Something about this xpac just felt "meh" to me. Its very obvious from how they constructed it (even before you hit torghast) that they borrowed heavily from ff xiv on this one.
I think the weight of all these years, not to mention the absolutely ridiculous way they monkey around with core class mechanics, has just made this game not very fun (at least for me).
It got me through to 10 Dec, which was what I needed it for (I played cyberpunk on PC, so it was a good time). As a side effect, I ended up resubbing to FF XIV.
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.
The thing is, I'll probably never actually reach level 50. People who rush to endgame do (okay, so here, we're technically talking about rushing to 50, not 60, but that's a small difference), but people who stop and smell the roses don't. And even if I do reach level 50, at that point, I'll have leveled way past nearly everything that I wanted to do, so I still can't do it. I suppose that I could theoretically delete everything and start over now that the account has some stupid, artificial restriction removed. Surely you can understand why that's a really unappealing prospect.
Congratulations, Blizzard. You've somehow managed to use 16 years of development and 8 expansions to make less content available than you had at launch. (Unless you count nothing as being available at launch because the servers were a disaster for the first year and some odd.)
Want to know why the MMORPG industry isn't doing so well in recent years? Games finding creative ways to do stupid things that are fine for people who are already at the endgame but don't allow new players to pick up the game and have fun is a major reason. Older games need to be able to pick up new players in order to do well, and while WoW is hardly the worst offender, a lot of older MMORPGs seem to actively want for no new players to ever join their game.
You could argue that it's not that bad if you want to. But what is gained by telling people that you must first rush to level 50 before you're allowed to play the game? What would be lost by letting new players just play the game? If you want to make the rush to 50 a default or recommendation, fine, but why make it a requirement for all new players?
Some games try to rush everyone to the endgame because they're trying to monetize a heavily pay to win endgame, and they don't expect to get any money from people playing through lower level content. But WoW is a subscription game! What is Blizzard's excuse for this stupidity?
Well, they do sell you a way around it in their game store. Three, in fact, priced at $40, $60, or $80. Maybe that's their excuse. But "pay $55 up front before trying the game" is hard enough to justify for a brand new launch, let alone one that released in 2004.
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.
The thing is, I'll probably never actually reach level 50. People who rush to endgame do (okay, so here, we're technically talking about rushing to 50, not 60, but that's a small difference), but people who stop and smell the roses don't. And even if I do reach level 50, at that point, I'll have leveled way past nearly everything that I wanted to do, so I still can't do it. I suppose that I could theoretically delete everything and start over now that the account has some stupid, artificial restriction removed. Surely you can understand why that's a really unappealing prospect.
Congratulations, Blizzard. You've somehow managed to use 16 years of development and 8 expansions to make less content available than you had at launch. (Unless you count nothing as being available at launch because the servers were a disaster for the first year and some odd.)
Want to know why the MMORPG industry isn't doing so well in recent years? Games finding creative ways to do stupid things that are fine for people who are already at the endgame but don't allow new players to pick up the game and have fun is a major reason. Older games need to be able to pick up new players in order to do well, and while WoW is hardly the worst offender, a lot of older MMORPGs seem to actively want for no new players to ever join their game.
You could argue that it's not that bad if you want to. But what is gained by telling people that you must first rush to level 50 before you're allowed to play the game? What would be lost by letting new players just play the game? If you want to make the rush to 50 a default or recommendation, fine, but why make it a requirement for all new players?
Some games try to rush everyone to the endgame because they're trying to monetize a heavily pay to win endgame, and they don't expect to get any money from people playing through lower level content. But WoW is a subscription game! What is Blizzard's excuse for this stupidity?
Well, they do sell you a way around it in their game store. Three, in fact, priced at $40, $60, or $80. Maybe that's their excuse.
Ideally, you would be playing the game to 50 with a character that you enjoyed playing and experiencing the game and having fun. If you don't enjoy even the first character to 50, then you probably just don't enjoy the game. The idea that you would create a rush character that you don't like to play in order unlock more areas to level in with an alt seems a bit twisted to me. Why not play a character you enjoy and take your time with it?
You can also gain xp by doing dungeons and PvPing by the way. It helps break up what would normally be quite a quests grind.
I think that what THEY believe they are achieving with this game design is a fleshed out, linear experience for a person's first run through so that they are able to get familiar with the game. Obviously you find this to be antithetical to your own ideal first experience.
One thing I am finding strange is how you keep calling them stupid or idiots and whatnot. It sounds like you're really angry about a game you aren't playing. I'd recommend just not playing WoW again.
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.
