World of Warcraft: Current Year

Nola · Feb 27, 2021

I unsubbed last night and I was planning on coming back in 9.1 but I’m sure not much will change. I gave it a good 2 months and the novelty ran out quickly and once again got bored with the game. I don’t know if it just me since I’m older or just MMOs are boring to me. They don’t keep me engaged and wanting to play like they use to.

jayrebb · Feb 27, 2021

Nah the carrots ran out. I shouldnt have alts frozen at low 200 ilevel when Im hitting 12-15 keys weekly for 2 months. I hit a ceiling on RNG and lost interest. I'm playing my main right now but it's pulling teeth to log in. It's cumbersome.

They need to release some story and a meaningful zone. Maybe 9.1 has that allegedly.

RobXIII · Feb 28, 2021

I should've known when, everytime I hit 60 and 'finished' the Shadowlands quest, I rolled another alt. The thought of daily jobs to farm anima just to unlock more content, the thought of the awful, slow Maw and shitty tower. Blech. If I could BG my way to like 210 iLevel I would be happy (Im either too old or the wrong class for arenas lol (hi Havoc DH)).

Oh well, was fun.

Mist · Feb 28, 2021

RobXIII said:
I should've known when, everytime I hit 60 and 'finished' the Shadowlands quest, I rolled another alt. The thought of daily jobs to farm anima just to unlock more content, the thought of the awful, slow Maw and shitty tower. Blech. If I could BG my way to like 210 iLevel I would be happy (Im either too old or the wrong class for arenas lol (hi Havoc DH)).

Oh well, was fun.

Havoc is fine, just find a holy pally or a disc priest and let them kill people for you.

Or you could go Veng and tank RBGs to 213 ilvl.

Chris · Feb 28, 2021

I think that the general theme is that WoW is no longer a "living" game where you can just play it all the time. It hasn't been for a very long time.

It's "seasonal" where you sub for a month to see the new content, then move on. Those of you staying subbed are like abuse victims lol.

I blame the ease of access to new content, there should be no catch up mechanisms, no difficulty levels and content gated behind other content. People think that they went these things, but they don't.

All those annoying attunment quests actually build community and are skill/time/knowledge checks to keep noobs out of content they can't clear.

Having to get gear from previous dungeons to run the new ones gives you the opportunity to have rewarding play for longer, you are supposed to enjoy doing dungeons so why design the game to have a gear reset every other patch so that older dungeons give you zero reward?

Difficulty levels ruins the lore/storyline/transmog experience, like do I really need to do the raid on a higher difficulty just to have slightly higher numbers on the gear that only allows you to run another higher difficulty?

For me, I did the Convenant quests, got nice looking gear and I was a week away from being able to upgrade it to Mythic item level. So why was I learning Mythic dungeons? It took my motivation away. It's also really weird that the catchup mechanism was in at launch, I feel like Convenant gear is there to catch you up for the next raid after Castle Nathria.

Mist · Feb 28, 2021

Chris said:
I think that the general theme is that WoW is no longer a "living" game where you can just play it all the time. It hasn't been for a very long time.

It's "seasonal" where you sub for a month to see the new content, then move on. Those of you staying subbed are like abuse victims lol.

I blame the ease of access to new content, there should be no catch up mechanisms, no difficulty levels and content gated behind other content. People think that they went these things, but they don't.

All those annoying attunment quests actually build community and are skill/time/knowledge checks to keep noobs out of content they can't clear.

Having to get gear from previous dungeons to run the new ones gives you the opportunity to have rewarding play for longer, you are supposed to enjoy doing dungeons so why design the game to have a gear reset every other patch so that older dungeons give you zero reward?

Difficulty levels ruins the lore/storyline/transmog experience, like do I really need to do the raid on a higher difficulty just to have slightly higher numbers on the gear that only allows you to run another higher difficulty?

For me, I did the Convenant quests, got nice looking gear and I was a week away from being able to upgrade it to Mythic item level. So why was I learning Mythic dungeons? It took my motivation away. It's also really weird that the catchup mechanism was in at launch, I feel like Convenant gear is there to catch you up for the next raid after Castle Nathria.

