I suspect that classic's not really the issue, retail's falling on its face all on its own. It's just a coincidence that classic happens to be releasing at the same time retail's in a big slump.
Looking forward, there are a few things Blizzard needs to do with Retail WoW if they want to revive it, after the BfA debacle.
1) They need to create something permanent. Something that stays with you, even after the next expansion is over. Player housing would be one option. Another option would be some sort of relic that is not stats driven (that way it doesn't become obsolete). A relic that gives permanent character progression beyond just 1 expansion. Or any other number of ideas that have been thrown around. Basically, after abandoning our Halfhill Farm, our Garrisons, our Legion Spaceship, our Legion Artifact Weapon, our Legion Order Hall, and soon our BfA amulet and azerite gear, people are fed up with this feature abandonment. The devs need to implement something new in the expansion that will be around for the long haul.
2) Re-center and re-focus the story. Blizzard has fallen into the trap of having to one-up themselves with threat level, villain power, and all that with every expansion. Villains can only get so ominous before they all start bleeding together. The Old Gods are cool when they have shown up here and there. But there's such a thin line between Old God and Void that I really couldn't tell you the difference, because it seems like most of the Old Gods use the power of the void. They feel like they are one and the same. And anyway, escalation is not the answer. There are stories that could be told that have emotional weight, plot weight, social weight, or other ideas without just escalating to "this guy has more tentacles than the last guy." Using Final Fantasy XIV's Shadowbringers expansion as an example of this, the plot in that game is an extremely personal story. It focuses on just a few people, and honestly, the player character is the centerpiece of all of it. Sure, there's a threat, and yeah, the threat is actually a significant one. But they tell the story in such a way that this giant looming threat is just background material for a much more intimate and personal story that is unfolding in the foreground, while the big ominous stuff is just kinda in the background. It's a much more subtle story. They aren't bashing you over the head with it, like Blizzard is doing to us with Sylvanas and all that.
3) They need to re-evaluate their core gameplay foundations. Part of why WoW Classic is booming is because that game feels way more organic. At least it did back in 2004 when everything wasn't datamined and all that. WoW Classic is an adventure. You go from zone to zone, and yes, things do take a long time. But while you are there and doing those things, it feels organic. It does not feel like this carefully and mathematically constructed process designed to take such and such amount of time. Modern Retail WoW is a time trap. Literally every game system is so carefully and meticulously designed down to the fraction for how long it will take. Nothing feels organic anymore. It feels like you're getting on to do a list of pre-defined chores that are each mathematically designed to take so much time. Modern WoW just feels too mechanical. It's just a laundry list. There's no adventure anymore. And if Blizzard wants to see Retail WoW continue forward, they're gonna need to find a way to restore some of that organic feeling and make the game feel more like an adventure again, and not just a list of 17 things you have to do every day when you log on.
I suspect that classic's not really the issue, retail's falling on its face all on its own. It's just a coincidence that classic happens to be releasing at the same time retail's in a big slump.
You mean “go grind 2 shitty factions for flying” wasnt a monumental content release showing off 15 years of dev trial and error? Im shocked.
Also that pvp lfg screenshot is hilarious. Thats how bad bfa pvp is. Personally im sick of the current gear treadmill depending so much on weekly chests/titanforging for real upgrades. Theres a point where id rather do vanilla raids than be slapped across the face with the same bracers 4 weeks in a row from the chest.
modern wow containing a complete lack of necessity on anyone's part to either initiate or reciprocate any form of conversation
So, nothing's stopping you, you've just decided that you're not going to bother and blame the game for it.
the reciprocate is a key part of that
nobody needs to say anything, so if you do, nobody says anything back. the only time you get any form of communication is in difficult content, of which there is none until the very endgame.
I mean, I have that level of interaction with people in m+ keys all the time. If you never group with people you don't already know you don't have much chance to interact with them
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It's pretty clear that a lot of people are not being particularly well-served by the contemporary game for whatever reason, and I do tend to agree that BfA has gone a bit far with the amount of stuff one character needs to do to stay 'up to date,' so to speak.
