it just has a lot more soul you know what i’m saying
1 Like
Unironically had more fun with Hardcore than retail in terms of levelling. Probably because of the risk-reward.
2 Likes
Yeah I’m being tongue in cheek about the vanilla thing, but I do genuinely enjoy the leveling experience in classic more. It’s got issues but I found in Dragonflight I was just drifting from quest to quest without needing to really think about what I was doing. Basically playing in auto-pilot.
2 Likes
Yeah, it’ more engaging because you’re having to think about how to pull. Whether you’re going to accidentally pull something else and so on. It’s slower and can be frustrating but it takes up more of my brain than retail where i generally fly to area, AoE every mob down, fly to another area, collect items.
3 Likes
If you want games to be slow levelling and frustrating, just go play Oblivion.
With no mods/patches.
2 Likes
True gamer would not respect “dibs” and simply take the pet / the kill.
Queueing is too much of a redditor movie
Just dont pick off skills as your main skills.
No one said this. 
6 Likes
I think WoW returning to a massive fantastical adventure/journey feel would be objectively better in every single way. Last time I felt like I was having a slower-paced hero’s journey was MoP 10 years ago and even that was relatively quick.
*And only felt like a hero’s journey because the MSQ continued through each of the zones and into the finale endgame patch of SoO.
6 Likes
My problem with Vanilla leveling is that it’s just extremely boring. You have to ‘think’ about it in terms of ‘will I die before the enemy when we both auto attack?’.
I much prefer retail gameplay in leveling, as in - the rotation of the specs for the most part are just much better, it’s just the leveling is easy on top. You can chain pull lots of monsters and not really worry about anything else or even dying, as you can just resurrect and carry on.
Having to strategize what you’re pulling and whatnot isn’t non-existent (and I definitely had my fair share of that during Dragonflight questing), but you’re not really worried about dying as you can resurrect, dying is simply an inconvenience and waste of time for you, so you don’t want to do it too much.
That being said, the design is simply different - Vanilla is about the leveling, so hardcore leveling makes sense. Retail is about the game after you’ve levelled, so making it tedious makes people not play your game at all.
The ‘fly to mobs and AoE them down’ only happens after you’ve reached max level and gotten some gear on you anyway, you had to be quite strategic while still in questing gear, especially if you wanted to tackle an elite mob.
That was… Dragonflight, no? Unfortunately I think the devs kind of wrote themselves into a box with the past expansions having the PC be some cosmic saviour, so you can’t really go back to feeling like just some random adventurer any more.
2 Likes
I think this has been my crucial problem with WoW in recent expansions. I actually used to play and enjoy an expansion primarily for it’s leveling experience. After Burning Crusade I became less and less interested with the end-game.
I think there is a balance that can be found, because you’re right the actual class rotations and interactivity is considerably better now than it was in Vanilla.
Also here comes a hot take, but I don’t like having flying enabled from moment 1 of an expansion. I will not elaborate on this.
I do really love the vibe of Dragonflight questing zones though. So I think it captures that Vanilla chill vibe quite well, it was just a little too brainless for me to be zipping from point A to B with zero thought.
5 Likes
Agree that a combination of Retail’s more intricate gameplay with Vanilla’s levelling/Journey would be the best possible blend of both worlds imo.
Can’t say I felt or feel that at all with Dragonflight tbh because 5 minutes after being called an adventurer I’m back to party-rocking with Alexstrasza and the Demi-Gods of the Universe again who all call me Hero/Champion of the Multiverse so in fact it feels like the exact opposite of a quaint adventure, especially with iridikron trying to summon the cosmic super-evil fart-ghosts of the Void to Azeroth to blow everyone up.
6 Likes
Damn, can’t believe Akamito was the reason why past expansions introduced the Pathfinder achievements that locked away your flight.
we gonna need some torches and pitchforks here folks
I mean, I can’t say I felt or feel that way with Dragonflight either. That being said, I unsubbed before the Sniffing patch, so maybe the patches afterwards have kinda gone back on this?
