World of Warcraft: Current Year

Merrith said:

This is where I'm at for the most part. New expansion obviously is a lure, but I've gotten to the part where I mainly just enjoy seeing the story unfold and checking out new zones. This is why FF14 expansion launches are my crack now because the Main Story there (or at least the massive amount of it during a new expansion launch) is just addicting to play through.

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I wish I could enjoy FF14. I do enjoy the MMO thing when it works, more than any type of game. But, that aesthetic is just not for me and the combat feels way too wonky compared to WoW(even with the shitty BFA changes).

Lodi said:

I wish I could enjoy FF14. I do enjoy the MMO thing when it works, more than any type of game. But, that aesthetic is just not for me and the combat feels way too wonky compared to WoW(even with the shitty BFA changes).

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I completely understand people having certain aesthetics they like and dislike. The combat definitely feels at lot better at cap than it does early on. I don't notice too much of a difference at cap other than BFA GCD changes pissing me off and at least it feels way better playing a BRD in 14 at 80. Blizzard really should revert those changes for Shadowlands.

The sad part is that there is nothing really new on the horizon. The wheel isn't changing at all. The best we can hope for is that Shadowlands returns to the form of Legion with more control over the systems of progression(namely legendaries), and alt-friendliness.

I'm not sure if that's really something all that worth getting excited for.

Lodi said:

The sad part is that there is nothing really new on the horizon. The wheel isn't changing at all. The best we can hope for is that Shadowlands returns to the form of Legion with more control over the systems of progression(namely legendaries), and alt-friendliness.

I'm not sure if that's really something all that worth getting excited for.

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I just wish the FF patch cycles had more Main Story to go through. You basically finish it in a day, then have all the stuff to do. They dumbed down crafting/gathering quite a bit where you don't have to put in as much effort anymore, and I don't actually raid in 14 so less to do on that front. Will have to see how the relic weapons turn out this expansion.

I'm curious how late in the year Shadowlands will get released, too. Worried it'll be like BFA with a shitty too short Beta because they're behind and trying to make sure it releases this year.

Lodi said:

The sad part is that there is nothing really new on the horizon. The wheel isn't changing at all. The best we can hope for is that Shadowlands returns to the form of Legion with more control over the systems of progression(namely legendaries), and alt-friendliness.

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Progress wise Legion legendaries were at first a huge RNG fest, your performance was scaled to whether or not you were lucky enough getting your BiS legendary, you had little control over that. Some unlucky lads in top progress guilds still didn't get their BiS 3 months after release, although farming all day long. As for alts you'd still have to go through the whole story / class hall thing (which was objectively better than running the same faction campaign again in BFA). It was the very definition of tedious.

BFA main features were at most controversial (Azerite gear), badly executed (islands) and plain dumb (warfronts). What's really baffling is at some point, they decided farming essences on alts is an utterly exciting process and went along with the idea that, as for reps, there must be a lot of players out there that feel it's quite fun to grind stuff you've already grind. Like say, you have a car and want to change it, behold here is a wooden chariot and a horse, enjoy the whole journey again!

Regarding Shadowlands I don't know about reinventing the wheel, but Blizzard really need to get their heads into the game. It's quite clear most of the game mechanics we have to endure nowadays are designed by people who either don't play videogames, or play them so little they have no idea how the game at some point turns into a chorefest. A radical shift is needed, it's 2020, you can't separate character progression and player progression anymore, everything should be account-based, no one cares anymore if you get gladiator on your monk or cutting edge on your warlock. Bring the player, not the class.

I thought I heard the rumor of legendaries coming back in Shadowlands the tower thing was going to be the key to them, and that players would get to customize which ability/slot they wanted the gear to be.

kaid said:

Rust bolt does have a BOA rep token already thats even easier to bang out in 8.3 and apparently nazjatar has an option to turn pearls into rep tokens that are boa so they are already moving this direction. I suspect whatever the ending patch or prepatch for next expansion just amps that up even more.

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Don't you have to be exalted already to buy the rust token?

Merrith said:

I thought I heard the rumor of legendaries coming back in Shadowlands the tower thing was going to be the key to them, and that players would get to customize which ability/slot they wanted the gear to be.

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Yep, this what they said at Blizcon and they didn't elaborate much more than that.

Fyff said:

Don't you have to be exalted already to buy the rust token?

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Yes

So people are doing all the rep stuff so they can be like a week ahead of the normal Joe? Seems fucking awful. No wonder you guys hate this game. You are spending hours doing pointless tasks for little gain.

Fyff said:

So people are doing all the rep stuff so they can be like a week ahead of the normal Joe? Seems fucking awful. No wonder you guys hate this game. You are spending hours doing pointless tasks for little gain.

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Or for no gain. The only reason to get rep is to get flying, and what's the point of flying if there's nothing to do? Faction rewards aren't worth any kind of effort on their own. At least Legion had emissary caches that had a rare mount in them along with gold and the chance at a legendary that you could also get from other activities.

