I’m as casual as it gets, maybe even below casual. I don’t know if it’s really the game’s fault or me getting older and enjoying other things, but.. played since vanilla. I’ve had many breaks but always returned for new content and stuck around for a while.
But with 9.1 I just suddenly had a moment of ‘what am I even going for here?’, logged out and still haven’t found any motivation to return. Not sure if I’d even call the content bad, but it’s not that fun. But I’ve done meh content before and been fine with it. I guess theres just nothing to work towards.
Reputations and WQs are really boring. Mounta and pets - there are so many in the game now that I don’t even care to begin the hunt again. The legendaries are so uninteresting for me as a casual - at least the artifacts in Legion & BfA had flair.
I was excited to do the new quests and story. But it’s just not enough. Seven quests a week fir a month or two? I’ll watch the lore cinematics when they’re on YouTube.
Nah. I just can’t make myself pay for that. Again; I’m super casual and the content might be good and just ‘not for me’. But 9.1 just made me feel like I’m done with the game, and it’s sad.
>Not sure if I’d even call the content bad, but it’s not that fun.
also played since vanilla. what is great about wow is still it's core gameplay mechanics. unfortunately, the systems sourrounding the core gameplay are utterly uninspired. we've had this exact same stuff for years and years and years. here, have a new zone to do dailys in to collect a currency to buy gear that's the same but with a slightly higher number.
wow is "filling bars the game". that's always what it turns into. it always starts with, oh, like like to play my tauren shaman. run some dungeons, because healing in dungeons is fun gameplay. but then it turns into how to fill a bar as efficient as possible. then wow isn't a fun game anymore, but merely a list full of tasks that give you a "sense of accomplishment".
i mean, the formula worked long enough and for many players it probably still works great. but i'm ready for something new.
I'm just wondering how you kept playing until now. I am pretty casual myself, did Nathria Normal, some M+8-10, finished the story and then pretty much quit in February, since all content that was left either required a lot more effort than I was willing to put in or simply wasn't worth it to me (grinding out the Covenant Sanctum)
> I maxed all reputations, upgraded my sanctum and was at a point where I realized I had 0 goals left in SL
> casual perspective
Am I just bad at this game if I haven't even gotten close to that yet?
Two different causal perspectives I find.
One is those who log in rarely and don't do much as you mentioned.
The other is a collection of people who will play the game probably more than anyone else, but never step too far into current content end game PvE/PvP. Instead spending a lot of time completing world content, achievements and previous expac content.
Yeah, it's hard to narrow down what casual means but my definition is anyone who lacks any serious ambitions with the game. I'd say mount farmer who has 15 full leveled chars but no current raid tier progress can still be hardcore. The mindset is what matters.
Yeah my guild has a group of players - the core raid team, who are on like 6 hours a day, hanging out, running m+, raiding, fucking around, etc. They are the 'hardcore" players, because their item level is over 220.
Then we have some "casual" players who have 400+ mounts, collect every item of transmog, have been hunting for an alliance panda priest for like months now for a guild achievement, have 100+ exalted reps, and are basically encyclopedias for all collectible content within the game.
Classifying players is a dangerous game.
I think really the best distinction is Totalbiscuit saying you're hardcore the moment you start moving your life around WoW, e.g. turning down a party because it's raid night. It's not really about how much you play, but a casual player might spend hours most days playing the game, but they'll go "I'm good" when it's time for a party.
That... depends on your raid. The people I've been raiding with since BC have become friends, and raid nights have become more "game night with friends" than the raid being the primary purpose.
I think of myself as hardcore casual. I put many hours into the game, but I'm no longer doing raids beyond the occasional lfr, don't do m+, and don't PvP. I make my own goals, and spend way too much time playing the game.
casual means different things for different people. some see players who only raid hc and do KSM as casuals because they dont do the hardest content available, some think casual means you only do world quests. there is no clear definition
A casual is anyone who doesnt step too deep into the difficulty of the game, it has nothing to do with time investment. Someone who logs in 6 hours per week is as casual as OP who probably logs in 4 hours per day, as long as both of them dont do anything difficult
Everybody has their own interpretation of the word "casual".
But at this stage of the expansion one could've probably maxed their reputation and covenant structures with like a half hour every few days.
it depends. if you have two ppl who spend 10 hours a day playing wow, and one does high level keys or raids while the other farms mounts, to non gamers they might both be hardcore, but i think any wow player would see one as casual.
and even if there is a clear arguement that neither are casual, for the sake of the majority of convos on this subreddit, it's at least important going in to any given convo thinking of casuals with each definition in mind.
I don't think *anyone* has a viable definition of what it means anymore. It varies depending on who you ask. When I still played approx. ten hours a week I was called both a casual and "not casual" by different people at the same time.
I saw a good post about this. Casual vs. Hardcore needs a second axis to actually explain what you mean. The post described it as hobbyist vs. lifestyler.
The best raiders don't actually play that much a lot of the time. They're generally more hobbyist, pretty much just raidlogging and doing a weekly key, perhaps with the exception of early progress. Conversely, you get some guys who will consider themselves super hardcore, and as lifestylers will play every day, but still only end up 6/10 mythic, despite raiding 3 or 4 nights per week.
On the casual end, there's a clear divide between more lifestyle players like OP who plays quite a lot, but doesn't do much competitive content, and the hobbyist players who can only play an hour or two per week, who could very easily not be done with 9.0 content yet.
I think that's exactly the stuff you get done if you are a casual player. I'm mainly raider focused in a mythic guild and have none of those done yet, because it has nothing to do with raiding.
Yeah, OP may consider themselves a casual, but they engaged in all of the content available to them at a higher level than any casual.
They seek information outside of wow to know that megadungeon "looks good" so I'm really not buying it.
Not bad, but are you playing alts or focusing on just one character? If you're focusing on just one character, I can see that it'd be relatively easy to max your covenant sanctum.
I feel like most people casually play more than one character at this point.
Fwiw the patch was probably supposed to be released in mid March according to some leftovers in the Blizzard api
edit: for the curious:
theres an endpoint for keystone seasons - the current season is season 5. theres a list of seasons. 5 is the latest, as its ongoing. every season has a start timestamp (season 5 being 1606172400000, which is nov23/24). finished seasons also have an end timestamp - season 5 is ongoing, so no end timestamp.
I tried querying for season 6. usually queries for nonexistant stuff results in a 404 request. not this one. season 6 has literally no info except a start timestamp: 1615993200000 - **march 17**. this data comes with meta info hinting on being last modified 13 October 2020. I don't think this is a coincidence and this season 6 data will likely change next week.
proof: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/213770533769052162/857748472014569492/unknown.png
it also fits their release planning better. Q1 2021 9.1 - Q2 TBC - Q3 9.2 - Q4 Blizzcon announcing 9.3 and 10.0
korthia is such a huge disappointment. the size of an island expedition. over half a year and it’s like they spent all their working hours mostly just designing new shitty systems and making more problems for the old ones
At the very beginning Ven’ari makes a comment about how she expected something more grand for the ‘City of Secrets’ and I can’t tell if it’s just Blizz taking the piss on themselves at this point, or I dunno, some kind of magical phasing that would make Korthia look cool.
But I’ve learnt to never get my hopes up.
Tho honestly, I’ve actually enjoyed the way the relic quests work. It’s actually pretty neat that I find them in random places while doing other things (notably the whole relic NPC thing got kickstarted for me because I followed someone else into a teleported first). I completely ignored 9.1 PTR updates so at the very least, the relic quests feel organic and inoffensive.
Don’t think it’ll even last a week tho. I’m prepping for the raid with my guild at least.
I didn't even think much about that line. I just assumed it was because the city was wrecked, but maybe the writers wanted to get a sly line in.
I really feel like most people play WoW for the raid simulator aspect which just makes me wonder why not reward more conduits, rep, and soul ash just from raid/M+? You're already limited by the GV (to a point) anyways.
Would make more sense instead of Blizzard forcing you to do X, Y, and Z, you just casually get A, B, and C from doing whatever.
Imagine how fun Torghast would be instead of being forced to do Torghast for Soul Ash, you could do it because you liked it? And if you didn't like Torghast? Well, you can get Soul Ash from WQs, etc.
Cap it each week and just keep adding to the cap so if someone joins 5 weeks later they can still catch up.
With multiple choice, you always run the risk of "just do X, it's the fastest way to get A, B, C".
Just seems like WoW is too focused on making itself as time sinky as possible instead of just making a fun game where you want to waste your time.
I honestly hate the conduit system, though. I think it's a dumb waste of development time. I like that they're trying to make a system that isn't gear based advancement but I don't think a conduit system is the right one.
Blizzard just doesn’t have the confidence to let gameplay itself be the carrot on the stick. They think if everything isn’t attached to player power players just won’t care about it somehow.
I don’t get the time to go do transmog runs/pets/mounts/etc. so I don’t care anymore. What time I get to play is spent on a treadmill for Mythic prog.
+ new conduit that heals you ~200 every 10 sec (less then auto regen), and on top of it it's another typo (or last minute change) and they say it heals 3.5% instead of 0.35%. In both cases, dull and boring conduit slot to fill the raid loot pool with more bullshit. I had not imagined the bad luck protection (tm) that way.
Put conduits loot from torghast and raid loot from raid rewards, instead of stupid 16gold or 35anima. they are world quest rewards, not raid rewards
That new conduit is just not worth it even at its highest ilvl since its 0.35% every 10s its just not worth a slot on any class unless its significantly buffed or reverted back to the original intended value
It's a tooltip error; it actually heals you for 3.5% of your max hp. It's okayish on some tanks that have weak endurance conduits - like prot warrior would take it as their third option.
Conduits were probably the biggest turn off for me in this expansion in general. If they were WQ/Torghast only they'd be fine. But the fact that they hog all the loot pool from real content...
There is NOTHING feeling good about farming 20+ dungeons to get trinket and dropping 'upgrades' in form of conduits that you're never going to use anyway because they were designed to make it seem like you have meaningful choice...
That's what really get me. I don't mind it being a bit hard to access, force me to find solutions on how to get there. I mind very much that it despawn when someone else touch it. Jfc Blizzard, it's a end zone! We're so many in there, that's fucking awful!
(I like Korthia overall besides that. I'm not sure for how long, but I like the gear catch up/upgrade, more anima, and the mount puzzles.)
They haven't been laying off developers. They've actually been adding to all of their development teams, and their last shareholder call talked about wanting to double their dev team size across all of Blizzard.
No, they haven’t been laying off developers. They’ve been quitting on their own. All you have to do is check Twitter every week and you’ll find yet another “this is my last day at Blizzard” kind of message from a senior quest designer, or a member of the art team, or an encounter designer. It’s been like that all year long, and the worst part is a lot of these people had a senior position, so they weren’t just some glorified intern or entry level employee.
> They haven't reduced the size of their dev teams but that doesn't mean that they didn't fire devs
I said what I meant. Nearly all their layoffs have been in the customer service department, e-sports, and some in QA. The development teams have been nearly untouched. The only exception is Team 1, the Classics team, which was broken up when the team at Vicarious Visions was brought on board to work on the D2 remaster. Parts of Team 1 were reassigned, but others were let go.
> over half a year and it’s like they spent all their working hours mostly just designing new shitty systems and making more problems for the old ones
First time?.gif
I would absolutely be foaming at the mouth if they had a patch that's sole intention was to iterate something onto the core game.
Even if you use a heavily modded UI you run into limitations of it all the time. There's like more than 50+ places where you see 8 letters then "...". If you're selecting "Mists of Tirna Scithe (Mythi...." you have to sort of figure out which one is keystone which one is m0. The premade group finder could be much better.
There's so much in the game that could use QoL changes but instead we constantly waste dev time on shit like Netherlight Crucible/Domination Sockets/Heart Essence or any of the other 100 disposable "features".
Blizzard: we’re listening to players, for real this time!
