raiding communities. This gave the game a false sense of where the priorities arise from.

He was convinced in the video that the game tries to focus too much on the Mythic Raider Player and the Average Joe who does nothing but play once a week. While I don't disagree with the Mythic piece, the more I thought about it I could see the Average Joe piece too. But I suspect that was Activision trying to get new players to play--looking at you Mission Table and Level Squish. Those feel like corporate decisions. But the Mythic Raider piece is entirely the Devs fault. The people in leadership on the Dev team focus way too much on the Mythic Crowd. Most players don't even touch heroic raiding, yet why is it always seem like the center of the conversation revolves around Mythic Raiding.

As I finished it I was watching it with my roomate (old WOW player) and he said when he tried WoW again he noticed the leveling experience was ruined, and when he got to endgame the only thing people talked about was raiding. His conclusion was that it's no wonder the population shrank because it feels like the game thinks it's a good thing if everyone is striving to be a Mythic Raider, and he said how do you expect people to have fun under that system?

Raiding is the only thing important.

[Coniferous]

The post I was responding to mentioned a weekly cap so your 'ad infinitum' comment is irrelevant. Besides, what's the problem with choosing the difficulty level that works best for you if rewards scale with difficulty?

You can't really have rewards that scale well with difficulty, because everyone has a different (non-linear) difficulty curve. Certain groups can blast through +15s all day but struggle with 20s... others blast through 10s and can't do 15s. It's not a curve, it's often closer to a backwards L shape.... easy, easy, easy, IMPOSSIBLE... but everyone's gets steep at a different spot. As a result, it's always going to be more efficient to do the lower content that's easy.

But yeah, a weekly cap would be fine with me, except kind of annoying if you wipe on a boss all week and don't hit your cap the way you normally do. Except I would make it a seasonal cap or something where catch up is quick, because catch up has been horribly broken in this game quite often over the past few expansions (farming essences during nyalotha was the worst!). It's no fun when it's a situation like SOO where it took like 16 weeks to cap valor on your gear, so it took 16 weeks for alts to catch mains - similarly with legendary ring upgrading by 5 ilvls a week for like 20 weeks.

Although to be completely honest, I prefer an increasing zone buff that you get for free instead of having to go get a weekly cap, but that defeats the op's goal of having things to do. (except my argument would be that it automatically nerfs the raid, giving you more to do in there).

[Glorious Leader]

As a result, it's always going to be more efficient to do the lower content that's easy.

Sick. Stop threatening people with a good time. This is really only an argument to maintain the privilege the some folks can get over others. This endless need to balance the rewards people get against each other is terrible for the game. If I want to farm 9999999999 dungeons to get my tier set I fail to see the problem with that.

[Coniferous]

Sick. Stop threatening people with a good time. This is really only an argument to maintain the privilege the some folks can get over others. This endless need to balance the rewards people get against each other is terrible for the game. If I want to farm 9999999999 dungeons to get my tier set I fail to see the problem with that.

I read your post several times, and I have no idea what you're arguing for. When you say, "maintain the privilege" I think you're saying the privilege of mythic raiders is bad... then I read "endless need to balance rewards" which sounds like you're saying that rewards shouldn't be balanced and the privilege should be maintained... then you're saying you want to be able to farm tier sets from dungeons which is either an argument that low tier players should get access to high end gear, or that high tier players should be able to spam dungeons with no cap endlessly to quickly get tier.

Honestly, no clue. No clue at all.

[cparle87]

It didn't, players did. WOW has things to do that don't focus on raiding but the more vocal part of the playerbase is too busy chasing gear to notice those activities.

QFT. Way too many people disregard huge swaths of the game as "not content" because they don't improve player power. The Zereth Mortis progression thing is a recent example.

[Sucralose]

Never happened. Its just the players who recycle that mentality, some times subliminally.
Raids have always told the story and been the focus of development time, but there has never been more to do outside of raiding than there is right now. Partially because it just keeps adding more and more on top of what is still there from before.

I mean what story? The majority of raids are simply a few sentences of dialogue most of them spell callouts. They all died covers most of the raid bosses stories told in raid.

[Kralljin]

In 9.1 the Domination shard means raid BiS comes from raids, no questions asked (hell they're also invaluable for dungeons, not required but BiS dungeon sets certainly include them).

Okay, so what about post 9.1?
Unless you're still supposed to wear Dom Shards in 9.2, which i doubt will be the case.

Best dungeon trinkets? Usually from dungeons as well, albeit this certainly varies.

Which is like, two slots, at best and there you even rely on the weekly Chest in order to acquire the best possible version, so good luck on that.

Great Vault also does this by making, say, one M+ clear and a couple Arena matches/week well worth your time from a value standpoint even if you don't main those activities at all.

Due to the sheer size of the itempool, it makes it very difficult to acquire specifc items from the vault.
You can obviously play more M+ if you want a specific item, but i think most players will burn themselves out doing 10 M+ dungeons every week just for having the best possible odds at a few items, if M+ isn't their main avenue.

And in order to get solid Items from PvP, you need Rating, which is naturally harder to gain.
It's not like in TBC, where you can play 10 games a week, then buy anything but Shoulder and weapons after X weeks.

As to the bolded, I said professions, not faction reputation items which frankly is no great loss to me considering how boring rep grinds are.

Speak for yourself, personally i just combined Rep grinds with doing dungeons where i still need items / badges, which made the whole thing super efficient.

[Boddhi]

I always wanted to be a mythic raider until i was a mythic raider.