Yeah I feel a lot of people are playing the Azerite Armor and Artifact power in general like they used to before WoD.
As in gearing up for Raids seems to be a bigger deal than learning the mechanics for raids and dungeons.
I mean seriously, ~30 levels of AP is supposed to last till the next raid, wtf is up with people grinding that. Its a surefire way for burnout.
So I stopped. It makes the game so much more enjoyable.
And the level requirements for pugs is ridiculous now.
Here's the thing. 340's can easily take on Normal Uldir. Like Ezpz, if they've learnt the mechanics. The Pugs are asking for 355. Dayum.
350's can easily take on Heroic. They're asking for 365+... wtf.
If all the strategy you're deploying is a Zerg-rush/Stack and attack/etc, then yeah, you're going to need more dps. But if people killed the raids like they were meant to...
And Raider.io doesn't help lol.
I've seen 370 people being rejected for +7 Mythics, cause they have lower score on io. I one chested a +8 on week 2 cause we had a Tank who "knew de way". Instead, you get tanks who have no idea which crowds to cc and which crowds to stack on. Obviously we need more damage.

 

DH is in such a good place right now for traits, that I've never really felt the pressure of absolutely farming this piece or that one. I was also very lucky on my weekly chest and got some 385 azerite pieces twice, so no matter the trait they'll be worth it. Now if only Fathoms could do a wee bit less DPS so I could actually use the 3 x 385 trinkets in my bag!

That's always going to be the way of PUGs. When there wasn't ilvl to based it on, people would walk up to you and inspect your gear to make sure you had appropriate gear for content. Now we have a number (or two if you count raider.io) to look up to have an idea of what you're capable of doing. Is it a fair representation of skill? Definitely not, but at least it tells me what I should be able to expect from you in terms of numbers.

You're a stranger to everyone when you pug. If you don't want to be treated like a stranger, raid with friends or make your own group.

 

I'm starting to feel the doldrums of this expansion. So much so that on a spur of the moment I decided to just level up my druid, my 4th character, to 120. Gearing it out is going to be much harder. I already took it through 8/8 lfr for pretty much nothing, and got very little from arathi and nothing from the world bosses (as is tradition), so no real head start. Main issue is that I have no real desire to actually gear the character out, though I do like playing it to some extent. But the idea of spamming heroics doesn't appeal to me right now, so I guess it will just be a LFR and WQ queen for now until the warfront comes by again.

So where does that really leave me at? My mage finally hit 370 (or rather, 371) since I finally managed to replace my last 340 azerite piece. Not really much more for me to do with the character I guess. I've just got a 355 belt to replace and a couple random 365's. But, the loot system is as bad as it's ever been. Getting the one item you want to drop should never feel disappointing, yet it does when it doesn't titanforge, and being at the point where items simply dropping isn't good enough is a very bad state for the game to be in. It's pretty much the same shit Destiny 2 ran into, where the only thing that mattered was a number. Only thing I can really do is spam Mythic 10's, but honestly, I find that whole system to be pretty boring, and I don't really want to waste what free time I do have doing that. I think I covered that in my previous post though.

