From what I've read, Shadowlands looks awful on paper. I find it implausible that people could enjoy it unless what they want to do is to rush to endgame and get on with grinding some small sliver of content endlessly. Which, to be fair, is what some people want to do, and is what Shadowlands seems to cater to.
It seems to me that WoW expansions are better regarded as sequels rather than expansions. It's just that when they launch a sequel, they pull the plug on the previous game. People who beat the previous game (i.e., reached the level cap) get to start the sequel at the new content. People who didn't play the previous game have to spend many hours slogging through some awful, mangled version of the previous games in the franchise before they get to the new, real game.
What baffles me is that Blizzard has designed the lower level content such that no one will actually like it, but still makes you go through it before you can get to the game that they intend for everyone to play. They seem to have the idea that asking players to slog through many hours of something awful before reaching the real game was a bad idea. But their solution was to shorten it somewhat, but still require players to do it. If you're trying to rush players past the old content and not really maintaining it anymore, why not just let people skip it entirely? They should either try to make the lower level content actually be good, or else let people skip it and start a new character at level 50.
It’s the afterlife. Heaven and Hell, Azeroth style. The zones are gorgeous, the stories are interesting. Yes I am biased because I love that sort of thing. The same way I loved their Japanese and Ancient Egyptian-themed zones.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
It seems to me that WoW expansions are better regarded as sequels rather than expansions.
Don't agree with most of what you said but then you have a rather ecletic taste in MMOs. But I do agree with that bit.
The continuing stories tie everything together into a WoW whole but the revamp of gaming systems and underlying tech (they even have ray traced shadows in this latest tech pass) they do with each xpac does make them feel more like sequels.
IMO, that's not a bad thing but a smart thing that keeps a 16 year old MMO relevant without any need to pull a Turbine or Sony and do a 2 or a 3 or a "Next."
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
For those who feel it is a rush to cap game, it can be if
you want, or if you mentally feel pressured to, it’s entirely up to the player.
I took well over a week to hit cap, and I’ll be rolling another
character to take it even slower. When I was about to hit cap, my boys were
already raid ready, that’s the game they play, where I’m exploring, taking in
the lore, enjoying the content, the atmosphere.
If you cannot slow down and smell the roses that’s your
fault, not the game, you most likely feel that’s what you need to do or feel
pressured to, I’m proof you don’t.
Then for those simplifying the game into certain categories
so to speak, any and ever game could be, Cyberpunk you just shoot, boring af,
grand theft auto you just drive and shoot omg so boring, any rpg you just do quests.
It’s what you make of it.
My faith is my shield! - Turalyon 2022
Your legend ends here and now! - (Battles Won Long Ago)
If you cannot slow down and smell the roses that’s your
fault, not the game, you most likely feel that’s what you need to do or feel
pressured to, I’m proof you don’t.
I haven't played since Shadowlands, and for a game that looks awful, I won't. But during Battle for Azeroth, if you wanted to take your time in lower level content, you kind of couldn't. The lower level content was awful, as everything scaled to be way too easy for you. People would intentionally pull three groups at once because it didn't matter, as mobs didn't do much if they hit you. In order to reasonably take your time on the lower level content, you need there to be lower level content that is actually good, or at least not terrible. WoW used to have that, then took it out of the game.
Even if you try to ignore that and spend a bunch of time on the lower level content anyway, the game will force you to level past it very quickly. And if the content is trivial when you're in the intended level range, it doesn't get better once you've leveled past it.
I'm having fun with it. I don't like every little thing about it, but WoW is a jack-of-all-trades master-of-none game and I won't be doing all content, anyway.
I will agree that the leveling process from 1 to Shadowlands has been trivialized now more than ever, which on paper is a bummer, but WoW's leveling process has been pretty messed up for some years now. The squish to 60 was long overdue...they just kept increasing the level cap without adding anything meaningful to the levels. All of the new spells and abilities were tied to systems of the most current expansion, so you would be gaining your last 40 levels without learning any new abilities or changing your rotation. It was a drag. I wouldn't go as far as Quizzical to say that it's total garbage and they should just let players skip it, but it has definitely become a tutorial to learn your class more than a world showcasing 16 previous years of meaningful content.
I will say that I wished the leveling from 50-60 was paced a bit better to go along with the campaign. It was disappointing to hit 60 and still have half of one zone and all of another to quest through before being able to choose a Covenant. Some things are definitely missing the polish we've come to expect from Blizzard, as well.
Still, it looks and sounds great (despite the latest Nvidia drivers playing havoc with lighting and shadows), the campaign was neat and a good way to learn the new zones, and it's good to have plenty of things to do every day again. It had been awhile since that was the case. Honestly, it's just more WoW. I'm constantly surprised by people who buy the expansions and then say "this was the last straw, I'm out" as if we don't all know what this game is at this point.
There are other factors too as in how much time you can throw at the game. In that ever since the expansion launched i've had less time to game than i usually do.
