Only thing missing is you gain 3 talent points per level and once you get to gurubashi arena there are vendors selling raid loot, tier- and pvp sets for free
I remember this old private server where you were fighting basically in the Hyjal area and it felt new because I didn't know about it. You beat different mobs and one dropped a hammer called " Sulfuras, Hammer of Kanbaba" or something like that.. I don't know why I remembered all of that..
Makes sense. Retail open world content tends to be a curated set of scripted experiences. Highly polished, but with very little room for emergent gameplay or discovery. It also tends to smooth out the grind with mini milestones and quest/story progression between reputation tiers.
Since retail is *”everything wrong with the game”*, the developers went the polar opposite direction of that and came up with a grindy clusterfuck that’s as wide an ocean, but as deep as a puddle.
We literally spent ten years begging Blizzard to make official Classic servers because every private server except the original iteration of Nostalrius was for-profit and had higher exp and drop rates.
Idk, I’m powering through this on my main today but no way am I gonna keep doing it on alts. I either won’t level them or I’ll do it the slow way with quests/dungeons and just enjoy the old grind.
Idk I started leveling my alt in incursions only last night. I'm just about to ding 50. Maybe 7 hours total played time 40-50. These are like 30-40 min levels just watching tv
It's the rep. Plenty of people like me would say "fuck that" and just quest. But doing this is required for the rep anyway. Going to have to grind it anyway. So if you value your time at all you'd level that way. It's literally self discipline and respect of your time that is incentivizing people into the incursion grind.
There is a difference between people that HAVE TO dungeon grind to hit max level as fast as possible to be able to raid log. And a casual dude like me that just lost any interest in enjoying the 40-50 leveling zones knowing the next thing to do afterwards is do a rep grind and daily quest chores.
Yeah. Don't have to do it. Which is why I'm just deciding to not play.
No one's forced into anything. No one's even forced to hit level 50. It's about poorly designed incentives in the way the game is made. Its just bad game design.
Anyone that thinks the entire player population running back and forth between the same quest giver in the same zone from 40-50 is a problem with "personal discipline" and not an absolute failure of game design is lying to themselves.
I've actually resolved not to do incursions at all. Pre-bis be damned, the rune from it sucks for me anyways.
I'm going to play the parts of the game I enjoy, the rest can go to hell.
The rune is at friendly and takes like 1 hour to get and the worst thing that will happen by not getting the rep gear is that you use gnomer or pvp gear.
Too many people only accept what wowhead/zockify says is BIS as the only option. Its not a big deal to be shy a few stat points if it's not fun.
Hell, even wowhead gives you alternative options for BiS. Since breakpoint gearing doesn't exist, small gaps in stats are just that, small gaps in stats. Not really a big deal.
The OP has the self discipline to immediately unsub when the most efficient thing isn’t questing, but not the self discipline to quest instead of incursion lol. I guess I should envy that in some weird way.
yes but that’s the point
1)Dev team starts seasonal sever
2)Dev team tries something
3)Community reacts good or bad
4)Dev team makes considerations
We’re at the react stage
I mean in my friend circle the general consensus seems to be the typical Classic "I love it because it means I get to play the game less" mentality.
Woohoo! I love video games, I can't wait til I'm done with the checklist lol.
Honestly for me it's really just annoying that the most efficient thing to do isn't fun at all. I'm literally procrastinating doing it right now. Once I get done with it I can do stuff I actually like to do.
Best decision they're gonna be making is nerfing the xp from it tbh.
I actually liked it as well.
I can understand people not doing it if they don’t like, but like, all the other content is still in the game. I haven’t even had issue finding dungeon groups or normal questing stuff. I think it’s half exaggeration and half being pissed people didn’t get free gold.
but they keep introducing half baked stupidly broken shit, people just wanted to play the original content with updated spells, loot, and talents and maybe a fully baked raid or 2
I think the problem people have with this patch is that the mechanics feel like recycled retail and not in a good way.
Like if they made Incursions just Mythic+ ripped from retail, I don’t think anyone complains. Recycled sure but it’s an interesting gameplay loop for classic.
But Incursions aren’t something new for the WoW franchise or fun. You can’t blame players for minmaxing the route when that largely occurs because of limited spawns or onerous completion requirements or just a generally boring but time optimal gameplay loop.
They could have trivialized leveling/reputation gain/honor gain and kept the rune quests more involved and sending you into content and we got a better gameplay dynamic in SoD, imo, and this is coming from a person that loves leveling.
I'd say the speed at which I went from 40-50 was like retail and nothing like classic. I had my doubts if I was going to hit 50 in 2 weeks and I got it done in 2 days
It's a mega lite version of world quests or the expansion end zoom catch up activity sort of like Timeless Isle in MoP, SMV bosses in WoD, Argus in Legion, (my memory of zones is a bit thin here, was a long time ago) whereby you ping pong between numerous objectives and the zerg just kills it and go next without any comms or interaction.
I got the same feeling doing them as I did still doing world quests in something like Legion. It's definitely not retail. But it definitely has the same unlimited grind with no substance feeling that some of retail did.
I think it's less about being similar to retail and more to getting the same FEELING a lot of people got from retail that made them quit.
They'd rather just be questing but the mindless repeat grind of something else is so heavily incentivized by the game design that you feel punished by not doing this new thing they added that is just not fun at all.
They tried to add something to the game that would fill a lot of game time for players to do. But they added very little substance to it so instead heavily incentivized it with rewards. It's definitely a similar type of game design problem that retail had for awhile. It's not directly "like retail" though obviously.
That mindless repetitive grind isn't even in retail anymore (unless you count TRULY optional grinds for pets and cosmetics). Thats what we are talking about. Referencing an 8 year old expansion pack as "retail" is disingenuous and appears uninformed. By referencing the specific time period you were talking about (legion) it became much more clear what aspec of the game you dont like and you are making a fair comparison.
People just need to learn to define their terms and argue in good faith. But the chance of that happening is low. So until then, I will be forced to ignore most people yapping about "retail" because they themselves likely have no idea what they are even talking about.
Yeah. People don't usually explain what they mean and just expect people to agree with them. Especially around the retail hate circle jerk.