At this point, I wonder when things are going to boil over. It's been two months now - is BfA worse than WoD? Or is WoD too far removed in the memory banks that it's dulled it? There's certainly a lot of parallels. Bad lore disguised by a decent leveling experience. A lack of end-game content. Hard dungeons with a challenge mode vs long dungeons with a buggy mythic plus mode. Boring garrisons that needed micromanagement vs island expeditions with no gear vendor and warfronts giving mythic dungeon gear for doing nothing. We're at the two month mark, which is pretty much the point where people got sick of garrisons and started quitting in droves. They both share a lot of the bad systems. Both have LFR. Both have Warforging. Both neutered and homogenized classes. So, if you weigh Garrisons against everything else that's bad in BfA, is BfA actually worse? Honestly, I say yes. First, the fucking war table is still in the game. It serves almost no purpose other than a reason to download the app and get a couple hundred rep, and it was possible to hit max rep with everything a month into the game. There's no prestige rep yet (though supposedly it's on the 8.1 ptr), but why even remove it from the game temporarily? Island Expeditions have potential, but blizzard has taken out pretty much every gear vendor in the game, so you can literally do a thousand islands and still not get a single mount. Warfronts exist, but keep in mind that the Horde got access to it on like week 3, yeah, a catch-up mechanism given to one side 3 weeks into the game that invalidated mythics, at least until it cycled off, and they're super mindnumbingly boring. Warmode is good, but I've literally run around drustvar on my rogue mining and herbing and not seen a single alliance. Part of that is due to faction imbalance, but part of that is also due to the server sharding nonsense that has been killing their game for years now. And of course, there's the GCD changes which literally no one in the game is a fan of, and makes everything feel sluggish. There's a lot more, but ultimately, I think BfA IS worse than WoD. And, there's no real sign of it getting any better, as Blizzard's communication has been frustratingly non-confrontational.

 

I've said it before WoD was a good expansion spread over too long a time period.

I don't recall anyone hanging as much shit on it as they're doing with bfa, especially not this early.

 

I've been doing M+ since they've opened, 8+ keys almost every week. Perhaps I am simply lucky, but I have not seen any game breaking bug so far. I've seen people talk about a bug encountered, but really they were just bad and didn't understand a mechanic properly.

It's almost like dungeon with no gear vendor. I really don't understand why people are frustrated by this aspect of Island Expeditions. Every piece of loot in WoW is rng based. If you're not happy with grinding content to get gear, you're playing the wrong game...

I'll agree to that. It's fucking ridiculous and boring.

I think LFR is a good thing. It gives casuals a thing to do to experience the content, provide an introduction to raiding and a nice step up from Heroics for gear. As a Mythic raider, the only reason I'm doing it is for the +3 stacks of Array before our Mythic raid night on reset; otherwise I wouldn't bother. The same way I don't bother doing heroics unless there's a satchel for those sweet augment runes.

I'm a bit on the fence about warforging. It's meant as an incentive to keep playing content from which you need nothing in case you get a lucky warforge and it becomes an upgrade. I don't really like it, but I don't think it's game breaking or anything either.

How so? I've played 3 classes up to 120, and a couple through 110 and I feel like most of them are actually pretty unique. The Class fantasy is generally well done instead of just being a copy-paste from another similar class. Some classes are problematic (Spriest) due to their abilities interaction or some needs tuning (shaman), but that's a different issue and something that will always be true of 1 or 2 classes no matter the patch.

While I agreed with you initially, having leveled an alt, I like that I can get some of that extra rep with the war table instead of having to go do 20 x WQs for 200 CoA rep. Or if I'm lucky, get a couple of augment runes from it instead of having to waste my time in a heroic dungeon. It's far from a perfect system, but I like how they made it optional so you don't feel bad if you don't actually log into the game to launch your mission exactly on time.

 

I'm just completely burnt out of M+. I did a ton of them in Legion, since the initial AP grind there was actually worse the what we have now. Perhaps I'm still burnt out on them, even though I quit the game for a year. But, even ignoring burnout, I don't really find them that fun. It just feels like I'm running on a treadmill. And truthfully, I don't even do that many of them a week. If I have a new character, I'll spam them a bit, like I've been targeting Waycrest Manor for my rogue since the weapon there is really good. Otherwise, I'll do the one for the week. And even doing that few of them, I've personally run into quite a few bugs. Example, duplicate packs in Atal'Dazar, and I'm not talking about teeming. That happened to me week two, and it's pretty shocking. Waycrest and Tol'Dagor both have severe clipping problems with AOE, causing you to pull packs through the wall or floor. I feel like that is something that is probably never going to get fixed. I've run into two different bugs on freehold. The first is on the pirate council. If you accidentally pull a pack, kill the boss and wipe on the pack, you will be stuck and unable to release for 10 minutes while the pack tries to kill the neutral pirate. I've also heard reports of a similar bug with the healing modifier making it so they're actually unkillable fullstop. Second is with the shark boss, where the shark bugs out and doesn't despawn when you kill the boss. It will keep you in combat until you die, although it does no damage. I've had that one happen twice now. And in Temple of Sethralis in the orb room, I've both experienced an orb falling through the floor and disappearing forever, as well as one pedestal having duplicate orbs. Obviously one of those kills the run instantly and one doesn't, but the fact that it can happen seemingly at random is terrible. And most of these bugs were reported multiple times during the Beta. There's probably more, but those are the ones that have personally happened to me.