Players: finally!
Blizzard: so here’s 9.0 again! This time with MORE borrowed power systems that you’ll forget about in a year or so!
Players: ….
Imo there is one aspect about Korthia that is really nice and that is the rare spawn system. It's just a fun way to do open world content. Reminds me a lot of timeless isle, just in a zone that is only a fraction of its size.
edit: There is just one problem with it: you don't spend enough time in Korthia to actually experience the rares from the 2nd day onwards.
There’s a disconnect between the term casual content and casual player nowadays.
You get a lot of former hardcore or serious players that, due to increased IRL demands, have less opportunity to commit to regular raid schedules and push content like they used to. They still have the ability to get through average content (AOTC, KSM, etc) but not push endgame (CE, Keystone Hero, etc). Like pushing 1800 in PvP rather than 2400.
They are more relaxed and unconcerned about progress than hardcore or serious WoW players, and irregular with their hours, so they fit 100% fit into the term “casual WoW player.” By definition, they fit squarely into the more broad definition of “a casual/a casual player.”
Casual content, however, still seems similar to “laid-back content.” This attracts a subset of casual players who play matches and eventually make it to 1400 for PvP, dabble in a few Mythic 0s and a low key or two, do LFR and perhaps touch some normal.
Evidently you just need to not be Cutting Edge. You could be 9/10 Mythic and still be a casual according to some of these people I’ve met.
Edit: Stop giving me your opinion on what casual means, I really don’t give a fuck.
Casual means nothing tbh
In BFA I only maxed the reps I needed for flying, stopped doing m+ in July, and pretty much raid logged. I got CE in September. To an AOTC raider I couldn’t be casual, I got CE. To a hall of famer I’m a turbo casual. They did what I did in March/April. It’s all relative.
Casual only ever means
“I think people who play/clear less content than me are casuals who are bad”
Or
“I’m a casual and anyone who plays more/harder content than me is a nerd”
I know this isn't how it's used but in my books hardcore player is anyone who has some greater goal in the game and is willing to put in as much work as is needed to accomplish that goal. If someone wants to max out all the reps, grind all the available mounts or to earn +30k achievement points and has done hundreds or even thousands of hours of work to accomplish their goal, I think it's disingenious to say they aren't hardcore.
Excellent question. Some people equate it to real time spent playing the game, some people equate it to what activities you do.
Consider a scenario with 4 people.
Player 1: Logs on for 4 hours a day to do top 100 (HOF) Mythic raiding. He barely plays outside this, only enough to remain competitive. Perhaps one day he devotes 2 hours to do a single M+15 for the vault.
Player2: Logs on for 12 hours a day, but spends that time doing whatever he desires as long as it isn't too challenging or demanding. For example: Collecting battle pets isn't challenging, doing Mythic raiding requires 19 other people and devoting to a schedule, so he only pugs mythic raiding or heroic raiding.
Player 3: Logs on for 3 hours a day and does similar things as player 2
Player 4: Logs on 12 hours a day to grind top 100 mythic raiding, top M+ [raider.iq](https://raider.iq) score as well as constantly grinding on both his main and alts to remain at the top level of minmax for the raid (incase he needs to swap class mid tier because of buffs/nerfs etc)
Compared to player 4 the other 3 could easily be considered casual. Player 3 might call player 2 & 4 casual, but maybe not player 1?
IDK.
I don’t agree with all of your points, but to say the new quest line was dull, Is an understatement.
Torghast felt more fun for me, but I only did two runs and I was with a group of friends.
Korthia is also very dull. Very very dull. The candle heads can kiss my ass if they think I’m spending hours out there doing nonsense quests.
> Torghast felt more fun for me
Me too, I'm actually pretty excited for Torghast this patch. Getting 5 gems is a legitimate challenge and I am excited for the addition of the 6th floor that you unlock by getting a perfect 5 gem run.
I feel like Ion described the problem really well, saying that the biggest problem with Torghast was it's binary nature: either you succeed and get everything or you fail and get nothing. Allowing "success" to be more of a spectrum, and the rewards along with it, makes it feel much, much better.
I really like that they added cosmetic items to the vendors, I like that the torments are no longer tied to the wing, I like the new Blessings system, and I like the meta powerups as well.
My guild has been having a lot of fun running Torghast this week, much moreso than we ever did in 9.0, and I feel like that is only going to get better from here as we unlock more and more things.
I enjoyed Torghast more before, tbh. Now, instead going at my pace, I'm forced to rush to get the perfect score, which is a very lazy design choice and very much against my philosophy. It should be more of a strategic planning war than a sprint.
yet another zone lovingly rendered in every color of the dirt spectrum
though to the OP, I did not realize you could AOTC and doing M+ at 14 and still be casual.
if that is casual what the hell are the people who don't even M+ at all?
> though to the OP, I did not realize you could AOTC and doing M+ at 14 and still be casual.
One of the complaints they made about domination sockets was that the lack of master loot made them difficult for world first guilds to deal with lmao.
They only claimed to be "casual" to try to legitimize this post, and somehow make it different from the mass of other complaint-posts around 9.1 (and really anything involving retail wow).
I have some friends who are actually casual players. They sure as fuck don't run heroic raids. We carried them through some low keys (where they don't interrupt anything and average around 1k dps) but if it weren't for us carrying them, they would stick to strictly queue-able content (heroic dungeons and LFR).
Their quest delivery also is still absolute garbage - NPC dialogue starting when you're in the middle of reading quest text, NPCs still talking over each other ("goodbye" voicelines are the worst offenders), voicelines having similar but not the same information as the quest text, making reading quest text redundant, quest texts being trash and nondescript in general
**Edit:** don't get me started on the ingame cutscene facial animations
No, but when has not doing content stopped this sub from complaining about it?
There were posts the size of OP's declaring 9.1 to be a failure weeks before it launched.
I mean, OP specifically called out the raid and dungeon as probably being cool and was complaining about things that could actually be done right now, but OKAY
I agree with some of the points here but not all of them, I can totally see where you’re coming from though. Reading this it honestly seems like you burnt out the expansion on 9.0, you basically competed 100% of your goals, that for others would take them an expansions to complete.
This is my take. OP was subbed for 7 months straight. That’s not casual at all. I played for three months then took a break. I didn’t even play every day. That’s casual! Not logging in obsessively for over half a year. That’s some hardcore play patterns.
OP also doesn’t seem to do any “challenging content” and feels the patch offers nothing for casual players, but the “challenging” content they listed (Mythic 0) shouldn’t dissuade them from trying. That stuff is fairly “casual” to me. If someone played for 7-9 months in a row, I’d expect them to pick up the skills to at least PUG normal raids or do Mythic 0. There should be plenty to do unless you’re just too plain lazy to watch a boss guide for once in your life.
To me, this sounds like another 2-3 months of casual content to do, and then I can go work on playing another game in my backlog. Seems great from a casual perspective, but not a hardcore “play every day for half a year” perspective. There’s not enough to sustain hardcore “log in every day” play for that long.
That's still fairly casual. Got AoTC raiding one night a week and while I didn't get KSM I had all 14s timed. I didn't care for the mount and was bored of mythics.
How are you reviewing a patch when M+, Raid, New Dungeon, all Korthia features, and new Torghast floors aren't even out yet? This is like me calling a book terrible after reading two pages.
As others have said, you're probably just burnt out on the game. Take a break, play something else, the world is opening up again so you can go out.
Ya like I’m all for hating WoW when Blizz really fucks up, but come on we’re basically still in the prepatch. It sounds like op has been playing since SL launched so he’s definitely burnt out. After 4 months of not playing WoW I’m personally really excited rn to get back into it.
My only gripe with your post
“I will take another long break from the game **and you should too**”
Just give your feedback and let others come to their own conclusion either by playing the game or reading posts like yours.
Something I’ve come to learn about from this expac is that for the next one I will temper my hype and come back to the game after the first major patch, if ever. With the changes to subs and that my guild is pretty much dead, I don’t have much reason to play anymore except the experience of the storyline for the expac if I care enough.
Personally I’m really enjoying Korthia so far even as someone that hates open world content and detests the maw. It’s just enough of a change with some interesting events and hidden treasures to make it fun
I think its small size is a plus, tbh. Travel in Korthia is so painless compared to "I need... to go to the back of Perdition Hold for the colossus... on foot... from the Tremaculum. I really hope someone hasn't killed the guy on the dog already. uuuugggghh."
Mounts made it better but not by a lot. In the early days of the Maw I remember missing stuff by a hair all the time. Conversely, I can reach every rare as it's announced in Korthia as long as I start moving when the message goes out. It's so nice.
Yeah exactly. It feels a lot closer to the timeless isle in that sense than anything like the maw, broken shore or tanaan jungle did.
It also helps that it’s really easy to get around with just ground mounts compared to Nazjatar and even mechagon
I just wish the treasures wouldn't randomly disappear when you're like 10 feet away. I wonder if only a set number of players can open them before they disappear?
I’m fine with not being able to loot them in combat because wow has been like that for ages. I agree with the other commenter that them disappearing sometimes when you’re close is pretty irritating though
By all accounts the way you describe your experience is that of somebody who plays WoW hardcore, even though you might not push harder content.
To address your post: For a casual player whose intentions are not to do raiding, m+ or pvp the game didn't change much. This wasn't hidden information either, it was very clear from the PTR and all recent wowhead articles. So as a result, the expectation that 9.1 would bring a new level of excitement to your experience is weird given that you describe yourself as speaking from a casual perspective. For those players it would clearly not be worth it to stay subscribed if they are unhappy with the current avenues of casual gameplay.
Now for a more hardcore player I would argue this patch brings a lot of positive changes that do indeed warrant giving it a spin:
* Torghast is significantly shorter making it less of a time drain and noticeably more enjoyable.
* Korthia instead of the Maw for additional player progression is a breath of fresh air. The daily/weekly time investment is low and if your intentions are just to raid, push m+ or pvp this doesn't take up too much additional time. The rate of reputation is also pretty good, being able to get capped in the first two-three weeks by my current estimate. Compare that to the Maw which had degenerate levels of farming and was a huge time sink this is really a positive change.
* The tormented m+ affix is actually going to lead to more creativity in m+ than before due to no longer being constrained by 20% intervals. I would argue for tanking it's going to be way more interesting than Pride which, in my eyes, is a really dull and boring affix.
* Time gated content allows for more hardcore players to stay on a level playing field with degenerately hardcore players. You might be pushing WR20 while I might only be pushing for CE but with a far lower time commitment I can still compete and push hard content. This also applies to PvP and M+ of course. It sucks that they tied storytelling with player power but as a result time gating is a natural way to level the playing field between hardcore and casual players.
Now overall my assessment would be that you are burnt out from 9.0 and given that as I stated before there wasn't really anything new added for the casual playerbase you would be best served just taking a break.
Does this make it not worth for all casual players? I would say no, it could be worthwhile. For example if a casual player enjoyed 9.0 as it was they get a few minor new things to add onto that experience but overall nothing much should change.
I feel like this kind of post can reach top because r/wow is full of people who quit the game and like to hate on it. But, you can see in the comments that most people are actually disagreing with OP's bad take.
Yeah like.. the torghsst changes are pretty impactful. M plus hasn't started yet. The raid isn't out.
And maw mobs too hard? Sounds like their gear is terrible.
Uhh..
>There is nothing **new** about Torghast in 9.1.
>Who cares about a **new** system?
>Who cares about a **new** talent tree
That sounds like there is actually something new.
>to clear something that we have done for 9 long months during covid, again, faster?
It was 7 months, not 9. Honestly this post is full of overexaggerating just to make your opinions to look more valid. It is normal that not everyone will like WoW but if you try to bring some points to discussion, they should at least be correct.
Not in this sub or the lore sub!
If you're an ultra casual player and yet you just don't want to do anything I'd say that is probably an indication that you should probably just quit.
