This was a debate topic on BlizzardWatch fairly recently and my friend Waya (oops I still think of you like that) – Joakim – mentioned it in the comments where we’ve been chatting. It was thought-provoking because he agreed with the person I’d been debating with on BW and I have an alternate point of view. I figured that would make it a good topic for a post.
My argument is as follows:
– Races are cosmetic
– The game isn’t just the latest expansion
– Having to work towards things/not having immediate access is ok
– Because it’s just cosmetic
See it kinda goes full circle. If it was gear or something progression related being gated then I’d understand the contention. It would hold people back from playing but something cosmetic? Plus it’s not like there aren’t these gates already in the game and for classes which aren’t cosmetic! Death Knights require another class to be levelled to 55, and I think Demon Hunters require a level 98. There is precedence for having to play something else in order to unlock what you want.
I guess I missed a bit out of my argument because what it boils down to is:
- Not having instant access is ok
Why should everything be instantly available? Why is it wrong to have to work towards unlocking things?
I realize that the distinction is that these races are attached to the Battle for Azeroth expansion and the requirements are from Legion. However see my above point that the game is more than just the latest expansion. Personally I think blizz should leverage ‘old’ content much more than they do. They have introduced the transmog achievements which cover all the past raids, and there’s the Raiding for Leashes pets that are found in old raids. I don’t think saying here “go play this content” is a bad thing because it increases the amount of content available.
It also doesn’t cost players anything. I mean the Raiding for Leashes requires players to go back to a raid they might have done hundreds of times. The requirements to unlock the Allied Races require that a player on one character (faction immaterial) has maxed out some reputations/got some zone achievements. If the player did that during Legion then they aren’t being asked to do it again. If they didn’t do it during Legion, then they aren’t being asked to do it twice, merely to play the parts of the game they missed out on doing.
If the player doesn’t feel like maxing the reps or doing the quests then they don’t have to – because the races are just cosmetic. They aren’t losing anything by only focusing on the content they enjoy. Well they are losing the cosmetic look of that race but I guess it’s a case of “what’s more important?” If they really want the race then playing the game to get it won’t be a big deal. If they are a bit meh about the race then what does it matter anyway?
Now I freely admit that I’m probably biased because I max everything as a matter of course. I didn’t really play during Warlords so I had zero reputations done when I resubbed. I now have all but two at exalted. When I level my main I do loremaster for the expansion as I go. That means I usually get max level before the final zone but I don’t mind that. Even when I was preparing to raid back in Mists I did it this way.
I think I’ve outlined my plans for levelling new characters here before. Basically when 7.3.5 drops and the new dynamic levelling is introduced I’m going to play Horde and see the story with my Goblin Rogue and probably my Troll Druid so I see it all. IF the 6 new character slots are added in that patch I’ll also be able to roll my new Gnome Mage to 60 ready for the BfA 110 level boost.
IF the allied races drop in 7.3.5 will I level them? Well I won’t be able to immediately because I don’t have exalted with any of the necessary reputations. I’m revered with the two Horde ones – Nightborne and Highmountain – and I haven’t even met the two Alliance ones because I haven’t unlocked Argus. I’m waiting until I’ve finished the Illidan’s Soul quest before I finish the Nighthold on LFR, and then do Tomb of Sargeras on LFR. Considering I have 19/40 soul fragments and I’ve had this quest in my log a couple of months I expect it’ll be a while.
Do I care? No I don’t. Yes I want to level a Void Elf Priest and a Lightforged Paladin, but I don’t have to do it immediately. I will be able to do them in time once I’ve unlocked them. That makes content last longer as well. Instant access isn’t really a good thing. It’s like letting somebody eat the whole cake at once. Waiting means savouring each bite and that can only be good in my opinion.
Anyway it’s a big game, it’s more than just the latest expansion, and I don’t see why it’s a bad thing to actually have to play the game. I also freely admit that I’m probably one of the few that sees it this way and that’s probably because I’m not in a hurry. I play what I want, when I want. I can’t do anywhere near everything every week, so I only do bits and pieces of what I feel like and have time for.
I’m a completionist, I’ll get round to it eventually. There’s no rush 🙂
First of all, I don’t mind, in fact most of the time I go by Waya online either way, or anglify Joakim to Joe or Jay depending on what I feel like at the time since Joakim to me feels like a name so distinctly not in use in English language ^^ It’s got a counterpart in the Spanish Joaquin (and sure there’s always Joaquin Phoenix to be argued for that it can be used in English) and I think there’s a French version as well, or tbh I thought Joaquin _was_ the French version until I googled to make sure I spelled it right and saw mostly connections to Spanish people or people from Spanish speaking countries.
