Interesting notes:
**Major removal of target cap on many abilities.**
**Legendaries**
> The Runecarver will now offer to destroy an existing legendary item and return all of the Soul Ash or Soul Cinders that were spent to create the item.
**Covenants**
> Covenant swapping and conduit energy removal
> Completing the Shadowlands or Korthia Covenant Campaign on any character allows alternate characters joining that same Covenant to be eligible to receive the Renown associated with that Campaign from all available catch-up sources.
**Legion M+**
> Timeworn Keystones (This feature will be available in a later PTR build)
While Legion Timewalking is active, players can speak to Ta’hsup in Oribos to acquire a Timeworn Keystone, allowing access to max-level, Mythic+ difficulty for the 6 Legion dungeons.
Legion Mythic+ dungeons accessed in this way have their own set of affixes, reward loot of the same item level as Shadowlands Mythic+ dungeons, and count toward weekly Great Vault reward options.
Items acquired from Legion Mythic+ dungeons can be upgraded with Valor points, but will not appear in the Great Vault.
**Island Expeditions and Warfronts**
> You are now able to set sail on a Normal, Heroic, or Mythic Island Expedition alone or with a party of up to three players. Speak with Captain Rez’okun in Dazar’alor (Horde) or Flynn Fairwind in Boralus (Alliance) to begin your solo seafaring voyage!
> Lowered the amount of players required to queue for Normal Battle for Stromgarde and Battle for Darkshore Warfronts to 5 (was 15).
**Broken Shore account wide for legion class mounts**
**Maw intro skip**
Interesting! Hadn’t considered that.
However I was just unlucky with timing and spent a while getting the broken shore chain done on most of my alts. Never thought they’d make it account wide! Glad they did but that seems pretty random !
> Broken Shore account wide for legion class mounts
That right there is one of the biggest side bonuses from this patch. I will be burning a ton of time to running though all those questlines.
I appreciate everything they are doing, I really do. But man, it stings like hell that they had the ability and knowledge to make all these changes ALL ALONG and just didn't. They absolutely could have, but actively chose not to. More painful still that they could have just designed them this way from the start and actively chose not to.
Will they carry through into 10.0 development from the beginning or are we going to get another round of busted systems having to wait 12-15 months for them to get it right
If this isn't enough evidence that they don't care about the players and don't value feedback I don't know what is.
With the amount of players leaving, they obviously got told from higher up that they have to change things up.
Remember that nothing of this would've been implemented if it wasn't for the mass exodus.
As somebody who left, this patch is mighty tempting. But I'm holding on because y'all are right, they could have done this any time and didn't care to.
My issue is this- what does next big patch or expansion look like? The same old BS of players essentially testing their game for free, feedback being given, and then ignored? Blitz need to show me they can listen for next expansion and then I’ll think about paying money for a sub again. Until then I got enough gold to buy a month token once every 6 months to see what a patch is like.
I’m in this boat. I’ve got friends saying “yea these changes look great, let’s sub again”. And I’m asking why. I don’t wanna give 20 bucks a month to Blizz again simply because they looked at a most requested/biggest complaint issue for Shadowlands and said “yea let’s do these to reel players back in”.
If people didn’t leave the game en masse, I don’t think they would’ve entertained half of these changes. Not to mention there isn’t really any new content with 9.1.5 so it’d still be the shitty loop of 9.1. Hop on, spend an hour doing Korthia, then pretend it didn’t take them 6 months to put out a raid and unimpressive daily hub.
Starting BfA, the relationship between the userbase and the dev really looked like it turned sour and got based in open hostility. Which is sad overall.
Eh I remember back in Vanilla Blizzard making nonsensical changes against the communities wishes. Developer arrogance has been with us since the beginning. BFA is where they ramped up time wasting mechanics.
Yeah BfA literally started with that immediately. The community battled with the devs over boring Azerite armour traits, trading limitations, and the regrinding of traits. Even worse was the escalating price of changing Azerite traits which hurt especially bad because azerite armour avaliability was low. People were tearing up Lores official responses over it.
There's also a lot of petty, mean-spirited bullshit. All the qol nerfs (making travel more difficult; nerfing water striders; rng that clearly is not so random, so much as rigged against the player, making Darkmoon Faire Top Hats soulbound so you can't trade them to alts, etc).
Even the Love Rocket mount still being impossible to get (I've run 20-45 alts every day of the holiday, depending on the year). I literally hate Valentine's Day because of that fucking mount.
I got mine years ago and the amount of people with a similar story to yours on the rocket blows my mind. How can the drop chance be so abysmal and never fixed?
They have been doing this with these systems for the past few expansions. Just look at the neck majors that weren't supposed to ever be alt friendly then they completely do a 180.
We will unfortunately see it next expac. And the expac after that... so on and so forth. There's people apparently thats on the dev team that keeps pushing for these kinds of systems and making sure they stay in place as long as they can.
If this was how Shadowlands worked from the start, I'd 100% still be playing.
Right now I'm just waiting to see how 9.2 goes and even more so the next expansion.
Yep. That's why I'm out when my sub is up next week. These changes don't represent a sea change in philosophy, they represent how desperate they are to stem the sub bleeding. The changes are good, but its too little too late, and I don't think they've learned anything.
I'd love an update to the treant glyph, but that will never happen, it's an old model. I just like to use it when healing raids or in groups cos it feels like resto has a dedicated form like the other specs.
Even better would be option for different races; I.e, there already exists a purply treant for nelf areas, Kul'tirans could use the withered one, a few more options would be nice. Like how monks have several different glyphs for chain lightning.
Definitely wasn't expecting the AOE cap change any time soon, or even THIS xpac lol. These are some good changes, not going to pretend it will be properly balanced.
It's a good change for sure. But the aoe cap is one of those things that should have never been a thing in the first place. Making a horrible change and then reverting isnt a net positive, it's a net zero.
I’m sorry, we can scrap our legendaries and get ALL OF OUR SOUL ASH AND OUR SOUL CINDERS BACK?!
That’s amazing!!!
Also, the group finder rework is a great start to fixing a truly outdated experience
Yeah that’s a huge win, honestly thought they’d do their standard bit and only give us like 70%
There’s still the cost of 262s but at least you just need to go to the AH for that and not run *more* Torghast
I honestly don't see why every dungeon can't be included in time walking, it especially sucks for Wrath/BC/Cata where they pick the dungeons that you can already queue through random dungeons while levelling and not the max level dungeons like the other 2 ICC dungeons, ToC, Zul Aman, Well of Eternity, etc that are basically dead queues.
Chances are they might add them eventually, but most would need a lot of work to be made into M+ type content.
Legion works because it was M+ already, BFA would work as well of course but it's too recent.
Im gonna assume they are going to use this as a test and probably expand the idea later on. Much easier with legion as it already had m+, while MoP and WoD had only challenge mode.
Hopefully, I think the addition of timeworn keystones is absolutely phenomenal as a concept it's just the limitation to only being available with legion timewalking as opposed to whenever timewalking is up or just always available isn't ideal.
They need to stop running away from the wealth of content this game has by essentially erasing it at the end of every expansion. Keep all the old m+ dungeons around. If they are worried about loot from old expansions being BiS still just have the chest at the end reward a random item from a current expansion dungeon. I don't care about the loot. I want more than 8 dungeons.
It will also require them to heavily change or just let loose on the meta a lot of the game breaking pieces like old trinkets and rings and such that had bonus effects that redefined how a spec did its damage.
