I completely agree with your first sentence, but completely disagree with the second sentence
I loved them in WoD and Legion
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World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth|OT| War Mode Enabled!
- Thread starter Tachya
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I loved them in WoD and Legion
I was fine with them minus timegating for quests in WoD and Legion. I didn't love or hate them. But if this is what we're going to continue to get then delete them and be done with it. They're not engaging or useful to anyone in the least.
The table really feels like it's just there to have some sort of daily skinner box because they couldn't come up with more engaging content that would draw players in organically.
So yeah, axe it and just be done with it. Order hall is fine because it added a good deal of flavor (even if it really was just a time gate), but there was enough going on in the world outside of it that it didn't feel like I was logging in just to check on that.
So yeah, axe it and just be done with it. Order hall is fine because it added a good deal of flavor (even if it really was just a time gate), but there was enough going on in the world outside of it that it didn't feel like I was logging in just to check on that.
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One of the biggest issues with BfA is that most of the "systems" content was just copy-pasted from Legion with no improvements or changes for the worse. The "new" systems of Islands and Warfronts were both pretty big busts and likely ate a TON of resources for completely underwhelming content. Those aren't even really that novel anyway besides some of the AI tech, as they're both using the scenario framework developed in Mists.
When you also account for the loot situation being objectively worse than Legion as of 8.1 still (losing Legendaries, Artifacts, and Tier Sets for...Azerite?) and other things like professions being absolutely gutted and mostly worthless except for Alchemy (Alchemy has always been quite powerful, but other professions are WAY worse than previous expansions) it's just a mess. Some other things as well, but it's all been covered before.
There's a theoretical large amount of "stuff" to do, but not much of it is actually fun or engaging. And everything showers you with loot now, whether it's appropriate for that level of activity/time investment or not.
I'm not sure if there's an easy solution at all, since you pretty much have to be revamp almost every system in the game right now, an expansion-level effort, if not greater. It's clear Blizzard was really pressed to meet a deadline with BfA and they couldn't even do much by 8.1's release to change course. It'd be interesting to see an extensive post-mortem later, as whoever signed off on most of the stuff that made it live clearly didn't have a good understanding of the game. There are many potential points of failure though, so you can't just lay the blame on a single person at Blizzard, even if it's easy to point to some more public figures that probably aren't doing their jobs well. The whole scrap and re-invent the wheel thing every expansion for the past few expansions isn't helping when there are reasonable solutions that were implemented IN THE EXACT GAME THEY'RE WORKING ON previously. Like the developers haven't even played much of their own game, understanding what made it successful, which kinda makes sense, as I imagine most of the designers except maybe artists from earlier expansions aren't even working on WoW anymore 14+ years of development in.
But if that's the case, they really should sit down and just spend at least a week or two in WoW history class or something, or actually engaging heavily on live servers (or earlier iterations of the game, private servers if they don't have functioning older internal builds.)
When you also account for the loot situation being objectively worse than Legion as of 8.1 still (losing Legendaries, Artifacts, and Tier Sets for...Azerite?) and other things like professions being absolutely gutted and mostly worthless except for Alchemy (Alchemy has always been quite powerful, but other professions are WAY worse than previous expansions) it's just a mess. Some other things as well, but it's all been covered before.
There's a theoretical large amount of "stuff" to do, but not much of it is actually fun or engaging. And everything showers you with loot now, whether it's appropriate for that level of activity/time investment or not.
I'm not sure if there's an easy solution at all, since you pretty much have to be revamp almost every system in the game right now, an expansion-level effort, if not greater. It's clear Blizzard was really pressed to meet a deadline with BfA and they couldn't even do much by 8.1's release to change course. It'd be interesting to see an extensive post-mortem later, as whoever signed off on most of the stuff that made it live clearly didn't have a good understanding of the game. There are many potential points of failure though, so you can't just lay the blame on a single person at Blizzard, even if it's easy to point to some more public figures that probably aren't doing their jobs well. The whole scrap and re-invent the wheel thing every expansion for the past few expansions isn't helping when there are reasonable solutions that were implemented IN THE EXACT GAME THEY'RE WORKING ON previously. Like the developers haven't even played much of their own game, understanding what made it successful, which kinda makes sense, as I imagine most of the designers except maybe artists from earlier expansions aren't even working on WoW anymore 14+ years of development in.
But if that's the case, they really should sit down and just spend at least a week or two in WoW history class or something, or actually engaging heavily on live servers (or earlier iterations of the game, private servers if they don't have functioning older internal builds.)