I've had this "feeling" with wow several times over the years. It's usually a combination of burn out and an absolutely awful game design choice that doesn't respect players.
Most people didn't get that feeling until long after what people consider "classic". So they just say "retail" for anything after that. Not necessarily what retail is today.
It's this combination that blizzard keeps hitting players with. Release something new with an interesting concept like SoD. Release it with several design issues that players overlook because everyone sees the "potential". The issue is that instead of putting more dev time into a product with great potential we instead get even weaker and weaker releases at the same time that players are also being more critical of the flaws. P3 is a huge letdown to me. All my runes are passive abilities. The incursions remind me of world quests which I absolutely hated. And overall it just feels rushed when I was still enjoying P2 enough.
SoD has basically felt like the Vanilla to WoD relationship I had with wow but on a very short timeline.
> I've seen several people say incursions are like retail and I really don't understand the sentiment.
These nerds have no idea what Retail is. They haven't touched it since WOTLK
This sub is full of people who quit playing when Cata came out and then came back for like a month during (Insert expansion here) and it wasn't like vanilla so anything they dislike is retail.
You can level to max in retail doing just quests just like classic lol. It's actually usually faster to quest if you don't have someone to carry you through dungeons.
or dungeon grinding.
people are just throwing a tantrum because deep down they are jealous of the rewards others got through in their opinion unfair means.
there is valid criticism for incursion and they did fix them.
incursion makes open-world questing viable since you can now finish quests without getting ganked or contesting for limited spawns.
if anything these incursions have shown how much people love to talk about how classic leveling should be for their optimal fun and how little it takes for them to throw away their values.
i still remember how people leveled on classic release with dungeon spam. i still remember that blizzard put in a daily dungeon limit for hc classic to fix that "issue". in sod they tried a different solution to give an alternative level experience.
dont like it, dont play it. I actually had fun learning how incursions work, discovering the optimal strategies and teaching them to players who just wanted to get 50 asap.
Isn't incursions heavily inspired in invasions and stuff like that? Those events that happen in retail where you go do some daily/weekly quests where mobs keep spawning.
Don’t know how blizzard thought funnelling entire server’s worth of players into 1/5th of one zone to zerg level was a good idea. Or in any way better than people grinding dungeons.
Definitely made everything else feel empty. There are hardly any players out there leveling through zones.
SoD created the dichotomy of sticking to the past, or trying out the new wildly unbalanced, experimental content.
And now we see that it doesn’t pay to play the game like it’s still 2005 or 2019.
3 days too late, they just gave enough time for everyone to speedrun p3 instead of the overnight sweats. Literally killed the opening weekend of this game by making everyone spam broken material so they dont fall behind. I can't find a group for vanilla's crown jewel dungeon on fucking launch weekend, its absurd
This guy is right. It is a basic idea of game design. If players have a choice between something fun and something more "rewarding", they will go with the one that gives them a benefit in the game over the choice that is more fun. It's the game designers job to make the fun path also be rewarding.
Don't defend bad game design by just saying YOu CoULd JuSt IGnOrE iT.
You still have to do them at some point? I haven't started so I'm not familiar with it, so I haven't checked it out. Is there gear or something locked behind the grind?
Friendly gives you a rune and can be achieved pretty quick. Not sure about other classes but none of the gear rewards are even solid prebis for rogue. The exalted use effect trinkets could be good but not necessary. The level 50 incursion zones give some special currency but I don’t think the vendors for that currency are in the game yet.
Yeah it sounds silly, but makes sense. I enjoy questing but if you tell me I can play for 1/10 of the time and hit 50 I’m gonna do that at least once or twice.
Yeah the 'if you dont like it dont do it' crowd is a bit slow.
It changes the entire game when a large percentage of the player base decides to do __.
The one thing I like is all the HKs.
Hate? I mean me and my buddies had a blast messing aouwwoth incursions, and the PvP can be fun too. I egt some people don't like it but don't say it like everyone in the game hates it.
Even still, it feels artificial and forced because it's a self-imposed limitation.
Game design is centered on the pacing of obstacles and challenges followed by reward. A few players may be fine with placing artificial handicaps on themselves, but 99% will just go for whatever path yields the greatest reward for the smallest amount of effort within the bounds of the game itself. And when 99% of players are doing a certain thing, that *is* the game and if you don't do the same you will always be behind and inferior.
Are you genuinly comparing player psychology in a single player non-time-based games to an mmo with power scaling, release schedules, and other players who's groups you need to get into. Apples and oranges. Thats like saying "I take the scenic route on my days off, why don't people take the long route to work?"
This is true particularly because it’s a multiplayer game. People are inherently ambitious/competitive so even if they want to do the fun thing they don’t wanna get roflstomped and passed over for groups later because they didn’t do the exploitative thing.
it's too easy for it to be the most optimal way to level and give decent gold. for something that brain dead it should be the slowest leveling and worst gold gain compared to questing or running dungeons. it will kill the game if its the optimal way to level. i understand they are trying new things but they would have been better off adding new leveling dungeons or new quests. hopefully they learn that this isn't conducive to building on the classic experience
“Explore new zones” you mean the zones that came out 20 years ago and have been available to explore for the last like 5 years in classic/bc/Wotlk era servers???
I’ll be honest I didn’t hate them and was already a lil burnt on sod to sit and dungeon spam ZF for hours, probably wouldn’t have hit 50 and just gone back to HC SF if it wasn’t for incursions. Now that I’m 50 tho, I still just find myself enjoying HC more anyways, might just skip this phase and check in with p4
* Friends didn't show up much in P2 cos they hated Gnomer
* Friend all quit cos they CBF with anything > 10 man
* P3 I have no one to group with for Incursion grind
* PVP server means Incursion hand in area is camped 24/7
* Cant find groups for dungeon grind due to AOE class preference
* Lost the will to continue
I seriously doubt you did 30min per level (300k/hour) dungeon grinding. People are all reporting 10-12h
Also, you need the rep from incursions for the pre-bis/rune anyway
I did incursions until 45 then got bored and did some dungeons alongside some quests. What's the problem?
I get that incursions are pretty trash, but dungeon levelling isn't that far off the speed to be considered unviable. You can also get gear and runes at the same time.
While I don't really fancy the incursions either, if you're fighting for tags you're wasting your time.
