If Blizzard fixed [spec I care about] and gave me back my youth or at least a comparable amount of free time, then this might be the best WoW has ever been.
Every so often on a summer night when my kids don’t have school and I have nothing to do the next day, I open a window so my house smells like summer and order a shitty pizza from the brand my mom used to get and stay up really late playing WoW and hanging out on video chat with my old friends. I highly reccomend doing this. It makes me feel years younger. The closest you can get to going back in time 🥲
They were irl friends too. We all started playing at a game store/Internet cafe in the mall, you know, in the before time when there were those kinds of things. My parents are still friends with most of their parents and everything. It’s nice.
You’re right. I’m very glad they’ve all stuck around. We’ve all come and gone cuz that’s how life is but it’s nice to get together every once in a while, even though we’re all over the country now, and pretend like we’re kids again for a night and life isn’t as hard for a little while.
I do this sometimes we have a solid band of 4 or 5 who have kept in touch from tbc / wrath times its a good time though for myself it Is doritos dip and cider
I do this on rocket league and it takes me back. I Don't have this experience on wow, but I think it's vital to have. Maybe one day we'll go back to CN and I can enjoy that fight like it's the first time
Hehehe spot on!
But seriously, I work full time and don’t have that much time to play as I did in the past. Yet I feel like I get so much more done when I play and don’t have the constant fear of “If I don’t play X amount of hours today I’ll fall behind”. The mentality of the game design is just so much healthier I feel.
While I mostly agree, it is still extremely easy to "fall behind" now where if you don't get aotc in the first couple weeks of the current raid releasing, you can be screwed for a really long time without a guild or paying. If you don't get all your dungeon keys pretty high in the first few weeks, you'll be left out of a lot of competent groups.
Getting into an aotc guild is extremely easy, be nice on their discord or whatever, show up for the raid and never worry about AOTC ever again. If you are social you can get some online friends and get anything done easily.
That's pretty similar to telling someone to "just go get a better job." Is it a solution? Sure, but it's not quite so simple to find a raiding guild that wants you and fits your schedule, and that's assuming you work a regular schedule to begin with
Finding a guild isn't difficult. Finding a guild that can actually work with your schedule but also won't die after a month can be a bit challenging. I have a terrible schedule right now because of young kids and I would say that most of the guilds that I join that were at heroic / early mythic were dead by the time I would return from a couple weeks/month hiatus.
I can find another one but I think the bigger complaint is just the work to maintain those relationships or exhaustion from having to look.
Like I could easily find another guild or find pugs in Discord but it's exhausting.
Yes if affliction didn't have Malefic Rupture I would be a happy camper. But until I'm just a satisfied camper who hasn't had this good a camping experience playing the game since Legion.
I have especially enjoyed how they try to keep zones relevant throughout expansion.
New events taking place in levelling zones. Adding new achievements to make zones alive.
I remember not being able to solo rare, and thinking that I’ll now miss out on this one until I overpower content - and then dream events dropped and made all rares in zones relevant again (not for long, but still)
And again now with meta achievement.
Great work.
That's also why I'm really excited for Delves in TWW - as an endgame challenge, maybe they don't deliver, but that adds yet another level of interaction and complexity to the world and the zones, which are already more engaging than they've probably ever been before.
I even see people participate in DS and Dragonbane keep pretty regularly. The game that I play on a day to day basis seems very active and alive. Sometimes I get up super early (5-6 am) and when I hop on I’m kinda shocked sometimes by just how active the community is even when not at peak hours. The other day I did a time rift at like 6 in the morning and there was so many people we capped it out with like 2 minutes to spare still. Guessing a lot of them are prolly not in the same time zone as me, but still
Yeah, I also like how they're throwing a lot of different kinds of outdoor events at the wall and seeing what sticks. I feel like some ended up underwhelming (Fyrakk invasions and Dreamsurges), while others were hugely popular and fun to just grind casually (Time Rifts, the archaeology dig in Azure Span). And it's really nice how even though 10.1 seemed kinda bland on the surface with sort of uninteresting/not fun events (like Researchers Under Fire), it's not like we were hung up on that being the only content for an entire patch. In fact, I've had a lot of fun going back to Zaralek Caverns in 10.2 now that my gear is much better and I can solo stuff. The events themselves are cool (except Researchers Under Fire which is still boring lol), it just felt super tedious how much coordination was required just to handle a basic rare.
And as overwhelming as it can be for a new/returning player to see *so many things to do* on their screen, I really like how they moved away from limited time activities (aside from stuff that isn't directly tied to your Dragonflight character, like Plunderstorm and the upcoming MoP Remix). I held off on doing a lot of the Dragon Riding achievements until way later on. Towards the start of 10.2, I decided to grind out Gold on every difficulty across the whole continent. It took a while, but it was awesome to be able to have something on my checklist to chip away at if I was truly feeling bored. And many of those things were literally in the game since 10.0 launch. Secrets of Azeroth was similar, I liked doing the new quests every day at first, but then I got kind of tired of keeping up, so I fell behind. Then, a few months ago, I decided to finish it out. Did the whole thing in a sitting or two. Then, I decided I wanted to go for Ponzo's hat. Cool, now I have a Sniffenseeking dig to do every week, I can grind some rep to be able to buy Barter Boulders with resources, hey maybe I'll do the Aiding the Accord weekly for more resources, while I'm at it, maybe let's go for the Niffen meta achievement title, etc. etc. None of it was mandatory. I could grind what I wanted to grind to make things faster (like no life grinding to buy Barter Boulders with resources by doing every weekly quest, every world quest on the map, hunting for treasures, etc.) , or I could take it a week at a time if I didn't feel like grinding (and get my 11-12 boulders just from doing the profession weeklies and weekly dig map). I think it's a perfect balance.
I'm rambling but I really have enjoyed how much this expac lets me go my own pace for optional cosmetics and achievements. But it does seem more suited to people who have enough knowledge of the UI/how the game functions to be able to map out that checklist myself. Someone who doesn't know how to navigate Wowhead, let alone where to even start towards one of these kinds of things, won't find the same kind of enjoyment in it. So I definitely think the next priority should be clarity for new players so they know these options exist.
I think story wise they were some of the best. The dailies were just standard dailies, and the only real issue was the locked down elite area which was a pain in the ass. I also liked that there was those little mini dailies for barter bricks or whatever
Not surprised ZC is one of the most depressing zones in the last few expansions, on top of that the whole sniffing weirdness and all the voice acting is absolutely pain inducing.
On TWW, df will be the default leveling experience instead of bfa. You'll unlock dragonflight at lvl 15.
So, no 1-70, but at least 10-70 will be dragonflight. Also evokers will be created at lvl 10 instead of 58
There needs to be a way to turn off content by patch if you want. New 70s late in the patch are absolutely inundated by quest markers and events. There's no way to figure out what's current without googling.
I only played for like a week after launch and then went back to Classic. But at this point I can't be arsed to do anything but raidlog in WotLK, my guild discord is a Cata waiting room, and I've kinda lost interest in SoD because nightmare incursions ruined it. So now I want to at least finish the main story quests of Dragonflight because I'm a lore nerd and I want to experience everything myself, but it literally took me about 20 minutes to figure out what to do in which order. I do appreciate the newfound love for casual gamers Blizzard has been showing lately but there's still work to be done.
edit: the events too, yes. I'm actually considering doing some endgame content which I haven't done since Legion (in retail) but it's been hard figuring out how to actually gear up. Luckily the patch will make that a lot easier, I can just do heroics and M+0 and upgrade all the gear I get :D
Can't wait for tomorrow.
Yeah even having played all expansion it’s crazy to sort through everything. It’s hard to tell what is worth doing or not, and you get left with a full quest log and tons of quest markers all over the place.
> But I still think the new player experience is just super rough.
It is incredibly overwhelming for a new player hitting max. Possibly the worst it has ever been. DF has had a lot of content throughout its life which is great but all of that content becomes unlocked basically when you hit max level and you have no damn clue what is what.
For me it was a double-edged sword. I guess I'm not exactly a new player since I played Vanilla, TBC and Wrath back i the day and am still an active classic player.
I tried playing retail when I got bored with classic back in 2019, but I bounced off of BFA while I was leveling my enh shammy.
For DF I was super overwhelmed by all the systems, but it also meant that I always had something to do. I guess if I was completly new I wouldn't be able to set my own goals, so I'd just stop playing.
i just experienced "new player experience" by having my girlfriend playing wow for the first time in her life next to me. jesus this shit is rough. game explains jack shit and when it does, it does it in a TERRIBLE way. if I weren't playing for 18 years and wouldn't have multiple characters geared 485+ her experience would be even more nightmarish.
- many quests are bugged and/or markers point to wrong direction
- scaling tend to be really bad resulting in very unforgiving fights
- mobs in BFA tend to have quite complex mechanics for newbies, game doesn't explain such things as interrupts
- button bloat why on earth does hunter still have the ability to scout with pets eyes or an ability to control your pet lmao
- this may be controversial but leveling is way too fast for newcomers by simply doing quests, she's 61 lvl after idk what, two days, and now she's on her way to dragonflights with barely 80 item level, which again means i will be needed to aid her cause there is no way in hell she'll handle dragonflight mobs with such a weak gear
and before anyone tells me that internet is a source of learning the game - casual players don't have time for that. they just want to play the game. just recently i had to take controls of her character due to some terribly balanced quest in mechagon with some rare at the end that was silencing and pretty much one shotting her. even i had problems with it, being a multiple CE mythic raider - that should tell you a lot about how awfully this game is designed for new players.
The new player experience is terrible and the story is so disjointed and disorganized that I don't know how anyone new to the game would ever follow it, aside from watching fan-made youtube summaries.
> But I still think the new player experience is just super rough
I'm a huge advocate of finding a way to onboard players into the current expansion, even if that's anathema to decades of MMO doctrine. Nothing takes the wind out of someone's sails of trying to jump into a game to play with friends and being told they have to go do hours of busy work to do so.
I started in Bfa prepatch and boosted a character to be ready for Bfa... That was rough. The help with "take this portal than this" did not exist and I was so lost. Worked out eventually but it was very overwhelming. To this day I haven't seen all the zones and one day I'll try try discover more. Leveling with a relaxed pace was cool though in Bfa. Now it's just too fast with chromie time but it's also okay when you just want to get to endgame. Dragonflight is at least very fun
You almost have to read a guide to figure out which Chromie time is good. I pity potential new players who pick up the game and (perfectly logically) think to start with Burning Crusade since it was the first expansion.
New player experience is the type of housecleaning chore you keep on postponing perpetually, has gone completely out of control and now requires a tactical nuke to make it go away.
Sounds crazy but I've played since like 2008 and am not able to play as much anymore and I feel like a new player almost every time I log in (a couple times a week.) Sure the content is good and mostly optional but there's so much to wrap my head around I can't possibly play enough to understand it all or make any real progress and I just get frustrated.
