Twentified 9.1 Notes

I mean Warlocks have been on the top charts for the longest time possible (One can argue ever since MoP). Never have I seen Destro/Affliction beneath the top 10 classes in terms of dps, from MoP up until Shadowlands, heck at certain expansions the class even peaked to top 3. In Legion Aff was considered the best dps class. You see people complaining about warlocks? See people saying theyre OP unreasonably? No, because hands down Warlocks are strong in a reasonable way, requires actual skill to become a God. One can maybe argue that Hunters also need skill to become a god. But what good is a Hunter God if millions can be aswell easily? Literally becomes a hunter civil war at this point, Im not really astonished when I see Hunters popping off and being on top charts. Because its expected, they have the Blizzard hand-job. But when I see a Warlock playing a battleground as if its his last game and going "Full-Force", I awe in amazement at such a sight to behold, leaving my keyboard and letting him clap my ass because Im not worthy of even defending myself. No recall or intervention can work with a player of such beauty.

TLDR: Warlock is love, Warlock is life.

(Dont take this degenerate paragraph seriously though)
 
Idk why people are so shocked at hunter buffs hunter being very meh at max level besides Beast master being pretty good in arenas and hunter being one of the best defensive classes in RBGs. They don't have much else going for them very boring class at 60 too. This is coming from a person who has mained hunter since WOTLK.
 
Are Hunters just horrible at endgame or something?
Pretty terrible at DPS, from looking at the charts.

One of the biggest issues that seems to effect low level PVP, is when a low DPS class in endgame raiding needs to be adjusted...And they adjust it in a way that ends up just making it crazy OP at low level.

Which really, historically has happened a lot to hunters.
 
Honestly my MM hunter's action bar looks like an endgame character's. I think the issue at low level is the random spell bloat that hunters get compared to other classes.

The damage is very problematic - but them having an entire endgame character's kit is more problematic in my eyes.
 
Honestly my MM hunter's action bar looks like an endgame character's. I think the issue at low level is the random spell bloat that hunters get compared to other classes.

The damage is very problematic - but them having an entire endgame character's kit is more problematic in my eyes.
Absolutely true.

It's one of the defining characteristics of what can make a twink more OP, is having a larger toolkit earlier. It's a huge advantage.

Restructure what levels they get what abilities, and you'd have a more even playing field. Unfortunately, we all know how much Blizz puts into consideration balanced classes for leveling.
 
Absolutely true.

It's one of the defining characteristics of what can make a twink more OP, is having a larger toolkit earlier. It's a huge advantage.

Restructure what levels they get what abilities, and you'd have a more even playing field. Unfortunately, we all know how much Blizz puts into consideration balanced classes for leveling.

Recently this has been bothering the hell out of me.

It would be so simple to make these abilities accessible earlier in the leveling process. There are often Rank 2's or Rank 3's of abilities that have no business being accessible later. They are not complex. They are not trivial (in some cases).

The best counter-argument I can think of is complexity for newer players - but maybe make the abilities learned through some sort of questline? That way, you're not deluged with a dozen more spells when starting the game - but once you know what you're doing, you can earn them.

We will likely never have that feature.
 
Honestly I am surprised blizzard doesn't use the spell rank system more, like they could easily stop classes from being broken at lower levels by splitting damage/utility up via spell ranks.

Like aspect of the turtle rank 1 2 3min cd
rank 2 reduce cd to 2 mins
stuff like that, I mean rogues have had rank 2 eviscerate since legion reducing its damage by 50% until you got to rank 2 why are other classes not having this kind of system applied to them? Could just take outlier abilities arcane blast aimed shot chaosbolt etc and just reduce the damage of these abilities by 15-25% via spell ranks. Would even give blizzard more "rewards" for lvling by unlocking "new" spells.
 
I think one of the biggest problems Blizzard has with the game is they (long ago) stopped thinking of leveling as a huge part of the game and started thinking of it as something that you do before the game actually starts. A product of their rapidly expanding level cap, which meant they had to speed leveling up to not deter new players, which meant culling and streamlining a lot of things yadda yadda yadda

So you end up with a situation where Blizzard just looks at 1-50 as "pre game" which, in fairness, it kinda is. Leveling is an inconvenience. Players and the designers want to rush you to end game. But look at classics release. Barring the weirdos who like speed running content, much of the joy of the game was for how rich and full the world felt back then. Because 1-60 was treated like an important (perhaps the most important) part of the game.

