World of Warcraft

[Bob_]

We still run Gruul every week for the chance of a couple of mains to get their missing DST.

I actually really enjoy this as we are all in full shit-talking mode given how unchallenging the content is. And I like that a trinket I got months ago is still good for me.

 

[Fcret]

We still run Gruul every week for the chance of a couple of mains to get their missing DST.

I actually really enjoy this as we are all in full shit-talking mode given how unchallenging the content is. And I like that a trinket I got months ago is still good for me.

No fun comfy raiding allowed in retail. Raiding will be an esport catering to ~40 people and you will like it (and also buy the pig).

 

[ZMOT]

I always hated how worthless crafting was in WoW. I'd only ever level my skills up for the achievements and the occasional self perk like discounted enchants or engineering gadgets. There were so few relevant crafted items you could make on par with raid gear, and they'd get lost in the tide of BoEs that trash would drop. Yet another system cast to the sidelines in favor of shuttling everyone into raiding.

because crafting hardly works in a mmo with linear progression - how would you balance it (let alone imagine blizzard manage it). add to that the absolutely autistic userbase which gets butthurt about "welfare epics" (without ever understanding the necessary function it provided) and you get a legacy feature none of the current devs can't handle.
over time the game also focused more and more on the gearing aspect while narrowing the avenues to get said gear and progress, can't have crafting throw a wrench into their finely tuned "lol just grind moar" design.

Really, they should just make some gear craftable and have a system like they did in TBC where you needed some resource from raids or dungeons to make it, so that you couldn't just skip it, and you could even make each raid tier have its own unique bullshitium ore. Cool stuff like weapons, shoulders, helms can still drop from raids, while mundane stuff like bracers, boots, maybe rings, can be crafted with some junky version also coming from raids so you're not forced into crafting alone. This would also let them make smaller raids.

Though what they need to address before anything is the insane stat inflation between raids. Something like Dragon Spine Trophy being from one of the first raids and the best trinket for almost the whole expansion isn't an issue, if anything it makes it memorable and gives people to run the place more often. Hell, I remember guilds would do semi-carries for pugs with a handful of their members but keep the Dragon Spine Trophy on reserve.

raid drops for crafted gear wouldn't change anything, they did it in the past and drops were so low (because fuck people who can't or don't want to raid in WoW) that prices were so high they were outside any casual or anyone looking to catch-up. if you buy gold via tokens to get gear might as well get a carry run in the first place.

the stat inflation won't change either because it serves two purposes: high difference mean people HAVE to farm it if they want to progress (what, clearing current tier with last tier's gear? preposterous!), and retail players have been trained for almost two decades that HIGHER NUMBA BETTA NUMBA. those are the same people who solely go by the number popping up when hitting things, and that number can never ever be lower (or too low after an upgrade), see the spergouts about stat squish.

it's exactly what retail players ask for, even if they're constantly bitching about it.

Then there was the whole multiple different levels of luck in how gear can roll, socket, no socket, titan forged, etc. That was their attempt at making things more replayable and from what I understand now most gear comes in weekly loot boxes because getting a paycheck feels fun or something in their mind. They also removed master loot and barred trading heavily, because fuck you for having friends or a good guild you play with, don't you dare try to be social in an MMO.

which reminds me, a while ago I noticed ESO having individual loot was the same thing causing much wailing when they introduced it in WoW, didn't really ever think about that before. of course it's properly implemented with a 2 hour trade window and now collections so the only RNG is which item you gonna get first. that whole loot autism just doesn't exist there, least of all in raids. don't miss DKP at all (hot take: SK was always better anyway).
point is what would WoW be without it?

 

[Retink]

raid drops for crafted gear wouldn't change anything, they did it in the past and drops were so low (because fuck people who can't or don't want to raid in WoW) that prices were so high they were outside any casual or anyone looking to catch-up. if you buy gold via tokens to get gear might as well get a carry run in the first place.

The thing is though is you can make those resources more plentiful or open new avenues to gaining them as time goes on. I'm sure it's easier to balance resources than it is to balance gear as a whole, especially since resources to craft gear gives you more options in terms of what the resources can make as well as doing hard increases where it's a permanent boost to drop rate versus a double resource week or something to smooth the market out without crashing it completely.