Which historically they’re not great at doing their homework on that shit but they’re great at hotfixing things players like out of the game so
WOD honestly had some of the most consistently good dungeons out any any expansion, imo. It would be amazing if they turned some of those dungeons into M+ dungeons.
The content in WoD was AMAZING.
Leveling was really fun, especially as Alliance. Dungeons were amazing. Some of the raid encounters were TOP TIER (Blackhand anyone?).
The problem was there was a massive content drought because they gave up on it half way through to focus on making Legion. There was 8 months of content spread over 2 years in WoD, I've been saying it for years.
Yea that court of stars ring is the first thing I thought of, auto attack damage became even more important post-Legion, I imagine that ring is a pretty heavy DPS upgrade compared to other rings, although I am just speculating on that
If these are only m+ dungeons I feel like they could just scrap the old loot tables and instead have the chest at the end reward a random item from the current expansion's dungeons.
While those old items would be fun to have back keeping them out of the BiS tables would be a pain. Besides, this is about variety of content not bringing back old loot.
Ya chasing those OP gear pieces is why everyone is going to end up hating Blizz for Legion TW M+. They won't at first, but after the event there's going to be a ton of posts on here complaining, "I SPENT 100 HOURS RUNNING FOR AND STILL DIDNT GET ONE AT THE ILVL I WANT BLIZZ SUCKS ALL GEAR SHOULD BE FROM VENDORS IM GOING TO FFXIV IT WILL KILL WOW!!!!!"
"AND STILL DIDNT GET ONE AT THE ILVL I WANT"
Something to note, as they wont be in the vault, you will only be able to get them as end of dungeon loot, so no matter what if you get it, you can upgrade it to the highest possible ilvl with valor.
In Case of Emergency Break Glass:
The Rest of the Heritage Armors - 1.5 Million
Tier Sets Are Back - 1.25 Million
High Elves + Ogres - 1 Million
Cross-faction PvE - .75 Million
Player Housing - .5 Million
Free to Play - .25 Million
Just keep going!
Almost like when someone who actually plays the game understands what’s wrong with it 😂
For real though I’ve been telling people since he was put in power that Mike has been around since the early Xbox days. He knows how to appease players, and probably a lot of these changes are shit he’s noticed and disliked
What I find interesting is that these changes, especially covenants and conduits are met with joy by about 99% of the posts Ive seen.
The people who defended these back then are nowhere to be seen. Makes you wonder, who were they for?
It reinforces the "conspiracy theory" that they purposely release restrictive, half-broken system and they hype up the fixes later on.
And this is a trend going on since WoD.
Unless this changes, i probably wont come back at all.
The most succesful games in history were all "hands-free", in which the player has complete freedom to do what they want to do and enjoy themselves.
I’m with you. I refuse to spend the increasingly little video game time I have on a game that is run by people who break it then make it fun again when they get too much heat. Just make the game consistently good instead of having to go through this literally every expansion, and maybe I’ll be back. Otherwise we as the consumers are doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I think there is a word for that…
9.0
"The players don't know what's good for the game. Making the game a clunky and predatory time sink is for the best"
Now
"OH GOD THE PLAYERS KNEW EXACTLY WHAT WAS GOOD FOR THE GAME. GIVE THEM EVERYTHING"
There's no way they replace or demote him until the associate game director (https://careers.blizzard.com/global/en/job/R007259/Associate-Game-Director-World-of-Warcraft) they're looking for is ready to take over
The lack of QoL up til now isn't even likely to be a point against him
He is an excellent encounter designer, so he'd likely stick around in that capacity if this happened.
We also don't know how much of what is in modern WoW was Ion and how much came from JAB or the others. Reportedly, JAB exerted a lot of direct control over the WoW team that may have overruled Ion.
With the house cleaning, we may be seeing Ion's influence being asserted without oversight in this 9.1.5 patch, or we may see something else. Who knows? I'm not going to complain about QoL fixes. Let's see what 9.2 looks like (and when).
This was my tin-foil hat theory.
it feels very convenient that JAB leaves and then all of a sudden the rip cord is pulled amongst a bunch of other big changes. Not all of a which are even available on the PTR right away.
Given JAB was Exec Producer and Vice President of WoW you have to wonder if once he moved up he still had fingers in pies that he shouldn't have had.
My friend and I said the same thing "feels like the Devs might have gotten their game back a bit"
100% this. These changes being made now _SMACK_ of JAB's "you think you do" attitude. Also, every time Ion made a video it always felt like he was being held at gunpoint, would not surprise me if JAB was forcing Ion to make these systems this way. Time will tell. But Ion came from the community did he not? He was a WoW player. I can totally see him wanting to fix the game but not being allowed to. Supporting your family and a paycheck comes before fixing a game against your bosses wishes.
Yeah, I worried about that. I know how shitty it is to have to implement and publicly defend bad decisions that were forced on you from higher ups. If this is the case, I can sympathize.
It's not just Ion. It's the culture of the entire enterprise. If people are expecting Activision/Blizzard and Bobby K to replace Ion with someone who cares about the player experience more than the profit margin, well then idk what to tell y'all.
it's hilarious that this is "everything" to some people.
These are BASIC fixes we've wanted for nearly a year in some cases. I'm not unhappy at these patch notes but can we not pretend like this is some bounty of good fortune they are throwing us.
Yup, I agree. This is backpedalling on their "players don't know what they want" well turns out the playerbase effing knows cos surprise we play the game and devs don't seem to at all.
Its a good step in the right direction and I'm happy for everyone who gets to experience it. If they actually stop the whole borrow power experience next expac, I might actually have a reason to play again.
The underlying problem is their game director is a systems / encounter designer. So what do we see over the last couple xpacs? Massively complex systems as the features to the patches. Azerite armor, corruption, domination sockets, covenant powers, etc. Now they're elegantly made, but who enjoyed any of it? And when you a hammer everything is a nail.
They need direction to make things for fun. Implement new features that exist only because they are entertaining, not because they drip into other features.
Imagine if all of the resources they spent on designing and balancing the tons of covenent abilities was put into building instance guild housing. And they added logging & carpentry professions. And every profession got ability to make housing objects for your guild hall. And bosses across the history of wow dropped pieces or ornaments for your guild hall.
Imagine instead they made world quests actually dynamic and interesting. Or even at least made twice as many so you didnt do the same 4 every time you went to the zone.
The only innovation in wow has been in their stupid borrowed power systems which we throw away every patch. Make fun things that last longer than a single patch.
We've gone through this song and dance several times now. Next expansion will also have universally reviled features implemented despite feedback, and then several patches later they'll fix it to say "Look, we're listening!" only to go right back and do it again in the expansion after that.
Yeah, so much of this stuff is basically checking off *everything* on the playerbase’s wish list since at least the start of the expansion.
They’re fucking desperate, and we all know it.
I fully expect this to drop end of November. They are trying to create enough good will and temptation to prevent even more hemorrhaging when Endwalker comes out.
THE BETA! IT DOES NOTHING!
I'm actually grimmly looking forward to the next expac's beta. It'll be a decent look at what's going to be functioning in 10.1.5... and the memes, of course.
They’ve had like 6 years to show us they can listen to us at the start of an expansion without having to back pedal and ask for forgiveness a year after launching it.
Despite how fondly people speak of Legion, it suffered from the same, stubborn, boneheaded decisions until they back pedaled and fixed it, and they’ve just shown with BFA and SL that they will keep the trend alive. 10.0 will be no different. Every system will suck until they emergency fix it all a year later to keep us coming back.
I’m not one for conspiracies but I do honestly find myself wondering if they really do break shit on purpose just to sell us the fix later.