However, there was also a time not really that long ago when the complaint du jour about the game was that there was nothing to do other than log in and raid; people in classic are enjoying the leveling race right now and that's great, but I think most are gonna find the endgame pretty threadbare: it's basically just raids, and farming materials for consumables for raids.
I dunno what the happy medium is; I think I liked legion's setup better than BfA's in this regard, but even legion was pretty aggressive compared to prior expansions (ex: mists.) Maybe the classic experience will convince them to dial this sort of think back a bit, if it attracts large numbers on a sustained basis.
I don't think we need more 'character permanence' or whatever from expansion to expansion necessarily, I just think they need to not write so much dumb bullshit. Unfortunately it's not clear they're capable of that
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
+2
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
I mean, I have that level of interaction with people in m+ keys all the time. If you never group with people you don't already know you don't have much chance to interact with them
Sure, in keys. At the very endgame, and only in the harder levels of keys. In easier ones people just sign up, start the key, and go. In classic so far I've found reasons to group up for almost every bit of content I've done, and I'm in the early 20s.
As I mentioned before, I am having way more fun with Classic than I expected. Before classic launched, I only intended to play it to see the vanilla alliance storylines. (My first character was a horde character on a pvp server. The pvp realm cross faction restrictions weren't lifted until after the Cata rework of vanilla content.) It turns out that I'm having way more fun with Classic's janky gameplay than retail's non-endgame gameplay.
A part of that is that I'm finding myself regularly challenged by standard mobs. I have to be careful with every pull I make, how I use my resources, and I need to utilize most of my toolkit. That sounded to me like it would make gameplay a slog, but really it just makes it interesting. I also have a much bigger solo dps toolkit in classic, even at level 15, than I do in retail wow (especially as a healer main). My level 15 human priest has smite, mind blast, shadow word pain, and wand for damage (and holy fire and mind flay coming soon), plus I need survivabiltiy so I need to mix in power word shield and renew at a minimum. I have choices about how I handle pulls. If I need to do more DPS I can swap in more smite and less wanding at the cost of more mana usage. Individual spells getting resisted can switch up how I handle the rest of the fight due to resource concerns. Things like potions are meaningful options, etc. Compare that to my Mistweaver who has... 3 dps spells that all fulfill the same basic utility: 'hit this button unless this other button is available', is never in danger of running out of resources and is basically unkillable in any kind of world pve environment (even stuff like najatar and mechagon). The only time my mistweaver ever feels threatened is when doing things like tanking the group rares in those zones. I literally have problems falling asleep while playing retail because of how boring it is, and I don't have that problem in Classic.
One thing that I think is worth noting: Classic isn't 'hard'. It's way easier than actual hardmode content in retail, it's just that it requires a level of engagement that retail does not. As Dalphir has stated, it also requires communication. I can mirror his experience of speaking to more people in 15 levels of classic than all of BFA, be that random strangers questing together with me, or helping people asking questions in zone chat. It's all been quite positive too, even when things weren't going so well. I don't think this is something 'special' about Classic, I think it's just that because retail doesn't require communication or grouping, it simply never happens. The traditional monolithic 'server' structure helps too, as even if I don't speak to every person I see, I recognize a lot of them from either zone chat or previous questing hubs.
I also agree with the sentiment that the zones are more organic. Nazjatar in particular is beautifully hand-crafted, but it feels crafted when adventuring in it. It is clearly a set of defined paths where you literally can't stray from it most of the time unless you already have flying. Conversely, the questing zones in Classic are open areas where you can freely explore. They're even set up so you can get fairly deep into zones safely even if you're not the proper level, as higher level enemies usually stay away from the roads. Instead of being funneled everywhere, you can explore and will commonly get rewarded for doing so by finding a new quest, or a rare monster, or whatnot.
One last (and fairly big) thing is a sense of progression. In addition to actually getting stronger when I level up (compared to retail where you actively get weaker when you hit your next level), there are talent points to spend every level, and new skills to learn. Gear is much harder to come by, so leveling professions along with your character is very rewarding (my wand was a big QoL increase, and it came from my enchanting). I feel like I'm getting stronger because I am. There's none of the treadmill feeling associated with azerite either.