The thing is, I'll probably never actually reach level 50. People who rush to endgame do (okay, so here, we're technically talking about rushing to 50, not 60, but that's a small difference), but people who stop and smell the roses don't. And even if I do reach level 50, at that point, I'll have leveled way past nearly everything that I wanted to do, so I still can't do it. I suppose that I could theoretically delete everything and start over now that the account has some stupid, artificial restriction removed. Surely you can understand why that's a really unappealing prospect.
Congratulations, Blizzard. You've somehow managed to use 16 years of development and 8 expansions to make less content available than you had at launch. (Unless you count nothing as being available at launch because the servers were a disaster for the first year and some odd.)
Want to know why the MMORPG industry isn't doing so well in recent years? Games finding creative ways to do stupid things that are fine for people who are already at the endgame but don't allow new players to pick up the game and have fun is a major reason. Older games need to be able to pick up new players in order to do well, and while WoW is hardly the worst offender, a lot of older MMORPGs seem to actively want for no new players to ever join their game.
You could argue that it's not that bad if you want to. But what is gained by telling people that you must first rush to level 50 before you're allowed to play the game? What would be lost by letting new players just play the game? If you want to make the rush to 50 a default or recommendation, fine, but why make it a requirement for all new players?
Some games try to rush everyone to the endgame because they're trying to monetize a heavily pay to win endgame, and they don't expect to get any money from people playing through lower level content. But WoW is a subscription game! What is Blizzard's excuse for this stupidity?
Well, they do sell you a way around it in their game store. Three, in fact, priced at $40, $60, or $80. Maybe that's their excuse.
Ideally, you would be playing the game to 50 with a character that you enjoyed playing and experiencing the game and having fun. If you don't enjoy even the first character to 50, then you probably just don't enjoy the game. The idea that you would create a rush character that you don't like to play in order unlock more areas to level in with an alt seems a bit twisted to me. Why not play a character you enjoy and take your time with it?
You can also gain xp by doing dungeons and PvPing by the way. It helps break up what would normally be quite a quests grind.
I think that what THEY believe they are achieving with this game design is a fleshed out, linear experience for a person's first run through so that they are able to get familiar with the game. Obviously you find this to be antithetical to your own ideal first experience.
One thing I am finding strange is how you keep calling them stupid or idiots and whatnot. It sounds like you're really angry about a game you aren't playing. I'd recommend just not playing WoW again.
If there are a lot of different classes, in a game, then I want to play them all. If I'm only allowed to play one, then I'm probably going to hate the game, even if I would have otherwise liked it. If I have one character rush to 50 in order to unlock the game, then I'm probably going to hate every moment of it. If I'm going to take my time with a bunch of characters, then by the time the first one reaches 50, they've all leveled past nearly all of the game's content and can't go back and play it.
I get that this isn't a problem for people who like to only have one main, or who regard alts as merely something to do occasionally while waiting for raid lockouts to expire. And that it also isn't a problem for people who were already at the endgame before the launch of Shadowlands, which is Blizzard's main target audience, anyway. But it would be basically trivial to make the game cater to more play styles, and Blizzard has artificially chosen not to.
If there are a lot of different classes, in a game, then I want to play them all. If I'm only allowed to play one, then I'm probably going to hate the game, even if I would have otherwise liked it. If I have one character rush to 50 in order to unlock the game, then I'm probably going to hate every moment of it. If I'm going to take my time with a bunch of characters, then by the time the first one reaches 50, they've all leveled past nearly all of the game's content and can't go back and play it.
I get that this isn't a problem for people who like to only have one main, or who regard alts as merely something to do occasionally while waiting for raid lockouts to expire. And that it also isn't a problem for people who were already at the endgame before the launch of Shadowlands, which is Blizzard's main target audience, anyway. But it would be basically trivial to make the game cater to more play styles, and Blizzard has artificially chosen not to.
What's stopping you from playing all classes in WOW? I do.
All that rushing to 50 does is unlock Shadowlands and that's not "the game" unless that's the only part you want to play.
You do not need a level 50 character to unlock Chromie time. All you need to do is take one character to 10 through the new tutorial. You never need to level any alts the same way you leveled your previous one.
I neither raid and I have no "mains" except maybe my main of the week. I have a lot of alts and not only does every class play differently, each spec in a class does as well. Is that enough "catering" to more play styles enough for you.
So I'm not your imaginary end game grinder killing time between raid lockouts. I don't even know any players like that.
Sounds to me like you just want to bitch about WoW and are cherry picking real and imaginary issues to bitch about without even having a passing knowledge of how it currently plays. And when others try to tell you how it works you ignore what we say and change the subject to a new belly ache.
So either plop down $15 for a month and see for yourself or don't. We don't really care what you do either way.