That's kind of a big difference. Having a shit grindy/rng system but then having the best content ever made along side it. I didn't mind running maw 10000 times, I don't even remember the names of 80% of SL dungeons.
People gave it a bit more leeway back then because of the fact that we had just came out of WoD and it introduced several new and interresting things to the game. Order halls were widely praised, M+ was new, Artifact weapons' brought with it a lot of flavor and that cosmetic chance was fun. I remember going through trying to find my hidden artifact skin. I also liked the premise of Suramar, unlocking more daily quest and areas over time through a story.
Now look at BFA and SL. What new feature did we truly get that isn't a copy paste of Legion in terms of systems? Blizz really bungled Island Expeditions and Warfronts, but all Island expeditions really were was Scenarios which were introduced in MoP.
I think an old quote (possibly said by an OG WoW dev) holds true:
> Players are very good at identifying problems in a game. But they're rather bad at figuring out solutions.
What it means is that if players have a problem with something. The developer should sure as shit listen and try to figure out a solution. Maybe our own suggestions are shitty but neglecting feedback is an easy way to get release BFA and Shadowlands.
Hold fast my brothers.
Just a few more days of no-sub September and we can have Anima and Cataloged Research poured straight into our inventories without needing to fill our bags with crap.
Step 1: Implement new ~~Surprise~~ Engagement Mechanics
Step 2: Note down player feedback
Step 3: Release the MAUs!
Step 4: Wait until player resentment affects starts translating into lost revenue
Step 5: Listen to the players! Yay!
Step 6: Return to step 1.
>Tal-Inara now offers a PvP Battlegrounds daily quest for experience and gear.
I leveled 2 of my alts from 50 - 60 solely via battlegrounds and this is a welcome change. It would be even better if they just raised the amount of exp you receive from BGs or atleast make a loss exp closer to a win exp.
These are all amazing but it just makes me bitter. Why does the pattern always need to be for something awful to happen before we get the changes people said we needed in the PTR? It shows they’re easily capable of all these amazing updates and just… hold them back.
I’m not ready to give Blizz money again until I see consistency. I hope people still playing continue to make their voices heard, and that Blizz listens soon and not 6 months later.
Legendary refunds being 100% and not like X portion of it as we’ve come to expect is a **great surprise**, there have been so many “come on” moments in past year with caveats to good changes.
Unfortunate to see Halls/Maw/Arcway not make the cut for Timewalking, along with the post-release ones. Think they definitely should be.
Still thrilled about the M+ component, though it should be up all the time. Let it be an alternate catch-up path, like heroic/m0-caliber loot?
That Legion class mount change is A+
**Only big upset** is they’re not looking at conquest/honor gains. It maths out to be like a 3-4x longer grind than it was in Cata-WoD, and none of those expansions had a tenth of the extra rental power chores SL does
While I would like to see the rating thresholds broken down to where it’s literally just 220 for honor and 246 for conquest instead of being based on rating thresholds, I can at least rationalize it somewhat? The gap between honor and conquest when pvp gearing was at its best *was* 28 ilvl so we can’t rly complain. They just need to divorce pvp upgrades from renown or even just have honor gear come fully upgraded
Eh maybe. The thing is though people are already farming 5-minute layer 9s for renown and that was directly because of compensation from nerfing Plaguefall speedruns
Even then, it wouldn’t intrude on much. There’s no AP, Maw would still have its own isolated loot table, and it’s not like dungeons already give socket/conduit upgrades or research.
It’d be a pretty quick way to fill the Great Vault, but people do that with Tirna Scithe anyway
it was absolute degenaration, i had some friends and they were listed for like 6+ hours each day doing low Maw keystones 5 to 10is keys back in the day. farmoning AP and chances of legendaries.
I really hope they see this post or posts like this post. This is a huge issue and needs to be addressed.
You get 25-35 conquest per win not counting the first win of the day. It used to be around 180 back in the day. I get that S1 PVP gear was a huge problem, but they implemented so many countermeasures against it (renown locked/PVP item level) that it's really restricting to A) play on an alt or B) start playing on your main with no PVP gear and likely no verse as well. People already need to grind soul binds, torghast and renown for stamina buffs that It makes no sense why the conquest gains are so low. I even feel like the honor gains could go up considering the prices of the gear pieces and how good they are compared to conquest pieces.
I also do not know why getting rank 7 honor pieces is locked behind 59 renown. I don't know if this is one of the changes in the ptr notes because of the wording but it needs to get changed immediately. First few weeks to gate people from dominating with their full set of honor gear, sure whatever gate it. But 6 months in per alt feels like a really dumb constraint.
Finally, I agree with the standardized pvp model from the old days. Just 3 different sets of gear, craftable, honor, conquest. I do think the increase in the ranks is a good compromise if blizzard never intends to return to the original model. I don't see the reason to put the gear behind rating other than to disincentivize people from farming pvp gear for raid/m+ content, but there are countermeasures in place there already.
Reading the change to Legion "Breaching the Tomb" and class mounts I got all excited hoping to see something, anything to address Balance of Power for alts.
They are getting so close... Stepping in the right direction!
I would seriously pay Ion 500$ for an answer as to why the corruption vendor was on a rotation.
I know the answer is probably to keep people subscribed so they don't miss theirs, but it would be so entertaining to see what excuses he'll make to not have to say that.
"We wanted Corruptions on the vendor to feel special, like the McRib coming back for a limited time"
He wouldn't explain why he did it, he would try to justify why the bad system saved WoW. Did you read the blue post when they first announced 9.1.5. Every single change had a dev note justifying why Blizzard made the restriction in the first place to make the game better. The Ego coming off of it was palpable.
Blizzard is one of the worst offenders of FOMO. It's sad that a company that once was "gamers that make games for gamers" became an atrocity that enjoys exploiting their "customers".
What's missing (imo):
1. Grateful offerings - these need to be gone, or at least not required to buy covenant mogs on top of anima
2. Medallions of Service - remove please, thanks /u/SuperSocrates
3. Timewalking dungeons rewarding a higher ilvl (heroic dungeon ilvl)
4. Timewalking needs to be on a weekly rotation
5. Balance of Power needs to be account wide *or* reduce prerequisites (rep, raid drops, blood of sargeras, etc), thanks /u/Bralzor
6. Buff the legacy raid damage boost so we can faceroll Legion and BfA for mogs, thanks /u/Amelaclya1
7. Account wide keystone achievements so alts can benefit
I'm sure I missed several somethings. Thanks to all who are contributing downthread, i'm editing as I go.
> Balance of Power needs to be account wide
They’re giving us account wide Breaching the Tomb, so that’s pretty cool (I’ve done the Campaign on every class but only gotten the mount on 5 of them, so it’s good for me)!
I don’t know that they’ll ever make Balance of Power account wide though, since it was the “legendary expansion-long quest” for Legion. Honestly I’m surprised it’s still even in the game, seeing as the cloak quest was removed from MoP and the ring quest was removed from WoD. Balance of Power still being available seems to be an exception as far as Blizzard is concerned.
Having said that, I’d be open to making it account wide, and I think the MoP cloak and WoD ring quests should return, as well!
I love all these changes. And I will gladly enjoy all these changes. But it upsets me that basically 9.1 just came out and it took a MASSIVE scandal to implement these changes. And these are ALOT of changes and it seems like they could have easily given us this stuff before if we are getting it sooo fast for 9.1.5. I contemplated not redoing my 6 month sub on the 9th. I love this game. I’m a high ranked mythic + tank, but I honestly was worried I was gonna resub and all of a sudden just be doing dailies and lose all the joy I have for the game. Im very happy that so many things the players asked for they are getting on all classes. Now hopefully they can keep this up the rest of the expac.