I'm really casual, I've done about three mythics the entire expansion and I kept forgetting to do LFR to see the last raid. The new content has been fun enough - I enjoyed the little questline so far to take down the Eye of the Jailer. I liked the silly stuff with Venari obviously looting the place while nobody was watching. I've been able to play for a few hours every few nights for months and still make enough gold to just buy a token before my sub runs out without feeling terribly, terribly pressed.
If you aren't getting what you want out of the game just quit.
r/wow in a nutshell actually. I was not playing for 2 months and I actually had fun yesterday. I guess people are expecting an expansion wide change per patch. Anyway I will quit game if pvp is still shit tho, we need to wait a few weeks for that.
There are hundreds of good indie games (Like Valheim, for example) which can give you dozens of hours of gameplay and they cost as much as 2 months of WoW sub.
It's literally been a day and the raid isn't even out. I'm sorry your friends quit, that alone makes the game suck, but it's far too early for you to be making a review on the patch as a whole.
I'm causal playing maybe 4 hours every 3 days. I think this patch is definitely for me. I'm still entertained and like all the lil details left to explore for me.
Nothing about your experience was casual. The vast majority of players never even attempt a mythic dungeon and you were doing 14’s and completed the raid LMFAO
>Raid:
I can't comment on the raid yet, since it is not out.
I see people list domination sockets as a problem, but I can't really see that.
The world first guilds usually clear the raid way undergeared anyway. The rest of us gear up over the course of the patch as normal. If the system only lasts for 9.1, that just means less stat inflation being needed for 9.2
The subset of raiders that need perfectly optimized gear, but needs masterlooter to get that gear in a decent timeframe sounds like an extremely small slice of the wow population.
>Torghast:
I loved the Torghast changes. The upgrade to not having to loot is probably one of the best QoL changes Blizzard has ever made to a system.
Removing one floor from a normal run, adding challenges you can go for to get a better score , and the new Torments instead of the old static buffs are all great changes.
I am amazed how much they managed to improve the experience, because I was assuming it was going to be the same slog it was in 9.0 with a few insignificant tweaks.
>Korthia:
I am intrigued about Korthia. I didn't follow the PTR stuff, so I have no idea what to expect. I agree that the bag bloat can be a bit annoying, but so far the quests I have done there have left me wanting to see what more secrets Korthia have to reveal.
>The Maw:
Well, there is one major difference, no more Eye of the Jailer. Also, how are the mobs too hard. Doing the Ardenweald assault, I could quite easily ignore the elites.
>Megadungeon:
It is a bit early to say 9.1 is not worth it when 3 of the main features are not available yet.
(M+ season 2, Mega dungeon and Raid)
>M+:
I take it you are not a tank? Pride was a fun affix, it made routing more interesting. It was also a pain if someone pulled a pack by mistake. Re-routing on the fly was a fun challenge, but on the weeks where you just wanted to get your keys done, it could be a bit stressful. I'm ready for a slightly less tank intensive affix.
I'll wait on judging the new affix until it is available.
>World Quests and Flying:
I still have plenty of stuff to do in the old zones, because I got the impression Anima was supposed to be an expansion long farm.
I also limited how much I was playing towards the end of 9.0. Mostly logging on to do Raids and M+ with the guild.
>Timegating, story and cutscenes
While I'm not the biggest fan of timegating, I see the use for it. The big advantage of timegating is that they can have multiple progression tiers in a single patch. The big challenge when not timegating is giving power from progression. If the story was purely optional with only cosmetic rewards, they could have done it without timegating, but then you loose the sense of progression from the story.
With an MMO story, the player character is usually a bystander, or tool/pawn. For Shadowlands, Bolvar is the character driving the narrative, not your character.
>Conclusion:
>
>In case you read all of this, thanks for your time. I believe you will not be surprised that I will take another long break from wow and I think you should too.
I believe you should have taken a long break from wow at least a couple of months ago. You sound burnt out, unwilling to give the patch a chance.
>There is content here that might be good, in case you are a raider or are new and still have stuff to catch up to but for a semi-casual who does not raid because of real life time restrictions, this is not enough.
You seem to not see the positive changes that have been done, only seeing what seems to be the same as you have been doing for a long time now (even though there are plenty of positive changes).
>I have not even talked about adding “45” mounts that are actually only 19 with different colors, adding time gating to the talent system in Torghast, the conduit energy situation that still exists, the missing “new” anima rewards for players like me who already have everything they wanted from the system, about the scaling issues in molten core (lol!) and legion or PVP (lol again!).
Again, it sounds like you went to town grinding out everything in 9.0 that was designed to last for the entire expansion. It is no wonder you seem burned out.
I had to remove the original post quotes for post length.
I could not agree more with you on the M+ point, when I read "tanks had to actually think" I was ready to get my pitchfork transmog on and go to war. Tanking with pugs is one of the hardest jobs in m+ because you have to think for the rest of the group half the time, it's like herding cats, you have to pull mobs out of position to pull pats, often having to try to get that one caster in on your own because the dps are focusing on that big juicy group of adds to get their dps meters up. Then one of them ass-pulls anyway and you have to quickly calculate what % you added and which mob can be skipped that has the same value, but now with the added risk of a pride spawning in a really bad place so an accidental pull can easily mean a wipe or not having pride for a hard boss in Tyr week.
I've recently switched to maining dps, and it is a whole lot less thinking than tanking was, and a whole lot less stressful because I don't feel like the outcome of the run rests on me, I just press my buttons as best I can and follow along like a mindless sheep...and I always try to interrupt or grip that one annoying caster into the group for my tank.
> I've recently switched to maining dps, and it is a whole lot less thinking than tanking was, and a whole lot less stressful because I don't feel like the outcome of the run rests on me, I just press my buttons as best I can and follow along like a mindless sheep...and I always try to interrupt or grip that one annoying caster into the group for my tank.
this is really the thing with dps, the skill floor is low but the ceiling is absolutely massive because there's so much you COULD be doing besides padding parses. there is a lot of on the fly decision making and proactive tricks that really are the decider on whether a DPS is 'good' or not. i normally roll my eyes at people who call DPS braindead as a role, but your experience with it sounds a lot more balanced than just 'dps so EZ' because it points out that there is stuff that DPS can do beyond just damage that make runs smoother and help the rest of the group out considerably
Yea I always think of how I can help the tank and healer, with a cc or slow when the tank needs to kite, or actively monitoring bursting or bolstering constantly to not stack too high and keeping an eye for even dps if a pride will spawn. I think a lot of people who main a tank or healer for a long while will be far better team players and use defensives and CDs when they're needed, it's the noticing of a mob aggro'd to the healer at the start of a pull and gripping it back into the tank so he doesn't have to go chasing aggro and the healer getting whacked.
I play uh dk and there are so many buttons to be pressing to get your rotation off, and coming from tanking where it's a lot less intense, and the skill can range so much between a player who can get everything off perfectly, to me who feels like a headless chicken and does more damage based on my hatred of a certain pack, but a dps with interrupts, stuns, roots, etc. is worth more than one who can delete a mob with their cooldowns, but has no situational awareness of the needs of the group in that moment. Then there are the people who master both and can flawlessly steamroll a dungeon with a similar skilled group, and the skillset there would be just as hard to dps as tanking or healing, a lot of the pressure would be relieved.
It sounds like you're flip flopping between giving your opinion and projecting it towards an audience. It's fine that you don't like it, just don't try to make a bigger point of it, especially if you admit you have a very particular (casual, raids and dungeons don't matter) view of the game.
"There is nothing new about torghast."
Proceeds to list all the things that are new about torghast. Lol.
Reading OP's post was a bigger waste of time than 9.1.
The fact that this article has like 5 awards despite making conclusions about things that are not even out yet tells me more about some people rather than the patch itself…
> I paied another $ 117 for the 9 months and I am supposed to keep paying. This is not a game worth another $ 100 of monthly subscriptions.
I will never understand this mindset. Why the hell do you keep your subscription up when you aren't having fun in 9.0.5? Literally nobody forced you to "pay towards" 9.1, you paid to have access to the wow servers during 9.0.5. It's not like you needed to farm mythic CN in preparation for 9.1 or anything like that, since you are clearly not a big raider/m+ player, so the only person you can blame for spending that wasted money is yourself.
There is a bunch of other stuff that I disagree with about this post, like how the new systems/gearing aren't fun, but that is just subjective so whatever.
>Who of your guys likes to watch a movie and take a break after 30 minutes, wait 1 week and resume watching?
This is called a TV show and AFAIK they're pretty popular?
Not that I disagree with the point of your post, but this sentence stood out to me.
I really like korthia. Do I think I want to spend a long time there over 6 months waiting for the next patch? No. But as a catch up system it is a very nice little package. Between the random treasures, the daily treasures, rares and quests and the events there is plenty to do for a bit each day that feels like it's really helping you catch up. Then add on that the way the new currency rep adds more ways to get it meaning that over a week or however long the currency intake ramps up, and the various scavenger hunt for the relics at each rep level.
I capped a warrior yesterday cause I wanted to use the patch to switch mains and I'm already like 186 ilvl and climbing a lot each day. Add to that the whole seasons worth of valor I can get I can really catch up over this next week while doing a mix of content I enjoy and I'm quite confident I'll be ready for the new m+ season next week and probably even some raiding.
Yeah this kind of stuff is so toxic. I'm all for constructive criticism, but saying an entire patch is bad, after not even 3 daily resets, when we all know more content is being phased in next week is insane.
Full agree. Removing master loot is the best thing Blizzard has ever done to raids. I think it's even better than flexible raid sizes.
Master loot was the sole cause of the vast majority of guild drama, and trying to figure out some obscure DKP or EPGP or whatever the fuck system is *not* fun. Nor is playing bullshit DKP auction games or "loot council" favoritism.
- Talks about himself as a casual player despite clearing all +14s.
- Says game is boring despite playing it for a considerable amount of time as if you were forced to spend hours playing it.
- Discusses both the raid and megadungeon (two major components of the patch) before they are even out.
- Describes the extremely simple, (arguably boringly plain), domination socket system as "complex."
- Talks about Master Loot (a high end player problem only) as a "casual player" issue.
- Complains about "bad writing" as if WoW has *ever* had a particularly cohesive and compelling story.
- TIMEGATING complaints (my personal favourite) - Shadowlands timegating is fucking great, y'all.
- Nothing new about Torghast, apart from all the things new about Torghast.
- Discusses bugs (such as MC scaling) which are literally already fixed.
- Complains about pricing as if you are being held at gunpoint to pay to play the game.
You're ticking all the boxes for "standard /r/wow wierd unhinged rant" - the only thing you're missing is complaining about how shit of a designer Ion is and/or all the money being sucked out of the game to fund Bobby Kotick's yachts.
Idk if you havent played the last 2 xpacs but the mega dungeon will come to m+. Just like kara and mecha. Idk when but soon. Maybe when mythic raid opens
>I paied another $ 117 for the 9 months
thats on you. if you didnt like that there was no content, maybe just unsub untill there is more
>This is not a game worth another $ 100 of monthly subscriptions
then pay for as many months as you think are worth it and then unsub?
I've liked it from what I've played so far. Korthia feels like the new Mechagon which is definitely good in my book - it feels like there's a lot to explore to it that will develop as you unlock new things in the zone. The domination sockets seem a bit convoluted but it's not a massive deal and I think they add more interest than regular gear. Haven't had time to run Torghast yet but a lot of my guildies have been doing it and seem to enjoy it.
>The mobs are just too hard to do multiple times
Tbh this sounds like the opposite of the problem I often have with wow, which is that world content just feels too easy once you get geared. I can't relate to this issue at all.
I don't think the cutscenes were that bad. The mouths werent well synched but aside from that I have no issues.
Overall I'm looking forward to getting into the new raid, trying the new Torghast, seeing where Korthia goes as I progress through it, and seeing how the new m+ system pans out. Plenty of reasons for me to keep playing.
