World of Warcraft: Current Year

jayrebb said:

Yeah Cata was that "alright the greatness of WOTLK is over" expac. Most of us quit during mid Cata for the next several years.

Once you've seen pinnacle of design there is no point hanging around. It wasn't until Legion that most of those people came back. Now that they've scuttled WoW's Legion-fueled revival with BFA, I'm interested to see if they've got another one in the tank in a few years. I literally sold BFA to my friends on "They can't just throw away Legion momentum, so BFA gotta be at least decent". I repeated this tag-line for a few weeks in an effort to sell BFA to my guild. I lost a lot of credibility.

If they did it just recently with Legion, it's certainly not impossible to someday see another great expac that receives widespread critical acclaim.

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No, it isn't impossible. However I think we're more likely to get cata and BFA then Legion or Wrath from this point out. The devs seem totally out of touch with what the player base wants from both a casual and a hardcore standpoint. Meanwhile the bean counters seem to have a bigger say then ever in the design and content release cycle. It makes me think that Legion wasn't as monetarily successful as you would think and that the design by numbers guys finally get their time to shine after a dud in in WoD and an under performing Legion.

Legion in and of itself was kind of perplexing. I feel that it was carried primarily by the legendary and artifact system with some help from a couple of strong raid tiers in Antorus and Nighthold. Despite the massively garbage beginning to the two primary systems by the midway point of the xpac they had pretty much been corrected. Artifact weapons from a mechanical standpoint allowed them to flesh out weaknesses that they couldn't get done at a base design level on a per class basis and gave you a concrete progression goal that was given importance in all activities. Not to mention how much fun it was to find out how to get the secret appearances or doing the mage towers when they were gear relevant. Also, having a reason to do all the dungeons/quests etc was nice. Sure you were still doing dailies or ten mythic 0s but at least you were given a shiny new tint or a piece of an appearance at the end.

By the ToS patch you were able to acquire a legendary every two weeks if doing appropriate content and for the real hardcore grinders you could attain one every week roughly. By the argus patch you could reliably get two a week just by playing the game and not being a raid logger. So while the initial patch in to emerald nightmare was horrible because of pace of attainment and the fact you could be completely borked if you got a pre buffed prydaz or sephuz, they mostly corrected it in a timely fashion. The legendary items themselves ranged from fun utility to rotation changing gems.

I know most people will say I'm crazy but getting rid of both artifact weapons and legendary's is probably the worst decision that blizzard made in the transition from Legion to BFA. They basically cut out half of the advancement/flexibility of every spec and gave back nothing. Azerite sure doesn't do much aside from some numbers for the most part.

Nighthold was one of the best raid tiers I've ever experienced. The only real issue with it was being tuned around max artifact traits. The only fight in that entire raid I had an issue with was Krosus, and only because of the RNG of the soaks. Then ToS was released and it was the worst piece of shit raid I've ever experienced. Made me actually quit the game for 5 months.

EN was the last raid tier we've had that didn't require some idiotic level of min maxing your character(s) to progress through at a reasonable rate. They really need to knock that shit off already.

Vimeseh said:

I know most people will say I'm crazy but getting rid of both artifact weapons and legendary's is probably the worst decision that blizzard made in the transition from Legion to BFA. They basically cut out half of the advancement/flexibility of every spec and gave back nothing. Azerite sure doesn't do much aside from some numbers for the most part.

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I think almost everyone would have disagreed with this at BfA release, and almost nobody would say otherwise now.

Khane said:

EN was the last raid tier we've had that didn't require some idiotic level of min maxing your character(s) to progress through at a reasonable rate. They really need to knock that shit off already.

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I'm pretty sure they do this so people accept their system progressing. During NH/TOS it was your artifact level going up every single week to make you a bit stronger so you could actually start killing bosses if you were a mediocre guild. Right before prepatch for example your weapons just kept getting exponentially better over time so people really started to crush bosses at the end. During BFA It's back to your neck level getting even stronger but this time it actually affects your abilities on your gear, so you slowly get stronger.

It makes sense to purposely inflate the bosses instead of everyone completely blasting through them cause it's tuned for entry-level normal gear I guess. But it's kind of annoying.