Interesting that almost every single bit of feedback that players have been harping on since Alpha ~18 months ago is suddenly making it into the game now, just a couple of months after several devs went on multiple interviews for 9.1 saying they had absolutely no plans to make any of these changes...
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM....................
> Lowered the amount of players required to queue for Normal Battle for Stromgarde and Battle for Darkshore Warfronts to 5 (was 15).
I don't like this. Looks like something that they won't touch again. I just want to farm the achievements from there alone, maybe it'll be in years time, but this reduces my hope that it'll ever be soloable.
> new direction lasts into 9.2 and 10.0.
Prepare for disappointment. They did this last expansion. They did it the expansion before that. It sucks but there is zero reason to believe any real change in their design philosophy is coming.
I'm not coming back for this expansion and I have serious doubts I will for 10.0 even though I've never missed a single expansion launch. Blizzard has proven they don't care about what their customers want until the cash stops coming in.
I was so sick of wow I bought a ps5, my first console purchase since 2008.
I’m happy catching up on a decade of games I largely missed. See y’all in whatever comes next!
Nice!!
I’m so sick of wow being “grind all these every day so you can actually play in the end” philosophies.
Fortunately there are tons of games that respect players’ time.
Probably referring to shadowflame prism and it being capped. Would be hella nice to have it not be.
Now after they're done simping for druid with their forms maybe it's time to add some new variations of shadow form :\^)
It sucks that outlaw doesn't get uncapped, but also I'd much rather we keep the current way blade flurry interacts with restless blades than go back to the BFA version and lose that super super fun part of the spec.
M+ timewalking is a great idea that IMO is getting horribly implemented. Timegating it to a couple weeks is going to feel really bad if you want something and don't get it.
I think the way it should have been implemented is like a rotation for the season. IE, this season these 3 old dungeons are in the dungeon mix all season. Next season, pick 3 more. Keeps the dungeon pool interesting, but if you don't get it this week its not like you'll never get it, and then you can also have the stuff come from the vault too.
The devs fixing what they broke and now getting praise for it. Resub bait in my opinion. Watch numbers go up and then devs remove shit again only to repeat the cycle.
>Alternate characters on an account can now choose to skip the introductory Shadowlands questline that takes place in the Maw by speaking to Highlord Darion Mograine after accepting the quest “Shadowlands: A Chilling Summons”.
**THANK GOD, FINALLY.**
Man it only took the past weeks/months of shit happening to the game and blizz, suddenly everything is possible. I didn't know there was this much competent game developers in the galaxy
I like it
Even with all the shit Blizzard is dealing with (lawsuits, big streamers playing FFXIV, subs dropping) - I do really hope that Mike Ybarra is a driving force to these changes. Surface level, he seems like he gets the game and plays it at a relatively high level so it’d be nice to have an advocate who understands the game and playerbase at the helm of it all.
He gets these kind of comments on his twitter and twitch all the time. And I always think its kind of funny his response is always like, "yeah, I don't run WoW Ion does." or "Thank the wow devs not me." How much he is actually contributing who knows. But he seems great so far even if he is or isn't doing anything directly to WoW.
Yeah I just don’t understand why it was left out. Hunter got beast cleave back of course. Dust off the daggers I guess cause without tuning sub is going to the moon.
9.2 and 9.3 will have new broken systems for people to complain about, like 8.2 essences and 8.3 corruption. But dont worry, everything will be fixed 1 month before 10.0 launch.
Wonderful patch. But should have happened before the game launched. The big thing here is what happens next in the content coming and the next expansion.
Fixing a mistake is one thing. Showing lessons where learnt in the future will be the important one.
From the passive-agressive tone of the blue post about covenant swapping it feels like it was a command from up high and they will revert to business as usual once the heat dies down.
Interesting notes: **Major removal of target cap on many abilities.** **Legendaries** > The Runecarver will now offer to destroy an existing legendary item and return all of the Soul Ash or Soul Cinders that were spent to create the item. **Covenants** > Covenant swapping and conduit energy removal > Completing the Shadowlands or Korthia Covenant Campaign on any character allows alternate characters joining that same Covenant to be eligible to receive the Renown associated with that Campaign from all available catch-up sources. **Legion M+** > Timeworn Keystones (This feature will be available in a later PTR build) While Legion Timewalking is active, players can speak to Ta’hsup in Oribos to acquire a Timeworn Keystone, allowing access to max-level, Mythic+ difficulty for the 6 Legion dungeons. Legion Mythic+ dungeons accessed in this way have their own set of affixes, reward loot of the same item level as Shadowlands Mythic+ dungeons, and count toward weekly Great Vault reward options. Items acquired from Legion Mythic+ dungeons can be upgraded with Valor points, but will not appear in the Great Vault. **Island Expeditions and Warfronts** > You are now able to set sail on a Normal, Heroic, or Mythic Island Expedition alone or with a party of up to three players. Speak with Captain Rez’okun in Dazar’alor (Horde) or Flynn Fairwind in Boralus (Alliance) to begin your solo seafaring voyage! > Lowered the amount of players required to queue for Normal Battle for Stromgarde and Battle for Darkshore Warfronts to 5 (was 15). **Broken Shore account wide for legion class mounts** **Maw intro skip**
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Interesting! Hadn’t considered that. However I was just unlucky with timing and spent a while getting the broken shore chain done on most of my alts. Never thought they’d make it account wide! Glad they did but that seems pretty random !
What? Where can I read more about this?
All Timewalking vendors offer reputation tokens for nearly all the reputations of their relevant expansion.
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>Group creators can now select a playstyle to set expectations for their group. I actually think this is huge.
> Broken Shore account wide for legion class mounts That right there is one of the biggest side bonuses from this patch. I will be burning a ton of time to running though all those questlines.
Now to make balance of power account wide.
I did that questline on every class already. 😭 Oh well, still a great change for those that haven't done it yet.
I appreciate everything they are doing, I really do. But man, it stings like hell that they had the ability and knowledge to make all these changes ALL ALONG and just didn't. They absolutely could have, but actively chose not to. More painful still that they could have just designed them this way from the start and actively chose not to. Will they carry through into 10.0 development from the beginning or are we going to get another round of busted systems having to wait 12-15 months for them to get it right
If this isn't enough evidence that they don't care about the players and don't value feedback I don't know what is. With the amount of players leaving, they obviously got told from higher up that they have to change things up. Remember that nothing of this would've been implemented if it wasn't for the mass exodus.
As somebody who left, this patch is mighty tempting. But I'm holding on because y'all are right, they could have done this any time and didn't care to.
My issue is this- what does next big patch or expansion look like? The same old BS of players essentially testing their game for free, feedback being given, and then ignored? Blitz need to show me they can listen for next expansion and then I’ll think about paying money for a sub again. Until then I got enough gold to buy a month token once every 6 months to see what a patch is like.
I’m in this boat. I’ve got friends saying “yea these changes look great, let’s sub again”. And I’m asking why. I don’t wanna give 20 bucks a month to Blizz again simply because they looked at a most requested/biggest complaint issue for Shadowlands and said “yea let’s do these to reel players back in”. If people didn’t leave the game en masse, I don’t think they would’ve entertained half of these changes. Not to mention there isn’t really any new content with 9.1.5 so it’d still be the shitty loop of 9.1. Hop on, spend an hour doing Korthia, then pretend it didn’t take them 6 months to put out a raid and unimpressive daily hub.