Where come reset i'm literally just wrapping up everything to do. Had i had more time then maybe i might complain about not enough to do, but! and another factor, i love alts.
Last sunday and this Sunday i've found i've completed most of the content to do. Where last sunday i was able to get my Shaman up to Oribos, where this sunday i had even more time and was able to get my hunter and pally up to oribos, and started threads of fate on my hunter.
So with one toon i'm only doing 1/4 of the game, for a casual, lore, explore, quester that's a truck load more content.
In BFA all i did was group, and leveled all 12 classes to cap. This expansion i'm going lore, i've only done 4 dungeons so far and when you're not over gearing, the content is quite engaging and challenging.
There is a game in there for smell the roses players.
Look at all the content it's an insane amount, BUT not if you're a one character player whom isn't into progression raiding or mythic+, or even dungeons for that matter, and also has an enormous amount of time to throw at the game, then yeah that could be a problem.
The hardest trick is to not feel the pressure of everyone is doing this and they are at this level, or feel like you're behind.
I dunno the game captivated me right form the get go, and i'm enjoying the game way too much to care what other players are doing. I mean my kids are 200 or close to that IL where i'm now 164ish and having an amazing time with the game.
I love threads of fate, omg so much, i picked maldraxxus as i feel my hunter fits there aesthetically, where i feel my shaman will fit venthyr and my pally OMG just a perfect fit for bastion.
Yeah i dunno playing another character on another covenant is like an entire new game again, it's fresh, exciting i love it. This is an alt friendly expansion after all becasue as i became familiar with the game i'm finding i do have extra time at the end of the week for them.
I truly did not think i'd like maldraxxus but surprise surprise it's actually a very interesting place, with pretty cool quests, which again on my story run i skipped all the side quests and now on threads of fate, shit loads of new content.
The expansion is definitely deserves a 9.0, i mean both my boys are massively invested in this expansion, but playing end game, where me for the first time in a long time am all about the RPG of it. So yeah a 9.2 from me
My faith is my shield! - Turalyon 2022
Your legend ends here and now! - (Battles Won Long Ago)
I will agree that the leveling process from 1 to Shadowlands has been trivialized now more than ever, which on paper is a bummer, but WoW's leveling process has been pretty messed up for some years now. The squish to 60 was long overdue...they just kept increasing the level cap without adding anything meaningful to the levels. All of the new spells and abilities were tied to systems of the most current expansion, so you would be gaining your last 40 levels without learning any new abilities or changing your rotation. It was a drag. I wouldn't go as far as Quizzical to say that it's total garbage and they should just let players skip it, but it has definitely become a tutorial to learn your class more than a world showcasing 16 previous years of meaningful content.
What I really want them to do is: 1) Make the content provide some sort of challenge. It doesn't have to be hard on an absolute scale, but at least hard enough that you sometimes feel like you could realistically have died. 2) Allow players to play through the lower level content at level without forcing them to level past it. Even just a simple way to say "stop making me gain experience" like EQ2 or DDO have would get the job done.
Making the lower level content good is better than letting players skip it. But I think it's ridiculous to say, we've tried to make sure it's awful, but you have to do it anyway.
As for a class tutorial, maybe in the sense of "press this button to use this skill". But if the goal is for players who reach the cap to actually be good at their class, then forcing them through a bunch of content where you win anyway even if you're awful isn't going to get that done.
So with one toon i'm only doing 1/4 of the game, for a casual, lore, explore, quester that's a truck load more content.
In BFA all i did was group, and leveled all 12 classes to cap. This expansion i'm going lore, i've only done 4 dungeons so far and when you're not over gearing, the content is quite engaging and challenging.
There is a game in there for smell the roses players.
Look at all the content it's an insane amount, BUT not if you're a one character player whom isn't into progression raiding or mythic+, or even dungeons for that matter, and also has an enormous amount of time to throw at the game, then yeah that could be a problem.
The hardest trick is to not feel the pressure of everyone is doing this and they are at this level, or feel like you're behind.
I lean quite far to the extreme in the "stop and smell the roses" direction. In Champions Online, I had 28 characters within two levels of the cap before any of them hit the cap. In Vanilla WoW, I had eight characters at 59 before the first hit 60. In DDO, I've probably spent enough time to level several characters to the cap, but the highest level content I've yet attempted is level 3 (as compared to a max of 32).
If I can't find a way to make it interesting to take your time on the lower level content, it's not me. It's the game. In Vanilla WoW, you could and I did. In Battle for Azeroth, I couldn't find a way to do it, and I sure tried hard. On paper, Shadowlands has a worse case of the problems that made Battle for Azeroth not viable at lower levels.
I hear you, overall no matter what you do you level too fast, even if you try and take it slow.
Then why not just turn off xp gain?
I don't turn it off as i like to feel a little progression at all times, and have found by not doing all the extra's it's a decent slow rate overall.
