World quests are also the source of most artifact power, as all other content gives far less AP for any given amount of gameplay time than world quests do.
Yeah, it shows how far out of touch with the modern systems in WoW I have become. It's interesting to me that they've gone with the approach of pushing players to specific content to complete their weekly grinds rather than giving a larger swath of acitivities you can complete. Of course, some will have better gains for the AP/rep/etc, but normally there are other gains for doing the other activities that make it feel more like you are getting some progress towards the grind while completing your primary goal for doing the other activity. Or maybe it's like this and I'm just out of touch.
World quests are also the source of most artifact power, as all other content gives far less AP for any given amount of gameplay time than world quests do.
Yeah, it shows how far out of touch with the modern systems in WoW I have become. It's interesting to me that they've gone with the approach of pushing players to specific content to complete their weekly grinds rather than giving a larger swath of acitivities you can complete. Of course, some will have better gains for the AP/rep/etc, but normally there are other gains for doing the other activities that make it feel more like you are getting some progress towards the grind while completing your primary goal for doing the other activity. Or maybe it's like this and I'm just out of touch.
I mean when finishing a heroic dungeon (let's assume you absolutely plow through it, how long does it take?) or doing a wq where you have to kill one mob both give same amount of AP, which is more efficient?
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
A lot of people love the Classic talent system because it gives you a little something every time you level up, making it feel like you're actually making progress. The issue with that talent system is that there is always a perfect set up for any particular encounter, making you feel like you have less actual choice
We had the Legion artifact system tree which was similar to talent trees but got rid of this problem by making it so you eventually fill out the entire 'tree', making it so that the only decisions you're making are when you're getting particular skills or passives, so that when everyone is caught up, everyone has the same spells and passives
Blizzard could take the same idea and implement a sort of talent tree that you can put points into that make your character stronger, and you'd earn points to put into it by leveling up. By level 120, everyone would have the same 100% filled talents, but you'd still have the choice of what you want to focus on as you level up. They could implement this without touching the current talent system at all, just like they did with artifacts
That would mean that the focus of the game would need to change from strictly focusing on the endgame to putting more effort into making the leveling process something that is enjoyable to do for it's own sake. I personally think this is a good idea, but I'm not sure how well it would go down with the current WoW developer team.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
If they don't do something to improve the levelling process then WoW is going to entirely stop getting new players. It's already a massive turnoff. It's not even a coherent game until max level at this point.
World quests are also the source of most artifact power, as all other content gives far less AP for any given amount of gameplay time than world quests do.
Yeah, it shows how far out of touch with the modern systems in WoW I have become. It's interesting to me that they've gone with the approach of pushing players to specific content to complete their weekly grinds rather than giving a larger swath of acitivities you can complete. Of course, some will have better gains for the AP/rep/etc, but normally there are other gains for doing the other activities that make it feel more like you are getting some progress towards the grind while completing your primary goal for doing the other activity. Or maybe it's like this and I'm just out of touch.
I mean when finishing a heroic dungeon (let's assume you absolutely plow through it, how long does it take?) or doing a wq where you have to kill one mob both give same amount of AP, which is more efficient?
The problem this speaks to is that there is essentially only one main criteria that matters to many players once they hit the level cap and that secondary objectives that you can work towards are in limited demand. If you had a setup where you had
And there were reasons you wanted to do all of these different things, though only AP gave you something you really want for endgame content while Valor was more for gearing alts and Justice was for Quality of Life/Transmog unlocks, then you could have a range of different content that rewarded varying amounts of the different currencies. Sure, you'd probably have some setup that gave you optimal AP gains that those who were interested could grind it out as soon as possible, but if most players were also interested in earning Valor and Justice for varying reasons then you'd probably find the experience of earning them much less of a grind.
The big change you'd want to make though, is changing AP to something that is an endless grind to something closer to a weekly currency cap. Don't think of it as the "you must be this tall to ride" mechanic, instead think of it as the "the tier becomes easier as it goes on longer" mechanic. It already is in many ways, but it has the predatory mobile phone maximization of player engagement/playtime setup rather than a more player friendly "keep up to stay on curve" setup.