As for the other stuff, arguing about whether or not you personally like one of the systems in the game isn't going to lead anywhere so I won't bother. Only thing I will really say is with the gear vendor - we went from having them for many years, to pretty much only having them for rep. You had a clear reward that you can save up and shoot for. Was that really a bad thing? But now you're 100% completely at the whims of rng, and in many cases, a second layer of rng in the form of forging. Like, I can't imagine being that one guy who had done a thousand island expeditions without getting a single mount. Must be soul crushing. I get the memes about blizzard wanting to increase player sub time with arbitrary grinds, but you know the one thing that increases playtime? Having a fun game.

 

Yeah, your comment about loot vendors and playing the wrong game if you hate all these levels of rng screams of recency bias, or maybe you only started playing more heavily post MoP?

Personally, I've played a lot less from MoP onwards. The introduction of thunderforging, personal loot and the removal of gear vendors is just one too many layers of rng I just don't find fun. I'd argue it's literally the antithesis, artificially lengthening the time to get BiS (to virtually infinity) to keep you playing longer.

Loot treadmill aside though, the class issues are probably more damning for me. We lost a whole talent tree with artifact weapons removed, then there was the gcd change, then the removal of set piece bonuses and finally the removal of legendaries.

We lost all of those and gained Azerite Armour. The traits aren't as powerful as set piece bonuses of old, but maybe on par with the middling legendaries on average.

We've lost so much that we've gained ten levels but feel weaker.

Much of that is probably unavoidable given we seemingly had to lose our artifact weapons, but the systems the were supposedly introduced to replace them, I'd argue, are woefully inadequate.

The game has serious issues, ones I don't think can't be fixed this expansion - which is a shame, because the stuff with Jaina, Bwonsamdi and the Old Gods is genuinely fascinating...

I guess that's what lore vids are for.

 

My heaviest playtime was 2005 through 2010 when I was still in high school and college and had loads of free time. I came back sometime during the year-long SoO patch (I actually came back, played for a few months, quit, came back again nearly a year later, and it was the same patch), but with work fulltime, I don't nearly have as much time as I used to. I still play a lot, but not as much as I used to when I was younger.

Anyways, I do agree with the class issues. And, it's further exacerbated by the fact that what talents you do have can be lost upon switching to a higher ilvl version of the same gear. Essentially you are getting more powerful, but actually not really. It's very counterproductive.

I do, however, think Blizzard can actually fix it. They made the system to begin with afterall. But will they? Given how there's still a ton of bugs from the Beta still currently in the game half a year later, I doubt it. They could just add make it so the Heart itself has some actual functionality so you don't keep gaining/losing the same trait over and over, though I don't think it should be as lazy as simply copy/pasting legion traits onto it. They can also make the traits actually mean something. Some of them are generic D2-esque procs, while many of them are just passive bonuses that you barely even notice happening. Very few of them actually change your gameplay or style of play in any meaningful fashion. Losing the artifact traits hurt, so much so that they're actually giving elemental shamans their maelstrom cap one back in 8.1 to hopefully improve the class performance.

Random aside. I really don't want to parrot a bunch of stuff most of us have already read on other websites. But, a lot of it rings true. Like, there was a recent repost of an article on how Blizzard delayed TBC in order to give it some more polish. These days, everything feels rushed and unfinished. Like, I don't think anyone can honestly look at BfA and say it feels like a complete game. What is the reason? Is it simply because they're at the beck and call of meeting quotas of their Activision overlords? Is it because all the good developers left for other games and now the D3 guys are working on it? Or are they simply overworked, having current content to work on, as well as Classic and the next expansion?

