Blizzard needs to reintroduce AP to save wow

Community General Discussion
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I didn’t say that, did I? But you’re lying to yourself if you don’t think there’s a large group of players who only play solo.

Where did I advocate for solo content to be the center of attention? I’m advocating for it to get the attention it needs, because it hasn’t gotten any in a long time.

If the majority prefer this style of wow, then how come nobody’s playing it then?

Except you can’t do it at your own pace because you need 4-19 other players to do it. You absolutely could farm AP at your own pace and it’s what the majority of players did. Do you think everyone was in islands or Maw of Souls 24/7? Nah they just did their WQs and weekly activites.

If you convinced yourself that you need to endlessly grind to do your raids/keys then that’s a you issue. You absolutely didn’t need to unless you were a top player.

I’m sure you’ll fund future content for wow all by yourself.

No they didn’t. The majority of players don’t raid HC or push high keys. For them unlocking their Artifact/Azerite powers was fun and rewarding. Artifact traits were infinitely more rewarding to unlock than gear as it gave you way more power. Same with essences.

We can look at the extremely low participation in content as an indicator of what people want. And like I said, i’m glad Blizzard tried completely removing it so players can see how bad it is. More & more players are starting to feel this way, even in the vocal minority.

We had no AP in Shadowlands. None in DF and yet nobody’s playing it. But sure, player progression for casual players is definitely what killed it lol.

I’ve cleared the raid on Mythic.

It’s an MMORPG, players still care about character progression even if they don’t need the gear for the content they’re doing. Casuals aren’t mindless drones just farming transmogs & mount reskins.

The “not needing gear for anything” part is another problem as there is 0 aspirational solo-content for players. Legion we had Mage Tower, BFA we had 5mask visions, SL we had higher levels of Torghast. DF has nothing.

You must be living under a rock then.

It’s not based on summer month stats. Blizzard themselves admitted that the expansion has sold worse than previous xpacs. Look at the Vault of the Incarnates number, it’s around the same level we had in Sanctum of Domination…

Is that why nobody’s playing DF?

If they can create another way then sure, but AP is a solution that already exists that players enjoyed.

No it didn’t. Shadowlands came after 2 expansions of AP systems and it had record breaking numbers in sales. After one xpac without AP systems the game has record low numbers in sales.

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43

This happened also with AP. Thinking AP is some kind if golden encouragement to log the game is also quite self centered. I am glad you enjoyed your AP. I couldn’t care less for it, and I don’t raid or do mythic+.

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Guess I must be the only person in this game that doesn’t know what AP stands for.

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Wasn’t as widespread of an issue as it currently is, because there was pretty high engagement. Dragonflight should be renamed to “raidloggerflight” because it’s designed for those players only.

Artifact Power and Azerite Power. It was a system that allowed you to always progress you character by doing any content in the game. You could do most of it solo as well, so you never had to rely on others to also be online if you wanted to play.

Another benefit was that it got players to log on to do daily/weekly content, which kept the open world & war mode alive and it lead to groups naturally forming.

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46

i think when people like myself (speaking for my own perspective mostly) asked for the removal of AP from the game.

we wanted fun things to replace it which was not just a grind.

we didnt ask for them to remove it and replace it with nothing, which is what happened.

and why none of us (the ones who called to remove it) still regularly play.

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What you call low participation numbers is due to multiple reasons.

  1. The biggest reason for DF performing badly is shadowlands. After bfa shadowlands was extremely overhyped and when the expansion turned out to be complete garbage, that was the last straw for a lot of people. It will take a lot of time to gain back the lost trust.
  2. A lot of people are finished. My main is essentially geared, there are a few bits and pieces that could be a tiny upgrade, but overall not worth chasing. Got curve. I’m essentially done. I can enjoy some other stuff like gearing up an alt or 2, play other games like D4 or Baldur’s gate 3, this is amazing, for once it doesn’t feel like the game is an endless grind and i need to be online all the time. This isn’t a negative thing for like 90% of the player base, this is actually amazing for most of us.
  3. The only content that is still active is the casual content. Have you done a time rift recently? Every day, almost the whole day, every hour, you don’t need a premade group or anything, you just show up and basically every shard has enough people to purple chest it.
  4. No casuals have ever grinded ap every day or chased down titanforged items. Most semi hardcore players didn’t chase titanforgings.
  5. With flightstones and crests casual gearing is way more interesting than any previous expansion
    Edit:
  6. It’s a .5 patch, these have always had a lower participation number.