But now, Blizzard just slaps together classes at low levels like "sure, yea, this class has 30 end game abilities? 60 levels? give them a new spell every two levels, who cares what it is" because you level so quickly it doesnt matter. Thats how you end up with specs that have mastery at 10 that relies on abilities they dont get until 12, 14, 16 etc...

So why worry about hunters in the 20s bracket? You're leveling through it in an afternoon and then the toolkits even out. Its a gnarly bump in the road for the handful of people who catch a BG to give themselves a mental rest between dungeon ques on their way to 60. Most of the solutions to early and mid level problems is "well, theyll level through it". Most people dont even notice the problems we notice because the time spent between 20 and 30 is... a couple hours.

Blizzard (and also most of the player base) have really just lost the thread. So it leads to poor game design decisions because hey... 1-50 isnt the game. 60 is.
 
Dang, well said chops.
Guess I sometimes forget that people generally see lvling as a chore and not a fun part of the game like I do, that's a real shame tbh. I have learned so much interesting stuff just from trying to maximize lvling, like things I would never have found out otherwise and yet most ppl just blast through the lvls without a care.

Maybe that's why I am enjoying chromiecraft so much atm because it locks ppl at certain lvls forcing ppl to actually take a look around and stuff. Like classes in retail wow play so differently at lower levels then they do at max, name a spec at max that lets you play ranged survival or ele enhance? They dont exist and yet all you see on the wow forums is people complaining about min max culture but refuse to even look into other areas of the game themselves.

Bit of a rant there sorry, I just don't get the playerbase sometimes.
 
I kinda prefer classes that have less spells/utilities. I struggle so hard when dealing with alot of buttons to press and especially when im outnumbered. Tried many classes but so far nothing really clicked for me because of that problem. Even now I often forget that warlocks have 2 debuffs (Curse of Weakness and Curse of Exhaustion) that can be applied on players since im not used to lvl20s having those spells.
 
Dang, well said chops.
Guess I sometimes forget that people generally see lvling as a chore and not a fun part of the game like I do, that's a real shame tbh. I have learned so much interesting stuff just from trying to maximize lvling, like things I would never have found out otherwise and yet most ppl just blast through the lvls without a care.

Maybe that's why I am enjoying chromiecraft so much atm because it locks ppl at certain lvls forcing ppl to actually take a look around and stuff. Like classes in retail wow play so differently at lower levels then they do at max, name a spec at max that lets you play ranged survival or ele enhance? They dont exist and yet all you see on the wow forums is people complaining about min max culture but refuse to even look into other areas of the game themselves.

Bit of a rant there sorry, I just don't get the playerbase sometimes.

It's a self compounding problem. Its not just a game culture thing, the game is actually by design making the leveling process brainless and quick as well. Also, by the nature of any game that has been around for a long time min-max becomes more and more prevalent and relevant. I played MTG for years. Long enough to know every important card effect and combination in every set. I knew the mana efficiency and the curves to make a deck work; my wife played casually with friends and did not know or look up every piece of information available. She enjoyed playing whatever she thought was cool or fun or like built decks around cards that she liked the art for. She had allot more fun playing than i did and it made me nostalgicly jealous of when I knew less and played more. WoW culture is similar because the age of the game itself, then that is exasperated greatly by design choices of the WoW devs.
 
It's a self compounding problem. Its not just a game culture thing, the game is actually by design making the leveling process brainless and quick as well. Also, by the nature of any game that has been around for a long time min-max becomes more and more prevalent and relevant. I played MTG for years. Long enough to know every important card effect and combination in every set. I knew the mana efficiency and the curves to make a deck work; my wife played casually with friends and did not know or look up every piece of information available. She enjoyed playing whatever she thought was cool or fun or like built decks around cards that she liked the art for. She had allot more fun playing than i did and it made me nostalgicly jealous of when I knew less and played more. WoW culture is similar because the age of the game itself, then that is exasperated greatly by design choices of the WoW devs.