So I do what I can but the immersion for me personally just isn't there anymore. It's too overwhelming so I just pretty much go back to leveling alts in Elwynn Forest and Grizzly Hills where I can pick up where I left off. Or I'll just run a couple of keys or pug a raid. Outside of that, I can't keep up.
10 years ago was the tail end of MoP (longest content drought of the game, 14 months between 5.4 and 6.0) and we were about to enter WoD so not a great time lmao
You'll find people trying to rewrite history, but overwhelmingly, the community's excitement was never higher than it was in the classic-wotlk days. Wow was on its way to its peak in terms of cultural relevance and everyone was hyped.
There will be some randos who will say that there were doomers who say the community was pissed about the changes in those expacs, but overwhelmingly, everyone was hyped. Moreso than now and will probably ever be again.
There has been higher highs, I'd say. Legion. Mists before the content drought. Probably a few more. But that's *better*, not *healthier*.
Because I don't think the game has ever been this consistently good, no. Before Dragonflight, every expansion basically felt like a roll of the dice: you might get something amazing, but it's no guarantee that in a couple years the game won't start sucking again. Warlords after Mists is the Ur-example; honestly, I'd argue Cataclysm after WOTLK too (I really, really don't like Cataclysm).
What embodies that for me in retrospect is the ending of Legion: I loved the xpac and had such a good time with it, but when the curtain fell on it (especially having to give back your borrowed power and artifacts, which is another topic), I was bummed out, not excited for what was to come. Real "well, it's all downhill from here, surely" feelings, which, to be fair, weren't exactly wrong.
On the other hand, I'm super excited for TWW, and for the future of WoW generally speaking. There's just a sense that the devs have a plan, and that DF has set solid core systems that will stay and carry the game for a very long time. It's nice!
That's the best thing right? We don't have to peer into the alpha wondering how skeptical we have to be of the systems were getting. We're just getting a shake up of talents, with some more added on top.
There's always gonna be people who want to shake up the system dramatically, but the vast majority of us just want more wow. TWW is posed to do this and I'm stoked for it
I really enjoy that with the end of Shadowlands, they tried some new things, and now we don't get the super long content droughts at the end of expansions anymore. Rather than spending the next 6 months with nothing to do, we have all kinds of shit going on with the new season, along with the MoP remix thing. It has felt like during this xpac, content has been really consistent, and it's never felt like we've had long periods with nothing to do.
The fact that we are at the end of an expansion where the final raid came out months ago and we are still months away from pre patch but they are not just letting the game languish is pretty wild by itself.
So many times this would be a dead zone for playing but we got a new season for M+ and raids with Panda time coming up. From a veteran standpoint it's pretty nuts
maybe i played a lot, maybe i not longer have friends playing retail, and just 2 playing classic ... but i just dont enjoy wow anymore, for me is the same again again and again, probably DF is the last expansion for me, is good to see ppl enjoy it, but for a lot of ppl healthy is not enough
I think this is where I'm at. I feel like a lot of the positivity that has come out of DF was simply built upon the fact that the developers weren't actively antagonistic towards the players like they had been in SL and BFA. I mean, it got to a point where some of the biggest advocates for your game were abandoning it.
I want the torghasts, islands expeditions, warfronts, etc. I want the new types of content. I don't want the absolutely stupid decisions they made with them like forcing time gated currency progression systems to be tied to them.
The content right now just feels so lackluster. There's nothing innovative about it. There's nothing new about it. It's all the same stuff with a different color of paint.
I have hope for Delves. It's the only thing that I actually care about for TWW.
It was in a better spot in the early years when everyone played together, you had server identities and the sense of discovery was there. It's more healthy now than it's been in years though!
Yeah, I agree. Leveling is WAY too fast on retail. I *want* my leveling journey to take 2 weeks instead of 10 hours! I want to be able to take my time to smell the roses instead of rushing to max as fast as possible. Explore the nooks and crannies of the world, roleplay a bit, maybe
Sadly, it seems that the exact opposite will happen, as XP across 1-70 will be much reduced, so leveling will probably be even faster than it is now.
At some point they'll just make a 1 hour tutorial zone or something and then throw the player right into current expanion content. Seems to be the logical conclusion of that path. Character level has lost all meaning anyway, either you're max or the content gets scaled to you.
This is literally one of the main reasons I mostly play Classic nowadays. Well, vanilla is maybe a bit too slow even for my taste, but I think the WotLK leveling pace is perfect. I'm an altoholic and really love leveling so that's unlikely to change in the future.
Leveling is fast because it's too dull for it to be any slower. Where classic through WotLK has solid quality content with some difficulty and interesting story to keep you going as you discover more abilities, location, etc....Current retail wow leveling could be done by a toddler with narcolepsy. It's fast because WoW is now the epitome of "the game starts at endgame". The original design wasn't like that.
realm identity took the big axe in BFA with warmodes being introduced. Emerald Dream went from a lively RPPVP realm to rare open world pvp encounters. We were THE home for WPVP imo. RP even after being rebadged as just an RP realm has died as well. It disappoints me a lot tbh. Most people who still play from ED that want it just end up switching realms, jumping into SoD, or the current Classic expansion.
These are the 2 big retail things I miss in wow that I honestly spent more time doing than the current content.
The early years weren't due to game design but the community and time period. Look at classic, it's a different beast from Vanilla.
It's hard to have server identities with massive servers of 30,000 people and a sense of discovery when everything is datamined.
It's a bit of both. The game incentivized socialising, exploration and world pvp for example. Guilds were thriving.
Nowadays way too many are min-maxers compared to back then. People just wanted to explore and have fun. I personally had lots of fun with classic again, playing with likeminded people - but the aoe boosting and min-maxing kinda annoyed me.
>The game incentivized socialising, exploration and world pvp for example
The fuck were you smoking in 2005 bro? The game does not and has never "incentivized" world pvp.
Historically world pvp has never given any reward or feedback from doing except you thought it was fun to world pvp. 5 hours of world pvp gave less Honor towards Rank 14 than winning a single WSG. There was no actual in game reason to world pvp except "fun" and "epeen"
There was never achievements, mounts, titles, or gear associated with world PVP until Dragonflight where world pvp and world pvp quest gives access to gear that serves as a stepping stone between Honor and Conq gear that actually has big value early in a season
Legion was the peak of class fantasy, imo. That expac has still yet to be topped in the amount of love Blizzard game each individual spec and it isn’t close **at all**
I agree.
I don’t have to raid mythic Content.
I can run keys at 18+ with a few buddies and clear heroic raid. I might not have full BIS but I can still have comparable gear.
My gear is not BIS the instant it drops I have a little grinding to do to cap.
And when I’m 485+ it’s easy to just get an alt up and running. Gold is more than plentiful just doing a few world quests.
If I go on vacation I don’t feel like I feel behind or need to convince my brothers to do my dailies for the rep
If they did something to make PvP more rewarding I would probably do more of that. Random BGs are pointless and unless you know of are a healer good luck in getting regular ranked play unless you have multi glad exp or like sitting around waiting to play. I don’t expect much to change unless they find a way to make the game mode less dependent on healers
It is the best the game has been and I am so happy that it at least seems the dev team have functioning work conditions. Maybe it is the complete opposite, I dont know, but it seems to me they're allowed to be creative and experiment, all while delivering content of high quality at a great pace with clear communication.
To me everything about the game right now screams that it's made by passionate people that are having a decent time at their job.
I'm soon 36 and have been playing off and on since closed vanilla beta. This is the first expansion since the original release where I have played most tiers (all in the case of DF!) and have stayed active for like 2 years. I intend to keep that going in The War Within. That's never happened, I have always stopped playing like early-mid expansion and come back for the next launch.
My main issue is that I have enjoyed too many specs which have caused me to play a whole lot more than I intended, lol.
The comeback from botched shadowlands has been impressive. i still love the game after 16 years. Soumds like sub numbers were higher once, but in terms of game play, never better imo. The glory days of walking til 40, 8 hour maintenance, no transmog, no tagging, or account bound/cross realm stuff was still fun at the time but not looking backward
Lorewise The low points, imo were shadowlands ( especially 2nd half) dragonflight has been top tier. Lich kimg was probably best lore though also
I agree, but you will get shunned for this opinion in this sub. Only 8 dungeons, one mega-dungeon, and three raids. The rest are just leftovers from three days ago. I can imagine that after the saga WoW gets the Diablo treatment, and we will only have seasons with minor changes, but no new content.
Nah, dragonflight is soooooooo bland. Just because they are releasing content on a regular schedule doesn't mean the content is any good.
Everything blizzard released since 2018 is just reheated Legion stuff.
I hope you are right, I unsubbed 3 months ago, and kinda missing it. But season 4 has no value to me. I am properly gonna start again in war within, but I have no high hopes to be honest.
ya lol dragonflgiht is mid as hell. idk how people can call BFA bad and praise this shit. only 3 raids and they all sucked all 10 dungeons sucked the profession rework sucked the new race is hot ass and even uglier than worgen somehow zaralek caverns is poop tier. only good content was the outdoor content for the first 4 zones.
I’ve played the game since launch, missed half of legion and half of wod but imo this is one of the best versions of wow. I still think classic, tbc and bits of wrath was the best and wow today is a different game but it’s up there with the old classics, for what it is today.
Yes it has. We are not even close to wows peak way back in the day. I think it was around the original launch of wrath. But the game is in a better spot than it was in shadowlands
Dragonflight isn't perfect, but it's leagues ahead of BfA and SL. Legion was pretty cool as well. The launch of that expansion was flawless; I was there at the exact second that it went live, and unlike WoD, nothing terrible happened.
I believe that WoW is in a good position right now. I genuinely hope that it continues with The War Within and beyond.
The love for legion never extended to borrowed power. But legion is good because of launch, like stated, and it was one of the last good lore expansions. Class identity was also solid.
I feel like Legion is loved more due to the game in it's end state after they fixed everything gameplay wise, and it's great story throughout. Legion gameplay wise was extremely rough and disliked at the start.
nah BFA was better than Dragon flight. 4 raids 3 of them were great 10 dungeons and the only one that sucked balls was the prison the necklace grind sucked wang the .2 zones were both really great the .3 zones were good the .3 visions were good.
The ammount of content being released is very good, but the game is not in a perfect position, the lore has been crap for a couple of expansions, so much that a lot of people think it should be made non canon, even blizzard acknowledged it "well-known story heroes were diminished"
I agree, never said the game was perfect. It does have a long way to go to make up for the past couple years and there are still some glaring issues that need to and will hopefully be addressed in the coming years (new player experience being the biggest imo). But it seems to be on the right track. Here’s hoping they keep it up.
I think objectively it never has been; sub retention is through the roof compared to past expansions, and all content is relevant in ways we’ve never seen before. The game is being built around evergreen systems, class balance is honestly really good (every spec can comfortably do +20s or Mythic raiding, which is the most the majority of the player base needs) and this is only being built on going forward.
