Unlabelled World of Warcraft - Thursday Loot Thread

7/20/2018 06:15:00 am
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World of Warcraft - Thursday Loot Thread

Thursday Loot Thread

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 03:12 AM PDT

Let us know what you got this week! Achievements, meta-achievements, mounts, pets, actual loot drops, gold thresholds, or other things that you can say, "Oooh, I got this" and be excited about. Post them here! Screenshots are encouraged but not necessary.

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In response to Ion's request for feedback on a Level Squish: Yes, a level squish would be very welcome, thank you!

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 11:47 AM PDT

I wouldn't feel like I lost power. I'd adjust, just like I adjust to stat squishes, and having to collect 10 poops early in a new expansion.

Please squish the levels, Ion!

Update:

  • Feel free to also cut down the amount of time it takes to level. 20-30 hours seems reasonable to reach 60 after the squish.

  • Introduce some form of Prestige Levels in new expansions so the cap remains at 60. New characters would only ever have to reach level 60 in order to play the new content, but they could still keep progressing once there.

submitted by /u/gustavposts
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We need to stop telling people to quit. Seriously.

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 04:13 AM PDT

As a community we really need to stop telling people to quit the game if they say something negative. You want to talk about toxicity? It's honestly off putting how often people tell you to quit because you're criticizing the game. It's everywhere. It's on the WoW forums, MMOchamp, reddit. I played on the beta and if you post that something is broken people rush to defend the game even when you're just reporting an issue.

And the downvote button isn't a "I disagree with this" button. We as a community need to be better. You want this game to do well and be around for as long as possible? Stop telling everyone to quit it isn't healthy for the game.

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The solution to levelling is simple: reduce the amount of XP needed per level (not at lower levels though) and place Outland, Northrend, Pandaria and Draenor in the same bracket, letting people choose their favourite adventure and thus making the experience both more fun and potentially more varied.

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 04:53 AM PDT

Hi, based on a few very interesting discussions and comments in this thread, here's my full stance on levelling (tweaked a couple of times):

  • We need a Level Squish (level 60 seems appropriate and iconic).
  • We need an XP Reduction to those levels; in my view, roughly 20-30 hours should be enough time to reach max level if you know your game. (However, I think there is room for a slower experience in the form of Timewalking Quests, in case you really want to soak in a particular expansion and its stories.)
  • We ought to divide content up into three brackets:
  1. The starter experience from level 1-10, which means beginning your journey in Elwynn forest, Mulgore, Durotar, etc. is mandatory. Every good story has a beginning.
  2. The adventure between level 11-60, which entails the rest of Azeroth, Outland, Northrend, Pandaria, Draenor and the Broken Isles. You may choose whichever continent you like to level up on. Once a continent becomes legacy content, it joins this level bracket.
  3. The heroic content leaves traditional levels behind and instead follows Ion's philosophy on expansion-specific systems (like talents and now also professions); each expansion after BfA has its own progression as you quest through it. Let's call it Heroic Levels for now. You earn 10 Heroic Levels in 9.0 in order to reach its endgame. Once 9.0 is legacy, it joins the adventure level bracket of 11-60 and simply becomes an additional option for you when deciding where to level up a new character. So a character at endgame will always be Level 60 and have 10 Heroic Levels for current content.

Original post and first edit below:

I've been thinking of all sorts of whacky solutions, including tokens and buffs and whatnot. But at the end of the day, the problems are that it drags out too long and that parts of the content you're forced to experience along the way is very boring to some people. Some of us could level for days on Pandaria, while others can't stand the look of it.

You could also argue that the lack of rewards between levels is a major issue these days since there are now more levels than ever to get through, but also fewer skills and talents than ever to hand out. But I believe that this would be less of an issue if levelling was simply faster. Sure, handing out a small loot bag for every level wouldn't hurt.

1st edit:

I've been chatting with some of you in the comments, and I've come to realise that I think levelling should be drastically sped up. If you think about it, games like Diablo or Overwatch are successful because you can jump in and out quickly and still feel like you made progress. There's instant gratification, and even 30 minutes of play feels worthwhile.