This is also a huge factor as well - I think about that nostalgia factor quite a bit. There's very little they could do to make the game more enjoyable for me, as far as leveling goes.

That being said, I think it would be quite easy to make the leveling process rich and enjoyable for new players, while also giving access to spells via some sort of quest chain or mission.
 
So what can we do now when blizz dont care about us as not-end-game playerbase? Nothing
Play cod in wsg 10hunters v 10 hunters till blizz remove "activision" part from them...
 
I think one of the biggest problems Blizzard has with the game is they (long ago) stopped thinking of leveling as a huge part of the game and started thinking of it as something that you do before the game actually starts. A product of their rapidly expanding level cap, which meant they had to speed leveling up to not deter new players, which meant culling and streamlining a lot of things yadda yadda yadda

So you end up with a situation where Blizzard just looks at 1-50 as "pre game" which, in fairness, it kinda is. Leveling is an inconvenience. Players and the designers want to rush you to end game. But look at classics release. Barring the weirdos who like speed running content, much of the joy of the game was for how rich and full the world felt back then. Because 1-60 was treated like an important (perhaps the most important) part of the game.

But now, Blizzard just slaps together classes at low levels like "sure, yea, this class has 30 end game abilities? 60 levels? give them a new spell every two levels, who cares what it is" because you level so quickly it doesnt matter. Thats how you end up with specs that have mastery at 10 that relies on abilities they dont get until 12, 14, 16 etc...

So why worry about hunters in the 20s bracket? You're leveling through it in an afternoon and then the toolkits even out. Its a gnarly bump in the road for the handful of people who catch a BG to give themselves a mental rest between dungeon ques on their way to 60. Most of the solutions to early and mid level problems is "well, theyll level through it". Most people dont even notice the problems we notice because the time spent between 20 and 30 is... a couple hours.

Blizzard (and also most of the player base) have really just lost the thread. So it leads to poor game design decisions because hey... 1-50 isnt the game. 60 is.

I agree to an extent, as i agree with most of the assessments here. I just think Blizzard also has a lot of the blame:

Bizzard itself settled the trends for MMOs for the better part of WoW lifespan. Even MMOs that tried to run away from the recipe, like GW2, had 80 levels, and similar HP pools and combat to WoW, only with more things added to it ( dodge, weaponswap, etc ). It's clear that a lot of these MMOs wanted the WoW pie and had to ease the transition to from WoW, which is why a lot of them had some design decisions translated from Wrath.

What most of these games didn't count, is that WoW player largely became, by Blizzard's own fault, content-locusts. Blizzard itself made their leveling irrelevant, the gamers only followed suit. Blizzard themselves made their games lack laterality, the gamers followed suit. The reason why FF14 is such a success right now and it "out-WoWs" WoW, is because the game has enough laterality at endgame, to placate the hunger for content that most players that came from WoW have, by offering them perpetual systems like housing and a good transmog system. What does a casual in WoW do? He raids, he Arena/PvP, or he levels alts. That's all. WoW lacks absolute laterality to make it's endgame more than what it is. And since things are too quick to get there, you can't even really smell the roses anymore. And getting there is frustrating because the dev team is so detached from casual experience that they think these humongous grinds for borrowed power systems are fun, which they aren't. So, when WoW players go play anything else, they are extremely jaded and have terrible habits and they must detox from them little by little.

Honestly, i largely blame Ion and Blizzard's philosophy of putting raiding devs as lead devs for EVERYTHING. Ion is a great raiding dev, but anyone who heard the guy speak can sense the loathing he has for anything else. He hates balancing talks, he hates talking about open world, he clearly doesn't care how classes perform outside raids, he clearly has no problems with class being designed by how they raid, etc etc. I don't agree with Asmon on much but when he said "LFR is not content" he was right. When Blizzard realized only 10% of their players raided, they had a choice: Either expand endgame to accomodate casuals more, or make everyone a raider. Guess what they've chosen?