 

[Fcret]

The thing is though is you can make those resources more plentiful or open new avenues to gaining them as time goes on. I'm sure it's easier to balance resources than it is to balance gear as a whole, especially since resources to craft gear gives you more options in terms of what the resources can make as well as doing hard increases where it's a permanent boost to drop rate versus a double resource week or something to smooth the market out without crashing it completely.

I think he's more talking about how the remaining worlo playerbase simply won't accept crafted gear being good. Other games with relevant crafted gear don't have 15+ years of ingrained raid elitism to contend with.

Worlo players, regardless of what they say, seem to like having to autistically grind for power. So much so that when they go to other games with more accessible forms of player power, they complain about having nothing to do once they have gear because they're utterly mindbroken.

Unfortunately, loot spergs are also the ones most likely to buy the token and pay for boosts so there's almost no incentive for Blizz to make gearing less retarded until the active player population is outright terminal.

 

[Retink]

I think he's more talking about how the remaining worlo playerbase simply won't accept crafted gear being good. Other games with relevant crafted gear don't have 15+ years of ingrained raid elitism to contend with.

Worlo players, regardless of what they say, seem to like having to autistically grind for power. So much so that when they go to other games with more accessible forms of player power, they complain about having nothing to do once they have gear because they're utterly mindbroken.

Unfortunately, loot spergs are also the ones most likely to buy the token and pay for boosts so there's almost no incentive for Blizz to make gearing less retarded until the active player population is outright terminal.

I get where you're coming from and WoW does make you rather brain dead because the gameplay is optimized to do that. But there are ways of fixing that without just doing a knee jerk all or nothing approach that WoW uses. Start with something small, as in it's the loot system of now, but one piece has a good crafter option, then slowly introduce a little more over time so that people get used to it.

Don't they even have ways to boost an items ilevel with a purchased item? So why not just make that a crafter item you can carry around with you and make it a little grindy to craft. I remember really liking Blacksmithing in Wotlk because you could craft items to give you more sockets and a belt buckle, but WoW for some reason always made those things profession specific so that you felt somewhat forced into a profession, rather than just taking one to cut down costs and being able to buy things with gold.

I don't know, WoW just seems to always pick the worst exploration in terms of how to make loot different. I know the legends in legion sucked originally because if you got the wrong one early as you got the first one easily it was better to just reroll than to grind like a retard. Then in Shadow Lands they did recipes you could craft for the legendary, but those also dropped in dungeons so when one dropped 3-4 members in the group would quit after it was gone. Fuck sakes, why not just make resources drop and have a small chance of dropping from each boss like Righteous Orbs back in the day, people used to love those and Crusader Enchant is a super memorable upgrade.

 

[Fcret]

I don't know, WoW just seems to always pick the worst exploration in terms of how to make loot different.

A current dev for the game straight-up said on twitter that they love it when they find extremely long guides theorycrafting a system they designed. The entire game is built to be as purposefully obtuse as possible and that won't change until the current devs are either leashed or replaced by people with normal pronouns.

 

[Retink]

A current dev for the game straight-up said on twitter that they love it when they find extremely long guides theorycrafting a system they designed. The entire game is built to be as purposefully obtuse as possible and that won't change until the current devs are either leashed or replaced by people with normal pronouns.

It's fine to be obtuse, as long as the game is fun, but when it's a trash fire where no one is happy with anything happening it's a rather bad idea to try to create more friction. I do remember them being mad at people simming instead of just deciding to accept simming being a thing and design less bullshit to try to subvert it.

 

[Next Task]

It's not. I'm pointing out that LFR shouldn't exist and normal should be matchmade and be the 'skill floor' for WoW. The existence of a 'story mode' fight that is basically impossible to wipe on is kind of a problem.

It seems to be increasingly common in MMOs to have a story mode for dungeons/raids, which I think is fine. It's a good way for casuals to learn the mechanics and experience whatever story is part of the instance, but gives much weaker loot because of it. Depends how it's done, of course, but it's better to let as much of the userbase get the mechanics down as possible before they start doing things at difficulties where they could cause a full wipe by being stupid.

But then, maybe I've just played friendlier MMOs where players would explain mechanics.