In WoW, levelling has become such a drag that even if you should spend an entire evening questing, at the end of it you still wouldn't feel like you accomplished much. That makes us all feel bad. I would rather see that 1-110 took you like 20 hours, so on avg. about 10-15 minutes per level. Yes, I know this seems radical for WoW. But in the end I think people investing time while playing all their alts at max level is better than players pulling their hair out while levelling. It's a good thing if endgame becomes accessible to more people, not a bad thing. Similarly, it's a good thing if people feel like they can change course and try a new character for raiding in the middle of an expansion, not a bad thing.

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So the game just let me use my level 100 boost on a Demon Hunter and I start will all Rogue gear equipped??

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 09:08 AM PDT

Wish we could actually use Spear+Shield just like these SW Infantries

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 05:52 AM PDT

It's only logical.

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 06:34 AM PDT

Even the Valkyr drew these in school

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 01:59 AM PDT

"I'm getting WoD vibes"

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 01:30 AM PDT

Level 110 mobs have the same amount of health and deal the same amount of damage as level 60 mobs. What the fuck, Blizzard?

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 09:02 AM PDT

7.2 Class Questline is impossible due to the prepatch.

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 05:30 AM PDT

The part where you receive your order hall questline (immediately after "In Dire Need") is impossible to start because the quests only appear if you have 35 or higher artifact rank. Since artifact tanks are gone, the quests simply never appear. I submitted a bug report but somehow I feel like this won't be fixed before BFA unless it receives serious attention.

Edit: After reading the comments here, it seems a huge amount of old content is broken and Blizzard's plan seems to be to just slowly fix things as people discover bugs. This is going to be a frustrating expac for people who like to do old content.

This is why WoW needs a complete refresh. There's hundreds of thousands of man hours of work worth of dead old expansion content in the game right now. The game needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.

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Is that Balancing?

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 04:13 AM PDT

Glimpse into Blizzard’s working environment.

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 11:25 AM PDT

I know there is a lot of concern over the current state of the game with the pre patch and with the expansion coming out. My best friend works at Blizzard and this past Tuesday was one of the more stressful patch days they've had. He was at the office for more than 12 hours and each day since has been very similar.

The people behind this game are genuinely working hard to fix the issues and get things ready.

I realize you pay to play this game and that you deserve to have a great experience. If you aren't the type of person to yell at flight attendants or servers in restaurants then keep that in mind when you comment about the game. Blizzard's staff genuinely wants community involvement and feedback, especially when it comes to bugs or problems. That same feedback can be given without demeaning or demoralizing comments about the people behind the game.

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Im a new player. The timeline is a little weird.

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 05:04 AM PDT

Blizzard, the 8.0 patch is a level of quality that should be below your standards.

Posted: 18 Jul 2018 05:15 PM PDT

I totally understand that these things happen, but with the size and scope of your organization and the WoW team, I am disappointed with how poorly things were transitioned from your development of the pre-patch to live. It's important to recognize what this lack of execution/quality communicates about your team's dedication to excellent work as well as the WoW brand in general. There have been a lot of comments here the last day and I would like to provide a list of issues in a single place. Thanks for your hard work and I'm looking forward to BFA. Since you've already acknowledged server issues and guild calendar/communities, I haven't referenced them here. I'll update this list as I see more.

Scaling Issues:

Leveling Issues:

Graphical or Weird Bugs:

Broken Items/Quests/Achievements/Class Hall:

Disappointing Decisions/Decisions you could have over-communicated or asked for player feedback on:

All in all, I get it -- there were always be bugs. Right now though the game does not feel like it's in a very stable state to the point that it wasn't hard to find these examples. I also think its a little concerning that this subreddit isn't inundated with very positive feedback around the patch which should be communicative of the level of quality you've delivered. Obviously there will be a lot of excitement when BFA launches but currently I'm disappointed. I have a lot of confidence that many of these things will get resolved over time, but I hope that timeliness is sooner rather than later. Thanks.

