While we are heavily focused on other MMOs at the moment - Mike wanted to drop in with his thoughts on the expansion thus far and the Seasonal nature of it, as well as his impressions of the Trading Post and gear crafting. How are you finding the expansion so far?
played every other WoW expansion apart from this one, I guess SL made me realise that the game isn't the same game for me as it was all them years ago :D been trying out some new games for once
oh yeah, totally couldnt be his age, genetics or the stress of running a business, it's all WoW's fault. to quote one Dr. Gregory House; "it's never lupus..."
This sentiment is, by far, the healthiest place for an MMO to be. Mechanics to retain people by force only hurt the game; allowing people to finish in the short term and come back fresh is great, without leaving people feeling resentment toward the game for wasting their time.
the problem is that the game ask for a monthly fee which is annoyhing. It makes me feel like I MUST play, otherwise i'd be throwing my money for nothing. That's why i stopped playing a year ago and moved to guild wars 2 again
I was a long time player and was pretty hard core, the last expansion I played and enjoyed was mists of pandaria, I then quit with the following expansion I think BFA if i remember correctly. My question is, is it worth coming back now ? Have they improved the game ? Or is it just a boring repetitive grind fest? Thanks in advance.
I wouldn't mind them adding activities outside the location of the current expansion at all. In fact, the Trading Post seems like the perfect fit for that, because it's optional/cosmetic stuff.
feels great knowing I can feel "done" without feeling like I'm falling behind. And I can come back and pick it up right away. And level up an alt and quickly reach a similar power level to my main. Dragonflight is a great expansion.
I got my Rogue main up to 411, and Keystone Hero. I'm at a point with my rogue where I feel like I'm happy with my progression and can relax on that character. I may pop in to do high keys or whatever, I would like to work on getting all 20s done for the teleports, but now I'm refocusing on my main of 14 years of my paladin, especially since all the ret changes look awesome and I'm super happy that I can reasonably play an alt without having to grind up so much other bullshit.
I’ve honestly been doing exclusively PvP and I’ve been having a blast. I honestly like the solo shuffle feature a lot. It finally gave me a chance to push arena rating which is something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid but I just don’t like committing to a team. Finally got the 1800 transmog and it feels so good.
@@Connor-zw6gz you can queue for rated arena by yourself, and everyone on your team and the enemy team is also by themselves. This means you can push rating without having to communicate with teammates. You play 6 rounds of 3v3, after each round the players are shuffled around so you play a single round of every possible comp. Your rating goes up or down depending on how many games out of 6 you won. I love it because rather than relying on communication with your team and the team itself, you rely solely on yourself. And If you want to have an actual team there are separate brackets of 2v2 and 3v3 for that as well.
It's good that people enjoy DF and I hope it stays that way. I looked into it for 30 days and I realised I had moved on after my break of one and a half years. I had a lot of fun and met amazing people during my time in WoW. Those memories will stay with me.
Kind of same. I got the WoW itch when DF started and I heard good things about it, but I played for a bit over a month and realized the love is no longer there. My connection to the world and the lore has been cut. Probably irreparably. And I feel I can move on now. But who knows. Maybe a bunch of retcons, a new owner or a new development team could bring me back one day.
Yeah, I enjoyed Dragonflight more than recent expansions. But after playing around in my first month, I didn't feel much drive to keep going. But I didn't walk away angry like I have in the past. I just don't want to play more of it. Maybe they do something cool with a patch or something, but if not, I feel a lot better walking away from the game now than I did after Korthia.
Same. Also dipped in for one month - still got 5 days left... Capped my main character. Gameplay is good, content seems good, it gave the impression of being the game I used to love. But the magic just isn't there for me anymore - it took too long.
I got exactly the same feelings, I hope people that enjoy it keep doing it and I really wish WoW to succeed but it's no longer for me. I moved on for good in 9.1 and found a new home in XIV. I might be too old but I enjoy a good slow paced story and side activities more than spamming M+ and raid every day.
Great video, fantastic content, love it all. As a 6/8 M progger currently who has never loved M+, I think they've improved some and have more room to improve. The 10 16's or higher per crafted piece is kind of odd since you only need 8 for vault maximization weekly (and I think that's too high tbh, should be 2, 4, 6 IMO, not 2,4,8). BUT I do like how there is a push to do something more than x number of 15 keys. I took a break from WoW after progging SLG Mythic in Nathria and I only ever did 15's to get my vault done - and the current M+ - Raid tie-ins are LEAPS and bounds above where they used to be. Plus there's an incentive to go above a 15, which I always thought was insanity (you want me to do +30% more dps/healing/tanking per key?!) but is not that bad in appropriate gear and with people who do mechanics/kicks correctly on at least the easiest dungeons and affixes - still more work to do here. Anyways. great content, and I'm very much looking forward to your takes on the rest of so-called Project MMO!
Nice vid. Just quick reaction to one small thing. You love crafting. I... still have no idea how it works. I find it confusing, messy and I just don't understand what any of the numerous items in my bags do. It feels like it was designed to be deliberately confusing and demand an excel spreadsheet. Also, it seems to need mythic+ which I've deliberately stopped doing last expansion when I realized I hated it.
M+ definitely helps but it's by no means required-- you can also get the upgrade items from raid (heroic for the 405s, mythic for the 418s), but you can also just get up to 392 crafted gear without doing any of that and just making your sparks of ingenuity into the base items. The main issue is that there's just not really anything outside of M+/raid that lets you progress it. I mean you can get 4 of the heroic raid/405 ilvl upgrade items from getting max rep with all the factions but otherwise there's nothing.
I was a crafting guy pre-DF. It was the one part of the game I always identified with even in bad expansions. DF is without a doubt the worst that crafting has been in the game. It's unreasonably complicated.
It only needs two major fixes in my opinion, and I hope you'd agree this would make things easier: 1. The reagent bag is dumb. When you learn a profession you should just get a semi-bottomless item tab under the profession that stores everything that profession can create/gather (that's not straight up gear). This would take the place of the old profession specific bags and they would be phased out (as well as the reagent bags which are stupid). So like an engineer would get bronze, silver, and gold screws all in that tab. No more bag space. Plus, the tab would make it really obvious what everything did. Oh! So these are parts I need to make crafts, these are item mods like tinkers, etc. Cleanly labeled like a professional would have them in a shop. Most MMOs have these "reagent only" tabs now. 2. They need to redesign specialization trees to be way more obvious. You should have one tree that gives you generic boosts to skill, inspiration, overall improvements to your prof. that unlocks at skill level 25 and then the rest should unlock at 50 and be specific to ONLY those categories. It's so dumb finding out that you get big inspiration boosts in a sub-tree that you need to create a build for another tree. It's confusing. Don't make people go down a less optimal tree for what they want to get generic stat boosts. The wording is so confusing, "am I gaining this skill only for crafting this type of item or all items?" That could be eliminated by just making sub-specializations very specific to that craft type. Those two changes would make the system a lot more friendly and understandable.
It's not really that complicated. the only part I really agree with is the last. Where it's unsure of what skill you gain for points in some sub specs. But other than that it's pretty simple just takes a second to figure it out. I also like the bigger tree. Gave me reasons to do same profs on alts until later when I have most of it.
Rule of thumb is, rank 3 consumables gives you the best stats. Rank 3 crafting materials gives you the best chance for a higher rank (top rank being rank 5 for gear). Basically, best ranks = best quality (or best potential).
I've stopped playing about a month ago. Quit as soon as I started feeling bad about logging in every day. And just for that reason I will have Dragonflight in my memory as one of the best Expansions because I didn't burn myself out on it.
I hit level 70 on a few classes and I feel no need to do any mythic, raiding or anything with those characters. It's getting to be a chore to level the other classes now, I think dragon flight is an improvement, but feels hollow as an expansion.
i dont think that's the expansion's fault, that is blizzard still expecting so much repetition and it's going against the vibe that Dragonflight is bringing.
I fully agree! I've got my AOTC, maxed out renown and now it's like well, I guess I could focus on getting an alt up to the same level, and sometimes I do? But only when I want to. It's great! Yes I play less, but my love for the expansion is not gone. Now I look forward to new content without thinking OOOF. It's great! :D
Nothing wrong with being "done" in an MMO. I'm glad WoW has done that and has shown a design change for sure. I guess for me I don't only do M+ so its not too hard for me to get experience for the catalyst. World boss gives 20%, big events such as the feast and dragonkeep give a lot too.
you are right, i rewatched that part and mis-heard. Probably threw me off due to him saying "weekly" i mean why would he have to do 10 M+ a week just incase he gets another spark. The point being i'm glad he's found himself in a happy and healthy spot with the game
Agreed with the spark upgrades from m+! I would have loved to see something to the tune of "Upgrade your spark crafted gear to 418, and it costs 150 shards" And you earn 1 shard per dungeon difficulty. If you're not a good player and you can only complete +2,s you're earning 2 shards per dungeon - you can still eventualy get the upgrade but it will take time. If you can crank through 15s, you'll get 15 shards per dungeon so it takes 10 dungeons to get the shards for the upgrade. A happy balance between skill and time invested is to reward the same currency but substantially different quantities.