Maybe they just have a weekly cap on how much AP can go into the necklace and each week that cap is raised by a linear amount. This lets people level up alts and do grind sessions if they want to catch that alt up. Maybe the Valor points in my example above could be used to buy BoA items that can be consumed to award AP to alt characters.
The thing is, I haven't seen any sign that Blizzard wants to move towards the more player friendly mechanics and instead seems to be putting more psychologically manipulative mechanics into their games to maximize playtime as opposed to designing fun systems.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
The thing is, I haven't seen any sign that Blizzard wants to move towards the more player friendly mechanics and instead seems to be putting more psychologically manipulative mechanics into their games to maximize playtime as opposed to designing fun systems.
They're not trying to maximise playtime, they're trying to maximise consecutive daily logins.
I would much rather a longer grind that can be done at my own pace on my own schedule than a shorter grind that can only be worked towards 1 hour per day.
Sometimes I just don't feel like playing WoW on a given day if I don't have a raid to log in for, and sometimes I feel like sitting down in the morning after waking up and playing WoW until it's time to go back to sleep, but the way modern WoW is designed if you miss a day of wizard chores you have no way to catch back up on the progress of them. If you miss a day of azerite power world quests, those are gone and you missed them because they tend to last 24 hours before expiring. I would prefer that world quests were more numerous but had a weekly expiry, so if you missed a day or two, you could fit in 2x or 3x the playtime on the third day to catch up.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
The thing is, I haven't seen any sign that Blizzard wants to move towards the more player friendly mechanics and instead seems to be putting more psychologically manipulative mechanics into their games to maximize playtime as opposed to designing fun systems.
They're not trying to maximise playtime, they're trying to maximise consecutive daily logins.
I would much rather a longer grind that can be done at my own pace on my own schedule than a shorter grind that can only be worked towards 1 hour per day.
Sometimes I just don't feel like playing WoW on a given day if I don't have a raid to log in for, and sometimes I feel like sitting down in the morning after waking up and playing WoW until it's time to go back to sleep, but the way modern WoW is designed if you miss a day of wizard chores you have no way to catch back up on the progress of them. If you miss a day of azerite power world quests, those are gone and you missed them because they tend to last 24 hours before expiring. I would prefer that world quests were more numerous but had a weekly expiry, so if you missed a day or two, you could fit in 2x or 3x the playtime on the third day to catch up.
I like how Destiny 2 does it. There are some dailies but for the most part they're pretty minor, the big stuff is all either weekly or cycles every 4 days.
The thing is, I haven't seen any sign that Blizzard wants to move towards the more player friendly mechanics and instead seems to be putting more psychologically manipulative mechanics into their games to maximize playtime as opposed to designing fun systems.
I would much rather a longer grind that can be done at my own pace on my own schedule than a shorter grind that can only be worked towards 1 hour per day.
I prefer the latter, though. I'm not sure how Blizzard can please both camps, unless they basically made every single bar/currency in the game have its own "rested" system. And that would probably have issues too.
forty on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
The thing is, I haven't seen any sign that Blizzard wants to move towards the more player friendly mechanics and instead seems to be putting more psychologically manipulative mechanics into their games to maximize playtime as opposed to designing fun systems.
They're not trying to maximise playtime, they're trying to maximise consecutive daily logins.
I would much rather a longer grind that can be done at my own pace on my own schedule than a shorter grind that can only be worked towards 1 hour per day.
Sometimes I just don't feel like playing WoW on a given day if I don't have a raid to log in for, and sometimes I feel like sitting down in the morning after waking up and playing WoW until it's time to go back to sleep, but the way modern WoW is designed if you miss a day of wizard chores you have no way to catch back up on the progress of them. If you miss a day of azerite power world quests, those are gone and you missed them because they tend to last 24 hours before expiring. I would prefer that world quests were more numerous but had a weekly expiry, so if you missed a day or two, you could fit in 2x or 3x the playtime on the third day to catch up.
Really, WOTLK was the perfect spot for the game when it came to dailies and the like.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
The thing is, I haven't seen any sign that Blizzard wants to move towards the more player friendly mechanics and instead seems to be putting more psychologically manipulative mechanics into their games to maximize playtime as opposed to designing fun systems.
I would much rather a longer grind that can be done at my own pace on my own schedule than a shorter grind that can only be worked towards 1 hour per day.