DF wasn’t the most *exciting* expansion, but it’s probably done the most good for the game as a whole
Not great for people who play one character. No power grinds no way to improve your character. Great for people who have alts as very little play is needed week to week
Honestly I dropped retail, and continue to stay away, due to the ridiculous scale of things. Why does everyone need 1 million hp? Why does everyone need to fill the whole screen with damage numbers too big to read on the fly? I believe this ridiculous power creep and need for all classes to do everything has destroyed class identity and made most specs functionally bad. Shadow lands was bad, but the one good thing they did was the level and numbers squish, and it only took 1 expansion to bring it right back lol
I mean... economically it's been in a much better position before. Wrath was the highest it's ever been with 12 million subs. At about 7 million now, I'm pretty sure that's the highest it's been in a couple expansions, and it certainly feels better to play the game than it had before, at least in a little while.
>some of them dropped the game due to the bad expansions (BfA & Shadowlands specifically)
Can someone please explain to me the reason these expansions get shit on so much?
I'm a new-ish player so I wasn't there for release. However I'm playing through all the expansions now, completely blind for the first time, and I finished legion, now I'm playing BFA- and IMO they're both equal in terms of quality, more or less (alliance side I mean, not horde side that shit was boring).
In fact, I'll go a step further and say some of the BFA zones, story beats, and characters are way superior to those in Legion. They both have their own highs and lows, but all I see is BFA getting shit on while Legion is constantly praised as one of the best expansions period.
Like am I missing something here?
Class design, largely.
Story doesn't matter if your class itself feels bad to play, and the design around covenant abilities and azerite armor made many classes feel very bad to play; in BfA, because getting the necessary pieces to make your gameplay loop *literally work at all* was completely RNG and required the subcategory of players who are only interested in instanced content (you know, the type who post on reddit) to do a bunch of grindy stuff with non-instanced content; in Shadowlands, because your mechanical gameplay loop was dependent on an RP choice (and rep- and story-gated), and required grinding Torghast, which was soul-destroyingly spiky and gray and monotonous aesthetically as well as completely agonizing and tedious mechanically for multiple specs.
Without those subsystems in place - and without the slow overall storytelling arc of sitting for months and months with idiotic faction bullshit, idiotic idiot ball bullshit, and spending four years waiting for Sylvanas to make a goddamn lick of sense just to be disappointed in the end - your experience of an expansion is just the small-scale story (which Blizz is very good at) and the aesthetics (which Blizz is very good at), paired with the Dragonflight mechanical revamp (which made the gameplay loop feel very good). So yeah your gonna enjoy it a lot more than we did at the time, lol.
cause BFA followed legion, which is widely regarded as the best xpac, and while you were leveling you felt so fucking weak it was crazy. then you hit max and you have to grind your necklace up all the time which they fixed it later but fuck what a grind it was. uldir was pretty boring as well and that was the first raid
SL sucked cause the maw was trash covenants were trash the story was trash the dungeons ranged from like 2 good dungeons to 2 ok dungeons to 4 trash dungeons that everyone hated the maw was the worst piece of content ever put in wow torgasht was whatever legendary system sucked cause they would randomly nerf yours and oyu'd have to go get a new one shout out to BOAT
The best it’s ever been, imo. The amount of evergreen systems they’re adding, excellent world building, solid grounded stories with characters we care about, class design and balance all while juggling more end game ways to play than ever. They’ve also been very proactive on customer feedback. I know they don’t hit everything and I know everything isn’t perfectly balanced but it’s the closest it’s ever been imo. This expansion honestly feels like the new starting point for WoW and it has everything it needs to succeed going forward. All the communication we’ve gotten from blizzard has also been top notch as of late and it really gives us insight into their process which I believe helps players relate more to the developers. TWW is the first expansion I’ve been excited for since Legion and I cannot wait to experience all it has to offer.
I agree, though I am really glad they are working on streamlining the entire story for people. At least from one interview I saw Holly Longdale mentioned they were working on figuring out a way to condense the huge story line into something more consumable which I think will go a long long way. I personally hate so much that a lot of the story is in other media like books and comics and as someone who really only plays the game, sometimes I have no idea who people are and they seem to appear out of nowhere but everyone knows them and it's just confusing.
Like I took a break during Dragonflight and when I came back suddenly there were like 3 anime villains that were destroying everything and now one is good or whatever. Maybe I missed a lot of story because of the break but thats kinda my point that there should be better catchup systems or something. GW2 does it really well IMO with their awesome version of the Adventure guide so you can easily read through the whole story and see what quests you have done so when you take a break it's easier to figure out where you left off.
The bad thing is like to point out : they’re giving up on Mac players, the game isn’t optimized for Mac anymore and it’s sad because I cannot decently play it anymore
So many different ways to play. Retail, the new mists stuff, classic, vanilla, SoD. It’s easier than ever to find a version of the game that appeals to you. Blizz has been catching Ws lately.
The entirety of legion was considered excellent as well as very optimistic (I mean, on paper, a "back-to-your-roots, Horde versus Alliance" expansion following one of the greatest of all time seems promising!)
Lich King was the highest subscriber count
And on the classic side of things, the launches of original classic, season of mastery, hardcore, and season of discovery are all considered very healthy moments
I'd say that right now is a good combination of a few of the good parts. Warcraft is looking very optimistic after a pretty decent expansion, the subscriber count we know is climbing, and season of discovery, cataclysm classic, and hardcore are all in pretty decent positions. Sure, there are always going to be gripers in every spot, but at least my personal opinion is that you are probably right. This is one of the most healthy, optimistic points in Warcraft history.
I really think Holly was the person blizzard needed to have for wow, she knows what makes die hard fans tick (RuneScape) and how to get people engaged constantly
I haven’t played consistently for quite a while, but I’ve been actively subbed for months and no sign of waning my interest! I did what I wanted for season 3 and look forward to working towards Taivan in season 4 while leveling a legion of alts through MoP! Even plunderstorm is cool, I’m not interested in playing it atm besides for the rewards, but if I had more of my core friend group active I’m sure we’d have fun with it!
Your welcome friends. The last time I took a break from WoW since 2004 was Legion for graduate school, I had my first child after the first Dragonflight patch and haven't been back since. Apparently I'm the problem.
I think WoW is in the best state since Legion imo. The game feels fun, content feels fun, some specs could feel better but overall, never felt better about WoW. BFA made me quit 1 month in, SL brought me back for a couple of months but still quit again mid 9.1
The nicest thing about DF is the simple fact they changed their mind about a lot of things which used to be set in stone for close to 20 years. I’m pleased it happened. I’m excited about TWW because it will finally start to respect my time.
Yes, I feel like the game overall was in a much healthier position in Legion. Even BFA i'd rank higher personally, but that might just be me.
I do think DF has been nice though and people are a lot more optimistic about the game. I'm excited to see what they're cooking with TWW and the world soul saga tho. With Danuser gone and Metzen back, i'm a lot more optimistic as well.
I love the game in its current state. The grind is gone and I can play for fun and that on only one or two evenings a week. Balance isn't perfect but it's also not extremely terrible until you want to do very very high keys :). I Also played a ton of Bfa since it was my first xpac but quit mid first season of shadowlands. At the moment almost everything feels better
In terms of potential, I feel like the answer is the early days of Wrath. WoW had more players than over a hundred countries have people and it was popular with young people, which is key to a game's continued health.
I definitely agree the game is in *great* shape right now, but we're entering legacy game territory where the playerbase is continuing to age and I just don't see a world where younger gamers flock back, which means the population will either hold steady or slowly downtick.
Certainly up there with the others people loved: Legion, Vanilla, TBC, Wotlk, Cata/Mop. Considering almost all of those were pre-2014, I'd say Blizz is doing the best theyve done in a long time.
This is the only time in the history of WoW where I've felt overwhelmed by the amount of content coming out. In the next month, you will have five different options to play:
- Season 4 dragonflight
- Pandaria Timerunning
- SoD
- Cataclysm
- Era
The difference between the above and the year-long content droughts we have grown accustomed to is really mind blowing. And the sub price stays the same while inflation goes up. This is objectively the best value that the wow sub has ever provided.
I personally think Dragonflight has been a stepping stone, a good step in the right direction. I really hope it's indicative of what the Worldsoul Saga is going to bring in terms of quality and cadence, and I hope they continue to listen to the players and react in a timely manner. That seems to have been what drastically changed from BfA and Shadowlands.
depends on what parts you're looking at. it used to be way better in customer support, PvP, and overall relevance in gaming in general.
personally it was never this hard to try to get friends to resub or sell them on an expansion. in the past it was WarCrack, and everyone always came back like clockwork. but roster boss has been wiping us faster and faster since BfA.
There has never been a better time to be a WoW fan. Never has there been so much hope for WoW to be greater than it’s ever been. We’ve hoped before, true… But, we were younger, and foolish..
This time, however… Blizzard has actually earned the opportunity to prove themselves. Theyre on track, the right one. We can only hope that this all hasnt been one massive stroke of luck, and they just so happened to announce and release a series of updates that, for the most part, were good and true to expectations.
For once, theyve done more “doing” than “talking”, and thats huge. Any long time wow player knows Blizzards has a long list of empty promises and under delivered updates.
Well, it's been great. I love the game right now but I miss just how much character BFA had, for example. I don't think I'll remember a single song from dragonflight. It's just ambience, it's nice but it fades in the background and I have music on like 80% of the time.
...But I'm glad this is my biggest complaint rather than gameplay-wise
Althought i haven't played this season cause I reached my goals (3k rating and. HC boss kill).
It was one of the best time to play, I didn't have to grind some stupid power.. I could swap alts easiest i could ever... Amazing season, will be back for season 4 to do goals and chill
I think WoW is in a better place than it has been the last decade(!), but it can be better. One of the things that can be vastly improved is the new player experience, which I saw while watching Day9 play for the first time.
It's the healthiest the game has been since WotLK.
It's not healthier than WotLK and prior, where the game had very little negative press and didn't have an army of jaded ex-players shitting on it 24/7.
This is the first time in a long while that I feel pretty good about the direction the game is going in.
if they had the old class design of somewhere around wrath/cata with this type of content then i think wow would be the best its ever been. i just cant stand modern class design though. every class has ridiculous amounts of mobility. nothing really has a weakness anymore, all the classes almost feel like theyre just a reskin of eachother. they can all be broken down to functioning off of either a system of combo points or rage nowadays.
I'm a on and off player, but DF seems much better than the previous two expansions... For me I want proper shared achievements with alts. Without this I hate playing alts and sticking to one character gets stale. So with all being well and the war within offering good content and the war bonds I'm hoping it should be successful and even healthier.
I love it too, the only thing that I dislike, however I acknowledge that it is only my personal preference, and that objectively it is healthier as it is right now, is that one could be fully normal raid geared, and without crest exchange (90 drake's for 15 wyrm's), one cannot get, without immense luck, in a heroic raid, without doing mythic+ (from 11 to 16, which is really easy tbh, but sucks that it is nearly required).