I may probably return to 8.1.5 just to level a zandalari and wait to the end of the expansion to end the war campaign such a mess to wait months for 3 missions , wait for the raid, then wait for the LFR raid to be completed (whyyyyyyy) then repeat and wait for the next patch.
One way to keep playing is to play rated battlegrounds while drinking. Been doing this almost every saturday night for like 2 months now and we have a blast.
Just hit max level and was wondering what's the fastest way to get geared for raiding.
Is this Polygon article still relevant?www.polygon.com/platform/amp/guides/2018/8/13/17684734/wow-battle-for-azeroth-goals-daily-weekly-azerite-armor-power
Or are there better things to do since the new patch?
Is this Polygon article still relevant?www.polygon.com/platform/amp/guides/2018/8/13/17684734/wow-battle-for-azeroth-goals-daily-weekly-azerite-armor-power
Or are there better things to do since the new patch?
1. Emissaries
2. Warfront first comopletions and the world bosses (especially Darkshore)
3. Mythic 0 gives 370 now
Depends on how geared you want to be. For Mythic you need to be like 400, but for heroic you can be like 375
You can buy 340 pieces now from the AH to catch up a great deal. Can probably get like 6-7 pieces out of that.
I would start by doing the mythic 0 dungeons that drop azerite gear with traits you want. The right trait combination can last a long time even on a 370 gear, at least for dps and healing. I'm not sure what people want you to have in ilvl for m0 these days though.
Warfronts, as suggested, work great. Arathi drops 340 at the end, 370 once per rotation from the quest at the table. Darkshore does 355 at the end, 400 once per rotation. Arathi requires 320 ilvl and darkshore requires 355 to queue up.
LFR requires 355 and drops 370 gear. It's also a way to see the fights on easy mode before you jump into the real thing.
Another way would be PVP conquest rewards. They'll require you to do rated pvp and people will probably want a baseline gear amount, but that'll depend on the group but I would aim for at least 340-355.
I read a few weeks after the last wing for LFR opens up but that sounded like a guess at best.
WoD is too much for me but I felt Legion struck a decent enough balance.
BfA's is an afterthought by comparison.
I don't know how much those 340 pieces cost on the AH, but if someone doesn't want to waste gold, you just do regular 5-man dungeons because they drop 340 gear now
and regular 5-mans are super easy
Oh nice! Good catch. I looked at the 5 pieces that I could get from the AH, and it would cost me ~4-4.5k gold, so not too bad.
ah ok, yeah I definitely wouldn't pay that with the 340 gear in easy mode 5-mans now
I'm not a player who ever farms gold or plays the AH, so I never have much gold. I have zero patience for taking effort to make gold in any MMO
Normals
in this most recent patch (8.1) Normals drop 340 now
Heroics drop 355 now
so it's super easy to get 340 and even 355
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I understand this, but in BfA they really went way too far if they were even gonna keep the table in at all. So far it has just been pretty much worthless and actually a net negative in a lot of cases for input/output. It's better to just not have it, than have it completely half-assed. The BfA version of mobile app still isn't updated with the features it was supposed to have, and it doesn't serve much current purpose with how shitty the table is now. Leaving the old armory app to rot was also a mistake, even if they needed to cut the mobile/online AH (which was mostly because it was a HUGE security concern and likely the source of most item dupes for years.)
Yeah any article from August would be way out of date. The video you linked seems like it would be good + I'm sure there's a guide or two on Wowhead that's more or less accurate. GamerKingFaiz
Yep, moved to stormrage and many guilds spam trade for members.
I'm working on my fifth set of heritage armor and my last set from Legion subraces and I just can't do it. It's too god damn boring and the armor isn't worth 2 days of playtime even though it's faster now it's not fast enough to not be boring as shit.
I recently got an alliance character to 120 and could use someone to suffer through DPS queues with me lol
This is the thing that astounds me most as someone who hasn't played since, early Draenor. I never got to Draenor's endgame; but it sounds so strange to me that there's apparently a new "system" every expansion now for gearing/progression? How bizarre. That sounds like it would be an extreme burden on development resources. I wonder if they'll consider at the very least using new systems for 2 expansions in a row rather than changing every single expansion. Free up a little time or something. Impressive that they manage to execute it though. No matter what I think about WoW, its actual development and number of changes/additions dwarfs the MMO's of old.
Mostly playing other MMOs like ESO for the past months has really put things into perspective for me on just how bizarre and self-crippling Blizzard's design philosophy has been where they have to reinvent the wheel each expansion and herd the playerbase into narrowly designated "current" content and relegating the legacy content to the backwaters for leveling or achieve/mog novelty farming. It ends up being so hit and miss where a blunder can really hurt them because the playerbase doesn't really have the prior successes to fall back on due to Blizzard arbitrarily deciding this isn't worth spending your time on any more.
