World of Warcraft: Current Year
- Thread starter hodj
- Start date
Shadowlands pre-sales highest of any World of Warcraft expansion
WoW at highest player engagement numbers in a decade.
www.pcgamer.com
But why?
Merrith
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 18,113
- 6,923
Shadowlands pre-sales highest of any World of Warcraft expansion
WoW at highest player engagement numbers in a decade.
But why?
"at this stage". Sounds like some cherry picked number.
Dalien
Registered Hodor
- 2,180
- 2,017
Pre-sales may be up but player engagement and retention are absolutely going to tank after the first few weeks. I've been meaning to rant about this for a week or two now so bear with me, it's a bit long.
Currently on Beta there are three servers: Oribos, The Maw, and Torghast. Oribos and The Maw are traditional leveling servers with character copies enabled so you can test the leveling experience. Torghast is the level 60 pre-made server for testing the endgame stuff. This looks great on paper but there's a major flaw with the endgame testing: the beta vendors. The beta vendors provide up to ilevel 197 gear, unlimited anima, souls, all the conduits, soulbinds, and adventurers. Level 60 characters also start at Renown Level 40 which unlocks all sorts of stuff and is going to take 13-14 weeks to max when it's live. As a result the majority of the people testing the endgame stuff are skipping weeks and even months of progression, and have no idea of the grind that's ahead of them.
I've been copying my level 50s to Oribos for a couple months and leveling them up naturally to get a taste of what the actual retail endgame experience will be like, and hoo boy let me ask you: Who's ready to grind out some systems!!!!!??
Upon hitting 60 and finishing the final story chapter in Revendreth, the first thing you do is choose which Covenant to join. Upon doing so you start your Covenant campaign chapters. One of the first things you're asked to do is complete three world quests in their zone.
Doesn't sound so bad except world quests take 2x-3x as long to do as they did in Legion/BFA. Remember the 8.3 weekly invasion quests where you fill the bar to 100% and it takes forever? Yeah, they're like that, except worse. Traveling to and from these world quests is a big pain in the ass due to zone design and limited flight paths. Some of them send you through or into areas packed with elites, and when you're finished doing the quest? Surprise! Flight Master's Whistle doesn't work in Shadowlands. So you can either hearth or you get to hump it halfway through the zone past all the elites again to get to a flight path.
Ok so you've finished the 3 world quests, now you start getting introduced to systems overload. First, you get to grind anima and souls to unlock your Covenant Sanctum features (using Night Fae for an example it unlocks Adventures(mission table), Teleport Network(for Ardenweald), Anima Conductor(unlocks additonal rares, treasures, world quests in Ardenweald) and the Queen's Conservatory(kind of like the MoP farm where you plant stuff and collect the next day for materials).
To farm anima you do more world quests and your daily Calling(Emissary), which is usually: complete more world quests.
For souls, you get sent to The Maw. The Maw is supposed to represent hell where all the worst souls are sent to be tormented for eternity. I feel they did a great job of capturing that feeling as a player being forced to do chores there. First of all, you can't mount in the Maw, aside from a few mounted mobs you can kill and steal their mount for 60 seconds. Anyways, when you're sent here you'll do a few quests that introduce you to collecting souls and farming your next currency: Stygia. Currently to farm Stygia you either kill rares or complete daily quests, all of which increase your Eye of the Jailer debuff. Once that gets high enough it's time to leave so there's kind of a soft cap on how much Stygia you can get daily.
When you have completed these Maw intro quests, you go back to your Covenant and are introduced to these three new systems: Adventures, Conduits and Soulbinds. Adventures are basically reskinned mission table. Conduits are basically relics from Legion that give you slight to moderate power increases. These are unlocked by doing a bunch of different things at max level: world quests, M+, raiding, pvp, maw vendor, there's probably more.
Soulbinds are the trees where you place your conduits, and are unlocked through the Covenant Campaign and Renown. This is where the time gating comes in.
Renown is gained in three ways: You get 1 per chapter you complete in your Covenant Campaign(8 total), and you can get two per week doing weekly quests (get 5 souls from The Maw, and farm 1000 anima). The Covenant Campaign is gated by Renown level though, so you can't actually do the campaign without waiting a week or two between chapters. For example, I finished chapter 4 and had to wait two weeks to start chapter 5 because it required Renown 13. Chapter 6 requires Renown 17 so it's going to be another two weeks before I can try that. At a minimum it is going to take at least 7 weeks to complete your Covenant Campaign with how it's set up now. It will take about 13 weeks to unlock all the Soulbind trees and tiers.
Moving along, around this time you'll get access to the Torghast intro quest line. You'll get story quests to go find Jaina, Thrall etc in there and to be honest this is the best feature on the expansion. Torghast is really fun starting out and you get insanely powerful as you ascend the floors and collect powers. In the intro quests you will go into the various 6 floor wings to learn the layouts and mechanics. Alas, this is also time gated as of last beta build so you can only do 1 quest per day. The wings that are open also rotate daily so you may not be able to complete your quest that day; I had to wait 2 days to complete one of the quests because the wings weren't open. So depending on the rotation it'll be a week or two before you get through all the intro quests and unlock the final 18 floor wing.