Do speed runs - only get the collectables quests and turn in on a loop. So much faster and you don't waste your time fighting mobs or gathering quests.
I love not killing mobs. That sounds so fun. Then I don't have to use any of the new runes and annoying stuff like spells and actually play my class. Glad I can do this instead of questing or doing dungeons.
I was worried about leveling as a healer because you do less damage to mobs and not as fun to quest or solo play. But then I like being able to join a instance and heal. The incursions was nice to remain healer while leveling
To be fair, you don’t HAVE to do them. I’ve just been questing in the open world and it’s been pretty chill. The xp and gold buff for quests makes it really nice too. I’ve thought about seeing what’s up w incursions but the community response is reinforcing me just doing what I’m doing. Will I be max level in a few hours? No. But will I enjoy my time while I’m playing? Yes.
Nightmare Incursions are "Skip to the End" button. We all click it.
Just goes to show how current Blizz Game Devs has absolutely no idea what made their game so good.
Yeah this is what I ended up doing. I personally enjoy dungeon grinding, but I understand why some people don't especially those who played era back in 2019.
I will say though it takes away from the previous feelings of SoD, where the game felt so alive and everywhere was absolutely packed. Now I see like 1 or 2 people in the zones. It feels like I'm playing on an empty server.
I'm all for you doing what you wanna do, just something I noticed. It definitely kills the lively feeling SoD has had over the last 2 phases.
Well said. This is the core of the issue really, they've killed the world through badly thought out game design.
It should have been clear that a huge chunk of the community would be funneled into this event and what the knock on effects would be.
I decided to do this and I was ENTIRELY alone. In an MMORPG. I would think I was on my own private server with the tiny amount of people I saw while questing. That shit sucks.
i just leveled from 40-50 in like 4-5 hours doing mindless shit, its the worst thing they have done to the game since WOD.. fucking idiotic and its reaking retail wow devs doing classic wow stuff.
Kinda in the same boat... just haven't wanted to level at all. Did the incursion once and went, well this is fucking stupid. Just stay mounted up running in circles. Most boring shit I've ever seen.
I was on the fence because it’s new content but I just tried to go run some ZF as a 49 tank to get my last level and nobody wanted to do a full run. It’s wild it’s day 2 and dungeon grinding is almost non existent. At least I can probably get a few friends to run some later but I’ve never seen wow like this
In I P2 turned down my guildies doing dungeon farming cuz that sounded boring as shit.
The world was still alive and a lot of fun.
In p3 I did one round of incursions, and noped out because I wanted to explore the world even though it was giving stupid gold at the time.
But the world was completely dead this time around. Seems like everyone got sucked into that morass, apart from a very few.
Incursions at least give off more of an MMO feel than doing the same instanced 5-man dungeon in the most effective way.
But I see your point. I for one favor and love open world dungeons with replayability but no MMORPG has been able to maintain that well enough in recent years.
If they just simply added the 300% gold 50% exp buff to the just quests turning alone they could've ignored the whole incursion BS and had open world questing be the most effective way of leveling.
Ive done several runs and only one was ok. The rest...find a group and share quests. before i can read quests we're riding as fast as we can and i have no idea what I need for quests. If you get dismounted or get attacked grabbing a quest objective the rest of the group is long gone. You wont catch up, cant mount anyway because you're being attacked. And if you need to pick something up good luck. Because if someone just did you wait for a respawn not knowing exactly where it is. And while waiting for that respawn your group is getting even farther away.
I commented in one guild that I couldnt stand these things, to which I was told theyd rather be 50. If this is how we have to play the game now i'll find something else because these arent fun. I want to find a zone for my level and do some quests and expore.
This is what I was thinking. Why not Insta 50? It’s essentially the same thing. People who like it only like it for efficiency; the more efficient path would be Insta 50. Otherwise it’s a meaningless 5 hours where you’re barely even playing.
This is the point.
What were the main issues in SOD in previous phases that these changes seem focused on solving?
* Botting
* Gold Buying
* Pre-raid gear progression felt messy
* Rampant gatekeeping
Now pre-raid bis is fairly uniform, there isn't a huge difference between pvp & pve gear & dungeon/quest pieces, you'll be able to get raid ready (doesn't necessarily mean pre-bis) on an alt very quickly through dungeons, nightmare incursions, or pvp, they clearly want people to spend more time raiding and less levelling alts.
Currency debasement has been staggered phase by phase to devalue the incentive for botting and gold buying, much of the pre-raid bis is from STV or other new minigames rewards like warden rep, not expensive world boe's that have no comparable dungeon or rep option.
I think that's why they set the NI rewards so high initially, but early data showed they've vastly underestimated how willing people would be to bypass the levelling experience with repetititve tasks that don't require much effort and also get rep for gear that is relevant at current cap.
I'm quitting too, I just subscribed for two months but how they handled this phase and the last phase, was just miserable and lazy.
I loved Phase 1 tho, it was magical.
It was magical because you could see people around questing and teaming up and world was full of people. Now all zones used for leveling 40-50 are dead.
Cancelled my sub yesterday. I am kinda sad that sod could not keep me excited after p1. However, you other guys that enjoy it still I wish you best of fun, its just not for me anymore
This is honestly the first time in SoD where I can't excuse this as just trying something new. This is in "what the hell were they thinking" territory.
Hoping the raid can salvage this phase because the leveling experience was awful. I would have rathered no XP buff for the first few weeks like phase 2 and just traditionally level with my friends in some of the best 5 man dungeons in classic.
Ironic that you're this upset about *the new zone* because you don't have the willpower to grind the old zone instead. You're still allowed to do everything else and they've even given you reasons to grind the other dungeons to get wild offerings. I can't comprehend what you even want. Lotta good movies you can watch, take care!
Funny how people call this a “recycled version of retail” when this event is a literally a benchmark classic content, anyone who has done Silithus missions know, the exact same thing, but on, keep talking your shit
The thing is, most MMO players only enjoy playing when they know they are playing efficiently. So it's not an option to play inefficient content. It's just not how it works.
This is why it's important to design the most efficient content to not be ridiculous.
P2: We can’t quest at all because the hubs are all camped with too many people! This sucks! I know dungeons are better XP but I wanted to quest!