Blizzard lacking perpetual systems is financially baffling and honestly disturbing as how they perceive their own game. ESO literally makes buckets of cash just by selling overpriced houses. People are able to derivate YEARS of fun from older games like Fallout New Vegas or 4, or Neverwinter Nights, by modding and replayability, having stuff to do. Yet, when it comes to the biggest MMO to date, their design decisions ammounted to making the game a "10-to-25 instanced enviromental simulator", which is what WoW is on it's best, and then there's nothing else except farming bad transmogs because the game still glues your armor to your body.

FF14 took the world by storm by doing everything Blizzard did but better. I personally hate the game, but i can admit that besides the artstyle and the awful color pallete, the game is a better WoW. It pleases casuals because it doesn't force them to raid, and gives them enough shit to do at endgame that isn't competitive crap. It pleases raidcores because it has great raiding too, which is something Blizzard doesn't have a monopoly of, even if they pretend they still are top dog and can just ignore everyone else. It pleases weeb FF fans and non weeb players altogether. GW2 End of Dragons was delayed but if they are looking around they will implement lateral systems and put GW2 back on the MMO map. New World, even with AGS' awful trackrecord, will be a solid enough MMO and since AGS will want to be successful, they will probably implement a lot of features for all kinds of players. I think the game already has Housing. I can't remember a fashion system. ESO a while ago had commemorated it's 15 million players, to which, remember: ESO is B2P. There are no F2Players. WoW can count it's F2P accounts, ESO can't. As much as people hate ESO quirks ( i love ESO but dear god those combat and animations are dogshit ), the game itself is going strong.

Blizzard's age of ignoring everyone because they were too far up the heavens has ended a while ago. And it was of their own detachment and making because they are fucking idiots. Sure, a lot of it has to do with us growing up and accelerating, but it also has to do with them making us becoming content-locusts. MMOs should focus on improving the world, not in shoving players in instances and that's that. They absolutely COULD look at low level content and leveling and make things pleasant for everyone. They don't do it because they are fucking lazy idiots. They could look at the crap that are borrowed power systems. They don't do it because they are fucking lazy idiots. And the fact they lost almost 30% of their playerbase from 2/3 years ago to now is living proof that they are fucking lazy idiots.

But anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk.

/rant off

PS: When i say Blizz are fucking lazy idiots i mean the lead devs and the decision-makers. I don't mean the rank and file that bust their ass off without all the glory to make a good game and are underpaid. For these people i only wish the best.
 
I agree to an extent, as i agree with most of the assessments here. I just think Blizzard also has a lot of the blame:

Bizzard itself settled the trends for MMOs for the better part of WoW lifespan. Even MMOs that tried to run away from the recipe, like GW2, had 80 levels, and similar HP pools and combat to WoW, only with more things added to it ( dodge, weaponswap, etc ). It's clear that a lot of these MMOs wanted the WoW pie and had to ease the transition to from WoW, which is why a lot of them had some design decisions translated from Wrath.

What most of these games didn't count, is that WoW player largely became, by Blizzard's own fault, content-locusts. Blizzard itself made their leveling irrelevant, the gamers only followed suit. Blizzard themselves made their games lack laterality, the gamers followed suit. The reason why FF14 is such a success right now and it "out-WoWs" WoW, is because the game has enough laterality at endgame, to placate the hunger for content that most players that came from WoW have, by offering them perpetual systems like housing and a good transmog system. What does a casual in WoW do? He raids, he Arena/PvP, or he levels alts. That's all. WoW lacks absolute laterality to make it's endgame more than what it is. And since things are too quick to get there, you can't even really smell the roses anymore. And getting there is frustrating because the dev team is so detached from casual experience that they think these humongous grinds for borrowed power systems are fun, which they aren't. So, when WoW players go play anything else, they are extremely jaded and have terrible habits and they must detox from them little by little.

Honestly, i largely blame Ion and Blizzard's philosophy of putting raiding devs as lead devs for EVERYTHING. Ion is a great raiding dev, but anyone who heard the guy speak can sense the loathing he has for anything else. He hates balancing talks, he hates talking about open world, he clearly doesn't care how classes perform outside raids, he clearly has no problems with class being designed by how they raid, etc etc. I don't agree with Asmon on much but when he said "LFR is not content" he was right. When Blizzard realized only 10% of their players raided, they had a choice: Either expand endgame to accomodate casuals more, or make everyone a raider. Guess what they've chosen?

