These 3 things are not positive lmao
The main reason was because forbidden reach was NOT capped or gated. With the Fryak, Researchers and now Superbloom you gated for a week. The rares are on some sort of rotation so it makes it super bland. Players lose interest almost immediately and just dont bother.
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I personally LOVE the QoL changes in DF, but then I only M+.
Torghast was fun, but I don’t miss having to do it each week.
Definitely do not miss the mandatory rep/renown grinds from BfA and SL…that was fine during lockdown, but no time now! 
I agree that the events (Dreamsurge etc.) are not engaging beyond gearing an alt, but are they meant to be?
I can see how if you don’t PvP, M+ or raid you might feel there’s not much in the game. The options are still there to grind rep etc. for those who want to? But a few extra WQs would probably help in this regard.
I can’t entirely agree with the OP, mostly, and I’ll explain why.
They are massively large zones, compared to any of the previous zones. Here is a quote from Reddit:
"Assuming Elwynn Forest is the size of the average Eastern Kingdom/Kalimdor Zone… and Azure Span is about the size of the average Dragon Isle Zones… you can fit 8.4 Eastern Kingdom/Kalimdor Zones into each Dragon Isle one.
At four major Dragons Isle Zones, that’s 33.6 zones. Dragon Isles is literally the size of the entire Eastern Kingdoms + half of Kalimdor."
So yes, we’re still getting 4 zones, but considering how varied certain parts of those zones feel (such as the black dragon stronghold, the brakenhide area, the bronze temple) etc, it feels like you’ve got mini zones stitched into one big zone.
Can’t complain here much, although frankly, I think we’re fine with 8 dungeons because it works better with M+ seasons.
So I think I’m not breaking any headlines when I say Dragonriding has been one of the best features in WOW, right up there with M+. I agree that I wouldn’t call the feature itself content, but the feature has helped create races, WQ that involve Dragonridng, and now also a boss that includes Dragonridng in their mechanics. It’s even helped transmog customization to some level because we now have customizable mounts.
Dragonriding is a tool that Blizzard has taken full advantage of, and I hope it continues into TWW.
So this isn’t content, but it was an important feature nonetheless. It brought back old abilities that were either part of artefacts or were removed entirely. I liked the old MOP talent system, but I feel like this one has been an overall improvement.
As someone who doesn’t do professions (although I do want to get into it when I get the chance), I can’t comment on this.
As for the world content part, I agree mostly (which is why they’re adding delves next expansion as kind of an apology basket). We’ve had less content per patch, and that can’t be denied, however, the time between patches has significantly decreased. We’ve gone from waiting 6 months for the next crumb of content, to 2 months. Sure not all of those patches have had amazing content, 10.1.7 was mostly just a gear catchup, yet the majority of it has been received well. 10.1.5 in particular was so big for an x.x.5 patch that it could have easily been a full-on patch.
If we want to compare it to BFA, BFA had a ton more content to do, but none of it was really fun to do because of the content itself and how it interacted with the larger game (cough Azerite system cough) was terrible.
As for whether any of this WQ for useful, it was great for catchup gear and mounts, transmogs, etc. But if you want to compare it to raiding or M+ gear then obviously not, because DF hasn’t had any endgame World content (which is why I said delves will be an apology basket).
Moving on…
This is objectively wrong. In terms of features SL had:
- Chorghast
- Covenants
- The completely overhauled levelling system
and that’s it. None of the other patches added features. Meanwhile, DF has:
- Dragonriding
- Mount Customization
- The new talent system
- The profession revamp
- The M+ affix revamp
- The trader’s post
and I don’t know if turning the big 4 reps into renown is considered a feature, but there you go.
That’s content, not a feature.
So I should mention it is trivially easy to get trader tender, especially since everyone won’t want every item. For me, I only got the Warlock transmog this month. Other than that, I didn’t want anything else. Now if we got barely any trader tender per month with them selling it in bundles all the time, I’d totally 100% agree, but they’re not. This isn’t like the WOW token where they’re selling gold directly for real money.
It also gave us a reason to do things, as the monthly reward requires us to fulfil a minimum amount of actions. Any incentive to do activities should be commended in my view.