I prefer the latter, though. I'm not sure how Blizzard can please both camps, unless they basically made every single bar/currency in the game have its own "rested" sustem. And that would probably have issues too.
Conquest points are the specific system you want. There's a weekly cap to earn the reward, but if you miss the weekly cap you can just do double the next week to catch up to those who didn't miss it.
The thing is, I haven't seen any sign that Blizzard wants to move towards the more player friendly mechanics and instead seems to be putting more psychologically manipulative mechanics into their games to maximize playtime as opposed to designing fun systems.
I would much rather a longer grind that can be done at my own pace on my own schedule than a shorter grind that can only be worked towards 1 hour per day.
I prefer the latter, though. I'm not sure how Blizzard can please both camps, unless they basically made every single bar/currency in the game have its own "rested" sustem. And that would probably have issues too.
Conquest points are the specific system you want. There's a weekly cap to earn the reward, but if you miss the weekly cap you can just do double the next week to catch up to those who didn't miss it.
Is that not just a straight linear time to reward grind, though?
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
World quests are also the source of most artifact power, as all other content gives far less AP for any given amount of gameplay time than world quests do.
Yeah, it shows how far out of touch with the modern systems in WoW I have become. It's interesting to me that they've gone with the approach of pushing players to specific content to complete their weekly grinds rather than giving a larger swath of acitivities you can complete. Of course, some will have better gains for the AP/rep/etc, but normally there are other gains for doing the other activities that make it feel more like you are getting some progress towards the grind while completing your primary goal for doing the other activity. Or maybe it's like this and I'm just out of touch.
It is like this, but the amount rewarded is just out of whack for most activities compared to world quests.
A M+ dungeon of a reasonable difficulty takes anywhere from 25-35 minutes and rewards 350-500 azerite power.
A single world quest might require you to kill a single named mob (I hesitate to call them "rare mobs" these days) which might take ten seconds and reward anywhere from 200 to 400 AP.
It's not so much that missing a day's world quests locks you out of rewards, it's that missing such a quick source of it feels so terrible because all the other options are four or five times slower in terms of reward per minute of gameplay.
I preferred the huge amount of dailies that were in MoP, but a lot of people didn't like it. And back then enough people didn't like that amount, and they complained, so Blizzard actually reduced the amount of dailies that were available in MoP, and then they dropped dailies almost altogether in Warlords. Because it seems like much of the WoW playerbase feels like if you can do it each day, you should do it each day. Self control, impulse control, and measured playing are not a strong suit of the WoW community in a very general sense. The community lacks the ability to regulate and just play the game in bite sized chunks.
That's what got us here in the first place. The community consumed all of the available content too quickly in the past, and then complained that there was nothing to do. And thus the repeatable, highly formulaic and piece-mealed quests were born and iterated on each expansion until we got to where we are today.
But back in MoP, there was just so much to do. It was a wealth of content, and I loved it. I also didn't force myself to do 100% of all of the dailies every day. I mainly just focused on one faction at a time and did their stuff for the day and then I was done. But given the fact that the community at large complained loud enough that Blizzard changed it, I'd say I was in the minority for how I handled that vast amount of daily content.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
There is far more in the way of daily tasks now than MoP ever had and it's not even close.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
There is far more in the way of daily tasks now than MoP ever had and it's not even close.
Yes, but it's different. Collecting a log full of blue quests and then setting about doing them is much different than flying around, filling bars and doing emissaries. To me at least. I'm not speaking for everyone.
But I'd much rather go to a hub, gather some quests, and then go do them. In that regard, Nazjatar is pretty decent. Naz is a fiery pile of poo for entirely different reasons. The quest structure of the zone is not the problem.
But anyway, back on track, being able to hit a zone and gather 10 daily quests and then do them felt better to me than having to do world quests. There's something about WQ's that just feels a bit too robotic and artificial.
The thing is, I haven't seen any sign that Blizzard wants to move towards the more player friendly mechanics and instead seems to be putting more psychologically manipulative mechanics into their games to maximize playtime as opposed to designing fun systems.
They're not trying to maximise playtime, they're trying to maximise consecutive daily logins.
I would much rather a longer grind that can be done at my own pace on my own schedule than a shorter grind that can only be worked towards 1 hour per day.