Blizzard lacking perpetual systems is financially baffling and honestly disturbing as how they perceive their own game. ESO literally makes buckets of cash just by selling overpriced houses. People are able to derivate YEARS of fun from older games like Fallout New Vegas or 4, or Neverwinter Nights, by modding and replayability, having stuff to do. Yet, when it comes to the biggest MMO to date, their design decisions ammounted to making the game a "10-to-25 instanced enviromental simulator", which is what WoW is on it's best, and then there's nothing else except farming bad transmogs because the game still glues your armor to your body.

FF14 took the world by storm by doing everything Blizzard did but better. I personally hate the game, but i can admit that besides the artstyle and the awful color pallete, the game is a better WoW. It pleases casuals because it doesn't force them to raid, and gives them enough shit to do at endgame that isn't competitive crap. It pleases raidcores because it has great raiding too, which is something Blizzard doesn't have a monopoly of, even if they pretend they still are top dog and can just ignore everyone else. It pleases weeb FF fans and non weeb players altogether. GW2 End of Dragons was delayed but if they are looking around they will implement lateral systems and put GW2 back on the MMO map. New World, even with AGS' awful trackrecord, will be a solid enough MMO and since AGS will want to be successful, they will probably implement a lot of features for all kinds of players. I think the game already has Housing. I can't remember a fashion system. ESO a while ago had commemorated it's 15 million players, to which, remember: ESO is B2P. There are no F2Players. WoW can count it's F2P accounts, ESO can't. As much as people hate ESO quirks ( i love ESO but dear god those combat and animations are dogshit ), the game itself is going strong.

Blizzard's age of ignoring everyone because they were too far up the heavens has ended a while ago. And it was of their own detachment and making because they are fucking idiots. Sure, a lot of it has to do with us growing up and accelerating, but it also has to do with them making us becoming content-locusts. MMOs should focus on improving the world, not in shoving players in instances and that's that. They absolutely COULD look at low level content and leveling and make things pleasant for everyone. They don't do it because they are fucking lazy idiots. They could look at the crap that are borrowed power systems. They don't do it because they are fucking lazy idiots. And the fact they lost almost 30% of their playerbase from 2/3 years ago to now is living proof that they are fucking lazy idiots.

But anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk.

/rant off

PS: When i say Blizz are fucking lazy idiots i mean the lead devs and the decision-makers. I don't mean the rank and file that bust their ass off without all the glory to make a good game and are underpaid. For these people i only wish the best.

Long post, a lot to unpack there.

Two things I'd like to add about FF14:

1) Their PvP is absolutely horrid. It's a meme even in that community. You play FF14 because there's so much to do at endgame (and/or because you like the artstyle, I guess?). But it's a poor replacement for a competitive pvp system.

2) Their F2P goes up to what is equivalent to Level 50 in WoW. I think that's a gigantic selling point. It's an interesting design decision, because you end up having a very large F2P scene when you offer so much content for free. But it draws people to your game - that's why I played for 2 weeks or so; I wanted to see what the game was like. And ultimately, the artstyle and players ended up making me realize I didn't want to keep playing it, haha. But as someone who never had any interest in it before, it drew me to the game by offering an expansive F2P experience. I think you're much more likely to want to try endgame when you're 90% of the way there, rather than 30% of the way there.
 
It's a self compounding problem. Its not just a game culture thing, the game is actually by design making the leveling process brainless and quick as well. Also, by the nature of any game that has been around for a long time min-max becomes more and more prevalent and relevant. I played MTG for years. Long enough to know every important card effect and combination in every set. I knew the mana efficiency and the curves to make a deck work; my wife played casually with friends and did not know or look up every piece of information available. She enjoyed playing whatever she thought was cool or fun or like built decks around cards that she liked the art for. She had allot more fun playing than i did and it made me nostalgicly jealous of when I knew less and played more. WoW culture is similar because the age of the game itself, then that is exasperated greatly by design choices of the WoW devs.