Just because of all the server issues me and most of my old friends all ended up on different servers. Oh well. I only occassionally talk to most of them. So its like me my wife and my best friend who are on the same server, so we’ll just have to meet new people, which is kinda what classic is about. The people who are powergaming it with raid groups they formed 2 years ago and isolating themselves from everyone else are kinda just ruining their own experience.
I mean, I have that level of interaction with people in m+ keys all the time. If you never group with people you don't already know you don't have much chance to interact with them
Sure, in keys. At the very endgame, and only in the harder levels of keys. In easier ones people just sign up, start the key, and go. In classic so far I've found reasons to group up for almost every bit of content I've done, and I'm in the early 20s.
if you don't say hello and thanks for the group in any given instance run that's on you man
that has nothing to do with needing a goup to kill fuckin' hogger
Yeah, I have always made a point of doing the basic "hello" and thanks in even normal mode dungeons, and taking the time to thank people who help me out in the world. I do understand that having been trained by the LFD and LFR in some really antisocial behaviours, how it would feel weird to do this in Retail. I guess, that's one of the big positives of the greater expectation of community interaction in Classic WoW compared to modern WoW.
I remember reading about people who would join LFR/Pick up Raids and only do certain bosses before dropping and basically screwing over everyone else who was still in the raid and trying to complete it. The prevelance of this type of behaviour in LFR and LFD and the lack of any consequences for that type of behaviour had made it normalized. Turn the clock back to Classic and you are a lot less likely to want to do things with people who leave 4-9-39 people hanging, especially if you are in a key role and dropping out has a decent chance of making the entire group fall apart.
I mean, people call Mechagon and Nazj a slog grind and I just have to be like, really.
I haven't gotten flying yet but that's because I'm terminally lazy and log on like once a week. People were unlocking that stuff in less than two weeks for under two hours of questing a day.
I've got a cobalt netherwing drake I earned in BC that took weeks of constant grinding to unlock, desperately clammoring to find rare drops for turnins for extra rep per day. THAT was a slog.
I mean, people call Mechagon and Nazj a slog grind and I just have to be like, really.
I haven't gotten flying yet but that's because I'm terminally lazy and log on like once a week. People were unlocking that stuff in less than two weeks for under two hours of questing a day.
I've got a cobalt netherwing drake I earned in BC that took weeks of constant grinding to unlock, desperately clammoring to find rare drops for turnins for extra rep per day. THAT was a slog.
Imagine having to reunlock the cobalt drake every expansion via some obnoxious achievement you only get from doing the same 4 out of 5 different daily quests every day. People dont mind farming rep. Its just that there are no rewards for doing it that people really want. It is just farming the rep to get back to where we were last expansion. The quests in the new zone arent interesting or fun. Most people just try to do the “kill named mob x” and bejeweled quests because they are quick. If i had to do any of the % based ones like the murlocs i would literally group up 50 of then and aoe them down in one pull with no danger. It is just busywork with no feeling of reward for anything. They are a slog because they are just another pointless grind. I was doing the naz on horde and mechagon on alliance in case they become allied races but ultimately decided i dont give a shit about that either. I dont want to roll tokens until i hit perfect stats + socket. It is all just really poorly designed content. Once again the art team is wasted on the dev team they work with.
I mean, I have that level of interaction with people in m+ keys all the time. If you never group with people you don't already know you don't have much chance to interact with them
Sure, in keys. At the very endgame, and only in the harder levels of keys. In easier ones people just sign up, start the key, and go. In classic so far I've found reasons to group up for almost every bit of content I've done, and I'm in the early 20s.
if you don't say hello and thanks for the group in any given instance run that's on you man
that has nothing to do with needing a goup to kill fuckin' hogger
There is a huge difference in the community experience between classic and retail.
I can't muster up much sympathy for arena dying since I hate WoW PvP in general and arena in particular from the bottom of my heart
I did the arena back in TBC and felt it was dumb
I pvped up until cata where I was defending the temple? in Tol barad and thought why am I doing this? this is not as fun as it once was? {early cata made me really question what and why I played the game I almost quit but the guild explosion and how a certain guild became a blob on windrunner on the horde. Someone talked to me about sticking around as it may be bad now but it may pick up?.