Sometimes I just don't feel like playing WoW on a given day if I don't have a raid to log in for, and sometimes I feel like sitting down in the morning after waking up and playing WoW until it's time to go back to sleep, but the way modern WoW is designed if you miss a day of wizard chores you have no way to catch back up on the progress of them. If you miss a day of azerite power world quests, those are gone and you missed them because they tend to last 24 hours before expiring. I would prefer that world quests were more numerous but had a weekly expiry, so if you missed a day or two, you could fit in 2x or 3x the playtime on the third day to catch up.
Really, WOTLK was the perfect spot for the game when it came to dailies and the like.
It really was, and some days I want to grind out 8 hours worth of it (which is why I like vanilla more here), but the wrath system is good enough tbh.
I wanted to unlock the void elves but it was looking like at least a month or more of grinding daily/weekly/world quests. If everything went my way I could unlock them in a little over a month. Realistically it's probably more like 3 because I wouldn't be able to sign on every day, nor would I want to.
This was a symptom of the "why does everyone sign in on a single day and grind out their dungeons?" in wrath and their solution in cata was to draw it out over the whole week to get your rewards. Then that transformed into world quests. I'm not really sure why that bothered them so much, who cares if I do it in a day or two.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
daily engagement means having world of warcraft front of mind daily
I'm paying $15 a month, it's already front of mind daily as an expense I'm paying for, I don't need them to try and play psychological mind games with me too.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I'm paying $15 a month, it's already front of mind daily as an expense I'm paying for, I don't need them to try and play psychological mind games with me too.
They're going to anyway, to try and wring even more money out of you!
Random thought inspired by Classic about something that could be implemented next expansion: instead of or alongside Warmode, introduce some sort of hard mode leveling. Mobs would be significantly stronger, with more health, damage and abilities. Classic mob tagging rules would possibly be in place. Regeneration of health and mana would be reduced. Stats would be normalized while this option was on, so you couldn’t just be like “I have heirlooms/endgame gear, even your hard mode is no match for me.” As with War Mode, you’d get some amount of bonus XP, to partially balance out the risk/reward, and maybe additional gold or artifact power equivalent as well.
The goal would be to provide an option within the game that incentives grouping the way that Classic does, without specifically forcing it on anyone. Ideally, it’d be balanced around some aim like a group of three or so reaching max level faster than one person alone.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
If I have barely touched pet battles (level 6 randoms on my team) but really really hate Nazjatar, you think it's sensible to level a team to grab the 3k rep for beating legendary pets?
I have no idea how much work is involved in getting up to snuff on pet battles.
If I have barely touched pet battles (level 6 randoms on my team) but really really hate Nazjatar, you think it's sensible to level a team to grab the 3k rep for beating legendary pets?
I have no idea how much work is involved in getting up to snuff on pet battles.
If I have barely touched pet battles (level 6 randoms on my team) but really really hate Nazjatar, you think it's sensible to level a team to grab the 3k rep for beating legendary pets?
I have no idea how much work is involved in getting up to snuff on pet battles.
Pet battles are fun! Give them a chance! I just finished catching every pet in the Eastern Kingdoms yesterday. I also made sure to get to my Qiraji Guardling while it’s still summer. This week I’ll probably also knock out the Mechagon Island collection and maybe possibly the Pandaria Safari.
Also, L120 #11, a Shaman. Now the only class left to get to 120 is a Druid, and I have one up to 105. I may just push it through on the weekend instead of the Safari achievements.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
If I have barely touched pet battles (level 6 randoms on my team) but really really hate Nazjatar, you think it's sensible to level a team to grab the 3k rep for beating legendary pets?
I have no idea how much work is involved in getting up to snuff on pet battles.
You can beat half of the pets on both Mechagon and Nazjatar with just an Unborn Valkyr and Ikky.
If you quested through Warlords of Draenor then you probably already have an Ikky, and an Unborn Valkyr takes maybe ten minutes flying around Northrend checking spawn locations to pick it up.
With a level 3 Garrison you can get a free 25 level battle training stone once per character, so if you have a few characters with level 3 garrisons (either from playing WoD or from 100 boosts which gave them a free one) then you should have a few of those available to you. There's a quest at the pet menagerie NPC which sends you to your garrison mine which is maybe five seconds away and then back to get a free level 25 pet stone.
