AlisterCrow
Grandfathered
With all the hype surrounding the new end-game, I'd like to list some reasons why people should play in the 20-29 bracket instead. This is in hopes of bringing more activity to the bracket and get back to instant or near-instant queues. Maybe other people will have the same reasons that I do; maybe you have your own reasons.
#1: Character progression and the means of said progression.....after hitting 110 on my lock I was able to see pretty quickly that doing dungeons rarely rewarded gear and that doing PvP rarely rewarded gear. I got most of my gear from world quests which are all mind-numbingly easy. I literally gained 20 item levels in two days and only received three pieces of gear after running heroic dungeons back to back for hours on end. Doing more difficult content did not reward me better than doing easier content. I got two pieces of mythic warforged gear and I did normal mode dungeons to get them because a stupid world quest procced. I know raids and rated BGs aren't even out but I get the feeling that I'll be doing rated battlegrounds and be rewarded nothing more than artifact power from the BG and will be getting my "PvP gear" from world quests.
As a trial account toon, character progression is closer to how things used to be; you run a dungeon and you get gear drops, you do pvp and you purchase gear with the currency you get from said pvp. After months, years even, of players telling Blizzard how much they dislike the amount of RNG in the game, they have decided to ignore us and double-down on RNG in order to keep players subbed longer and try to hook players with an addictive gambling-like system. If you're tired of all the RNG at end-game and can't justify paying for that sytem, then this bracket offers some escape from that. The only thing that is similar is the http://www.wowhead.com/item=135539/crate-of-battlefield-goods that now drops as a reward for winning a random battleground. There is much less RNG at this level and it feels so much better to play.
#2: Artifact weapons seemed cool at first but they actually suck......does anyone actually think it's a good idea to have gated specializations? Because that's basically what artifact weapons are; a way to make people play longer just to gain artifact power in order to change specs. I played for 6-7 hours just to get an extra 5% damage to my spell woohoo. In the past, if you played for 5-6 hours trying to make your character stronger, would you would most certainly see a larger increase than 5% to one spell; you would see an increase in your overall dmg.
Again, trial accounts don't have the burden of gated specs. If you want to swap specs, the only thing you need is the gear for that spec which is how it should be. If you were to invest 5-6 hours of game-time in to a 20, you would almost certainly be fully geared and in BGs/Dungeons having fun.
#3: They flat out lied about class order halls not being garrisons 2.0. Remember hearing that your followers would be sent out to discover something for you to do? Yeah, those are rare missions, the rest of them are for artifact power, gold, or follower XP and gear for your followers. The only reason they kept this crap around is so that you can download their mobile app so they can make more money. Everyone made fun of the garrison in WoD saying that it was like a crappy cellphone game, well they took that criticism and turned it in to an actuall cellphone game. I almost forgot to mention that you will need to raise your followers ilvl to 850 before you can get into blizzard's next mega-dungeon: the return to Karazhan. Blizzard stated that the order hall mission table would not be mandatory for content. They lied......just like they did in WoD.
#4: The only good end-game zone is Surumar......everything else was nice looking aside from the blatant copy/paste of older zones like Gilneas in Azsuna. I only felt immersed with the story in Surumar because Blizz actually did those quests right, well almost right. 25-50 rep per quest? Oh but I get more artifact power....yay. What a shame that this beautifully made zone has such underwhelming rewards for being there not to mention that it's mandatory for unlocking several instances.
Why pay a subscription for world-content that isn't much better than the content you get in your character's starting-zone? You could be doing something similar for free.
#5: You don't have to grind all the way up to level 110 to get to the "good stuff"
It's much less tedious to level up to 20 and start progression than it is to level all the way up to 110 only to be gated by a new sytem that slows your character progression to a crawl. Many 110s are not playing alts at all due to how gated character progression is now.
#6. You won't have that many abilities at max lvl either...
One of the criticisms of twinks in the past is that they're not as skilled as max level players because there aren't as many abilities at level 20. Well, in Legion many classes have more spells available at level 20 than ever before and as someone who has played several high-level toons this expansion, they don't really have that much more to work with anymore.
#7. You're not paying for Blizzard's laziness......well, maybe laziness isn't the right word, but it seems to me that all Blizzard is capable of doing these days is recreating other games with a few little differences and what Legion seems to be is the product of them trying to recreate WoW.....it's like there's a bunch of money hungry new guys on the team or something(sarcasm).
I'm not paying for this crap. And I can understand why you wouldn't either. I'll just work on getting those sweet PvP titles at lower lvls like Conqeuror, of the Horde and the coveted Bloodthirsty title. I'm going back to how I started playing this game, as a f2p twink.