Meanwhile ESO is going into its third expansion now (which isn't even counting the smaller scale DLC content) and they haven't had anything resembling these issues.
I might just even have still been playing if it weren't for the current expansion's Horde capital being such a fucking slog to navigate through. That was one of the significant contributors to me just losing the compulsion to log in, and this is an issue rooted in aforementioned overarching design choices. I've gotten really sick of the whole "this is where you should be spending most of your time now" philosophy.
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I don't think it's the systems that need to be changed. It completely blows to have to shift gears every two years. New systems should compliment existing ones - not completely overwrite them. I think that, overall, the systems from Vanilla to Mists for progression/gearing worked well enough with the tweaks and implementation. When Warforging/Thunderforging arrived I was kinda iffy but whatever. WoD was kinda whatever but Legion introduced a system that made sense and while I didn't like having the same weapon every day for 2.5 years it was a solid foundation to build on and it made a good amount of sense to add progression past a level cap.
But then Azerite showed up and replaced it for no real reason. AP grinding was rough in the first half of Legion but that system should have been refined. Not replaced. Instead we get it, an even more undercooked mission table, Mists scenarios but somehow even less fun and interesting (I hate scenarios unless they're story/single player driven), Warfronts (Group content designed to be won? What?!) and even worse (imo) forging.
Blizzard needs to build on and expand things that work and dump what doesn't. It seems 8.2 will bring back the artifact progression in some way but Azerite doesn't work and the whole system should be dropped in favor of the Legion and (in theory) 8.2 version in the future. Keep improving it and then maybe in 2-3 more expansions after 9.0 consider something new. We barely have a chance to get tired of things before throwing them out of the window and telling us "this is what you'll get and you'll LIKE it." or "The system works - you guys just don't understand it." or "Back in Burning Crusade I went 9 months without an upgrade!!!!"
I'm just kinda floored that they had a decent complimentary system with Artifacts, and they just threw it out. I'm not saying that I wanted to keep using Ashbringer forever, but why didn't we just replace that progression tree with a new one?
Even just moving the progression to the heart of azeroth would have been fine and it looks like they're going the route of giving it a tree instead in 8.2, but... why wasn't that just the go-to?
Even just moving the progression to the heart of azeroth would have been fine and it looks like they're going the route of giving it a tree instead in 8.2, but... why wasn't that just the go-to?
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I think there almost certainly must be some politicking around with the WoW team ending up reinventing the wheel all the time now for a lot of designers to try and justify their employment. Because more lately for sure it screams of doing something to do something and look busy, rather than doing something to actually build on and steadily improve the game. Which is interesting, because obviously it's much easier and less effort to just do whatever, rather than intelligently examine the game for flaws and strengths of 14+ years of development and design systems to compliment those.
I think a lot certainly has to do with the part where they have "the largest team size ever!", but that doesn't really mean shit if they're not building the game like the previous expansions existed and solved many issues in interesting ways. A new generation of devs on the game thinking that of course they must know better than their predecessors.
I think a lot certainly has to do with the part where they have "the largest team size ever!", but that doesn't really mean shit if they're not building the game like the previous expansions existed and solved many issues in interesting ways. A new generation of devs on the game thinking that of course they must know better than their predecessors.
The bolded part is especially important and is in some ways why I think this crazy restructuring thing going on at Blizzard/Activision is a good thing. Like, I don't want people to lose their jobs that don't deserve it but all these hands in the pot are causing conflicts and the quality (and in a lesser sense, quantity) of the content just doesn't match what it should be. We joke that it's just the WoW cycle but there's no reason we should STILL be having 8-12 month gaps between the .3 patch and the new expansion. Other games get it right with less people on their teams - something needs to be done. And I hope this is the first step into consolodating the workflow and bringing the game into line with other games like it.
I'm complaining a lot about BFA and WoW in general right now but it's because I genuinely love the game and know it can be better than it is. I think for too long Blizzard has been able to rest on the "we're the best in the business and bring polish to the genre" shtick and that's not the case anymore. There's too many options for gaming right now for people to be tied down to an MMO (that you pay monthly for, no less) that isn't at least meeting expectations. They need to get their asses into gear.
This is certainly *a* problem, but other games/devs seem to deal with it better. Part of why it's such an issue in WoW, especially over the past few expansions, is how every new thing immediately makes an old thing obsolete. This is applies explicitly to raids, but sort of permeates their entire design paradigm. It makes it feel like there is less content than there is because the bulk of it is no longer worth engaging in. WoW could really benefit from a little horizontal progression.