If you can get 2 of those then you can boost both an Ikky and the Valkyr and be done with it. After that you start to need a few more than that for the rest - Twilight Clutch-Sister is used in several of the fights, it's from Bastion of Twilight (Cata raid) drops from Veliona but it's not 100%.
There's also a really overpowered combo for Mechagon, which is Boneshard (from Lord Marrowgar in ICC) + Ikky + an elemental pet (I use the Molten Corgi). Boneshard + Ikky together are enough for almost all the Mechagon pets, plus the Corgi as backup (or any other elemental pet). Boneshard has this weird ability called Blistering Cold which stacks up a DOT over time that will tick 3-4 times per round, and Ikky can apply two different damage taken debuffs and after you set the combo up in the first four rounds of combat, for every round after that the enemy pet is taking 1-1.5k damage which will kill any pet in 2 or 3 more rounds.
It's also a very easy combo to set up, since both Boneshard and Ikky only have to use two abilities each to set it up. Boneshard being an undead pet gets a free invulnerable round when they die, so you can always get those two off easily, plus Ikky being a flying pet gets a bonus to speed while above 50% HP so you can nearly always get both of those two abilities off, and once the combo is up you're 2-3 rounds from winning the match. So far I've found only a handful of boss pets that can actually survive that combo, and none of the Mechagon ones can.
A bit of work and hunting down Polished Pet Charms on alts now I have 25 rare Lil Bling, Kneebiter, Unborn Val'kyr, and Ikky.
Not optimal for some of these fights but I'm managing to luck my way through the ones that I'm not kitted right for.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Yep lil bling and kneebiter are two extremely good pets too, kneebiter has basically the same moveset as Ikky (Black Claw -> Flock is functionally the same as Black Claw -> Hunting Party) and there are some fights where for whatever reason Ikky can't get his combo off while kneebiter can.
I'm paying $15 a month, it's already front of mind daily as an expense I'm paying for, I don't need them to try and play psychological mind games with me too.
there's a few naz/mechagon pet battles that seem to have been designed deliberately to frustrate the usual valkyr/stampede shenanigan, but most of them fall to it pretty reliably
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Welp, my friends and guildies talked me into coming back to the Horde. I was wanting to see Eternal Palace so I did it. I was set and happy being Alliance and playing Lightforged, but they were short on healers and in need of help, and so I went back. There's some good and bad with the decision, but I'm at peace with it.
Some thoughts:
Went into Eternal Palace for the first time last night. They started me on Heroic, which I guess is a compliment to me that they didn't want to run me through Normal to gear up and learn the fights. I went in pretty much blind, but it was okay. I'm good at not standing in stuff. My overall thoughts on Eternal palace after clearing 6/8 in one run last night is that the fights have a few new interesting mechanics, i.e. Ashvane. But overall, it was just new takes on old mechanics. Nothing too new from what I saw. We'll finish out the final two bosses on Monday.
There is, however, some unexpected down-side to my faction transfer that caught me by surprise. There was a whole lot of stuff from BfA that did not carry over that I assumed it would.
For example:
-- I was 100% complete with the Kul Tiras basic campaign. I had completed the scouting table and the Kul Tiras meta achievement for doing all the chapters in all the zones. I assumed that since I had all those achievements on that character, that they would just transfer that progress to Horde, but that was not the case. I have a fresh scouting table and a full suite of quests ahead of me in Zandalar.
-- In addition to the above point with my BfA basic campaign having reset, my War Campaign also reset. Again, I assumed (obviously an incorrect assumption) that since I had completed 100% of the war campaign and had all available meta achievements associated with the original war campaign, Tides of Vengeance, and the 8.2 Baine stuff, that all that would transfer. It did not.
-- The intro to Zuldazar quest chain and all associated unlocks had to be redone. I had to do the tour of the city and gain access to the portals, bank, and all that stuff again. Additionally, I am missing any flight paths and continental outposts that are tied to story progression. So like for example, when I take the boat from Zuldazar to Tiragarde, that town where I dock has no NPCs in it at all right now. Nothing. They allow me to use the boat to get around, but once I'm there, there's nothing there. So I'm missing a bunch of flight paths and bases, which I assumed would have carried over. But it didn't.