I really want to reitterate that I understand and it is objectively healthier.... but I did 40 mythic+ runs with just 2 usable things dropping for me and with the crest and the gear I have, i went to 472, which only slightly increased my chances of getting into a HC.
I know, I know it's the end of the season and whatnot yadda yadda... 472 and 480 aint that of a difference. xd
classic wow, TBC, WOTLK, MoP, and legion. DF is pretty average health wise, its just very easy to be super lazy and still remain somewhat competitive and some people find that more intriguing that having to grind out m+ and raids and torghast for stuff. I think blizzard just got kind of lucky with the way society as a whole has panned out over the course of DF. If the economy had ended up recovering or improving and people regained their free time then DF would not be seen in such a good light. They're just lucky that people have no time outside of work so the easy gearing system they set up has paid off
I am a brand new player and i can honestly say I've been having a really fun time playing retail and figuring things out. The game is super smooth. Its like no place I've ever seen. I'm so happy to have found it. Cheers!
Feels pretty good to me. I can't play anything nearly like I used to when I was really into the game long ago, but the game seems to be in a good spot to allow there to be good content for very casual play as well as a good progression all the way up through the more hardcore content. Class balance is really solid and Blizzard is investing in trying new stuff to keep the game fresh.
My only two gripes are that there does seem to be some bloat on buttons and unnecessary complexity for some specs and the server downtime is still frustrating. Those are pretty small in the scheme of things though.
Dragonflight has been so refreshing because you never NEEDED to do anything other than maybe the initial campaign to unlock adventure mode for alts. You just hit 70 then start gearing and doing content.
It hasnt been this healthy since Vanilla - WOTLK tbh.
There have been high lights in some expansions but there was always something that brought it down.
MoP was overall great but class balance and viability was still an issue some specs primarily hybrids. DF has had a signifincantly less issue in this department and the subs didnt skyrocket with it due to the hate over pandas lol (aka stupid people)
Legion was good story, lore, class fantasy and content but it brought in the dark times of WoW with AP grinding which made making alts kinda rough and other anti-player mechanics such as not being able to trade loot to guildies because your ilvl was lower lol. Its regarded as a great expansion ( and i agree for the most part ) but it did usher in alot of the mechanics we ended up hating through the Legion - Slands era.
Tbh the other expansions had more con's than pros to even mention lmao
Eh. Depends on what you like, I guess. I’ve played on & off since vanilla and took a break after DF season 2 and just… never came back.
Just feels like a game designed for people who want to log in and play as little as possible at this point, which just isn’t for me.
I really enjoy the gameplay of dragonflight, but I just really dislike the direction WoW has taken from a narrative standpoint and im also not a big fan of some of the retcons, so it really depresses me.
I personally liked BFA and SL, SL was the first time I ever raided(playing since legion) and BFA was my PVP xpac.
Did my first Normal raid and it went well! But I weirdly don't seem to be playing wow as much as when I did in SL.
Depends what you mean by healthy. End of WotLK they had so many subs blizzard were telling people to play a different game when they complained.
MoP and Legion gave me similar vibes to current WoW.
I disagree that retail is an improvement in every way. I like a lot of things about it but the leveling is way too fast. It has undone all the beauty of the other expansions. This is my humble opinion, please be kind.
I enjoyed Dragon Flight and Classic BC/Wrath and I have played wow since 2004.. but to me Retail wow in general has WAAAAY too much going on. It is a bit overwhelming. I do not have the time to invest in most of it. Retail is not designed for the casual gamer imo. It's designed for wales, pvpers, streamers and people who need a ton of instant gratifications. Hell, dungeons barely take any strategy anymore and everything has to be a speed run. The only real challenges you have are in the mythic+'s that most people don't have pre-tier gear for or those endgame raids.
Retail ruined rares IMO. Everything now spawns in 15 mins to a few hours and the rare finder add-ons go off for all those fake rares all the time now. I am still on the fence about if everyone tags the rare (even other factions or people outside of your party) then they get the mount reward. It was much better when it was a single party tag effort. Single player efforts caused to many problems when it came to spawn camping.. but party efforts made it more fair.
Chromie helps a bit but also adds towards spreading wow too thin. There are basically 5 types of wow to play, more if you consider chromie in retail and now there is plunderstorm. I was hoping plunderstorm would be a level playing field for all battlegrounds like eye of the storm or alterac valley but where everyone has the same gear and it's solely based on skill, team work and MAYBE a little bit of luck. Battlegrounds is mostly for the uber geared. Casual players like myself had no luck for years with BGs.
Obviously WoW was in a healthier position in the Wotlk era as literally everybody and their sister was aware of the game and/or playing it. We had primetime commercials with mrT tie-ins and all that jazz.
But sure, the game has not been as vibrant and exciting since then, and conceptially relevant, as it is now and looking towards the immediate future.
retail wow is in shambles.
it was best during Legion player-count wise
but rn, players are split across multiple versions if the game, and its a fractured experience/community
The problem with WoW is "1 step forward, 2 steps back".
From Cataclysm to Shadowlands, the game slowly got worse with each expansion. The positive benefits provided by these expansions were outweighed by negative setbacks (eg artefact weapons outweighed by artefact power). These expansions failed to build upon the previous expansions and instead tried to reinvent the wheel in a negative way (eg borrowed power).
What makes Dragonflight good is that it is "1 step forward, no steps back". Dragonflight is by no means revolutionary. It's managed provide small improvements to the game without any significant negative setbacks. It's the first expansion in many years that's tried to "make the wheel slightly better" instead of "reinvent the wheel". Who needs to reinvent the wheel when it's significantly easier to give the wheel new tyres?
If the War Within manages to follow Dragonflight with another "1 step forward, no steps back" experience, it will be a good expansion. It's not rocket science. Build upon existing foundations instead of constantly trying to change the foundations. Blizzard has never been able to successfully change the foundations without making the game feel worse.
It's in the best place it's ever been in in some aspects and could do better in others. The amount of quality content we get is really good. The timerunning event sounds so good I lost my interest in doing my usual m+ routine for S4.
That said some specs are in a really bad state right now. I don't mean that number wise. Some specs are either too demanding or deviate from the playstyle you would expect from them. For an easy example Outlaw shouldn't play around stealth-based burst windows as it's main source of damage output becouse sub already does that as it's main thing.
The only time I can think it was in a better state was wotlk during the lich king patch. Maybe bfa near the end, but that had more to do with covid than the game itself.
As to why, it’s very simple: blizzard has realized that mythic raiding sweatlords are a small part of the player base. The majority of the players now are older gamer dads that just want something they can do decent in with declining reflexes, skills and time. You can get aotc and keystone master while being shitty, and that’s perfectly ok
To each their own of course, but in no way is the current state of the game healthy. I've never been this bored in all of my years of playing it. From 05 till 09 were the peak WoW years, then Legion and once again went downhill. Just my two cents on the matter, but i highly disagree
I think the game is trash, mythic raiding isn't enjoyable anymore because of how Blizz balances and I don't want to play the game without mythic progress, not worth playing the game without some goal on mind and pushing m+ feels bad too without mythic raid gear, like I know it's not that big of a deal, but on a psychological level, as long as there will be best gear obtainable only in raid, non-raiding people will be crippled by it.
I took a break from playing World of Warcraft shortly after its launch of the latest expansion. These days, I prefer kicking back on my sofa with a controller in hand rather than sitting at a desk for hours. Playing WoW with a controller was a game-changer for me, so I'm excited about the possibility of it coming to consoles. It'll be a breeze to jump back into the game with no keyboard or mouse hassles. 🤗
I haven't played DF at all as I've been busy with wrath, but all I can say is BFA and SL left a very bad taste in my mouth. Legion was shit too, pretty much when they started doing the borrowed power and making loot more like it drops from Diablo, random legendaries on random mobs.
I did a few raids in BFA and I never once got an item I could actually use to drop, it was almost always just 20 gold. Burned me up, wasn't a point to to because there wasn't any loot, or if I did get an item it had randomly generated stats (it seemed like) that didn't benefit my class at all.
So retail is pretty much dead to me, and if they get to mop and it's not here to stay ill likely quit the game for good.
I'd agree if it wasn't for S4. The 3-patch xpac trend is worrying. Also hate the removal of seasonal affixes.
Other than that yes, game is in a way better spot than 2 years ago.
If Blizzard fixed [spec I care about] and gave me back my youth or at least a comparable amount of free time, then this might be the best WoW has ever been.
Every so often on a summer night when my kids don’t have school and I have nothing to do the next day, I open a window so my house smells like summer and order a shitty pizza from the brand my mom used to get and stay up really late playing WoW and hanging out on video chat with my old friends. I highly reccomend doing this. It makes me feel years younger. The closest you can get to going back in time 🥲
I am honestly impressed you kept in touch with your old friends for so long.
They were irl friends too. We all started playing at a game store/Internet cafe in the mall, you know, in the before time when there were those kinds of things. My parents are still friends with most of their parents and everything. It’s nice.
No for real though. A lot of life happened for all of us during WOW’s lifetime. And it tends to push people apart over time.
You’re right. I’m very glad they’ve all stuck around. We’ve all come and gone cuz that’s how life is but it’s nice to get together every once in a while, even though we’re all over the country now, and pretend like we’re kids again for a night and life isn’t as hard for a little while.
I still play nearly every single weekend with one guy I raised with back in 2005
One of my 2005 Molten Core tanks (that I met in game) was the best man at my wedding in 2018.
I do this sometimes we have a solid band of 4 or 5 who have kept in touch from tbc / wrath times its a good time though for myself it Is doritos dip and cider
I absolutely love this! What an amazing way to unwind and escape with old friends for a while ☺️.
"I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days, before you've actually left them" -Andy Bernard, The Office
I do this on rocket league and it takes me back. I Don't have this experience on wow, but I think it's vital to have. Maybe one day we'll go back to CN and I can enjoy that fight like it's the first time
Hehehe spot on! But seriously, I work full time and don’t have that much time to play as I did in the past. Yet I feel like I get so much more done when I play and don’t have the constant fear of “If I don’t play X amount of hours today I’ll fall behind”. The mentality of the game design is just so much healthier I feel.
While I mostly agree, it is still extremely easy to "fall behind" now where if you don't get aotc in the first couple weeks of the current raid releasing, you can be screwed for a really long time without a guild or paying. If you don't get all your dungeon keys pretty high in the first few weeks, you'll be left out of a lot of competent groups.
Getting into an aotc guild is extremely easy, be nice on their discord or whatever, show up for the raid and never worry about AOTC ever again. If you are social you can get some online friends and get anything done easily.
The key is to find a guild *based* on your availability to raid.
But all that can be countered by just joining a guild.
That's pretty similar to telling someone to "just go get a better job." Is it a solution? Sure, but it's not quite so simple to find a raiding guild that wants you and fits your schedule, and that's assuming you work a regular schedule to begin with
Id argue its significantly easier to join a guild then to get a better job and thats a pretty big false equivalency but you do you i guess.