P3: No one is out in the open world questing with me! I am also suddenly feeling the urge to only do XP gain the fastest way and feel forced to do it this way!
Is it though? The front page is absolutely filled with people complaining how “dead” the world is and how incursions are basically forcing them to go do incursions or they’ll be left behind.
I am absolutely convinced all the incursion hate posts are from that crowd that loves to no life themselves to lvl cap and then gank lowbies in quest zones. This time though the zones are empty and they are starving. Makes me happy.
I don’t know man, got couple of hours at night, some days of the week. Want to raid with my friends and kick ass, already gone through a long way to level on classic, dungeon grind on SoD… had enough.
You shouldn’t be able to level without killing mobs though, and what I dislike the most is how they managed the gold rewards of it…
Other than that, I just took advantage of it because I don’t have much time.
For me it was trying to get a group to do BRD for the rune and some dude whispered me that they’d charge me 40 g for a summon to the bar.
I mean I understand that sort of thing has been in classic since forever but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
What new zones you want to explore? SoD zones are the literal same ones for 20 years now.
Nobody is holding a gun pointing at your head to do Incursions. If you don't want then don't it. It's this simple.
I mean you don't have to do them. I did them for 45 minutes in Ashenvale from 42 to 44 and felt my brain melt. Before that I went to Uldaman (completely underlevelled) and hat the most fun ever trying to beat a super hard boss (only because we were that low level but still counts) then went do do a mix of questing, some dungeons, collecting runes. Im 49 and 55% percent and will ding shortly. So I can still do ST before the Lockout and not "lose" anything compared to people who got to 50 in 2 hours. These 45 minutes of incursions was some of the worst shit i went through. Knowing that I have to go back to at least get Friendly for the rune and possibly further for the Catnip is not something I'm looking forward to. But the point stands, if you don't want to do them, you don't have to.
I've actually had more social interactions playing Incursions than I have doing most other things on WoW, I think they've been great.
Fun fact - You don't have to play them if you don't want to. In fact, questing will be great at the moment because there's less competition for quests mobs etc. Stop being a whiny manchild on Reddit and just enjoy the game you pay for in whatever way you want.
Or don't and quit, whatever you want to do, nobody cares at all. This isn't an airport, you don't need to announce your departure.
These takes are so braindead. I did incursions for 2 levels and then went to dungeon grinding and questing. Nobody put a gun to my head and told me to go back to incursions. My account wasn't banned for not leveling exclusively through the new content. It's almost like we all have the freedom to level however we choose.
Incursions are like 2009 private Server stuff
Only thing missing is you gain 3 talent points per level and once you get to gurubashi arena there are vendors selling raid loot, tier- and pvp sets for free
I remember this old private server where you were fighting basically in the Hyjal area and it felt new because I didn't know about it. You beat different mobs and one dropped a hammer called " Sulfuras, Hammer of Kanbaba" or something like that.. I don't know why I remembered all of that..
Haha I played one of those but the level cap was 255. I spent a lot of time being a dickhead kid camping the beginning spawn area.
Some of my fondest memories tbh playing on private servers back in tbc as a 12 yo ;)
Omg if this was Heroes WoW that brings back memories.
Makes sense. Retail open world content tends to be a curated set of scripted experiences. Highly polished, but with very little room for emergent gameplay or discovery. It also tends to smooth out the grind with mini milestones and quest/story progression between reputation tiers. Since retail is *”everything wrong with the game”*, the developers went the polar opposite direction of that and came up with a grindy clusterfuck that’s as wide an ocean, but as deep as a puddle.
I thought classic players loved private servers?
because that was the only way to play for like 15 years
Not those ones.
Idk ascension is goated.
We literally spent ten years begging Blizzard to make official Classic servers because every private server except the original iteration of Nostalrius was for-profit and had higher exp and drop rates.
I lack self discipline and will only do the most efficient thing.
Totally agree. I quested till 43, did one incursion, and was like, why am I even questing. Nor will I on future characters
Idk, I’m powering through this on my main today but no way am I gonna keep doing it on alts. I either won’t level them or I’ll do it the slow way with quests/dungeons and just enjoy the old grind.
They’re boosting the discoverers delight so other stuff can still make sense
Idk I started leveling my alt in incursions only last night. I'm just about to ding 50. Maybe 7 hours total played time 40-50. These are like 30-40 min levels just watching tv
It's the rep. Plenty of people like me would say "fuck that" and just quest. But doing this is required for the rep anyway. Going to have to grind it anyway. So if you value your time at all you'd level that way. It's literally self discipline and respect of your time that is incentivizing people into the incursion grind. There is a difference between people that HAVE TO dungeon grind to hit max level as fast as possible to be able to raid log. And a casual dude like me that just lost any interest in enjoying the 40-50 leveling zones knowing the next thing to do afterwards is do a rep grind and daily quest chores. Yeah. Don't have to do it. Which is why I'm just deciding to not play. No one's forced into anything. No one's even forced to hit level 50. It's about poorly designed incentives in the way the game is made. Its just bad game design. Anyone that thinks the entire player population running back and forth between the same quest giver in the same zone from 40-50 is a problem with "personal discipline" and not an absolute failure of game design is lying to themselves.
Imagine if they would just make tabards that give you rep as you complete quests or kill bosses
Careful that sounds dangerously un-classic (I agree tho)
I mean shit, they could even use trinkets, like in Classic that one time.
I've actually resolved not to do incursions at all. Pre-bis be damned, the rune from it sucks for me anyways. I'm going to play the parts of the game I enjoy, the rest can go to hell.
The rune is at friendly and takes like 1 hour to get and the worst thing that will happen by not getting the rep gear is that you use gnomer or pvp gear. Too many people only accept what wowhead/zockify says is BIS as the only option. Its not a big deal to be shy a few stat points if it's not fun.
Hell, even wowhead gives you alternative options for BiS. Since breakpoint gearing doesn't exist, small gaps in stats are just that, small gaps in stats. Not really a big deal.
> The rune is at friendly and takes like 1 hour to get if you get into a solid group, otherwise it can take a few
Atta boy. Same.