Like for the story run i could not progress as i didn't earn enough xp becasue i didn't do any extra, side quests, harvesting, mining, dungeons, i had to go grind out the extra xp.
My faith is my shield! - Turalyon 2022
Your legend ends here and now! - (Battles Won Long Ago)
The end game is just grinding the same 8-10 dungeons for 2+ years basically. If you don't M+ you don't progress.
This is my only issue with the expansion currently.
I got to 60, did the renown up to where I could each week, did my torghast runs to get soul ash for the legendary, got my best in slot legendary, and now I'm stuck just doing world quests and running Mythic + dungeons endlessly on my character.
Now that I've run a lot of Mythic and Mythic + dungeons, I'm worn out on the same 8 dungeons and can't seem to get into a raid group (so many people require a specific mythic.io addon score or like 195+ item level to run even regular and I'm at 190). So I've just been doing arenas. This expansion arena / battlegrounds feel fun again and I'm on the grind. The only downside is Paladins / Rogues feel broken as hell currently but I'm sure they will eventually fix that.
I hear you, overall no matter what you do you level too fast, even if you try and take it slow.
Then why not just turn off xp gain?
I don't turn it off as i like to feel a little progression at all times, and have found by not doing all the extra's it's a decent slow rate overall.
Like for the story run i could not progress as i didn't earn enough xp becasue i didn't do any extra, side quests, harvesting, mining, dungeons, i had to go grind out the extra xp.
Can you turn off XP gain now? That is, still go kill mobs and complete quests and what not, but just choose not to gain experience for it? If you can, that makes things a lot more interesting. As best as I can tell, at least in Battle for Azeroth, you couldn't.
But that still doesn't address my complaint about content being trivial. I suppose that you could create an artificial challenge by just not wearing gear, or at least, wearing gear far inferior to what your character has or could readily acquire. But it doesn't seem fair to people you group with to do that to them.
And while I'm sometimes okay with artificial challenges, they need to be interesting, and crippling your gear doesn't seem like an interesting challenge to me. Sifting through the gear you get and deciding what you like the best is part of the fun.
I hear you, overall no matter what you do you level too fast, even if you try and take it slow.
Then why not just turn off xp gain?
I don't turn it off as i like to feel a little progression at all times, and have found by not doing all the extra's it's a decent slow rate overall.
Like for the story run i could not progress as i didn't earn enough xp becasue i didn't do any extra, side quests, harvesting, mining, dungeons, i had to go grind out the extra xp.
Can you turn off XP gain now? That is, still go kill mobs and complete quests and what not, but just choose not to gain experience for it? If you can, that makes things a lot more interesting. As best as I can tell, at least in Battle for Azeroth, you couldn't.
But that still doesn't address my complaint about content being trivial. I suppose that you could create an artificial challenge by just not wearing gear, or at least, wearing gear far inferior to what your character has or could readily acquire. But it doesn't seem fair to people you group with to do that to them.
And while I'm sometimes okay with artificial challenges, they need to be interesting, and crippling your gear doesn't seem like an interesting challenge to me. Sifting through the gear you get and deciding what you like the best is part of the fun.
Apparently, i've never done it. Heard about it on a podcast quite a long time ago.
Alliance speak to Behsten in Stormwind. Horde speak to Slahtz in Orgrimmar.
Yeah i don't do dungeons and find the content is much more challenging and just gear up slowly with the content which keeps the content tough af at times.
Then i get on my hunter OMG i was giggling everything is faceroll, and why i have a hunter, just for that experience as it's fun as well.
So largely class's vary your experience as well, i know i have all 12 capped at BFA.
My faith is my shield! - Turalyon 2022
Your legend ends here and now! - (Battles Won Long Ago)
I mean my only grip is Torghast, which for the record i love Torghast runs immensely.
The grip is that at the start i knew nothing about the game.
Since launch day i've figured it all out on my own, never looking anything up. The problem was that all i knew about Torghast was that it's fun af, and some boss will come murder you after a certain amount of time (hard to avoid everything).
Anyway i'd do a floor, maybe two and leave as i didn't want to hit the time limit, which was invisible for some reason?
Then i wanted to finish one and oh man i would skip huge portions, avoid as much as i could and go as fast as i could, have to get to the end before my time limit was breached.
Well i get to the end in about 20 minutes and try to kill the boss but yep times up that thing would come kill me.
Then i started experimenting on when this time limit goes off and stayed
on first floor while i made dinner, then was like WTF it never
appeared. Sure it sounds embarrassing but it took me sometime to figure out that it only came out after all lives are gone, which was always on the boss.
OK now that i know you can take all the time you want, awesome smell the roses, and omg i was 100% thorough, every corner, every pixle explored, which then turned my runs into about an hour or more.
Powerful af by the end, but then impossible to beat the boss? Run out of lives, /record scratch moment, and over. Well that's kinda fucked to be honest. So there my grip. Which is being tweaked now.