Don't get me wrong, I do have fun with the game. My playtime hasn't decreased yet, and likely won't, since I do still have 3 more characters to level up, and hopefully 8.1 brings some semblance of a complete game. I think pvp is at a pretty good spot, and warmode is cool, though faction inbalances can quickly make that unplayable, but server sharding has made it so I barely even see anyone anyways unless it's around boss WQ hotspots. Uldir is also fun, and having 4 characters at 120 means I spend of time doing it, but how long will that last? The truth is, our experience these days is 100% curated by blizzard. Again, I don't want to parrot what others are saying by calling it a theme park experience, but it really is. They control the content we can do, when we can do it, and how often we can do it. We can't become too powerful too fast, and our hands are held in nearly everything.

 

I see the 'Activision Overlords' thing bandied around a lot.

They merged, Blizzard weren't 'acquired.' Activision aren't Blizzard's overlords like, say, EA are Dice's.

In fact - I'd be happy to be corrected on this - I'd be shocked if Blizzard wasn't the breadwinner in that relationship, even with CoD and Destiny coming from AV.

I don't want to speculate on their workplace culture and environment, because I'm ignorant, but if I had to; I wouldn't be surprised if the 'rushing out' vs polish is a result of the team on WoW are struggling to justify the costs the game incurs, especially given the rumours of heavy sub drops.

QUICK, PUSH THE ALLIED RACE BUTTON!

 

You may not be the only ones getting fed up. I realised I didn't like the current methods of prolonging playtime mid Legion but kept playing until I cleared the last raid. Didn't even resub for BFA and very much doubt I'll ever come back unless they majorly rethink the fundamental systems they're using.

 

I saw this a couple of days ago, and if you look at their own reply, they admit that the number likely isn't very accurate. So, I'd take it with a grain of salt. There's a lot of variables to consider when it comes to sub numbers, and we don't exactly now how Blizzard keeps track of it, like whether that includes token purchases or china and things like that. There's a post on reddit that goes into it more in depth, but I would honestly be surprised if the current sub count was lower than what it was for WoD. Perhaps in time, but it's only been 2 months.

 

I just see no chance that 50% of the playerbase uses weakaura. I admit it is a popular addon, but i simply dont see it used that much among the more casual crowd.

 

I don't really have much to say for this week. Sort of did the bare minimum, meaning just enough Uldir bosses to increase the azerite trait stack. My mage is nearly to the point where there's just not that many upgrades in H Uldir outside of titanforging, though I still need the staff off fetid. I'm working on making the tailoring gloves, but 50 expulsom is about 75k which isn't that much cheaper than buy 385 boe gloves. My shaman is almost caught up, and I even got a second H Mother weapon this week, which was cool. Rogue entered that limbo phase where there's nothing left in normal but it's hard getting into heroic, and druid just has 1 week of normal under its belt, and I don't feel like spamming mythics with it.

I guess I'm just sort of maintaining the status quo. I started leveling my warrior, though I should probably do my monk first since its at 111 already, so hopefully its ready by the time that the warfront loot pinata is ready. Oh, funny story, I've been running old raids for legendary stuff, and got the Eye of Sulfuras for the second week in a row on my Rogue. I died laughing when it happened. I pretty much follow the same raid pattern with my warrior since they can both use thunderfury and warglaives, though they always seem to drop on characters that can't use them. Did start the rogue daggers this week, and my math shows that it's about a 10 week grind. I should probably get around to do shadowmorne as well. So I'm pretty much just hoping to not get bored of the game before its over and quit.