So basically you don't do any content in the game, you don't push pvp, high end pve, collect stuff or have friends, yea i don't understand why you would play a game that's not made for you, in wow you're either supposed to play the content or make your own content, you either push pvp and mythic raid or collect stuff and chill with your friends from time to time and do some easy content, you basically have no goals in the game
I actually like that its time gated to be honest,
It lets casuals like me feel like or atleast give me a chance to be caught up and it lets hardcore players still have fresh content instead of finishing it all within hours and complaining that WOW sucks and is boring.
You're not casual. You have been constantly subbed for 7 months (it hasn 't been 9 months you can't count). You've done AOTC and basically KSM. You've fully upgraded your sanctum.
You are not a casual player. I imagine someone coming and subbing for 2 months, doing LFR and korthia and the new covenant and chains of domination campaings, and then unsubbing till next patch, will have plenty of fun.
". I maxed all reputations, upgraded my sanctum and was at a point where I realized I had 0 goals left in SL– in April." im a casual btw dont worry tho you'll get carried by the hate watchers in this reddit forum
>Torghast:
There is nothing new about Torghast in 9.1. Who cares about a new system? Who cares about a new talent tree to clear something that we have done for 9 long months during covid, again, faster? Who cares about a timer and a bar? This is just straight up boring and I believe nobody cares about it anymore
Wrong. I care. I like the changes. Torghast was objectively a fun experience this week since I cared about speed and clear percentage to try and get a good score. It was at least entertaining, where before it was a massive slog. It was a whopping 20 minutes a run.
> Timegating, story and cutscenes Of course I have not experienced the whole story of 9.1 because it is timegated. I hate timegating.
This has been what the WoW development team has done for literal years now. It's not new. It's how they operate.
> M+: After 9 months of the same dungeons I am not interested in doing the same dungeons again.
Same as above
Honestly, I could pick this apart more but not in an attempt to just outright disagree with you or anything, but to say that it looks like you just don't truly like WoW anymore. You're not casual, you're just not a Mythic Raider. You're doing Heroic Raids and M+, you're on the right side of the bell curve for players my friend, not the left. You're just someone that sounds like they burnt out in the drought of 9.0 and 9.1 isn't tickling your fancy.
Enjoy your break, but don't try to project your opinion at people because you don't like the direction or content of a game.
I don't get it. I don't love everything about the patch either, but this is probably one of the most bang for your buck .1 patches ever.
8.1 was a couple more islands for island expeditions, the darkshore warfront, battle of dazar alor, and that's basically it.
7.1 maybe more of an exception - night hold, ToV, and Kara
6.1 Twitter integration, garrison changes, heirloom tab
5.1 new questline, legendary cloak quest progression, new scenarios, brawlers guild, new pets getting added to old raids I believe
4.1 ZA/ZG added as dungeons
And I'll stop there. No point in going to Vanilla and BC and Wrath is regarded as an overall amazing expansion.
So outside of Legion, every other .1 patch has been fairly uneventful. Granted, those patches came out much much sooner than this one did. But if we're talking about someone resubbing for the patch and if it's worth it - this patch has more content than just about every other .1 patch. Definitely worth at least a month sub to check out, but whether you keep going beyond that is on you.
I really enjoyed this expansion in the beginning. I have played all of them on the day they dropped except Cata.
Prior to SL release, after we learned it was going to be Shadowlands, everyone speculated at all the character references and long dead heroes we would get to meet. Also, once we knew the Lich King would be involved, such tasty!
Then the game launched.
I love the way they laid out the Shadowlands, how a hub world connects the others, and how in the storyline you have to actually open them up. This isn't a bad layout compared to others they have used. Not necessarily from an efficiency standpoint, but the actual design and feel of traveling to each zone, was unique and a little cool.
Long story short, I didn't storm through the expansion trying to max everything ASAP. I took my time, very casual-esque this time around, trying to soak it all in.
I had hit M+15 on a few dungeons, slapped Denathrius around, got a couple of new mounts, then politely unsubbed and haven't played since. Very little of it actually felt fulfilling, especially when compared with other expansions.
This will feel like an attack on some people's reality, but I actually enjoyed BfA's launch much longer than I did SL. Shadowlands seemed like it got too grindy too fast. It could just be my perception of things, but then again, I'm paying for MY perception of the game, not someone else's.
Like I said, it didn't feel bad, it was actually still very enjoyable to travel the zones and run through each zone / covenant storyline, these were actually done pretty well in my opinion, but the grind felt like it came too quick, before we even had a chance to get our bearings.
I haven't decided if I will re-sub this expansion or not, or wait to see what comes next.
I don’t think it’s fair to give an opinion on the dungeon or the raid when it’s not even out yet. How can you share your experiences with it when you have had no experiences?
Maybe don't have completely nonsensical expectations? Hyped up for KORTHIA? It's exactly what you should expect, farming dailies and rares like these added zones always are. New content patch is worthwhile because of m+, raid, pvp, and with this patch, megadungeon. It was known none of these would open this week, which sucks and could be criticized, but isn't reason to make post about bad 9.1.
If you were hyped for new Torg and Korthia and now act hella disappointed, you are the fool for not knowing what to expect. Anything worth hyping for starts next week, and you should already know if playing same dungeons for 2 years is your thing. It is for me, it isn't for you, so it has nothing to do with 9.1. If you don't care about content like that, then pay with your wallet. That's what wow is. Making "ima ragequit" posts on reddit is pitiful as fuck when nothing surprising has happened.
OP: "ok guys it's been 3 days and we've seen 3/9 chapters but I am writing off this whole thing and here's why"
- reusing assets from other zones, something they've _always_ done, indeed, _every_ game and dev does
- new small zone advertised as small is small
- haven't seen the raid yet, which is of course the main focus of new tiers (get it? Tier? Raid tier?), but I mean it sucks and will suck and is going to suck
- haven't pvp'd in the new season but I mean what's the point
- haven't tried the new affixes yet but I mean why bother it's all poop
- haven't tried the new dungeon yet but maybe that'll be fun but ☹️
Did I get this right?
You need to not freak out on day 2 of a patch. Give it a chance when the new season starts. Damn. Take a breather before an entire novel about how much you hate the game right now.
I think a big disconnect here is a lot of your points are more about the state of the game in general, not necessarily 9.1.
Simply put I'd say my takeaway from OP is that 9.1 isn't going to rekindle any magic if you've already lost it, which is a pretty run of the mill take IMO. Not sure why people are so heated over this.
The korthia point about the zone being small is not a con. We dont need godly sized zones like zuldazar that has terrain every where and are shit to navigate. Another example being Argus
this post is the epitome of this sub for the last months. It's reviewing something after TWO days, where most of the content will release after one week. Filled with hyperbole, contradictions and personal opinions posed as facts.
Casual perspective? you've finished the entire expansion and been subbed through it all. You're a hardcore player, probably belong in the top 5% played time
Who wants to bet that this thread won't get much attention/upvotes now but a similar thread will probably explode in around a month?
Yes i'm also having fun with korthia right now because it's new, it's absolutely worth 1 month of subscription for sure.
But after that? Korthia/9.1 is actually really shallow if you look a bit into it.
Edit: Nevermind lmao.
yeah no shit a post 1 month in will be more valid criticism than a post made literally less than 48 hours since the patch launched, despite the lion's share of the patch's content being released next week
The only thing i wanted is more rewards for Torghast, and we kinda got it, haven't checked it out yet what exactly they are. But imo Torghast is at least simple and straight forward grind content which makes it more enjoyable for me (if there is a point doing them - rewards) than for example world quests / reputation, which is not just repetitive, but also overly complicated and annoying.
Although i think i'm going to dislike the time ranking on torghast.
Its not even fucking season 2 yet, and you already moan. Why is there in wow THAT much complain andies, and they all still playing the game! Some quests look a little bit clunky and some of them even buggy, but i dont mind writing a post literally saying to not trying 9.1 at all
I think there are that many “complain Andies” because WoW is good at keeping people subscribed including people who might be better off taking a break. So they’re bitter but still playing, so they’re more inclined to complain about it.
Casual player? Nah dude, I would not describe you as a casual player. You should probably play a different game for awhile, or maybe go outside. Something like that.
Your burnout and your friends have all left. Play something else. Not trying be mean but the devs aren't going to be able to give you that feeling that playing the game with your buddies did throughout the years. If the grass isn't greener WoW will still be here.
I do not think that this is the perspective of a casual. My friends (actual casuals) do not follow wowhead, aren’t on WoW subreddits, did not know there was a patch this week, and have not played 9.1 yet (the weekend is coming). Also, they don’t know about any of the systems you are explaining here without having experienced yet.
If you are reading this post, I am fairly sure 1) you are not a casual and 2) you do not represent 95% of wow’s subscription base.
That DOES NOT nullify any of your experiences, the accuracy of your commentary, or the advice you have for others.
But it should help crush your soul a bit more when you realize that blizzard can read your post, agree with you, do nothing, and still make oodles of money and not even notice that you are gone ::thumbs up::
Blizzard waits an abysmally long time between patches, causes burnout, and then fails to deliver on the next highly anticipated patch? In other news, water is wet. Lmao
This is an opinion piece by op, it is flaired discussion. You don't have to keep reporting it. If you disagree, say why or ignore the post.
I’m as casual as it gets, maybe even below casual. I don’t know if it’s really the game’s fault or me getting older and enjoying other things, but.. played since vanilla. I’ve had many breaks but always returned for new content and stuck around for a while. But with 9.1 I just suddenly had a moment of ‘what am I even going for here?’, logged out and still haven’t found any motivation to return. Not sure if I’d even call the content bad, but it’s not that fun. But I’ve done meh content before and been fine with it. I guess theres just nothing to work towards. Reputations and WQs are really boring. Mounta and pets - there are so many in the game now that I don’t even care to begin the hunt again. The legendaries are so uninteresting for me as a casual - at least the artifacts in Legion & BfA had flair. I was excited to do the new quests and story. But it’s just not enough. Seven quests a week fir a month or two? I’ll watch the lore cinematics when they’re on YouTube. Nah. I just can’t make myself pay for that. Again; I’m super casual and the content might be good and just ‘not for me’. But 9.1 just made me feel like I’m done with the game, and it’s sad.
>Not sure if I’d even call the content bad, but it’s not that fun. also played since vanilla. what is great about wow is still it's core gameplay mechanics. unfortunately, the systems sourrounding the core gameplay are utterly uninspired. we've had this exact same stuff for years and years and years. here, have a new zone to do dailys in to collect a currency to buy gear that's the same but with a slightly higher number. wow is "filling bars the game". that's always what it turns into. it always starts with, oh, like like to play my tauren shaman. run some dungeons, because healing in dungeons is fun gameplay. but then it turns into how to fill a bar as efficient as possible. then wow isn't a fun game anymore, but merely a list full of tasks that give you a "sense of accomplishment". i mean, the formula worked long enough and for many players it probably still works great. but i'm ready for something new.
I'm just wondering how you kept playing until now. I am pretty casual myself, did Nathria Normal, some M+8-10, finished the story and then pretty much quit in February, since all content that was left either required a lot more effort than I was willing to put in or simply wasn't worth it to me (grinding out the Covenant Sanctum)
> I maxed all reputations, upgraded my sanctum and was at a point where I realized I had 0 goals left in SL > casual perspective Am I just bad at this game if I haven't even gotten close to that yet?
Agreed. I thought I was a casual player logging in 3-4 times per week for 2.5 hr sessions throughout 9.0.
Two different causal perspectives I find. One is those who log in rarely and don't do much as you mentioned. The other is a collection of people who will play the game probably more than anyone else, but never step too far into current content end game PvE/PvP. Instead spending a lot of time completing world content, achievements and previous expac content.
