And predict it on his blog.
I leveled a new warlock from 1 to 30 on a semi-random server. I guess I wanted to experience leveling in a new, plain environment so I didn’t install any addons. That guy has been leveling in BFA. It’s been pretty smooth and I’ve enjoyed it so far.
But then I started thinking… Why am I not leveling my established warlock? The differences in the two warlocks is that my established guy has better gear and lots of rep with all the different factions. Plus some crafting skills. So why not use him? So I decided to switch to my established guy and level him from 30 to 50 (and if I have any endurance after that, do the same for my other ‘main,’ an Orc Shaman).
Before starting, I installed a couple of add ons. One of them is Azeroth Auto Pilot and man that is one crazy add on. It literally leads you around by the nose directing you where to go to pick up and complete quests. I guess one of the positive things about not having played in years is that the last couple of expansions are all brand new to me… It’s got me going to Warlords of Draenor and I’m finding the Garrison stuff pretty fun so far (just started it).
But don’t ask me what the storyline is…with that add on you shoot thru the dialogs so fast you have no chance to read them.
No offense, the problem is not me, but your reading comprehension.
Loot is a big part of these games by design, not my design. Improving your gear as you level up is part of the basic game design of the game, not my design.
I don’t know how Shadowlands is specifically designed, but I’d be surprised if you can’t progress through the expansion before grinding for better gear.
This is also a rather bad take.
The raid gear absolutely has a purpose. For example to be able to survive Molten Core you had to grind some fire resist. The game works like that, you need to reach some goal, so that you unblock a new piece of content. Guilds going through encounters, moving ahead while gearing up, so with better chances to survive.
Gear is the gate to the content. The game sets a playing field, you gear up to reach that place. Once you’re done you move the focus on the next goal.
But it’s silly to complain about an expansion resetting progress. If you balance the game around the raiders then everyone else cannot play, if you balance it around the non-raiders, then it’s trivial for the raiders.
Thinking that your loot was a “waste of time” because it’s replaced by an expansion is a bad take. The loot you got had a purpose for that goal you chased. You played those raids? Spend those hours to enjoy the game? Then that loot served its purpose to let you access some new piece of content that would be otherwise unreachable.
So you need multiple goals. Raiding gear for the raiders. Crafting goals for the crafters. Pokemon goals for the pet collectors. PvP goals for both arena and PvP players.
WoW does a decent job with all of these. They all require some grinding. Which is to say simply spending time in the game.
In my case it became a question: How many hours do I want to spend on each character to achieve the post-level cap goals only to see those achievements wiped out by the new expansion arriving in X months?
At some point the answer was not all that many hours. So I hit cap, fooled around a bit, and unsubscribed. I was about done with WoW but Blizz giving away the most recent expansion for just resubbing dragged me back in a couple of days ago, so I’m playing that new content. Not sure what I will do about Shadowlands.
The game is designed around those. And it’s more finely grained. There’s exploring new regions with their unique look, the sights, the lore, the stories, the characters, the monsters, the money rewards and their sinks, better mounts, customized mounts, reputation gains leading to different benefits, movement shortcuts like flying paths, new skills and spells, and so on. Even gear itself is finely grained. There can be new powers, or just stat improvements. And with transmogrification a trash pieces of gear can still offer a new visual look.
The more short/mid/long term goals the better plays the experience, for a goal oriented game. The busier you feel, the more it’s satisfying, as long the short term goals keep pushing you on.
Do you see that huge building at the far end of the map? I’m going trough the story because I want to end up there and see what’s the deal.
(this being an example of my recent disappointment, going through Shadowmoon Valley in Draenor, running all the way to a huge construction, the Temple of Karabor, surely it’s going to be a dungeon, or even endagme raid? Nope, it’s an empty prop because that part of the zone was cut… And it just sits there, unfinished and with no purpose.)
This is again some weird representation. You don’t play a game, any game, thinking of what happens two years later.
If you play Battle for Azeroth is because it’s what you want to do, right that moment, and find the experience, moment to moment, enjoyable enough for the time you spend in it. Why should another expansion looming in the future affect the experience in ANY way?
So then there’s the “post game.” But this is not your case, I suppose. As it wouldn’t be mine.
The post game has its purpose of being the GATE to “endgame”. Whatever it is in the form of mythic dungeons and raids.
If you don’t raid then I suppose the game still tries to throw you a bone anyway, but that isn’t the real experience. Either you have a piece of content you want to see, or you don’t. If you don’t, the appeal is the appeal of the grind, and that’s WEAK.
But “you” being not the target. The target being edgame raiders! So, for them, the post game is definitely purpose-full. It’s what gets them ready for challenging content. That’s their reward, experience the raids, progress through the tiers, have fun with that handcrafted piece of content reserved to them and special. It’s definitely worthwhile, as long you can commit to that.