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Yeah, and while it's not nice to single out individuals, when I look at someone like Lore I'm like — "you do what exactly that's helping around here?"
Dude is clearly not doing his job. Especially when you look at companies that do have very successful CMs — Bex from GGG (Path of Exile devs) is trading memes and stuff (along with more important info) on Reddit, Twitter, and elsewhere all the time. And from what I've seen more from afar since I don't play the game, Digital Extremes (Warframe) also have top quality community interactions. I'm sure there's other examples besides those two, but they're first on my mind and often cited by others.
For a PAID, SUBSCRIPTION game, Blizzard is not getting more value than whatever they're paying the CMs, and to be honest, it's probably significant negative value with how Lore (especially) and some others have spoken to the public.
I mean yeah when the game is in a shit state it's not fun to do the job, but that doesn't mean you can just stop doing the job or make things worse and still collect a paycheck.
The best PR guy at Blizzard right now is Araxom, and that's not even what he's paid for. He's a customer support rep, and apparently only a mid or upper-mid level one.
Also Milo Rambaldi
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I kind of agree, but I also think when there's people around like Lore that might be feeding him cherry-picked information from the community when he's otherwise relying heavily on metrics, it's not 100% on him. Anyone's guess how bad the situation is though.
But I think he's definitely more in his element as a raid/encounter designer than as a team leader. It's just that everyone else who filled the role before got promoted away to other teams or moved on elsewhere outside of Blizzard. That seems to be extremely common with Blizzard projects especially ever since WoW launched. The successful people lead a project or team and then move on wherever, leaving the less qualified with the reins. The few "failures" for project leads just get reassigned in less visible roles if not let go. Thinking Jay Wilson and vanilla D3 here.
Thanks for this!
Here's the list I made from this video, so I could easily reference while playing:
1. Unlock world quests (no ilvl requirements): drops 295-370 (scaling)
2. World boss World quest (1x per week): drops 355
3. Emissary quests: drops 325-385 (scaling)
4. Dungeons: drops 340-400
5. Mythic+ Chests: drops 380-410
6. Residuum Vendors: sells 385-415
7. Raids: drops 340-415
8. Warfronts
-- Stromgarde (requires ilvl 320): Scenario wins (340) One-time quest (370)
---- Stromgarde controlled: World boss (370) Rares (340)
-- Darkshore (requires ilvl 335): Scenario wins (355) One-time quest (400)
---- Darkshore controlled: World boss (400) Rares (355)
9. Incursions: drops 325-370 (scaling)
10. Crafting: makes 200s-415
11. PvP: drops 370-415 (scales with rank)
12. Azerite: gather to level Heart of Azeroth amulet (get it for just playing the game essentially)
-- Island Expeditions (can farm to get weekly 2500 AP bonus)
13. Time walking dungeons (when available) can be best bang for your buck (repeatable): drops 365
I hit 60 with a total playtime of 17 hours I checked an alt I leveled right when 7.3 came out and that time clocked in at 1 day 2 hours at 58. So leveling is faster now but the real test is coming up I've heard you can do 60-80 in like 8 hours but I guess I'll find out. I just hope it's not 20 hours like it used to be.
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Last time I did that section was before the change was really bad and before it was later improved. I was doing the Karazhan runs and it was okay enough vs. having to suffer through more of that period than I had to for the umpteenth time. And I actually like parts of BC more than I do certain parts of Wrath leveling.
I leveled 4 of the subraces to 110 before they fixed Northrend each time it took almost 20 hours on average last time I leveled they made 60-70 easier but 70-80 really fucking dragged I ended up doing Howling Fjord Dragonblight and Zul Drak and all that got me to level 74 I think I ended up finishing it up by doing Hellfire and Netherstorm I really feel like people don't appreciate Netherstorm enough the quests are insanely easy and there's tons of mobs everywhere. I can do 80-90 in like 6 hours god I love Cata and Pandaria leveling it's my favorite range.
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Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley are way underrated, especially since you don't "have" to do them for leveling. Even way back in Wrath you only had to do most of one or the other I think to continue to Northrend.
I don't nearly like Icecrown or Storm Peaks as much because they are definitely much more endgame content zones than good leveling zones. This is indicated by the loaner flying mount you used to have to get to quest in those if you were below 80. You could get the loaner at 77 I think and it was slower than a slow flying mount, but you would need it to reach some vertical areas. If you could, going on an epic ground mount was faster in open areas.