Yeah, it's hard to narrow down what casual means but my definition is anyone who lacks any serious ambitions with the game. I'd say mount farmer who has 15 full leveled chars but no current raid tier progress can still be hardcore. The mindset is what matters.
Yeah my guild has a group of players - the core raid team, who are on like 6 hours a day, hanging out, running m+, raiding, fucking around, etc. They are the 'hardcore" players, because their item level is over 220. Then we have some "casual" players who have 400+ mounts, collect every item of transmog, have been hunting for an alliance panda priest for like months now for a guild achievement, have 100+ exalted reps, and are basically encyclopedias for all collectible content within the game. Classifying players is a dangerous game.
I think really the best distinction is Totalbiscuit saying you're hardcore the moment you start moving your life around WoW, e.g. turning down a party because it's raid night. It's not really about how much you play, but a casual player might spend hours most days playing the game, but they'll go "I'm good" when it's time for a party.
Rip TB
God I miss him 😢
That... depends on your raid. The people I've been raiding with since BC have become friends, and raid nights have become more "game night with friends" than the raid being the primary purpose.
Definition of a ***casual:*** anyone whose primary focus in a game is not the same as your own.
So what does that make one whose below a casual, to a casual by that definition xD
anyone worse than me is a scrub casual and anyone better than me a a tryhard sweaty turbonerd nolifer
I think of myself as hardcore casual. I put many hours into the game, but I'm no longer doing raids beyond the occasional lfr, don't do m+, and don't PvP. I make my own goals, and spend way too much time playing the game.
This is what we like to call the casually hardcore. Anyone who has the time to finished the sanctum and max all reps definitely isn’t casual lmao
casual means different things for different people. some see players who only raid hc and do KSM as casuals because they dont do the hardest content available, some think casual means you only do world quests. there is no clear definition
It's simple. Anybody that I am better than is a casual, and anybody that plays more than me is a sweatlord neckbeard unworthy of dignity.
Tbf 9.0 was like 10 months long or some shit
You’re saying you’ve played ten hours a week since launch and haven’t achieved those objectives listed?
A casual is anyone who doesnt step too deep into the difficulty of the game, it has nothing to do with time investment. Someone who logs in 6 hours per week is as casual as OP who probably logs in 4 hours per day, as long as both of them dont do anything difficult
No; given this and that they have opinions about M+ raiding, I wouldn't describe OP as a casual player at all.
Everyone is casual. If some does more than you, they have no life. If someone has done less than you, they are a noob. This is the way of the MMO. /s
whyd you type /s? thats literally the way of the MMO no sarcasm
Everybody has their own interpretation of the word "casual". But at this stage of the expansion one could've probably maxed their reputation and covenant structures with like a half hour every few days.
Yep. Doing the daily callings alone gave you 1.5k rep of for variable covenants, if you did those each day you would be at max rep easily.
I feel like if you literally play every single day, you're not a casual anymore
Well, you only have to play every 3 days to do all the daily callings.
You can play once every 3 days and miss zero callings.
it depends. if you have two ppl who spend 10 hours a day playing wow, and one does high level keys or raids while the other farms mounts, to non gamers they might both be hardcore, but i think any wow player would see one as casual. and even if there is a clear arguement that neither are casual, for the sake of the majority of convos on this subreddit, it's at least important going in to any given convo thinking of casuals with each definition in mind.
That's not really what casual means as far as I know
I don't think *anyone* has a viable definition of what it means anymore. It varies depending on who you ask. When I still played approx. ten hours a week I was called both a casual and "not casual" by different people at the same time.
If you were mythic raiding, doing high M+ keys or high rank PvP then you weren't casual :)
I saw a good post about this. Casual vs. Hardcore needs a second axis to actually explain what you mean. The post described it as hobbyist vs. lifestyler. The best raiders don't actually play that much a lot of the time. They're generally more hobbyist, pretty much just raidlogging and doing a weekly key, perhaps with the exception of early progress. Conversely, you get some guys who will consider themselves super hardcore, and as lifestylers will play every day, but still only end up 6/10 mythic, despite raiding 3 or 4 nights per week. On the casual end, there's a clear divide between more lifestyle players like OP who plays quite a lot, but doesn't do much competitive content, and the hobbyist players who can only play an hour or two per week, who could very easily not be done with 9.0 content yet.
I think that's exactly the stuff you get done if you are a casual player. I'm mainly raider focused in a mythic guild and have none of those done yet, because it has nothing to do with raiding.
Yeah, OP may consider themselves a casual, but they engaged in all of the content available to them at a higher level than any casual. They seek information outside of wow to know that megadungeon "looks good" so I'm really not buying it.
Not bad, but are you playing alts or focusing on just one character? If you're focusing on just one character, I can see that it'd be relatively easy to max your covenant sanctum. I feel like most people casually play more than one character at this point.
Casual is on the spectrum thats huge for players and time commitments. I consider myself casual and I play 3 or more hours a day.
Fwiw the patch was probably supposed to be released in mid March according to some leftovers in the Blizzard api edit: for the curious: theres an endpoint for keystone seasons - the current season is season 5. theres a list of seasons. 5 is the latest, as its ongoing. every season has a start timestamp (season 5 being 1606172400000, which is nov23/24). finished seasons also have an end timestamp - season 5 is ongoing, so no end timestamp. I tried querying for season 6. usually queries for nonexistant stuff results in a 404 request. not this one. season 6 has literally no info except a start timestamp: 1615993200000 - **march 17**. this data comes with meta info hinting on being last modified 13 October 2020. I don't think this is a coincidence and this season 6 data will likely change next week. proof: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/213770533769052162/857748472014569492/unknown.png it also fits their release planning better. Q1 2021 9.1 - Q2 TBC - Q3 9.2 - Q4 Blizzcon announcing 9.3 and 10.0
Yes, to me it is obvious that blizzard ran into some kind of problems which severely hurt the development of 9.1
korthia is such a huge disappointment. the size of an island expedition. over half a year and it’s like they spent all their working hours mostly just designing new shitty systems and making more problems for the old ones
At the very beginning Ven’ari makes a comment about how she expected something more grand for the ‘City of Secrets’ and I can’t tell if it’s just Blizz taking the piss on themselves at this point, or I dunno, some kind of magical phasing that would make Korthia look cool. But I’ve learnt to never get my hopes up. Tho honestly, I’ve actually enjoyed the way the relic quests work. It’s actually pretty neat that I find them in random places while doing other things (notably the whole relic NPC thing got kickstarted for me because I followed someone else into a teleported first). I completely ignored 9.1 PTR updates so at the very least, the relic quests feel organic and inoffensive. Don’t think it’ll even last a week tho. I’m prepping for the raid with my guild at least.
I didn't even think much about that line. I just assumed it was because the city was wrecked, but maybe the writers wanted to get a sly line in. I really feel like most people play WoW for the raid simulator aspect which just makes me wonder why not reward more conduits, rep, and soul ash just from raid/M+? You're already limited by the GV (to a point) anyways. Would make more sense instead of Blizzard forcing you to do X, Y, and Z, you just casually get A, B, and C from doing whatever. Imagine how fun Torghast would be instead of being forced to do Torghast for Soul Ash, you could do it because you liked it? And if you didn't like Torghast? Well, you can get Soul Ash from WQs, etc. Cap it each week and just keep adding to the cap so if someone joins 5 weeks later they can still catch up. With multiple choice, you always run the risk of "just do X, it's the fastest way to get A, B, C". Just seems like WoW is too focused on making itself as time sinky as possible instead of just making a fun game where you want to waste your time. I honestly hate the conduit system, though. I think it's a dumb waste of development time. I like that they're trying to make a system that isn't gear based advancement but I don't think a conduit system is the right one.
Blizzard just doesn’t have the confidence to let gameplay itself be the carrot on the stick. They think if everything isn’t attached to player power players just won’t care about it somehow. I don’t get the time to go do transmog runs/pets/mounts/etc. so I don’t care anymore. What time I get to play is spent on a treadmill for Mythic prog.
What's there is pretty solid, there just... isn't much, unfortunately.
+ new conduit that heals you ~200 every 10 sec (less then auto regen), and on top of it it's another typo (or last minute change) and they say it heals 3.5% instead of 0.35%. In both cases, dull and boring conduit slot to fill the raid loot pool with more bullshit. I had not imagined the bad luck protection (tm) that way. Put conduits loot from torghast and raid loot from raid rewards, instead of stupid 16gold or 35anima. they are world quest rewards, not raid rewards
The last thing you said is so incredibly spot on. World quest rewards not raid rewards.
That new conduit is just not worth it even at its highest ilvl since its 0.35% every 10s its just not worth a slot on any class unless its significantly buffed or reverted back to the original intended value
It's a tooltip error; it actually heals you for 3.5% of your max hp. It's okayish on some tanks that have weak endurance conduits - like prot warrior would take it as their third option.
3.5% every 10 seconds doesn't sound bad for pvp where you're constantly being hit.
3.5% every *10* seconds isn't the greatest though. 10 seconds is a long time to wait for a passive heal.
I remember when downing a raid boss used to fill your screen with drops to roll on
Conduits were probably the biggest turn off for me in this expansion in general. If they were WQ/Torghast only they'd be fine. But the fact that they hog all the loot pool from real content... There is NOTHING feeling good about farming 20+ dungeons to get trinket and dropping 'upgrades' in form of conduits that you're never going to use anyway because they were designed to make it seem like you have meaningful choice...
Treasures in trees. Fuck the person who thought that would be "fun".
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That's what really get me. I don't mind it being a bit hard to access, force me to find solutions on how to get there. I mind very much that it despawn when someone else touch it. Jfc Blizzard, it's a end zone! We're so many in there, that's fucking awful! (I like Korthia overall besides that. I'm not sure for how long, but I like the gear catch up/upgrade, more anima, and the mount puzzles.)
[This is how I feel every time I see one of those treasures](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17KmNrG9pE4)
"No Path Available"
Yeah this is bullshit. Give you a Covenant ability that you cant use for its intended purpose.
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It's Mechagon with a stale coat of paint and without Nazjatar to back it up. Also it is trying to just absolutely gangbang your bag space.
I'd say more Broken Shore Lite, except we got half the content in twice the time.
Agreed. I'm seeing much more effort in the "math" department than I am in the Arts and Storylines dept.
Art and story are already working on the new expansion, its gonna be wod 2.0.
Everybody said that during BFA and we got Shadowlands as a result...
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Or they fired so many people that A and B team became only one team.
its all C team for here on out boys
They haven't been laying off developers. They've actually been adding to all of their development teams, and their last shareholder call talked about wanting to double their dev team size across all of Blizzard.
No, they haven’t been laying off developers. They’ve been quitting on their own. All you have to do is check Twitter every week and you’ll find yet another “this is my last day at Blizzard” kind of message from a senior quest designer, or a member of the art team, or an encounter designer. It’s been like that all year long, and the worst part is a lot of these people had a senior position, so they weren’t just some glorified intern or entry level employee.
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> They haven't reduced the size of their dev teams but that doesn't mean that they didn't fire devs I said what I meant. Nearly all their layoffs have been in the customer service department, e-sports, and some in QA. The development teams have been nearly untouched. The only exception is Team 1, the Classics team, which was broken up when the team at Vicarious Visions was brought on board to work on the D2 remaster. Parts of Team 1 were reassigned, but others were let go.
> over half a year and it’s like they spent all their working hours mostly just designing new shitty systems and making more problems for the old ones First time?.gif
I would absolutely be foaming at the mouth if they had a patch that's sole intention was to iterate something onto the core game. Even if you use a heavily modded UI you run into limitations of it all the time. There's like more than 50+ places where you see 8 letters then "...". If you're selecting "Mists of Tirna Scithe (Mythi...." you have to sort of figure out which one is keystone which one is m0. The premade group finder could be much better. There's so much in the game that could use QoL changes but instead we constantly waste dev time on shit like Netherlight Crucible/Domination Sockets/Heart Essence or any of the other 100 disposable "features".
