I realized something about world of warcraft playing it normaly and playing Pandaria Remix.
People tend to say: WoW starts at max level.
I have the feeling in terms of gameplay WoW ENDS at max level.
The moment you are max level nothing of your char ever changes again excapt for your gear. But since the enemies numbers go up all the time that is a “non-change” that just increases numbers but the gameplay doesnt change.
You will rarely change up your hotbar, your abilites, your talents, you will be using the same abilites and same patterns for the rest of the the current expansion.
When borrowed power in its many forms was still a thing your actually playing at level 70 changes what you do with your caracter, now only numbers change and sometimes maybe 1 ability thats better in m+ then raiding.
Pandaria Remix showed me when I started playing you can mix and match things, change up your class realy fast or play in a way you cant in retail cause the numbers are diffrent. For example with some classes as soon as you have certain amount of tempo you dont need to use some abilites anymore cause of cooldowns.
Just a thing to think about and not hating borrowed power so much.
I prefer not having borrowed power. Instead of feeling useless when you reach max level you now have most of what you need bar some gearing. Your power comes from you not some additional item or set of things that you then have to spend hours, days, weeks unlocking and building up.
I don’t agree with either of those statements.
The experience of playing WoW is all of it.
The enemy numbers don’t go up nearly as fast as a player’s numbers. So you DO get stronger over time.
Yes and I like that.
I don’t want to change up my hotbar, abilities and talents all the time.
I don’t hate borrowed power. I enjoyed grinding for artifact power. I like working towards something and a system like that allowed me to do that.
But… The system itself needs to be fun and interesting. And THAT is where Blizzard failed in BfA and Shadowlands. THAT is why many people started to dislike borrowed power.
But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of an rpg? If the main source of power is your own skill, why then have ANY numbers and gear and all outside of cosmetic reasons?
RPGs are defined by things like level, gear and learning new abilites.
When you make all abilities baseline and super fast to get its kinda not an RPG but an Action Adventure or something?
That’s why I said in terms of gameplay. Story, experience, art, etc all are part yes but the gameplay itself wont change much anymore.
This is only true if you do the highest end content and instantly enchant and socket and all. If you just gear up with the gear you get from questing, lfr and normal dungeons you actually are about the same strength as every monster at all times cause your itemlevel determines the power of the enemies.
No it defeats the purpose of an RPG if you are insignificant and all power comes from some neck/weapon/minions. In an RPG the power should come from you.
So I hope we never go back to the hell that Legion introduced. I never want to have to AP farm again. I never want to see make you play metrics back in the game. DF has been a breath of fresh air.
Noooo. I’m a predominantly world content player.
I only do LFR in terms of raids (and only if there’s some transmog there that I want or for a tier piece). I only do heroic dungeons at most.
And yet there’s a HUGE difference in power from when I start gearing in a season to when I’m ‘done’ gearing. I’m speaking from experience here.
Those things you mention “level, gear and learning new abilites” are part of an RPG, sure, but they’re not the ONLY part. There’s many factors to a game like WoW and many people enjoy it differently.
I don’t enjoy having to re-learn my class. I don’t enjoy having to change builds.
So I pick something I enjoy the gameplay of and stick with that; it’s the gameplay that brings me joy, not the theorycrafting, learning and whatnot.
So for you that argument might very well be true, but for other players it might not be.
In terms of enjoyment, I’ve still enjoyed Legion much more than DF.
But I’m the type of player who enjoys a grind; IF the endgoal is worthy and fun.
I’ve enjoyed DF just fine, but that’s all it was for me: Just fine.
It wasn’t fantastic most of the time. It wasn’t horrible either (with the low point for me being Zaralek Cavern and everything to do with that). But that’s all DF is for me: Fun, but ultimately not very outstanding WoW.
Legion WAS outstanding WoW for me.
Heck, even BfA offered me a more interesting world content routine than DF does.
Because for all its faults, earning AP through quests is fun for me and makes them feel worth doing; as opposed to now where I only do WQs with a nice gold reward. I will admit that part of that BfA WQ routine was the fact that I simply loved those 6 initial zones so much; each one of them in their own way.
The thing is…borrowed power was also just more levels, more skills, more “gaining experience”.
It just had a different form then the baseline levelling. Artefact Power was just XP, and Artefact Tree was just a skill tree, and the bonuses were just gear. Everything just in another form.
Also very rarely in ANY RPG the character himself becomes stronger, its nearly always some device/gear/power he earns that MAKES him strong. That has a story telling purpose. Its so you as a player don’t become disconnected with the character and think he isn’t “like you” anymore.
By your logic we should remove level from wow. And it kind of makes sense honestly…level are just a waiting room to play the actually game at this point. Since you have nearly learned every ability after one or two hours of gameplay that will be relevant later.
This argument will forever keep going in circle but borrowed power itself was never the issue. The issue is and forever will be the people with no self control that force themselves to grind things they never HAD to and blame borrowed power for their own lack of discipline.
Artifact weapons as one example were amazing, they might’ve started out a bit slow but Blizzard was quick enough to fix the problem and it was gold.
Borrowed power can work as an excellent carrot-on-a-stick but sadly too many addicts play this game.
It might be that I am wrong on this one, I just had the feeling when playing dragonflight that I am constantly even loosing power instead of becoming stronger. I just started playing wow retail again after some time.
Might be that I am the type of player that just loves to improve my character and the only source of power being gear and at the same time everything scaling with my item level doesn’t feel much like an improvement
This COULD be the actual case when I think about it. Its kind of like a level boost or a battle pass skip. You do something that actually removes the gameplay for you, makes you not play the game and you sometimes even PAY to not play the game.
And when those so called “addicts” gets way ahead of you. You are forced to grind more as well to catch up with them. End-game scene is a very competitive environment where everyone is looking for that small boost to give you that edge over others.
That’s in that case actually on blizzard if they design the game towards the addicts instead of leaving it as is, slightly challenging for people with low to medium effort gear and skill.
I would prefer if they kept some basic talent tree type design that they maybe change bit between expansions or with reworks but I would rather not see any borrowed powers again. I still see the aftermath of all the previous expansions with such.
I would like to see if its actually doable to have normally geared people try a raid that’s a bit over their gear level.
So to say…every slot a person has should have an corresponding upgrade in the raid. Can you beat the raid when your raid party is geared like that as a normal person?
I mean that just smacks of desperation if you have to go to such ridiculous extremes to try and make a point. I never said or suggested any of that.
My entire point is that we’ve done all that when we levelled, we gained more talent points, that is made us stronger, we are done with that now. We are max level and ready to go. We can gear up via any our preferred method and feel strong. Not be as weak as cabbage as we were at level 1. By the time we reach cap we should be strong, we should be a master of our class etc. That is an RPG.
People are free to disagree but do not try to tell me what I think or what I have said. It’s plain to see what I have said. If you feel it’s fine to be as weak as a baby when we cap and have yet another long winded grind to become powerful then that’s great for you. I simply do not agree.