"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
If there are a lot of different classes, in a game, then I want to play them all. If I'm only allowed to play one, then I'm probably going to hate the game, even if I would have otherwise liked it. If I have one character rush to 50 in order to unlock the game, then I'm probably going to hate every moment of it. If I'm going to take my time with a bunch of characters, then by the time the first one reaches 50, they've all leveled past nearly all of the game's content and can't go back and play it.
I get that this isn't a problem for people who like to only have one main, or who regard alts as merely something to do occasionally while waiting for raid lockouts to expire. And that it also isn't a problem for people who were already at the endgame before the launch of Shadowlands, which is Blizzard's main target audience, anyway. But it would be basically trivial to make the game cater to more play styles, and Blizzard has artificially chosen not to.
What's stopping you from playing all classes in WOW? I do.
All that rushing to 50 does is unlock Shadowlands and that's not "the game" unless that's the only part you want to play.
You do not need a level 50 character to unlock Chromie time. All you need to do is take one character to 10 through the new tutorial. You never need to level any alts the same way you leveled your previous one.
I neither raid and I have no "mains" except maybe my main of the week. I have a lot of alts and not only does every class play differently, each spec in a class does as well. Is that enough "catering" to more play styles enough for you.
So I'm not your imaginary end game grinder killing time between raid lockouts. I don't even know any players like that.
Sounds to me like you just want to bitch about WoW and are cherry picking real and imaginary issues to bitch about without even having a passing knowledge of how it currently plays. And when others try to tell you how it works you ignore what we say and change the subject to a new belly ache.
So either plop down $15 for a month and see for yourself or don't. We don't really care what you do either way.
I hope you're right. If you're right, then that would solve my complaint. It directly contradicts what the others are saying, though.
Meanwhile, searching for "Chromie time" rather than just "Chromie" on the wiki turned up this:
"Timewalking Campaigns (aka Chromie Time) allow players who have already experienced Battle for Azeroth and reached level 50 on at least one character to choose to level any subsequent characters in a different expansion. While a Timewalking Campaign is active, all zones will scale up to level 50 instead of their usual level caps. Veteran players can pick a campaign from Chromie near the Stormwind Embassy or Orgrimmar Embassy and get adventuring.
When a character reaches level 50, they will be removed from Timewalking Campaigns and teleported back to Stormwind or Orgrimmar. At level 50 characters are meant to progress into the Shadowlands."
That jumbled mess contradicts itself, and also everyone else. It says that you can't access Chromie time until you've reached level 50. But it also says that at level 50, it kicks you out of Chromie time so you still can't access it.
Meanwhile, it also says that if you use Chromie time on another character, it will make all zones in it scale up to level 50. Elsewhere on the wiki, it says that other zones besides Battle for Azeroth (and Shadowlands) only scale up to some lower level, usually capped at 30-45. But if you can't access the other zones until the other zones will scale to level 50 for you, then it doesn't actually mean anything for the other zones to only scale to 30 or 40 or whatever.
Yes, yes, the wiki can be edited by absolutely anyone, so it can sometimes be wrong. But that points to a more fundamental problem: creating an artificial restriction on new accounts that veteran players are not subject to means that veteran players don't know what the restrictions are because they aren't affected by them, which makes it much harder to help new players with them. Which is why I'm getting a bunch of contradictory information here when I ask.
If there are a lot of different classes, in a game, then I want to play them all. If I'm only allowed to play one, then I'm probably going to hate the game, even if I would have otherwise liked it. If I have one character rush to 50 in order to unlock the game, then I'm probably going to hate every moment of it. If I'm going to take my time with a bunch of characters, then by the time the first one reaches 50, they've all leveled past nearly all of the game's content and can't go back and play it.
I get that this isn't a problem for people who like to only have one main, or who regard alts as merely something to do occasionally while waiting for raid lockouts to expire. And that it also isn't a problem for people who were already at the endgame before the launch of Shadowlands, which is Blizzard's main target audience, anyway. But it would be basically trivial to make the game cater to more play styles, and Blizzard has artificially chosen not to.
What's stopping you from playing all classes in WOW? I do.
All that rushing to 50 does is unlock Shadowlands and that's not "the game" unless that's the only part you want to play.
You do not need a level 50 character to unlock Chromie time. All you need to do is take one character to 10 through the new tutorial. You never need to level any alts the same way you leveled your previous one.
I neither raid and I have no "mains" except maybe my main of the week. I have a lot of alts and not only does every class play differently, each spec in a class does as well. Is that enough "catering" to more play styles enough for you.
So I'm not your imaginary end game grinder killing time between raid lockouts. I don't even know any players like that.