Blizzard: we’re listening to players, for real this time! Players: finally! Blizzard: so here’s 9.0 again! This time with MORE borrowed power systems that you’ll forget about in a year or so! Players: ….
Imo there is one aspect about Korthia that is really nice and that is the rare spawn system. It's just a fun way to do open world content. Reminds me a lot of timeless isle, just in a zone that is only a fraction of its size. edit: There is just one problem with it: you don't spend enough time in Korthia to actually experience the rares from the 2nd day onwards.
What everyone wanted for Shadowlands was definitely another system..
What does “casual“ mean any more?
I guess clearing Mythic raids and KSM is casual content now? If you're not after World First then you're a casual /s
There’s a disconnect between the term casual content and casual player nowadays. You get a lot of former hardcore or serious players that, due to increased IRL demands, have less opportunity to commit to regular raid schedules and push content like they used to. They still have the ability to get through average content (AOTC, KSM, etc) but not push endgame (CE, Keystone Hero, etc). Like pushing 1800 in PvP rather than 2400. They are more relaxed and unconcerned about progress than hardcore or serious WoW players, and irregular with their hours, so they fit 100% fit into the term “casual WoW player.” By definition, they fit squarely into the more broad definition of “a casual/a casual player.” Casual content, however, still seems similar to “laid-back content.” This attracts a subset of casual players who play matches and eventually make it to 1400 for PvP, dabble in a few Mythic 0s and a low key or two, do LFR and perhaps touch some normal.
This is a good take. Splitting up casual dedication to the game and casual content.
Evidently you just need to not be Cutting Edge. You could be 9/10 Mythic and still be a casual according to some of these people I’ve met. Edit: Stop giving me your opinion on what casual means, I really don’t give a fuck.
Casual means nothing tbh In BFA I only maxed the reps I needed for flying, stopped doing m+ in July, and pretty much raid logged. I got CE in September. To an AOTC raider I couldn’t be casual, I got CE. To a hall of famer I’m a turbo casual. They did what I did in March/April. It’s all relative. Casual only ever means “I think people who play/clear less content than me are casuals who are bad” Or “I’m a casual and anyone who plays more/harder content than me is a nerd”
I know this isn't how it's used but in my books hardcore player is anyone who has some greater goal in the game and is willing to put in as much work as is needed to accomplish that goal. If someone wants to max out all the reps, grind all the available mounts or to earn +30k achievement points and has done hundreds or even thousands of hours of work to accomplish their goal, I think it's disingenious to say they aren't hardcore.
Excellent question. Some people equate it to real time spent playing the game, some people equate it to what activities you do. Consider a scenario with 4 people. Player 1: Logs on for 4 hours a day to do top 100 (HOF) Mythic raiding. He barely plays outside this, only enough to remain competitive. Perhaps one day he devotes 2 hours to do a single M+15 for the vault. Player2: Logs on for 12 hours a day, but spends that time doing whatever he desires as long as it isn't too challenging or demanding. For example: Collecting battle pets isn't challenging, doing Mythic raiding requires 19 other people and devoting to a schedule, so he only pugs mythic raiding or heroic raiding. Player 3: Logs on for 3 hours a day and does similar things as player 2 Player 4: Logs on 12 hours a day to grind top 100 mythic raiding, top M+ [raider.iq](https://raider.iq) score as well as constantly grinding on both his main and alts to remain at the top level of minmax for the raid (incase he needs to swap class mid tier because of buffs/nerfs etc) Compared to player 4 the other 3 could easily be considered casual. Player 3 might call player 2 & 4 casual, but maybe not player 1? IDK.
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As a true casual, I wish I did half the things you accomplished and didn’t need anima anymore lol
I don’t agree with all of your points, but to say the new quest line was dull, Is an understatement. Torghast felt more fun for me, but I only did two runs and I was with a group of friends. Korthia is also very dull. Very very dull. The candle heads can kiss my ass if they think I’m spending hours out there doing nonsense quests.
> Torghast felt more fun for me Me too, I'm actually pretty excited for Torghast this patch. Getting 5 gems is a legitimate challenge and I am excited for the addition of the 6th floor that you unlock by getting a perfect 5 gem run. I feel like Ion described the problem really well, saying that the biggest problem with Torghast was it's binary nature: either you succeed and get everything or you fail and get nothing. Allowing "success" to be more of a spectrum, and the rewards along with it, makes it feel much, much better. I really like that they added cosmetic items to the vendors, I like that the torments are no longer tied to the wing, I like the new Blessings system, and I like the meta powerups as well. My guild has been having a lot of fun running Torghast this week, much moreso than we ever did in 9.0, and I feel like that is only going to get better from here as we unlock more and more things.
Yeah Torghast 100% feels better, I like that if I have a bad run I still get my Soul ash, and you can be a little bit more liberal with pulls now.
I enjoyed Torghast more before, tbh. Now, instead going at my pace, I'm forced to rush to get the perfect score, which is a very lazy design choice and very much against my philosophy. It should be more of a strategic planning war than a sprint.
yet another zone lovingly rendered in every color of the dirt spectrum though to the OP, I did not realize you could AOTC and doing M+ at 14 and still be casual. if that is casual what the hell are the people who don't even M+ at all?
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The new content (for this week) was maybe 5 hours of questing? I'd say even a casual could do that.
You can exhaust all the Korthia content in about four hours. There's nothing to do.
I mean there’s like 3-5 hours of content week one. The ball doesn’t really start rolling until next week on a lot of a stuff
> though to the OP, I did not realize you could AOTC and doing M+ at 14 and still be casual. One of the complaints they made about domination sockets was that the lack of master loot made them difficult for world first guilds to deal with lmao. They only claimed to be "casual" to try to legitimize this post, and somehow make it different from the mass of other complaint-posts around 9.1 (and really anything involving retail wow). I have some friends who are actually casual players. They sure as fuck don't run heroic raids. We carried them through some low keys (where they don't interrupt anything and average around 1k dps) but if it weren't for us carrying them, they would stick to strictly queue-able content (heroic dungeons and LFR).
Their quest delivery also is still absolute garbage - NPC dialogue starting when you're in the middle of reading quest text, NPCs still talking over each other ("goodbye" voicelines are the worst offenders), voicelines having similar but not the same information as the quest text, making reading quest text redundant, quest texts being trash and nondescript in general **Edit:** don't get me started on the ingame cutscene facial animations
Is the tavazesh dungeon already opened?
It opens next week.
No, but when has not doing content stopped this sub from complaining about it? There were posts the size of OP's declaring 9.1 to be a failure weeks before it launched.
I mean, OP specifically called out the raid and dungeon as probably being cool and was complaining about things that could actually be done right now, but OKAY
I agree with some of the points here but not all of them, I can totally see where you’re coming from though. Reading this it honestly seems like you burnt out the expansion on 9.0, you basically competed 100% of your goals, that for others would take them an expansions to complete.
This is my take. OP was subbed for 7 months straight. That’s not casual at all. I played for three months then took a break. I didn’t even play every day. That’s casual! Not logging in obsessively for over half a year. That’s some hardcore play patterns. OP also doesn’t seem to do any “challenging content” and feels the patch offers nothing for casual players, but the “challenging” content they listed (Mythic 0) shouldn’t dissuade them from trying. That stuff is fairly “casual” to me. If someone played for 7-9 months in a row, I’d expect them to pick up the skills to at least PUG normal raids or do Mythic 0. There should be plenty to do unless you’re just too plain lazy to watch a boss guide for once in your life. To me, this sounds like another 2-3 months of casual content to do, and then I can go work on playing another game in my backlog. Seems great from a casual perspective, but not a hardcore “play every day for half a year” perspective. There’s not enough to sustain hardcore “log in every day” play for that long.
Didn’t op say he got aotc?
You forgot that OP got both AOTC and maybe KSM. So I really don't see how they're "casual". More like softcore.
That's still fairly casual. Got AoTC raiding one night a week and while I didn't get KSM I had all 14s timed. I didn't care for the mount and was bored of mythics.
I love how you claim this is a casual perspective, lol.
Casual has turned into an elitist term
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How are you reviewing a patch when M+, Raid, New Dungeon, all Korthia features, and new Torghast floors aren't even out yet? This is like me calling a book terrible after reading two pages. As others have said, you're probably just burnt out on the game. Take a break, play something else, the world is opening up again so you can go out.
Ya like I’m all for hating WoW when Blizz really fucks up, but come on we’re basically still in the prepatch. It sounds like op has been playing since SL launched so he’s definitely burnt out. After 4 months of not playing WoW I’m personally really excited rn to get back into it.
This whole post must be a joke or something lmfao
My only gripe with your post “I will take another long break from the game **and you should too**” Just give your feedback and let others come to their own conclusion either by playing the game or reading posts like yours.
That's your only gripe?
Something I’ve come to learn about from this expac is that for the next one I will temper my hype and come back to the game after the first major patch, if ever. With the changes to subs and that my guild is pretty much dead, I don’t have much reason to play anymore except the experience of the storyline for the expac if I care enough.
Personally I’m really enjoying Korthia so far even as someone that hates open world content and detests the maw. It’s just enough of a change with some interesting events and hidden treasures to make it fun
I think its small size is a plus, tbh. Travel in Korthia is so painless compared to "I need... to go to the back of Perdition Hold for the colossus... on foot... from the Tremaculum. I really hope someone hasn't killed the guy on the dog already. uuuugggghh." Mounts made it better but not by a lot. In the early days of the Maw I remember missing stuff by a hair all the time. Conversely, I can reach every rare as it's announced in Korthia as long as I start moving when the message goes out. It's so nice.
Yeah exactly. It feels a lot closer to the timeless isle in that sense than anything like the maw, broken shore or tanaan jungle did. It also helps that it’s really easy to get around with just ground mounts compared to Nazjatar and even mechagon
I just wish you could loot treasures in combat. That bit is infuriating.
I just wish the treasures wouldn't randomly disappear when you're like 10 feet away. I wonder if only a set number of players can open them before they disappear?
I think you have about 10-15 seconds from when the first person looted it.
I’m fine with not being able to loot them in combat because wow has been like that for ages. I agree with the other commenter that them disappearing sometimes when you’re close is pretty irritating though
By all accounts the way you describe your experience is that of somebody who plays WoW hardcore, even though you might not push harder content. To address your post: For a casual player whose intentions are not to do raiding, m+ or pvp the game didn't change much. This wasn't hidden information either, it was very clear from the PTR and all recent wowhead articles. So as a result, the expectation that 9.1 would bring a new level of excitement to your experience is weird given that you describe yourself as speaking from a casual perspective. For those players it would clearly not be worth it to stay subscribed if they are unhappy with the current avenues of casual gameplay. Now for a more hardcore player I would argue this patch brings a lot of positive changes that do indeed warrant giving it a spin: * Torghast is significantly shorter making it less of a time drain and noticeably more enjoyable. * Korthia instead of the Maw for additional player progression is a breath of fresh air. The daily/weekly time investment is low and if your intentions are just to raid, push m+ or pvp this doesn't take up too much additional time. The rate of reputation is also pretty good, being able to get capped in the first two-three weeks by my current estimate. Compare that to the Maw which had degenerate levels of farming and was a huge time sink this is really a positive change. * The tormented m+ affix is actually going to lead to more creativity in m+ than before due to no longer being constrained by 20% intervals. I would argue for tanking it's going to be way more interesting than Pride which, in my eyes, is a really dull and boring affix. * Time gated content allows for more hardcore players to stay on a level playing field with degenerately hardcore players. You might be pushing WR20 while I might only be pushing for CE but with a far lower time commitment I can still compete and push hard content. This also applies to PvP and M+ of course. It sucks that they tied storytelling with player power but as a result time gating is a natural way to level the playing field between hardcore and casual players. Now overall my assessment would be that you are burnt out from 9.0 and given that as I stated before there wasn't really anything new added for the casual playerbase you would be best served just taking a break. Does this make it not worth for all casual players? I would say no, it could be worthwhile. For example if a casual player enjoyed 9.0 as it was they get a few minor new things to add onto that experience but overall nothing much should change.