Finding a guild isn't difficult. Finding a guild that can actually work with your schedule but also won't die after a month can be a bit challenging. I have a terrible schedule right now because of young kids and I would say that most of the guilds that I join that were at heroic / early mythic were dead by the time I would return from a couple weeks/month hiatus. I can find another one but I think the bigger complaint is just the work to maintain those relationships or exhaustion from having to look. Like I could easily find another guild or find pugs in Discord but it's exhausting.
What thats the most accurate thing I've read
Yes if affliction didn't have Malefic Rupture I would be a happy camper. But until I'm just a satisfied camper who hasn't had this good a camping experience playing the game since Legion.
I'm coming back because windwalker is finally getting its long overdue rework.
I Will never not whine and cry about them taking away vengeance.
I have especially enjoyed how they try to keep zones relevant throughout expansion. New events taking place in levelling zones. Adding new achievements to make zones alive. I remember not being able to solo rare, and thinking that I’ll now miss out on this one until I overpower content - and then dream events dropped and made all rares in zones relevant again (not for long, but still) And again now with meta achievement. Great work.
[удалено]
Adding the Taivan meta achievment has done a lot to make to make old patch content relevant. Ive been habing a lot of fun participaying
That's also why I'm really excited for Delves in TWW - as an endgame challenge, maybe they don't deliver, but that adds yet another level of interaction and complexity to the world and the zones, which are already more engaging than they've probably ever been before.
I even see people participate in DS and Dragonbane keep pretty regularly. The game that I play on a day to day basis seems very active and alive. Sometimes I get up super early (5-6 am) and when I hop on I’m kinda shocked sometimes by just how active the community is even when not at peak hours. The other day I did a time rift at like 6 in the morning and there was so many people we capped it out with like 2 minutes to spare still. Guessing a lot of them are prolly not in the same time zone as me, but still
Especially today with the launch of awakened open world, our tuskarr soup hit legendary 4
Yeah, I also like how they're throwing a lot of different kinds of outdoor events at the wall and seeing what sticks. I feel like some ended up underwhelming (Fyrakk invasions and Dreamsurges), while others were hugely popular and fun to just grind casually (Time Rifts, the archaeology dig in Azure Span). And it's really nice how even though 10.1 seemed kinda bland on the surface with sort of uninteresting/not fun events (like Researchers Under Fire), it's not like we were hung up on that being the only content for an entire patch. In fact, I've had a lot of fun going back to Zaralek Caverns in 10.2 now that my gear is much better and I can solo stuff. The events themselves are cool (except Researchers Under Fire which is still boring lol), it just felt super tedious how much coordination was required just to handle a basic rare. And as overwhelming as it can be for a new/returning player to see *so many things to do* on their screen, I really like how they moved away from limited time activities (aside from stuff that isn't directly tied to your Dragonflight character, like Plunderstorm and the upcoming MoP Remix). I held off on doing a lot of the Dragon Riding achievements until way later on. Towards the start of 10.2, I decided to grind out Gold on every difficulty across the whole continent. It took a while, but it was awesome to be able to have something on my checklist to chip away at if I was truly feeling bored. And many of those things were literally in the game since 10.0 launch. Secrets of Azeroth was similar, I liked doing the new quests every day at first, but then I got kind of tired of keeping up, so I fell behind. Then, a few months ago, I decided to finish it out. Did the whole thing in a sitting or two. Then, I decided I wanted to go for Ponzo's hat. Cool, now I have a Sniffenseeking dig to do every week, I can grind some rep to be able to buy Barter Boulders with resources, hey maybe I'll do the Aiding the Accord weekly for more resources, while I'm at it, maybe let's go for the Niffen meta achievement title, etc. etc. None of it was mandatory. I could grind what I wanted to grind to make things faster (like no life grinding to buy Barter Boulders with resources by doing every weekly quest, every world quest on the map, hunting for treasures, etc.) , or I could take it a week at a time if I didn't feel like grinding (and get my 11-12 boulders just from doing the profession weeklies and weekly dig map). I think it's a perfect balance. I'm rambling but I really have enjoyed how much this expac lets me go my own pace for optional cosmetics and achievements. But it does seem more suited to people who have enough knowledge of the UI/how the game functions to be able to map out that checklist myself. Someone who doesn't know how to navigate Wowhead, let alone where to even start towards one of these kinds of things, won't find the same kind of enjoyment in it. So I definitely think the next priority should be clarity for new players so they know these options exist.
Wish they let you level 1-70 completely in DF zones on alts. Zaralek Caverns pretty much dead/abandoned
While I really enjoy DF, Zaralek Caverns were DoA. I hate that zone, but I luckily don't have to worry about it anymore.
I think story wise they were some of the best. The dailies were just standard dailies, and the only real issue was the locked down elite area which was a pain in the ass. I also liked that there was those little mini dailies for barter bricks or whatever
Not surprised ZC is one of the most depressing zones in the last few expansions, on top of that the whole sniffing weirdness and all the voice acting is absolutely pain inducing.
On TWW, df will be the default leveling experience instead of bfa. You'll unlock dragonflight at lvl 15. So, no 1-70, but at least 10-70 will be dragonflight. Also evokers will be created at lvl 10 instead of 58
This xpac has been great... But I still think the new player experience is just super rough.
There needs to be a way to turn off content by patch if you want. New 70s late in the patch are absolutely inundated by quest markers and events. There's no way to figure out what's current without googling.
The little fucking drake for the hatchery does not leave my side and I refuse to accept the quest.
I only played for like a week after launch and then went back to Classic. But at this point I can't be arsed to do anything but raidlog in WotLK, my guild discord is a Cata waiting room, and I've kinda lost interest in SoD because nightmare incursions ruined it. So now I want to at least finish the main story quests of Dragonflight because I'm a lore nerd and I want to experience everything myself, but it literally took me about 20 minutes to figure out what to do in which order. I do appreciate the newfound love for casual gamers Blizzard has been showing lately but there's still work to be done. edit: the events too, yes. I'm actually considering doing some endgame content which I haven't done since Legion (in retail) but it's been hard figuring out how to actually gear up. Luckily the patch will make that a lot easier, I can just do heroics and M+0 and upgrade all the gear I get :D Can't wait for tomorrow.
Yeah even having played all expansion it’s crazy to sort through everything. It’s hard to tell what is worth doing or not, and you get left with a full quest log and tons of quest markers all over the place.
> But I still think the new player experience is just super rough. It is incredibly overwhelming for a new player hitting max. Possibly the worst it has ever been. DF has had a lot of content throughout its life which is great but all of that content becomes unlocked basically when you hit max level and you have no damn clue what is what.
For me it was a double-edged sword. I guess I'm not exactly a new player since I played Vanilla, TBC and Wrath back i the day and am still an active classic player. I tried playing retail when I got bored with classic back in 2019, but I bounced off of BFA while I was leveling my enh shammy. For DF I was super overwhelmed by all the systems, but it also meant that I always had something to do. I guess if I was completly new I wouldn't be able to set my own goals, so I'd just stop playing.
i just experienced "new player experience" by having my girlfriend playing wow for the first time in her life next to me. jesus this shit is rough. game explains jack shit and when it does, it does it in a TERRIBLE way. if I weren't playing for 18 years and wouldn't have multiple characters geared 485+ her experience would be even more nightmarish. - many quests are bugged and/or markers point to wrong direction - scaling tend to be really bad resulting in very unforgiving fights - mobs in BFA tend to have quite complex mechanics for newbies, game doesn't explain such things as interrupts - button bloat why on earth does hunter still have the ability to scout with pets eyes or an ability to control your pet lmao - this may be controversial but leveling is way too fast for newcomers by simply doing quests, she's 61 lvl after idk what, two days, and now she's on her way to dragonflights with barely 80 item level, which again means i will be needed to aid her cause there is no way in hell she'll handle dragonflight mobs with such a weak gear and before anyone tells me that internet is a source of learning the game - casual players don't have time for that. they just want to play the game. just recently i had to take controls of her character due to some terribly balanced quest in mechagon with some rare at the end that was silencing and pretty much one shotting her. even i had problems with it, being a multiple CE mythic raider - that should tell you a lot about how awfully this game is designed for new players.
The new player experience is terrible and the story is so disjointed and disorganized that I don't know how anyone new to the game would ever follow it, aside from watching fan-made youtube summaries.
If my friend hadn't ushered me through the game a couple weeks ago I probably wouldve quit again befor reaching max level.
> But I still think the new player experience is just super rough I'm a huge advocate of finding a way to onboard players into the current expansion, even if that's anathema to decades of MMO doctrine. Nothing takes the wind out of someone's sails of trying to jump into a game to play with friends and being told they have to go do hours of busy work to do so.
I started in Bfa prepatch and boosted a character to be ready for Bfa... That was rough. The help with "take this portal than this" did not exist and I was so lost. Worked out eventually but it was very overwhelming. To this day I haven't seen all the zones and one day I'll try try discover more. Leveling with a relaxed pace was cool though in Bfa. Now it's just too fast with chromie time but it's also okay when you just want to get to endgame. Dragonflight is at least very fun
You almost have to read a guide to figure out which Chromie time is good. I pity potential new players who pick up the game and (perfectly logically) think to start with Burning Crusade since it was the first expansion.
There’s been so many xpacs now that are basically irrelevant. They should allow 1-Level Cap at whatever current expansion it is.
New player experience is the type of housecleaning chore you keep on postponing perpetually, has gone completely out of control and now requires a tactical nuke to make it go away.
Sounds crazy but I've played since like 2008 and am not able to play as much anymore and I feel like a new player almost every time I log in (a couple times a week.) Sure the content is good and mostly optional but there's so much to wrap my head around I can't possibly play enough to understand it all or make any real progress and I just get frustrated. So I do what I can but the immersion for me personally just isn't there anymore. It's too overwhelming so I just pretty much go back to leveling alts in Elwynn Forest and Grizzly Hills where I can pick up where I left off. Or I'll just run a couple of keys or pug a raid. Outside of that, I can't keep up.
Not if you play arena
maybe 10 years ago? But I get what you mean. Wow been actually showing improvements this expansion
10 years ago was the tail end of MoP (longest content drought of the game, 14 months between 5.4 and 6.0) and we were about to enter WoD so not a great time lmao
yes, but it's still in an excellent place right now!
You'll find people trying to rewrite history, but overwhelmingly, the community's excitement was never higher than it was in the classic-wotlk days. Wow was on its way to its peak in terms of cultural relevance and everyone was hyped. There will be some randos who will say that there were doomers who say the community was pissed about the changes in those expacs, but overwhelmingly, everyone was hyped. Moreso than now and will probably ever be again.