I always hated how worthless crafting was in WoW.

So they've removed any incentive to take a crafting profession, then? Because if there's nothing worth getting on any of the paths, does that just mean most people only take gathering skills? Or have the professions completely changed from Classic?

 

[King Dead]

So they've removed any incentive to take a crafting profession, then? Because if there's nothing worth getting on any of the paths, does that just mean most people only take gathering skills? Or have the professions completely changed from Classic?

I'll preface this by saying that I started in the tail end of Wrath and quit in early BfA, so I didn't have much experience with the earliest side of the game.

That said, during pretty much the entirety of my playtime, crafting professions were more or less meaningless. The basic gear you could make while leveling was outclassed by questing gear that you'd get within the first hour or two, so there was never much of a market for it (I always sent it over to my enchanter to DE). Same with the max-level blues, maybe alright to pick up if you needed to fill out a slot but otherwise kind of worthless. If you dealt in bulk, maybe you could make some profit on the AH from people that wanted to jumpstart with a base set of gear, but when level boosts became a thing, that was less appealing since you'd get a free set of appropriate gear.

And as mentioned, there was very little endgame gear that you could craft, and it was always ridiculously expensive. The only real benefit I saw to most profs was the free boosts you'd get, like blacksmiths putting sockets in their gear or leatherworkers getting free leg enchants. It did have a drawback, though. Gathering professions would also provide a stat boost, but it wasn't as good as what the crafting professions offered, so you'd generally want double crafting if you were going to raid on that character. But going double crafting meant that you couldn't get resources yourself, which was especially painful at the start of the expansion when everything costs an arm and a leg.

Consumables were pretty much the only consistent moneymaker that I recall. Alchemists with potions and flasks, enchanters with enchants, scribes with glyphs (until those stopped being consumable), and other miscellaneous ones like leatherworkers' drums. If it was something players needed to stock up on for raids, you could probably make some coin off of it. Of course, if you were like me and your main didn't have consumables to create, you were shit out of luck. I was LW/engi on my main, and I rarely played my alts; I think drums existed back in BC, but they didn't add them to LW again until Legion IIRC.

I did still like engineering, even if it was borderline impossible to make any money with it. Pets and mounts were pretty much it for its moneymaking potential, if you spent the time and money on getting all the components; if you didn't, oh well, sucks to be you. But I mostly used it for all those gadgets and tinkers that made the game much more bearable. Rocket boots, gliders, Jeeves, Blingtron, portable wormholes...engineering had a lot of fun stuff.

Anyway, I dunno what people do nowadays with crafting. There were occasionally some good things to make, but overall I generally just stopped using my professions after I got them leveled up. I wish they would have made gathering professions more accessible; either make them all secondaries and let you pick them all up, or perhaps two crafting and one gathering. Being able to pick up resources myself on a double-crafting character might have made me craft more.

 

[Berrakh]

So what was wrong with Sargeras as a villain?

 

[Fcret]

So they've removed any incentive to take a crafting profession, then? Because if there's nothing worth getting on any of the paths, does that just mean most people only take gathering skills? Or have the professions completely changed from Classic?

Crafting still produces flasks, toys, gems, and other such things. In Shadowlands, they also tried to make it relevant by having crafters produce an item that you need as prerequisite to getting a legendary.

It's not completely irrelevant, just mostly so. Leveling professions is still boring, though less of a grind now that your skill level is tied to the expansion (so there's a separate blacksmithing skill level for BfA recipes, Shadowlands recipes, etc). In terms of getting mats and producing valuable items, the time spent vs rewards is so lopsided that only bots and South American gold farmers really do it. And getting the recipes themselves is still a retarded RNG grind.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I did still like engineering, even if it was borderline impossible to make any money with it.

In mid-Wrath I used to make a decent amount of money selling ammo to Hunters on my Engineer. Do a couple rounds around Icecrown in off-peak hours, get a ton of Saronite, turn it into Mammoth Cutters, sell it in the auction house. Pretty sure I paid for half of my Turbo-Charged Flying Machine just doing that.

So what was wrong with Sargeras as a villain?

Technically, nothing. He's basically just Galactus but more on fire.

