Define meaningful content, there’s plenty to do before ilv 470.
It’s not too bad to catch up, the big hinderance is knowing how to do it.
You can go from fresh 120 to 450 in a few days with nazjatar, black empire campaign, assaults, bosses and emisarries.
The only real drag is leveling cloak and essences.
I understand your sentiment but I personally think that catch-up mechanics, for example, count as “unimportant content: rush through it - only the latest releases = important content”.
What I’m looking for are steps towards an overall inclusion of the entire game, even if everything has to be restructured.
Let’s see what the level-squish and future will bring. I’m afraid choosing “unchanged” expansions via a table alone won’t provide an overall satisfying progression system. A suggestion would be to restructure everything in a way so that bosses, zones or quests would remain relevant at max level giving all parts of the game a dignity they deserve, without scaling mobs.
Maybe also scaling down expansion area sizes, fewer quests that refer to deleted ones to maintain their dignity - this would make zones themselves more attractive since you’re now stuck in smaller interpretations of them making you wonder about their beauty again.
There’s so much one could do…
I quit in WOTLK. Recently returned 2 months ago!. I have managed to get a warrior up to 465 item level, which is my guilds raid level. Even leveled 6 others to 120. But there is no chance i will play these, not an alt friendly game at all. Pathfinder is simple not going to happen. I would rather spend my time doing something far more intresting
A bit behind is fine, this behind, isn’t. The gap between a full corrupted char and a newbie is huge.
Forget pve where most likely you won’t get grouped at all because there are tons of people available who will do much more than you no matter what you try: pvp? You think entering an arena as a newcomer or a returning veteran with 20 corruption against people who have 8-9 stack amp is a fine, skill rewarding and enjoyable experience?
Depends on which TW and which spec you are .
Last week on Wotlk no weapons on vendor for Frost DK .
good
this is how mmorpg should be
people who invest their time should be much stronger then lazy people who want instant catch up.
hope for SL to be the same - and so far with covenants , soulbinds , runecarving etc seems exackly this way .
as it should be.
no it shouldn’t, otherwise you’re cutting off everyone that start after a while in the xpac. does not make any sense.
especially because the corruption gap is on top of all the other gaps, essences, azerite, gear etc etc etc
My problem is that ilv means pretty much squat and it’s mostly about azerites, essences, cloak and corruptions. It’s true that catching up to ~450ilv is pretty quick just doing world quests and other auxiliary content, but that doesn’t get you much anywhere. You’re still getting deleted by superior corruptions in arena and not welcome in most raid groups. Getting your corruptions, azerites and essences is where the mind-bogglingly excessive grind is, a grind for features that’ll be removed by the time you make any meaningful progress into them this late into the expansion. The whole point of catch-up is to let latecomers enjoy the little that is left of the expansion. You only need to look at the previous expansion to see how catch-up should’ve been done, with everyone being able to just get an item from class order hall to max out your artifact weapon, specific legendaries being easily purchaseable from a vendor with a currency you could realistically farm enough of within a day or two and high item level gear being purchaseable from a vendor in Vindicaar. That’d already make you set for the last raid and be somewhat competitive in PvP.
I was doing my compulsory military service so I couldn’t play the game even if I wanted to. Now that it’s over, I looked forwards to jumping back to the game I enjoyed. As it stands, it seems it’s better to just catch up on alts levels with timewalking as someone pointed out and disregard the remainder of BfA, no matter how much I would’ve liked to enjoy it. I wrote the OP as this realization was starting to sink in and I can’t say I’m not disappointed at the game in it’s current form. Just a waste of a subscription.
Next time don’t quit for an entire expansion and think you’ll be on par with other players when you come back.
Makes you look rather stupid.
You’re unruly of a reply here, go away.
I never expected to be on par. Read the thread before replying and you won’t seem so silly yourself.
My problem is that the systems that attribute for BfAs power progression are very grindy and time consuming, and by the time you make any meaningful progression into them, they’ll be removed and/or disabled, making it pretty pointless to even get started with them this late into the expansion, which is the sole purpose of catch-ups with these borrowed power systems that are only temporary. The systems require you to invest more time than there is time left in the expansion and they only exist within this expansion. I wouldn’t mind progressing and investing time and effort into them otherwise. The catch-ups for essences and corruptions are very weak at best, since I don’t have a main with any noteworthy essences yet for I quit in 8.0, so I can’t utilize the essence vendor, nor could I equip any meaningful corruptions yet since I don’t have the corruption resistance to do so without blowing myself into pieces, and the cloak progress and rep grinds for essences are pretty much timegated behind months of resets.
Just disappointed about wasting a subsription is all I guess.
Nah that’s complete and utter Bull. I started a new character a week and a half ago and I’m already 470 ilvl with full essences.
If you put your back into it, you can catch up fully in 3 weeks tops.
I bought SL yesterday and used by boost on a paladin. None of my other characters are super high geared or anything anyway so I’ve decided to use this one to do all the quest lines I haven’t completed and try and grind some rep for flying etc - think it would take me too long to gear up seeing my highest character is only 461 lol
While you can do a lot, there are just things pretty difficult to get, or takes a lot to farm. I got my cloak of my shaman last week on 15. I am exactly 15 weeks behind on the 3 extra resistence, what is 30k echoes. I also needed to buy essences, and there are corruption-‘scroll’ costs incoming, which is also around 30k echoes. How do you get 60k echoes?
And azerite pieces are also a problem. When you are able to finish a +10 each week it takes 9 weeks to buy 1 random piece for each slot.
Not to think of sockets for every slot, which has A LOT of value with stat corruption amplifiers 
Talking about utter bull, grinding essences from scratch (as in actually getting them, grinding the reps honor etc, not just buying off the vendor) alone is something that takes well over “3 weeks tops”. Corruptions even more so. Again, I left the game in 8.0, unlike you, I don’t have the option to just buy essences from MOTHER. That’s only intended to help alts, as it is helping you with your alts, not really a catchup for someone who hasn’t done the months of grinding in the first place. Memory of Lucid Dreams alone takes well over “3 weeks tops” to get to a meaningful rank, let alone the rest, and at this point it doesn’t seem very sensible to start the grind in the first place as it’d be removed by the time I unlock it anyway.
So I was at home watching Netflix, then decided to go to the store and got there later than everyone else. Can you guys believe I had to wait in line?? It’s disgusting to think that the people who went in early and waited all that time got served before I did. Getting there late should entitle me to cut line. Unbelievable.
It’s more like standing in a line that lasts longer than the store is open, since the essences and corruptions will be disabled by the time you’d realistically be able to get them at this point.
Why would you even bother with those at this point in expansion ?
Even if more aggressive catch up has been implementer ,it would not be worth.
If i was you ,i would level alts to 120 and wait for pre-patch events to gear them up.
That’s what I’ve concluded too. I hoped there’d be some actual catch-ups like there were in Legion, which is why I subscribed. So it’s a waste of a subscription for me which is what’s annoying me. Catching up alts to 120 with timewalking is probably what I’ll be doing since that’s the only thing that makes sense, but it’s a disappointment. Like I said earlier, I’m returning from compulsory military service so I was out of the loop for a while, looked forwards to catching up with the expansion I almost missed only to find out it’s not really welcoming of people coming back late like this. Unlike of Legion, which is kind of the experience I was expecting since it worked so well there and it doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t have similiar catch-ups this time around. Seems backwards.