I kinda miss stuff like that.
IC was cool to quest through at the start of WOTLK but the quests have aged badly and there's alot of running around and random elite quests even though most classes can solo them now I really enjoyed the part towards the end that closed out the Scarlet Crusade storyline I wish that chain was closer to the start of the zone instead of at the very end because the quests are fun.
I never do Stormpeaks and I'm not really sure why I just always skip it but I might check it out if I finish up my normal run of Zul Drak Grizzly Hills and Howling fjord. A zone I really like is Dragonblight for the Horde god that's a good zone to quest in as long as you skip the Dragontemple quests it's got some of my favorite quests in the entire game in that zone.
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Dragonblight kinda makes me sad because the Battle for the Undercity scenario was removed and that was clearly the highlight of the zone. Still has some other good parts, but I find other parts a chore. I mostly HATE Borean Tundra as someone that has done it as Horde -- particularly since most of my experiences with it were without flying, so going in and out of the keep, that's situated in a pit, was awful. Most of the landscape is very bland compared to Howling Fjord, even if some of the quests might be a bit better (there's a few hangups in Howling Fjord that are a bit buggy or have issues to this day.)
Zul'Drak is interesting sometimes, but I also always found it somewhat dull overall, and it's a very skippable zone now too. I usually go there mostly for the sweet XP from the Amphitheater of Anguish and get someone on a high level main to carry me through real quick. The other main thing I dislike about Zul'Drak is that it seems very much like an afterthought of a zone compared to a lot of the other Wrath ones, as it was never really fleshed out or used for endgame at all, even though there very clearly could have been a troll raid or something (maybe in Wrath 2.0, revenge of Bolvar's Lich King? I dunno.)
I like Howling Fjord, everyone loves Grizzly Hills (the shame about that one is hardly anyone gets to do the whole zone, which has the entire eastern half that's easy to not have to do before moving on.) I like Sholazar a good bit, but mostly cause I usually approach it and Nagrand in the same way -- with a lot of rested XP banked to take advantage of all the killing quests. If you're just trying to get through it for the story or whatever, it's not as good.
I think that's it for Wrath zones though, and I'm not quite ready to sit down and talk about every other location yet!
It was dumb to remove the Undercity battle I bet they are kicking themselves for that because they could have used it to set up Sylvanas being evil ERR I mean morally grey.
I don't think anyone on either faction likes Borean Tundra it's just so bland even when WOTLK came out the only reason people went to the tundra was to avoid the 2000 people leveling in the Fjord. Zul Drak was supposed to be expanded upon during the course of WOTLK but Blizzard cut the raid for some reason it was gonna be like Wraths ZA you can still see where the entrance to the raid was gonna be by flying around near the dungeons there's two big doors that are sealed. I was pissed when I found out they weren't doing a Troll raid in Wrath I think instead of the troll raid they had planned they did Trial of The Crusader or whatever it's called. Still such a waste the trolls have some of the coolest lore in Warcraft I'm dying to see Hakkar again and I'm still pissed they chopped up ZA and ZG into crappy remaster dungeons. I don't think they ever said why they canned the Wrath troll raid if I remember right they rushed from Ulduar to TOC before people were even done clearing Ulduar. Does anyone know why they did that?
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I'm not sure why ToC was rushed out so fast, because hardly anyone was close to done with Ulduar in the time frame it was out before ToC dropped. I think it's one of, if not the shortest full raid tiers for a raid of that size that had a lot of difficult hard modes, a legendary to complete, and the first "secret" hardmode-only boss with Algalon. I don't know if there's an easy reference somewhere, but I'm sure clear rates were very low before ToC released.
Looking up the easy stuff though:
Ulduar has 14 bosses, 13 ones with in-fight activated hard modes and Algalon as hard mode only. Some have multiple tiers of hard mode as well for a more granular experience. It was out for a mere 112 days, which is 3 months, 21 days. Just look at the fucking official patch notes: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Patch_3.1.0#Secrets_of_Ulduar Don't get anywhere near that level of effort nowadays for a major patch.
And I don't think I've ever heard anything more specific about the cancellation of a planned troll raid in Zul'Drak during Wrath. I know earlier on, Azjol-Nerub was planned as a whole underground sub-zone underneath Dragonblight, but it was reduced to the two dungeons after an underground zone layered below another full zone wasn't technically feasible at the time. They might have tentatively had a raid planned with that too, but obviously cut when the idea of an entire extra zone was.
I'm not going to go google hunting, but I am fairly sure blizzard admitted that there were at least early plans for a Zul"drak raid when they were designing WOTLK.
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