Sounds to me like you just want to bitch about WoW and are cherry picking real and imaginary issues to bitch about without even having a passing knowledge of how it currently plays. And when others try to tell you how it works you ignore what we say and change the subject to a new belly ache.
So either plop down $15 for a month and see for yourself or don't. We don't really care what you do either way.
I hope you're right. If you're right, then that would solve my complaint. It directly contradicts what the others are saying, though.
Meanwhile, searching for "Chromie time" rather than just "Chromie" on the wiki turned up this:
"Timewalking Campaigns (aka Chromie Time) allow players who have already experienced Battle for Azeroth and reached level 50 on at least one character to choose to level any subsequent characters in a different expansion. While a Timewalking Campaign is active, all zones will scale up to level 50 instead of their usual level caps. Veteran players can pick a campaign from Chromie near the Stormwind Embassy or Orgrimmar Embassy and get adventuring.
When a character reaches level 50, they will be removed from Timewalking Campaigns and teleported back to Stormwind or Orgrimmar. At level 50 characters are meant to progress into the Shadowlands."
That jumbled mess contradicts itself, and also everyone else. It says that you can't access Chromie time until you've reached level 50. But it also says that at level 50, it kicks you out of Chromie time so you still can't access it.
Meanwhile, it also says that if you use Chromie time on another character, it will make all zones in it scale up to level 50. Elsewhere on the wiki, it says that other zones besides Battle for Azeroth (and Shadowlands) only scale up to some lower level, usually capped at 30-45. But if you can't access the other zones until the other zones will scale to level 50 for you, then it doesn't actually mean anything for the other zones to only scale to 30 or 40 or whatever.
Yes, yes, the wiki can be edited by absolutely anyone, so it can sometimes be wrong. But that points to a more fundamental problem: creating an artificial restriction on new accounts that veteran players are not subject to means that veteran players don't know what the restrictions are because they aren't affected by them, which makes it much harder to help new players with them. Which is why I'm getting a bunch of contradictory information here when I ask.
Well I returned only recently and I had no max level characters when I did.
After my first time through the new tutorial I had no choice - it was continue to BFA or nothing (except the choice to just start leveling in Elwyn Forrest outside the gates of Stormwind and carry on from there.)
But on my second time after the tutorial I was given a choice to continue (i.e. BFA) or not. Choosing not to continue gave me access to Chromie time and his icon appeared on the Stormwind map and I could chose any of the past expansions to level in.
But even without that you can chose to do the old tutorial zones instead of the new one including the racial-specific ones (Worgen, etc.) The game state without Chromie defaults to Cataclysm and since all of that had been partially leveled scaled before Shadowlands, at any given level you have 10 or more possible zones to go level in.
There is absolutely zero reason for the leveling experience to be the same way for as many characters as you care to make.
Side note... the current character/server limit is 50
"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
Well I returned only recently and I had no max level characters when I did.
After my first time through the new tutorial I had no choice - it was continue to BFA or nothing (except the choice to just start leveling in Elwyn Forrest outside the gates of Stormwind and carry on from there.)
But on my second time after the tutorial I was given a choice to continue (i.e. BFA) or not. Choosing not to continue gave me access to Chromie time and his icon appeared on the Stormwind map and I could chose any of the past expansions to level in.
But even without that you can chose to do the old tutorial zones instead of the new one including the racial-specific ones (Worgen, etc.) The game state without Chromie defaults to Cataclysm and since all of that had been partially leveled scaled before Shadowlands, at any given level you have 10 or more possible zones to go level in.
There is absolutely zero reason for the leveling experience to be the same way for as many characters as you care to make.
Side note... the current character/server limit is 50
Did you get your first character to level 50 before the second character was given the choice? Or could you get your first character to 12 or so, start a second character, get to 10, and have a choice even though you hadn't completed Battle for Azeroth?
Also, on the first character, did it say that you had to go to Battle for Azeroth initially but could then leave and go elsewhere whenever you pleased as soon as you wanted? Or did it force you to stay in Battle for Azeroth until you reached level 50?
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.
You can turn XP off whenever you want.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Finally hit 60 this week in Shadowlands. The stories is just good enough that you get annoyed by the fact that they all seem to end on a cliffhanger. I'm amazed how great this game looks and how tight it plays after 16 years.
I don't have any major complaints about the quests or dungeons, but I really have this been there, done that feeling as far as the actual gameplay hooks. I found myself zoning out into auto pilot even the first time through some of the content. Not sure that you can really do much about that - the fact that I've been playing this long is a small gaming miracle.
Well I returned only recently and I had no max level characters when I did.