While doing the Torghast quests you'll also get introduced to the Runeforger(legendary crafter) who needs you to collect another currency (Soul Ash) from Torghast. Once you farm enough for his inital quest you'll be able to start farming more to craft a legendary.
Anyways, I've rambled on long enough and hopefully given y'all an idea of what it's going to be like in retail as a fresh 60. It feels like if you skipped BFA and came back for 8.3 with all these systems heaped on you, only more grindy and they pile it on shortly after you hit level 60. It feels like they are trying to squeeze out even more engagement metrics even though they kind of hit the wall of what players will put up with in BFA. Lately a lot of players on Oribos/Maw are already burning out from the systems grinds and cancelling their pre-orders. My prediction is that most retail players are going to peace out after a month or two, then we'll get the "lessons learned" speech again and they'll loosen it up.
P.S.: Get a few stacks of Goblin Glider Kits if you don't have Engineering. You'll thank me later.
Currently on Beta there are three servers: Oribos, The Maw, and Torghast. Oribos and The Maw are traditional leveling servers with character copies enabled so you can test the leveling experience. Torghast is the level 60 pre-made server for testing the endgame stuff. This looks great on paper but there's a major flaw with the endgame testing: the beta vendors. The beta vendors provide up to ilevel 197 gear, unlimited anima, souls, all the conduits, soulbinds, and adventurers. Level 60 characters also start at Renown Level 40 which unlocks all sorts of stuff and is going to take 13-14 weeks to max when it's live. As a result the majority of the people testing the endgame stuff are skipping weeks and even months of progression, and have no idea of the grind that's ahead of them.
I've been copying my level 50s to Oribos for a couple months and leveling them up naturally to get a taste of what the actual retail endgame experience will be like, and hoo boy let me ask you: Who's ready to grind out some systems!!!!!??
Upon hitting 60 and finishing the final story chapter in Revendreth, the first thing you do is choose which Covenant to join. Upon doing so you start your Covenant campaign chapters. One of the first things you're asked to do is complete three world quests in their zone.
Doesn't sound so bad except world quests take 2x-3x as long to do as they did in Legion/BFA. Remember the 8.3 weekly invasion quests where you fill the bar to 100% and it takes forever? Yeah, they're like that, except worse. Traveling to and from these world quests is a big pain in the ass due to zone design and limited flight paths. Some of them send you through or into areas packed with elites, and when you're finished doing the quest? Surprise! Flight Master's Whistle doesn't work in Shadowlands. So you can either hearth or you get to hump it halfway through the zone past all the elites again to get to a flight path.
Ok so you've finished the 3 world quests, now you start getting introduced to systems overload. First, you get to grind anima and souls to unlock your Covenant Sanctum features (using Night Fae for an example it unlocks Adventures(mission table), Teleport Network(for Ardenweald), Anima Conductor(unlocks additonal rares, treasures, world quests in Ardenweald) and the Queen's Conservatory(kind of like the MoP farm where you plant stuff and collect the next day for materials).
To farm anima you do more world quests and your daily Calling(Emissary), which is usually: complete more world quests.
For souls, you get sent to The Maw. The Maw is supposed to represent hell where all the worst souls are sent to be tormented for eternity. I feel they did a great job of capturing that feeling as a player being forced to do chores there. First of all, you can't mount in the Maw, aside from a few mounted mobs you can kill and steal their mount for 60 seconds. Anyways, when you're sent here you'll do a few quests that introduce you to collecting souls and farming your next currency: Stygia. Currently to farm Stygia you either kill rares or complete daily quests, all of which increase your Eye of the Jailer debuff. Once that gets high enough it's time to leave so there's kind of a soft cap on how much Stygia you can get daily.
When you have completed these Maw intro quests, you go back to your Covenant and are introduced to these three new systems: Adventures, Conduits and Soulbinds. Adventures are basically reskinned mission table. Conduits are basically relics from Legion that give you slight to moderate power increases. These are unlocked by doing a bunch of different things at max level: world quests, M+, raiding, pvp, maw vendor, there's probably more.
Soulbinds are the trees where you place your conduits, and are unlocked through the Covenant Campaign and Renown. This is where the time gating comes in.
Renown is gained in three ways: You get 1 per chapter you complete in your Covenant Campaign(8 total), and you can get two per week doing weekly quests (get 5 souls from The Maw, and farm 1000 anima). The Covenant Campaign is gated by Renown level though, so you can't actually do the campaign without waiting a week or two between chapters. For example, I finished chapter 4 and had to wait two weeks to start chapter 5 because it required Renown 13. Chapter 6 requires Renown 17 so it's going to be another two weeks before I can try that. At a minimum it is going to take at least 7 weeks to complete your Covenant Campaign with how it's set up now. It will take about 13 weeks to unlock all the Soulbind trees and tiers.