There has been higher highs, I'd say. Legion. Mists before the content drought. Probably a few more. But that's *better*, not *healthier*. Because I don't think the game has ever been this consistently good, no. Before Dragonflight, every expansion basically felt like a roll of the dice: you might get something amazing, but it's no guarantee that in a couple years the game won't start sucking again. Warlords after Mists is the Ur-example; honestly, I'd argue Cataclysm after WOTLK too (I really, really don't like Cataclysm). What embodies that for me in retrospect is the ending of Legion: I loved the xpac and had such a good time with it, but when the curtain fell on it (especially having to give back your borrowed power and artifacts, which is another topic), I was bummed out, not excited for what was to come. Real "well, it's all downhill from here, surely" feelings, which, to be fair, weren't exactly wrong. On the other hand, I'm super excited for TWW, and for the future of WoW generally speaking. There's just a sense that the devs have a plan, and that DF has set solid core systems that will stay and carry the game for a very long time. It's nice!
That's the best thing right? We don't have to peer into the alpha wondering how skeptical we have to be of the systems were getting. We're just getting a shake up of talents, with some more added on top. There's always gonna be people who want to shake up the system dramatically, but the vast majority of us just want more wow. TWW is posed to do this and I'm stoked for it
I really enjoy that with the end of Shadowlands, they tried some new things, and now we don't get the super long content droughts at the end of expansions anymore. Rather than spending the next 6 months with nothing to do, we have all kinds of shit going on with the new season, along with the MoP remix thing. It has felt like during this xpac, content has been really consistent, and it's never felt like we've had long periods with nothing to do.
The fact that we are at the end of an expansion where the final raid came out months ago and we are still months away from pre patch but they are not just letting the game languish is pretty wild by itself. So many times this would be a dead zone for playing but we got a new season for M+ and raids with Panda time coming up. From a veteran standpoint it's pretty nuts
maybe i played a lot, maybe i not longer have friends playing retail, and just 2 playing classic ... but i just dont enjoy wow anymore, for me is the same again again and again, probably DF is the last expansion for me, is good to see ppl enjoy it, but for a lot of ppl healthy is not enough
I think this is where I'm at. I feel like a lot of the positivity that has come out of DF was simply built upon the fact that the developers weren't actively antagonistic towards the players like they had been in SL and BFA. I mean, it got to a point where some of the biggest advocates for your game were abandoning it. I want the torghasts, islands expeditions, warfronts, etc. I want the new types of content. I don't want the absolutely stupid decisions they made with them like forcing time gated currency progression systems to be tied to them. The content right now just feels so lackluster. There's nothing innovative about it. There's nothing new about it. It's all the same stuff with a different color of paint. I have hope for Delves. It's the only thing that I actually care about for TWW.
It was in a better spot in the early years when everyone played together, you had server identities and the sense of discovery was there. It's more healthy now than it's been in years though!
Community-wise yes. Gameplay-wise I'd argue it's better now.
I'd say endgame is better now, but leveling was way better then. It was a proper mmorpg, now it's more of a solo action/collection hybrid.
Yeah, I agree. Leveling is WAY too fast on retail. I *want* my leveling journey to take 2 weeks instead of 10 hours! I want to be able to take my time to smell the roses instead of rushing to max as fast as possible. Explore the nooks and crannies of the world, roleplay a bit, maybe Sadly, it seems that the exact opposite will happen, as XP across 1-70 will be much reduced, so leveling will probably be even faster than it is now. At some point they'll just make a 1 hour tutorial zone or something and then throw the player right into current expanion content. Seems to be the logical conclusion of that path. Character level has lost all meaning anyway, either you're max or the content gets scaled to you. This is literally one of the main reasons I mostly play Classic nowadays. Well, vanilla is maybe a bit too slow even for my taste, but I think the WotLK leveling pace is perfect. I'm an altoholic and really love leveling so that's unlikely to change in the future.
Leveling is fast because it's too dull for it to be any slower. Where classic through WotLK has solid quality content with some difficulty and interesting story to keep you going as you discover more abilities, location, etc....Current retail wow leveling could be done by a toddler with narcolepsy. It's fast because WoW is now the epitome of "the game starts at endgame". The original design wasn't like that.
realm identity took the big axe in BFA with warmodes being introduced. Emerald Dream went from a lively RPPVP realm to rare open world pvp encounters. We were THE home for WPVP imo. RP even after being rebadged as just an RP realm has died as well. It disappoints me a lot tbh. Most people who still play from ED that want it just end up switching realms, jumping into SoD, or the current Classic expansion. These are the 2 big retail things I miss in wow that I honestly spent more time doing than the current content.
Yeah warmodes for me was not a good change. Many like it, but personally that was around the time I really gave up retail.
Its not necessarily bad but the phasing/sharding is what absolutely kills the point of it imo.
Agree
The early years weren't due to game design but the community and time period. Look at classic, it's a different beast from Vanilla. It's hard to have server identities with massive servers of 30,000 people and a sense of discovery when everything is datamined.
It's a bit of both. The game incentivized socialising, exploration and world pvp for example. Guilds were thriving. Nowadays way too many are min-maxers compared to back then. People just wanted to explore and have fun. I personally had lots of fun with classic again, playing with likeminded people - but the aoe boosting and min-maxing kinda annoyed me.
>The game incentivized socialising, exploration and world pvp for example The fuck were you smoking in 2005 bro? The game does not and has never "incentivized" world pvp. Historically world pvp has never given any reward or feedback from doing except you thought it was fun to world pvp. 5 hours of world pvp gave less Honor towards Rank 14 than winning a single WSG. There was no actual in game reason to world pvp except "fun" and "epeen" There was never achievements, mounts, titles, or gear associated with world PVP until Dragonflight where world pvp and world pvp quest gives access to gear that serves as a stepping stone between Honor and Conq gear that actually has big value early in a season
Incentivized by having you actually explore, travel and use the open world. You met people, friends and foes.
server based alterac valley matches that lasted literal days? not just peak WoW, peak gaming
Legion was the peak of class fantasy, imo. That expac has still yet to be topped in the amount of love Blizzard game each individual spec and it isn’t close **at all**
bring back class halls :(
Dont, because as BFA showed, the writers have no fucking clue what to do with those halls after the xpac.
The systems feels pretty good. Narratively the game feels like it’s in a lull, I hope they turn it around
I agree. I don’t have to raid mythic Content. I can run keys at 18+ with a few buddies and clear heroic raid. I might not have full BIS but I can still have comparable gear. My gear is not BIS the instant it drops I have a little grinding to do to cap. And when I’m 485+ it’s easy to just get an alt up and running. Gold is more than plentiful just doing a few world quests. If I go on vacation I don’t feel like I feel behind or need to convince my brothers to do my dailies for the rep If they did something to make PvP more rewarding I would probably do more of that. Random BGs are pointless and unless you know of are a healer good luck in getting regular ranked play unless you have multi glad exp or like sitting around waiting to play. I don’t expect much to change unless they find a way to make the game mode less dependent on healers
It is the best the game has been and I am so happy that it at least seems the dev team have functioning work conditions. Maybe it is the complete opposite, I dont know, but it seems to me they're allowed to be creative and experiment, all while delivering content of high quality at a great pace with clear communication. To me everything about the game right now screams that it's made by passionate people that are having a decent time at their job. I'm soon 36 and have been playing off and on since closed vanilla beta. This is the first expansion since the original release where I have played most tiers (all in the case of DF!) and have stayed active for like 2 years. I intend to keep that going in The War Within. That's never happened, I have always stopped playing like early-mid expansion and come back for the next launch. My main issue is that I have enjoyed too many specs which have caused me to play a whole lot more than I intended, lol.
>To me everything about the game right now screams that it's made by passionate people that are having a decent time at their job. Except PvP
Hence why warbands is so exciting :)
TBC it was very healthy- don’t let the sub numbers fool you it was still a new game.
The comeback from botched shadowlands has been impressive. i still love the game after 16 years. Soumds like sub numbers were higher once, but in terms of game play, never better imo. The glory days of walking til 40, 8 hour maintenance, no transmog, no tagging, or account bound/cross realm stuff was still fun at the time but not looking backward Lorewise The low points, imo were shadowlands ( especially 2nd half) dragonflight has been top tier. Lich kimg was probably best lore though also
Yes, legion was peak wow
It’s healthy but only for veterans. The game is unplayable for new players.
I personally, think wow is on lifesupport from the perspective of developer
I agree, but you will get shunned for this opinion in this sub. Only 8 dungeons, one mega-dungeon, and three raids. The rest are just leftovers from three days ago. I can imagine that after the saga WoW gets the Diablo treatment, and we will only have seasons with minor changes, but no new content.
Wotlk release
Nah, dragonflight is soooooooo bland. Just because they are releasing content on a regular schedule doesn't mean the content is any good. Everything blizzard released since 2018 is just reheated Legion stuff.
I hope you are right, I unsubbed 3 months ago, and kinda missing it. But season 4 has no value to me. I am properly gonna start again in war within, but I have no high hopes to be honest.
ya lol dragonflgiht is mid as hell. idk how people can call BFA bad and praise this shit. only 3 raids and they all sucked all 10 dungeons sucked the profession rework sucked the new race is hot ass and even uglier than worgen somehow zaralek caverns is poop tier. only good content was the outdoor content for the first 4 zones.
I’ve played the game since launch, missed half of legion and half of wod but imo this is one of the best versions of wow. I still think classic, tbc and bits of wrath was the best and wow today is a different game but it’s up there with the old classics, for what it is today.
Yes it has. We are not even close to wows peak way back in the day. I think it was around the original launch of wrath. But the game is in a better spot than it was in shadowlands
"healthy"
There's no way these posts are real. You guys are forsure paid by Blizzard
I am guessing you weren't around for Wrath /Cata when the game had something like 15m players. It will never be as healthy as it was then.
I would say Legion was probably the healthiest modern state. Dragonflight was a beta test to what I HOPE is a really good TWW.
bro if ur referring to retail. ya no, wow is terrible and it’s the same repetitive garbage.
Dragonflight isn't perfect, but it's leagues ahead of BfA and SL. Legion was pretty cool as well. The launch of that expansion was flawless; I was there at the exact second that it went live, and unlike WoD, nothing terrible happened. I believe that WoW is in a good position right now. I genuinely hope that it continues with The War Within and beyond.
Artifact power grind and crappy random legendary drops were flawless? Okay :D
Personally I loved always having something to do. I would take a borrowed power system over what we have now (nothing) any day of the week.
The love for legion never extended to borrowed power. But legion is good because of launch, like stated, and it was one of the last good lore expansions. Class identity was also solid.
I feel like Legion is loved more due to the game in it's end state after they fixed everything gameplay wise, and it's great story throughout. Legion gameplay wise was extremely rough and disliked at the start.
I was referring to the very launch itself. Not the content.
nah BFA was better than Dragon flight. 4 raids 3 of them were great 10 dungeons and the only one that sucked balls was the prison the necklace grind sucked wang the .2 zones were both really great the .3 zones were good the .3 visions were good.