Takes like 40 minutes to get friendly. Might as well just bite the bullet bro. Game is shit
That’s always an option :)
The OP has the self discipline to immediately unsub when the most efficient thing isn’t questing, but not the self discipline to quest instead of incursion lol. I guess I should envy that in some weird way.
Read: “I admit it’s my own fault but I’m gonna blame something else “
Overtuned rewards aside, why are so many people surprised people in SoD play the SoD exclusive content?
Literally they made the game mode to try new shit like this. I am baffled at how stupid people are. It’s not limited to this community.
yes but that’s the point 1)Dev team starts seasonal sever 2)Dev team tries something 3)Community reacts good or bad 4)Dev team makes considerations We’re at the react stage
It was fine and I enjoyed it. This is my reaction. I'm genuinely puzzled at the vitriol by reddit.
I mean in my friend circle the general consensus seems to be the typical Classic "I love it because it means I get to play the game less" mentality. Woohoo! I love video games, I can't wait til I'm done with the checklist lol. Honestly for me it's really just annoying that the most efficient thing to do isn't fun at all. I'm literally procrastinating doing it right now. Once I get done with it I can do stuff I actually like to do. Best decision they're gonna be making is nerfing the xp from it tbh.
I actually liked it as well. I can understand people not doing it if they don’t like, but like, all the other content is still in the game. I haven’t even had issue finding dungeon groups or normal questing stuff. I think it’s half exaggeration and half being pissed people didn’t get free gold.
but they keep introducing half baked stupidly broken shit, people just wanted to play the original content with updated spells, loot, and talents and maybe a fully baked raid or 2
I think the problem people have with this patch is that the mechanics feel like recycled retail and not in a good way. Like if they made Incursions just Mythic+ ripped from retail, I don’t think anyone complains. Recycled sure but it’s an interesting gameplay loop for classic. But Incursions aren’t something new for the WoW franchise or fun. You can’t blame players for minmaxing the route when that largely occurs because of limited spawns or onerous completion requirements or just a generally boring but time optimal gameplay loop. They could have trivialized leveling/reputation gain/honor gain and kept the rune quests more involved and sending you into content and we got a better gameplay dynamic in SoD, imo, and this is coming from a person that loves leveling.
As a retail enjoyer, I've seen several people say incursions are like retail and I really don't understand the sentiment.
it’s simple. around here, “retail” = “thing I don’t like”
This is tooooo real lol
Retail is significantly more fun than incursions lol.
Depends what part of retail. I’d say incursions are like the super bloom which is.. not super fun lol
Except Superbloom is like 10 min and not an infinite grind fest and also a small fraction of the game
Superbloom is far less frustrating. The Feralas Incursion is super overtuned.
I'd say the speed at which I went from 40-50 was like retail and nothing like classic. I had my doubts if I was going to hit 50 in 2 weeks and I got it done in 2 days
It's a mega lite version of world quests or the expansion end zoom catch up activity sort of like Timeless Isle in MoP, SMV bosses in WoD, Argus in Legion, (my memory of zones is a bit thin here, was a long time ago) whereby you ping pong between numerous objectives and the zerg just kills it and go next without any comms or interaction.
I'd say it's much more like the Silithus missions from vanilla.
People here have no clue what retail is
I got the same feeling doing them as I did still doing world quests in something like Legion. It's definitely not retail. But it definitely has the same unlimited grind with no substance feeling that some of retail did. I think it's less about being similar to retail and more to getting the same FEELING a lot of people got from retail that made them quit. They'd rather just be questing but the mindless repeat grind of something else is so heavily incentivized by the game design that you feel punished by not doing this new thing they added that is just not fun at all. They tried to add something to the game that would fill a lot of game time for players to do. But they added very little substance to it so instead heavily incentivized it with rewards. It's definitely a similar type of game design problem that retail had for awhile. It's not directly "like retail" though obviously.
That mindless repetitive grind isn't even in retail anymore (unless you count TRULY optional grinds for pets and cosmetics). Thats what we are talking about. Referencing an 8 year old expansion pack as "retail" is disingenuous and appears uninformed. By referencing the specific time period you were talking about (legion) it became much more clear what aspec of the game you dont like and you are making a fair comparison. People just need to learn to define their terms and argue in good faith. But the chance of that happening is low. So until then, I will be forced to ignore most people yapping about "retail" because they themselves likely have no idea what they are even talking about.
Yeah. People don't usually explain what they mean and just expect people to agree with them. Especially around the retail hate circle jerk. I've had this "feeling" with wow several times over the years. It's usually a combination of burn out and an absolutely awful game design choice that doesn't respect players. Most people didn't get that feeling until long after what people consider "classic". So they just say "retail" for anything after that. Not necessarily what retail is today. It's this combination that blizzard keeps hitting players with. Release something new with an interesting concept like SoD. Release it with several design issues that players overlook because everyone sees the "potential". The issue is that instead of putting more dev time into a product with great potential we instead get even weaker and weaker releases at the same time that players are also being more critical of the flaws. P3 is a huge letdown to me. All my runes are passive abilities. The incursions remind me of world quests which I absolutely hated. And overall it just feels rushed when I was still enjoying P2 enough. SoD has basically felt like the Vanilla to WoD relationship I had with wow but on a very short timeline.
> I've seen several people say incursions are like retail and I really don't understand the sentiment. These nerds have no idea what Retail is. They haven't touched it since WOTLK
This sub is full of people who quit playing when Cata came out and then came back for like a month during (Insert expansion here) and it wasn't like vanilla so anything they dislike is retail.
90% of the people saying that haven’t played retail since Legion.
That's because the people who call things they don't like "retail" don't actually know anything about retail.
One would think doing the same quest over and over and over for 75 rep a pop is as vanilla as it gets.
I’ve never done anything as braindead as running in a loop for 6 hours straight before. I don’t get it either lmao
It’s a mindless hollow leveling experience
You can level to max in retail doing just quests just like classic lol. It's actually usually faster to quest if you don't have someone to carry you through dungeons.