Lodi said:

I kind of have a hard time finding the carrot for anything in this type of game nowadays. They've so removed any kind of mental reward for doing anything, in favor of everyone just being mediocre.

Visuals don't mean much, because the only thing that really changes is the colors of your gear. Titles were always lame. Mounts are so multitudinous that I just don't care anymore. Mythic is unbearably e-sporty and I can't stand listening to half the people in Discord(they are much younger than me now, I'm old).

I just wonder what the carrot is anymore. In Legion we played our mains and our alts just to see everything because it's fun, but it's just not fun in this expansion. It's bland work and there are way too many interesting games to find any of this enjoyable.

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There isn't a single bit of interesting loot in this expansion. Not a single one. There isn't even a single interesting mount. Legion at least had the Valarjar Stormwing and Volpin the Elusive. Raiders hated legendaries, but I thought they were perfect for a casual. WQ's were fast to do on mains and alts. And then there were class mounts. There was always something to do in Legion. I was busy doing stuff right up until they brought servers down for bfa patch.

Bfa has what? No interesting mounts, no interesting gear. WQ's were made tedious because they spread them out over two overly large continents. They are tedious even with flying. Emissary caches are no draw because they just give gold. Rep rewards don't exist. Island things are dumb and even LFA is a massive pain in the ass these days because people don't have the basics down anymore. I came back to get the 15th anniv mount but gave up because people couldn't complete the raids.

On the other side of the coin, hard content is made intolerable by people who think they are elite becuase they watch Method videos on Youtube.

You don't have to be old to find voice chat intolerable. I've always hated it. My first exposure to it wasn't 5 minutes old when I listened to an adult whining about loot. There's nothing quite so pointedly pathetic as listening to a grown man whine about not getting his tunic of orc bashing. And lets not forget all the inbreds who have no social life outside of the game so every raid night is filled with boring distracting BS.

BFA is what you get when you design activities for the 5% not the 95%.

Fucker said:

You don't have to be old to find voice chat intolerable. I've always hated it. My first exposure to it wasn't 5 minutes old when I listened to an adult whining about loot. There's nothing quite so pointedly pathetic as listening to a grown man whine about not getting his tunic of orc bashing. And lets not forget all the inbreds who have no social life outside of the game so every raid night is filled with boring distracting BS.

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My god, voice chat has been the single thing I hate most about gaming evolution. Hated when we started using it in eq, hate it even more today.

I'm generally not the guy who is into dev shit talking hyperbole, but who the fuck came up with Essences? Jesus christ.

I was looking to fuck around on a non-serious spec(Enhancement), and I noticed that I had literally none of the good Essences for it. Imagine what this shit is going to be like when you can't reliably run EP.

Fyff said:

So people are doing all the rep stuff so they can be like a week ahead of the normal Joe? Seems fucking awful. No wonder you guys hate this game. You are spending hours doing pointless tasks for little gain.

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It's not like I'm losing anything by holding paragon boxes an extra week. I just haven't turned in any in like 2 months because I'm capped on ap and I not only get the same gold reward when patch launches but more ap. It's like, the laziest possible min/maxxing you can do via only doing emissaries.

krismunich said:

You are right on the BFA is somewhat bland, after legion with demons in Star Destroyer there was nothing that could top that theme I guess. However BFA had so much more content than legion if you did all they offered. I am a 31.5K achievement 525 mounts guy and I still have stuff to do in BFA despite playing 4-8 hours a day/365 (atill a filty casual, I know). The flying brain (puzzle mount), the dungeon mounts like the parrot or the aztec raptor, the bee and many more. I guess people are jsut fed up with doing the same things over and over in another setting - which wasn't BFAs strongest part - after 15 years. Hopefully the WOW theme understands this after the classic hype and go for a more "classic" approach in Shadowlands but the whole classic forum/community drama showed me that people perceive and consume games way differently nowadays so you cannot please everyone I guess.

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Nah, it still doesn't come close to legion content if we're talking about doing all the class stories etc on alts and what not. If you're playing that much and being any way efficient with that time, you should have no real content left. Killing 40k+ mobs in one zone or running a dungeon for the 500th time hoping for that 1% or less mount drop isn't content, that's just banging your head against a wall for an achievement point. Stuff like the puzzle mount is fun, but Legion had secret stuff as well, and frankly you can knock that out in a day or two easily. Barely a blip on 4-8 hours a day/365.

xzi said:

It's not like I'm losing anything by holding paragon boxes an extra week. I just haven't turned in any in like 2 months because I'm capped on ap and I not only get the same gold reward when patch launches but more ap. It's like, the laziest possible min/maxxing you can do via only doing emissaries.

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There's a difference between saving your rep and not just handing in what you got and the people a couple pages back actively grinding Mechagon rep for BoA tokens....

Big Phoenix said:

Hah I got that from my first KR run. Fucking hate that instance.

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I did as well, believe it or not. Guild was pissed at me.

I still haven't gotten any fucking bfa dungeon mounts. I've done underrot a not okay amount of times across my characters. Hate that place so much. lol. I don't even want to use it, I like the crawg from the raid more but.. gotta catch em all