I think this expansion has made some good stride in the direction that the game needs to go and I have enjoyed my time playing it. That said, there are still some things that need to be done to make the game better such as account wide reputations, less random stats on gear and end game content that doesn’t require 20 add ons to do well.
no content requires addon to perform well. I'm not even sure what you mean by random stats on gear. All stats are deterministic unless you craft an item without missives. And all rep rewards are account wide. The rep itself just isn't.
you're never getting account wide rep, you got the rewards account wide and it's easier for all characters going forward, up to 200% faster. Blizzard is never going to let you be one and done for all 60 characters, get it out of your head.
there’s not really any point of needing rep on all characters. You get all rewards (minus the primal infusion at the end) for all alts so it’s not necessary
Its funny you posted this today. After Tues NA reset I logged in and said "why"? I have full 418 heroic gear, A Head of the Curve, (not a mythic raider) and now I am felt like I completed everything I wanted to for the time being. I also completed the post. So I logged off.
Ive had quite bad luck with getting loot from raiding itself this raid tier, most of my gear has came from either mythic+ or the vault, but mainly myhic+. I like raiding but its hard to be motivated when i have to rely on the vault and mythic+ to provide me the gear to progress content that barely does. I usually burn out from the mythic+ grind, cuz its more tedious than fun and the whole deal just feels pointless after a while since id spend more time doing something that i dont enjoy but is required for something i do enjoy.
I think the trading post is a great addition to the game, and I think that Dragonflight in general has taken a lot of steps in the right direction. My biggest qualm with WoW now is how out of reach raiding is for your average player. I love doing M+ because it's content I can hop into in a more "episodic" format, like watching a tv show rather than a movie. If I have ample time I can chain them, but if something happens I can just stop after one run. FFXIV has done a great job of creating that type of environment even in their high-end raiding scene, and after experiencing that I have a hard time envisioning ever coming back to WoW raiding. That would be fine, except that all the best gear you get from the game is from mythic raiding, so if you want to push as high as you can in M+, it behooves you to also be pushing into mythic. It's just kind of an unfortunate setback. Even though I enjoy M+, I can work on it all day and still not be able to do as well as a mythic raider that does M+ more casually. I also really think WoW needs to take a lesson from FF in the way they display their mechanics. There are so many times I get hit by things in WoW that feels unfair just because you can't tell where the edge of the swirly is, or other unclear things. FF makes it very very apparent, and if you get hit by a mechanic, it very much feels like your fault, not a fault of bad display.
If they can cut raiding up into smaller chunks without killing the difficulty, I think that people would get back in. Make raiding about clearing bosses with complex mechanics and maybe a few interesting trash fights. We already have Mythic plus for mob clearing challenges.
the biggest issue with Raids and other Group content is Addons, it creates the need for supernatural levels of difficulty and screws over those who dont want addons. i myself am very minimalistic with my addons, i dont want DBM, Damage Meters or any other shit like that, i really wish Blizzard would ban those addons entirely, so it's about skill, not machines doing the work.
That's why a lot of people like the older expansion [vanilla/tbc/wotlk] raiding. It's a bit of a challenge, but nowhere near retail's level, and it's possible for every level of player for older xpac.s
It took so long to get back to this version of the game, where you can feel "done" with current content. It took so long that I quit and lost interest, and don't really feel like getting back into it now even though it seems really good. Just took way too many years & expansions to get back to it.
For me, the trading post was super easy to fill up. I didn’t know current content and just some legacy dungeons may be a couple odd groups, and then just bouncing around on my various different characters and when I checked the live with complete and I was like oh wow I don’t even know what I did, but I guess I did it.
Honestly, I've been on that "too much M+" train since Shadowlands vault was previewed. Even after they reduced it. Especially as a pugger who can spend nearly as much time looking for a group as actually running the dungeon. It burns you out, and the worst part is it burns you out when you most need all three vaults. You're already naturally getting tired of mythics because you've been running them for months, but you really need all 3 slots to increase your chance at the limited number of still useful items that it can drop.
WOW has always had that issue since they added M+, the best gearing path is M+ for all forms of endgame content. For players like myself who do not want / need the stress of a timer or as you pointed out do not want to spend 10+ hours a week in that situation nothing has changed since BFA.
As someone who usually hates any timed events in games, M+ isn’t really about the timer unless you are at a very high level. If you can just clear the dungeon you will time it 99% of the time.
I personally loved DF but i actually ended up quitting because of the amount of m+ focus. I can't play quite as much as i could in the past and I do not enjoy m+ that much (I find it repetitive and it gets boring really fast). So when i realized how much M+ I felt like I had to do to be competitive, I simply couldn't be bothered.
@@ChinnuWoW sure, depending on the level you would like to perform at this is possible. But fact is you could be performing better and compared to someone who does m+ (assuming similar skill level), you are simply behind.
It's an understandable issue and an easy fix. They just need to reward way more drops/gear for the first four or five you run per week and then less for the rest. You incentivize people to at least run a handful a week but still reward grinders for their time invested but not with as much. I'm very surprised they haven't learned this lesson in M+ considering they do it with renown rewards. You get a couple big bursts of renown a week and then have to really grind if you want more. It's a perfect fit for casual and hardcore players alike. They wouldn't need valor quite as much if they would increase gear drops (plus it would make players really push knowing that the first four or five were like 80% drop chances for some M+ loot)
@@AuspexAO Yeah, I agree. I've always been against the weekly vault as a rewards crutch. With more drops in M+ and now with valor upgrades, the vault just shouldn't need to exist. One of the worst feelings in past expansions was reaching the point where your only possible reward was from the vault every week. That was awful. Valor mostly fixed that, but it still feels pretty mandatory to grind 8 a week per character, which is way too much. 1-3-5 would feel way better imo.
yeah, even with the dungeon pool changing next season, that's a lot of repetition, repetition that dont really relent for alts, it's the least alt friendly part of WoW right now atm.
Bang on…The game is really fun… I can build my character any way I want… explore zones… upgrade gear easily… and overcome great foes… elden ring is awesome! … then once a month I can log into wow and check the trading post 15 dolla well spent imo… I hope the next expansion is as boring as dragonflight maybe I’ll finally be able to build my dream house… just pure non stop fun 😂
I gave DF a fair shot after a break of 17 months. Its a nice, fresh expension but the core problem sadly cant be resolved with a new paint. the addon usage and how it is required to do any serious content in the game made me realize that WoWs problem is fundamental and that the Devs need to make a choise. Either continue with the addon culture like IO ect or risk the possibility that casuals wont bother with it or people that share my opinion. i think its too much at this point and addons dictate too much and how the game is played on a core level that effects literally any player in the game.
I thought with the ui revamp they would have a good ingame template for pvp… I wanted to play with as little addons as possible.. but yet again they seem completely necessary just to participate at a basic level…
There are people that never do ranked in lol or overwatch because they are scared to. Sometime, fix yourself before asking to fix the game. You are putting too much stress on yourself, you ain't asking for a date. What if you get rejected few time? Who care? What about you get a guild if yo get rejected that much by random. I like having a pve ranking, because it give me something to play for outside of meaningless seasonal gear. If they add mythic+ auto LFR, people would cry again and insult the survival hunter they have to play with. Welcome to modern gaming. As much as you want to make the game healthy, you can't have a wholesome community in a game so popular. And I stop the potential delusionnal catgirl right there, FF14 have it own toxicity, do any competitive content and you will see it. 🙄
You’re really exaggerating the addons. There is absolutely nothing you can’t do in the game without addons. Do they help? Yea sure but they’re not necessary. I don’t use any addons besides UI stuff and weakauras.
i'm actually in a rather happy place for the first time in years. i'm content with my gear, i login once a day to farm what i want, and play other games in the meanwhile. i'd probably play a bit more if the pugging community wasn't so toxic (yes, i'm in a guild but it's been weathered hard by the last few expacs), if they would replace the last remaining annoying affixes *stares at explosive*, and if the raid tier was better. there are some bosses that just seem pointlessly busy like the 2nd to last boss where most of the fight is destroying eggs. the fight is just too fast paced for me to have any fun with it.
@@neugassh3570 that's from the fact that people are still reeling from the past two expansions, it has nothing to do with Dragonflight, but for those who are playing WoW is in a state that has not been seen in a while, a state of fun.
it's way better than SL but i still find myself raid logging some weeks, or the most ill do is the weekly and that's it. not even renown capped but there's almost zero incentive to do it. i made the mistake of taking alchemy which is complete dog shit in terms of the crafting orders, and barely functions outside that only useful thing is longer phials.
The progression for 418 crafting materials works well when you focus on your main character. With alts it's getting tough when you got the sparks every 2 weeks or so.
@@eodyn7 only for the primal chaos, not for the concentrated primal infusions that let you craft gear at 418. You still have to run the 10 +16s or above for each 418 piece of gear.
@@Nyeusi that's only part of the puzzle my dude... the Infusions that you require are only gained through repetitive farming of M+ 16s. also those 5 sparks add up to 2 weapons and a lariat for a Fury Warrior, far from full set.
yeah, I have to agree with your take on the one issue you have with the fact that having to run too many mythic plus dungeons to get year is overwhelming. I have the skill I am sure to run mythic raids, but my problem is the fact that I don’t want to take the time to get the gear necessary to do them having to run a certain amount of dungeons per week just starts to feel like work again just give me tokens. Let me save up by running whatever I want goodbye high enough item level gear to clear whatever content my own personal skill level allows me to do. Don’t dangle gear over my head. It was the only way I can attain is through jumping all these hoops just to artificially inflated engagement.