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It's now possible to reach Exalted with Gelkis and Magram Clans in 8.0!

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 05:48 AM PDT

Noticed that the shadow of the corrupted fire hawk shows only the skeleton

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 04:52 AM PDT

Not much foresight on his part

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 12:44 PM PDT

This subreddit every time a patch launch isn't immaculate

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 06:53 AM PDT

Transmogged Cloak Model Changed - Demonic Gladiator's Cloak. Why?

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 09:14 AM PDT

It seems like Pre-Patch removed the last of its kind in Thousand Needles :(

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 04:56 AM PDT

How the current leveling experience negatively impacts WoW, and some proposed solutions for all players.

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 04:01 AM PDT

Since patch 8.0 dropped a few days ago, there have been quite a few threads created to discuss, lament, and decry the exacerbated tedium of the current leveling experience. I wanted to throw my 2 cents into the ring as to why the leveling experience in WoW has been problematic not just since the prepatch dropped, but since Blizzard implemented their changes to the leveling experience in 7.3.5. I also have a few ideas on how to find a way to improve the leveling experience for players who play WoW for the endgame, while still maintaining an interesting and engaging leveling experience for players who enjoy that element of the game, and (I would argue more importantly) new players.

Before that, however, I wanted to respond to a few arguments I've seen cited often in the threads in the past few days:

"It's part of the squish process. This happened in WoD, it'll get patched in a few days."

  • My concern doesn't lie with the prepatch state of the leveling process; the stat squish has made the leveling process worse and thus thrust it into the limelight, but the experience has been lackluster for a while before that. I agree that the current issues brought on by the stat squish will likely be resolved in due time, but I fear the underlying issues with the leveling experience will not.

"People are just upset because you can't just faceroll mobs anymore, now it's actually challenging."

  • I've seen this one a lot, and I'd like to note two things:

  1. In my opinion, the leveling experience is problematic due to multiple factors, not just the ease with which enemies die. I'll get more into these in a moment, but suffice it to say I don't have any problem with mobs taking more than 1 attack to kill.

  2. That said, being forced to cast smite/cobra shot/frostbolt/etc. 3-7 more times to kill a mob does not make the gameplay more challenging, or interesting. It only makes it take longer. The Sequelitis video about Ocarina of Time explains this really well (skip to 8:20-9:29 for the relevant clip), but I'll paraphrase here: making enemies take longer to kill does not inherently make them harder. A longer fight only creates the illusion of difficulty because you've spent more time on the ordeal than you had previously. Does this mean all fights should be short? Not at all! It means that the time it takes to kill an enemy is not itself an accurate measure of difficulty.

"The slower leveling forces you to get used to your class and get familiar with it"

  • Not without most of your class abilities or your mastery you don't. I agree that the 90-110 range allows you to familiarize yourself with your spec's flow, but before that you don't have the tools in your kit necessary to really get a feel for how the class plays. That's to say nothing of the fact that fighting mobs in the world and running dungeons and raids are wildly different tactically and mechanically.

"Well I love the new leveling experience, it feels more engaging and like it really means something to level a character again."

  • This is something I've seen a lot of as well, and I'm going to combine it with the "this is how it was in Vanilla" sentiment. My response to this is: that's awesome! I'm glad you're enjoying it. However, it's clear that at minimum a vocal minority (and more likely an increasingly vocal and sizable portion) of WoW's playerbase doesn't enjoy it. That said, I don't want to rain on your parade; part of what makes WoW such a wonderful game is how much fun it can be for people who enjoy wildly different kinds of gameplay. I'm by no means suggesting we go back to the way things were before, because that was also a lackluster leveling experience, it just had the upside for endgame-oriented players of being relatively brief with heirlooms and dungeons. I'm saying that considering how fundamental an aspect of the game leveling up is, it should be more universally appealing than it currently is.