Which i dunno when it took 20 minutes and i'd die to the boss, meh, shit happens right, but when i've gone well over an hour and then the boss two shots me well, yeah. I mean if it was toe to toe battle to the end and lost, that i could live with.
My faith is my shield! - Turalyon 2022
Your legend ends here and now! - (Battles Won Long Ago)
I hear you, overall no matter what you do you level too fast, even if you try and take it slow.
Then why not just turn off xp gain?
I don't turn it off as i like to feel a little progression at all times, and have found by not doing all the extra's it's a decent slow rate overall.
Like for the story run i could not progress as i didn't earn enough xp becasue i didn't do any extra, side quests, harvesting, mining, dungeons, i had to go grind out the extra xp.
Can you turn off XP gain now? That is, still go kill mobs and complete quests and what not, but just choose not to gain experience for it? If you can, that makes things a lot more interesting. As best as I can tell, at least in Battle for Azeroth, you couldn't.
But that still doesn't address my complaint about content being trivial. I suppose that you could create an artificial challenge by just not wearing gear, or at least, wearing gear far inferior to what your character has or could readily acquire. But it doesn't seem fair to people you group with to do that to them.
And while I'm sometimes okay with artificial challenges, they need to be interesting, and crippling your gear doesn't seem like an interesting challenge to me. Sifting through the gear you get and deciding what you like the best is part of the fun.
Apparently, i've never done it. Heard about it on a podcast quite a long time ago.
Alliance speak to Behsten in Stormwind. Horde speak to Slahtz in Orgrimmar.
Yeah i don't do dungeons and find the content is much more challenging and just gear up slowly with the content which keeps the content tough af at times.
Then i get on my hunter OMG i was giggling everything is faceroll, and why i have a hunter, just for that experience as it's fun as well.
So largely class's vary your experience as well, i know i have all 12 capped at BFA.
After looking through the wiki, it looks like Blizzard thinks of turning off experience as being a battlegrounds thing, not a "stop and smell the roses in PVE" thing. But the patch note says:
Disabling experience gains will prevent a player from gaining experience through any means available in the game.
That sure makes it look like it applies to PVE, too. Which it should.
My experience with difficulty (or rather, the lack of there of) in Battle for Azeroth is that the first several levels had an appropriate challenge. Then at some point that depended on your class, you got a self-healing skill. And then everything from that point on was trivial, provided that you didn't do something like jump off a high enough cliff to instantly kill you.
But that also creates the question of how much content one character can do. The review says that at level 10, you pick which expansion you want to do. Does that mean that you have to pick one and stick with it? Or can you bounce around between them and it's fine? The wiki sure makes it look like you have to go to Battle for Azeroth eventually in order to reach level 50.
You can bounce between them. The shell is 1 to 10 the new starter, or not and go OG starter zones.
Then all the way to 50 from 10, BFA is only another option, not mandatory in anyway except for brand new players, which their shell is, new starter, BFA to 50, then SL.
Yeah i was pretty sure it's all xp from what i took from the podcast.
I'm not denying the game could use a little more control over xp gains similar to how EQ2 handles it. And yeah, it doesn't take too much effort to make your character broken af which i got from my boys which means SUPER OP lol.
So yeah i'm finding by not doing dungeons the content is challenging but again as my il grows the challenge is lessening, on warlock, where i know my hunter IL is much lower and is steam roiling everything in its path
My faith is my shield! - Turalyon 2022
Your legend ends here and now! - (Battles Won Long Ago)
I hear you, overall no matter what you do you level too fast, even if you try and take it slow.
Then why not just turn off xp gain?
I don't turn it off as i like to feel a little progression at all times, and have found by not doing all the extra's it's a decent slow rate overall.
Like for the story run i could not progress as i didn't earn enough xp becasue i didn't do any extra, side quests, harvesting, mining, dungeons, i had to go grind out the extra xp.
Can you turn off XP gain now? That is, still go kill mobs and complete quests and what not, but just choose not to gain experience for it? If you can, that makes things a lot more interesting. As best as I can tell, at least in Battle for Azeroth, you couldn't.
But that still doesn't address my complaint about content being trivial. I suppose that you could create an artificial challenge by just not wearing gear, or at least, wearing gear far inferior to what your character has or could readily acquire. But it doesn't seem fair to people you group with to do that to them.
And while I'm sometimes okay with artificial challenges, they need to be interesting, and crippling your gear doesn't seem like an interesting challenge to me. Sifting through the gear you get and deciding what you like the best is part of the fun.
Apparently, i've never done it. Heard about it on a podcast quite a long time ago.
Alliance speak to Behsten in Stormwind. Horde speak to Slahtz in Orgrimmar.
Yeah i don't do dungeons and find the content is much more challenging and just gear up slowly with the content which keeps the content tough af at times.