I really like where Dragonflight is at right now. I mainly do m+, but also pug hc clears and 1-2 mythic bosses once in a while. I like the raid, I like most of the dungeons, and I love that they switch it up, and put old content in the mix, so you don't just run the same 6-8 dungeons, with the exact same bis loot for the entire expasion, but it actually changes between seasons. And although it is "damaging" to not cap your vault for 1 or 2 weeks, its nothing like the last few expansions, I HATED the forced grind and it really killed my enjoyment. I also feel like it's easier/faster to catch up on gear with alts that you haven't played for a while, or a freshly dinged one. The game has problems no doubt, but for me personally, and the parts of the game that I consume it's a solid 8/10. Overall I'm optimistic about the future of wow, and looking forward to see if they can keep the game going along this path.
My bestie returned to DF, after skipping both BFA and Shadowlands. and he sums up DF pretty well: he is having fun, but there really is not a lot of content to do for him. (He's a Casual with Capital C)
I was really enjoying DF, but the M+16 toxicity has done me in. Every group you (finally) get into, disbands and where's the fun in that. So I can't gear up through M+ anymore, my Raiding Team is HC only, and struggling to kill Broodkeeper, so I'll keep raiding - drop the M+ etc and just play something else for a while :)
Now I'm not going to take credit...but when I applied for the wow community council a while back, the "trading post" was one of the ideas I suggested, you could call it a coincidence, but the "ideas" and concept are almost identical (like really identical). Now, I haven't played dragon flight in a while, but before sending my proposal off, I sent it to some of my Guild to read over. They recently got back to me recently telling me "Blizzard used your idea" I had no idea what they were talking about as I haven't been following Dragon Flight but seeing the trading post was pretty surreal. I honestly thought my guild was trolling me with fake screengrabs as they know how much work I put into the proposal. I'm not THAT bothered though, as I'm just glad to see it, and people seem to be enjoying it!
exactly, some people are upset that the expansion seems lackluster, but we needed something more down to earth and badly we needed that, and i think we need the next one to be like that as well, no high stakes saving the universe just improving the game at it's core after BFA and Shadowlands has come and gone, Dragonflight is a breath of fresh air for someone dying of suffication.
As glad as I am for WoW having a good expansion, I'm worried that it's a "too little, too late" kind of scenario. The only reason why they even bothered with DF was because the bottom line was in jeopardy, and they couldn't afford a third flop in a row. Most of the people who left during both exoduses have either left WoW for good and moved on to other MMOs or left MMOs all together.
Yeah. I'm in that camp - I have dipped into the game intermittently, but I kinda tapped out the last several expansions... The never-ending reward systems were such a terrible departure from the game I knew and loved. Now it seems to be back to the - in my opinion - much healthier system again where you can actually be "done" with the current content. But it's too late - I just genuinely don't feel any desire to play it again. Even if I know it's good. But it took too long, the magic is gone for me.
not really. also sl and bfa while they had meh decisions in someplaces were overall good expansions imo. But there are still plenty of wow players. Thats just doomer mentality of some kind.
I agree Preach. Ive done all my 20´s on both fortified and tyrannical. Now, Im basically just doing weekly runs for vault. 8 runs definantly seem like too much for three vault slots, Id say six would be the correct number.
Im loving WoW rn. My Main is roughly 405 I got KSM and AOTC and im good to chill. Which means now im going back and doing old achievement hunting and doing Order Halls on my Alts. Transmog farming. Getting the Horder Allied races cus im an Alliance main and I dont feel like Im forced to go back onto my main.
I'm an avid mythic plus player since legion has never been a fan of raiding though. gearing through mythic plus takes too long. I finally put down wow till they fix the mythic plus loot system and many other problems with mythic plus like no penalties for people leaving after 1 wipe or cause something is pulled wrong etc. If they fix some of the major issues i had with M+ I might return to wow someday but rn I just can't go through a 4th expansion of this. side note: rip having to play destiny did you lose bet? lol..... I feel bad for you Mike.
penalties for leavers would lock people in to something they maybe didn't sign up for but realized after it started. And any goals you can set to make it ok would be punishment, unreachable or abusable.
Kinda wish they'd cover SWTOR though its very confusing to figure everything out its taken me a good week and i still don't understand a lot of things. But gearing and endgame seem really easy to jump into, and the story is great- even the free part of the game its worth a try for most people.
This is by far the best wow expansion to date for me. I have also achieved my goals for the most part but I'm still logging in to do fun stuff with the guild, do m+ on whatever character I feel like and just mess around. It's really been a breath of fresh air and I hope it can continue.
Yep! basically finished but still playing cuz it's fun to just...be done. Now I help others or level up alts. No more annoyed with alts because of stupid system grinds.
its a start, hopefully this scumpany can start pumping out QUALITY CONTENT like FF does and not hold you hostage to the game. Itll be 2 more decent expansions and alot of Dev team power to smooth/polish that turd created over the years.
idk. even if there are things that suck about it sometimes. I think the overal quality (outside maybe story but thats not why most people play) is better. I played ff for a while and it just felt like unless I cared about story there wasn't much I wanted to do.
Are we going to see a return of the TDP style of video with all the other games the team may be playing, it could be cool to have those videos as a check in, a way to check out the way the different games and that kind of thing.
Gearing was way too fast. We're maybe halfway done the season but with the vault, piles of crafted gear, and upgrading through valor, I'll be 418 on two characters by the end of the week without ever touching the mythic raid.
The worst part of the crafting system for me is artisans mettle which is needed for recrafts and you can get it only by doing profssions stuff. The whole point of me making a crafting order is so i dont have to bother with professions myselfs but get a crafter to do it. And now I have to craft to be able to make a fucking order? What the fuck are they smoking at blizzard?
Chill expansion i like it. I agree on the M+ grind feels really exhausting with all the negative affixes to not get drops you need at the end over and over again, including the vault.
I cleared Normal, working on Heroic. Once I clear that, I'm good. I've always been a player for the lore, so when an expansion keeps me going for months, that's a great thing, but MMOs are never ending. PvP hasn't been good since BC, and M+ got old by the end of Legion. Raids are fun, questing is fun. I'll stay subbed for Traders Tenders, but in terms of playing, I just come back to do the new quests and raids.
I'm close to done as well. I achieved the goals I wanted to achieve and now I'm just waiting for either the next small patch (shouldn't be too far away) or the next big patch in Spring. Having played almost 4 months straight of one game is a good sign of it being enjoyable again vs only 2~ months in SL S1 lol.
I mean you really only need to do 8 m+ a week for full chest. 10 a week is just extra for the 405 or 418 upgrades And with valor uncapped now. It’s not that bad
You get 1 character to 10 Renown with each faction. Then start another and they get a 100% boost. You then do the same once you hit 20 and get 200% to 10 and 100% to 20. That way you can hit max renown just by doing the quests.
I never disliked WoW because to be honest I never played that much, my majority of the time I spend on FFXIV since 2013, I just got my friends to hop up from time to time in WoW and play the game, so it was always fresh for me, but DragonFlight seems really cool with these features.
Glad to hear Preach and everyone is happy with DF, but I don't really understand it. There's nothing to do outside of raid / m+, still. Old content is irrelevant, still. Your main source of gear is a completely random lootbox, still. The game is loaded with bugs, still. It has all the same problems it always had, except now you can play alts...except only SORT of, because for all their talk of shit being account wide, it's really not. The UI revamp was incredibly half assed and unfinished on launch, and is only marginally better now. Professions are timegated behind a bi-weekly, one-off Sparks quest. Raid fights are still made with the expectation that addons will make them do-able and fix Blizzard's shitty encounter design after the fact. It's still the same half-baked nonsense, except now it looks like they're actually putting effort into making half baked nonsense? It's still half baked... Maybe it's all good and I've just moved on from WoW personally, Shadowlands was the last straw for me, and there's no going back. But I really don't see what everyone is positive about. Is the bar really that low we accept the LFD eyeball just floating in the middle of the screen all by itself, unable to be moved? Lol.
@@sanmaru5555 Because you literally hit a wall within an hour of starting and can’t progress until the Spark arbitrarily unlocks two weeks later. My Blacksmith died at like level 60 something (ish? I haven’t played in a bit) because the game just fucking…stopped. Lol. It’s not about wanting to consume everything ASAP, it’s that the game is STILL designed in a very player unfriendly way. “Borrowed power” was just the tip of the iceberg. Nothing important is account wide, everything is designed to waste your time and stretch out your sub (the spark, Valor cap, the lootbox vault, etc) huge amounts of content is wasted, the economy is meaningless while the WoW token exists, the QA is still non existent, etc. And what happened to the profession mogs they advertised. A hat that only appears when you mine isn’t really what they said this was going to be about.
@@April-mw1fq I don't understand the mindset of people who claim DF is a great expansion either, and I agree with all your points. I've kind of come to the suspicion that those that love DF are people who started playing WoW during BFA or SL and that's why with DF more of the same BS they don't see it as such an issue compared to those that were playing from before.
They locked questlines behind renown so i don't blame ppl to farm it to avoid spoilers. Also i was able to claim 500 tokens on account without active sub, not sure if it was bug or a bait ;D
i couldn't even finish leveling in wow.. GW has it's claws on me now... i should go do another zone of Return of Dragons achievement for my Legendary amulet now that i think about it...
OK, kind of a bit of rambling in the beginning with a lot of jumping around tonally but very valid points and analysis of the wow situation. Looking forward to the MMO series!
