10.2 is already way better than 10.1 and we’re only in first day. However, the dragonflight pattern is still here. most of the things we do in outdoor will be useless the moment season starts next week and then there won’t be any way to get some power & gear. i know this is what many players wanted after last few expansions but at the end of the day this is an mmorpg. you need to provide engaging content .
the casual outdoor content that released today is supposed to last for a whole year with few additions with 10.2.5 and 10.2.7
the difference between 10.2 and 10.1 is story is a bit more interesting and the rewards look better but is it enough for a year ? none of the weekly stuff will matter the moment players start pushing keys . i’m not against m+ or raids don’t get me wrong, i’m just saying i see a month worth of content and then the rest ? new weekly events will be like researchers under fire , becoming irrelevant after a few weeks . i’m pretty sure most of the active playerbase didn’t do that event more than 2-3 times
the good: you don’t need to do anything else if you only do m+ or raids
the bad: you don’t have any reason to do weekly things after you get your rewards, even if you do get all the rewards out there it won’t take longer than a month since there aren’t many.
dragonflight pattern: release content that’ll last a few weeks , wait for 3 months for a new bit of content that will only be useful for alts, absolute lack of anything for a few months, new season and repeat.
every other mmo has ways to mix these stuff. even tho future xpacs look way better with additions like delves, it won’t take away the big issue here. wow needs bigger changes.
one last note: i love everything that comes as a reward with 10.2 they all look great. it’s just not enough for a whole year . hope this topic doesn’t find people who just wants to stand against any different opinion .
Well if we go by Blizzard’s own “learnings” you can just compare the differences between Dragonflight and the upcoming The War Within.
Dragonflight doesn’t have compelling outdoor content. The War Within has Delves.
Dragonflight has a storyline that goes in many different directions. The War Within has a singular story objective.
Dragonflight has catch-up systems galore. The War Within is (seemingly) shorter so it doesn’t have to rely on that.
Dragonflight is a character-centric experience. The War Within is more account-centric because of Warbands.
And Dragonflight and The War Within have notably different themes, tones, atmospheres, and character lineup.
I think the goal of having shorter expansions will be the best medicine for WoW, if Blizzard can pull it off.
Right now the Seasons are too long, they’re too many, and they’re not supported by enough content to remain relevant for these long expansion cycles. Players simply lose interest in the hamster wheel experience. So speeding the expansion development up should result in fewer Seasons before a new expansion comes out, so it’s easier – as a player – to stay in a loop where you’re looking forward to the next thing, because it’s not just Season upon Season upon Season.
Either you force players to do content or you let them choose to content.
If you force them, they do it - for a while. Then they’ll resent doing it, then they’ll quit.
This is what happened. Their tolerance lasted longer than I’d have thought since it went from Legion upt to SL when their tolerance broke.
Open world content gives power through flightstones and crests. Not enough in my mind but it’s there.
Problem is that M+ gives way more of this so M+ players don’t feel like open world content is rewarding enough.
I say reduce the rewards from M+ drastically and increase the rewards from Open World Content and then you’ll see a lot more players doing it.
If you were to retroactively optimize Dragonflight, then it probably ought to look like this:
10.0 box content.
10.1 Guardian of the Dream.
11.0. Next expansion.
Zaralek Cavern and that whole Season comes off as an in-between that doesn’t really do anything. It’s just a bothersome stepping stone between the initial experience and the exciting ending.
It was the same in Shadowlands. The Korthia Season didn’t really do much good either.
Even in BfA Blizzard could easily have constructed the story so it took us straight to Nazjatar, instead of having the Battle of Dazar’alor. It’s just extra fluff that ultimately only serves to drag out the expansion. WoW is much better off when players can see the next expansion shortly ahead of them – there’s excitement in that. There’s no excitement in seeing 3-4 hamster wheel Seasons ahead of you.
but this will force those players again . they will resent and ‘‘quit’’ (which they actually don’t as long as m+ is fine and gets regular updates). delves are a great idea to let players get hc raid gear at a slower pace but will it be enough ? i think if we had some sort of legendary crafting with it’s pieces dropping from both open world and m+ content at a weekly capacity it could be great .
or just increase the amount of good cosmetics like don’t add the coolest mount as mythic raid reward on top of everything else players get. add a recolor of it to open world for example.