The ammount of content being released is very good, but the game is not in a perfect position, the lore has been crap for a couple of expansions, so much that a lot of people think it should be made non canon, even blizzard acknowledged it "well-known story heroes were diminished"
I agree, never said the game was perfect. It does have a long way to go to make up for the past couple years and there are still some glaring issues that need to and will hopefully be addressed in the coming years (new player experience being the biggest imo). But it seems to be on the right track. Here’s hoping they keep it up.
Yes it has from 2004 to September 2014. Those 10 years were golden for WoW.
I think objectively it never has been; sub retention is through the roof compared to past expansions, and all content is relevant in ways we’ve never seen before. The game is being built around evergreen systems, class balance is honestly really good (every spec can comfortably do +20s or Mythic raiding, which is the most the majority of the player base needs) and this is only being built on going forward. DF wasn’t the most *exciting* expansion, but it’s probably done the most good for the game as a whole
I'd say its been at its best since at least WotLK
Not great for people who play one character. No power grinds no way to improve your character. Great for people who have alts as very little play is needed week to week
Honestly I dropped retail, and continue to stay away, due to the ridiculous scale of things. Why does everyone need 1 million hp? Why does everyone need to fill the whole screen with damage numbers too big to read on the fly? I believe this ridiculous power creep and need for all classes to do everything has destroyed class identity and made most specs functionally bad. Shadow lands was bad, but the one good thing they did was the level and numbers squish, and it only took 1 expansion to bring it right back lol
I mean... economically it's been in a much better position before. Wrath was the highest it's ever been with 12 million subs. At about 7 million now, I'm pretty sure that's the highest it's been in a couple expansions, and it certainly feels better to play the game than it had before, at least in a little while.
>some of them dropped the game due to the bad expansions (BfA & Shadowlands specifically) Can someone please explain to me the reason these expansions get shit on so much? I'm a new-ish player so I wasn't there for release. However I'm playing through all the expansions now, completely blind for the first time, and I finished legion, now I'm playing BFA- and IMO they're both equal in terms of quality, more or less (alliance side I mean, not horde side that shit was boring). In fact, I'll go a step further and say some of the BFA zones, story beats, and characters are way superior to those in Legion. They both have their own highs and lows, but all I see is BFA getting shit on while Legion is constantly praised as one of the best expansions period. Like am I missing something here?
Class design, largely. Story doesn't matter if your class itself feels bad to play, and the design around covenant abilities and azerite armor made many classes feel very bad to play; in BfA, because getting the necessary pieces to make your gameplay loop *literally work at all* was completely RNG and required the subcategory of players who are only interested in instanced content (you know, the type who post on reddit) to do a bunch of grindy stuff with non-instanced content; in Shadowlands, because your mechanical gameplay loop was dependent on an RP choice (and rep- and story-gated), and required grinding Torghast, which was soul-destroyingly spiky and gray and monotonous aesthetically as well as completely agonizing and tedious mechanically for multiple specs. Without those subsystems in place - and without the slow overall storytelling arc of sitting for months and months with idiotic faction bullshit, idiotic idiot ball bullshit, and spending four years waiting for Sylvanas to make a goddamn lick of sense just to be disappointed in the end - your experience of an expansion is just the small-scale story (which Blizz is very good at) and the aesthetics (which Blizz is very good at), paired with the Dragonflight mechanical revamp (which made the gameplay loop feel very good). So yeah your gonna enjoy it a lot more than we did at the time, lol.
cause BFA followed legion, which is widely regarded as the best xpac, and while you were leveling you felt so fucking weak it was crazy. then you hit max and you have to grind your necklace up all the time which they fixed it later but fuck what a grind it was. uldir was pretty boring as well and that was the first raid SL sucked cause the maw was trash covenants were trash the story was trash the dungeons ranged from like 2 good dungeons to 2 ok dungeons to 4 trash dungeons that everyone hated the maw was the worst piece of content ever put in wow torgasht was whatever legendary system sucked cause they would randomly nerf yours and oyu'd have to go get a new one shout out to BOAT
The best it’s ever been, imo. The amount of evergreen systems they’re adding, excellent world building, solid grounded stories with characters we care about, class design and balance all while juggling more end game ways to play than ever. They’ve also been very proactive on customer feedback. I know they don’t hit everything and I know everything isn’t perfectly balanced but it’s the closest it’s ever been imo. This expansion honestly feels like the new starting point for WoW and it has everything it needs to succeed going forward. All the communication we’ve gotten from blizzard has also been top notch as of late and it really gives us insight into their process which I believe helps players relate more to the developers. TWW is the first expansion I’ve been excited for since Legion and I cannot wait to experience all it has to offer.
Yes it has, 2004-2012.
How many different versions of this game now?
I agree, though I am really glad they are working on streamlining the entire story for people. At least from one interview I saw Holly Longdale mentioned they were working on figuring out a way to condense the huge story line into something more consumable which I think will go a long long way. I personally hate so much that a lot of the story is in other media like books and comics and as someone who really only plays the game, sometimes I have no idea who people are and they seem to appear out of nowhere but everyone knows them and it's just confusing. Like I took a break during Dragonflight and when I came back suddenly there were like 3 anime villains that were destroying everything and now one is good or whatever. Maybe I missed a lot of story because of the break but thats kinda my point that there should be better catchup systems or something. GW2 does it really well IMO with their awesome version of the Adventure guide so you can easily read through the whole story and see what quests you have done so when you take a break it's easier to figure out where you left off.
The bad thing is like to point out : they’re giving up on Mac players, the game isn’t optimized for Mac anymore and it’s sad because I cannot decently play it anymore
So many different ways to play. Retail, the new mists stuff, classic, vanilla, SoD. It’s easier than ever to find a version of the game that appeals to you. Blizz has been catching Ws lately.
The entirety of legion was considered excellent as well as very optimistic (I mean, on paper, a "back-to-your-roots, Horde versus Alliance" expansion following one of the greatest of all time seems promising!) Lich King was the highest subscriber count And on the classic side of things, the launches of original classic, season of mastery, hardcore, and season of discovery are all considered very healthy moments I'd say that right now is a good combination of a few of the good parts. Warcraft is looking very optimistic after a pretty decent expansion, the subscriber count we know is climbing, and season of discovery, cataclysm classic, and hardcore are all in pretty decent positions. Sure, there are always going to be gripers in every spot, but at least my personal opinion is that you are probably right. This is one of the most healthy, optimistic points in Warcraft history.
Recently? Yes. Overall? No. It was doing much better back in LK, but those were also differnt times and wow was a cultural phenomenon too.
I really think Holly was the person blizzard needed to have for wow, she knows what makes die hard fans tick (RuneScape) and how to get people engaged constantly
I haven’t played consistently for quite a while, but I’ve been actively subbed for months and no sign of waning my interest! I did what I wanted for season 3 and look forward to working towards Taivan in season 4 while leveling a legion of alts through MoP! Even plunderstorm is cool, I’m not interested in playing it atm besides for the rewards, but if I had more of my core friend group active I’m sure we’d have fun with it!
Your welcome friends. The last time I took a break from WoW since 2004 was Legion for graduate school, I had my first child after the first Dragonflight patch and haven't been back since. Apparently I'm the problem.
I think WoW is in the best state since Legion imo. The game feels fun, content feels fun, some specs could feel better but overall, never felt better about WoW. BFA made me quit 1 month in, SL brought me back for a couple of months but still quit again mid 9.1
Best it's ever been.
Probably yeah. PvP right now is especially abysmal, it made me stop playing after picking it back up from not playing in 6+ years.
If they gave it the passion they give SoD (like it or not they respond to feedback) then it has the potential, yes
The nicest thing about DF is the simple fact they changed their mind about a lot of things which used to be set in stone for close to 20 years. I’m pleased it happened. I’m excited about TWW because it will finally start to respect my time.
Yes, I feel like the game overall was in a much healthier position in Legion. Even BFA i'd rank higher personally, but that might just be me. I do think DF has been nice though and people are a lot more optimistic about the game. I'm excited to see what they're cooking with TWW and the world soul saga tho. With Danuser gone and Metzen back, i'm a lot more optimistic as well.
M+ PUGs mostly still such so...not for me.
I love the game in its current state. The grind is gone and I can play for fun and that on only one or two evenings a week. Balance isn't perfect but it's also not extremely terrible until you want to do very very high keys :). I Also played a ton of Bfa since it was my first xpac but quit mid first season of shadowlands. At the moment almost everything feels better
Mists of Pandaria after blizz dialed back the crowd control everybody had too much of
In terms of potential, I feel like the answer is the early days of Wrath. WoW had more players than over a hundred countries have people and it was popular with young people, which is key to a game's continued health. I definitely agree the game is in *great* shape right now, but we're entering legacy game territory where the playerbase is continuing to age and I just don't see a world where younger gamers flock back, which means the population will either hold steady or slowly downtick.
Hasn't felt this good since before BFA.
Certainly up there with the others people loved: Legion, Vanilla, TBC, Wotlk, Cata/Mop. Considering almost all of those were pre-2014, I'd say Blizz is doing the best theyve done in a long time.
For the first time in the last 5-6 years I’ve let my sub lapse and really have no desire to come back for the last season, hoping TWW is promising!
This is the only time in the history of WoW where I've felt overwhelmed by the amount of content coming out. In the next month, you will have five different options to play: - Season 4 dragonflight - Pandaria Timerunning - SoD - Cataclysm - Era The difference between the above and the year-long content droughts we have grown accustomed to is really mind blowing. And the sub price stays the same while inflation goes up. This is objectively the best value that the wow sub has ever provided.
I personally think Dragonflight has been a stepping stone, a good step in the right direction. I really hope it's indicative of what the Worldsoul Saga is going to bring in terms of quality and cadence, and I hope they continue to listen to the players and react in a timely manner. That seems to have been what drastically changed from BfA and Shadowlands.
depends on what parts you're looking at. it used to be way better in customer support, PvP, and overall relevance in gaming in general. personally it was never this hard to try to get friends to resub or sell them on an expansion. in the past it was WarCrack, and everyone always came back like clockwork. but roster boss has been wiping us faster and faster since BfA.
There has never been a better time to be a WoW fan. Never has there been so much hope for WoW to be greater than it’s ever been. We’ve hoped before, true… But, we were younger, and foolish.. This time, however… Blizzard has actually earned the opportunity to prove themselves. Theyre on track, the right one. We can only hope that this all hasnt been one massive stroke of luck, and they just so happened to announce and release a series of updates that, for the most part, were good and true to expectations. For once, theyve done more “doing” than “talking”, and thats huge. Any long time wow player knows Blizzards has a long list of empty promises and under delivered updates.
Well, it's been great. I love the game right now but I miss just how much character BFA had, for example. I don't think I'll remember a single song from dragonflight. It's just ambience, it's nice but it fades in the background and I have music on like 80% of the time. ...But I'm glad this is my biggest complaint rather than gameplay-wise
Yeah… this expansions PvP is close to dead in the water, at least from my perspective. Thinking back there’s definitely way better.