I mean, I have that level of interaction with people in m+ keys all the time. If you never group with people you don't already know you don't have much chance to interact with them
Sure, in keys. At the very endgame, and only in the harder levels of keys. In easier ones people just sign up, start the key, and go. In classic so far I've found reasons to group up for almost every bit of content I've done, and I'm in the early 20s.
if you don't say hello and thanks for the group in any given instance run that's on you man
that has nothing to do with needing a goup to kill fuckin' hogger
He isnt talking about politeness - saying "hi" then 25 min later saying "thx" even though half the party have left already. He is talking about communication that involves whole sentences and a bit of back and forth.
+3
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
I mean, I have that level of interaction with people in m+ keys all the time. If you never group with people you don't already know you don't have much chance to interact with them
Sure, in keys. At the very endgame, and only in the harder levels of keys. In easier ones people just sign up, start the key, and go. In classic so far I've found reasons to group up for almost every bit of content I've done, and I'm in the early 20s.
if you don't say hello and thanks for the group in any given instance run that's on you man
that has nothing to do with needing a goup to kill fuckin' hogger
He isnt talking about politeness - saying "hi" then 25 min later saying "thx" even though half the party have left already. He is talking about communication that involves whole sentences and a bit of back and forth.
Whole sentences such as "gg" and "ty < 3".
reVerse on
+1
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
He isnt talking about politeness - saying "hi" then 25 min later saying "thx" even though half the party have left already. He is talking about communication that involves whole sentences and a bit of back and forth.
Whole sentences such as "gg" and "ty < 3".
yeah sorry I didn't post a massive screenshot of our entire interaction, i figured the fact that five strangers grouped up for a random quest at level 20-something was enough to be noteworthy by itself
was constant chatter on the best way to approach the groups of elites
Dhalphir on
+2
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
I mean you can spin each side however you want, but you are in denial if you think the level of interaction is comparable between Retail and Classic.
The whole thing still reads like a self-fulfilling prophecy, to me.
People can say "you can socialize in retail all you want" but the fact remains that we're all the same human beings so the fact that we all happily socialise in Classic and avoid it in retail is clearly down to differences in the games, even if it's still our own behaviour at the end of the day. Classic goes out of its way to incentivize being social, grouping up, and working together. Retail doesn't require it, so the default is to not bother.
The whole thing still reads like a self-fulfilling prophecy, to me.
People can say "you can socialize in retail all you want" but the fact remains that we're all the same human beings so the fact that we all happily socialise in Classic and avoid it in retail is clearly down to differences in the games, even if it's still our own behaviour at the end of the day. Classic goes out of its way to incentivize being social, grouping up, and working together. Retail doesn't require it, so the default is to not bother.
Alternatively, Classic is an 'event' right now, a great big nostalgic party, and people are chattier under those circumstances.
People aren't taking things too seriously or zoned out watching Netflix on another monitor as they do their fifteenth straight leveling dungeon.
+1
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
That's a nonsense argument.
People group up and socialise in Classic because there are tangible benefits and rewards for doing so. There are no benefits or rewards to grouping up or socialising in most retail WoW content, which is why they don't do it.
+5
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited September 2019
It's a well documented principle of game design that players will frequently go against their own interests and own enjoyment of the game if the game's rules or context encourage them to do so. Classic encourages socializing to happen organically as part of the game's requirements - optimal play requires you to be social. Retail does not. I don't know why this is such a controversial position to take. The fact that I don't go out of my way to socialize in retail does not discredit my statements that I enjoy the socializing in Classic.
How does optimal play require you to be social, specifically
because in classic, killing mobs is dangerous and slow enough that having even one other person with you with extra buffs, extra damage, and some extra healing or utility can mean that two people can chew through mobs at a speed greater than the sum of their individual contributions.
for example, a warrior and a paladin questing together will kill mobs far more than 2x as fast as either of them alone, because they both buff each other with battle shout and blessings, the paladin can heal the warrior and the warrior keeps threat off the paladin.
it's always the right choice to group up for any content in classic, there is no scenario where you're better off alone
this is not the case in retail, because kill speeds are so low that there is massive diminishing returns, and two people more or less kill mobs about as fast as one + one, which means usually there's no real difference between grouping up and just killing separately in the same area
I mean technically didn't the first level 60 get there by solo grinding a bunch of shit? He certainly wasn't getting in a group to kill an elite for some leveling quest.