-- Additionally, my "Welcome to Nazjatar" and "Welcome to Mechagon" progress did not carry over, so I had to go through the effort of re-unlocking those zones, setting up the base, and all of that.
-- Oh, and regarding Mechagon, I lost all my quest progress on the Spider Mount building meta achievement. I was about 60% through that, and all those quests got wiped clean and my list is all grey again.
My advice: do not faction change characters with a ton of BfA progress because you will literally lose all of that progress.
Hate to break it to you, but if you do any kind of grind, be it weeks of daily chores or an all-day affair, then you’ve fallen for a psychological mind game.
Hate to break it to you, but if you do any kind of grind, be it weeks of daily chores or an all-day affair, then you’ve fallen for a psychological mind game.
You're not wrong but also literally all of society is a mind game.
Hate to break it to you, but if you do any kind of grind, be it weeks of daily chores or an all-day affair, then you’ve fallen for a psychological mind game.
All video games are completely pointless wastes of time. You should only play them if you are having fun minute to minute. Sometimes progression itself is the point and people find the grinding fun/relaxing. But if that's not you then yeah don't play them.
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Yeah, it shows how far out of touch with the modern systems in WoW I have become. It's interesting to me that they've gone with the approach of pushing players to specific content to complete their weekly grinds rather than giving a larger swath of acitivities you can complete. Of course, some will have better gains for the AP/rep/etc, but normally there are other gains for doing the other activities that make it feel more like you are getting some progress towards the grind while completing your primary goal for doing the other activity. Or maybe it's like this and I'm just out of touch.
I mean when finishing a heroic dungeon (let's assume you absolutely plow through it, how long does it take?) or doing a wq where you have to kill one mob both give same amount of AP, which is more efficient?
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/cz58mg/why_not_implement_something_like_the_legion/
The problem this speaks to is that there is essentially only one main criteria that matters to many players once they hit the level cap and that secondary objectives that you can work towards are in limited demand. If you had a setup where you had
Currency 1 (AP)
Currency 2 (Valor Points)
Currency 3 (Justice Points)
And there were reasons you wanted to do all of these different things, though only AP gave you something you really want for endgame content while Valor was more for gearing alts and Justice was for Quality of Life/Transmog unlocks, then you could have a range of different content that rewarded varying amounts of the different currencies. Sure, you'd probably have some setup that gave you optimal AP gains that those who were interested could grind it out as soon as possible, but if most players were also interested in earning Valor and Justice for varying reasons then you'd probably find the experience of earning them much less of a grind.
The big change you'd want to make though, is changing AP to something that is an endless grind to something closer to a weekly currency cap. Don't think of it as the "you must be this tall to ride" mechanic, instead think of it as the "the tier becomes easier as it goes on longer" mechanic. It already is in many ways, but it has the predatory mobile phone maximization of player engagement/playtime setup rather than a more player friendly "keep up to stay on curve" setup.
Maybe they just have a weekly cap on how much AP can go into the necklace and each week that cap is raised by a linear amount. This lets people level up alts and do grind sessions if they want to catch that alt up. Maybe the Valor points in my example above could be used to buy BoA items that can be consumed to award AP to alt characters.
The thing is, I haven't seen any sign that Blizzard wants to move towards the more player friendly mechanics and instead seems to be putting more psychologically manipulative mechanics into their games to maximize playtime as opposed to designing fun systems.
They're not trying to maximise playtime, they're trying to maximise consecutive daily logins.
I would much rather a longer grind that can be done at my own pace on my own schedule than a shorter grind that can only be worked towards 1 hour per day.
Sometimes I just don't feel like playing WoW on a given day if I don't have a raid to log in for, and sometimes I feel like sitting down in the morning after waking up and playing WoW until it's time to go back to sleep, but the way modern WoW is designed if you miss a day of wizard chores you have no way to catch back up on the progress of them. If you miss a day of azerite power world quests, those are gone and you missed them because they tend to last 24 hours before expiring. I would prefer that world quests were more numerous but had a weekly expiry, so if you missed a day or two, you could fit in 2x or 3x the playtime on the third day to catch up.
I like how Destiny 2 does it. There are some dailies but for the most part they're pretty minor, the big stuff is all either weekly or cycles every 4 days.