Then, there's all the 8.1 stuff coming up. It looks to be decent so far. The azerite changes are a step in the right direction, but I don't think anyone actually thinks it's going to suddenly be a good system. Also, the raid looks pretty dope. A bit complicated perhaps, but interesting. of the 4 I saw, I think I like the Treasure Guardian the most, though I am worried about how long the fight takes. As an aside, I really hope they rethink the ilvl progression. Right now, everything is +30, which is far too much. Like, LFR will drop 370 gear and Normal will drop 385 gear. That completely invalidates Uldir completely, which is currently half of the raid content in the game. And it's not like G'huun drops a mount or a rare transmog piece or anything like that either. I think it's the same ilvl progression that they did from nighthold to ToS, and ToS to Antorus, but with the item squish it seems way too severe. Nighthold from Trial of Valor was only +15 which seems like it should be a better methodology this early on.

 

It's weird, they just did an item squish. What's the point of squishing if you're just gonna let the numbers balloon out of control again?

 

Because their intent is to squish after every expansion. It's really fucking silly, but that's where we're at.

 

They should just do a level squish at this point. Like, when everything just scales to your level, it really turns the leveling process into chore where you character only really feels like it's progressing once or twice when it gets a key talent or ability.

 

Honestly? They need to just do away with levels entirely. Just add in a change for new players that means they have to go through a class questline that requires you to finish a zone to unlock the next set of abilities/talents/whatever up to current content, then whenever a new expansion launches, make it so you have to finish the main quest line in each zone to be considered ready for endgame content.

There's really no reason for "levels" to be a thing anymore, especially given how they keep trying to introduce alternative leveling systems.

 

Really deep in the doldrums now. I did exactly one M+ last reset. I did just enough raid bosses to boost my uldir traits by 1. Mage and shaman are pretty much just chasing 2 slots out of heroic. Rogue isn't that far behind, and druid is about ready to start doing heroic uldir. I've been leveling my warrior, mostly so farming out Shadowmourne will be easier. It was actually pretty cool how much of a timecapsule it was. It was still wearing all highmaul and blackrock foundry gear, which is weird to think it's been almost 4 years since that raid came out. Anyways, mostly levelling in valsharrah since that zone is super easy, as well as doing all the legion invasions. Each one gives like 60% of a level for almost no effort, which is nice. Probably a full level with heirloom gear, but I didn't feel like spending 100k just to spend 1 less hour in a zone.

At this point, I'm just waiting for Blizzcon news. I feel like no matter what improvements to the current systems they add, it's going to be hard to recapture my attention. I doubt I'll suddenly start grinding island expeditions (though I do want to level a character doing nothing but them) even with the new vendor - it's going to take more than that. The new raid is going to have to be exceptional, because depending on when the Classic release date is will likely determine how much longer I play.

 

I have to say, my pattern with WoW has continued. I bought the Xpac, levelled to max level, realised how much of a grind everything is, and just stopped playing.

I wouldn't mind raiding, if I could just play a few hours a few hours a week. But the grind required to gear up etc is just never-ending it seems. Progression raids are fun, everything else is not. And I'm not willing to put the time in to grind.

WoW is a lifestyle, rather than a game. And I don't want to live that lifestyle anymore I guess. The music and zones this time around were pretty cool though.

 

What if swinging an axe as a warrior felt like how it does as Kratos in the new God of War?

What if playing as a Rogue was as fluid and beautiful as Bayonetta/Revengence's combat was?

Been asking myself those questions a lot as I played bfa. I feel like the game itself, fundamentally, isn't fun to play.

And why the fuck not? Why hasn't WoW evolved like the rest of the action/rpg genre has over the past fifteen years?

Because it's an mmo? Fuck that noise. It's why I'm so irrationally angry by people pining for Classic. It's pure nostalgia wank. They're one of the biggest and best devs in the world, but I'm often furious with how few risks they take lately. I'm guessing we'll see this trend continue at Blizzcon with a bunch of remakes announced rather than anything exciting.

I hope I'm wrong.

I just keep looking at Overwatch. That was supposed to be an mmo. Imagine an MMO made by Blizzard in 2020 with that level of polish. Imagine if the combat in WoW matched the polish and style of modern action rpgs?

It'll never happen. Too many people would probably riot, but I'm desperate for a WoW that completely overhauls how the game plays. I still love the world and lore, I just don't enjoy playing any more...