I really hate the rep system looming over any toon i make so i broke with my many years of farming the love rocket and i'm not gonna play wow for a long while. I've been enjoying SWTOR though its not as fluid and i had a melt down yesterday at something like the mage tower introduced but in a much much much worse and lesser way.. being unfair to stupid levels (as somebody who completed all mage towers for dps/tank and the resto one) it was just blah. I suspect gear and spec played a big part, and story choices also give you more help if you pick the dark alignment but it really soured the otherwise great knights of the fallen throne, and previous expansion which are still worth playing through, but i dont think i'll be able to replay it anytime soon. I don't believe Blizzard has changed enough same team similar choices focusing on engagement metrics when all along just encouraging you to play alts is all the engagement you need for some people, drop an item or two for an alt while playing a main make all the reps account wide so making a second or third toon can speed up progress.. all these things would create more gameplay engagement without it being shoved in.
@@kloaf1131 Yeah but it doesn't show on each alt how far the reps have gone, just having bars that need filling left feels really bad to people, having all the unlocks account wide isn't enough a game needs to feel complete as well as being complete. and gear being locked is an old system too, should be that you can earn gear at a reduced rate for alts by doing stuff on mains, used to be crafting now days its all lame. Other games like FFXIV have a much better job system there isn't a good reason wow aren't adapt a similar one, its one of the places wow is lagging behind. That and its story telling - they really need to learn to put more forgiveness into every day stories and questlines, most conflict in wow ends with somebody dead, or being hostile it breeds that kind of player behavior.
The game is very very fun right now. It’s not what WoW used to be and that’s great. Sub for a bit, get what you want to do done and then wait a bit. It feels like a video game again and not a time sink. It’s so fun and that’s something I haven’t had in WoW for a long time.
it's definitely how WoW should be and i really hope that they encourage that going forward, it's a good thing to be done in an MMO for a bit, because then when new stuff is going on, people are going to want to come back to see it.
For the trading post, i do have to disagree with you on one thing. Not having a lot of old world activities sucks, it is there, and if that is content you are doing, why not be rewarded for it? I have spent a lot of money recently on doing professions for collecting transmogs, but i get 0 tender for it. I'm leveling a lot of alts with friends, why do i barely get tender for it? I'm not saying that there should be less Dragonflight stuff, just make sure that here is plenty to do for us who do not have, and have no interest in buying Dragonflight. And why is some of it limited to just dragonflight? if i'm fishing, should it really matter whether or not it is in dragonflight? There is an activity where you have to /love some of the dragon aspects, so i traveled to where i know where i can find Alextraza: in wyrmrest temple, Dragonblight, Northrend. If you know this stuff, why look up a guide right... right? blizz? right? It of course failed to specify that that this iteration of her did not count... i'm assuming there is a specific Alextraza in the dragon isles to /love? BUT WHY? i did what you asked me to do! give me my dam points! The amount of tender you can get is capped, so why be so stingy with where you can get it? you can't game the system just let us play however we want Anything that does not need to be specific to Dragonflight, should not require Dragonflight.
What's next ? progress when using the auction house ? stop demanding stuff when it's already very easy to cap, you will not die if you did few things you don't like
@@sanmaru5555 there is, what was it? earn 5000 on the AH? something like that. As for demanding things. i'm not demanding anything, i'm just disappointed that it is not inclusive to all the many ways different people play this game. I'm glad to hear that most people have no issue capping. And i am also capped, i'm not at all saying i cant, nor am i saying it's hard. I'm am saying that there is so much opportunity to give people a reason to return to the old world, rather then insisting people play the new world. WoW has nearly 20 years of content, why limit so much of this feature to the last 2 months of content?
im in the same boat, just cleared hc and were progressing onto mythic but im not as bothered in clearing it. So now im ready to transtion into just playing wow a couple days a week and play another game as my main game.
Wow man, nailed down my exact feeling on the xpac so far. Just got aotc and it's a gear check and m+ is a little too spammy for my taste but you need the gear. But overall I can dig it. And I'm looking forward to the upcoming content. Just spent some time on the ptr with a pally. The Ret changes are fun. We will see on the tuning... I can do all the fun little things now until next patch and not feel like I'm playing catch up the whole time and grinding for dumb shit... unless I want to, and that's great. I'm cautiously optimistic for the future of the game for the forst time in years.
M+ feels bad imo this season…too hard, one missed interrupt or fail to los can wipe the group, the scaling to 20 feels bad, people leaving is worse than ever, lust and brez feel even more mandatory, affix sucks, 10 too many. Feels bad cause I’ve loved m+ in prior seasons
I havent enjoyed an expansion like this in quite a long time, and havent invested into crafting so much, in forever. Dungeons are WAY better than Shadowlands, Thundering is not my cup of tea but w/e at this point. Really really nice start to an expansion and not just the first month of it like Shadowlands.
DF is another bad expansion in a series of bad expansions. Blizz has just been mailing it in for years now. Nothing new, nothing fresh, just rewording and different paint jobs. Honestly I’m surprised this game still has such a following, it must be the time commitment people have invested. It’s a tedious bore to log in anymore.
If they can adjust M+ like Jade Temple, COS, SBG, Halls of Valor as a dung system, why would not do the same with some good old raids? Ulduar, Blackrock Mountain, Sunwell Plateu? Let say it won't yelld as high iLvL item as main raid but 10ilvl lower, yet will let ppl have planty of raiding throug out the week, instead of swaping alts every day...
my goal was to get heroic rasz down but i somehow never got it down with the guild. i did some mythic bosses but rasz never happened when i was there. and now the guild went to shit lol. oh well imma play some eso and gw2
Have been taking DF super slow, no guild, no buddies to play with, so I'm just pootling along at my own pace. My gear is crap, I have no gold bc I quit in SL and gave all my gold away lol. Happy days.
Same here, nothing is wrong with taking a break. Doesn't mean you hate the game, you just want to step away until something interesting happens enough that you want to step back in.
the thing still stopping me from playing wow is how dead alliance is, even if you can cross faction some stuff now being on the alliance still feels way too separated from 90% of the playerbase and it just feels desolate. if they just united trade chat and let anyone go to any city and join guilds cross server and faction it would feel so much better. faction based MMOs just do not work in the current decade.
While we are heavily focused on other MMOs at the moment - Mike wanted to drop in with his thoughts on the expansion thus far and the Seasonal nature of it, as well as his impressions of the Trading Post and gear crafting. How are you finding the expansion so far?
still feeling it the way i was when it launched, love Dragonflight and cant wait to see what Season 2 has in store.
played every other WoW expansion apart from this one, I guess SL made me realise that the game isn't the same game for me as it was all them years ago :D been trying out some new games for once
Mike starts playing wow again and his hair starts going again. You got to stop before it’s too late my man.
LMFAO. Now that you mentioned…
Totally not the stress of having his whole office under water right after they finished getting settled in
@@PrinceDoobie honestly that was such a huge bummer. I hope everything is going well for them now
oh yeah, totally couldnt be his age, genetics or the stress of running a business, it's all WoW's fault. to quote one Dr. Gregory House; "it's never lupus..."
@@UltimateGamerCC could be any or all of those things, but leaning on the original joke....it's all wows fault!
This sentiment is, by far, the healthiest place for an MMO to be. Mechanics to retain people by force only hurt the game; allowing people to finish in the short term and come back fresh is great, without leaving people feeling resentment toward the game for wasting their time.
Yes yes and yes!
the problem is that the game ask for a monthly fee which is annoyhing. It makes me feel like I MUST play, otherwise i'd be throwing my money for nothing. That's why i stopped playing a year ago and moved to guild wars 2 again
I was a long time player and was pretty hard core, the last expansion I played and enjoyed was mists of pandaria, I then quit with the following expansion I think BFA if i remember correctly. My question is, is it worth coming back now ? Have they improved the game ? Or is it just a boring repetitive grind fest? Thanks in advance.
@@jayhsynthat's not for anyone but you to decide
I wouldn't mind them adding activities outside the location of the current expansion at all. In fact, the Trading Post seems like the perfect fit for that, because it's optional/cosmetic stuff.
feels great knowing I can feel "done" without feeling like I'm falling behind. And I can come back and pick it up right away. And level up an alt and quickly reach a similar power level to my main. Dragonflight is a great expansion.
Feel pretty much the same. And then you go on the forums and people are saying Shadowlands amd BFA were better expansions xD
So basivcaly you just wasting time actualy playing becouse everything you did and do will be erased in few months.
@@jakubpelikan2393 My guy, every single game is technically a waste of time and pixels on a screen so go away with your "clever" argument
@@jakubpelikan2393 if I'm having fun, it's not a waste of time
@@jakubpelikan2393 lmfaoo you have the absolute worst takes I’ve ever read. Worse than Narcs takes. Go outside. Gatekeeping video games is beyond sad
I got my Rogue main up to 411, and Keystone Hero. I'm at a point with my rogue where I feel like I'm happy with my progression and can relax on that character. I may pop in to do high keys or whatever, I would like to work on getting all 20s done for the teleports, but now I'm refocusing on my main of 14 years of my paladin, especially since all the ret changes look awesome and I'm super happy that I can reasonably play an alt without having to grind up so much other bullshit.
I’ve honestly been doing exclusively PvP and I’ve been having a blast. I honestly like the solo shuffle feature a lot. It finally gave me a chance to push arena rating which is something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid but I just don’t like committing to a team. Finally got the 1800 transmog and it feels so good.
What is the solo shuffle feature and how did it help you push rating? Sorry i havent played in awhile but curious!