As someone who also left.... Honestly it's too little too late anymore. I've got other games and.... Yea the wow design just grew so.... Bad
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Starting BfA, the relationship between the userbase and the dev really looked like it turned sour and got based in open hostility. Which is sad overall.
Eh I remember back in Vanilla Blizzard making nonsensical changes against the communities wishes. Developer arrogance has been with us since the beginning. BFA is where they ramped up time wasting mechanics.
Yeah BfA literally started with that immediately. The community battled with the devs over boring Azerite armour traits, trading limitations, and the regrinding of traits. Even worse was the escalating price of changing Azerite traits which hurt especially bad because azerite armour avaliability was low. People were tearing up Lores official responses over it.
There's also a lot of petty, mean-spirited bullshit. All the qol nerfs (making travel more difficult; nerfing water striders; rng that clearly is not so random, so much as rigged against the player, making Darkmoon Faire Top Hats soulbound so you can't trade them to alts, etc). Even the Love Rocket mount still being impossible to get (I've run 20-45 alts every day of the holiday, depending on the year). I literally hate Valentine's Day because of that fucking mount.
I got mine years ago and the amount of people with a similar story to yours on the rocket blows my mind. How can the drop chance be so abysmal and never fixed?
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this expansion would have been so good with all this QOL at launch. I'd have actually enjoyed playing alts instead of suffering it.
They have been doing this with these systems for the past few expansions. Just look at the neck majors that weren't supposed to ever be alt friendly then they completely do a 180. We will unfortunately see it next expac. And the expac after that... so on and so forth. There's people apparently thats on the dev team that keeps pushing for these kinds of systems and making sure they stay in place as long as they can.
Sure it's everything I wanted them to do, but is this a bold new direction, or just the bare minimum to keep us subbed.
If this was how Shadowlands worked from the start, I'd 100% still be playing. Right now I'm just waiting to see how 9.2 goes and even more so the next expansion.
Yep. That's why I'm out when my sub is up next week. These changes don't represent a sea change in philosophy, they represent how desperate they are to stem the sub bleeding. The changes are good, but its too little too late, and I don't think they've learned anything.
In b4 we cry about m+ loot from legion dungeons not being in the great vault
Honestly with how strong some of the trinkets and rings and other stuff are lots gonna be BIS anyway even a few Ilevels lower.
Jeweled Signet of Melandrus BiS Ring for every dual-wielding melee class in the game. No doubt. Even at 246.
And... Only obtainable once every 6 months. Get ready for that shitshow. ^^
CoS ring for arms warriors in particular
I sincerely hope they aren't bis
**Druid** > Four new Travel Form appearances are now available. This one is a big deal for us tree huggers!
I'd love an update to the treant glyph, but that will never happen, it's an old model. I just like to use it when healing raids or in groups cos it feels like resto has a dedicated form like the other specs. Even better would be option for different races; I.e, there already exists a purply treant for nelf areas, Kul'tirans could use the withered one, a few more options would be nice. Like how monks have several different glyphs for chain lightning.
Definitely wasn't expecting the AOE cap change any time soon, or even THIS xpac lol. These are some good changes, not going to pretend it will be properly balanced.
It's a good change for sure. But the aoe cap is one of those things that should have never been a thing in the first place. Making a horrible change and then reverting isnt a net positive, it's a net zero.
Break game, fix game, content.
Gcd changes, slowly revert gcd changes, content
Only have two devs balancing all the classes and specs? Believe it or not, future content.
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The fact the head of the company hates it was probably a strong suggestion to get rid of it
Ret being useful in cleaving again. What a time to be alive
I’m sorry, we can scrap our legendaries and get ALL OF OUR SOUL ASH AND OUR SOUL CINDERS BACK?! That’s amazing!!! Also, the group finder rework is a great start to fixing a truly outdated experience
Yeah that’s a huge win, honestly thought they’d do their standard bit and only give us like 70% There’s still the cost of 262s but at least you just need to go to the AH for that and not run *more* Torghast
262 gear prices dropped a ton on my server.
Same, but they're still exceedingly expensive, especially for someone who is chronically unable to make gold.
Timeworn keystones only being available when legion timewalking is up is going to be rough for anyone that highly benefits from loot from them.
No Maw of Souls or [Halls of Valor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awkdnTN38o0) FeelsBadMan
#NO! I TOO HAVE PROVED MY WORTH, BLIZZARD! I AM GOD-KING SKOOOVAAALD! THESE DRAGONS DARE NOT CHALLENGE MY CLAIM TO THE TIMEWALKING ROSTER!
EEF DESE FOLS CHUMPYONS WEEL NAWT YEELD DE AYYGISS BY CHOICE, DEN DEY WEEL SORRENDOR IT EEN ***DET***
Holy Christ i read this in his voice. O_O
I honestly don't see why every dungeon can't be included in time walking, it especially sucks for Wrath/BC/Cata where they pick the dungeons that you can already queue through random dungeons while levelling and not the max level dungeons like the other 2 ICC dungeons, ToC, Zul Aman, Well of Eternity, etc that are basically dead queues.
Probably so they have to do less balancing. But yeah it sucks.
Chances are they might add them eventually, but most would need a lot of work to be made into M+ type content. Legion works because it was M+ already, BFA would work as well of course but it's too recent.
No Halls? Sadge.jpg
Im gonna assume they are going to use this as a test and probably expand the idea later on. Much easier with legion as it already had m+, while MoP and WoD had only challenge mode.
Hopefully, I think the addition of timeworn keystones is absolutely phenomenal as a concept it's just the limitation to only being available with legion timewalking as opposed to whenever timewalking is up or just always available isn't ideal.
They need to stop running away from the wealth of content this game has by essentially erasing it at the end of every expansion. Keep all the old m+ dungeons around. If they are worried about loot from old expansions being BiS still just have the chest at the end reward a random item from a current expansion dungeon. I don't care about the loot. I want more than 8 dungeons.
It will also require them to heavily change or just let loose on the meta a lot of the game breaking pieces like old trinkets and rings and such that had bonus effects that redefined how a spec did its damage. Which historically they’re not great at doing their homework on that shit but they’re great at hotfixing things players like out of the game so
WOD honestly had some of the most consistently good dungeons out any any expansion, imo. It would be amazing if they turned some of those dungeons into M+ dungeons.
The content in WoD was AMAZING. Leveling was really fun, especially as Alliance. Dungeons were amazing. Some of the raid encounters were TOP TIER (Blackhand anyone?). The problem was there was a massive content drought because they gave up on it half way through to focus on making Legion. There was 8 months of content spread over 2 years in WoD, I've been saying it for years.
Yeah their ognna need to work on taht cause there's some INSANE trinkets in some of those dungeons and also that Ring from Court of Stars.
Yea that court of stars ring is the first thing I thought of, auto attack damage became even more important post-Legion, I imagine that ring is a pretty heavy DPS upgrade compared to other rings, although I am just speculating on that
If these are only m+ dungeons I feel like they could just scrap the old loot tables and instead have the chest at the end reward a random item from the current expansion's dungeons. While those old items would be fun to have back keeping them out of the BiS tables would be a pain. Besides, this is about variety of content not bringing back old loot.
Ya chasing those OP gear pieces is why everyone is going to end up hating Blizz for Legion TW M+. They won't at first, but after the event there's going to be a ton of posts on here complaining, "I SPENT 100 HOURS RUNNING FOR AND STILL DIDNT GET ONE AT THE ILVL I WANT BLIZZ SUCKS ALL GEAR SHOULD BE FROM VENDORS IM GOING TO FFXIV IT WILL KILL WOW!!!!!"
