TBCC has ruined WoW for me

Community General Discussion
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Retail dead. Not interested in TBC, don’t have time for that these days. Not to mention how boring the rotations are and how you spend 30 seconds of every 2-3 minutes drinking. For the time TBC was great, good to go down memory lane a bit, but not long haul for me. Now I just have to wait god knows how long for 9.1 and hope players come back to retail. And if they don’t what’s even the point? I’d love to know the numbers tbc has taken. Almost every streamer is playing tbc. Im gunna guess and hope that its like Classic hype, but only thing that got people back to retail then was a whole new expansion. Doubt 9.1 will have the same effect.

It feels like Blizz have killed their own game just to make more money. Not only from the ‘delux’ version of a game the majority of us already paid for back in the day, but people probably wont be playing retail to buy tokens with WoW gold, so will have to start paying monthly again.

Have they run out of ideas for retail? Or just scared to make drastic changes? Or have they released TBC in the hopes that people will realise how good they have it on retail, which backfired? I dont know. Next expansion they need to take feedback on from the entire players base and rework the game to work for everyone, stop all this classic nonsense imo. Wont ever happen, I know. Seems like WoW is in the milking stage and the game is going to end in the next expansion.

What are the predictions for next expansion? We go back to Azeroth and loads of time has past or we go back in time? We all end up playing WotLK again? Classic and retail merge into each other? Haha! Wouldn’t surprise me. Maybe they fix icecrown and the gateway to shadowlands, but by doing so we go back in time and Arthas is on the throne again, and we all have to pay for an old expansion, again…

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I think they just saw the insane publicity (1 million concurrent viewers on twitch) and the insane money Classic generated, so their marketing team probably pushed for TBC as soon as possible to milk the cash cow even more, nothing more to it.

But yes it is a bit disappointing that this has seemed to affect retail in the sense that they abandoned Shadowlands to do that pet project.

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My biggest bet that they’re trying to fix the game until a point - probably after wotlk classic. Because WoW will probably lose SO much people after wrath classic if retail still sucks.

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Many who left because of the state of Shadowlands aren’t going to rush back for patch 9.1. All patch 9.1 does is: A) Fix nothing and B) doubles, no triples down on some of the worst systems/aspects of the game.

It’s not like 9.1 hits the reverse pedal and takes Shadowlands into a Legion/BFA state.

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They’d rather focus on TBCC than admit that the game director’s vision for retail WoW is totally failed . That vision of his has greatly drained the player base. Now they’re barrel dredging with debiberately grindy gem systems, adding RIO etc to try force players of the big three (M+, raid, PVP) to play more than they would normally.

The game has next to no story content and if you added a covenants 9 chapter ‘stories’ together+raid lines, you have less than 30 mins of voiced text. It’s worse than a ‘12 episode season’ for a kids cartoon where the episodes are 10 minutes long.

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During 8.2 when classic was released i never felt people not playing retail :smiley:
now the only reason why you see people playing TBC is that there is no 9.1 and people already did all content in first patch of the expansion
it’s very well known that when expansion is new there is not much going on even BFA had this problem
8.3 felt like a complete game so when someone started during 8.3 he had so much content to do
and it will be the same for shadowlands

Blizzard always do this mistake
they fix the game in last patch and then reset everything :smiley:

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While i agree that Ion and the elitist jerks catering to the seasonal raiders mindset really has ruined the game,

I don’t see how them copying RIO into the game is anything new, Blizzard copies tons of popular addons, Gearscore and ilvl as we know today was also an Addon that they copied and added into the game, this isn’t anything new they do as a plot against the players.

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I can’t see them fixing this mess. The prior borrowed power systems had some fun and redeeming features.

The borrowed power system is this game forces you to play specific specs on a specific covenant or you’re ruining your damage output.

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It’s not new, just another shift in the direction that takes the game away from the roots which made it wildly positive in its beginning.

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Don’t you dare to say tbc is overrated!! Don’t you know the rules down here?

They haven’t. Their ideas sound good but actually suck.

That’s be a mistake. Listening to classic andies that would not play retail in the end would be a fatal error.

I’m not going to play this overrated expansion.

They should just stop releasing content with classics schedule in mind.

BFA 8.1 was good but not that different from 8.0.

Is that a bad thing to move incentives from wq to big3? Knowing legion shifted incentives from big 3 to wq.

That’s a problem they created themselves. If they were not reinventing the wheel every single expansion, then they would not make such mistakes.

That shift started around wrath.