@@Connor-zw6gz you can queue for rated arena by yourself, and everyone on your team and the enemy team is also by themselves. This means you can push rating without having to communicate with teammates. You play 6 rounds of 3v3, after each round the players are shuffled around so you play a single round of every possible comp. Your rating goes up or down depending on how many games out of 6 you won. I love it because rather than relying on communication with your team and the team itself, you rely solely on yourself.
And If you want to have an actual team there are separate brackets of 2v2 and 3v3 for that as well.
It's good that people enjoy DF and I hope it stays that way. I looked into it for 30 days and I realised I had moved on after my break of one and a half years. I had a lot of fun and met amazing people during my time in WoW. Those memories will stay with me.
Kind of same. I got the WoW itch when DF started and I heard good things about it, but I played for a bit over a month and realized the love is no longer there. My connection to the world and the lore has been cut. Probably irreparably. And I feel I can move on now. But who knows. Maybe a bunch of retcons, a new owner or a new development team could bring me back one day.
Yeah, I enjoyed Dragonflight more than recent expansions. But after playing around in my first month, I didn't feel much drive to keep going. But I didn't walk away angry like I have in the past. I just don't want to play more of it.
Maybe they do something cool with a patch or something, but if not, I feel a lot better walking away from the game now than I did after Korthia.
Same. Also dipped in for one month - still got 5 days left... Capped my main character. Gameplay is good, content seems good, it gave the impression of being the game I used to love. But the magic just isn't there for me anymore - it took too long.
I got exactly the same feelings, I hope people that enjoy it keep doing it and I really wish WoW to succeed but it's no longer for me. I moved on for good in 9.1 and found a new home in XIV. I might be too old but I enjoy a good slow paced story and side activities more than spamming M+ and raid every day.
@@Rhob81 ff xiv is shit and looks shit. Even gw2 looks more appealing
Great video, fantastic content, love it all. As a 6/8 M progger currently who has never loved M+, I think they've improved some and have more room to improve. The 10 16's or higher per crafted piece is kind of odd since you only need 8 for vault maximization weekly (and I think that's too high tbh, should be 2, 4, 6 IMO, not 2,4,8). BUT I do like how there is a push to do something more than x number of 15 keys. I took a break from WoW after progging SLG Mythic in Nathria and I only ever did 15's to get my vault done - and the current M+ - Raid tie-ins are LEAPS and bounds above where they used to be. Plus there's an incentive to go above a 15, which I always thought was insanity (you want me to do +30% more dps/healing/tanking per key?!) but is not that bad in appropriate gear and with people who do mechanics/kicks correctly on at least the easiest dungeons and affixes - still more work to do here.
Anyways. great content, and I'm very much looking forward to your takes on the rest of so-called Project MMO!
Nice vid. Just quick reaction to one small thing. You love crafting. I... still have no idea how it works. I find it confusing, messy and I just don't understand what any of the numerous items in my bags do. It feels like it was designed to be deliberately confusing and demand an excel spreadsheet. Also, it seems to need mythic+ which I've deliberately stopped doing last expansion when I realized I hated it.
M+ definitely helps but it's by no means required-- you can also get the upgrade items from raid (heroic for the 405s, mythic for the 418s), but you can also just get up to 392 crafted gear without doing any of that and just making your sparks of ingenuity into the base items.
The main issue is that there's just not really anything outside of M+/raid that lets you progress it. I mean you can get 4 of the heroic raid/405 ilvl upgrade items from getting max rep with all the factions but otherwise there's nothing.
I was a crafting guy pre-DF. It was the one part of the game I always identified with even in bad expansions.
DF is without a doubt the worst that crafting has been in the game. It's unreasonably complicated.
It only needs two major fixes in my opinion, and I hope you'd agree this would make things easier:
1. The reagent bag is dumb. When you learn a profession you should just get a semi-bottomless item tab under the profession that stores everything that profession can create/gather (that's not straight up gear). This would take the place of the old profession specific bags and they would be phased out (as well as the reagent bags which are stupid). So like an engineer would get bronze, silver, and gold screws all in that tab. No more bag space. Plus, the tab would make it really obvious what everything did. Oh! So these are parts I need to make crafts, these are item mods like tinkers, etc. Cleanly labeled like a professional would have them in a shop. Most MMOs have these "reagent only" tabs now.
2. They need to redesign specialization trees to be way more obvious. You should have one tree that gives you generic boosts to skill, inspiration, overall improvements to your prof. that unlocks at skill level 25 and then the rest should unlock at 50 and be specific to ONLY those categories. It's so dumb finding out that you get big inspiration boosts in a sub-tree that you need to create a build for another tree. It's confusing. Don't make people go down a less optimal tree for what they want to get generic stat boosts. The wording is so confusing, "am I gaining this skill only for crafting this type of item or all items?" That could be eliminated by just making sub-specializations very specific to that craft type.
Those two changes would make the system a lot more friendly and understandable.
It's not really that complicated. the only part I really agree with is the last. Where it's unsure of what skill you gain for points in some sub specs. But other than that it's pretty simple just takes a second to figure it out. I also like the bigger tree. Gave me reasons to do same profs on alts until later when I have most of it.
Rule of thumb is, rank 3 consumables gives you the best stats. Rank 3 crafting materials gives you the best chance for a higher rank (top rank being rank 5 for gear). Basically, best ranks = best quality (or best potential).
I've stopped playing about a month ago. Quit as soon as I started feeling bad about logging in every day.
And just for that reason I will have Dragonflight in my memory as one of the best Expansions because I didn't burn myself out on it.
sounds reasonable to me, gonna be back in season 2?
@@UltimateGamerCC Maybe, still got alot of Games I want to play and I want to catch up on FF14's last patch aswell.
@@thedarkfox9851 fair enough.
I hit level 70 on a few classes and I feel no need to do any mythic, raiding or anything with those characters. It's getting to be a chore to level the other classes now, I think dragon flight is an improvement, but feels hollow as an expansion.
i dont think that's the expansion's fault, that is blizzard still expecting so much repetition and it's going against the vibe that Dragonflight is bringing.
I fully agree! I've got my AOTC, maxed out renown and now it's like well, I guess I could focus on getting an alt up to the same level, and sometimes I do? But only when I want to. It's great! Yes I play less, but my love for the expansion is not gone. Now I look forward to new content without thinking OOOF. It's great! :D
Nothing wrong with being "done" in an MMO. I'm glad WoW has done that and has shown a design change for sure. I guess for me I don't only do M+ so its not too hard for me to get experience for the catalyst. World boss gives 20%, big events such as the feast and dragonkeep give a lot too.
He's not talking about the catalyst, he's talking about the primordial stuff you need for upgrading crafted gear.
you are right, i rewatched that part and mis-heard. Probably threw me off due to him saying "weekly" i mean why would he have to do 10 M+ a week just incase he gets another spark. The point being i'm glad he's found himself in a happy and healthy spot with the game
Agreed with the spark upgrades from m+!
I would have loved to see something to the tune of "Upgrade your spark crafted gear to 418, and it costs 150 shards" And you earn 1 shard per dungeon difficulty. If you're not a good player and you can only complete +2,s you're earning 2 shards per dungeon - you can still eventualy get the upgrade but it will take time. If you can crank through 15s, you'll get 15 shards per dungeon so it takes 10 dungeons to get the shards for the upgrade.
A happy balance between skill and time invested is to reward the same currency but substantially different quantities.
I think this expansion has made some good stride in the direction that the game needs to go and I have enjoyed my time playing it. That said, there are still some things that need to be done to make the game better such as account wide reputations, less random stats on gear and end game content that doesn’t require 20 add ons to do well.
no content requires addon to perform well. I'm not even sure what you mean by random stats on gear. All stats are deterministic unless you craft an item without missives. And all rep rewards are account wide. The rep itself just isn't.
you're never getting account wide rep, you got the rewards account wide and it's easier for all characters going forward, up to 200% faster. Blizzard is never going to let you be one and done for all 60 characters, get it out of your head.
there’s not really any point of needing rep on all characters. You get all rewards (minus the primal infusion at the end) for all alts so it’s not necessary
@@kloaf1131 Probably he means random tertiary and powerful stats like Avoidance or Leech.
@@Nyeusithe infusion is important for a lot of people. Especially alts You just invalidated your own point man 😂
Its funny you posted this today. After Tues NA reset I logged in and said "why"? I have full 418 heroic gear, A Head of the Curve, (not a mythic raider) and now I am felt like I completed everything I wanted to for the time being. I also completed the post. So I logged off.
Ive had quite bad luck with getting loot from raiding itself this raid tier, most of my gear has came from either mythic+ or the vault, but mainly myhic+. I like raiding but its hard to be motivated when i have to rely on the vault and mythic+ to provide me the gear to progress content that barely does. I usually burn out from the mythic+ grind, cuz its more tedious than fun and the whole deal just feels pointless after a while since id spend more time doing something that i dont enjoy but is required for something i do enjoy.
I think the trading post is a great addition to the game, and I think that Dragonflight in general has taken a lot of steps in the right direction. My biggest qualm with WoW now is how out of reach raiding is for your average player. I love doing M+ because it's content I can hop into in a more "episodic" format, like watching a tv show rather than a movie. If I have ample time I can chain them, but if something happens I can just stop after one run.
FFXIV has done a great job of creating that type of environment even in their high-end raiding scene, and after experiencing that I have a hard time envisioning ever coming back to WoW raiding. That would be fine, except that all the best gear you get from the game is from mythic raiding, so if you want to push as high as you can in M+, it behooves you to also be pushing into mythic. It's just kind of an unfortunate setback. Even though I enjoy M+, I can work on it all day and still not be able to do as well as a mythic raider that does M+ more casually.