After my first time through the new tutorial I had no choice - it was continue to BFA or nothing (except the choice to just start leveling in Elwyn Forrest outside the gates of Stormwind and carry on from there.)
But on my second time after the tutorial I was given a choice to continue (i.e. BFA) or not. Choosing not to continue gave me access to Chromie time and his icon appeared on the Stormwind map and I could chose any of the past expansions to level in.
But even without that you can chose to do the old tutorial zones instead of the new one including the racial-specific ones (Worgen, etc.) The game state without Chromie defaults to Cataclysm and since all of that had been partially leveled scaled before Shadowlands, at any given level you have 10 or more possible zones to go level in.
There is absolutely zero reason for the leveling experience to be the same way for as many characters as you care to make.
Side note... the current character/server limit is 50
Did you get your first character to level 50 before the second character was given the choice? Or could you get your first character to 12 or so, start a second character, get to 10, and have a choice even though you hadn't completed Battle for Azeroth?
Also, on the first character, did it say that you had to go to Battle for Azeroth initially but could then leave and go elsewhere whenever you pleased as soon as you wanted? Or did it force you to stay in Battle for Azeroth until you reached level 50?
No I didn't get my first character to 50 before I started my second after my first was level 20 or so. And yeah I over-emphasized the "BFA or nothing" part since even with that first character you can chose the old tutorial and even if you choose the new one to do, you can just stop after you get to Stormwind and go do your own thing. I was deliberately avoiding playing with my 30something or 40something characters because I wanted t get a fresh feel for the classes and their rotations before I focused on the higher level ones... I'm glad I did that because every spec has had small and big changes.
IDK for sure but I may be a special case because I did play it for a couple of months in 2019 when Classic launched and while I was subbed for that I spent some time in Legion to check out the Demon Hunter class.
So prior to my return I had actually dipped my toe at least in all previous expansions except BFA. I had actually done all content up to the end of MOP when I played regularly so I may have unlocked chromie doing that despite not being max level.
Maybe @blueturtle13 can chip in since he also just recently went back.
"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
Do you know what it does with the levels of old characters? I still have a bunch of characters whose levels were in the 20s before Shadowlands. Would they now be level 10? Or something else?
I don't care to repeat the Vanilla content, as I played that when it was actually in Vanilla. It's everything else that I haven't seen, apart from the first two zones for various races.
Do you know what it does with the levels of old characters? I still have a bunch of characters whose levels were in the 20s before Shadowlands. Would they now be level 10? Or something else?
I don't care to repeat the Vanilla content, as I played that when it was actually in Vanilla. It's everything else that I haven't seen, apart from the first two zones for various races.
This is what the level squish did:
I had a whole host of characters with a Warlock at 41 and a DH at 40 after the squish. Most of the ones I had who had unlocked the max riding/flying skill back in their day (and kept that although being below 40 which is the new level for getting that) were in the low to mid 30s.
EDIT: also, you can check it out 1-20 for free on as many characters as you want if you're unsure with a trial account. That's actually what I did before subbing,
"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
Thank you for the explanations. It sounds like the sensible thing to do is to just ignore Chromie time entirely. If you want to finish an expansion, then once you reach the top of the level range that it scales to, freeze your experience so that you don't level past it. And then you can unfreeze it once done.
People have talked about finishing an expansion storyline. What does that mean? At least back in Vanilla, WoW really didn't have a storyline at all. It had some quest chains, and some scattered fragments of lore, but nothing that you could point to and say, that's what WoW's storyline is. Has that now changed, with expansions offering a very long, on-rails story? Or perhaps something like Guild Wars 1, where there was a story to each campaign that made sense if you played through everything in order, but you could jump around and skip parts of it if you wanted to.
Would it be possible to do an entire expansion by having different characters do different zones? In Vanilla, you could certainly do that--and I did. But other than the "go talk to someone at the next quest hub" quests, hardly any quest lines crossed zone boundaries. Is it still that way, or did they make the expansions more on rails, so that a single character must do the entire expansion in order to see the end, rather than just leveling elsewhere and then doing the last zone of an expansion?
unless you really like doing pvp at certain levels there is no real reason to stay a low levels. Finding raid groups to do low level raids at the appropriate level is next to impossible if you want to to see the end of the storylines...cause they are in the raids.
In vanilla you are the story, it's how mmorpg's used to be, about your character living, existing, surviving in the world.
FYI Quizz as you have so many questions, not sure if you know or not but all you have to do is sub for a month and the entire game is playable only Shadowlands content will be unavailable.
But, you will get all the Shadowlands base game changes, like squish, chromie, class changes ect.
Low cost option to test drive it.