Posts
1) They need to create something permanent. Something that stays with you, even after the next expansion is over. Player housing would be one option. Another option would be some sort of relic that is not stats driven (that way it doesn't become obsolete). A relic that gives permanent character progression beyond just 1 expansion. Or any other number of ideas that have been thrown around. Basically, after abandoning our Halfhill Farm, our Garrisons, our Legion Spaceship, our Legion Artifact Weapon, our Legion Order Hall, and soon our BfA amulet and azerite gear, people are fed up with this feature abandonment. The devs need to implement something new in the expansion that will be around for the long haul.
2) Re-center and re-focus the story. Blizzard has fallen into the trap of having to one-up themselves with threat level, villain power, and all that with every expansion. Villains can only get so ominous before they all start bleeding together. The Old Gods are cool when they have shown up here and there. But there's such a thin line between Old God and Void that I really couldn't tell you the difference, because it seems like most of the Old Gods use the power of the void. They feel like they are one and the same. And anyway, escalation is not the answer. There are stories that could be told that have emotional weight, plot weight, social weight, or other ideas without just escalating to "this guy has more tentacles than the last guy." Using Final Fantasy XIV's Shadowbringers expansion as an example of this, the plot in that game is an extremely personal story. It focuses on just a few people, and honestly, the player character is the centerpiece of all of it. Sure, there's a threat, and yeah, the threat is actually a significant one. But they tell the story in such a way that this giant looming threat is just background material for a much more intimate and personal story that is unfolding in the foreground, while the big ominous stuff is just kinda in the background. It's a much more subtle story. They aren't bashing you over the head with it, like Blizzard is doing to us with Sylvanas and all that.
3) They need to re-evaluate their core gameplay foundations. Part of why WoW Classic is booming is because that game feels way more organic. At least it did back in 2004 when everything wasn't datamined and all that. WoW Classic is an adventure. You go from zone to zone, and yes, things do take a long time. But while you are there and doing those things, it feels organic. It does not feel like this carefully and mathematically constructed process designed to take such and such amount of time. Modern Retail WoW is a time trap. Literally every game system is so carefully and meticulously designed down to the fraction for how long it will take. Nothing feels organic anymore. It feels like you're getting on to do a list of pre-defined chores that are each mathematically designed to take so much time. Modern WoW just feels too mechanical. It's just a laundry list. There's no adventure anymore. And if Blizzard wants to see Retail WoW continue forward, they're gonna need to find a way to restore some of that organic feeling and make the game feel more like an adventure again, and not just a list of 17 things you have to do every day when you log on.
You mean “go grind 2 shitty factions for flying” wasnt a monumental content release showing off 15 years of dev trial and error? Im shocked.
Also that pvp lfg screenshot is hilarious. Thats how bad bfa pvp is. Personally im sick of the current gear treadmill depending so much on weekly chests/titanforging for real upgrades. Theres a point where id rather do vanilla raids than be slapped across the face with the same bracers 4 weeks in a row from the chest.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
more words than i've said to strangers in wow in the last four years combined.
modern wow containing a complete lack of necessity on anyone's part to either initiate or reciprocate any form of conversation
So, nothing's stopping you, you've just decided that you're not going to bother and blame the game for it.
the reciprocate is a key part of that
nobody needs to say anything, so if you do, nobody says anything back. the only time you get any form of communication is in difficult content, of which there is none until the very endgame.
Can't see how that tone is necessary. He's not wrong. And even if he is, be nice.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It's pretty clear that a lot of people are not being particularly well-served by the contemporary game for whatever reason, and I do tend to agree that BfA has gone a bit far with the amount of stuff one character needs to do to stay 'up to date,' so to speak.