I also really think WoW needs to take a lesson from FF in the way they display their mechanics. There are so many times I get hit by things in WoW that feels unfair just because you can't tell where the edge of the swirly is, or other unclear things. FF makes it very very apparent, and if you get hit by a mechanic, it very much feels like your fault, not a fault of bad display.
If they can cut raiding up into smaller chunks without killing the difficulty, I think that people would get back in. Make raiding about clearing bosses with complex mechanics and maybe a few interesting trash fights. We already have Mythic plus for mob clearing challenges.
the biggest issue with Raids and other Group content is Addons, it creates the need for supernatural levels of difficulty and screws over those who dont want addons. i myself am very minimalistic with my addons, i dont want DBM, Damage Meters or any other shit like that, i really wish Blizzard would ban those addons entirely, so it's about skill, not machines doing the work.
That's why a lot of people like the older expansion [vanilla/tbc/wotlk] raiding. It's a bit of a challenge, but nowhere near retail's level, and it's possible for every level of player for older xpac.s
It took so long to get back to this version of the game, where you can feel "done" with current content. It took so long that I quit and lost interest, and don't really feel like getting back into it now even though it seems really good. Just took way too many years & expansions to get back to it.
For me, the trading post was super easy to fill up. I didn’t know current content and just some legacy dungeons may be a couple odd groups, and then just bouncing around on my various different characters and when I checked the live with complete and I was like oh wow I don’t even know what I did, but I guess I did it.
Honestly, I've been on that "too much M+" train since Shadowlands vault was previewed. Even after they reduced it. Especially as a pugger who can spend nearly as much time looking for a group as actually running the dungeon. It burns you out, and the worst part is it burns you out when you most need all three vaults. You're already naturally getting tired of mythics because you've been running them for months, but you really need all 3 slots to increase your chance at the limited number of still useful items that it can drop.
WOW has always had that issue since they added M+, the best gearing path is M+ for all forms of endgame content. For players like myself who do not want / need the stress of a timer or as you pointed out do not want to spend 10+ hours a week in that situation nothing has changed since BFA.
As someone who usually hates any timed events in games, M+ isn’t really about the timer unless you are at a very high level. If you can just clear the dungeon you will time it 99% of the time.
The more M+ you do the less of an issue the timer becomes.
I personally loved DF but i actually ended up quitting because of the amount of m+ focus. I can't play quite as much as i could in the past and I do not enjoy m+ that much (I find it repetitive and it gets boring really fast). So when i realized how much M+ I felt like I had to do to be competitive, I simply couldn't be bothered.
I’m a ‘casual mythic’ raider and never stepped foot in an M+. My performance is not an issue.
@@ChinnuWoW sure, depending on the level you would like to perform at this is possible. But fact is you could be performing better and compared to someone who does m+ (assuming similar skill level), you are simply behind.
@@ChinnuWoW if youve never set foot in a M+ then yes your performance is an issue
@@hush9185 Bich, I'm in the top 3 DPS and 4/8M. My ilvl is 414. I don't need to do M+.
@@rfo98b Not really since I'm ilvl 414. M+ is mainly beneficial just for the start of a patch to get gear quicker, but I catch up later on.
Agree on M+. 8 a week is still too much for my tastes. I know it's not mandatory, but it is highly incentivized.
It's an understandable issue and an easy fix. They just need to reward way more drops/gear for the first four or five you run per week and then less for the rest. You incentivize people to at least run a handful a week but still reward grinders for their time invested but not with as much. I'm very surprised they haven't learned this lesson in M+ considering they do it with renown rewards. You get a couple big bursts of renown a week and then have to really grind if you want more. It's a perfect fit for casual and hardcore players alike. They wouldn't need valor quite as much if they would increase gear drops (plus it would make players really push knowing that the first four or five were like 80% drop chances for some M+ loot)
@@AuspexAO Yeah, I agree. I've always been against the weekly vault as a rewards crutch. With more drops in M+ and now with valor upgrades, the vault just shouldn't need to exist. One of the worst feelings in past expansions was reaching the point where your only possible reward was from the vault every week. That was awful. Valor mostly fixed that, but it still feels pretty mandatory to grind 8 a week per character, which is way too much. 1-3-5 would feel way better imo.
yeah, even with the dungeon pool changing next season, that's a lot of repetition, repetition that dont really relent for alts, it's the least alt friendly part of WoW right now atm.
Bang on…The game is really fun… I can build my character any way I want… explore zones… upgrade gear easily… and overcome great foes… elden ring is awesome! … then once a month I can log into wow and check the trading post 15 dolla well spent imo… I hope the next expansion is as boring as dragonflight maybe I’ll finally be able to build my dream house… just pure non stop fun 😂
You look so happy Preach, glad to see that! :D
Nothing i want more than TDP videos of you trying solo shuffle as a challenge to whatever rating
I gave DF a fair shot after a break of 17 months. Its a nice, fresh expension but the core problem sadly cant be resolved with a new paint. the addon usage and how it is required to do any serious content in the game made me realize that WoWs problem is fundamental and that the Devs need to make a choise. Either continue with the addon culture like IO ect or risk the possibility that casuals wont bother with it or people that share my opinion. i think its too much at this point and addons dictate too much and how the game is played on a core level that effects literally any player in the game.
I thought with the ui revamp they would have a good ingame template for pvp… I wanted to play with as little addons as possible.. but yet again they seem completely necessary just to participate at a basic level…
There are people that never do ranked in lol or overwatch because they are scared to. Sometime, fix yourself before asking to fix the game. You are putting too much stress on yourself, you ain't asking for a date. What if you get rejected few time? Who care? What about you get a guild if yo get rejected that much by random.
I like having a pve ranking, because it give me something to play for outside of meaningless seasonal gear.
If they add mythic+ auto LFR, people would cry again and insult the survival hunter they have to play with. Welcome to modern gaming.
As much as you want to make the game healthy, you can't have a wholesome community in a game so popular.
And I stop the potential delusionnal catgirl right there, FF14 have it own toxicity, do any competitive content and you will see it. 🙄
You’re really exaggerating the addons. There is absolutely nothing you can’t do in the game without addons. Do they help? Yea sure but they’re not necessary. I don’t use any addons besides UI stuff and weakauras.
i'm actually in a rather happy place for the first time in years. i'm content with my gear, i login once a day to farm what i want, and play other games in the meanwhile. i'd probably play a bit more if the pugging community wasn't so toxic (yes, i'm in a guild but it's been weathered hard by the last few expacs), if they would replace the last remaining annoying affixes *stares at explosive*, and if the raid tier was better. there are some bosses that just seem pointlessly busy like the 2nd to last boss where most of the fight is destroying eggs. the fight is just too fast paced for me to have any fun with it.
Idk who made a bigger comeback between Warcraft and preach’s head top 🔥
its kinda easy to answer
WoW obviously
@@UltimateGamerCC So big comeback it has half the player base than the previous expansion :D:D:D
@@neugassh3570 that's from the fact that people are still reeling from the past two expansions, it has nothing to do with Dragonflight, but for those who are playing WoW is in a state that has not been seen in a while, a state of fun.
@@UltimateGamerCC fun for very few
Here's hoping we can see Mike and friends tackles Abyssos Savage in FFXIV at some point
That would be a blast to see
if a normal Human does 180° as fast and often as Preach
he dies..
I refuse to beat my head against m+.
it's way better than SL but i still find myself raid logging some weeks, or the most ill do is the weekly and that's it. not even renown capped but there's almost zero incentive to do it. i made the mistake of taking alchemy which is complete dog shit in terms of the crafting orders, and barely functions outside that only useful thing is longer phials.
The progression for 418 crafting materials works well when you focus on your main character.
With alts it's getting tough when you got the sparks every 2 weeks or so.
There's an easy alt catch up for that
@@eodyn7 only for the primal chaos, not for the concentrated primal infusions that let you craft gear at 418. You still have to run the 10 +16s or above for each 418 piece of gear.
@@eodyn7 there's a LITTLE catchup, but still encourages repetition en masse, way too much of it tbh.
@@UltimateGamerCC you get 5 sparks instantly and account wide primal chaos (with tax). It’s pretty easy for alts
@@Nyeusi that's only part of the puzzle my dude... the Infusions that you require are only gained through repetitive farming of M+ 16s. also those 5 sparks add up to 2 weapons and a lariat for a Fury Warrior, far from full set.
yeah, I have to agree with your take on the one issue you have with the fact that having to run too many mythic plus dungeons to get year is overwhelming. I have the skill I am sure to run mythic raids, but my problem is the fact that I don’t want to take the time to get the gear necessary to do them having to run a certain amount of dungeons per week just starts to feel like work again just give me tokens. Let me save up by running whatever I want goodbye high enough item level gear to clear whatever content my own personal skill level allows me to do. Don’t dangle gear over my head. It was the only way I can attain is through jumping all these hoops just to artificially inflated engagement.
I really like where Dragonflight is at right now. I mainly do m+, but also pug hc clears and 1-2 mythic bosses once in a while. I like the raid, I like most of the dungeons, and I love that they switch it up, and put old content in the mix, so you don't just run the same 6-8 dungeons, with the exact same bis loot for the entire expasion, but it actually changes between seasons. And although it is "damaging" to not cap your vault for 1 or 2 weeks, its nothing like the last few expansions, I HATED the forced grind and it really killed my enjoyment. I also feel like it's easier/faster to catch up on gear with alts that you haven't played for a while, or a freshly dinged one.