They did the gear this way so that CN Normal would be compelling progression content for the first month rather than a complete was, then by the time people stop doing CN normal, there's catch-up gear so you can just do CN Heroic.

It honestly worked out fine timing-wise. The real problem is that you hit an ilvl progression-wall somewhere around ilvl 210ish unless you can break 1800 in PvP. The gear that drops in M+ is just too low ilvl and you're basically stuck waiting for your chest each week. Valor points will probably fix this but still seem grindy AF.

The problem is that you just can't make WoW all that compelling vs other modern games. It's fun for a month or two each season and then garbage for the next 3-4. They need to find a way to inject content mid-season

Chris · Feb 28, 2021

Mist said:
They did the gear this way so that CN Normal would be compelling progression content for the first month rather than a complete was, then by the time people stop doing CN normal, there's catch-up gear so you can just do CN Heroic.

It honestly worked out fine timing-wise. The real problem is that you hit an ilvl progression-wall somewhere around ilvl 210ish unless you can break 1800 in PvP. The gear that drops in M+ is just too low ilvl and you're basically stuck waiting for your chest each week. Valor points will probably fix this but still seem grindy AF.

The problem is that you just can't make WoW all that compelling vs other modern games. It's fun for a month or two each season and then garbage for the next 3-4. They need to find a way to inject content mid-season

It worked out timing wise but isn't compelling? That's why it isn't compelling, it's designed to spit out good gear no matter what you do.

Here's a radical concept:

Convenant gear is equivalent to normal dungeon blues and not time gated.

All dungeons are heroic difficulty (delete the normal faceroll versions), then you got your difficulty scaling mythic version on top of that like it works now.

You can't do Castle Nathria unless your gear is at Mythic Dungeon level, so you actually have to do the dungeons and can't just skip them with covenant welfare epics. Raid finder is normal difficulty.

Castle Nathria awards gear better than everything other than high mythic dungeon keys. The final boss drops a legendary sword which is the only legendary you are getting this tier and involves some grinding to get.

The Vault only works if you clear Castle Nathria that week, just have one item drop if you do a full clear.

I was going to say that Castle Nathria only has one difficulty level, but how about Mythic Keys in raids? The bleeding edge raiders can compete for that +1 item level increase.

When the next raid comes out, you can't do it unless you have full Castle Nathria gear. If the new raid has a new dungeon packaged with it, it only has upgrades to make Castle Nathria easier, NOT to just skip the entire tier. Oh and there's an attunment for the new raid that requires you clearing Castle Nathria, fuck your alts.

Mist · Feb 28, 2021

Chris said:
It worked out timing wise but isn't compelling? That's why it isn't compelling, it's designed to spit out good gear no matter what you do.

Here's a radical concept:

Convenant gear is equivalent to normal dungeon blues and not time gated.

All dungeons are heroic difficulty (delete the normal faceroll versions), then you got your difficulty scaling mythic version on top of that like it works now.

You can't do Castle Nathria unless your gear is at Mythic Dungeon level, so you actually have to do the dungeons and can't just skip them with covenant welfare epics. Raid finder is normal difficulty.

Castle Nathria awards gear better than everything other than high mythic dungeon keys. The final boss drops a legendary sword which is the only legendary you are getting this tier and involves some grinding to get.

The Vault only works if you clear Castle Nathria that week, just have one item drop if you do a full clear.

I was going to say that Castle Nathria only has one difficulty level, but how about Mythic Keys in raids? The bleeding edge raiders can compete for that +1 item level increase.

When the next raid comes out, you can't do it unless you have full Castle Nathria gear. If the new raid has a new dungeon packaged with it, it only has upgrades to make Castle Nathria easier, NOT to just skip the entire tier. Oh and there's an attunment for the new raid that requires you clearing Castle Nathria, fuck your alts.

Sounds fucking terrible. Not a single thing about that sounds like it would improve anything about the current or future state of the game.