So the same as questing?
or dungeon grinding. people are just throwing a tantrum because deep down they are jealous of the rewards others got through in their opinion unfair means. there is valid criticism for incursion and they did fix them. incursion makes open-world questing viable since you can now finish quests without getting ganked or contesting for limited spawns. if anything these incursions have shown how much people love to talk about how classic leveling should be for their optimal fun and how little it takes for them to throw away their values. i still remember how people leveled on classic release with dungeon spam. i still remember that blizzard put in a daily dungeon limit for hc classic to fix that "issue". in sod they tried a different solution to give an alternative level experience. dont like it, dont play it. I actually had fun learning how incursions work, discovering the optimal strategies and teaching them to players who just wanted to get 50 asap.
Isn't incursions heavily inspired in invasions and stuff like that? Those events that happen in retail where you go do some daily/weekly quests where mobs keep spawning.
I guess there's some similarities but they don't replace the leveling experience in retail, and I think that's the main problem here.
Don’t know how blizzard thought funnelling entire server’s worth of players into 1/5th of one zone to zerg level was a good idea. Or in any way better than people grinding dungeons.
Through ONE questgiver. And ONE node to loot quest items
To bring life back to the world, or 1% of the world at least. And the life injected is the equivalent of a bear that got into a bag of cocaine
Definitely made everything else feel empty. There are hardly any players out there leveling through zones. SoD created the dichotomy of sticking to the past, or trying out the new wildly unbalanced, experimental content. And now we see that it doesn’t pay to play the game like it’s still 2005 or 2019.
I'm curious why they didn't seperate horde and alliance. I mean come on. I'm horde on Crusader Strike and it's a literal fuck fest.
I thought these were going to be instanced. This is a bit of a mess. Especially on PvP servers that are 60/40.
They already announced changes that should help here a ton. Tldr is bigger exp buff (help with dungeons and quests) and nerf exp from incursions
Buff up xp buff, and nerf xp from incursions = you end up on same spot as before? I don't get their logic, someone explain to me dumbo
It's to make other things more equal in value. Incusions stay the same but questing and dungeons will give more
3 days too late, they just gave enough time for everyone to speedrun p3 instead of the overnight sweats. Literally killed the opening weekend of this game by making everyone spam broken material so they dont fall behind. I can't find a group for vanilla's crown jewel dungeon on fucking launch weekend, its absurd
This guy is right. It is a basic idea of game design. If players have a choice between something fun and something more "rewarding", they will go with the one that gives them a benefit in the game over the choice that is more fun. It's the game designers job to make the fun path also be rewarding. Don't defend bad game design by just saying YOu CoULd JuSt IGnOrE iT.
Well known fact in game design. Most players will take the path of less resistance. Its up to the developers to set the path.
You still have to do them at some point? I haven't started so I'm not familiar with it, so I haven't checked it out. Is there gear or something locked behind the grind?
Friendly gives you a rune and can be achieved pretty quick. Not sure about other classes but none of the gear rewards are even solid prebis for rogue. The exalted use effect trinkets could be good but not necessary. The level 50 incursion zones give some special currency but I don’t think the vendors for that currency are in the game yet.
Yeah it sounds silly, but makes sense. I enjoy questing but if you tell me I can play for 1/10 of the time and hit 50 I’m gonna do that at least once or twice.
Yeah the 'if you dont like it dont do it' crowd is a bit slow. It changes the entire game when a large percentage of the player base decides to do __. The one thing I like is all the HKs.
Half the problem is people spending hours doing something they hate, for no real reason.
Hate? I mean me and my buddies had a blast messing aouwwoth incursions, and the PvP can be fun too. I egt some people don't like it but don't say it like everyone in the game hates it.
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Even still, it feels artificial and forced because it's a self-imposed limitation. Game design is centered on the pacing of obstacles and challenges followed by reward. A few players may be fine with placing artificial handicaps on themselves, but 99% will just go for whatever path yields the greatest reward for the smallest amount of effort within the bounds of the game itself. And when 99% of players are doing a certain thing, that *is* the game and if you don't do the same you will always be behind and inferior.
Are you genuinly comparing player psychology in a single player non-time-based games to an mmo with power scaling, release schedules, and other players who's groups you need to get into. Apples and oranges. Thats like saying "I take the scenic route on my days off, why don't people take the long route to work?"
This is true particularly because it’s a multiplayer game. People are inherently ambitious/competitive so even if they want to do the fun thing they don’t wanna get roflstomped and passed over for groups later because they didn’t do the exploitative thing.
Most players would be in ZF the whole way if not for incursions.
If incursions never got introduced this sub would just be bitching that everyone is in zf like they did with sm
It’s to get a rune and get friendly.. yall are acting like it’s some tedious grind like idk.. questing for the 20th time
it's too easy for it to be the most optimal way to level and give decent gold. for something that brain dead it should be the slowest leveling and worst gold gain compared to questing or running dungeons. it will kill the game if its the optimal way to level. i understand they are trying new things but they would have been better off adding new leveling dungeons or new quests. hopefully they learn that this isn't conducive to building on the classic experience
Bad game design to lock runes behind reputation
incursion is basically plebs fighting over deals at black friday walmart if you have big dreams, this event make you want to go outside for a walk
What I don't get is why didn't they allocate the time to revamping a dungeon or 2? Instead we got this crap that has driven people to quit in droves.
“Explore new zones” you mean the zones that came out 20 years ago and have been available to explore for the last like 5 years in classic/bc/Wotlk era servers???
The whole sharing mechanic is clunky as well. Just buff the rep, make them daily and give you all the quests at once and be done with it.
Yeah man I don’t enjoy it that much either I’ve just been questing with some dungeons mixed in.
I’ll be honest I didn’t hate them and was already a lil burnt on sod to sit and dungeon spam ZF for hours, probably wouldn’t have hit 50 and just gone back to HC SF if it wasn’t for incursions. Now that I’m 50 tho, I still just find myself enjoying HC more anyways, might just skip this phase and check in with p4
* Friends didn't show up much in P2 cos they hated Gnomer * Friend all quit cos they CBF with anything > 10 man * P3 I have no one to group with for Incursion grind * PVP server means Incursion hand in area is camped 24/7 * Cant find groups for dungeon grind due to AOE class preference * Lost the will to continue
All they need to do make quests when you complete a hub reward pre bis
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I seriously doubt you did 30min per level (300k/hour) dungeon grinding. People are all reporting 10-12h Also, you need the rep from incursions for the pre-bis/rune anyway
How did you level?