On the other hand, the game really should have ended when the dude with the planet-piercing sword was killed. World of Warcraft went from "we must defeat the Lich Kel'Thuzad in Naxxramas!" to "another week, another reality-destroying threat" with basically no downtime. The bad writing train really has no brakes.

 

[Berrakh]

On the other hand, the game really should have ended when the dude with the planet-piercing sword was killed. World of Warcraft went from "we must defeat the Lich Kel'Thuzad in Naxxramas!" to "another week, another reality-destroying threat" with basically no downtime. The bad writing train really has no brakes.

That’s what I am saying. He’s way closer to Thanos quality than the Jailer too. “This universe is bad because such depravity can exist within it. Better fix that problem.”

 

[Well Intentioned]

So what was wrong with Sargeras as a villain?

White males who liked to drink and play video games created him. As opposed to an intellectually disabled white male (who is begging to be outed as a sex pest) working with a team of pronoun specialists crafting the Jailer.

 

[Retink]

Well you see, the Jailer was behind Sargeras all along and whereas Illidan was trying to raise an evil army to stop Sargeras, Sargeras was trying to raise an evil army to stop the Void Lords and their old gods, and the old gods were only evil because they wanted to stop the Jailer, and the Jailer was trying to raise Sargeras to suck Azeroth dry in order to stop an even bigger and eviler bad guy.

 

[Well Intentioned]

Well you see, the Jailer was behind Sargeras all along and whereas Illidan was trying to raise an evil army to stop Sargeras, Sargeras was trying to raise an evil army to stop the Void Lords and their old gods, and the old gods were only evil because they wanted to stop the Jailer, and the Jailer was trying to raise Sargeras to suck Azeroth dry in order to stop an even bigger and eviler bad guy.

View attachment 3080346

Gotta include Gul'dan and Medivh in there somehow, too.

It's funny that this structure has been used from WC1 on (albeit with a bit of retconning.)

 

[Retink]

Gotta include Gul'dan and Medivh in there somehow, too.

It's funny that this structure has been used from WC1 on (albeit with a bit of retconning.)

It was still reasonably bearable as it was mostly Sargeras fucking with people by means of the Dreadlords and Arthas broke free while Illidan tried to and ended up as a semi-pawn. They also tended to avoid going back and fucking with lore and bringing back characters randomly, because up until Wotlk the only minor setback was Kael and that was a meme.

One dumb thing about this whole dimension hopping is that it fucks up the afterlife in WoW as now people can just go from dead to alive super easily, but also why did we just off Sargeras and the Burning Legion instead of traveling to different Legion worlds? Not every Legion world needs to be green Fel. Outlands had a lot of diverse stuff going on and there could be other worlds in the process of enslavement instead of fully corrupted. It also makes the battle feel like we're making pushes into the Legion strongholds instead of just going straight to their home world and winning.

 

[King Dead]

It was still reasonably bearable as it was mostly Sargeras fucking with people by means of the Dreadlords and Arthas broke free while Illidan tried to and ended up as a semi-pawn. They also tended to avoid going back and fucking with lore and bringing back characters randomly, because up until Wotlk the only minor setback was Kael and that was a meme.

One dumb thing about this whole dimension hopping is that it fucks up the afterlife in WoW as now people can just go from dead to alive super easily, but also why did we just off Sargeras and the Burning Legion instead of traveling to different Legion worlds? Not every Legion world needs to be green Fel. Outlands had a lot of diverse stuff going on and there could be other worlds in the process of enslavement instead of fully corrupted. It also makes the battle feel like we're making pushes into the Legion strongholds instead of just going straight to their home world and winning.

I think they didn't do any more than Argus because of players' reactions to the outer space setting of BC all those years ago. Now, I've only gotten this secondhand because, as mentioned, I wasn't playing then, but from how I understood it, there was at least a vocal subset of players that really didn't appreciate the slightly more sci-fi take on Warcraft with some of the Outland races and zones. Aside from the obvious of being on a hunk of rock out in the middle of the Twisting Nether and being reminded of this anytime you looked over the edge of a zone, they took issue with things like the Ethereals and their mana-domes, the naaru being crystalline aliens, and the draenei with their crystal spaceships (not to mention the whole Broken retcon).