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In my outlook, yes. The big three should be side content that is entirely optional, not the focus/requirement. That’s my outlook though and I know that some people are happy with M+/raids/rated PVP getting so much attention, people who enjoy that casual players are constantly being pushed to do one or more of them.

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Blizzard are making the categorical error of assuming that most of their playerbase shift between the two games (classic and retail) because of their love for WoW.

Some do, granted, but i’d wager most prefer one.

So this approach of having one “game” being stretched to tedium because the other is getting new toys, and vice versa, isn’t really working for a lot of us.

Like; TBCC dropped, that doesn’t change the fact and is no remedy for many players to SL’s stagnancy. I have no interest in playing TBCC, I did my original TBC run.

I hope they revisit this approach, because classic was supposed to be this “passion project” for a niche part of the playerbase, and I am not happy if the model going forward is it’s expected I “waste time” in older versions of the game to stop me becoming bored with the newer game I originally thought my sub was for.

I’m aware both have dev teams of their own, but you can see it with the patching - one gets changed when the other does not. It’s extremely clear what they’re doing and it’s extremely clear they thought TBCC release would take the heat off of SL’s patch length but i’m afraid for a good deal many players they probably gave TBCC’s release no more than a cursory thought such as “I hope the servers are up giving TBCC is out today” and that’s it.

And i’m aware that some classic fans will be all “yeah, but why should you get your way, why not me get mine?” and i’ll be frank. Classic had it’s day in vanilla and the game evolved. Things move forward. The game has moved forward. As a subber since vanilla, I expect the game to move forward. Just because some people wax lyrical about how “good it was” it does not mean that I, whom is interested in what it could be am interested in having my sub money being assumed to be “good for” me paying to visit a memory of a game I’m not particularly fanatical about as opposed to exploring ways to make the game better than it ever was.

We set an extremely low bar for the devs if we allow them to believe that their best option is to “play the popular record” they’ve played before, and that’s good enough, as opposed to expecting them to come up with better and better records. That’s their job is it not?

If people want to play the same record, then let them - somewhere else, a truly seperate project. It’s how this sort of thing is done pretty much everywhere - you have niche clubs and groups for these sorts of time-preserved interests, but what you don’t do is start having modern music companies delaying their investment and scouting of contemporary talent because they now dedicate two weeks in a month to playing old records and expecting people to like it.

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I cannot stress this enough. I started in 2007, played the most of Vanilla and the most of TBC, and they both sucked imo. Sure for the time they were good, but now with the current systems, I just can’t figure out why people play it, other than the pure nostalgia. Call me crazy, but I actually believe TBC is the worst expansion they have released (or on par with WOD).

I think they are scared of making drastic changes. I think WoW’s community is the hardest to cater to, and they just rather go with the ‘safer’ approach, than to do something next level.

They did that with SL though, you have to keep that in mind. Throughout BFA players literally complained non-stop about class design, about mechanics that are infinite (e.g. azerite power, artifcat power), about clearing world content to be eligible for raids (azerite farming, some essences), and last but not least, titanforging. I remember countless of posts and comments everywhere, how gear is easy to obtain, how people hate being showered in epics.

Now look at SL. There is 0 mechanics that make you better in a raid, outside of the 2 renown levels you got per week. Anima is purely cosmetic, and doesn’t give you any advantages. Gear was hard to get. M+ is nerfed to the ground, and the only viable way to get good gear is to be lucky on the great vault. There is no azerite / artifact power. And most importantly, when you get a good piece of gear, you are done for the reminder of the patch.

See the irony? I always argued with the above mentioned complaints, that titanforging, infinite mechanics are good for the game. Why? Because it atleast kept me playing, and because there was always something in the back of my head, that meant I will be better (I’m not a competitive player btw, nor a minmaxer).

Would be the best bet, no matter how crazy it sounds. Anyways, if retail doesn’t get better anytime soon, atleast wotlk classic will come in 1 year 11 months time. :smiley: Will deffo stick for that one, as it was by far the best expansion and time ever in the game, atleast for me. :slight_smile:

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I played TBC back in the day and I am playing some TBCC now, but I am only playing TBCC because of the fact my IRL friends all shifted over to it.

Professions and other aspects feel rewarding to upgrade, it’s nice not seeing M+ runners and all of that other nonsense.

I still spend most of my game time in retail though, but in older expansions doing bits a missed.

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I loved TBC at the time. I had loads of time to play, I loved getting my Lionheart Executioner and getting my belf pally in glad gear and kicking backside on the Isle of QD. The long grind for epic flying. The hard dungeons. Loved it.

