I haven’t played wow for a couple of months. I cleared 9.0, leveled a few alts but couldn’t get my head around leveling the rest, I found it just far FAR to reptative and having to do the intro over and over and over was the worst.
But I was looking forward to 9.1, I had my reservations about it at the beginning but everyone pointed out the builds were early and more was coming… Well 9.1 is literally weeks away the main content is on ptr now and where is everything?. We have maybe an hour or two worth of story content then that’s it. Back to the same old wq/rep grind.
I’m feeling rather underwhelmed by it and I can’t see it’s content lasting until 9.2. Or at least 9.1.5.
Depends on what you want out of it and what you’re going into it with, I guess.
I mean, if you didn’t like the WoW routine in 9.0, then you will probably not find much different in 9.1.
But if you did enjoy 9.0, and simply exhaused the gameplay value to the point of boredom, then 9.1 should be a breath of fresh air and provide new gameplay for some months to come.
And then there’s the one-off experience with the new story and cincematics and dungeon and raid, and that should all be super enjoyable on that first-time playthrough. It always tends to be, and no one would be here if they weren’t at least looking forward to that.
And there’s probably some weeks or months of value in that, depending on your time investment.
So a month’s subscription seems reasonable to me if you still have an interest in WoW. And then afterward it probably depends on how appealing the routine gameplay loop appears. To each his own there.
New dungeon, New raid, New daily quest zone, flying for previous zones. Same old.
If I wasn’t raiding with my guild, then I’d probably give it 30 days to check out the new content, gear my character and push some keys (or pvp if that’s your kink). If I’m still having fun after the 30 days, then put another 30 in. If not, play some other games, come back for 9.2/10.0 and try again.
You’re also not restricted to shadowlands only, right now like me, I’ve been raidlogging CN, leveled in TBC, and been selling transmog from older expansions for gold on the AH to fund my raid costs, gametime and future expansions.
It will be ok, I guess interesting for some, about 4-5 weeks and that’s it. After that, everything will be more or less the same as now, maybe a little better. The raid and players who are interested in that will probably play longer. As for me, I don’t see anything that would interest me too much.
For me, 9.1 is exactly the same thing, maybe a little improved and that’s it.
New affix for m+ seems cool, prideful is a drag honestly.
New opportunities to explore new zones.
Torg changes.
For me, sub getting some okay buffs, not huge, but welcome QoL changes, so should make what I’m doing now feel better which is fine by me.
Also give me more time to craft alternative leggos as started late. So I should have time to actually try assy out.
The fact the game will be busier will be good too.
Also flying. World quests will feel so much less chorish and it may encourage me to actually father anima outside of the weekly, and hop about getting the grateful offerings too.
Same old same we’ve had for many years. Very bog standard safe major patch like usual. Looking forward to raiding and pushing keys with the boys for a couple months. Fully expecting the usual cycle of everyone bored and quitting 2-3 months in. Which I’m actually fine with this time, some good games due then.
It’s far worse than 9.0/9.0.5. Have fun having to raid to get those overpowered shards in order to be competitive in PvP because they for some reason work everywhere (their combined “set bonus” doesn’t, but on their own they’re still super strong). And have fun doing 3 daily quests and two assaults per week for a small chance at one of several new paragon mounts.
The open world archeology-styled progression seems pretty cool, the gear progression for casuals is far better and the gem based tier sets is implemented in the open world and the raid
Overall from a casual POV this patch should be much better all things considered.
If you’re into more challenging content then the M+ affix sounds very good, the new raid has interesting loot (altho I haven’t checked any feedback from testers about it), Torghast seems to be in a better place altho it’s still very similar to what we have right now and PvP shouldn’t change much beside PvE being less important than previously in PvP gear progression and there’s a lot of PvP talents updated.
Most of the issues player may have in 9.0 will still be a thing in 9.1 beside the loot scarcity which was fixed in 9.0.5 tho, so if you can’t stand being locked in a covenant or hate torghast then not much will change.
That said the maw is fixed so no worry in this regard, as well as being far less important in the grand scheme of things.
Conduits catch-up and gem sockets can be obtained from the new zone but it’s no longer the only source & the content is much less frustrating. Unless Blizz changed it you can acquire both from good Torghast runs afaik. Which is already mandatory anyway so no additional grind.
No previous X.1 patch in the game history had a full raid, a megadungeon and an open world zone. Quality may vary but the content is there.
7.1 didn’t had a zone and only featured a 3 bosses raid with reused assets iirc, yet I don’t recall it being considered lacking content. That said we would already be in 7.2 at that point based on legion’s schedule so it’s not exactly comparable.
As long as Blizz doesn’t give us yet another 8 months patch then it should be alright content wise, or at least no worse than usual.
I would like to come back to retail for 9.1 and I’m gathering strenght and willpower to grind Torghast and renown … Everyday I’m waiting for Blizzard blessing in form of blue post about adding soul ash to dungeon rewards, silly optimism of mine.
I kinda see it as a new Mechagone. Sure there’s some new story, and soon you’re back to anima farming WQs, but…
There’s a whole new Mechagone zone, with daily quests, new faction to grind rep etc…
And there’s pretty much a new Maw, an old zone that becomes playable basically (up till now you pretty much had to leave before you even entered) and new events, Covenant invasions.
Not sure if there’ll be new WQs to make anima farming a bit less monotonous?
I’m mean techiniclly this has been the case for a very very long time in WoW and still here you are. In one way 9.1 is acutally bigger than previous .1 patches since usally its just a raid in a zone we already have and a storyline leading up to it.
Now we get a new area we get a new dungeon and we even get a hardmode for that said dungeon which I’m looking forward too harder 5 man content I feel would be a good way to add more content to this game. Plenty of achiemvents and old content to clear for those that want.
More catchup systems out there for alts etc. As far for the WQ/Rep grind its totally optional. In my mind the grind that is needed in the game today is done right compared to Legion/BFA where the endless grind was a must rather than an optinal thing.
The sad thing is that those who wait out the time gates will experience 9.1 better like with 9.0.
All things considered, 9.1 is hardly fixing the main things that made 9.0 a bore:
Boregast grind, Covenants, a boring experience overall for anyone who does not do High end content atm.
Might as well level my classic priest more, or play other games