The game has problems no doubt, but for me personally, and the parts of the game that I consume it's a solid 8/10. Overall I'm optimistic about the future of wow, and looking forward to see if they can keep the game going along this path.
Mike, can we PLEASE get an updated UI for Dragonflight?
Hopefully someday we will get a new legacy.
My bestie returned to DF, after skipping both BFA and Shadowlands.
and he sums up DF pretty well: he is having fun, but there really is not a lot of content to do for him.
(He's a Casual with Capital C)
I was really enjoying DF, but the M+16 toxicity has done me in. Every group you (finally) get into, disbands and where's the fun in that. So I can't gear up through M+ anymore, my Raiding Team is HC only, and struggling to kill Broodkeeper, so I'll keep raiding - drop the M+ etc and just play something else for a while :)
So use your own key and select who you want. I do it all the time
@@SkidogMedia This doesn't avoid the issue tho, you can't tell how toxic/non toxic people will be unless you play with friends.
@@Rhob81 I’ve had no toxicity problems lol. Honestly the opposite
Now I'm not going to take credit...but when I applied for the wow community council a while back, the "trading post" was one of the ideas I suggested, you could call it a coincidence, but the "ideas" and concept are almost identical (like really identical). Now, I haven't played dragon flight in a while, but before sending my proposal off, I sent it to some of my Guild to read over. They recently got back to me recently telling me "Blizzard used your idea" I had no idea what they were talking about as I haven't been following Dragon Flight but seeing the trading post was pretty surreal.
I honestly thought my guild was trolling me with fake screengrabs as they know how much work I put into the proposal. I'm not THAT bothered though, as I'm just glad to see it, and people seem to be enjoying it!
Imagine thinking you came up with the trading post idea lmfao.
Imagine thinking a monthly battle pass retention mechanic is genius
I'm done too. It's horrible. I have no idea why you keep sucking it up
Agree. WoW's formula once again feels... normal. Dragon Flight feels back to being a pleasant balance of an MMO.
exactly, some people are upset that the expansion seems lackluster, but we needed something more down to earth and badly we needed that, and i think we need the next one to be like that as well, no high stakes saving the universe just improving the game at it's core after BFA and Shadowlands has come and gone, Dragonflight is a breath of fresh air for someone dying of suffication.
As glad as I am for WoW having a good expansion, I'm worried that it's a "too little, too late" kind of scenario. The only reason why they even bothered with DF was because the bottom line was in jeopardy, and they couldn't afford a third flop in a row. Most of the people who left during both exoduses have either left WoW for good and moved on to other MMOs or left MMOs all together.
Yeah. I'm in that camp - I have dipped into the game intermittently, but I kinda tapped out the last several expansions... The never-ending reward systems were such a terrible departure from the game I knew and loved. Now it seems to be back to the - in my opinion - much healthier system again where you can actually be "done" with the current content. But it's too late - I just genuinely don't feel any desire to play it again. Even if I know it's good. But it took too long, the magic is gone for me.
not really. also sl and bfa while they had meh decisions in someplaces were overall good expansions imo. But there are still plenty of wow players. Thats just doomer mentality of some kind.
it's only too late when the game goes into maintenance mode and stops getting content altogether, until then the game is not beyond saving.
I agree Preach. Ive done all my 20´s on both fortified and tyrannical. Now, Im basically just doing weekly runs for vault. 8 runs definantly seem like too much for three vault slots, Id say six would be the correct number.
So you're saying you pretty much got carried through heroic.
Im loving WoW rn. My Main is roughly 405 I got KSM and AOTC and im good to chill. Which means now im going back and doing old achievement hunting and doing Order Halls on my Alts. Transmog farming. Getting the Horder Allied races cus im an Alliance main and I dont feel like Im forced to go back onto my main.
I'm an avid mythic plus player since legion has never been a fan of raiding though. gearing through mythic plus takes too long. I finally put down wow till they fix the mythic plus loot system and many other problems with mythic plus like no penalties for people leaving after 1 wipe or cause something is pulled wrong etc. If they fix some of the major issues i had with M+ I might return to wow someday but rn I just can't go through a 4th expansion of this.
side note: rip having to play destiny did you lose bet? lol..... I feel bad for you Mike.
penalties for leavers would lock people in to something they maybe didn't sign up for but realized after it started. And any goals you can set to make it ok would be punishment, unreachable or abusable.
Kinda wish they'd cover SWTOR though its very confusing to figure everything out its taken me a good week and i still don't understand a lot of things.
But gearing and endgame seem really easy to jump into, and the story is great- even the free part of the game its worth a try for most people.
Imo the endgame gearing loop in swtor is kinda shit.
This is by far the best wow expansion to date for me. I have also achieved my goals for the most part but I'm still logging in to do fun stuff with the guild, do m+ on whatever character I feel like and just mess around. It's really been a breath of fresh air and I hope it can continue.
Yep! basically finished but still playing cuz it's fun to just...be done. Now I help others or level up alts. No more annoyed with alts because of stupid system grinds.
One of the worst for me
Yeah, I'm also done with Dragonflight. Because I decided not to buy it
okk, go play something else then ^^
Your loss
Year later, I'm so happy I saved 60 + 12 x 12 = 204$ 🙂
its a start, hopefully this scumpany can start pumping out QUALITY CONTENT like FF does and not hold you hostage to the game. Itll be 2 more decent expansions and alot of Dev team power to smooth/polish that turd created over the years.
idk. even if there are things that suck about it sometimes. I think the overal quality (outside maybe story but thats not why most people play) is better. I played ff for a while and it just felt like unless I cared about story there wasn't much I wanted to do.
Are we going to see a return of the TDP style of video with all the other games the team may be playing, it could be cool to have those videos as a check in, a way to check out the way the different games and that kind of thing.
Gearing was way too fast. We're maybe halfway done the season but with the vault, piles of crafted gear, and upgrading through valor, I'll be 418 on two characters by the end of the week without ever touching the mythic raid.
The worst part of the crafting system for me is artisans mettle which is needed for recrafts and you can get it only by doing profssions stuff. The whole point of me making a crafting order is so i dont have to bother with professions myselfs but get a crafter to do it. And now I have to craft to be able to make a fucking order? What the fuck are they smoking at blizzard?
Chill expansion i like it. I agree on the M+ grind feels really exhausting with all the negative affixes to not get drops you need at the end over and over again, including the vault.
I cleared Normal, working on Heroic. Once I clear that, I'm good. I've always been a player for the lore, so when an expansion keeps me going for months, that's a great thing, but MMOs are never ending. PvP hasn't been good since BC, and M+ got old by the end of Legion. Raids are fun, questing is fun. I'll stay subbed for Traders Tenders, but in terms of playing, I just come back to do the new quests and raids.
kl zag shwy
That thumbnail will haunt my dreams forever
Accept Preachdormu into your heart
@preachgaming When are we getting a Season 2 of your PUG AoTC seires? Every episode following your lock was a BANGER.
Considering your saving 100gb uninstalling WoW its huge! All that freedom and space. There is more to life than Warcraft.
How much they paid ?
I'm close to done as well. I achieved the goals I wanted to achieve and now I'm just waiting for either the next small patch (shouldn't be too far away) or the next big patch in Spring. Having played almost 4 months straight of one game is a good sign of it being enjoyable again vs only 2~ months in SL S1 lol.
He is not talking, he is unloading. After a 3-5 minutes this speach flood gets tiresome.
Then don't watch?
I mean you really only need to do 8 m+ a week for full chest. 10 a week is just extra for the 405 or 418 upgrades And with valor uncapped now. It’s not that bad
I am confused how people are able to farm out all the renown in the first days. How is this possible? I am many weeks in and still not done.
You get 1 character to 10 Renown with each faction. Then start another and they get a 100% boost. You then do the same once you hit 20 and get 200% to 10 and 100% to 20.
That way you can hit max renown just by doing the quests.
4:24 GW2 has done this for years now (mostly cause it’s system hasn’t been changed in forever).
I never disliked WoW because to be honest I never played that much, my majority of the time I spend on FFXIV since 2013, I just got my friends to hop up from time to time in WoW and play the game, so it was always fresh for me, but DragonFlight seems really cool with these features.
Glad to hear Preach and everyone is happy with DF, but I don't really understand it. There's nothing to do outside of raid / m+, still. Old content is irrelevant, still. Your main source of gear is a completely random lootbox, still. The game is loaded with bugs, still. It has all the same problems it always had, except now you can play alts...except only SORT of, because for all their talk of shit being account wide, it's really not. The UI revamp was incredibly half assed and unfinished on launch, and is only marginally better now. Professions are timegated behind a bi-weekly, one-off Sparks quest. Raid fights are still made with the expectation that addons will make them do-able and fix Blizzard's shitty encounter design after the fact. It's still the same half-baked nonsense, except now it looks like they're actually putting effort into making half baked nonsense? It's still half baked...
Maybe it's all good and I've just moved on from WoW personally, Shadowlands was the last straw for me, and there's no going back. But I really don't see what everyone is positive about. Is the bar really that low we accept the LFD eyeball just floating in the middle of the screen all by itself, unable to be moved? Lol.
dunno why people are so against timegating few things ? is it because your can't control to urge to complete professions ??