Perhaps someone else would like to list their reasons for playing @20? I realize my list is mostly reasons not to play end-game, but the main one is that It feels fundamentally wrong to pay them for ruining my favorite game.
#1: Character progression and the means of said progression.....after hitting 110 on my lock I was able to see pretty quickly that doing dungeons rarely rewarded gear and that doing PvP rarely rewarded gear. I got most of my gear from world quests which are all mind-numbingly easy. I literally gained 20 item levels in two days and only received three pieces of gear after running heroic dungeons back to back for hours on end. Doing more difficult content did not reward me better than doing easier content. I got two pieces of mythic warforged gear and I did normal mode dungeons to get them because a stupid world quest procced. I know raids and rated BGs aren't even out but I get the feeling that I'll be doing rated battlegrounds and be rewarded nothing more than artifact power from the BG and will be getting my "PvP gear" from world quests.
As a trial account toon, character progression is closer to how things used to be; you run a dungeon and you get gear drops, you do pvp and you purchase gear with the currency you get from said pvp. After months, years even, of players telling Blizzard how much they dislike the amount of RNG in the game, they have decided to ignore us and double-down on RNG in order to keep players subbed longer and try to hook players with an addictive gambling-like system. If you're tired of all the RNG at end-game and can't justify paying for that sytem, then this bracket offers some escape from that. The only thing that is similar is the http://www.wowhead.com/item=135539/crate-of-battlefield-goods that now drops as a reward for winning a random battleground. There is much less RNG at this level and it feels so much better to play.
#2: Artifact weapons seemed cool at first but they actually suck......does anyone actually think it's a good idea to have gated specializations? Because that's basically what artifact weapons are; a way to make people play longer just to gain artifact power in order to change specs. I played for 6-7 hours just to get an extra 5% damage to my spell woohoo. In the past, if you played for 5-6 hours trying to make your character stronger, would you would most certainly see a larger increase than 5% to one spell; you would see an increase in your overall dmg.
Again, trial accounts don't have the burden of gated specs. If you want to swap specs, the only thing you need is the gear for that spec which is how it should be. If you were to invest 5-6 hours of game-time in to a 20, you would almost certainly be fully geared and in BGs/Dungeons having fun.
#3: They flat out lied about class order halls not being garrisons 2.0. Remember hearing that your followers would be sent out to discover something for you to do? Yeah, those are rare missions, the rest of them are for artifact power, gold, or follower XP and gear for your followers. The only reason they kept this crap around is so that you can download their mobile app so they can make more money. Everyone made fun of the garrison in WoD saying that it was like a crappy cellphone game, well they took that criticism and turned it in to an actuall cellphone game. I almost forgot to mention that you will need to raise your followers ilvl to 850 before you can get into blizzard's next mega-dungeon: the return to Karazhan. Blizzard stated that the order hall mission table would not be mandatory for content. They lied......just like they did in WoD.
#4: The only good end-game zone is Surumar......everything else was nice looking aside from the blatant copy/paste of older zones like Gilneas in Azsuna. I only felt immersed with the story in Surumar because Blizz actually did those quests right, well almost right. 25-50 rep per quest? Oh but I get more artifact power....yay. What a shame that this beautifully made zone has such underwhelming rewards for being there not to mention that it's mandatory for unlocking several instances.
Why pay a subscription for world-content that isn't much better than the content you get in your character's starting-zone? You could be doing something similar for free.
#5: You don't have to grind all the way up to level 110 to get to the "good stuff"
It's much less tedious to level up to 20 and start progression than it is to level all the way up to 110 only to be gated by a new sytem that slows your character progression to a crawl. Many 110s are not playing alts at all due to how gated character progression is now.
#6. You won't have that many abilities at max lvl either...
One of the criticisms of twinks in the past is that they're not as skilled as max level players because there aren't as many abilities at level 20. Well, in Legion many classes have more spells available at level 20 than ever before and as someone who has played several high-level toons this expansion, they don't really have that much more to work with anymore.
#7. You're not paying for Blizzard's laziness......well, maybe laziness isn't the right word, but it seems to me that all Blizzard is capable of doing these days is recreating other games with a few little differences and what Legion seems to be is the product of them trying to recreate WoW.....it's like there's a bunch of money hungry new guys on the team or something(sarcasm).
I'm not paying for this crap. And I can understand why you wouldn't either. I'll just work on getting those sweet PvP titles at lower lvls like Conqeuror, of the Horde and the coveted Bloodthirsty title. I'm going back to how I started playing this game, as a f2p twink.
Perhaps someone else would like to list their reasons for playing @20? I realize my list is mostly reasons not to play end-game, but the main one is that It feels fundamentally wrong to pay them for ruining my favorite game.
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