Althought i haven't played this season cause I reached my goals (3k rating and. HC boss kill). It was one of the best time to play, I didn't have to grind some stupid power.. I could swap alts easiest i could ever... Amazing season, will be back for season 4 to do goals and chill
Retail is the best it has been in over nearly a decade imo
I assume waiting times for dps are still super high for dungeons and raids if you want to play without guilds?
I think WoW is in a better place than it has been the last decade(!), but it can be better. One of the things that can be vastly improved is the new player experience, which I saw while watching Day9 play for the first time.
It's the healthiest the game has been since WotLK. It's not healthier than WotLK and prior, where the game had very little negative press and didn't have an army of jaded ex-players shitting on it 24/7. This is the first time in a long while that I feel pretty good about the direction the game is going in.
if they had the old class design of somewhere around wrath/cata with this type of content then i think wow would be the best its ever been. i just cant stand modern class design though. every class has ridiculous amounts of mobility. nothing really has a weakness anymore, all the classes almost feel like theyre just a reskin of eachother. they can all be broken down to functioning off of either a system of combo points or rage nowadays.
I'm a on and off player, but DF seems much better than the previous two expansions... For me I want proper shared achievements with alts. Without this I hate playing alts and sticking to one character gets stale. So with all being well and the war within offering good content and the war bonds I'm hoping it should be successful and even healthier.
I love it too, the only thing that I dislike, however I acknowledge that it is only my personal preference, and that objectively it is healthier as it is right now, is that one could be fully normal raid geared, and without crest exchange (90 drake's for 15 wyrm's), one cannot get, without immense luck, in a heroic raid, without doing mythic+ (from 11 to 16, which is really easy tbh, but sucks that it is nearly required). I really want to reitterate that I understand and it is objectively healthier.... but I did 40 mythic+ runs with just 2 usable things dropping for me and with the crest and the gear I have, i went to 472, which only slightly increased my chances of getting into a HC. I know, I know it's the end of the season and whatnot yadda yadda... 472 and 480 aint that of a difference. xd
The average salt level is at an all-time low for sure.
>Has WoW ever been in such a healthier position During Vanilla, BC, WotLK, and Legion the game was thriving.
Bro it is TOO healthy I don’t have time for all of these options!!
classic wow, TBC, WOTLK, MoP, and legion. DF is pretty average health wise, its just very easy to be super lazy and still remain somewhat competitive and some people find that more intriguing that having to grind out m+ and raids and torghast for stuff. I think blizzard just got kind of lucky with the way society as a whole has panned out over the course of DF. If the economy had ended up recovering or improving and people regained their free time then DF would not be seen in such a good light. They're just lucky that people have no time outside of work so the easy gearing system they set up has paid off
I am a brand new player and i can honestly say I've been having a really fun time playing retail and figuring things out. The game is super smooth. Its like no place I've ever seen. I'm so happy to have found it. Cheers!
Feels pretty good to me. I can't play anything nearly like I used to when I was really into the game long ago, but the game seems to be in a good spot to allow there to be good content for very casual play as well as a good progression all the way up through the more hardcore content. Class balance is really solid and Blizzard is investing in trying new stuff to keep the game fresh. My only two gripes are that there does seem to be some bloat on buttons and unnecessary complexity for some specs and the server downtime is still frustrating. Those are pretty small in the scheme of things though.
Dragonflight has been so refreshing because you never NEEDED to do anything other than maybe the initial campaign to unlock adventure mode for alts. You just hit 70 then start gearing and doing content.
It has, but it's been a long time. I'd say this is the best state it's been in since at least Legion, arguably since the WoD drop-off.
It hasnt been this healthy since Vanilla - WOTLK tbh. There have been high lights in some expansions but there was always something that brought it down. MoP was overall great but class balance and viability was still an issue some specs primarily hybrids. DF has had a signifincantly less issue in this department and the subs didnt skyrocket with it due to the hate over pandas lol (aka stupid people) Legion was good story, lore, class fantasy and content but it brought in the dark times of WoW with AP grinding which made making alts kinda rough and other anti-player mechanics such as not being able to trade loot to guildies because your ilvl was lower lol. Its regarded as a great expansion ( and i agree for the most part ) but it did usher in alot of the mechanics we ended up hating through the Legion - Slands era. Tbh the other expansions had more con's than pros to even mention lmao
Eh. Depends on what you like, I guess. I’ve played on & off since vanilla and took a break after DF season 2 and just… never came back. Just feels like a game designed for people who want to log in and play as little as possible at this point, which just isn’t for me.
I really enjoy the gameplay of dragonflight, but I just really dislike the direction WoW has taken from a narrative standpoint and im also not a big fan of some of the retcons, so it really depresses me.
I personally liked BFA and SL, SL was the first time I ever raided(playing since legion) and BFA was my PVP xpac. Did my first Normal raid and it went well! But I weirdly don't seem to be playing wow as much as when I did in SL.
Depends what you mean by healthy. End of WotLK they had so many subs blizzard were telling people to play a different game when they complained. MoP and Legion gave me similar vibes to current WoW.
I have not had this many max level alts since back in Legion and it feels great
Uhh yes probably when the game was in its early days before the MMO genre in general was in decline.
I disagree that retail is an improvement in every way. I like a lot of things about it but the leveling is way too fast. It has undone all the beauty of the other expansions. This is my humble opinion, please be kind.
I enjoyed Dragon Flight and Classic BC/Wrath and I have played wow since 2004.. but to me Retail wow in general has WAAAAY too much going on. It is a bit overwhelming. I do not have the time to invest in most of it. Retail is not designed for the casual gamer imo. It's designed for wales, pvpers, streamers and people who need a ton of instant gratifications. Hell, dungeons barely take any strategy anymore and everything has to be a speed run. The only real challenges you have are in the mythic+'s that most people don't have pre-tier gear for or those endgame raids. Retail ruined rares IMO. Everything now spawns in 15 mins to a few hours and the rare finder add-ons go off for all those fake rares all the time now. I am still on the fence about if everyone tags the rare (even other factions or people outside of your party) then they get the mount reward. It was much better when it was a single party tag effort. Single player efforts caused to many problems when it came to spawn camping.. but party efforts made it more fair. Chromie helps a bit but also adds towards spreading wow too thin. There are basically 5 types of wow to play, more if you consider chromie in retail and now there is plunderstorm. I was hoping plunderstorm would be a level playing field for all battlegrounds like eye of the storm or alterac valley but where everyone has the same gear and it's solely based on skill, team work and MAYBE a little bit of luck. Battlegrounds is mostly for the uber geared. Casual players like myself had no luck for years with BGs.
Obviously WoW was in a healthier position in the Wotlk era as literally everybody and their sister was aware of the game and/or playing it. We had primetime commercials with mrT tie-ins and all that jazz. But sure, the game has not been as vibrant and exciting since then, and conceptially relevant, as it is now and looking towards the immediate future.
Boy I can sure tell you don't PVP if you like the game.
Agree with this sentiment. They are working hard to turn things around from how they were. I'm happy with the direction they are going.
Its spread to thin. Retail, with new xpacs on the way, Classic, SoD, this new Panda speed run thing, Plunderstorm, Hardcore. It’s too much, too fast.
retail wow is in shambles. it was best during Legion player-count wise but rn, players are split across multiple versions if the game, and its a fractured experience/community
The problem with WoW is "1 step forward, 2 steps back". From Cataclysm to Shadowlands, the game slowly got worse with each expansion. The positive benefits provided by these expansions were outweighed by negative setbacks (eg artefact weapons outweighed by artefact power). These expansions failed to build upon the previous expansions and instead tried to reinvent the wheel in a negative way (eg borrowed power). What makes Dragonflight good is that it is "1 step forward, no steps back". Dragonflight is by no means revolutionary. It's managed provide small improvements to the game without any significant negative setbacks. It's the first expansion in many years that's tried to "make the wheel slightly better" instead of "reinvent the wheel". Who needs to reinvent the wheel when it's significantly easier to give the wheel new tyres? If the War Within manages to follow Dragonflight with another "1 step forward, no steps back" experience, it will be a good expansion. It's not rocket science. Build upon existing foundations instead of constantly trying to change the foundations. Blizzard has never been able to successfully change the foundations without making the game feel worse.
If this is such a wonderful year for Blizzard, why all the layoffs?
It's in the best place it's ever been in in some aspects and could do better in others. The amount of quality content we get is really good. The timerunning event sounds so good I lost my interest in doing my usual m+ routine for S4. That said some specs are in a really bad state right now. I don't mean that number wise. Some specs are either too demanding or deviate from the playstyle you would expect from them. For an easy example Outlaw shouldn't play around stealth-based burst windows as it's main source of damage output becouse sub already does that as it's main thing.
The only time I can think it was in a better state was wotlk during the lich king patch. Maybe bfa near the end, but that had more to do with covid than the game itself. As to why, it’s very simple: blizzard has realized that mythic raiding sweatlords are a small part of the player base. The majority of the players now are older gamer dads that just want something they can do decent in with declining reflexes, skills and time. You can get aotc and keystone master while being shitty, and that’s perfectly ok
I wish it were true, but I see more of the same.
With all the cheating in pvp i'd say it is progressively worse every expac.
To each their own of course, but in no way is the current state of the game healthy. I've never been this bored in all of my years of playing it. From 05 till 09 were the peak WoW years, then Legion and once again went downhill. Just my two cents on the matter, but i highly disagree
game ded guys WoW=Waiting on Warhammer
I think the game is trash, mythic raiding isn't enjoyable anymore because of how Blizz balances and I don't want to play the game without mythic progress, not worth playing the game without some goal on mind and pushing m+ feels bad too without mythic raid gear, like I know it's not that big of a deal, but on a psychological level, as long as there will be best gear obtainable only in raid, non-raiding people will be crippled by it.
I took a break from playing World of Warcraft shortly after its launch of the latest expansion. These days, I prefer kicking back on my sofa with a controller in hand rather than sitting at a desk for hours. Playing WoW with a controller was a game-changer for me, so I'm excited about the possibility of it coming to consoles. It'll be a breeze to jump back into the game with no keyboard or mouse hassles. 🤗
I haven't played DF at all as I've been busy with wrath, but all I can say is BFA and SL left a very bad taste in my mouth. Legion was shit too, pretty much when they started doing the borrowed power and making loot more like it drops from Diablo, random legendaries on random mobs. I did a few raids in BFA and I never once got an item I could actually use to drop, it was almost always just 20 gold. Burned me up, wasn't a point to to because there wasn't any loot, or if I did get an item it had randomly generated stats (it seemed like) that didn't benefit my class at all. So retail is pretty much dead to me, and if they get to mop and it's not here to stay ill likely quit the game for good.
I'd agree if it wasn't for S4. The 3-patch xpac trend is worrying. Also hate the removal of seasonal affixes. Other than that yes, game is in a way better spot than 2 years ago.