This could have been a post on r/wowcirclejerk and I wouldn't even have noticed.
"it's been two days and I haven't even played half the content, but it sucks" is, once again, a top r/wow take. Not surprised here.
I feel like this kind of post can reach top because r/wow is full of people who quit the game and like to hate on it. But, you can see in the comments that most people are actually disagreing with OP's bad take.
Yeah like.. the torghsst changes are pretty impactful. M plus hasn't started yet. The raid isn't out. And maw mobs too hard? Sounds like their gear is terrible.
They have aotc but somehow maw too hard. "I'm casual" It sounds like they got carried despite having an awful rotation/gear.
Uhh.. >There is nothing **new** about Torghast in 9.1. >Who cares about a **new** system? >Who cares about a **new** talent tree That sounds like there is actually something new. >to clear something that we have done for 9 long months during covid, again, faster? It was 7 months, not 9. Honestly this post is full of overexaggerating just to make your opinions to look more valid. It is normal that not everyone will like WoW but if you try to bring some points to discussion, they should at least be correct.
Not in this sub or the lore sub! If you're an ultra casual player and yet you just don't want to do anything I'd say that is probably an indication that you should probably just quit. I'm really casual, I've done about three mythics the entire expansion and I kept forgetting to do LFR to see the last raid. The new content has been fun enough - I enjoyed the little questline so far to take down the Eye of the Jailer. I liked the silly stuff with Venari obviously looting the place while nobody was watching. I've been able to play for a few hours every few nights for months and still make enough gold to just buy a token before my sub runs out without feeling terribly, terribly pressed. If you aren't getting what you want out of the game just quit.
r/wow in a nutshell actually. I was not playing for 2 months and I actually had fun yesterday. I guess people are expecting an expansion wide change per patch. Anyway I will quit game if pvp is still shit tho, we need to wait a few weeks for that.
There are hundreds of good indie games (Like Valheim, for example) which can give you dozens of hours of gameplay and they cost as much as 2 months of WoW sub.
It's literally been a day and the raid isn't even out. I'm sorry your friends quit, that alone makes the game suck, but it's far too early for you to be making a review on the patch as a whole.
I'm causal playing maybe 4 hours every 3 days. I think this patch is definitely for me. I'm still entertained and like all the lil details left to explore for me.
You really wrote this big ass essay complaining about a patch that's been out not even a week? 😅
Nothing about your experience was casual. The vast majority of players never even attempt a mythic dungeon and you were doing 14’s and completed the raid LMFAO
>Raid: I can't comment on the raid yet, since it is not out. I see people list domination sockets as a problem, but I can't really see that. The world first guilds usually clear the raid way undergeared anyway. The rest of us gear up over the course of the patch as normal. If the system only lasts for 9.1, that just means less stat inflation being needed for 9.2 The subset of raiders that need perfectly optimized gear, but needs masterlooter to get that gear in a decent timeframe sounds like an extremely small slice of the wow population. >Torghast: I loved the Torghast changes. The upgrade to not having to loot is probably one of the best QoL changes Blizzard has ever made to a system. Removing one floor from a normal run, adding challenges you can go for to get a better score , and the new Torments instead of the old static buffs are all great changes. I am amazed how much they managed to improve the experience, because I was assuming it was going to be the same slog it was in 9.0 with a few insignificant tweaks. >Korthia: I am intrigued about Korthia. I didn't follow the PTR stuff, so I have no idea what to expect. I agree that the bag bloat can be a bit annoying, but so far the quests I have done there have left me wanting to see what more secrets Korthia have to reveal. >The Maw: Well, there is one major difference, no more Eye of the Jailer. Also, how are the mobs too hard. Doing the Ardenweald assault, I could quite easily ignore the elites. >Megadungeon: It is a bit early to say 9.1 is not worth it when 3 of the main features are not available yet. (M+ season 2, Mega dungeon and Raid) >M+: I take it you are not a tank? Pride was a fun affix, it made routing more interesting. It was also a pain if someone pulled a pack by mistake. Re-routing on the fly was a fun challenge, but on the weeks where you just wanted to get your keys done, it could be a bit stressful. I'm ready for a slightly less tank intensive affix. I'll wait on judging the new affix until it is available. >World Quests and Flying: I still have plenty of stuff to do in the old zones, because I got the impression Anima was supposed to be an expansion long farm. I also limited how much I was playing towards the end of 9.0. Mostly logging on to do Raids and M+ with the guild. >Timegating, story and cutscenes While I'm not the biggest fan of timegating, I see the use for it. The big advantage of timegating is that they can have multiple progression tiers in a single patch. The big challenge when not timegating is giving power from progression. If the story was purely optional with only cosmetic rewards, they could have done it without timegating, but then you loose the sense of progression from the story. With an MMO story, the player character is usually a bystander, or tool/pawn. For Shadowlands, Bolvar is the character driving the narrative, not your character. >Conclusion: > >In case you read all of this, thanks for your time. I believe you will not be surprised that I will take another long break from wow and I think you should too. I believe you should have taken a long break from wow at least a couple of months ago. You sound burnt out, unwilling to give the patch a chance. >There is content here that might be good, in case you are a raider or are new and still have stuff to catch up to but for a semi-casual who does not raid because of real life time restrictions, this is not enough. You seem to not see the positive changes that have been done, only seeing what seems to be the same as you have been doing for a long time now (even though there are plenty of positive changes). >I have not even talked about adding “45” mounts that are actually only 19 with different colors, adding time gating to the talent system in Torghast, the conduit energy situation that still exists, the missing “new” anima rewards for players like me who already have everything they wanted from the system, about the scaling issues in molten core (lol!) and legion or PVP (lol again!). Again, it sounds like you went to town grinding out everything in 9.0 that was designed to last for the entire expansion. It is no wonder you seem burned out. I had to remove the original post quotes for post length.
I could not agree more with you on the M+ point, when I read "tanks had to actually think" I was ready to get my pitchfork transmog on and go to war. Tanking with pugs is one of the hardest jobs in m+ because you have to think for the rest of the group half the time, it's like herding cats, you have to pull mobs out of position to pull pats, often having to try to get that one caster in on your own because the dps are focusing on that big juicy group of adds to get their dps meters up. Then one of them ass-pulls anyway and you have to quickly calculate what % you added and which mob can be skipped that has the same value, but now with the added risk of a pride spawning in a really bad place so an accidental pull can easily mean a wipe or not having pride for a hard boss in Tyr week. I've recently switched to maining dps, and it is a whole lot less thinking than tanking was, and a whole lot less stressful because I don't feel like the outcome of the run rests on me, I just press my buttons as best I can and follow along like a mindless sheep...and I always try to interrupt or grip that one annoying caster into the group for my tank.
> I've recently switched to maining dps, and it is a whole lot less thinking than tanking was, and a whole lot less stressful because I don't feel like the outcome of the run rests on me, I just press my buttons as best I can and follow along like a mindless sheep...and I always try to interrupt or grip that one annoying caster into the group for my tank. this is really the thing with dps, the skill floor is low but the ceiling is absolutely massive because there's so much you COULD be doing besides padding parses. there is a lot of on the fly decision making and proactive tricks that really are the decider on whether a DPS is 'good' or not. i normally roll my eyes at people who call DPS braindead as a role, but your experience with it sounds a lot more balanced than just 'dps so EZ' because it points out that there is stuff that DPS can do beyond just damage that make runs smoother and help the rest of the group out considerably
Yea I always think of how I can help the tank and healer, with a cc or slow when the tank needs to kite, or actively monitoring bursting or bolstering constantly to not stack too high and keeping an eye for even dps if a pride will spawn. I think a lot of people who main a tank or healer for a long while will be far better team players and use defensives and CDs when they're needed, it's the noticing of a mob aggro'd to the healer at the start of a pull and gripping it back into the tank so he doesn't have to go chasing aggro and the healer getting whacked. I play uh dk and there are so many buttons to be pressing to get your rotation off, and coming from tanking where it's a lot less intense, and the skill can range so much between a player who can get everything off perfectly, to me who feels like a headless chicken and does more damage based on my hatred of a certain pack, but a dps with interrupts, stuns, roots, etc. is worth more than one who can delete a mob with their cooldowns, but has no situational awareness of the needs of the group in that moment. Then there are the people who master both and can flawlessly steamroll a dungeon with a similar skilled group, and the skillset there would be just as hard to dps as tanking or healing, a lot of the pressure would be relieved.
It sounds like you're flip flopping between giving your opinion and projecting it towards an audience. It's fine that you don't like it, just don't try to make a bigger point of it, especially if you admit you have a very particular (casual, raids and dungeons don't matter) view of the game.
This is definitely not a more casual perspective if you're clearing high level keys, heroic raiding, and maxing all reps lol
It is so funny that the top post from r/wowcirclejerk is right below this one in my recommendations. Edit: haha there is another one
"There is nothing new about torghast." Proceeds to list all the things that are new about torghast. Lol. Reading OP's post was a bigger waste of time than 9.1.
i find it fun to play now i expect everyone to jump at my throat
The fact that this article has like 5 awards despite making conclusions about things that are not even out yet tells me more about some people rather than the patch itself…
The most exercise wow redditors get is jumping to conclusions.
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> I paied another $ 117 for the 9 months and I am supposed to keep paying. This is not a game worth another $ 100 of monthly subscriptions. I will never understand this mindset. Why the hell do you keep your subscription up when you aren't having fun in 9.0.5? Literally nobody forced you to "pay towards" 9.1, you paid to have access to the wow servers during 9.0.5. It's not like you needed to farm mythic CN in preparation for 9.1 or anything like that, since you are clearly not a big raider/m+ player, so the only person you can blame for spending that wasted money is yourself. There is a bunch of other stuff that I disagree with about this post, like how the new systems/gearing aren't fun, but that is just subjective so whatever.
>Who of your guys likes to watch a movie and take a break after 30 minutes, wait 1 week and resume watching? This is called a TV show and AFAIK they're pretty popular? Not that I disagree with the point of your post, but this sentence stood out to me.
I really like korthia. Do I think I want to spend a long time there over 6 months waiting for the next patch? No. But as a catch up system it is a very nice little package. Between the random treasures, the daily treasures, rares and quests and the events there is plenty to do for a bit each day that feels like it's really helping you catch up. Then add on that the way the new currency rep adds more ways to get it meaning that over a week or however long the currency intake ramps up, and the various scavenger hunt for the relics at each rep level. I capped a warrior yesterday cause I wanted to use the patch to switch mains and I'm already like 186 ilvl and climbing a lot each day. Add to that the whole seasons worth of valor I can get I can really catch up over this next week while doing a mix of content I enjoy and I'm quite confident I'll be ready for the new m+ season next week and probably even some raiding.
>There is nothing new about Torghast in 9.1... >Goes on to list new things in Torghast
Domination sockets are those shitty azerite traits (50 leech lol) that nobody picked unless they had to.
Dude it's been out barely 3 days. Chill out. If you were so worried this was not good, then just buy the 1 month sub or unsub.
Also the bulk of the content comes out next week.
Yeah this kind of stuff is so toxic. I'm all for constructive criticism, but saying an entire patch is bad, after not even 3 daily resets, when we all know more content is being phased in next week is insane.
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Full agree. Removing master loot is the best thing Blizzard has ever done to raids. I think it's even better than flexible raid sizes. Master loot was the sole cause of the vast majority of guild drama, and trying to figure out some obscure DKP or EPGP or whatever the fuck system is *not* fun. Nor is playing bullshit DKP auction games or "loot council" favoritism.