However, there was also a time not really that long ago when the complaint du jour about the game was that there was nothing to do other than log in and raid; people in classic are enjoying the leveling race right now and that's great, but I think most are gonna find the endgame pretty threadbare: it's basically just raids, and farming materials for consumables for raids.
I dunno what the happy medium is; I think I liked legion's setup better than BfA's in this regard, but even legion was pretty aggressive compared to prior expansions (ex: mists.) Maybe the classic experience will convince them to dial this sort of think back a bit, if it attracts large numbers on a sustained basis.
I don't think we need more 'character permanence' or whatever from expansion to expansion necessarily, I just think they need to not write so much dumb bullshit. Unfortunately it's not clear they're capable of that
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Sure, in keys. At the very endgame, and only in the harder levels of keys. In easier ones people just sign up, start the key, and go. In classic so far I've found reasons to group up for almost every bit of content I've done, and I'm in the early 20s.
A part of that is that I'm finding myself regularly challenged by standard mobs. I have to be careful with every pull I make, how I use my resources, and I need to utilize most of my toolkit. That sounded to me like it would make gameplay a slog, but really it just makes it interesting. I also have a much bigger solo dps toolkit in classic, even at level 15, than I do in retail wow (especially as a healer main). My level 15 human priest has smite, mind blast, shadow word pain, and wand for damage (and holy fire and mind flay coming soon), plus I need survivabiltiy so I need to mix in power word shield and renew at a minimum. I have choices about how I handle pulls. If I need to do more DPS I can swap in more smite and less wanding at the cost of more mana usage. Individual spells getting resisted can switch up how I handle the rest of the fight due to resource concerns. Things like potions are meaningful options, etc. Compare that to my Mistweaver who has... 3 dps spells that all fulfill the same basic utility: 'hit this button unless this other button is available', is never in danger of running out of resources and is basically unkillable in any kind of world pve environment (even stuff like najatar and mechagon). The only time my mistweaver ever feels threatened is when doing things like tanking the group rares in those zones. I literally have problems falling asleep while playing retail because of how boring it is, and I don't have that problem in Classic.
One thing that I think is worth noting: Classic isn't 'hard'. It's way easier than actual hardmode content in retail, it's just that it requires a level of engagement that retail does not. As Dalphir has stated, it also requires communication. I can mirror his experience of speaking to more people in 15 levels of classic than all of BFA, be that random strangers questing together with me, or helping people asking questions in zone chat. It's all been quite positive too, even when things weren't going so well. I don't think this is something 'special' about Classic, I think it's just that because retail doesn't require communication or grouping, it simply never happens. The traditional monolithic 'server' structure helps too, as even if I don't speak to every person I see, I recognize a lot of them from either zone chat or previous questing hubs.
I also agree with the sentiment that the zones are more organic. Nazjatar in particular is beautifully hand-crafted, but it feels crafted when adventuring in it. It is clearly a set of defined paths where you literally can't stray from it most of the time unless you already have flying. Conversely, the questing zones in Classic are open areas where you can freely explore. They're even set up so you can get fairly deep into zones safely even if you're not the proper level, as higher level enemies usually stay away from the roads. Instead of being funneled everywhere, you can explore and will commonly get rewarded for doing so by finding a new quest, or a rare monster, or whatnot.
One last (and fairly big) thing is a sense of progression. In addition to actually getting stronger when I level up (compared to retail where you actively get weaker when you hit your next level), there are talent points to spend every level, and new skills to learn. Gear is much harder to come by, so leveling professions along with your character is very rewarding (my wand was a big QoL increase, and it came from my enchanting). I feel like I'm getting stronger because I am. There's none of the treadmill feeling associated with azerite either.
I can't get 9 of my friends to log in so we can raid.
So instead I play FF14. It kind of sucks because I like WOW, but I'm still enjoying myself so eh
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
if you don't say hello and thanks for the group in any given instance run that's on you man
that has nothing to do with needing a goup to kill fuckin' hogger
I remember reading about people who would join LFR/Pick up Raids and only do certain bosses before dropping and basically screwing over everyone else who was still in the raid and trying to complete it. The prevelance of this type of behaviour in LFR and LFD and the lack of any consequences for that type of behaviour had made it normalized. Turn the clock back to Classic and you are a lot less likely to want to do things with people who leave 4-9-39 people hanging, especially if you are in a key role and dropping out has a decent chance of making the entire group fall apart.