Apart from the note about M+ seasons I’ve said earlier, I mostly agree with this. I don’t know if I’d compare the raid bosses of DF to BFA and Legion considering that BFA and Legion both had a 10.3, and DF doesn’t have one. But even if you shave 10 bosses off the top, both Legion and BFA have 4-5 more bosses than DF.
I don’t know if I agree with this. For me, the dungeon and raid designers have almost always done a great job with the raids and dungeons. Sure there have been some mid-fights, but every expansion has those.
Again, delves will mostly solve this issue.
I’ve said it before, but World content isn’t hard. Because you can just make a group, get 50 people, and just murder anything in your way. One of the fundamentals of game design in any MMO is if you do more challenging content, you should get better rewards, which is why the top delve gear will be comparable to around 10+ - 15+ M+ gear and not the top gear.
The Azerite System and Titanforging, I’ve learned, were great for the World Content players because they allowed them to get gear equal to raiding and M+ players over time. In doing so, however, it annoyed raiders, M+ players, and even PVP players to some extent. That’s why I’m looking forward to delves so much because delves don’t clash with the main player base.
Anyway, I’m done. I guess I just wanted to give my opinion on the whole post since it’s an interesting one.
I don’t think it was bad at all, people consider it bad because it was “mandatory”, just like they would think of dream surges or researchers under fire if they gave AP.
Also, rewards are a core part of an MMO gameplay loop, and the only way for content to be rewarding is it’s involved in your characters’ power progression in some way.
Absolutely this, and it’s wild to me that they couldn’t make more of those changes and make them earlier while it was current.
Yeah we gonna get some wild stuff. It’s gonna be another world event with 425 ilvl catch up gear which is now pathetic compared to ilvl inflation of 10.2, more cringy story sections with the most boring cast this game has ever known, and some minor scenarios. That’s what we lost another raid tier and zone for.
It was never infinite, there were very clear cutoff points with diminishing returns that made it clear to non-obsessive people that “you can stop for now”. We’re complaining because nothing replace that content, and the game is boring and unrewarding outside of endgame grinds which became even grindier.
Bro what, how can anyone who’s even playing the game make this claim? Dragon Isles are bigger than previous expansion continents but they are stil not as big as even one of the 2 OG continents. But most estimates they are 2/3rds of EK or Kalimdor, so like 30% of Vanilla in pure scale.
The actual content populating that mass is the about the same as Legion, probably even less when counting Suramar and the reduced number of world quests half of which are races.
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I can’t speak for Legion or BFA as I only picked wow backup with Dragonflight, after playing classic when it first came out many, many moons ago …
But I like the content model, though i’m not without gripes - I find the story lacking
and juvenile … (SPOILER ALERT) why tyrande still worships elune eludes me (i may have missed something from playing through bits of old content but elune stipped her powers when facing sylvanas, right?), and wheres the gore!?
Anywho, I don’t particularly enjoy the events that have been thrown in, soup, invasions, superbloom, but I do like having open world group content. I hated forbidden reach and didn’t spend much time there - its so grindy …
Overall though I’ve enjoyed DF and its making me excited for war within, especially with warbands coming and other quality of life features. I LOVE dragonriding, can’t wait for it in the old world, even though I am puzzled by the decision to restrict the speed.
I’d love it for WQ rewards to scale with gear though, for a smaller ilvl reward increase, so that stuff is still worth picking up from time to time.
Yes i do it better
So you didn’t like it. But the majority of people did. As shown by numbers. Don’t pass off your opinions as facts.
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well other than that they nerfed the gold from paragon box and no mount/pet/toy rewards either from paragon reputation so basically no point doing them after you are max rewnown other than fishing for some gold wqs. Also no callings which would make us do them daily.
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What you are talking about is not even content in the first place, it’s a system that used the WQ as content, which is why it sucked, as you had to constantly do chores. I don’t remember the details about the cutoff points, but even if we assume it does end up at some point, you still had to do a tedious and boring grind through WQ, and that is not content.
I’d gladly take a similar system that does NOT involve chores, but what you’re wishing for is the return of mandatory grind through boredom.
Funny that they removed those systems then.