Do you even play this game? What have you cleared?

Chris · Feb 28, 2021

Mist said:
Sounds fucking terrible. Not a single thing about that sounds like it would improve anything about the current or future state of the game.

Except that's how it used to work when the game was way more popular and felt like it had way more content?

These companies keep chasing new, casual players by dumbing everything down and the sub numbers keep dropping.

Merrith · Feb 28, 2021

Chris said:
Except that's how it used to work when the game was way more popular and felt like it had way more content?

These companies keep chasing new, casual players by dumbing everything down and the sub numbers keep dropping.

On the content part, some of that was just total number of zones and total number of dungeons. Also part of the explosion of sub numbers came from dumbing down a lot of things in Wrath (extremely easy Heroic dungeons, super easy first raid, group finder). If games want max subs, there is a sweet spot they have to hit these days.

Mist · Feb 28, 2021

Chris said:
Except that's how it used to work when the game was way more popular and felt like it had way more content?

It's a 17 year old game at this point. It was popular then because it was new and an incredibly polished version of something that various companies had been trying, and failing, to properly make for the previous decade, being put out in a very popular IP, by a company at the absolute top of their game.

Nowadays, the gaming world has largely moved past this whole genre. Shadowlands did a good job putting a shiny coat of paint on a 17 year old game that was fun for 3 months but there's just no way to make this compelling without a constant stream of content that they clearly cannot afford to provide.

You hit near-max ilvl and then what do you do for the next 3-4 months? Or you hit the max ilvl accessible for your personal skill-cap and then what do you do?

Also choreghast is killing the game. It was a good idea but the pacing of the floors is just way off. They should half the floors and double the mob density. It takes longer to walk than it does to kill mobs. The Diablo team should have emphasized to the WoW team how important it is to get the mob density right.

Chris said:
These companies keep chasing new, casual players by dumbing everything down and the sub numbers keep dropping.

I don't understand the dumbing down comment at all. Even Normal CN is more complex than most of the raid bosses in the first 3 expansions (aka when the game was "way more popular") minus the last 2 bosses of Sunwell and hard modes in WOTLK.

Chris · Feb 28, 2021

Mist said:
It's a 17 year old game at this point. It was popular then because it was new and an incredibly polished version of something that various companies had been trying, and failing, to properly make for the previous decade, being put out in a very popular IP, by a company at the absolute top of their game.

Nowadays, the gaming world has largely moved past this whole genre. Shadowlands did a good job putting a shiny coat of paint on a 17 year old game that was fun for 3 months but there's just no way to make this compelling without a constant stream of content that they clearly cannot afford to provide.

You hit near-max ilvl and then what do you do for the next 3-4 months? Or you hit the max ilvl accessible for your personal skill-cap and then what do you do?

Also choreghast is killing the game. It was a good idea but the pacing of the floors is just way off. They should half the floors and double the mob density. It takes longer to walk than it does to kill mobs. The Diablo team should have emphasized to the WoW team how important it is to get the mob density right.

I don't understand the dumbing down comment at all. Even Normal CN is more complex than most of the raid bosses in the first 3 expansions (aka when the game was "way more popular") minus the last 2 bosses of Sunwell and hard modes in WOTLK.

They dumbed down the base game most people play and made raids more complicated.

All I'm saying is that the path to max ilevel can be more evenly distributed over the content, instead of everything catching you up to the raiders right away.

Mist · Feb 28, 2021

Chris said:
They dumbed down the base game most people play and made raids more complicated.

Still don't see how this is true. Dungeon mechanics are still harder than anything in WOTLK and earlier.

Chris · Feb 28, 2021

Mist said:
Still don't see how this is true. Dungeon mechanics are still harder than anything in WOTLK and earlier.

You don't even consider the open world part of the game anymore do you? Classic is full of difficult quests and subzones of elites to murder you. Compare the difficulty of Redridge at lv15-20 to the difficulty of anything since. The Maw is a nice throwback but there's hardly any reason to go there.

