They really need to look at making it more interesting.
I find i got lots of hero gear, but the cap each week is so low, this week, i get to raise 2 items from 610-619 before running out of Runed crests.
+9 is a challenge for pug life, my push group are even still working up to it. so my ilvl going up like 1 a week?
this fees really bad atm lol.
Tried converting lesser crests into higher ones if you got excess of them?
90 = 15 next track.
Might be able to squeeze out enough for another upgrade.
its capped.
i dunno why they did that, you can convert 90 crests to 15 runed, but if you are at ur cap, you cant actually use the item to gain the 15 crests lol. So literally no point to it
They shoulda just had all crests uncapped, apart from the Gilded ones and just gate the top top upgrades.
I think in the absence of any borrowed power system, the raw gear drops and upgrades should be a lot more plentiful, because if they’re not – as we see – you just feel like you’re putting a lot of time and effort into the game without much sense of reward or progression.
And I think that’s across all levels of play. Because everyone has their own cap or wall they run into, or just increasingly lower chances of getting a gear drop that’s an upgrade.
It’s a pretty bad design right now, because it’s too bare bone. If you zoom out, then WoW plays like an ARPG now, but it does not have the reward structure or character progression to support this kind of fast objective-driven gameplay.
I wonder what Blizzard will do going forward.
I thought they only go backwards, where do you turn in your lower teir for higher?
its once u get max out the possible use for the Carved Harbinger Crests, so no more slots to ugprade with them.
you get an achievement, that then lets you trade 90 of them for 15 Runed crests
BUt you get like a pouch thing to use to get 15 Runed crest, and if you are already at Cap, you just cant use it lol
While i like the gear discount as well for alts, it kinda makes it feel like if you are someone who isnt farming +9s, your better off playing an alt first, then once your gear is capped out as high as u can, then level your main, using the discount bonus, so your main can get more out of the crest caps lol
Beside the upgrade vendor by the bank in Dornogal.
It’s Microsoft now so I think the loot will accelerate. Microsoft isn’t going to want people like me sitting spending zero money on Xbox games because I’m playing WoW all day.
Blizzard starved most of the players of loot for almost 2 decades, then as soon as Microsoft buys them it’s the land of the loot. Are we just believing that’s a coincidence?
Imagine being the Blizzard employee explaining to the Microsoft bigshot why the company is hemorrhaging money is because “the casuals don’t deserve loot”.
I don’t know. I think a lot of this design has always been Blizzard’s design. But maybe with Microsoft we’ll get extra crests if we use Bing as our search engine. 
But yeah, to me it feels like Blizzard relies a lot on the grind and the carrot on the stick, because they feel the gameplay can’t stand on its own legs. People simply won’t play the game just for fun.
I don’t think they’ll accelerate the loot acquisition, because then players will just gear up quicker and subsequently be done quicker. And then they’ll stop playing as well.
I think what Blizzard really wants is some kind of borrowed power system that isn’t borrowed power (so players don’t get upset), but which extends the character progression beyond just getting gear and crests. Like, there has to be more to the WoW adventure than hunting gear and crests.
I just don’t think they know how to go about it, design-wise. But it feels really lacking right now.
Give it a few weeks and we may see a lot of people hit a wall when they hit 619 ilvl, still can’t pug +9s, and thus can’t advance their gear to make those keys more accessible. The skill of the average player (myself included) seems to have been overestimated this season. I do not think a group of 5x me in 619 will get through 9s so I expect to get stuck.
Fingers crossed Blizzard does something about that rather sharpish. I’d rather they didn’t wait until season 2.
yea ive timed some 7-9s atm with a full team on comms.
needing +10 for Myth item in vault and +9s for crests to upgrade beyond 619 is rough.
its guna end up with people just farming Mists cuz its easy lmao
I’d say it functions like most RPGs. The player does stuff that isn’t exactly the most exciting stuff but it gets them more power to achieve their goal.
In WoW’s case there is no true goal as it doesn’t ever end. It doesn’t build up to a final conflict with the last boss then that’s it.
In my case Microsoft can’t lose. If I get bored of WoW and switch to only Xbox I’ll be spending way more money than I’m spending on WoW.
Sure. But that design is not one WoW manages to pull off very well. Hence why we’re sitting here with a bit of a scuffed feeling.
Other games simply do this much better, namely the entire ARPG sub-genre of games – which is basically the design WoW leans into.
Whether it’s Diablo IV, Last Epoch, or Path of Exile, they all have way more going for them in this department than WoW has. And WoW basically has the same gameplay loop as these games. It’s just being less rewarding.
It’s like, I appreciate that a lot of youtubers and streamers were doing 10s on 619 and lower - but they’re also usually in the top 5-10% of players. Me, average andy, probably a B+ player… these dungeons are hard. Probably too hard. If M+ was my only content, I strongly suspect I’d already have unsubbed. Right now I’m here because I’m in like 3 regular raid teams, and I get to do delves with my guild, and I enjoy all of that.
But I wouldn’t be here if I was mostly into pugging M+. There’s so many other things I could be doing that’s more fun than this season rn 
And I say this as someone who used to be constantly logging alts, doing a casual key or two here and there. Sometimes one before work, or a weekend morning when nobody else I knew was online. That’s ended. I will not touch pugging this season, at all. It’s out of whack and I don’t need my blood pressure to get any higher than it already is 
I’d say it pulls it off very well. There are people who are “forced” to do anything that gives them even a miniscule chance of a chance of getting loot, while also not thinking they are addicted.
These individuals want all the loot and they want no one else to have any. Normally stuff like that needs to be injected.
I don’t play those other games so I can’t compare them to WoW.
Dont get me wrong, il still be doing keys with my team, i just feel like the tuning is off and a lot of people who dont have a group of 5 regulars to play with, will stop much quicker than me
its going to be another 2 weeks, before im basically full 619. most people get to that point just from runed crests in M+ keys.
after that, IF it unlocks the transfer from Runed to Gilded crests, then each week might give me like 1 item a +3 ilvl upgrade, which will just feel like there is basically 0 gear progression at all
Really?!
How many gear upgrades did you get on your main character last week?
Two. One from the vault and a very juicy Hero two hander from a map. I alone getting loot isn’t Microsoft’s goal though. Their goal is to get money from everyone. They are getting money from me on multiple fronts because I buy lots of Xbox games. I buy less if I’m playing WoW all the time.
Throw some numbers, what do you think is an acceptable amount of upgrades for a character per week?
Myth track from vault? or Hero?
cuz the hero 2hander from map, still guna cap you at 619 if you arent able to actively farm the Gilded crests
I’m playing the long game. I don’t do anything if it’s too annoying or difficult to be worth doing. If Microsoft nerf stuff I’ll get back in the keys, if they don’t I won’t.
No way I’m grinding the amount of crests needed currently. Microsoft are doing a good job in the sense that most people will grind them. I don’t count because I’m not most people.