Despite this, this does not mean I want to be expected by blizzard to “enjoy the old days” as a way of ignoring their lack of action on their “new days” because it’s a cop out.

Think of it like this. You’re running a kid’s birthday party. You’ve promised the kids a laser disco with a professional singer live. They’re excited, obviously. The kids turn up to your party super excited, they can’t wait for the singer. “It will be at 3pm” you say, they accept it. They do other party stuff. It gets to 3pm, the singer isn’t here, you call them, oh crap, you arranged them for 6pm ,not 3pm. You now have a 3 hour window of time you thought was sorted, which is now open, and you can tell people are itching for the disco.
In the meantime, you put on the tv old cartoons and tell the kids “enjoy” and although some of them do indeed enjoy this, the kids whom turned up for the promise of something a bit more exciting, are bored, and why shouldn’t they be? They didn’t come to sit and watch old cartoons, and yet now they’re being told they have to either do that, or sit around being bored, in order to wait for the disco.
In this scenario the problem is the party planner has badly planned their execution, and is now expecting the kids to “make do” with their approach, when in my opinion, those kids have every right to be pissed off.

The difference here however, isn’t that blizzard simply “forgot” to release 9.1. The problem is they have decided to focus on letting people watch cartoons rather than prioritising making sure the disco is sorted. I mean they have poured energy and time into getting the TBCC release out, sorting out honour mistakes with people etc. And meanwhile SL gets a big fat silence on what;'s going on.

We can easily say “covid19” and I get that, I really do. But the actions with TBCC and the responsiveness to the honour fiasco and making sure issues were ironed out before launch (and launch went ahead as stated, no exceptions) makes me think this capacity to execute is there when blizz put their minds to it. The issue is they’ve put more of their minds into it for a old rerun of the game, rather than the actual game we’re required to be subbed to to play the old nostalgic version, whilst at the same time we’re tapping our foots impatiently.

I mean their inability to read the room is absolutely breathtaking it really is. Why on earth are they posting about arena being released in TBCC here? Really? \remind us of the updates going ahead as planned in TBCC whilst we’re sitting here with no idea as to when 9.1 is coming and we’ve been in this patch for 7 months or so. TBCC has been out what, a couple of weeks and they’ve already had the first major update.

It is a freaking joke.

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I agree with all your points, but I can only like it once.

Retail used to be social for me and the social aspect is a big pull (combined with the other aspects), but when people I know left the game entirely or went into TBCC it means I play TBCC a little, but only lightly and for social reasons.

Blizzard can ‘assume’ away on why I play TBCC a little, but the above is my one and only reason: friends.

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I bet you’re not alone, I imagine there are many people who play wow with and for their friends, and if their friends whom are “kinda into” TBCC go into it to kill boredom, those retail friends are kinda inclined to follow them even if they don’t really like TBCC in-itself.

I have no issue with TBCC in itself not those whom enjoy it. I think my issue is blizzard’s assumption that absolutely every wow player is hyped over it (arrogant beyond belief) and then going as far as to update a very bored and impatient retail GD forum with all of the wonderful updates and goings-on in TBCC, when they’re despserately waiting for an update themselves.

I think of it like this. I’m hungry but i can’t eat until the evening because of preferences. You (not you personally) know i’m hungry. There’s nothing wrong with you eating in and of-itself, but you deciding you’re going to open your chips in front of me, and eat them in front of me, whilst talking about how cool they are, whilst being valid, would make you a bit of douche.

That is blizzard right now.

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Exactly i’m a person of TODAY
even tho i like to reminisce
i still prefer to moving forward as a person or as a gamer
to me the TBC is like an OLD photo
I like OLD songs but i prefer new albums from the artist because i want to see how they look at the WORLD today not 10 years ago
i do not call my ex-girlfriends to talk about how good was the TIME we spend together
But many people are stuck with opinion that the game was in best state in THIS expansion or that expansion

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TBC is a great trip down memory lane. For many it’s just a stop gap until 9.1. Not everyone will go for the old skool experience, some just play other games or take a break.

I am reminded of how much Retail has come in terms of gameplay and quality of life. Retail wins by miles.

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In my views, it’s the other way around, ie world content should be optional whereas big 3 should be getting the most work.

Legion and BFA were expansions in which I was never able to play an alt at a decent level, since non big3 content was mandatory in order to do big3 content.

Reminds me of thete gaming saying Blizzard lost customers with legion, because some raiders can dedicate enough time for raid logging but can’t afford to spend more time playing. By killing raid logging, Blizzard lost players too.

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