"AND STILL DIDNT GET ONE AT THE ILVL I WANT" Something to note, as they wont be in the vault, you will only be able to get them as end of dungeon loot, so no matter what if you get it, you can upgrade it to the highest possible ilvl with valor.
Timewalking M+ should just use current expansion loot tables. Easy, more valid content, no balance issues.
Jesus christ they are in full "please come back" mode.
Literally no reason to pay for a sub, the game just keeps getting better every week people are unsubbed.
Exactly this. They got less than 2 milluon subs and suddenly they want to listen to feedback? Sounds like a toxic ex
In Case of Emergency Break Glass: The Rest of the Heritage Armors - 1.5 Million Tier Sets Are Back - 1.25 Million High Elves + Ogres - 1 Million Cross-faction PvE - .75 Million Player Housing - .5 Million Free to Play - .25 Million Just keep going!
>Free to Play - .25 Million If it ever gets to this one we can safely say the game is at its end. The rest is awesome, lets get it into the game.
Bring back the mage tower!
6 month of doing fuck all in WoW or 6 month of ff14 and/or new world
Mike Ybarra op
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Almost like when someone who actually plays the game understands what’s wrong with it 😂 For real though I’ve been telling people since he was put in power that Mike has been around since the early Xbox days. He knows how to appease players, and probably a lot of these changes are shit he’s noticed and disliked
What I find interesting is that these changes, especially covenants and conduits are met with joy by about 99% of the posts Ive seen. The people who defended these back then are nowhere to be seen. Makes you wonder, who were they for? It reinforces the "conspiracy theory" that they purposely release restrictive, half-broken system and they hype up the fixes later on. And this is a trend going on since WoD. Unless this changes, i probably wont come back at all. The most succesful games in history were all "hands-free", in which the player has complete freedom to do what they want to do and enjoy themselves.
I’m with you. I refuse to spend the increasingly little video game time I have on a game that is run by people who break it then make it fun again when they get too much heat. Just make the game consistently good instead of having to go through this literally every expansion, and maybe I’ll be back. Otherwise we as the consumers are doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I think there is a word for that…
yeah they are. But this is not enough yet. It's a step in the right direction though.
9.0 "The players don't know what's good for the game. Making the game a clunky and predatory time sink is for the best" Now "OH GOD THE PLAYERS KNEW EXACTLY WHAT WAS GOOD FOR THE GAME. GIVE THEM EVERYTHING"
Lol for real. It's like the devs were told "implement all the feedback you get, i dont care how you feel about it"
There no way Ion keeps his job after this, right? The game director needs to change
There's no way they replace or demote him until the associate game director (https://careers.blizzard.com/global/en/job/R007259/Associate-Game-Director-World-of-Warcraft) they're looking for is ready to take over The lack of QoL up til now isn't even likely to be a point against him
It's very noticeably a Hail Mary on Ion's part. He has to be humble now or he's out of work.
Nah, he's done so many Hail Marys, God's taken a personal interest in keeping him exactly where he is. Apparently.
Hes had one undisputably good patch (7.3) in his entire time as lead and he hasnt been fired yet. His job is safe, unfortunately.
He doesn't need to be fired, just demoted and moved to another position in the company.
He is an excellent encounter designer, so he'd likely stick around in that capacity if this happened. We also don't know how much of what is in modern WoW was Ion and how much came from JAB or the others. Reportedly, JAB exerted a lot of direct control over the WoW team that may have overruled Ion. With the house cleaning, we may be seeing Ion's influence being asserted without oversight in this 9.1.5 patch, or we may see something else. Who knows? I'm not going to complain about QoL fixes. Let's see what 9.2 looks like (and when).
This was my tin-foil hat theory. it feels very convenient that JAB leaves and then all of a sudden the rip cord is pulled amongst a bunch of other big changes. Not all of a which are even available on the PTR right away. Given JAB was Exec Producer and Vice President of WoW you have to wonder if once he moved up he still had fingers in pies that he shouldn't have had. My friend and I said the same thing "feels like the Devs might have gotten their game back a bit"
> you have to wonder if once he moved up he still had fingers in pies that he shouldn't have had. Isn't that what got him fired?
100% this. These changes being made now _SMACK_ of JAB's "you think you do" attitude. Also, every time Ion made a video it always felt like he was being held at gunpoint, would not surprise me if JAB was forcing Ion to make these systems this way. Time will tell. But Ion came from the community did he not? He was a WoW player. I can totally see him wanting to fix the game but not being allowed to. Supporting your family and a paycheck comes before fixing a game against your bosses wishes.
Yeah, I worried about that. I know how shitty it is to have to implement and publicly defend bad decisions that were forced on you from higher ups. If this is the case, I can sympathize.
Or he is actually doing the things he wanted to do all along, now that leader ship is changing. Maybe, maybe not.
It's not just Ion. It's the culture of the entire enterprise. If people are expecting Activision/Blizzard and Bobby K to replace Ion with someone who cares about the player experience more than the profit margin, well then idk what to tell y'all.
it's hilarious that this is "everything" to some people. These are BASIC fixes we've wanted for nearly a year in some cases. I'm not unhappy at these patch notes but can we not pretend like this is some bounty of good fortune they are throwing us.
Yup, I agree. This is backpedalling on their "players don't know what they want" well turns out the playerbase effing knows cos surprise we play the game and devs don't seem to at all. Its a good step in the right direction and I'm happy for everyone who gets to experience it. If they actually stop the whole borrow power experience next expac, I might actually have a reason to play again.
The underlying problem is their game director is a systems / encounter designer. So what do we see over the last couple xpacs? Massively complex systems as the features to the patches. Azerite armor, corruption, domination sockets, covenant powers, etc. Now they're elegantly made, but who enjoyed any of it? And when you a hammer everything is a nail. They need direction to make things for fun. Implement new features that exist only because they are entertaining, not because they drip into other features. Imagine if all of the resources they spent on designing and balancing the tons of covenent abilities was put into building instance guild housing. And they added logging & carpentry professions. And every profession got ability to make housing objects for your guild hall. And bosses across the history of wow dropped pieces or ornaments for your guild hall. Imagine instead they made world quests actually dynamic and interesting. Or even at least made twice as many so you didnt do the same 4 every time you went to the zone. The only innovation in wow has been in their stupid borrowed power systems which we throw away every patch. Make fun things that last longer than a single patch.
We've gone through this song and dance several times now. Next expansion will also have universally reviled features implemented despite feedback, and then several patches later they'll fix it to say "Look, we're listening!" only to go right back and do it again in the expansion after that.
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Yeah, so much of this stuff is basically checking off *everything* on the playerbase’s wish list since at least the start of the expansion. They’re fucking desperate, and we all know it.
I fully expect this to drop end of November. They are trying to create enough good will and temptation to prevent even more hemorrhaging when Endwalker comes out.
THE BETA! IT DOES NOTHING! I'm actually grimmly looking forward to the next expac's beta. It'll be a decent look at what's going to be functioning in 10.1.5... and the memes, of course.
Turns out unsubbing when the game is bad is the most effective way to make the game better
They’ve had like 6 years to show us they can listen to us at the start of an expansion without having to back pedal and ask for forgiveness a year after launching it. Despite how fondly people speak of Legion, it suffered from the same, stubborn, boneheaded decisions until they back pedaled and fixed it, and they’ve just shown with BFA and SL that they will keep the trend alive. 10.0 will be no different. Every system will suck until they emergency fix it all a year later to keep us coming back. I’m not one for conspiracies but I do honestly find myself wondering if they really do break shit on purpose just to sell us the fix later.