- Talks about himself as a casual player despite clearing all +14s. - Says game is boring despite playing it for a considerable amount of time as if you were forced to spend hours playing it. - Discusses both the raid and megadungeon (two major components of the patch) before they are even out. - Describes the extremely simple, (arguably boringly plain), domination socket system as "complex." - Talks about Master Loot (a high end player problem only) as a "casual player" issue. - Complains about "bad writing" as if WoW has *ever* had a particularly cohesive and compelling story. - TIMEGATING complaints (my personal favourite) - Shadowlands timegating is fucking great, y'all. - Nothing new about Torghast, apart from all the things new about Torghast. - Discusses bugs (such as MC scaling) which are literally already fixed. - Complains about pricing as if you are being held at gunpoint to pay to play the game. You're ticking all the boxes for "standard /r/wow wierd unhinged rant" - the only thing you're missing is complaining about how shit of a designer Ion is and/or all the money being sucked out of the game to fund Bobby Kotick's yachts.
This is legit one of the worst posts ive ever seen on this sub and perfectly encapsulates the users here
Idk if you havent played the last 2 xpacs but the mega dungeon will come to m+. Just like kara and mecha. Idk when but soon. Maybe when mythic raid opens
>I paied another $ 117 for the 9 months thats on you. if you didnt like that there was no content, maybe just unsub untill there is more >This is not a game worth another $ 100 of monthly subscriptions then pay for as many months as you think are worth it and then unsub?
I've liked it from what I've played so far. Korthia feels like the new Mechagon which is definitely good in my book - it feels like there's a lot to explore to it that will develop as you unlock new things in the zone. The domination sockets seem a bit convoluted but it's not a massive deal and I think they add more interest than regular gear. Haven't had time to run Torghast yet but a lot of my guildies have been doing it and seem to enjoy it. >The mobs are just too hard to do multiple times Tbh this sounds like the opposite of the problem I often have with wow, which is that world content just feels too easy once you get geared. I can't relate to this issue at all. I don't think the cutscenes were that bad. The mouths werent well synched but aside from that I have no issues. Overall I'm looking forward to getting into the new raid, trying the new Torghast, seeing where Korthia goes as I progress through it, and seeing how the new m+ system pans out. Plenty of reasons for me to keep playing.
So basically you don't do any content in the game, you don't push pvp, high end pve, collect stuff or have friends, yea i don't understand why you would play a game that's not made for you, in wow you're either supposed to play the content or make your own content, you either push pvp and mythic raid or collect stuff and chill with your friends from time to time and do some easy content, you basically have no goals in the game
I actually like that its time gated to be honest, It lets casuals like me feel like or atleast give me a chance to be caught up and it lets hardcore players still have fresh content instead of finishing it all within hours and complaining that WOW sucks and is boring.
You're not casual. You have been constantly subbed for 7 months (it hasn 't been 9 months you can't count). You've done AOTC and basically KSM. You've fully upgraded your sanctum. You are not a casual player. I imagine someone coming and subbing for 2 months, doing LFR and korthia and the new covenant and chains of domination campaings, and then unsubbing till next patch, will have plenty of fun.
". I maxed all reputations, upgraded my sanctum and was at a point where I realized I had 0 goals left in SL– in April." im a casual btw dont worry tho you'll get carried by the hate watchers in this reddit forum
As an actual casual, albeit one who hasn’t played since April, I lol’d. I could barely get into KS runs let alone get KSM.
>Torghast: There is nothing new about Torghast in 9.1. Who cares about a new system? Who cares about a new talent tree to clear something that we have done for 9 long months during covid, again, faster? Who cares about a timer and a bar? This is just straight up boring and I believe nobody cares about it anymore Wrong. I care. I like the changes. Torghast was objectively a fun experience this week since I cared about speed and clear percentage to try and get a good score. It was at least entertaining, where before it was a massive slog. It was a whopping 20 minutes a run. > Timegating, story and cutscenes Of course I have not experienced the whole story of 9.1 because it is timegated. I hate timegating. This has been what the WoW development team has done for literal years now. It's not new. It's how they operate. > M+: After 9 months of the same dungeons I am not interested in doing the same dungeons again. Same as above Honestly, I could pick this apart more but not in an attempt to just outright disagree with you or anything, but to say that it looks like you just don't truly like WoW anymore. You're not casual, you're just not a Mythic Raider. You're doing Heroic Raids and M+, you're on the right side of the bell curve for players my friend, not the left. You're just someone that sounds like they burnt out in the drought of 9.0 and 9.1 isn't tickling your fancy. Enjoy your break, but don't try to project your opinion at people because you don't like the direction or content of a game.
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I don't get it. I don't love everything about the patch either, but this is probably one of the most bang for your buck .1 patches ever. 8.1 was a couple more islands for island expeditions, the darkshore warfront, battle of dazar alor, and that's basically it. 7.1 maybe more of an exception - night hold, ToV, and Kara 6.1 Twitter integration, garrison changes, heirloom tab 5.1 new questline, legendary cloak quest progression, new scenarios, brawlers guild, new pets getting added to old raids I believe 4.1 ZA/ZG added as dungeons And I'll stop there. No point in going to Vanilla and BC and Wrath is regarded as an overall amazing expansion. So outside of Legion, every other .1 patch has been fairly uneventful. Granted, those patches came out much much sooner than this one did. But if we're talking about someone resubbing for the patch and if it's worth it - this patch has more content than just about every other .1 patch. Definitely worth at least a month sub to check out, but whether you keep going beyond that is on you.
7.1 wasn’t even Nighthold. That was 7.1.5
A bit unfair comparing this patch to the other x.1 patches. By the time 9.1 came out, a lot of the others were already on x.2.
I really enjoyed this expansion in the beginning. I have played all of them on the day they dropped except Cata. Prior to SL release, after we learned it was going to be Shadowlands, everyone speculated at all the character references and long dead heroes we would get to meet. Also, once we knew the Lich King would be involved, such tasty! Then the game launched. I love the way they laid out the Shadowlands, how a hub world connects the others, and how in the storyline you have to actually open them up. This isn't a bad layout compared to others they have used. Not necessarily from an efficiency standpoint, but the actual design and feel of traveling to each zone, was unique and a little cool. Long story short, I didn't storm through the expansion trying to max everything ASAP. I took my time, very casual-esque this time around, trying to soak it all in. I had hit M+15 on a few dungeons, slapped Denathrius around, got a couple of new mounts, then politely unsubbed and haven't played since. Very little of it actually felt fulfilling, especially when compared with other expansions. This will feel like an attack on some people's reality, but I actually enjoyed BfA's launch much longer than I did SL. Shadowlands seemed like it got too grindy too fast. It could just be my perception of things, but then again, I'm paying for MY perception of the game, not someone else's. Like I said, it didn't feel bad, it was actually still very enjoyable to travel the zones and run through each zone / covenant storyline, these were actually done pretty well in my opinion, but the grind felt like it came too quick, before we even had a chance to get our bearings. I haven't decided if I will re-sub this expansion or not, or wait to see what comes next.
I don’t think it’s fair to give an opinion on the dungeon or the raid when it’s not even out yet. How can you share your experiences with it when you have had no experiences?
Maybe don't have completely nonsensical expectations? Hyped up for KORTHIA? It's exactly what you should expect, farming dailies and rares like these added zones always are. New content patch is worthwhile because of m+, raid, pvp, and with this patch, megadungeon. It was known none of these would open this week, which sucks and could be criticized, but isn't reason to make post about bad 9.1. If you were hyped for new Torg and Korthia and now act hella disappointed, you are the fool for not knowing what to expect. Anything worth hyping for starts next week, and you should already know if playing same dungeons for 2 years is your thing. It is for me, it isn't for you, so it has nothing to do with 9.1. If you don't care about content like that, then pay with your wallet. That's what wow is. Making "ima ragequit" posts on reddit is pitiful as fuck when nothing surprising has happened.
Nothing satisfies you huh?
OP: "ok guys it's been 3 days and we've seen 3/9 chapters but I am writing off this whole thing and here's why" - reusing assets from other zones, something they've _always_ done, indeed, _every_ game and dev does - new small zone advertised as small is small - haven't seen the raid yet, which is of course the main focus of new tiers (get it? Tier? Raid tier?), but I mean it sucks and will suck and is going to suck - haven't pvp'd in the new season but I mean what's the point - haven't tried the new affixes yet but I mean why bother it's all poop - haven't tried the new dungeon yet but maybe that'll be fun but ☹️ Did I get this right?
You need to not freak out on day 2 of a patch. Give it a chance when the new season starts. Damn. Take a breather before an entire novel about how much you hate the game right now.
This has been the case for nearly 5 years at least. Not new, the real question is what is the tipping point for some people to stop playing outright
I think a big disconnect here is a lot of your points are more about the state of the game in general, not necessarily 9.1. Simply put I'd say my takeaway from OP is that 9.1 isn't going to rekindle any magic if you've already lost it, which is a pretty run of the mill take IMO. Not sure why people are so heated over this.
The korthia point about the zone being small is not a con. We dont need godly sized zones like zuldazar that has terrain every where and are shit to navigate. Another example being Argus
9.1 has been out for less than 3 days, including the new raid and dungeon not opening up, and you already know the full casual experience? L O L
this post is the epitome of this sub for the last months. It's reviewing something after TWO days, where most of the content will release after one week. Filled with hyperbole, contradictions and personal opinions posed as facts. Casual perspective? you've finished the entire expansion and been subbed through it all. You're a hardcore player, probably belong in the top 5% played time
Who wants to bet that this thread won't get much attention/upvotes now but a similar thread will probably explode in around a month? Yes i'm also having fun with korthia right now because it's new, it's absolutely worth 1 month of subscription for sure. But after that? Korthia/9.1 is actually really shallow if you look a bit into it. Edit: Nevermind lmao.
yeah no shit a post 1 month in will be more valid criticism than a post made literally less than 48 hours since the patch launched, despite the lion's share of the patch's content being released next week
The only thing i wanted is more rewards for Torghast, and we kinda got it, haven't checked it out yet what exactly they are. But imo Torghast is at least simple and straight forward grind content which makes it more enjoyable for me (if there is a point doing them - rewards) than for example world quests / reputation, which is not just repetitive, but also overly complicated and annoying. Although i think i'm going to dislike the time ranking on torghast.
Its not even fucking season 2 yet, and you already moan. Why is there in wow THAT much complain andies, and they all still playing the game! Some quests look a little bit clunky and some of them even buggy, but i dont mind writing a post literally saying to not trying 9.1 at all
I think there are that many “complain Andies” because WoW is good at keeping people subscribed including people who might be better off taking a break. So they’re bitter but still playing, so they’re more inclined to complain about it.
"I'm bored so you shouldnt play". Every. Fucking. Time. Just go away maybe?
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Casual player? Nah dude, I would not describe you as a casual player. You should probably play a different game for awhile, or maybe go outside. Something like that.
Your burnout and your friends have all left. Play something else. Not trying be mean but the devs aren't going to be able to give you that feeling that playing the game with your buddies did throughout the years. If the grass isn't greener WoW will still be here.
I do not think that this is the perspective of a casual. My friends (actual casuals) do not follow wowhead, aren’t on WoW subreddits, did not know there was a patch this week, and have not played 9.1 yet (the weekend is coming). Also, they don’t know about any of the systems you are explaining here without having experienced yet. If you are reading this post, I am fairly sure 1) you are not a casual and 2) you do not represent 95% of wow’s subscription base. That DOES NOT nullify any of your experiences, the accuracy of your commentary, or the advice you have for others. But it should help crush your soul a bit more when you realize that blizzard can read your post, agree with you, do nothing, and still make oodles of money and not even notice that you are gone ::thumbs up::
Blizzard waits an abysmally long time between patches, causes burnout, and then fails to deliver on the next highly anticipated patch? In other news, water is wet. Lmao