Let’s say that we “fix” the problem. Make it so gear dropped in a raid is only usable in raids, and gear dropped outside of raids, only usable outside. Secondarily, make raid progression entirely linear. You start from Molten Core, tier 1, and go up all the way to tier X. Each tier requiring full gear sets from the previous.
No more loss of progress!
The simple reason why this doesn’t happen is that by the time expansions add up to raid tier 10, 90% of the active playerbase will be there, waiting the next tier to drop. But as those players burn out, there’s not enough new blood replacing them. Because the playerbase gets scattered and someone stuck at tier 2 won’t easily find a group of raiders, all sharing his own specific progress, and advancing in absolute coordination.
That’s why expansions are used as hard resets with the purpose of repacking the community into one unified pool.
In Destiny they went as far as removing the old content, just so you are forcefully pushed to buy a new expansion. Otherwise, if I’m currently progressing through tier 2, and the expansion has just added tier 15, then they won’t see my money. Because I’ll be ready to see tier 15 only in 2023, and that’s just in the case I’m still playing the same game!
I really should have bit the bullet on this last week, and geared up. My stuff from the beginning of BoA is ilevel 60. I boosted a rogue and his ilevel is 68. I had to stop and wait for the tukui site to stop getting slammed. I couldn’t install tukui. It is bad enough playing after this long, but not having to ui in some recognizable layout was making it worse.
You can can get in? I can’t.
Yes, I haven’t had trouble besides when it first started up it appeared I got stuck in transit from Dalaran to Stormwind and had to kill it and log back in.
I had no trouble at all getting started. At 4pm on the dot, the questgiver appeared in Stormwind. I did about the first forty minutes of quests, up until you reach the expansion capital. No issues with connections or anything - my biggest annoyance was having to wait for some mob respawns due to having lots of players in the same area. I’m only one data point, but it’s been a remarkably smooth launch.
I am in the can’t get going camp. The game has no clue about what servers I am on, and every server I have characters on I just get the black screen.
They are working on it, and I never seriously try and play on launch night anyway.
Yeah, I had figured I wouldn’t play tonight and I’ve been halfway trying but no dice. I’m having the same results as @Mark_Crump.
So lemme ask this - what mods do people use? Haven’t used any mods since I re-started last week. Azeroth Auto Pilot was awesome for leveling my two mains to 50, but what now?
I’ve loaded:
EvoUI
WeakAuras
DBM
RareScanner
anything else that’s a ‘must have’?
And holy cow the complaining is amazing.
I use Weak Auras, Hero Rotation, Bagnon, Altoholic, DBM, Titan Panel, Better Transmog, and Skada and Recount.
Also, my decision to consolidate on the two biggest servers (Area52 and Stormrage) is biting me. I could get on to my old server, Argent, no problem.
That said, in a day or two this usually sorts out and since I don’t do any CE content, meh.
I’m a fan of old UI, but on 1080p it’s already too tiny. So I use a number of manual resizes of UI elements through MoveAnything, as well as moving around some stuff.
I spent an ungodly amount of time, especially to make Neuron work to create new custom bars WITHOUT affecting the main UI. It requires a lot more manual configuration to keep it minimal than to go all in with the fancy options.
So, despite everything looks vanilla, I had to make huge subtle changes, but it’s all done with: titan panel, neuron, moveanything and blizzmove.
ElvUI is a way better fork of tukui.
So I got the expansion and started playing. I like the look of the Shadowlands but the gameplay isn’t really any different than in previous versions.
It’s kind of funny that I had Thrall, Jaina Proudmore, and a high level Ebon Knight following me and fighting with me and we still had to pound a bit on trash mobs to kill them. You’d think with that bunch it would be insta kills, but no, we are all weaklings again.
I made a level and unlocked a dungeon. That was all I got. I got to a capital city and set my hearth there as well. There’s an open portal to Orgrimmar there now too.
What drew me back into the game was the level 60 dungeon that is rogue-like and can be played solo. If it’s good, I could have a lot of fun playing that. Looks like the reward is getting crafting materials for making legendaries.
You’re right. I forgot that I was using that before, and was wondering why the setup steps didn’t popup when I first started up with tukui. So another 20 minutes arranging things in elvui.
My wife and I got about halfway through Bastion’s story last night. The only problem we had was she had to port to Silithus and fly to Ogrimmar since the ports to there and Thunderbluff weren’t working.
I’m a little disappointed that it’s all straight questing at the start. Previous expansions threw some of the new systems right at you from the beginning. There’s no Garrison, or class hall, or Heart of Azeroth and war table.
This may be the expansion I finally leave the Horde. I was on Argent, which is dead, and moved to Area52. The guild I hooked up with there just isn’t as good as my Alliance guild on Stormrage. I am in one of the larger guilds on the server there.
I also shy away from the big UI adding. It’s too much of a pain keeping them updated and patches break them.