I haven't gotten flying yet but that's because I'm terminally lazy and log on like once a week. People were unlocking that stuff in less than two weeks for under two hours of questing a day.
I've got a cobalt netherwing drake I earned in BC that took weeks of constant grinding to unlock, desperately clammoring to find rare drops for turnins for extra rep per day. THAT was a slog.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Imagine having to reunlock the cobalt drake every expansion via some obnoxious achievement you only get from doing the same 4 out of 5 different daily quests every day. People dont mind farming rep. Its just that there are no rewards for doing it that people really want. It is just farming the rep to get back to where we were last expansion. The quests in the new zone arent interesting or fun. Most people just try to do the “kill named mob x” and bejeweled quests because they are quick. If i had to do any of the % based ones like the murlocs i would literally group up 50 of then and aoe them down in one pull with no danger. It is just busywork with no feeling of reward for anything. They are a slog because they are just another pointless grind. I was doing the naz on horde and mechagon on alliance in case they become allied races but ultimately decided i dont give a shit about that either. I dont want to roll tokens until i hit perfect stats + socket. It is all just really poorly designed content. Once again the art team is wasted on the dev team they work with.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
There is a huge difference in the community experience between classic and retail.
(I honestly love it. Don't judge me.)
I did the arena back in TBC and felt it was dumb
I pvped up until cata where I was defending the temple? in Tol barad and thought why am I doing this? this is not as fun as it once was? {early cata made me really question what and why I played the game I almost quit but the guild explosion and how a certain guild became a blob on windrunner on the horde. Someone talked to me about sticking around as it may be bad now but it may pick up?.
He isnt talking about politeness - saying "hi" then 25 min later saying "thx" even though half the party have left already. He is talking about communication that involves whole sentences and a bit of back and forth.
Whole sentences such as "gg" and "ty < 3".
yeah sorry I didn't post a massive screenshot of our entire interaction, i figured the fact that five strangers grouped up for a random quest at level 20-something was enough to be noteworthy by itself
was constant chatter on the best way to approach the groups of elites
"Hmm... did I leave the oven on?"
These dailies are awful (FUCK THE FATHOM RAY DAILY). The zone is awful. And there's no plot.
https://ptr.wowhead.com/dressing-room#sNzm0zJ89ckM0b9V87MUMg87cUMw87VUMK808UMI808UMD808UMt808UMG87k
People can say "you can socialize in retail all you want" but the fact remains that we're all the same human beings so the fact that we all happily socialise in Classic and avoid it in retail is clearly down to differences in the games, even if it's still our own behaviour at the end of the day. Classic goes out of its way to incentivize being social, grouping up, and working together. Retail doesn't require it, so the default is to not bother.
Alternatively, Classic is an 'event' right now, a great big nostalgic party, and people are chattier under those circumstances.
People aren't taking things too seriously or zoned out watching Netflix on another monitor as they do their fifteenth straight leveling dungeon.
People group up and socialise in Classic because there are tangible benefits and rewards for doing so. There are no benefits or rewards to grouping up or socialising in most retail WoW content, which is why they don't do it.
because in classic, killing mobs is dangerous and slow enough that having even one other person with you with extra buffs, extra damage, and some extra healing or utility can mean that two people can chew through mobs at a speed greater than the sum of their individual contributions.
for example, a warrior and a paladin questing together will kill mobs far more than 2x as fast as either of them alone, because they both buff each other with battle shout and blessings, the paladin can heal the warrior and the warrior keeps threat off the paladin.
it's always the right choice to group up for any content in classic, there is no scenario where you're better off alone
this is not the case in retail, because kill speeds are so low that there is massive diminishing returns, and two people more or less kill mobs about as fast as one + one, which means usually there's no real difference between grouping up and just killing separately in the same area
Since I have not leveled in BFA but followed some of the rumors people were spreading I feel the faction split is they ran out of ideas
Still I was highly tempted to level to get the plaguebearer pvp set but I saw what it took to get the look and decided not to