With all that said, let's talk about my problems with the leveling experience. The leveling experience in WoW is, in my opinion, lackluster due to three primary factors:

  1. A lack of complex and interesting gameplay for a majority of your leveling experience (i.e. playing a fraction of a spec for a majority of your leveling experience, or the "press 2 buttons ad nauseum" problem). The classes in WoW are balanced and tuned around the endgame content of the current expansion, in most (if not all) cases the endgame PvE content. As the game has gone on and the level cap has continued to get higher and higher, the acquisition of core class and spec abilities has been further and further spread out. With the pruning of class abilities in recent years, this has been exacerbated to the point that for many specs, you spend a large majority of your journey to 110 playing an incomplete version of your spec, picking up components only sparingly. This isn't a universal issue across all specs, but often it can feel as if you're mostly pressing one or two, maybe three buttons repeatedly, until an enemy dies, often with minimal interaction with other abilities or aspects of your spec.

  2. A lack of noticeable progression (leveling up doesn't actually do anything tangible for you more often than not, and this diminishes a sense of accomplishment). With the level cap being 110, and the current pruned abilities and talent system, there simply aren't enough tools in the toolkit to give something to a player every level. This isn't an issue in and of itself, but when specs or even whole classes can go anywhere from 5-15 levels before getting something substantial or impactful from leveling up, it's hard not to see the mechanic of levels as an arbitrary amount of busywork. Ironically, the introduction of scaling zones can make this feeling even more harshly felt, as now hitting certain level thresholds within a zone's range doesn't make that zone's mobs any easier, which can deprive the player of a sense of growing power. I want to make clear that I'm not saying scaling zones are bad, as I love the freedom they give when deciding where to level; just that in its current iteration, there are too many levels on the journey to 110 that don't give the player any sense of progression or growth, or a reward of any kind.

  3. The overall time investment (it currently takes much longer to level than it did before, even if you level with a mind towards efficiency). Right now the prospect of getting a new character from level 1 to level 110 is, frankly, daunting. I get anxious just thinking about it. Not because it's difficult and I don't think I'm up to the task, but because I know it's going to take a long time to achieve, regardless of my skill level. I've been leveling a Nightborne mage in preparation for BfA, and while I haven't been striving for maximum possible efficiency, I am trying to go at a brisk pace to hit max level ASAP, and am an experienced enough player to know how to maximize my experience gain. As of posting this I've played just under 32 hours on that mage (call it 29 when taking into account idling and some mining I did on a whim), and I'm level 60. While I'm sure it's possible to level faster than I'm doing, I argue that given the amount of effort I'm putting into streamlining the leveling process (not reading quest text, using heirlooms, grouping quests as efficiently as I can), it still shouldn't have taken me this long to get just over halfway to the level cap.

This wouldn't be an issue but for the previous 2 factors I've mentioned. In fact, any one or even two of these issues wouldn't be that pronounced on their own, but together they amplify one another. All 3 of these factors coalesce into a scenario where you're playing a class that isn't whole and can often be unengaging, without a consistent sense of progress or growth, save for the growing understanding that you're going to be doing this for a good long while before you attain max level and, by extension, the entirety of the gameplay experience for your class. I also need to point out that this is based on the experience of a player who's intimately familiar with the game, and is using heirlooms. I don't have the rings, so a total of 45% increased experience.

If it takes that long for me, how long must it take for a player new to the game?

Since the leveling changes came in 7.3.5, I've introduced a few friends to the game, and almost all of them burnt out before they hit level 40, citing that the game felt too slow and boring. Some of this I can attribute to just not being interested in the kind of game WoW is, but I can't help but feel disingenuous recommending this game to someone when I myself don't enjoy what is the core gameplay loop for a majority of the levels your character attains.

So I've talked at length about how the leveling experience is lackluster, but I have no intention of making this just a rant thread. So, here's what I think the solution to this problem is, and some possible ways to get there.

In an ideal world, I think the leveling experience should be fun and engaging, while being semi-optional to players who have already achieved max level. This way everyone gets what they want: new players and players who enjoy the journey from 1-Max can do so in a challenging and engaging way, while existing players who are just leveling an alt and want to get straight to the current content can expedite the process in a reasonable manner.