Dungeon mechanics may be more complicated but you can ignore/facetank most of them, Classic bosses had dangerous but simple mechanics.

Mist · Feb 28, 2021

Chris said:
The Maw is a nice throwback but there's hardly any reason to go there.

Sockets, conduits, a bunch of important Torghast upgrade unlocks. I still max out my Maw eye in WM every single day, maybe I'm just fucking crazy but I actually find the Maw to be fairly compelling. It's a difficult outdoor zone that acts as a rubric to measure your gear progress. That zone was scary BRUTAL when I was ilvl 170 and now I feel like a god there at ilvl 223 and yet I can still die there and get in really bad situations especially with the added difficulty of hostile players.

Chris said:
Dungeon mechanics may be more complicated but you can ignore/facetank most of them, Classic bosses had dangerous but simple mechanics.

I can't even name any mechanics in classic dungeons aside from Dire Maul. Dire Maul was a really good set of dungeons.

Scholomance had some mechanics but most of the challenge of the dungeon was trash pulls. It was also a good dungeon.

BRD was a good dungeon because it was huge and had lots of interesting options for paths and skips. It had 10 levels worth of content in a single dungeon. That kind of stuff I definitely miss.

There are a few elite subzones in Shadowlands, and they come up in the daily calling rotation a couple times a week. These areas were really hard when we were ilvl 170 but aren't hard now.

Modern WoW is good in that you can always find a challenge that matches the sum of your skill + gear level, but eventually you hit a point where the content at your "level" stops being rewarding and then you have to wait 3-4 months for the content cycle to restart.

I do agree that 4 different raid difficulties is just too much and I think most sane people can see that pretty clearly.

I hope each season adds a difficult outdoor zone filled with rare mobs, I really like that gameplay. The rewards are definitely something they can keep working on.

Lodi · Feb 28, 2021

Chris said:
Dungeon mechanics may be more complicated but you can ignore/facetank most of them, Classic bosses had dangerous but simple mechanics.

You lost me at this part. It's extremely easy to get one-shot in M+. Those Classic encounters barely had any mechanics. The raids were also largely a joke by comparison. Players are WAY better now at the seriously raiding/M+'ing level than they were back then(for better or worse).

kaid · Feb 28, 2021

Mist said:
Still don't see how this is true. Dungeon mechanics are still harder than anything in WOTLK and earlier.

In heroic and non heroic dungeons most of the mechanics can basically be ignored completly other than a couple of dungeons. If you are doing mythics you probably are already well above what the bulk of people in the game ever do.

kaid · Feb 28, 2021

Lodi said:
You lost me at this part. It's extremely easy to get one-shot in M+. Those Classic encounters barely had any mechanics. The raids were also largely a joke by comparison. Players are WAY better now at the seriously raiding/M+'ing level than they were back then(for better or worse).

Well back in TBC the dungeons were legit pretty hard but it was not mechanics. It was just that shit hit very hard compared to the gear you had. basically you would just CC most of a pull and take things one or two at a time. There were almost no strange or weird mechanics to learn or avoid just CC the shit out of anything you could focus fire.

Tauntworth · Feb 28, 2021

Chris said:
Dungeon mechanics may be more complicated but you can ignore/facetank most of them, Classic bosses had dangerous but simple mechanics.

The tanking meta right now for anything above 15 is kiting....as a tank. It's a huge complaint by the general tanking community, you're not actually tanking. As for abilities on bosses, or hard hitting mobs like the enraged spirits in DoS, if you do not properly line up your cooldowns while thinking about the next pull or boss ability, you are going to brick the key. No, facetanking is not a thing. The only tank that can somewhat say this right now is guardian druid, or a DH (when in metamorphosis specifically).

Mist · Feb 28, 2021

kaid said:
In heroic and non heroic dungeons most of the mechanics can basically be ignored completly other than a couple of dungeons. If you are doing mythics you probably are already well above what the bulk of people in the game ever do.

You can't plow through the heroic mechanics at ilvl 160.

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