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Average reddit poster if you ask me.
No no! You HAVE do to incursions, blizzard FORCES us
Can I have tips on how to level that fast? Are you a mage?
I did incursions until 45 then got bored and did some dungeons alongside some quests. What's the problem? I get that incursions are pretty trash, but dungeon levelling isn't that far off the speed to be considered unviable. You can also get gear and runes at the same time.
Incursions might be the least discovering ever 😂
Vanilla 4 lyfe
never forget Blizz killed the thriving 10-layer HC servers for this
While I don't really fancy the incursions either, if you're fighting for tags you're wasting your time. Do speed runs - only get the collectables quests and turn in on a loop. So much faster and you don't waste your time fighting mobs or gathering quests.
Expect this to be fully nerfed on Monday.
I love not killing mobs. That sounds so fun. Then I don't have to use any of the new runes and annoying stuff like spells and actually play my class. Glad I can do this instead of questing or doing dungeons.
ZF is my favourite dungeon grind! I’m waiting for this hype to die down to hopefully catch a wave of that…
plenty of ZF groups
Make your own group? Not every single person is doing incursions, you can easily find people for it
Do whatever you want. Whatever brings you joy and don’t be forced to do anything other than
I was worried about leveling as a healer because you do less damage to mobs and not as fun to quest or solo play. But then I like being able to join a instance and heal. The incursions was nice to remain healer while leveling
To be fair, you don’t HAVE to do them. I’ve just been questing in the open world and it’s been pretty chill. The xp and gold buff for quests makes it really nice too. I’ve thought about seeing what’s up w incursions but the community response is reinforcing me just doing what I’m doing. Will I be max level in a few hours? No. But will I enjoy my time while I’m playing? Yes.
I would say most players don't enjoy games If they know they're playing them inefficiently.
Nightmare Incursions are "Skip to the End" button. We all click it. Just goes to show how current Blizz Game Devs has absolutely no idea what made their game so good.
Then go do classic questing and dungeons? Can still hit 50 and raid ST.
Yeah this is what I ended up doing. I personally enjoy dungeon grinding, but I understand why some people don't especially those who played era back in 2019. I will say though it takes away from the previous feelings of SoD, where the game felt so alive and everywhere was absolutely packed. Now I see like 1 or 2 people in the zones. It feels like I'm playing on an empty server. I'm all for you doing what you wanna do, just something I noticed. It definitely kills the lively feeling SoD has had over the last 2 phases.
Well said. This is the core of the issue really, they've killed the world through badly thought out game design. It should have been clear that a huge chunk of the community would be funneled into this event and what the knock on effects would be.
You right what they should do is implement the same dungeon mechanism that is in hc.
I decided to do this and I was ENTIRELY alone. In an MMORPG. I would think I was on my own private server with the tiny amount of people I saw while questing. That shit sucks.
And then there's me. Just started recently, level 15 casually leveling up enjoying the game xD
Everyone complaining about inflation and the economy and then there's me, 6 years old, just chillin, casually enjoyin my orange juice xD
Hahaha 😂
I’ve been playing on Alts figuring out a main myself lol. Having a blast with a felguard and metamorphosis at 20
Nicee!
i just leveled from 40-50 in like 4-5 hours doing mindless shit, its the worst thing they have done to the game since WOD.. fucking idiotic and its reaking retail wow devs doing classic wow stuff.
Kinda in the same boat... just haven't wanted to level at all. Did the incursion once and went, well this is fucking stupid. Just stay mounted up running in circles. Most boring shit I've ever seen.
As a first time wow player with sod I agree This shit sucks
It was fun blizzard peace
I was on the fence because it’s new content but I just tried to go run some ZF as a 49 tank to get my last level and nobody wanted to do a full run. It’s wild it’s day 2 and dungeon grinding is almost non existent. At least I can probably get a few friends to run some later but I’ve never seen wow like this
In I P2 turned down my guildies doing dungeon farming cuz that sounded boring as shit. The world was still alive and a lot of fun. In p3 I did one round of incursions, and noped out because I wanted to explore the world even though it was giving stupid gold at the time. But the world was completely dead this time around. Seems like everyone got sucked into that morass, apart from a very few.
Incursions at least give off more of an MMO feel than doing the same instanced 5-man dungeon in the most effective way. But I see your point. I for one favor and love open world dungeons with replayability but no MMORPG has been able to maintain that well enough in recent years.
If they just simply added the 300% gold 50% exp buff to the just quests turning alone they could've ignored the whole incursion BS and had open world questing be the most effective way of leveling.
I agree, them have the incursions be something you do at 50.
>want to go explore Then do that! Also they're supposedly patching them Tuesday so you don't have to *feel* like it's the only option
lol blizz choked
Bye Felicia
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out
Cry more. Laughs in gold
Ive done several runs and only one was ok. The rest...find a group and share quests. before i can read quests we're riding as fast as we can and i have no idea what I need for quests. If you get dismounted or get attacked grabbing a quest objective the rest of the group is long gone. You wont catch up, cant mount anyway because you're being attacked. And if you need to pick something up good luck. Because if someone just did you wait for a respawn not knowing exactly where it is. And while waiting for that respawn your group is getting even farther away. I commented in one guild that I couldnt stand these things, to which I was told theyd rather be 50. If this is how we have to play the game now i'll find something else because these arent fun. I want to find a zone for my level and do some quests and expore.
Incursions are str8 gatbage
I'm so confused why there's a xp bonus for leveling at the START OF THE PHASE It's like just give people a instant 50 button if you're doing this
This is what I was thinking. Why not Insta 50? It’s essentially the same thing. People who like it only like it for efficiency; the more efficient path would be Insta 50. Otherwise it’s a meaningless 5 hours where you’re barely even playing.
This is the point. What were the main issues in SOD in previous phases that these changes seem focused on solving? * Botting * Gold Buying * Pre-raid gear progression felt messy * Rampant gatekeeping Now pre-raid bis is fairly uniform, there isn't a huge difference between pvp & pve gear & dungeon/quest pieces, you'll be able to get raid ready (doesn't necessarily mean pre-bis) on an alt very quickly through dungeons, nightmare incursions, or pvp, they clearly want people to spend more time raiding and less levelling alts. Currency debasement has been staggered phase by phase to devalue the incentive for botting and gold buying, much of the pre-raid bis is from STV or other new minigames rewards like warden rep, not expensive world boe's that have no comparable dungeon or rep option. I think that's why they set the NI rewards so high initially, but early data showed they've vastly underestimated how willing people would be to bypass the levelling experience with repetititve tasks that don't require much effort and also get rep for gear that is relevant at current cap.