I'm the type where i have to experience it, read a manual on how to do whatever, i'm lost, try to do it or do it, then read the manual, i understand it all perfectly.
Partly why i don't want to know anything about anything before the expansion launches, i like to figure it out when i get there is the real reason, but partly as anything i hear wont make any sense as i've not experienced it.
My faith is my shield! - Turalyon 2022
Your legend ends here and now! - (Battles Won Long Ago)
I'm honestly trying to figure out what the real agenda was: Go to war with the min-maxers (failed if so), reward the narcissist elitists (may be a hit or miss based on comments in their forums), or just plain artifically keeped you logged in (most probable).
BFA
Daily:
World quests (7 zones)
Emissary
Mechagon quests
Nazjatar quests
Minor assault quests
Major assault quests
Mini-vision
Table missions
Warfront contributions
Warfront world quests (2 zones)
incursion (actually every 19 hours)
Weekly:
Island expedition bar
5 world bosses
2 warfronts (2 diff. each)
Ny'alotha (4 difficulties)
Greater assault bar
PvP conquest chest
Call to arms (weekly*)
Mythic+ chest
Adventure guide quest
Against over odds (outnum.)
Shadowlands
Daily "Callings" (emissary replacement?)
Daily World Quests
Daily Maw quests
Daily Maw meter
Weekly renown quests
Weekly anima stock
Weekly Torghast boss loot w/soul ash
Weekly souls from Maw
Weekly vault (replacement to m+cache - more tasks)
The good news is the "busy work" is shrinking but the (excessive or too stand outish imo) timegating actually makes said "work" more grueling than it seems lightly listed on paper.
As far as feeling pressure or competitiveness is concerned to not feel this in WoW is impossible. To not conform to this slavery is not to progress.
Ultimately the Torghast thing feels like a gimmick to me. Slapping a roguelike, not new btw, into a MMO just doesn't quite work here.
Ah well I hope this ex-pack can finally be the wake up call to kill my addiction from WoW.
They've perfected the drip drip drip of content by making every single system totally ambiguous to the point, not even professional players can honestly say, I know how this works, case in point adventures good luck figuring out if you'll win or not.
Winning, not enough to win seriously. Every drop is nerfed, in BFA and prior, you could earn another chance, not so in SL. When you work for something, wait three days to be rewarded, the system gives you grey items and skins, worth some gold, but honestly when you're dead who cares about gold.
New leveling - a joke everything you did before, but now you can choose your path to damnation.
Zone design - painful, don't get me wrong, they look great, but they're built from the get go as a lower circle of hell.
Actually I like that, 1-50 is the primary hell plain. SL zones 1-4 and the covenants of reskinned rewards are levels 2-5 in hell, the Maw, ranks in at at least the 6th plane of hell, Torghast nicely fills every level after.
I thought it would be a decent expandable system for duo/trio content like scenarios of MOP married to a rando Greater rift system of Diablo 3. But like everything in SL its just another illusion offering nothing but temporary power that isn't even that strong. Think what you will of BFA Visions content, but at least it gave the people who did not want to fill out a CV to raid or have our souls bleed in mythic+ toxicity..
Shadowlands, is just that a shade of something that once was great. Not the beautiful hereafter. 9/10 don't make me laugh. Game might scrape a 5 for zone art and movies but loses everything for cut and past design.
Please do A WOW Shadowlands review 3 months later. There is no way this is a 9.0 experience. Iplay and it is a quickly declining experience. Two guilds exploded from players quitting and slow progress. We need some honesty here to get some eyes for future changes.
GRIND DOES NOT EQUAL MAKING A GAME CHALLENGING!! YES I AM YELLING LOL
Obviously the reviewer wrote this article during his "honeymoon phase".
I've played all expansions but WoD and I can safely say this the worste and most boring expansion of all. Even BfA was better and that's saying a lot.
I could see super casuals enjoying this Xpac for a while (the type that play 2 hours a week) but for players who like to invest some time in their MMO, this Xpac offers nothing.
Also Blizzard has become completely corrupt by now, all their decisions damage the game and spit on the community.
Comments
I think the weight of all these years, not to mention the absolutely ridiculous way they monkey around with core class mechanics, has just made this game not very fun (at least for me).
It got me through to 10 Dec, which was what I needed it for (I played cyberpunk on PC, so it was a good time). As a side effect, I ended up resubbing to FF XIV.
Congratulations, Blizzard. You've somehow managed to use 16 years of development and 8 expansions to make less content available than you had at launch. (Unless you count nothing as being available at launch because the servers were a disaster for the first year and some odd.)