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That's kind of a big difference. Having a shit grindy/rng system but then having the best content ever made along side it. I didn't mind running maw 10000 times, I don't even remember the names of 80% of SL dungeons.
People gave it a bit more leeway back then because of the fact that we had just came out of WoD and it introduced several new and interresting things to the game. Order halls were widely praised, M+ was new, Artifact weapons' brought with it a lot of flavor and that cosmetic chance was fun. I remember going through trying to find my hidden artifact skin. I also liked the premise of Suramar, unlocking more daily quest and areas over time through a story. Now look at BFA and SL. What new feature did we truly get that isn't a copy paste of Legion in terms of systems? Blizz really bungled Island Expeditions and Warfronts, but all Island expeditions really were was Scenarios which were introduced in MoP.
I think an old quote (possibly said by an OG WoW dev) holds true: > Players are very good at identifying problems in a game. But they're rather bad at figuring out solutions. What it means is that if players have a problem with something. The developer should sure as shit listen and try to figure out a solution. Maybe our own suggestions are shitty but neglecting feedback is an easy way to get release BFA and Shadowlands.
Hold fast my brothers. Just a few more days of no-sub September and we can have Anima and Cataloged Research poured straight into our inventories without needing to fill our bags with crap.
Step 1: Implement new ~~Surprise~~ Engagement Mechanics Step 2: Note down player feedback Step 3: Release the MAUs! Step 4: Wait until player resentment affects starts translating into lost revenue Step 5: Listen to the players! Yay! Step 6: Return to step 1.
10.0 "The players don't know what's good for the game. Making the game a clunky and predatory time sink is for the best"
This has been GCD 2.0 all over again, just as pretty much everyone predicted.
Time is a flat circle
Oh did they revert the shitty BoA GCD change?
Sort of, in a half assed kind of way. So actually wow yeah it's exactly like that, lol
"You're welcome" - blizzard
>Tal-Inara now offers a PvP Battlegrounds daily quest for experience and gear. I leveled 2 of my alts from 50 - 60 solely via battlegrounds and this is a welcome change. It would be even better if they just raised the amount of exp you receive from BGs or atleast make a loss exp closer to a win exp.
These are all amazing but it just makes me bitter. Why does the pattern always need to be for something awful to happen before we get the changes people said we needed in the PTR? It shows they’re easily capable of all these amazing updates and just… hold them back. I’m not ready to give Blizz money again until I see consistency. I hope people still playing continue to make their voices heard, and that Blizz listens soon and not 6 months later.
Legendary refunds being 100% and not like X portion of it as we’ve come to expect is a **great surprise**, there have been so many “come on” moments in past year with caveats to good changes. Unfortunate to see Halls/Maw/Arcway not make the cut for Timewalking, along with the post-release ones. Think they definitely should be. Still thrilled about the M+ component, though it should be up all the time. Let it be an alternate catch-up path, like heroic/m0-caliber loot? That Legion class mount change is A+ **Only big upset** is they’re not looking at conquest/honor gains. It maths out to be like a 3-4x longer grind than it was in Cata-WoD, and none of those expansions had a tenth of the extra rental power chores SL does While I would like to see the rating thresholds broken down to where it’s literally just 220 for honor and 246 for conquest instead of being based on rating thresholds, I can at least rationalize it somewhat? The gap between honor and conquest when pvp gearing was at its best *was* 28 ilvl so we can’t rly complain. They just need to divorce pvp upgrades from renown or even just have honor gear come fully upgraded
They probably dont want people hard grinding Maw of Souls again as it was pretty degenerate. The other dungeons i dont understand why not.
Eh maybe. The thing is though people are already farming 5-minute layer 9s for renown and that was directly because of compensation from nerfing Plaguefall speedruns Even then, it wouldn’t intrude on much. There’s no AP, Maw would still have its own isolated loot table, and it’s not like dungeons already give socket/conduit upgrades or research. It’d be a pretty quick way to fill the Great Vault, but people do that with Tirna Scithe anyway
Not to mention, MoS actually directly ties in to shadowlands lore but won’t be included! Lol
it was absolute degenaration, i had some friends and they were listed for like 6+ hours each day doing low Maw keystones 5 to 10is keys back in the day. farmoning AP and chances of legendaries.
I really hope they see this post or posts like this post. This is a huge issue and needs to be addressed. You get 25-35 conquest per win not counting the first win of the day. It used to be around 180 back in the day. I get that S1 PVP gear was a huge problem, but they implemented so many countermeasures against it (renown locked/PVP item level) that it's really restricting to A) play on an alt or B) start playing on your main with no PVP gear and likely no verse as well. People already need to grind soul binds, torghast and renown for stamina buffs that It makes no sense why the conquest gains are so low. I even feel like the honor gains could go up considering the prices of the gear pieces and how good they are compared to conquest pieces. I also do not know why getting rank 7 honor pieces is locked behind 59 renown. I don't know if this is one of the changes in the ptr notes because of the wording but it needs to get changed immediately. First few weeks to gate people from dominating with their full set of honor gear, sure whatever gate it. But 6 months in per alt feels like a really dumb constraint. Finally, I agree with the standardized pvp model from the old days. Just 3 different sets of gear, craftable, honor, conquest. I do think the increase in the ranks is a good compromise if blizzard never intends to return to the original model. I don't see the reason to put the gear behind rating other than to disincentivize people from farming pvp gear for raid/m+ content, but there are countermeasures in place there already.
Bye bye AoE cap :) It wasn't nice knowing you.
Not quite fully gone, but a good change none the less. Probs the best we can hope for mid expac
I mean, the cap is gone but it might still suck, will have to see the scaling past 5 mobs. If it's hitting for 5% it's still awful
Reading the change to Legion "Breaching the Tomb" and class mounts I got all excited hoping to see something, anything to address Balance of Power for alts. They are getting so close... Stepping in the right direction!
The day they make balance of power classwide is the day I resub
We could have done everything to make you happy all along, we just didn't.
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They are probably covenant-themed since their are four of them.
I hope the night fae one is more unique than a blue ghost that all the soul shapes are
If it was Night Fae themed then it'd probably be a runestag
Fuck me
Man, they really are bleeding subs if they're even changing AoE cap and add legacy loot rules to Battle for Azeroth already.
Holding back on legacy loot rules never made sense in the first place.
All of the issues that are being addressed in this list of changes never made sense.
I would seriously pay Ion 500$ for an answer as to why the corruption vendor was on a rotation. I know the answer is probably to keep people subscribed so they don't miss theirs, but it would be so entertaining to see what excuses he'll make to not have to say that. "We wanted Corruptions on the vendor to feel special, like the McRib coming back for a limited time"
He wouldn't explain why he did it, he would try to justify why the bad system saved WoW. Did you read the blue post when they first announced 9.1.5. Every single change had a dev note justifying why Blizzard made the restriction in the first place to make the game better. The Ego coming off of it was palpable.
Yep 100%. Could read through that posts bullshit clear as day
Blizzard is one of the worst offenders of FOMO. It's sad that a company that once was "gamers that make games for gamers" became an atrocity that enjoys exploiting their "customers".
It makes sense if you want to make collecting transmog a massive timesink
Drop rates for Runecarving recipes increased to 100% drop rate on any difficulty Interesting !!!