Moving along, around this time you'll get access to the Torghast intro quest line. You'll get story quests to go find Jaina, Thrall etc in there and to be honest this is the best feature on the expansion. Torghast is really fun starting out and you get insanely powerful as you ascend the floors and collect powers. In the intro quests you will go into the various 6 floor wings to learn the layouts and mechanics. Alas, this is also time gated as of last beta build so you can only do 1 quest per day. The wings that are open also rotate daily so you may not be able to complete your quest that day; I had to wait 2 days to complete one of the quests because the wings weren't open. So depending on the rotation it'll be a week or two before you get through all the intro quests and unlock the final 18 floor wing.
While doing the Torghast quests you'll also get introduced to the Runeforger(legendary crafter) who needs you to collect another currency (Soul Ash) from Torghast. Once you farm enough for his inital quest you'll be able to start farming more to craft a legendary.
Anyways, I've rambled on long enough and hopefully given y'all an idea of what it's going to be like in retail as a fresh 60. It feels like if you skipped BFA and came back for 8.3 with all these systems heaped on you, only more grindy and they pile it on shortly after you hit level 60. It feels like they are trying to squeeze out even more engagement metrics even though they kind of hit the wall of what players will put up with in BFA. Lately a lot of players on Oribos/Maw are already burning out from the systems grinds and cancelling their pre-orders. My prediction is that most retail players are going to peace out after a month or two, then we'll get the "lessons learned" speech again and they'll loosen it up.
P.S.: Get a few stacks of Goblin Glider Kits if you don't have Engineering. You'll thank me later.
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Ukerric
Bearded Ape
- 7,918
- 9,564
Thanks a lot for re-assuring me I am certainly never going to come back, as this was the only part that interested me, essentially, and it seems even that is fucked.
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Ukerric
Bearded Ape
- 7,918
- 9,564
Burns
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 6,105
- 12,291
Dalien
Registered Hodor
- 2,180
- 2,017
You can, there's just not really a reason to right now. You can do a harder level to get a little more Soul Ash but it's really not worth it right now.
To elaborate, there are 8 layers (difficulty levels) for each wing. The reward for beating them is Soul Ash (for legendaries) and each layer you clear rewards a bit more (weekly).
What is time gated right now is getting through all the intro quests to unlock all the wings.
Fresh 60s at 130-140 ilvl are going to start struggling around layer 4-5, that's when the "Torments" they added start kicking in.
Chris
Potato del Grande
- 18,206
- -336
Totally agree with the rest of your post but this design sounds more like Classic, which people have been asking for.
Swooping in on quest objectives then flying back out ruined the game in Cataclysm and ruined end game since Burning Crusade.
It's fine to have some struggle as long as it is rewarding to do it. That was Classic.
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You know, there were some people that suggested adding some EverQuest-like AA system to progress your characters further, because people were bored after clearing a_current_raid_02 and having BiS gear. I see that Blizzard found a solution to that: They added AA-like systems, but they reset not only each expansion, but each major patch!
And now we have the dream MMO game where you can grind while you grind. Your teeth, that is.
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Fucker
Log Wizard
- 11,561
- 26,137
Fucker
Log Wizard
- 11,561
- 26,137
MMO's straight up need to get rid of levels. They serve no purpose other than fluffing up sub numbers.
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Fucker
Log Wizard
- 11,561
- 26,137
It is a meaningless number, as is their laughable MAU number. They are counting me every day I log in. October would have me appearing as 21 different people. It is just another way to cloak their declining number of players.
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That is a direct legacy of the MMO lineage coming from the MUD days, through games like Neverwinter Online and to EverQuest. People wanted to play D&D style roleplay games online with friends and strangers.
To do away with levels would just result in people judging you by item level/gearscore, or anything else the community comes up with, like raider.io.
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Fucker
Log Wizard
- 11,561
- 26,137
- 2,605
- 4,143
Yeah, just like that. From a game design perspective you have to separate your newbies from the experienced/seasoned players. For example, this is also the reason why leveling in League of Legends (from 1 to 30) is a thing*, even when the "leveling" there is even more pointless than the usual MMO leveling experience. It's just that you have to ease players into the core systems and gameplay loop of the game without overwhelming them.
I know we're all jaded suckers that have done this a over and over again, but there are people out there that may be legitimately trying out WoW for their first time. I met two of them in a leveling dungeons (SotS, of all places) that have been playing for a mere month. Tank wanted to kick them because they failed mechanics at Lord Stormsong, which of course wipes the group.
*) And also why "smurfing" is a thing, and why they separate players into leagues divided by "skill".
Warmuth
Molten Core Raider
- 869
- 493
The biggest problem with it is that zone design is shit. Everything is always on the other side of a mountain or at the top of the cliff of whatever canyon you’re in.
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