Then i get on my hunter OMG i was giggling everything is faceroll, and why i have a hunter, just for that experience as it's fun as well.
So largely class's vary your experience as well, i know i have all 12 capped at BFA.
After looking through the wiki, it looks like Blizzard thinks of turning off experience as being a battlegrounds thing, not a "stop and smell the roses in PVE" thing. But the patch note says:
Disabling experience gains will prevent a player from gaining experience through any means available in the game.
That sure makes it look like it applies to PVE, too. Which it should.
My experience with difficulty (or rather, the lack of there of) in Battle for Azeroth is that the first several levels had an appropriate challenge. Then at some point that depended on your class, you got a self-healing skill. And then everything from that point on was trivial, provided that you didn't do something like jump off a high enough cliff to instantly kill you.
But that also creates the question of how much content one character can do. The review says that at level 10, you pick which expansion you want to do. Does that mean that you have to pick one and stick with it? Or can you bounce around between them and it's fine? The wiki sure makes it look like you have to go to Battle for Azeroth eventually in order to reach level 50.
Shutting off xp has been around for a long time. It effects all xp. Battleground twinks demanded this.
I hear you, overall no matter what you do you level too fast, even if you try and take it slow.
Then why not just turn off xp gain?
I don't turn it off as i like to feel a little progression at all times, and have found by not doing all the extra's it's a decent slow rate overall.
Like for the story run i could not progress as i didn't earn enough xp becasue i didn't do any extra, side quests, harvesting, mining, dungeons, i had to go grind out the extra xp.
Can you turn off XP gain now? That is, still go kill mobs and complete quests and what not, but just choose not to gain experience for it? If you can, that makes things a lot more interesting. As best as I can tell, at least in Battle for Azeroth, you couldn't.
But that still doesn't address my complaint about content being trivial. I suppose that you could create an artificial challenge by just not wearing gear, or at least, wearing gear far inferior to what your character has or could readily acquire. But it doesn't seem fair to people you group with to do that to them.
And while I'm sometimes okay with artificial challenges, they need to be interesting, and crippling your gear doesn't seem like an interesting challenge to me. Sifting through the gear you get and deciding what you like the best is part of the fun.
Apparently, i've never done it. Heard about it on a podcast quite a long time ago.
Alliance speak to Behsten in Stormwind. Horde speak to Slahtz in Orgrimmar.
Yeah i don't do dungeons and find the content is much more challenging and just gear up slowly with the content which keeps the content tough af at times.
Then i get on my hunter OMG i was giggling everything is faceroll, and why i have a hunter, just for that experience as it's fun as well.
So largely class's vary your experience as well, i know i have all 12 capped at BFA.
After looking through the wiki, it looks like Blizzard thinks of turning off experience as being a battlegrounds thing, not a "stop and smell the roses in PVE" thing. But the patch note says:
Disabling experience gains will prevent a player from gaining experience through any means available in the game.
That sure makes it look like it applies to PVE, too. Which it should.
My experience with difficulty (or rather, the lack of there of) in Battle for Azeroth is that the first several levels had an appropriate challenge. Then at some point that depended on your class, you got a self-healing skill. And then everything from that point on was trivial, provided that you didn't do something like jump off a high enough cliff to instantly kill you.
But that also creates the question of how much content one character can do. The review says that at level 10, you pick which expansion you want to do. Does that mean that you have to pick one and stick with it? Or can you bounce around between them and it's fine? The wiki sure makes it look like you have to go to Battle for Azeroth eventually in order to reach level 50.
I'm almost certain you can stop xp at 10 and play all the content, pre-shadowlands, at level 10.
However, some of the content stops scaling at level 30. So once you start to get over level 30, it starts to limit what you get xp for.
I hear you, overall no matter what you do you level too fast, even if you try and take it slow.
Then why not just turn off xp gain?
I don't turn it off as i like to feel a little progression at all times, and have found by not doing all the extra's it's a decent slow rate overall.
Like for the story run i could not progress as i didn't earn enough xp becasue i didn't do any extra, side quests, harvesting, mining, dungeons, i had to go grind out the extra xp.
Can you turn off XP gain now? That is, still go kill mobs and complete quests and what not, but just choose not to gain experience for it? If you can, that makes things a lot more interesting. As best as I can tell, at least in Battle for Azeroth, you couldn't.
But that still doesn't address my complaint about content being trivial. I suppose that you could create an artificial challenge by just not wearing gear, or at least, wearing gear far inferior to what your character has or could readily acquire. But it doesn't seem fair to people you group with to do that to them.
And while I'm sometimes okay with artificial challenges, they need to be interesting, and crippling your gear doesn't seem like an interesting challenge to me. Sifting through the gear you get and deciding what you like the best is part of the fun.
Apparently, i've never done it. Heard about it on a podcast quite a long time ago.
Alliance speak to Behsten in Stormwind. Horde speak to Slahtz in Orgrimmar.