I’m cautiously optimistic by their claims that they want to make more of what they add remain relevant for more than just the duration of a single patch or expansion.
Interesting, niche content being added and then later removed has long been a major issue with this game as far as I’m concerned.
That being said, there’s a healthy balance to be struck. Perhaps going back and scattering new quest chains and rewarding secrets is a good way to help keep older content relevant as well? To their credit, they’ve been doing that to an extent but having it be more common would be good.
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thanks to blizzard’s horrible implementations of good ideas, wow players think MMO aspect of wow is a big ‘‘chore’’ . there are many players who just want to log in and do m+ and log off. they think that’s an mmo gameplay. it isn’t. i’m not judging don’t get me wrong but the fact that you only enjoy competitive part of the game shows that you don’t like mmos. probably your aim is bad for shooter games and you wanted something competitive. most of them have no idea about the game’s story , they kill a boss thousands of times in a season but only know its name .
to be completely fair, if this is how they want to play, they should be able to . but that’s not a reason to cut the game’s rest . blizzard can create an environment where everyon can do what they want without getting into too much of other stuff.
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Yes it absolutely is content, whether you like it or not doesn’t change the fact. That was the one and only way of having relevant and rewarding world content, because SL and DF definitely don’t have it.
Now WQs are dropping 415 gear which is like 60+ ilvls below bis lmao. It’s not just that there is no valuable gear and no valuable power grinds (AP), they also nerfed the amount of available quests, rep rewards, and removed emissaries which tied them together for larger chunks of rewards.
DF is a lobby expansion because non-instanced content is completely useless, and there’s no challenging and rewarding solo content to break the endless seasonal grinds.
Again, this is how the game was before Legion innovated and stopped it from being a raid log simulator.
hahaha now thats a good joke mate. Legions story might have been nice because there was alot of it. But legion had so many things wrong with it. Saying its the best expansion ever by far is just wrong
I don’t understand how you can complain about lack of content and at the same time call grinding World Quests, which are basically normal quests except you automatically accept them by going into their zone, content.
Go back to the previous expansions and do the quests there then, there’s your content. Yes it absolutely is content, whether you like it or not doesn’t change the fact.
Im kinda on the fence about df’s rep grind.
On the one hand the rep was pretty easy to get, but on the other once you’ve completed your weekly wq’s theres nothing to do.
I mean i could have raided, but the transmogs looked super boring so i never bothered. Also the whole “no personal loot” kinda killed my motivation to even try.
I think they spend time and money on games that repay with player numbers. WoW is a dwindling numbers old game, so less money is spent on it.
OK. Il coment on this only:
Yes, DF gutted WQs. So did SL by the way.
And the reason? Because people did content they DID NOT LIKE (emphasis on that) to farm for AP currency to DO the content they actually liked.
VERY few people actually liked doing WQ for the sake of it. And few people still like that content. But… and here is the big but…
Not respecting player time and forcing people to do content they don’t want as a “chore” is not a replacement to the fact that WQ are, and will always be, BORING. No matter the rewards it gives.
So after 2 expansions worth of making mistakes Blizz FINALLY got the memo that its a game. People dont want to do chores. They wanna play what is fun, and their JOB is to make that thing fun. Not rewards, nothing.
So… the focused on PvP M+ and raiding. Which they have sucesfuly acheveived with the amazing content cadance of DF.
Open world… well… they maintained it, tried a few formulas. Nothing worked. So… they will do Delves next expansion.
Hopefully THAT will make Open World content fun and incentivize people to play it. But that is the important thing.
TLDR motto: DF did not kill WQ. WQ killed themselves for being so boring.
True. An MMO has the characteristics you say.
But also: We are not in 1999 anymore.
WoW in 2004 got the same model as Everquest, and added a few very important features to adapt it to the 21st century. One of which is: If you die, all your loot does not drop. For example.
It was a massive success.
But now its 2023. Same situation. You cant get systems and mechanics from 2004 and call that “the original thing”. Accept the change. Dont be the blockbuster that refused to adapt.
And that is the reason people do instanced content. Because open world content sucks and is not built for 2023. Its just simply BORING. So people do what is adapted to 2023: M+.