The main reason that people who raid/m+ will want to do the new zone is renown 18, it gives a reusable rune for 100k (which regular runes cost 1-3k each), so most people that are pushing are gonna go for that.
Another good things that they did (that DF lacked until now), is that this patch is STACKED on the cosmetic department:
A TON of new mounts, with some of them being really good looking/original.
Outdoor sets that actually are comparable to tier sets in regards to quality (visually).
Weekly events that actually reward mounts/tmogs/resources.
Generally I think comparing it to 10.1 does it a disservice. I think the content available is WAY better than zaralek caverns.
I mean I am happy that I don’t have to do this boring outdoor farm fiesta and can just do the content I like.
Outdoor content in WoW has never been engaging or meaningful anyways. It was either a must grind for rep gate stuff or a time gate system trash fiesta that nobody liked either.
I don’t know how you want to make killing rares or doing stupid quests exciting but I am 100% certain that this cannot be achieved.
Delves will be basically a dungeon/scenario thing that rewards mediocre rewards and is for those people who seemingly have anxiety to join dungeon groups. From what it sounds like it will be more or less dungeons that replaced players with NPC and maybe has a little different setting than trash+bosses or so.
Most people don’t need that either.
I never seen anybody in pugs use any aug runes because they are so minor and so expensive. a 100k rune will also not change that.
If you just run 20s, there is absolutely no reason to get the rune anyways.
I don’t know, generally I don’t see any major differences in the playstyles between the last patches (caverns and isle or whatever the name was). Do crappy events and kill rares while having a weird weekly quest.
I am fine with that because I am not force to do that. So props to those who enjoy this kind of activities. And yea it looks like the rewards got a little better for that at least.
I think outdoor content feels useless because they conditioned the playerbase into thinking these things were mandatory for power progression in legion/bfa/sl etc with the ap grind, legendary powers, other long carrot on a stick farms
Now when they have largely decoupled the world content from player power progression that we were used to the last like 5-6 years it feels worthless, when in reality this is the way it always was before the ap grind era
wow has one of the best stories & open world in the industry as it always has something good to do in the open world . right now it lacks that. Shadowlands & Bfa were more WOW than Dragonflight, if you don’t like those, you should’ve left not me.
literally gives heroic raid rewards at the end of the progress
i don’t want those stupid things either that’s why i’m not happy with the game’s state.
good for you, there’s nothing for people who don’t like to do the same exact thing for 6 months tho
dragonflight is killing wow’s mmo aspect . this doesn’t mean they should force the grind on hardcore players but the more you guys ignore the issue the more players this game will lose as it’s already heavily bleeding in the expansion that is supposedly the best one in a while. 8m characters tried m+ in s1 and only around 2.5-3m came back to m+ in s2.
first of all i never specified the content i like and that is none of your business, you like doing the same 8 dungeons which includes half of them from old expansions, for 6 months just to get NOTHING and your progress to be reset but i’m not judging you.
Recycled content every patch. After bad bfa and dog SL we received medicore expansion. Don’t get me wrong, blizzard made a lot of great changes like trading post, talent trees, frequent patches, customization etc. Core game is still dog. 1600 guilds achieved CE this tier and blizzard still pumps a lot of resources into something that very few care to participate in. M+ has been the same since legion. Pugging is probably the worst experience wow has to offer. They have to implement solo queue for m+ and revamp how keys work/rewards structure. Open world content doesn’t exist, two core features of the game became snooze fiesta, and even though blizzard’s made a lot of good changes, it’s not enough to make people care about wow again.
Yes, it’s about difficulty and improvement. You want to remove your brain and do e-h3roin. Which has great cost to Blizzard releasing the content you need. We just redo the same thing.
thank god someone understood the context. totally agree with you.
no i don’t you just keep assuming things because you lack experience it’s your problem. try to play other games to see casual content can actually be challenging . good luck to you when they decide to change how things work in wow, it’s clear that they’re aware of the awful m+ and other issues . have fun while you can <3
no it’s not. you can casually play elden ring that doesn’t make the game easy, you can casually do arenas in ESO that doesn’t make them easy, you can casually grind anything in gw2, doesn’t make the game easy. most mmos give you optiion here, wow players in general lack knowledge in mmos so they think casual content has to be very easy. litreally play some other games/ mmos to see the point.
m+ is a doomed experience with it’s current state and won’t last long as it’s heavily bleeding in numbers