Want to know why the MMORPG industry isn't doing so well in recent years? Games finding creative ways to do stupid things that are fine for people who are already at the endgame but don't allow new players to pick up the game and have fun is a major reason. Older games need to be able to pick up new players in order to do well, and while WoW is hardly the worst offender, a lot of older MMORPGs seem to actively want for no new players to ever join their game.
You could argue that it's not that bad if you want to. But what is gained by telling people that you must first rush to level 50 before you're allowed to play the game? What would be lost by letting new players just play the game? If you want to make the rush to 50 a default or recommendation, fine, but why make it a requirement for all new players?
Some games try to rush everyone to the endgame because they're trying to monetize a heavily pay to win endgame, and they don't expect to get any money from people playing through lower level content. But WoW is a subscription game! What is Blizzard's excuse for this stupidity?
Well, they do sell you a way around it in their game store. Three, in fact, priced at $40, $60, or $80. Maybe that's their excuse. But "pay $55 up front before trying the game" is hard enough to justify for a brand new launch, let alone one that released in 2004.
You can also gain xp by doing dungeons and PvPing by the way. It helps break up what would normally be quite a quests grind.
I think that what THEY believe they are achieving with this game design is a fleshed out, linear experience for a person's first run through so that they are able to get familiar with the game. Obviously you find this to be antithetical to your own ideal first experience.
One thing I am finding strange is how you keep calling them stupid or idiots and whatnot. It sounds like you're really angry about a game you aren't playing. I'd recommend just not playing WoW again.
I get that this isn't a problem for people who like to only have one main, or who regard alts as merely something to do occasionally while waiting for raid lockouts to expire. And that it also isn't a problem for people who were already at the endgame before the launch of Shadowlands, which is Blizzard's main target audience, anyway. But it would be basically trivial to make the game cater to more play styles, and Blizzard has artificially chosen not to.
All that rushing to 50 does is unlock Shadowlands and that's not "the game" unless that's the only part you want to play.
You do not need a level 50 character to unlock Chromie time. All you need to do is take one character to 10 through the new tutorial. You never need to level any alts the same way you leveled your previous one.
I neither raid and I have no "mains" except maybe my main of the week. I have a lot of alts and not only does every class play differently, each spec in a class does as well. Is that enough "catering" to more play styles enough for you.
So I'm not your imaginary end game grinder killing time between raid lockouts. I don't even know any players like that.
Sounds to me like you just want to bitch about WoW and are cherry picking real and imaginary issues to bitch about without even having a passing knowledge of how it currently plays. And when others try to tell you how it works you ignore what we say and change the subject to a new belly ache.
So either plop down $15 for a month and see for yourself or don't. We don't really care what you do either way.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Meanwhile, searching for "Chromie time" rather than just "Chromie" on the wiki turned up this:
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Timewalking_Campaigns
"Timewalking Campaigns (aka Chromie Time) allow players who have already experienced Battle for Azeroth and reached level 50 on at least one character to choose to level any subsequent characters in a different expansion. While a Timewalking Campaign is active, all zones will scale up to level 50 instead of their usual level caps. Veteran players can pick a campaign from Chromie near the Stormwind Embassy or Orgrimmar Embassy and get adventuring.
That jumbled mess contradicts itself, and also everyone else. It says that you can't access Chromie time until you've reached level 50. But it also says that at level 50, it kicks you out of Chromie time so you still can't access it.
Meanwhile, it also says that if you use Chromie time on another character, it will make all zones in it scale up to level 50. Elsewhere on the wiki, it says that other zones besides Battle for Azeroth (and Shadowlands) only scale up to some lower level, usually capped at 30-45. But if you can't access the other zones until the other zones will scale to level 50 for you, then it doesn't actually mean anything for the other zones to only scale to 30 or 40 or whatever.
Yes, yes, the wiki can be edited by absolutely anyone, so it can sometimes be wrong. But that points to a more fundamental problem: creating an artificial restriction on new accounts that veteran players are not subject to means that veteran players don't know what the restrictions are because they aren't affected by them, which makes it much harder to help new players with them. Which is why I'm getting a bunch of contradictory information here when I ask.
After my first time through the new tutorial I had no choice - it was continue to BFA or nothing (except the choice to just start leveling in Elwyn Forrest outside the gates of Stormwind and carry on from there.)
But on my second time after the tutorial I was given a choice to continue (i.e. BFA) or not. Choosing not to continue gave me access to Chromie time and his icon appeared on the Stormwind map and I could chose any of the past expansions to level in.
But even without that you can chose to do the old tutorial zones instead of the new one including the racial-specific ones (Worgen, etc.) The game state without Chromie defaults to Cataclysm and since all of that had been partially leveled scaled before Shadowlands, at any given level you have 10 or more possible zones to go level in.