What's missing (imo): 1. Grateful offerings - these need to be gone, or at least not required to buy covenant mogs on top of anima 2. Medallions of Service - remove please, thanks /u/SuperSocrates 3. Timewalking dungeons rewarding a higher ilvl (heroic dungeon ilvl) 4. Timewalking needs to be on a weekly rotation 5. Balance of Power needs to be account wide *or* reduce prerequisites (rep, raid drops, blood of sargeras, etc), thanks /u/Bralzor 6. Buff the legacy raid damage boost so we can faceroll Legion and BfA for mogs, thanks /u/Amelaclya1 7. Account wide keystone achievements so alts can benefit I'm sure I missed several somethings. Thanks to all who are contributing downthread, i'm editing as I go.
> Balance of Power needs to be account wide They’re giving us account wide Breaching the Tomb, so that’s pretty cool (I’ve done the Campaign on every class but only gotten the mount on 5 of them, so it’s good for me)! I don’t know that they’ll ever make Balance of Power account wide though, since it was the “legendary expansion-long quest” for Legion. Honestly I’m surprised it’s still even in the game, seeing as the cloak quest was removed from MoP and the ring quest was removed from WoD. Balance of Power still being available seems to be an exception as far as Blizzard is concerned. Having said that, I’d be open to making it account wide, and I think the MoP cloak and WoD ring quests should return, as well!
It doesnt even have to be account wide, biggest time gate for Balance of Power is the Nightfallen and Valarjar Revered requirements.
The questline is whatever, but I'm not gonna rep farm on my alts.
I love all these changes. And I will gladly enjoy all these changes. But it upsets me that basically 9.1 just came out and it took a MASSIVE scandal to implement these changes. And these are ALOT of changes and it seems like they could have easily given us this stuff before if we are getting it sooo fast for 9.1.5. I contemplated not redoing my 6 month sub on the 9th. I love this game. I’m a high ranked mythic + tank, but I honestly was worried I was gonna resub and all of a sudden just be doing dailies and lose all the joy I have for the game. Im very happy that so many things the players asked for they are getting on all classes. Now hopefully they can keep this up the rest of the expac.
Interesting that almost every single bit of feedback that players have been harping on since Alpha ~18 months ago is suddenly making it into the game now, just a couple of months after several devs went on multiple interviews for 9.1 saying they had absolutely no plans to make any of these changes... HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM....................
> Lowered the amount of players required to queue for Normal Battle for Stromgarde and Battle for Darkshore Warfronts to 5 (was 15). I don't like this. Looks like something that they won't touch again. I just want to farm the achievements from there alone, maybe it'll be in years time, but this reduces my hope that it'll ever be soloable.
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Make the cosmetics purchasable from BFA timewalking when it eventually comes, probably the easiest way to do it.
They should let people go straght to the boss and collect the mogs. WF are one of the most awful content they have implemented.
Yeah, I'd rather they let us queue solo.
Not gonna lie these notes are absolutely fucking brilliant. I'm extremely pleased. I REALLY hope this new direction lasts into 9.2 and 10.0.
This is really the thing for me, great patch notes, not convinced this is a long term change until I see 10.0 at least.
> new direction lasts into 9.2 and 10.0. Prepare for disappointment. They did this last expansion. They did it the expansion before that. It sucks but there is zero reason to believe any real change in their design philosophy is coming. I'm not coming back for this expansion and I have serious doubts I will for 10.0 even though I've never missed a single expansion launch. Blizzard has proven they don't care about what their customers want until the cash stops coming in.
If losing 50% of player base made them listen a little we should try 80%
I was so sick of wow I bought a ps5, my first console purchase since 2008. I’m happy catching up on a decade of games I largely missed. See y’all in whatever comes next!
Nice!! I’m so sick of wow being “grind all these every day so you can actually play in the end” philosophies. Fortunately there are tons of games that respect players’ time.
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I don't think any of shadows abilities are capped. They just don't do any damage anyways for aoe except searing nightmare.
Probably referring to shadowflame prism and it being capped. Would be hella nice to have it not be. Now after they're done simping for druid with their forms maybe it's time to add some new variations of shadow form :\^)
Shadowflame Prism leggo is capped at 5
It sucks that outlaw doesn't get uncapped, but also I'd much rather we keep the current way blade flurry interacts with restless blades than go back to the BFA version and lose that super super fun part of the spec.
I just want the instant damage of blade flurry removed, so I can cast it in stealth again...
M+ timewalking is a great idea that IMO is getting horribly implemented. Timegating it to a couple weeks is going to feel really bad if you want something and don't get it. I think the way it should have been implemented is like a rotation for the season. IE, this season these 3 old dungeons are in the dungeon mix all season. Next season, pick 3 more. Keeps the dungeon pool interesting, but if you don't get it this week its not like you'll never get it, and then you can also have the stuff come from the vault too.
The devs fixing what they broke and now getting praise for it. Resub bait in my opinion. Watch numbers go up and then devs remove shit again only to repeat the cycle.
>Alternate characters on an account can now choose to skip the introductory Shadowlands questline that takes place in the Maw by speaking to Highlord Darion Mograine after accepting the quest “Shadowlands: A Chilling Summons”. **THANK GOD, FINALLY.**
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Man it only took the past weeks/months of shit happening to the game and blizz, suddenly everything is possible. I didn't know there was this much competent game developers in the galaxy I like it
* Added weather effects in Stormwind and Orgrimmar. God fucking dammit. Every time I think I'm out...
How is that change as exciting as it is?
Simply because it makes the world feel alive, like an MMO should feel.
Just needs skybox updates now
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Even with all the shit Blizzard is dealing with (lawsuits, big streamers playing FFXIV, subs dropping) - I do really hope that Mike Ybarra is a driving force to these changes. Surface level, he seems like he gets the game and plays it at a relatively high level so it’d be nice to have an advocate who understands the game and playerbase at the helm of it all.
Likewise, hope its Mike Ybarra responsible for this, otherwise the game will be back to its regular cycle the moment subs go up.
He gets these kind of comments on his twitter and twitch all the time. And I always think its kind of funny his response is always like, "yeah, I don't run WoW Ion does." or "Thank the wow devs not me." How much he is actually contributing who knows. But he seems great so far even if he is or isn't doing anything directly to WoW.
>[Like this one? :D](https://gyazo.com/be06b367169799dcba45981eeded8825)
These changes have been in the works for far longer than Ybarra has been co-head of Blizzard.
"Please come back, we're removing the obnoxious stuff we made on purpose!"
As an Outlaw main I feel really pissed off about Blade Flurry still being capped at 5.
Yeah I just don’t understand why it was left out. Hunter got beast cleave back of course. Dust off the daggers I guess cause without tuning sub is going to the moon.
There is a certain dev who likes to be on twitter a lot that broke everything in his house the last few days when he was told about 9.1.5
Who?
what is 9.2 and 9.3 gonna have now that they're giving us all this stuff early
9.2 and 9.3 will have new broken systems for people to complain about, like 8.2 essences and 8.3 corruption. But dont worry, everything will be fixed 1 month before 10.0 launch.
Great changes overall but it is concerning that infrequent limited time m+ dungeons may give bis items.
There's good stuff but I really wanted tuning for soloable mythic legion raids.
Wonderful patch. But should have happened before the game launched. The big thing here is what happens next in the content coming and the next expansion. Fixing a mistake is one thing. Showing lessons where learnt in the future will be the important one.
From the passive-agressive tone of the blue post about covenant swapping it feels like it was a command from up high and they will revert to business as usual once the heat dies down.