Yeah i don't do dungeons and find the content is much more challenging and just gear up slowly with the content which keeps the content tough af at times.
Then i get on my hunter OMG i was giggling everything is faceroll, and why i have a hunter, just for that experience as it's fun as well.
So largely class's vary your experience as well, i know i have all 12 capped at BFA.
After looking through the wiki, it looks like Blizzard thinks of turning off experience as being a battlegrounds thing, not a "stop and smell the roses in PVE" thing. But the patch note says:
Disabling experience gains will prevent a player from gaining experience through any means available in the game.
That sure makes it look like it applies to PVE, too. Which it should.
My experience with difficulty (or rather, the lack of there of) in Battle for Azeroth is that the first several levels had an appropriate challenge. Then at some point that depended on your class, you got a self-healing skill. And then everything from that point on was trivial, provided that you didn't do something like jump off a high enough cliff to instantly kill you.
But that also creates the question of how much content one character can do. The review says that at level 10, you pick which expansion you want to do. Does that mean that you have to pick one and stick with it? Or can you bounce around between them and it's fine? The wiki sure makes it look like you have to go to Battle for Azeroth eventually in order to reach level 50.
I'm almost certain you can stop xp at 10 and play all the content, pre-shadowlands, at level 10.
However, some of the content stops scaling at level 30. So once you start to get over level 30, it starts to limit what you get xp for.
That's what I meant by having to go to Battle for Azeroth eventually to reach 50. That's the only content available between 46-50.
I also want to know what they mean by "you have to go to Battle for Azeroth on your first character". If they mean that you have to peek into Battle for Azeroth and can then immediately leave and go to Burning Crusade, fine. If they're trying to stop you from creating alts until your first character reaches the cap (and some games do this!), that's full-on game-breaking to me.
That's what I meant by having to go to Battle for Azeroth eventually to reach 50. That's the only content available between 46-50.
I also want to know what they mean by "you have to go to Battle for Azeroth on your first character". If they mean that you have to peek into Battle for Azeroth and can then immediately leave and go to Burning Crusade, fine. If they're trying to stop you from creating alts until your first character reaches the cap (and some games do this!), that's full-on game-breaking to me.
It means you can't take advantage of the chromie system at all until you max a character out. You can still create alts, but you are forced to level through BFA until you get a max level character.
Edit: I think you only need to get to level 50 as once the expansion was released, I was able to level anywhere with any of my characters.
That's what I meant by having to go to Battle for Azeroth eventually to reach 50. That's the only content available between 46-50.
I also want to know what they mean by "you have to go to Battle for Azeroth on your first character". If they mean that you have to peek into Battle for Azeroth and can then immediately leave and go to Burning Crusade, fine. If they're trying to stop you from creating alts until your first character reaches the cap (and some games do this!), that's full-on game-breaking to me.
It means you can't take advantage of the chromie system at all until you max a character out. You can still create alts, but you are forced to level through BFA until you get a max level character.
Edit: I think you only need to get to level 50 as once the expansion was released, I was able to level anywhere with any of my characters.
The wiki says that "Chromie" is some random NPC involved in a few high-level quests, which wasn't helpful in trying to deduce what you're talking about.
Does "take advantage of the chromie system" mean "access other expansions"? If so, then what sort of moron decided that you shouldn't be able to access content that doesn't scale above level 30 until after you've reached level 50?
If forcing the first character to go through Battle for Azeroth is just a restriction on the first character, so that I could create a dummy character that never actually logs in to burn that restriction, then play for real on other characters, I can live with that. But "you can't access content until you've leveled way past it" is inexcusably stupid.
Whenever a developer says something to the effect of, "our game is alt-friendly because after you reach the level cap...", what he really means is "if you like to play alts, you're going to hate this game and should stay away". People who play alts a lot don't often reach the level cap.
That's what I meant by having to go to Battle for Azeroth eventually to reach 50. That's the only content available between 46-50.
I also want to know what they mean by "you have to go to Battle for Azeroth on your first character". If they mean that you have to peek into Battle for Azeroth and can then immediately leave and go to Burning Crusade, fine. If they're trying to stop you from creating alts until your first character reaches the cap (and some games do this!), that's full-on game-breaking to me.
It means you can't take advantage of the chromie system at all until you max a character out. You can still create alts, but you are forced to level through BFA until you get a max level character.
Edit: I think you only need to get to level 50 as once the expansion was released, I was able to level anywhere with any of my characters.
The wiki says that "Chromie" is some random NPC involved in a few high-level quests, which wasn't helpful in trying to deduce what you're talking about.
Does "take advantage of the chromie system" mean "access other expansions"? If so, then what sort of moron decided that you shouldn't be able to access content that doesn't scale above level 30 until after you've reached level 50?
If forcing the first character to go through Battle for Azeroth is just a restriction on the first character, so that I could create a dummy character that never actually logs in to burn that restriction, then play for real on other characters, I can live with that. But "you can't access content until you've leveled way past it" is inexcusably stupid.