Really, WOTLK was the perfect spot for the game when it came to dailies and the like.
Conquest points are the specific system you want. There's a weekly cap to earn the reward, but if you miss the weekly cap you can just do double the next week to catch up to those who didn't miss it.
It is like this, but the amount rewarded is just out of whack for most activities compared to world quests.
A M+ dungeon of a reasonable difficulty takes anywhere from 25-35 minutes and rewards 350-500 azerite power.
A single world quest might require you to kill a single named mob (I hesitate to call them "rare mobs" these days) which might take ten seconds and reward anywhere from 200 to 400 AP.
It's not so much that missing a day's world quests locks you out of rewards, it's that missing such a quick source of it feels so terrible because all the other options are four or five times slower in terms of reward per minute of gameplay.
That's what got us here in the first place. The community consumed all of the available content too quickly in the past, and then complained that there was nothing to do. And thus the repeatable, highly formulaic and piece-mealed quests were born and iterated on each expansion until we got to where we are today.
But back in MoP, there was just so much to do. It was a wealth of content, and I loved it. I also didn't force myself to do 100% of all of the dailies every day. I mainly just focused on one faction at a time and did their stuff for the day and then I was done. But given the fact that the community at large complained loud enough that Blizzard changed it, I'd say I was in the minority for how I handled that vast amount of daily content.
Yes, but it's different. Collecting a log full of blue quests and then setting about doing them is much different than flying around, filling bars and doing emissaries. To me at least. I'm not speaking for everyone.
But I'd much rather go to a hub, gather some quests, and then go do them. In that regard, Nazjatar is pretty decent. Naz is a fiery pile of poo for entirely different reasons. The quest structure of the zone is not the problem.
But anyway, back on track, being able to hit a zone and gather 10 daily quests and then do them felt better to me than having to do world quests. There's something about WQ's that just feels a bit too robotic and artificial.
It really was, and some days I want to grind out 8 hours worth of it (which is why I like vanilla more here), but the wrath system is good enough tbh.
I wanted to unlock the void elves but it was looking like at least a month or more of grinding daily/weekly/world quests. If everything went my way I could unlock them in a little over a month. Realistically it's probably more like 3 because I wouldn't be able to sign on every day, nor would I want to.
This was a symptom of the "why does everyone sign in on a single day and grind out their dungeons?" in wrath and their solution in cata was to draw it out over the whole week to get your rewards. Then that transformed into world quests. I'm not really sure why that bothered them so much, who cares if I do it in a day or two.
They're going to anyway, to try and wring even more money out of you!
Random thought inspired by Classic about something that could be implemented next expansion: instead of or alongside Warmode, introduce some sort of hard mode leveling. Mobs would be significantly stronger, with more health, damage and abilities. Classic mob tagging rules would possibly be in place. Regeneration of health and mana would be reduced. Stats would be normalized while this option was on, so you couldn’t just be like “I have heirlooms/endgame gear, even your hard mode is no match for me.” As with War Mode, you’d get some amount of bonus XP, to partially balance out the risk/reward, and maybe additional gold or artifact power equivalent as well.
The goal would be to provide an option within the game that incentives grouping the way that Classic does, without specifically forcing it on anyone. Ideally, it’d be balanced around some aim like a group of three or so reaching max level faster than one person alone.
I have no idea how much work is involved in getting up to snuff on pet battles.
https://www.wowhead.com/guide=1179/pet-battles-and-you-a-trainers-manual
Pet battles are fun! Give them a chance! I just finished catching every pet in the Eastern Kingdoms yesterday. I also made sure to get to my Qiraji Guardling while it’s still summer. This week I’ll probably also knock out the Mechagon Island collection and maybe possibly the Pandaria Safari.
Also, L120 #11, a Shaman. Now the only class left to get to 120 is a Druid, and I have one up to 105. I may just push it through on the weekend instead of the Safari achievements.
You can beat half of the pets on both Mechagon and Nazjatar with just an Unborn Valkyr and Ikky.
If you quested through Warlords of Draenor then you probably already have an Ikky, and an Unborn Valkyr takes maybe ten minutes flying around Northrend checking spawn locations to pick it up.