But the leveling experience definitely didn’t feel like that to me. You’re obviously going to be called a hero for saving someone’s puppy from a house fire, that’s not on the same level as being called a hero for saving the cosmos. Dragonflight’s questing adventure was very much so grounded and low-stakes personal stories from what I can remember.
Like yeah, you’re party-rocking with Alexstrasza just as much as you were party rocking with the Aspects since… uh, Wrath at the very least, if not even earlier (TBC and Caverns of Time?).
I think so too. I think it’s what they’re trying with Dragonflight, but a lot of people are (somehow) grumbling about how they want to retvrn to grim and dark tales so i’ve got a bad feeling about what’ll come, instead
I don’t think they’ll ever put us ‘lower’ on the power scale or anything anymore, we’re stuck in champion/hero-hell
3 Likes
I hate the pathfinder achievement to be fair. I just preferred unlocking it once you hit or were close to max level as in Burning Crusade/Wrath for a gold fee or quest or whatever. Pathfinder was far too many hoops to jump through for the sake of engagement rather than their initial reason given which was getting people to traverse the new areas on foot during leveling.
Yeah I get people hate having things taken away from them but too bad.
How is it possible that Dragonflight echoes Mists of Pandaria so much bros
they’re gonna follow it up with another Warlords of Draenor (but likely even worse, since Shadowlands made that possible)
(the emoji really did have multiple meanings during WoD)
I mean, I think for the most part the newer Pathfinder achievements are relatively just that. You do the main quests and explore the basic areas, and then you unlock flying. I do like that Dragonflight started out with flying in mind, so this was changed. It let them play around with verticality when designing the zones far more. It’s not something I really expect from them again, though, I feel like Dragonflight was the only expac where this was possible.
I remember having to grind rep in Legion and Battle for Azeroth which I was not happy about. Rep grinds have always been a major peeve of mine so it hit me where it hurt.
1 Like
I personally could not even compare the 2 because one is D-tier for me and the other is S-tier. MoP carefully balanced its themes and knew when to throw the punch, Dragonflight is completely tonally deaf.
2 Likes
MoP was ok
perhaps mid some might say
I dunno, obviously MoP is better (S-tier for me too), but Dragonflight is definitely up there with the better expansions for me. The ‘tonally deaf’ comment I don’t really understand, unless you mean the change from Shadowlands to Dragonflight and ‘wait weren’t we at war what do you mean it’s been 3 years and everything is kumbaya now?’.
But I also understand why this change was made, because honestly, faction war got so repetitive and boring that this is at least new. I’m also not going to say that there haven’t been some tonally deaf moments in Dragonflight either, but saying it’s completely so? Can you elaborate?
I think MoP also suffered from Blizzard not managing to do balanced changes, as the initial reception was ‘wtf everything is a joke and light hearted panda expansion???’ so they just had these completely extreme tonal shifts from enjoying tea with your Pandaren bros to ‘the horde is firing squading the trolls wtf?’.
I guess the Sha worked as a blanket defense for the tonal shifts since when you’re wondering ‘wait shouldn’t me mowing down helpless orcs swimming away from the shore that I’m relentlessly bombing be some sort of like idk… and evil choice? why am i getting cheered on?’ immediately gets answered with ‘haha sha lol’.
Dragonflight’s leveling definitely had fewer of those instances, the only really tonally deaf moment was just the gnoll mass murder with that mage quest giver that is telegraphed to be really insane and evil and you should probably deal with that, but then the questline ends and there’s no actual resolution to it.
(I think some quest lines ended too short in general for Dragonflight, I remember having similar feelings with the Tuskarr in the first zone, where you deal with grief of losing a pet and whatnot and it gets handwaved away within a quest where you just find a replacement pet. I thought they were meant to be lifelong companions, not something you can just randomly replace!)
hehe
Dragonflight tier
2 Likes