Whenever a developer says something to the effect of, "our game is alt-friendly because after you reach the level cap...", what he really means is "if you like to play alts, you're going to hate this game and should stay away". People who play alts a lot don't often reach the level cap.
You do not have to be level cap. Only have one character that had made it to lvl 50. Then you do 1-10 on alts and you can pick which expansion you want to level them from 10 -50 in.
That's what I meant by having to go to Battle for Azeroth eventually to reach 50. That's the only content available between 46-50.
I also want to know what they mean by "you have to go to Battle for Azeroth on your first character". If they mean that you have to peek into Battle for Azeroth and can then immediately leave and go to Burning Crusade, fine. If they're trying to stop you from creating alts until your first character reaches the cap (and some games do this!), that's full-on game-breaking to me.
It means you can't take advantage of the chromie system at all until you max a character out. You can still create alts, but you are forced to level through BFA until you get a max level character.
Edit: I think you only need to get to level 50 as once the expansion was released, I was able to level anywhere with any of my characters.
The wiki says that "Chromie" is some random NPC involved in a few high-level quests, which wasn't helpful in trying to deduce what you're talking about.
Does "take advantage of the chromie system" mean "access other expansions"? If so, then what sort of moron decided that you shouldn't be able to access content that doesn't scale above level 30 until after you've reached level 50?
If forcing the first character to go through Battle for Azeroth is just a restriction on the first character, so that I could create a dummy character that never actually logs in to burn that restriction, then play for real on other characters, I can live with that. But "you can't access content until you've leveled way past it" is inexcusably stupid.
Whenever a developer says something to the effect of, "our game is alt-friendly because after you reach the level cap...", what he really means is "if you like to play alts, you're going to hate this game and should stay away". People who play alts a lot don't often reach the level cap.
Chromie is an npc that allows you to switch to other expansions. Chromie is also a character that has been showing up throughout expansions since at least Lich King... about 12 years ago?
I don't know which moron does anything.
I play lots of alts and it seems like an almost meaningless restriction to me personally. That you have to play through the game in a more linear way until your first 50 isn't that big of a deal to me personally. It sounds like you abhor the idea and so should maybe just move on.
Comments
It seems to me that WoW expansions are better regarded as sequels rather than expansions. It's just that when they launch a sequel, they pull the plug on the previous game. People who beat the previous game (i.e., reached the level cap) get to start the sequel at the new content. People who didn't play the previous game have to spend many hours slogging through some awful, mangled version of the previous games in the franchise before they get to the new, real game.
What baffles me is that Blizzard has designed the lower level content such that no one will actually like it, but still makes you go through it before you can get to the game that they intend for everyone to play. They seem to have the idea that asking players to slog through many hours of something awful before reaching the real game was a bad idea. But their solution was to shorten it somewhat, but still require players to do it. If you're trying to rush players past the old content and not really maintaining it anymore, why not just let people skip it entirely? They should either try to make the lower level content actually be good, or else let people skip it and start a new character at level 50.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
The continuing stories tie everything together into a WoW whole but the revamp of gaming systems and underlying tech (they even have ray traced shadows in this latest tech pass) they do with each xpac does make them feel more like sequels.
IMO, that's not a bad thing but a smart thing that keeps a 16 year old MMO relevant without any need to pull a Turbine or Sony and do a 2 or a 3 or a "Next."
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
For those who feel it is a rush to cap game, it can be if you want, or if you mentally feel pressured to, it’s entirely up to the player.
I took well over a week to hit cap, and I’ll be rolling another character to take it even slower. When I was about to hit cap, my boys were already raid ready, that’s the game they play, where I’m exploring, taking in the lore, enjoying the content, the atmosphere.
If you cannot slow down and smell the roses that’s your fault, not the game, you most likely feel that’s what you need to do or feel pressured to, I’m proof you don’t.
Then for those simplifying the game into certain categories so to speak, any and ever game could be, Cyberpunk you just shoot, boring af, grand theft auto you just drive and shoot omg so boring, any rpg you just do quests. It’s what you make of it.
Even if you try to ignore that and spend a bunch of time on the lower level content anyway, the game will force you to level past it very quickly. And if the content is trivial when you're in the intended level range, it doesn't get better once you've leveled past it.
I'm a MUDder. I play MUDs.
Current: Dragonrealms
I will agree that the leveling process from 1 to Shadowlands has been trivialized now more than ever, which on paper is a bummer, but WoW's leveling process has been pretty messed up for some years now. The squish to 60 was long overdue...they just kept increasing the level cap without adding anything meaningful to the levels. All of the new spells and abilities were tied to systems of the most current expansion, so you would be gaining your last 40 levels without learning any new abilities or changing your rotation. It was a drag. I wouldn't go as far as Quizzical to say that it's total garbage and they should just let players skip it, but it has definitely become a tutorial to learn your class more than a world showcasing 16 previous years of meaningful content.