Khane said:

Nighthold was one of the best raid tiers I've ever experienced. The only real issue with it was being tuned around max artifact traits. The only fight in that entire raid I had an issue with was Krosus, and only because of the RNG of the soaks. Then ToS was released and it was the worst piece of shit raid I've ever experienced. Made me actually quit the game for 5 months.

EN was the last raid tier we've had that didn't require some idiotic level of min maxing your character(s) to progress through at a reasonable rate. They really need to knock that shit off already.

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I agree completely. I do think that Nighthold's and Antorus' strengths made up for ToS. Trial was fun and Emerald Nightmare was your standard introductory raid even if it canted towards the easy side.

I just can't get over the Azerite pieces though. At least for the classes I play currently we are right back where we were at launch. Echoing Blades for sin and the new eyebeam trait for DH are just so obscenely better numbers wise that you are going to be equipping three of them at 370 ilevel from mythic 0 with no hope of upgrading them unless you are a higher end mythic raider until you save up for your 415 piece. The third of which I would be able to afford the last week or two of the tier because I don't have the set schedule to mythic raid. Of course they will be nerfed right around the time you buy your first or second piece so there goes 2 to 4 months of saving. In S1 I was grinding out and keying 15 to 18s with the occasional 19. For the last couple of weeks though I pretty much do my ten and maybe one other key if a buddy needs help. The gearing patterns are just infuriating.

xzi said:

I'm pretty sure they do this so people accept their system progressing. During NH/TOS it was your artifact level going up every single week to make you a bit stronger so you could actually start killing bosses if you were a mediocre guild. Right before prepatch for example your weapons just kept getting exponentially better over time so people really started to crush bosses at the end. During BFA It's back to your neck level getting even stronger but this time it actually affects your abilities on your gear, so you slowly get stronger.

It makes sense to purposely inflate the bosses instead of everyone completely blasting through them cause it's tuned for entry-level normal gear I guess. But it's kind of annoying.

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That would make sense if it were true, but it's not. The average guild was not progressing through NH at a steady rate, they would kill Trilliax and hit a stone fucking wall until they were all close to max artifact level and even then still struggled. ToS was even worse. Mistress was a complete and total guild killer in ToS. There was no progressing with gear or that idiotic concordance bullshit.

Mythrax, and to a much bigger degree, G'huun were guild killers in Uldir. G'huun might be the most terribly designed raid encounter I've ever seen in WoW. Guilds would literally kill him just enough times to get their core members the CE achievement and then never go back again.

ToS doesn't even really count cause it was an entire piece of shit raid and I'm still mad the guild I was raiding with wiped at 0% on mistress

then that guild died

then foh wiped at 0% on that fat boi that shoots lasers

I'm seeing a pattern here actually

Vimeseh said:

I agree completely. I do think that Nighthold's and Antorus' strengths made up for ToS. Trial was fun and Emerald Nightmare was your standard introductory raid even if it canted towards the easy side.

I just can't get over the Azerite pieces though. At least for the classes I play currently we are right back where we were at launch. Echoing Blades for sin and the new eyebeam trait for DH are just so obscenely better numbers wise that you are going to be equipping three of them at 370 ilevel from mythic 0 with no hope of upgrading them unless you are a higher end mythic raider until you save up for your 415 piece. The third of which I would be able to afford the last week or two of the tier because I don't have the set schedule to mythic raid. Of course they will be nerfed right around the time you buy your first or second piece so there goes 2 to 4 months of saving. In S1 I was grinding out and keying 15 to 18s with the occasional 19. For the last couple of weeks though I pretty much do my ten and maybe one other key if a buddy needs help. The gearing patterns are just infuriating.

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Dude, azerite is atrocious. Having to re-empower your character to previous tier levels and hope for good drops again is the worst design I've ever seen. I can't even believe it's an actual thing they've moved forward with. It's like leaving items with flat, static empowerments in the game, or going back to the days when items dropped that gave 1% crit chance rather than ratings that scaled. It's so regressive it's almost impossible to believe it's a thing.

You bring 0 percent wipes and guild destruction?

Yah Khane. We aren't even in the reset every tier mode with them. We are at the hey this how powerful you were on release level of reset.

We all joke that Noodleface is the guild killer turns out it was me all along

Gasp.