There is absolutely zero reason for the leveling experience to be the same way for as many characters as you care to make.
Side note... the current character/server limit is 50
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Also, on the first character, did it say that you had to go to Battle for Azeroth initially but could then leave and go elsewhere whenever you pleased as soon as you wanted? Or did it force you to stay in Battle for Azeroth until you reached level 50?
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I don't have any major complaints about the quests or dungeons, but I really have this been there, done that feeling as far as the actual gameplay hooks. I found myself zoning out into auto pilot even the first time through some of the content. Not sure that you can really do much about that - the fact that I've been playing this long is a small gaming miracle.
IDK for sure but I may be a special case because I did play it for a couple of months in 2019 when Classic launched and while I was subbed for that I spent some time in Legion to check out the Demon Hunter class.
So prior to my return I had actually dipped my toe at least in all previous expansions except BFA. I had actually done all content up to the end of MOP when I played regularly so I may have unlocked chromie doing that despite not being max level.
Maybe @blueturtle13 can chip in since he also just recently went back.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I don't care to repeat the Vanilla content, as I played that when it was actually in Vanilla. It's everything else that I haven't seen, apart from the first two zones for various races.
I had a whole host of characters with a Warlock at 41 and a DH at 40 after the squish. Most of the ones I had who had unlocked the max riding/flying skill back in their day (and kept that although being below 40 which is the new level for getting that) were in the low to mid 30s.
EDIT: also, you can check it out 1-20 for free on as many characters as you want if you're unsure with a trial account. That's actually what I did before subbing,
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Would it be possible to do an entire expansion by having different characters do different zones? In Vanilla, you could certainly do that--and I did. But other than the "go talk to someone at the next quest hub" quests, hardly any quest lines crossed zone boundaries. Is it still that way, or did they make the expansions more on rails, so that a single character must do the entire expansion in order to see the end, rather than just leveling elsewhere and then doing the last zone of an expansion?
BFA
Daily:
- World quests (7 zones)
- Emissary
- Mechagon quests
- Nazjatar quests
- Minor assault quests
- Major assault quests
- Mini-vision
- Table missions
- Warfront contributions
- Warfront world quests (2 zones)
- incursion (actually every 19 hours)
Weekly:- Island expedition bar
- 5 world bosses
- 2 warfronts (2 diff. each)
- Ny'alotha (4 difficulties)
- Greater assault bar
- PvP conquest chest
- Call to arms (weekly*)
- Mythic+ chest
- Adventure guide quest
- Against over odds (outnum.)
ShadowlandsAC2 Player RIP Final Death Jan 31st 2017
Refugee of Auberean
Refugee of Dereth
They've perfected the drip drip drip of content by making every single system totally ambiguous to the point, not even professional players can honestly say, I know how this works, case in point adventures good luck figuring out if you'll win or not.
Winning, not enough to win seriously. Every drop is nerfed, in BFA and prior, you could earn another chance, not so in SL. When you work for something, wait three days to be rewarded, the system gives you grey items and skins, worth some gold, but honestly when you're dead who cares about gold.
New leveling - a joke everything you did before, but now you can choose your path to damnation.
Zone design - painful, don't get me wrong, they look great, but they're built from the get go as a lower circle of hell.
Actually I like that, 1-50 is the primary hell plain. SL zones 1-4 and the covenants of reskinned rewards are levels 2-5 in hell, the Maw, ranks in at at least the 6th plane of hell, Torghast nicely fills every level after.
I thought it would be a decent expandable system for duo/trio content like scenarios of MOP married to a rando Greater rift system of Diablo 3. But like everything in SL its just another illusion offering nothing but temporary power that isn't even that strong. Think what you will of BFA Visions content, but at least it gave the people who did not want to fill out a CV to raid or have our souls bleed in mythic+ toxicity..
Shadowlands, is just that a shade of something that once was great. Not the beautiful hereafter. 9/10 don't make me laugh. Game might scrape a 5 for zone art and movies but loses everything for cut and past design.
GRIND DOES NOT EQUAL MAKING A GAME CHALLENGING!! YES I AM YELLING LOL
Obviously the reviewer wrote this article during his "honeymoon phase".
I've played all expansions but WoD and I can safely say this the worste and most boring expansion of all. Even BfA was better and that's saying a lot.
I could see super casuals enjoying this Xpac for a while (the type that play 2 hours a week) but for players who like to invest some time in their MMO, this Xpac offers nothing.
Also Blizzard has become completely corrupt by now, all their decisions damage the game and spit on the community.
A disaster IMO
2/10