Yeah I agree that blizzard itselfis a huge factor in this, but that being said there is still tons of stuff to do in game that doesn't involve being max level. I just wish people were more willing to see the forest for the trees
I agree to an extent, as i agree with most of the assessments here. I just think Blizzard also has a lot of the blame:

Bizzard itself settled the trends for MMOs for the better part of WoW lifespan. Even MMOs that tried to run away from the recipe, like GW2, had 80 levels, and similar HP pools and combat to WoW, only with more things added to it ( dodge, weaponswap, etc ). It's clear that a lot of these MMOs wanted the WoW pie and had to ease the transition to from WoW, which is why a lot of them had some design decisions translated from Wrath.

What most of these games didn't count, is that WoW player largely became, by Blizzard's own fault, content-locusts. Blizzard itself made their leveling irrelevant, the gamers only followed suit. Blizzard themselves made their games lack laterality, the gamers followed suit. The reason why FF14 is such a success right now and it "out-WoWs" WoW, is because the game has enough laterality at endgame, to placate the hunger for content that most players that came from WoW have, by offering them perpetual systems like housing and a good transmog system. What does a casual in WoW do? He raids, he Arena/PvP, or he levels alts. That's all. WoW lacks absolute laterality to make it's endgame more than what it is. And since things are too quick to get there, you can't even really smell the roses anymore. And getting there is frustrating because the dev team is so detached from casual experience that they think these humongous grinds for borrowed power systems are fun, which they aren't. So, when WoW players go play anything else, they are extremely jaded and have terrible habits and they must detox from them little by little.

Honestly, i largely blame Ion and Blizzard's philosophy of putting raiding devs as lead devs for EVERYTHING. Ion is a great raiding dev, but anyone who heard the guy speak can sense the loathing he has for anything else. He hates balancing talks, he hates talking about open world, he clearly doesn't care how classes perform outside raids, he clearly has no problems with class being designed by how they raid, etc etc. I don't agree with Asmon on much but when he said "LFR is not content" he was right. When Blizzard realized only 10% of their players raided, they had a choice: Either expand endgame to accomodate casuals more, or make everyone a raider. Guess what they've chosen?

Blizzard lacking perpetual systems is financially baffling and honestly disturbing as how they perceive their own game. ESO literally makes buckets of cash just by selling overpriced houses. People are able to derivate YEARS of fun from older games like Fallout New Vegas or 4, or Neverwinter Nights, by modding and replayability, having stuff to do. Yet, when it comes to the biggest MMO to date, their design decisions ammounted to making the game a "10-to-25 instanced enviromental simulator", which is what WoW is on it's best, and then there's nothing else except farming bad transmogs because the game still glues your armor to your body.

FF14 took the world by storm by doing everything Blizzard did but better. I personally hate the game, but i can admit that besides the artstyle and the awful color pallete, the game is a better WoW. It pleases casuals because it doesn't force them to raid, and gives them enough shit to do at endgame that isn't competitive crap. It pleases raidcores because it has great raiding too, which is something Blizzard doesn't have a monopoly of, even if they pretend they still are top dog and can just ignore everyone else. It pleases weeb FF fans and non weeb players altogether. GW2 End of Dragons was delayed but if they are looking around they will implement lateral systems and put GW2 back on the MMO map. New World, even with AGS' awful trackrecord, will be a solid enough MMO and since AGS will want to be successful, they will probably implement a lot of features for all kinds of players. I think the game already has Housing. I can't remember a fashion system. ESO a while ago had commemorated it's 15 million players, to which, remember: ESO is B2P. There are no F2Players. WoW can count it's F2P accounts, ESO can't. As much as people hate ESO quirks ( i love ESO but dear god those combat and animations are dogshit ), the game itself is going strong.

Blizzard's age of ignoring everyone because they were too far up the heavens has ended a while ago. And it was of their own detachment and making because they are fucking idiots. Sure, a lot of it has to do with us growing up and accelerating, but it also has to do with them making us becoming content-locusts. MMOs should focus on improving the world, not in shoving players in instances and that's that. They absolutely COULD look at low level content and leveling and make things pleasant for everyone. They don't do it because they are fucking lazy idiots. They could look at the crap that are borrowed power systems. They don't do it because they are fucking lazy idiots. And the fact they lost almost 30% of their playerbase from 2/3 years ago to now is living proof that they are fucking lazy idiots.

But anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk.

/rant off

PS: When i say Blizz are fucking lazy idiots i mean the lead devs and the decision-makers. I don't mean the rank and file that bust their ass off without all the glory to make a good game and are underpaid. For these people i only wish the best.


honestly blizzard has had every opportunity to make the game perpetual but specifically chose not to, remember instead of fixing old gear set bonuses they just turned them off. Like not even removing them just flat turning them off so we can have the blessed ability to see what was taken from us.

Someone is using a piece of gear from a lower lvl? better nerf it into the ground because blizzard demands we have fun their way and only their way. One of the best things about classic wow is doing old content because pieces of gear from said content would be relevant the entire xpac. hell some classic pieces are still relevant in tbc with gear like the druid energy helmet which is just super coo and interesting.

So much wasted potential in retail atm its pretty disappointing, I have had more fun playing my 20's then I have had playing max lvl since mop and thats prety sad tbh.
 
Long post, a lot to unpack there.

Two things I'd like to add about FF14:

1) Their PvP is absolutely horrid. It's a meme even in that community. You play FF14 because there's so much to do at endgame (and/or because you like the artstyle, I guess?). But it's a poor replacement for a competitive pvp system.

2) Their F2P goes up to what is equivalent to Level 50 in WoW. I think that's a gigantic selling point. It's an interesting design decision, because you end up having a very large F2P scene when you offer so much content for free. But it draws people to your game - that's why I played for 2 weeks or so; I wanted to see what the game was like. And ultimately, the artstyle and players ended up making me realize I didn't want to keep playing it, haha. But as someone who never had any interest in it before, it drew me to the game by offering an expansive F2P experience. I think you're much more likely to want to try endgame when you're 90% of the way there, rather than 30% of the way there.

Bear in mind, i'm not saying FF14 PvP is good. It's not. WoW PvP isn't that great either. And i say all that knowing that FF14 is not a game for me. I can't stand it's leveling system. I hate the fact it has no character building. For me, even the illusion of choice is better than no choice at all, and the fact that you can build a haste-focused Warrior or a Titan's Grip absolute unit is the biggest draw in twinking for me, since Blizzard likes to diminish options for balance ( which i call the Riot Games Approach ). I loathe FF14 artstyle. I detest the palette. I'm a huge fan of Final Fantasy Tactics, specially the advance versions and FF14 just feels like a slap in the face considering my story, but that's a issue I have.

What i can say is that all my friends who loved WoW now love FF14 and are enjoying themselves much more on a game that allows them to do whatever they want because it offers a lot of lateral systems. Transmog and Housing and RP? Check. Good raids? Check. All classes on one character as a merit? Check. Better Story than Twilightlands? Absolutely check.

But yeah, not a game for me. I'm more of a SWG/sandbox/characterbuilding kinda guy. Albeit i am a bit hyped for New World ( even thought i shouldn't be ), because the crafting and housing seems passable enough.
 
So much wasted potential in retail atm its pretty disappointing
true, at first wow was a WORLD to explore i remember 1st death from guy using stun-trinket (15min cd or so) and that was ... "HOW?! where can i get it?!" and my friends showed me where.
now its just 'look at wowhead' and 'google that', just like buying gear in moba's u just have the right way. the only way. META.
And its not about using or not wowhead or playing in borders of meta, copying youtuber's builds etc. Its all bout possibilities, cuz if some1 can play ilvl44 surv u will struggle fight him. And nobody cares that u dont want to be op huntard. u just lose in pvp.(or win with lower %chance)
Same shit everywhere else: u either play the game how its supposed to be played by blizz, or do not succeed.
and that way is boring now, cuz its way easier to balance pvp talents than mess with major talent.
So we have rogue that cant disarm trash in raids for some reason, doesnt break balance but smells like "activision" spirit...

so the real thing that we have now is wow is dying as openworld game but will live as instance based game i believe.
 

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