And not to mention while DF has lower number of players than previous expansions, this is no surprise, wow has been losing subs for multiple expansions. The thing is df is retaining players a lot better than previous expansions a.k.a. while the overall number is lower, the players that are playing are sticking around more. People are more likely to level up alts and a bigger % of players returns whenever major content patch drops. This is an extremely good sign as while the game isn’t gaining a lot of subs, the player base is at least stabilizing and it’s not losing as many subs. This is the first sign of the game getting better and people actually enjoying the content.

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48

I mean clearing the raid and then not being forced to play is kinda nice tho, no?

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49

Because night elves ears aren’t pointy enough. Everyone uses the decline of subs to validate their tinfoil theory about why WoW is dying.
If you think the game felt more alive when dozens of character were swarming one rare after the other like ants in chorethea then there’s nothing more we can say here.
Maybe you were enjoying it but the other 30 people around you felt miserable.

Subs are dropping because people aren’t having fun. Duh. Either because there’s no fun content or because it has accessibility problems like organized raiding. It’s not rocket science and the solution isn’t to make it more addictive like a moneybaiting, eastern “f2p” MMO.

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50

Thing is, they have actually added in a lot of open world content this xpac. Most of it is bad tbf, but I don’t see a scenario where players will regularly play without good rewards even if the content is good.

Look at Mage Tower. It’s still super fun and yet nobody does them anymore because there’s no reward for it. There’s only a certain amount of cosmetic rewards you can add before people become jaded to it, just look at mounts and how little people care about those now. AP added in an extremely good reward & incentive that could be used liberally, unlike cosmetic rewards.

No it’s not. Loads of players hated Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor and Legion was still extremely popular because it was good. Dragonflight just isn’t a good expansion unless you enjoy raidlogging.

You could do that with AP as well. I played through other games all the time when AP existed. Unless you were a WF raider, you literally didn’t need to spam grind AP at all.

Most people just AFK while a handful of people finish filling up the bar.

Bro Zaralek Cavern died 2 weeks into the patch… That was a major patch & not a .5 patch.

If you only like raiding or M+ in wow then sure. I imagine DF owns for you, but for those of us who want to play wow and not just raid/keys it’s awful since there’s nothing to do.

Night elf ears add 0 content so it isn’t relevant at all.

The number one complaint from casual players is a lack of good casual & solo content. AP added character progression for everyone, but especially casuals & solo players who don’t engage with organized content like raids or keys.

An MMORPG without character progression doesn’t work at all. Dragonflight is proof of that.

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AP was detrimental to the game. I barely played Legion as a result of the artifact system.

BFA was horrible as well.

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The game is empty cause in M+ its for 5 classes only and the raid is dead already with 90% of the guilds capped their skill and can’t reach more.

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I’m straight up convinced that OP is a troll who’s baiting rn, s

Imagine thinking that not forcing players to log in every day to do menial chores so that you can stay relevant for the content you want to be doing is somehow a bad thing. Allowing your playerbase to take a break and come back whenever you want to and still be relevant is a great thing. There’s a ton of things you don’t have to do in-game now but can, so do those.

I will give you this however, AP was pretty fun until you realized that you want to play more than one spec the entire expansion. Then it became a second job.

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54

I have a suspicion that those two statements are somehow contradictory:

Solo content and MMORPG (emphasis on the “Massive Multiplayer Online” part).

If you want to reinvigorate solo content there are other alternatives to AP.

Right now, you can literally bulldoze ALL the WQ missions and rares, get everything you want and reach exalted in 2 weeks. They “COULD” incentivize people to do it with carrot rewards like epics and AP, but that is the wrong approach.

