I generally enjoy WoW. Despite all the nay-sayers, I have fun in BfA just like I had in Legion or earlier expansion. And by that I mean I mostly have fun. But occasionally I find out that someone in Blizzard has decided that I have to engage in a content that I despise if I want to see major part of the game.
This was especially prevalent in Legion, when we had to finish dungeons in order to complete class campaign or even get basic profession recipes, we had to kill final raid boss to complete Suramar story and even had to get into PVP-free-for-all zones in order to get some recipes / parts of the campaign.
It’s fine when those things are optional, minor and/or prestigious such as specific mounts (hivemind or any of the mythic kill ones) or just make things more effective (Anchor Weed is great example. Dungeon quest is needed to get rank 2, but you can always get rank 1 and gather it anyway).
It’s not fine when story is locked by group content that is not convenient (like Xavius kill for Suramar storyline - sure, you could get it via LFR, but eventually less people were interested in it and queue time was increasing).
It’s far from fine when you are forced to do a specific type of content in order to unlock something that is a major part of the expansion and was advertised as one of its key features.
I’ve just read this
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/zandalari-kul-tiran-allied-race-testing/73737
And now I’m really irritated, to say the least. Horde needs Zandalar Forever achievement which requires a single-player scenario, but Alliance has to do A Nation United - a long quest-chain that involves several dungeons including one that is only available at mythic difficulty?
I don’t get it. Who thought that it would be a good idea? You don’t force people to do pet battles to get the story, right? You don’t tell people to get a mythic difficulty raid kill. You don’t make engaging in PvP and winning in Arena a requirement for major parts of expansion, right? So why are you forcing us to run dungeons and some of them can’t even be accessed via the automatic group-finding tool that you gave us back in WotLK?
I hate dungeons. I hate them with a passion. I can’t stand the go-go-go attitude that so many other players show and which is even encouraged by M+ timers. And I’m not the only one. I remember other people complaining about locking World Quests in Argus behind a dungeon. I know people who back in Legion were running M+ and this expansion they just don’t bother, they’ve lost interest.
I could ask some people to help me, friends or guildies, sure I could. But I would have to ask them to either do something they don’t enjoy or something that gives them no reward just to run a dungeon with me just for the sake of completing it. Then I’d have to do some single quests and ask them for another dungeon run. Some more quests and another dungeon run. I’m not sure how many dungeons are needed for Nation United, I know it’s at least three though, separated by other requirements.
But I’m not going to. I will not ask people to pull me through content I despise. I just don’t want to waste their time and mine. Because even if I do it now, spend time looking for people then force myself to complete it all, Blizzard will pull it again for something else.
Instead I will reconsider if I’m getting my money’s worth out of this game.
I know that some people will come with argument that this is MMO and I should expect group activity. That is true. But I don’t expect forced specific type of group activity. I choose where and how I play with people and if I like raids or PvP I want to engage in that. We don’t force PvP even though it is faction war expansion. Raids and PvP are optional. Dungeons, as it turns out, are mandatory.
And if you compare how much time and effort it takes to get those two achievements on both sides, Horde one is just so much player-friendly, while Alliance one is just a chore.