Regardless of the later approval of the expansion, it wouldn't surprise me that they remembered those initial reactions and factored that into their decision for future expansions. Everything from mid-BC (with Zul'Aman and Quel'Danas) through mid-Legion (before Argus) returned to a more fantasy focus, with sci-fi elements pushed to the background if they were seen at all. Even Draenor, despite being another world, was still squarely in the realm of fantasy normalcy. Instead of risking another negative response to an entire expansion on an alien planet, they did a one-and-done with Argus in a single patch and called it a day. Besides, they had to wrap up the Legion story quickly because there were more important plotlines to get to, like Danuser's thinly-disguised zombie queen fetish the real big bad the Jailer...wait, scratch that, there's a bigger bad, whatever.

Of course, I could be wrong, and maybe 10.0 will have all the world-hopping adventures we could ever hope for. With how much WoW's story has jumped the shark in the last few years, I'm intrigued to see how much they'll fuck it up this time.

 

[Retink]

I think they didn't do any more than Argus because of players' reactions to the outer space setting of BC all those years ago. Now, I've only gotten this secondhand because, as mentioned, I wasn't playing then, but from how I understood it, there was at least a vocal subset of players that really didn't appreciate the slightly more sci-fi take on Warcraft with some of the Outland races and zones. Aside from the obvious of being on a hunk of rock out in the middle of the Twisting Nether and being reminded of this anytime you looked over the edge of a zone, they took issue with things like the Ethereals and their mana-domes, the naaru being crystalline aliens, and the draenei with their crystal spaceships (not to mention the whole Broken retcon).

Regardless of the later approval of the expansion, it wouldn't surprise me that they remembered those initial reactions and factored that into their decision for future expansions. Everything from mid-BC (with Zul'Aman and Quel'Danas) through mid-Legion (before Argus) returned to a more fantasy focus, with sci-fi elements pushed to the background if they were seen at all. Even Draenor, despite being another world, was still squarely in the realm of fantasy normalcy. Instead of risking another negative response to an entire expansion on an alien planet, they did a one-and-done with Argus in a single patch and called it a day. Besides, they had to wrap up the Legion story quickly because there were more important plotlines to get to, like Danuser's thinly-disguised zombie queen fetish the real big bad the Jailer...wait, scratch that, there's a bigger bad, whatever.

Of course, I could be wrong, and maybe 10.0 will have all the world-hopping adventures we could ever hope for. With how much WoW's story has jumped the shark in the last few years, I'm intrigued to see how much they'll fuck it up this time.

I get the dislike of sci-fi in fantasy, as I think it's become extremely too common now in a lot of franchises, but you don't have to make an off world legion themed expansion that's space themed. As you mentioned with WoD it was much more reserved but you still had the Draenei and all that jazz which gave it a bit of an odd futuristic feel, though they toned that down to be more in line with opulence than space technology.

Maybe there's nothing we can do about a full Legion world as we saw with Argus it's all Fel Fucked, but why not something like a different planet that's very fantasy themed but has been infiltrated by the Dreadlords and they're fucking around by subverting the society and getting whatever bullshitium ore or pixie dust from that planet. To the locals we'd probably seem like invading assholes, so they'd want to get rid of us, but maybe there's a faction that's suspicious of what's going on, sort of like Velen was. You could even have fun with it and not reveal it's Legion themed initially, just say Wrathion is still being a shithead and opened a portal to a new world, and now we have to go there to find out what's going on. Showing up makes the people of that world freak out and attack us because someone told them we're the baddies, at first it seems like a Wrathion WoD plot, but it's revealed oh no it's Dreadlords doing their thing. Expansion ends with us overthrowing the Dreadlords and leaving the portal open because the people on the other world don't really have any issue with us now that we've shown ourselves to not be evil and helped them out with their corruption problem. Could have been all the Suramar stuff and more placed there, even linked it back to Azeroth with some bullshit like the Well of Eternity exploding shot the city across space and time and it just evolved from there and part of the mystery is learning that happened.

Just seems like a better way of exploring the realms of WoW than going into the afterlife and realizing that the way death functions is retarded and people could just not die as they can go back and forth so easily between the two worlds.