@@sanmaru5555 Because you literally hit a wall within an hour of starting and can’t progress until the Spark arbitrarily unlocks two weeks later. My Blacksmith died at like level 60 something (ish? I haven’t played in a bit) because the game just fucking…stopped. Lol. It’s not about wanting to consume everything ASAP, it’s that the game is STILL designed in a very player unfriendly way. “Borrowed power” was just the tip of the iceberg. Nothing important is account wide, everything is designed to waste your time and stretch out your sub (the spark, Valor cap, the lootbox vault, etc) huge amounts of content is wasted, the economy is meaningless while the WoW token exists, the QA is still non existent, etc.
And what happened to the profession mogs they advertised. A hat that only appears when you mine isn’t really what they said this was going to be about.
@@April-mw1fq I don't understand the mindset of people who claim DF is a great expansion either, and I agree with all your points. I've kind of come to the suspicion that those that love DF are people who started playing WoW during BFA or SL and that's why with DF more of the same BS they don't see it as such an issue compared to those that were playing from before.
The trading post is shit. It took me 2h. And all the "goals" that I finish now don't give me anything, not even that currency.
I’m sure I’d it took you 50 hours to complete you would be crying about how it’s just giving you too many chores to do.
@@kye4216 I would be fine with the 2h if they would not cap the currency
They locked questlines behind renown so i don't blame ppl to farm it to avoid spoilers. Also i was able to claim 500 tokens on account without active sub, not sure if it was bug or a bait ;D
i couldn't even finish leveling in wow.. GW has it's claws on me now... i should go do another zone of Return of Dragons achievement for my Legendary amulet now that i think about it...
It is difficult to gear up solely as a M+ player. THe rewards don't match the time and skill requirements
nope and while being able to craft gear can help with the slog, the slog is still far too slow.
What do you think about the ret changes
Havent crafted anything for anybody else then myself and my alts. Nobody wants my not maxed out crafted items. and upping it takes FOREVER!
OK, kind of a bit of rambling in the beginning with a lot of jumping around tonally but very valid points and analysis of the wow situation. Looking forward to the MMO series!
I really hate the rep system looming over any toon i make so i broke with my many years of farming the love rocket and i'm not gonna play wow for a long while.
I've been enjoying SWTOR though its not as fluid and i had a melt down yesterday at something like the mage tower introduced but in a much much much worse and lesser way.. being unfair to stupid levels (as somebody who completed all mage towers for dps/tank and the resto one) it was just blah.
I suspect gear and spec played a big part, and story choices also give you more help if you pick the dark alignment but it really soured the otherwise great knights of the fallen throne, and previous expansion which are still worth playing through, but i dont think i'll be able to replay it anytime soon.
I don't believe Blizzard has changed enough same team similar choices focusing on engagement metrics when all along just encouraging you to play alts is all the engagement you need for some people, drop an item or two for an alt while playing a main make all the reps account wide so making a second or third toon can speed up progress.. all these things would create more gameplay engagement without it being shoved in.
alt rewards outside of gear should be I'm pretty sure. atleast thats what was said early on
@@kloaf1131 Yeah but it doesn't show on each alt how far the reps have gone, just having bars that need filling left feels really bad to people, having all the unlocks account wide isn't enough a game needs to feel complete as well as being complete.
and gear being locked is an old system too, should be that you can earn gear at a reduced rate for alts by doing stuff on mains, used to be crafting now days its all lame.
Other games like FFXIV have a much better job system there isn't a good reason wow aren't adapt a similar one, its one of the places wow is lagging behind.
That and its story telling - they really need to learn to put more forgiveness into every day stories and questlines, most conflict in wow ends with somebody dead, or being hostile it breeds that kind of player behavior.
The game is very very fun right now. It’s not what WoW used to be and that’s great. Sub for a bit, get what you want to do done and then wait a bit. It feels like a video game again and not a time sink. It’s so fun and that’s something I haven’t had in WoW for a long time.
it's definitely how WoW should be and i really hope that they encourage that going forward, it's a good thing to be done in an MMO for a bit, because then when new stuff is going on, people are going to want to come back to see it.
@@UltimateGamerCC 100% agreed. It’s great to come in, do what you want. Push and what not. And stop and come back later. It’s fun and healthy.
Diagree, having way more fun on my Paladin in Wrath. Shit got too complex in WoW.
Isn't it only 8 M+ to get all 3 options?
1 to get 1 option
4 to get 2
8 to get 3.
Im done as well, but the experience was wack so...... idk thanks I guess?
For the trading post, i do have to disagree with you on one thing.
Not having a lot of old world activities sucks, it is there, and if that is content you are doing, why not be rewarded for it?
I have spent a lot of money recently on doing professions for collecting transmogs, but i get 0 tender for it.
I'm leveling a lot of alts with friends, why do i barely get tender for it?
I'm not saying that there should be less Dragonflight stuff, just make sure that here is plenty to do for us who do not have, and have no interest in buying Dragonflight.
And why is some of it limited to just dragonflight?
if i'm fishing, should it really matter whether or not it is in dragonflight?
There is an activity where you have to /love some of the dragon aspects, so i traveled to where i know where i can find Alextraza: in wyrmrest temple, Dragonblight, Northrend.
If you know this stuff, why look up a guide right... right? blizz? right?
It of course failed to specify that that this iteration of her did not count...
i'm assuming there is a specific Alextraza in the dragon isles to /love?
BUT WHY?
i did what you asked me to do! give me my dam points!
The amount of tender you can get is capped, so why be so stingy with where you can get it?
you can't game the system
just let us play however we want
Anything that does not need to be specific to Dragonflight, should not require Dragonflight.
What's next ? progress when using the auction house ?
stop demanding stuff when it's already very easy to cap, you will not die if you did few things you don't like
@@sanmaru5555 there is, what was it? earn 5000 on the AH? something like that.
As for demanding things.
i'm not demanding anything, i'm just disappointed that it is not inclusive to all the many ways different people play this game.
I'm glad to hear that most people have no issue capping.
And i am also capped, i'm not at all saying i cant, nor am i saying it's hard.
I'm am saying that there is so much opportunity to give people a reason to return to the old world, rather then insisting people play the new world.
WoW has nearly 20 years of content, why limit so much of this feature to the last 2 months of content?
@@Oldschool_Gamer_ i am starting to get your point of view and i agree, it can be expanded
im in the same boat, just cleared hc and were progressing onto mythic but im not as bothered in clearing it. So now im ready to transtion into just playing wow a couple days a week and play another game as my main game.
Wow man, nailed down my exact feeling on the xpac so far. Just got aotc and it's a gear check and m+ is a little too spammy for my taste but you need the gear. But overall I can dig it. And I'm looking forward to the upcoming content. Just spent some time on the ptr with a pally. The Ret changes are fun. We will see on the tuning... I can do all the fun little things now until next patch and not feel like I'm playing catch up the whole time and grinding for dumb shit... unless I want to, and that's great. I'm cautiously optimistic for the future of the game for the forst time in years.
Cheers!
M+ feels bad imo this season…too hard, one missed interrupt or fail to los can wipe the group, the scaling to 20 feels bad, people leaving is worse than ever, lust and brez feel even more mandatory, affix sucks, 10 too many. Feels bad cause I’ve loved m+ in prior seasons
Didn't this guy quit WoW?!
And now he says he's 'DONE'?!
SMH.
I havent enjoyed an expansion like this in quite a long time, and havent invested into crafting so much, in forever. Dungeons are WAY better than Shadowlands, Thundering is not my cup of tea but w/e at this point. Really really nice start to an expansion and not just the first month of it like Shadowlands.
Are you doing elder scrolls online in prosjekt mmo?
DF is another bad expansion in a series of bad expansions. Blizz has just been mailing it in for years now. Nothing new, nothing fresh, just rewording and different paint jobs. Honestly I’m surprised this game still has such a following, it must be the time commitment people have invested. It’s a tedious bore to log in anymore.
If they can adjust M+ like Jade Temple, COS, SBG, Halls of Valor as a dung system, why would not do the same with some good old raids? Ulduar, Blackrock Mountain, Sunwell Plateu? Let say it won't yelld as high iLvL item as main raid but 10ilvl lower, yet will let ppl have planty of raiding throug out the week, instead of swaping alts every day...
my goal was to get heroic rasz down but i somehow never got it down with the guild. i did some mythic bosses but rasz never happened when i was there. and now the guild went to shit lol. oh well imma play some eso and gw2
Have been taking DF super slow, no guild, no buddies to play with, so I'm just pootling along at my own pace. My gear is crap, I have no gold bc I quit in SL and gave all my gold away lol. Happy days.
The reason Preach gets into raids is more because he’s a big RUclipsr than any sort of personal connections due to length of play.
How about swtor for project mmo?
Very interested to see how your reaction will be to destiny 2 raids.
Same here, nothing is wrong with taking a break. Doesn't mean you hate the game, you just want to step away until something interesting happens enough that you want to step back in.
So he's not gonna play the next tiers/patches?
he will lawl, he keeps creating drama for nothing
No game should force you to play it everyday, you should want to play it everyday.
Hair looks great, Mike!
Yeah all three of them!
the thing still stopping me from playing wow is how dead alliance is, even if you can cross faction some stuff now being on the alliance still feels way too separated from 90% of the playerbase and it just feels desolate. if they just united trade chat and let anyone go to any city and join guilds cross server and faction it would feel so much better. faction based MMOs just do not work in the current decade.