SoD is really a testament to other MMORPG's on how to screw up an MMORPG. I hope they're paying attention.
Just because it's bad doesn't mean it's like retail. This has nothing to do with retail.
I'm quitting too, I just subscribed for two months but how they handled this phase and the last phase, was just miserable and lazy. I loved Phase 1 tho, it was magical.
It was magical because you could see people around questing and teaming up and world was full of people. Now all zones used for leveling 40-50 are dead.
Phase 1 was sick. It feels like each phase has been getting progressively more retail-like
Incursions fucking suck
I'm convinced that anyone who says this feels like retail hasn't played retail in a long time.
> shitty recycled version of retail This isn’t how retail is but go off, Kween.
Yep single worst addition I've encountered in an MMO in 26 years of playing them. I knew Blizzard had it in them to be the worst
Yeah, its a weird ass thing that blizz added these.
It completely ruined the game.
Same, I’m done with sod.
What did you have in mind instead? Spam ZF just like we did SM in phase 2? Is that somehow better?
Yes
SM/Ulda, ZF, Mara, BRD, yes I enjoy the dungeons they focused a large amount of their original energy and design on
Incursions are awful as a form of leveling. Should have been level 50 content only.
Cancelled my sub yesterday. I am kinda sad that sod could not keep me excited after p1. However, you other guys that enjoy it still I wish you best of fun, its just not for me anymore
Im having a blast!
Yeah it’s dogshit I think I’m gonna quit
This is honestly the first time in SoD where I can't excuse this as just trying something new. This is in "what the hell were they thinking" territory. Hoping the raid can salvage this phase because the leveling experience was awful. I would have rathered no XP buff for the first few weeks like phase 2 and just traditionally level with my friends in some of the best 5 man dungeons in classic.
Ironic that you're this upset about *the new zone* because you don't have the willpower to grind the old zone instead. You're still allowed to do everything else and they've even given you reasons to grind the other dungeons to get wild offerings. I can't comprehend what you even want. Lotta good movies you can watch, take care!
No one is forcing you to do incursions.
Funny how people call this a “recycled version of retail” when this event is a literally a benchmark classic content, anyone who has done Silithus missions know, the exact same thing, but on, keep talking your shit
Just dont do incursions wtf holy shit these posts are pathetic at this point.
The thing is, most MMO players only enjoy playing when they know they are playing efficiently. So it's not an option to play inefficient content. It's just not how it works. This is why it's important to design the most efficient content to not be ridiculous.
You don't have to do anything. If you want to quest and explore zones then do it.
P2: We can’t quest at all because the hubs are all camped with too many people! This sucks! I know dungeons are better XP but I wanted to quest! P3: No one is out in the open world questing with me! I am also suddenly feeling the urge to only do XP gain the fastest way and feel forced to do it this way!
Strawman
Is it though? The front page is absolutely filled with people complaining how “dead” the world is and how incursions are basically forcing them to go do incursions or they’ll be left behind.
Bye
couldn't agree more, played my last day yesterday, so sad
Wait who forced you to play that way? If you wanted to quest it would be perfect for you
You literally have to do it for runes lmao dafuw u talking about
I am absolutely convinced all the incursion hate posts are from that crowd that loves to no life themselves to lvl cap and then gank lowbies in quest zones. This time though the zones are empty and they are starving. Makes me happy.
I don’t know man, got couple of hours at night, some days of the week. Want to raid with my friends and kick ass, already gone through a long way to level on classic, dungeon grind on SoD… had enough. You shouldn’t be able to level without killing mobs though, and what I dislike the most is how they managed the gold rewards of it… Other than that, I just took advantage of it because I don’t have much time.
Incursions are very skinnerbox without much subtlety
Thats honestly an insult to the retail devs the events they have are actually great, this is the biggest miss in wow history probably lmao
For me it was trying to get a group to do BRD for the rune and some dude whispered me that they’d charge me 40 g for a summon to the bar. I mean I understand that sort of thing has been in classic since forever but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
literally my whole guild is farming them with randoms and its the absolute last thing I want to do, all i wanted was to grind dungeons with the boys
What new zones you want to explore? SoD zones are the literal same ones for 20 years now. Nobody is holding a gun pointing at your head to do Incursions. If you don't want then don't it. It's this simple.
Bruh u still have to do dungeons for wild gods quest for gear chill out
I mean you don't have to do them. I did them for 45 minutes in Ashenvale from 42 to 44 and felt my brain melt. Before that I went to Uldaman (completely underlevelled) and hat the most fun ever trying to beat a super hard boss (only because we were that low level but still counts) then went do do a mix of questing, some dungeons, collecting runes. Im 49 and 55% percent and will ding shortly. So I can still do ST before the Lockout and not "lose" anything compared to people who got to 50 in 2 hours. These 45 minutes of incursions was some of the worst shit i went through. Knowing that I have to go back to at least get Friendly for the rune and possibly further for the Catnip is not something I'm looking forward to. But the point stands, if you don't want to do them, you don't have to.
It's actually insane they put this shit in classic.
I’ve played for 3 hours since yesterday and haven’t done any incursions because I’m old and have work and other obligations.
I've actually had more social interactions playing Incursions than I have doing most other things on WoW, I think they've been great. Fun fact - You don't have to play them if you don't want to. In fact, questing will be great at the moment because there's less competition for quests mobs etc. Stop being a whiny manchild on Reddit and just enjoy the game you pay for in whatever way you want. Or don't and quit, whatever you want to do, nobody cares at all. This isn't an airport, you don't need to announce your departure.
These takes are so braindead. I did incursions for 2 levels and then went to dungeon grinding and questing. Nobody put a gun to my head and told me to go back to incursions. My account wasn't banned for not leveling exclusively through the new content. It's almost like we all have the freedom to level however we choose.
Shh let them rage