Khane said:

Dude, azerite is atrocious. Having to re-empower your character to previous tier levels and hope for good drops again is the worst design I've ever seen. I can't even believe it's an actual thing they've moved forward with. It's like leaving items with flat, static empowerments in the game, or going back to the days when items dropped that gave 1% crit chance rather than ratings that scaled. It's so regressive it's almost impossible to believe it's a thing.

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As soon as I made it to 120 I got my welfare 400 and it was some Azerite shoulders. The next layer unlocks at neck level 32. My neck was at 12. I think the last unlock is 40 something? 44? Even with the week to week adjustments that's one big bucket of nope.

xzi said:

We all joke that Noodleface is the guild killer turns out it was me all along

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I got like 8 people the Argus title monica

All I did was.. get the title and then my guild leader told me they were trialing a different paladin

If Legion didnt make them some money, then I would be shocked. I havent enjoyed WoW that much since Mists of Pandaria and BFA is a steaming pile of shit by comparison. I want to know whats happening with WoW, but I have never felt this disinterested in playing the game. Ever. Kind of sad considering how long Ive played it.

Daidraco said:

If Legion didnt make them some money, then I would be shocked. I havent enjoyed WoW that much since Mists of Pandaria and BFA is a steaming pile of shit by comparison. I want to know whats happening with WoW, but I have never felt this disinterested in playing the game. Ever. Kind of sad considering how long Ive played it.

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I dont think they didn't make money on legion. Just more of a situation where they had one subpar money making expansion in mop (relative to wrath/cata) and one flop in wod. So the purse string holders required x amount of sales and x amount of retention or we do things a different way in bfa. Maybe legion didn't hit those numbers. This is all just speculation of course. Like everyone else I'm trying to rationalize how blizzard went overnight from a solid developer, long gone are the vanilla and diablo 2 glory days, to a company that can produce bfa.

I really think the whole problem was doing away with the artifact. That was a meaty progression system versus the fucking filling bar + 3-5 traits to pick from on random shit gear. People play games like this to progress and the necklace isn't cutting it. It's a TV dinner steak versus the Artifact's ribeye.

I personally really enjoyed the legendary system last xpac. I think the dungeons were also just flat better. Meaningful trash that wasn't just "MORE TRASH EVERYWHERE!"

And lets face it, Zandalar was a boring choice. It would have worked if there was legit faction content for leveling on either continent. I was so fucking bored with the zones before I even hit 110...

I thought I might get excited and come back to try all the new content added the past month, but instead...I think I'm genuinely done.

The legendary system became good, over time. It was a total shit sandwich at the beginning. But instead of learning from that and building upon a good, currency based system. They regressed completely and made the new version of legendaries even worse to obtain by making the activities to get them non-fucking existent outside of once a week RNG bullshit (And you can't even get placeholder items in those slots with stats as holdovers, lol). At least in Legion you could play your ass off to increase your chances (once they fixed the LOL WOOPS OPPOSITE of bad luck protection bug). And once you got your legendary you didn't need to get it all over again at the beginning of every raid tier.

The problem wasn't so much getting rid of the artifact and legendary system, because eventually they would probably need to go away from those had it lasted more than another expansion or two (there's some great things with it, but weaknesses as well). The issue is they got rid of it after the very expansion they were introduced in, and replaced it with a system that would have been hard enough to implement on its own over a couple of expansions WITHOUT having to follow up right on the heels of them dropping the artifact and legendary system. Its basically making it as difficult as possible for them to succeed, and fucking it up gloriously like everyone knew they would at first.

The way they ended the legendary system was perfect. Earn currency and target what you want. Why they didn't do that from the start is retarded

Noodleface said:

The way they ended the legendary system was perfect. Earn currency and target what you want. Why they didn't do that from the start is retarded

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Because then you would have every piece you wanted in a month and supplement pieces in two. I get why they wouldn't want it to be argus levels of attainment but they should have launched azerite purchasing at the ToS pace for acquiring a legendary.

I also dont agree that the artifact system had to go away anytime soon. It gave them a lot of flexibility and could have been shifted to various gear slots with minor tweaks since obviously you wouldn't be collecting ring appearances. They could have milked the system for 2-3 expansions assuming the game lasted that long. Using a different piece of gear would allow them to iterate on it as well as giving a built in excuse for class design directions.