I will say that I wished the leveling from 50-60 was paced a bit better to go along with the campaign. It was disappointing to hit 60 and still have half of one zone and all of another to quest through before being able to choose a Covenant. Some things are definitely missing the polish we've come to expect from Blizzard, as well.
Still, it looks and sounds great (despite the latest Nvidia drivers playing havoc with lighting and shadows), the campaign was neat and a good way to learn the new zones, and it's good to have plenty of things to do every day again. It had been awhile since that was the case. Honestly, it's just more WoW. I'm constantly surprised by people who buy the expansions and then say "this was the last straw, I'm out" as if we don't all know what this game is at this point.
1) Make the content provide some sort of challenge. It doesn't have to be hard on an absolute scale, but at least hard enough that you sometimes feel like you could realistically have died.
2) Allow players to play through the lower level content at level without forcing them to level past it. Even just a simple way to say "stop making me gain experience" like EQ2 or DDO have would get the job done.
Making the lower level content good is better than letting players skip it. But I think it's ridiculous to say, we've tried to make sure it's awful, but you have to do it anyway.
As for a class tutorial, maybe in the sense of "press this button to use this skill". But if the goal is for players who reach the cap to actually be good at their class, then forcing them through a bunch of content where you win anyway even if you're awful isn't going to get that done.
If I can't find a way to make it interesting to take your time on the lower level content, it's not me. It's the game. In Vanilla WoW, you could and I did. In Battle for Azeroth, I couldn't find a way to do it, and I sure tried hard. On paper, Shadowlands has a worse case of the problems that made Battle for Azeroth not viable at lower levels.
This is my only issue with the expansion currently.
I got to 60, did the renown up to where I could each week, did my torghast runs to get soul ash for the legendary, got my best in slot legendary, and now I'm stuck just doing world quests and running Mythic + dungeons endlessly on my character.
Now that I've run a lot of Mythic and Mythic + dungeons, I'm worn out on the same 8 dungeons and can't seem to get into a raid group (so many people require a specific mythic.io addon score or like 195+ item level to run even regular and I'm at 190). So I've just been doing arenas. This expansion arena / battlegrounds feel fun again and I'm on the grind. The only downside is Paladins / Rogues feel broken as hell currently but I'm sure they will eventually fix that.
But that still doesn't address my complaint about content being trivial. I suppose that you could create an artificial challenge by just not wearing gear, or at least, wearing gear far inferior to what your character has or could readily acquire. But it doesn't seem fair to people you group with to do that to them.
And while I'm sometimes okay with artificial challenges, they need to be interesting, and crippling your gear doesn't seem like an interesting challenge to me. Sifting through the gear you get and deciding what you like the best is part of the fun.
Horde speak to Slahtz in Orgrimmar.
- Disabling experience gains will prevent a player from gaining experience through any means available in the game.
That sure makes it look like it applies to PVE, too. Which it should.My experience with difficulty (or rather, the lack of there of) in Battle for Azeroth is that the first several levels had an appropriate challenge. Then at some point that depended on your class, you got a self-healing skill. And then everything from that point on was trivial, provided that you didn't do something like jump off a high enough cliff to instantly kill you.
But that also creates the question of how much content one character can do. The review says that at level 10, you pick which expansion you want to do. Does that mean that you have to pick one and stick with it? Or can you bounce around between them and it's fine? The wiki sure makes it look like you have to go to Battle for Azeroth eventually in order to reach level 50.
However, some of the content stops scaling at level 30. So once you start to get over level 30, it starts to limit what you get xp for.
I also want to know what they mean by "you have to go to Battle for Azeroth on your first character". If they mean that you have to peek into Battle for Azeroth and can then immediately leave and go to Burning Crusade, fine. If they're trying to stop you from creating alts until your first character reaches the cap (and some games do this!), that's full-on game-breaking to me.
Edit: I think you only need to get to level 50 as once the expansion was released, I was able to level anywhere with any of my characters.
Does "take advantage of the chromie system" mean "access other expansions"? If so, then what sort of moron decided that you shouldn't be able to access content that doesn't scale above level 30 until after you've reached level 50?
If forcing the first character to go through Battle for Azeroth is just a restriction on the first character, so that I could create a dummy character that never actually logs in to burn that restriction, then play for real on other characters, I can live with that. But "you can't access content until you've leveled way past it" is inexcusably stupid.
Whenever a developer says something to the effect of, "our game is alt-friendly because after you reach the level cap...", what he really means is "if you like to play alts, you're going to hate this game and should stay away". People who play alts a lot don't often reach the level cap.
I don't know which moron does anything.
I play lots of alts and it seems like an almost meaningless restriction to me personally. That you have to play through the game in a more linear way until your first 50 isn't that big of a deal to me personally. It sounds like you abhor the idea and so should maybe just move on.