With that in mind, I think the following solution would solve virtually all three of the above issues with the leveling experience:

Level squish.

It's not a new concept, but I do think it's a deceptively simple and effective solution. I'd propose the level breakdown be as follows:

  • 1-30: "Classic" content, including Cata-revamped zones

  • 30-40: BC/Wrath

  • 40-50: Cata/Mists

  • 50-55: WoD

  • 55-60: Legion

  • 60-70: BfA

The reason I specifically separate WoD and Legion is because while previous expansions have arguably been relatively self-contained in their plot, WoD is where the trend of expansions directly leading into one another plot-wise starts, and so I think it's worth not incentivizing the player to choose one or the other, as both WoD and Legion will be relevant precursors to some of the events in BfA. I don't count Mists in this trend as War Crimes is where the transitional event happens.

In addition, I'd propose that talents be given every 10 levels, as opposed to every 15(ish). With those two core changes, the number of level-ups between new abilities or talents would be greatly reduced, which would both increase class complexity sooner, as well as provide more frequent rewards and a more consistent sense of character progression.

Furthermore, the reduced level cap would allow for a faster leveling experience overall, provided experience requirements were adjusted accordingly.

Honestly, this is by far the cleanest and most elegant solution I can think of, and I don't think anything else would come close in terms of addressing the current issues with the base leveling experience. However, that still leaves the issue of having to level a character for the 4th, 5th, or 12th time. For this, I propose one or both of the following:

  1. Buff the exp gain passives of the core 5 heirloom items. Note that I'm not saying make the items themselves stronger in terms of stats, but make wearing heirlooms more impactful in terms of time needed to level. Additionally, I would change all heirlooms to require max level to purchase. This would enable players who have already leveled to max to choose to expedite the process of leveling if they so choose, but would still force a new player to experience the level grind at least once before making that choice.

  2. Institute level "checkpoints". For instance, once you've leveled a character to 30, when making a new character you can then choose to create that character at level 30. For this to function well and to prevent a surge of max level players with no knowledge of their class, I'd say the highest checkpoint would have to be at least an expansion before the current content (so if this were to be put into place for BfA, the highest benchmark you could achieve would be 100, or 55 in a level-squish world). This would allow players to bypass leveling content if they so choose while still requiring they experience it at least once. This system would also have the added benefit of allowing players to dynamically change their mind about what kind of character they want to level; if I hit level 40 on my warrior and decide that I really want to try healing but I still want to jump into the story of Cata or Mists, I could decide to bench my warrior and just roll up a priest at 40, which would allow me to try out a new class and playstyle without sacrificing the narrative I've been enjoying.

It's worth noting that the level squish, as well as the two ideas above, could function both together and separately; both suggestions for expediting the leveling process could be implemented without making any substantial changes to the way leveling has been since 7.3.5, and the level squish could easily reduce the time taken to level to a point where the current heirlooms would provide enough of a boost to make the process feel properly streamlined. Again, these are just some ideas that I think would improve the leveling experience for some players without jeopardizing the enjoyment of others.

In conclusion, thanks for reading. I want to say that although I'm frustrated with the state of the leveling system in its current state, I absolutely adore this game, and want to see it continue to be a fun and engaging experience for players of all walks of life. In the spirit of this, I'd like to take this moment to ask that we try and refrain from taking sides against each other and getting nasty in these discussions, and instead focus on sharing our thoughts constructively. We all clearly love and care about this game, and there's no reason we can't save our bloodlust for the Battle for Azeroth.

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Golden Belf eyes still emit green glow

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 05:24 AM PDT

Devs Just Confirmed that the 11 Levels Required for the Transmog Raiding. They said this has always been the case.

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 11:17 AM PDT

My best friend’s main is Alliance and mine is Horde. This is how friendships are destroyed.

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 09:51 AM PDT

The single most insane change in this build is the removal of the two chat scroll arrows.

Posted: 19 Jul 2018 06:14 AM PDT

Like, what kind of sociopath is looking at the UI and thinks, "man, these buttons. Fuck these buttons. I'll remove them and just leave blank space!"

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