With a level 3 Garrison you can get a free 25 level battle training stone once per character, so if you have a few characters with level 3 garrisons (either from playing WoD or from 100 boosts which gave them a free one) then you should have a few of those available to you. There's a quest at the pet menagerie NPC which sends you to your garrison mine which is maybe five seconds away and then back to get a free level 25 pet stone.
If you can get 2 of those then you can boost both an Ikky and the Valkyr and be done with it. After that you start to need a few more than that for the rest - Twilight Clutch-Sister is used in several of the fights, it's from Bastion of Twilight (Cata raid) drops from Veliona but it's not 100%.
There's also a really overpowered combo for Mechagon, which is Boneshard (from Lord Marrowgar in ICC) + Ikky + an elemental pet (I use the Molten Corgi). Boneshard + Ikky together are enough for almost all the Mechagon pets, plus the Corgi as backup (or any other elemental pet). Boneshard has this weird ability called Blistering Cold which stacks up a DOT over time that will tick 3-4 times per round, and Ikky can apply two different damage taken debuffs and after you set the combo up in the first four rounds of combat, for every round after that the enemy pet is taking 1-1.5k damage which will kill any pet in 2 or 3 more rounds.
It's also a very easy combo to set up, since both Boneshard and Ikky only have to use two abilities each to set it up. Boneshard being an undead pet gets a free invulnerable round when they die, so you can always get those two off easily, plus Ikky being a flying pet gets a bonus to speed while above 50% HP so you can nearly always get both of those two abilities off, and once the combo is up you're 2-3 rounds from winning the match. So far I've found only a handful of boss pets that can actually survive that combo, and none of the Mechagon ones can.
Not optimal for some of these fights but I'm managing to luck my way through the ones that I'm not kitted right for.
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Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Some thoughts:
Went into Eternal Palace for the first time last night. They started me on Heroic, which I guess is a compliment to me that they didn't want to run me through Normal to gear up and learn the fights. I went in pretty much blind, but it was okay. I'm good at not standing in stuff. My overall thoughts on Eternal palace after clearing 6/8 in one run last night is that the fights have a few new interesting mechanics, i.e. Ashvane. But overall, it was just new takes on old mechanics. Nothing too new from what I saw. We'll finish out the final two bosses on Monday.
There is, however, some unexpected down-side to my faction transfer that caught me by surprise. There was a whole lot of stuff from BfA that did not carry over that I assumed it would.
For example:
-- I was 100% complete with the Kul Tiras basic campaign. I had completed the scouting table and the Kul Tiras meta achievement for doing all the chapters in all the zones. I assumed that since I had all those achievements on that character, that they would just transfer that progress to Horde, but that was not the case. I have a fresh scouting table and a full suite of quests ahead of me in Zandalar.
-- In addition to the above point with my BfA basic campaign having reset, my War Campaign also reset. Again, I assumed (obviously an incorrect assumption) that since I had completed 100% of the war campaign and had all available meta achievements associated with the original war campaign, Tides of Vengeance, and the 8.2 Baine stuff, that all that would transfer. It did not.
-- The intro to Zuldazar quest chain and all associated unlocks had to be redone. I had to do the tour of the city and gain access to the portals, bank, and all that stuff again. Additionally, I am missing any flight paths and continental outposts that are tied to story progression. So like for example, when I take the boat from Zuldazar to Tiragarde, that town where I dock has no NPCs in it at all right now. Nothing. They allow me to use the boat to get around, but once I'm there, there's nothing there. So I'm missing a bunch of flight paths and bases, which I assumed would have carried over. But it didn't.
-- Additionally, my "Welcome to Nazjatar" and "Welcome to Mechagon" progress did not carry over, so I had to go through the effort of re-unlocking those zones, setting up the base, and all of that.
-- Oh, and regarding Mechagon, I lost all my quest progress on the Spider Mount building meta achievement. I was about 60% through that, and all those quests got wiped clean and my list is all grey again.
My advice: do not faction change characters with a ton of BfA progress because you will literally lose all of that progress.
You're not wrong but also literally all of society is a mind game.
All video games are completely pointless wastes of time. You should only play them if you are having fun minute to minute. Sometimes progression itself is the point and people find the grinding fun/relaxing. But if that's not you then yeah don't play them.