Simply because back in the day people DID that because it was trivial to do it. What do you prefer to do: a 40 min M+ for 100 AP, or 10 WQ missions at 50 AP a pop where you pull 40 mobs, do some AoE and 1-shot everything.

That is not “fun” content. Thats just a chore. But if you do actually want outdoor content to be fun, make it harder.

As in:

Solo world quest: Make them super hard if you play solo. As in, play them perfect or you die. In Max ilvl gear that is. In lower level no chance to do most of the missions solo.

When you eventually realize you need to group up, cap the group sizes to 5. That way you cant do a 40 man raid and just trivialize things. The HP and damage of mobs will scale according to the size of that group (for balance purpose).

Even in 5 man groups, make it hard as in you are at an actual risk of wiping if you don’t play it right.

Then reward those players with gear with the same ilvl as M+ and raid. That way its a legitimate game mode. And throw in a few unique trinkets now and then.

Some quests by design will be easier (like those that you dont need to kill anything), others very hard (like some rare monsters). Thats how you judge difficulty and progress.

That is what I would do. Fix the root problem. Not the “quick fix” solution (AP) someone wrote on a napkin in 2010.

In a similar fashion, I would also make open world PvP its own legitimate content:

I would make it more like a FFA gauntlet with extra mechanics (fire on the ground, swirlies, zones that heal you, ect…).

And then fix the major problem: people grouping. When people group up, its a massive disadvantage to those that are not. Its not fun to get wiped like that. If people do group up, they go to a different phase with other people that are grouped up.

Then reward conquest/honor like the PvP missions. And some PvP gear now and then.

Thats my take. No AP required. Only FUN, FUN, FUN, which is what WoW should be. Not a chore.

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I don’t raid. And I would like to play every day. That’s what I enjoy about an MMORPG.
However, they’ve made it impossible to do that and feel the content I’m doing is actually worthwhile.

I don’t understand how some people want to sub to an MMORPG and NOT play.

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Whenever I want, without having crappy design forcing me in logging everyday otherwise I’d be missing on some things. Being able to drink beers with friends outside without thinking “CRAP, I haven’t done my AP today” feels good.

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Because from 9 to 17 I have work to do.

Then from 17 to ~22 I have family to be with.

Then, from 22 to about 1am is my “me time”.

If you come up to me right now and say that after a hards days work I have to spend my first 1 to 2h farming some stupid AP so that then I can spend the last hour I have to actually play what I want… NO…NO…NO…

I log in, I play what I want. It just happens to be that M+ (what I do) is legitimate content while solo outdoor is not. Complain to blizz to make Solo WQ fun, instead of forcing ME to play with you on something I don’t want to do.

So that YOU sir can have fun. No thanks.

Easy to understand why bro… :slight_smile:

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58

It’s not that people don’t want to play, they don’t want to feel forced to play.
That’s the main issue with a borrowed power grind; it turns content that’s supposed to be fun into a chore (just look at Torghast, islands, warfronts).

It’s also impossible to balance and adds unnecessary, gamebreaking complexity to WoW.

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Sure. But being ABLE to play all the time should also be supported, right?

I would advice against that. Alcohol is a terrible thing.

No no no. I don’t want to force MY way of playing on others. But I do want to BE ABLE to play the way I like it. But right now, I can’t. YOUR way of playing is being forced on me.

See what the problem is there?

Sure, I get that.
I personally don’t like being ‘done’ in an MMORPG. I always want there to be something to work towards.

Now to be clear: If reintroduced, I’d want it to be AP exclusively for world content progression. It shouldn’t have any effect on ‘the big 3’ content. Optional AP for those who like that sort of thing.

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The thing is, you were always able to do it (unless you’re WF raider). No one forced you to farm enormous amount of AP. You are making a mistake thinking the game was forcing you to play it. AP was a good reason to log in every day. But now there is no reason to play at all, cause there is nothing to do literally.

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61

This part is subjective, I personally lean in the opposite direction and need a finish line for my main so I can play alts.

I don’t think endless grinds are healthy though; it’s more likely to cause burnout since it heavily incentivizes players to do content they don’t like or play the game more than they’d like.

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