Ye I get your point, if fact that’s where I stood on costumes and to some extent heroes (as a lot of them where re-hashed visuals on similar skills as could be found on other heroes, a problem that got worse the bigger the roster got) in Marvel Heroes (RIP), but my issue with it in WoW is two-fold.
First of all, they’re connected to the new xpac. This immediately makes me want to drop current characters and roll with the new ones first as it feels (at least now, can’t say for sure since I haven’t played any beta and haven’t played WoW at all in a year or so) like it’ll add to the immersion. Playing my old chars give sort of a comfortable familiar setting, but c’mon, you can’t tell me you didn’t want to roll a Highmountain tauren, a Nightborne, a Drogbar, a Valarjar or any of the other races in legion that we saw either for the first time or that hasn’t played a big of a part as it did in legion? Even when it’s mostly visual variations like nightborne compared to night/blood elf or the tauren which are pretty much just the elk-like horns rather than the old pointy ones (though tbh I can’t remember if regular taurens have other variations to choose from, but it feels like they’re modelled more on cows/bulls and highmountain ones are more modelled on elks).
Secondly, like I said somewhere in the comments on the other post, one of the reasons I quit rather than stuck around once the raiding fell apart is that I was already bored with the grind, I’m fed up with the legion xpac, and I don’t like the whole “You want to do X? Well first you have to do Y, because fuck you that’s why!”. I mean the old way of attunements and all, I felt more fine with, I even wanted that. Same when they brought back some of that feeling with a “Want to queue for this dungeon? Well you have to find it first so you know where the entrance is for when you die and have to corpse run.” See? No “fuck you, that’s why!” there! Instead it all just makes sense! =D Even if some of it might’ve been more contrived in the older stuff, it was still a “You need this item to be able to enter, here’s a list with materials you need to create it”. I don’t know about you but even if they now go with “We don’t trust you enough to let you be one of us”, what’s the point of going “See these groups of people? The ones that helped me save the world from the legion? Well they like me, now do you trust me?”? Because that kinda falls apart on the fact that you (and your raid group) are the ones that _actually_ take down the legion, regardless of what the other factions think of you. At least I assume that because otherwise why did we even play? =P Tbh I haven’t seen 7.3 and didn’t see that much of 7.2 before I was bored so I’m not 100% sure but it makes sense that it’s _literally us_ that saves the world, most likely sacrificing our artifact in doing so because otherwise, who would consider another weapon an upgrade when we’ve wielded legendary weapons (lore-wise, not rarity-scale-wise) like the Lightbringer unless it’s been destroyed or depowered in the process of banishing the legion?
Actually scratch two-fold, I came up with a third reason: the faction imbalance…
As you even said in your post, you’re already revered with the factions needed for unlocking the new horde factions, but haven’t even seen the ones required for the allied ones. Well, even when you reach them, the quests doen’t take you very far and sure, you probably don’t get exalted with the horde ones either through just questing (though something in the back of my mind tells me you either do, or get damn close to it at the very least, but I could be thinking or revered as I think that’s a requirement for some profession-stuff or something similar). Any way, how do you get to exalted? World quests! =D Cool, that should even things out, right!? Nope! =,(
In fact that just makes it worse. If it’s not enough that you can comfortably get to at least revered with the horde factions through questing and maybe honored or revered with the allied ones, there’s more world quests per day up for the horde factions as well, so even if you start at the same point when you start grinding world quests it takes longer for allys to complete it…Oh! Plus! Since the horde factions are part of the “base factions” released with the xpac, every time they complete the Kirin Tor world quests they get a token to get another 2k or so rep, but you can’t do that for the newer factions from 7.2 (might change with future patch I suppose but even so, anyone that’s played at all during legion is most likely exalted with the horde factions, but definitely less likely to be exalted with the ally factions)…why don’t blizz just remove the allience from the game, every now and then they seem to do things that show they hate us anyway.. -.- Well mission complete, although I admit I’m not sure I’d come back anyway, what I am sure of is that if is stays like this then I’m not coming back..
PS. Just because of that rant at the end I’m probably already exalted with them anyway, that sounds like my luck.. When I argue against imbalance like that I’ve often looked afterwards and seen that it doesn’t even affect me.. Any way, imbalance is imbalance, so my strike against BfA is, wait for it…FOR THE ALLIANCE! =D
Speaking of BfA, I just saw the trailer last week. Best comment ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJr3dXZfcg&lc=UgzQ7Lz7mfvgRgVfxmF4AaABAg (should show up as top comment with the tag “Highlighted comment”) ^^
Also, as always, the darklegacycomics has the right idea: http://www.darklegacycomics.com/608 XD
Also, have I reached the right Samantha on Skype? I think so since I found her in my ‘favourites’ list, but there was no message history, didn’t recognize the name (samantha100880) and no response yet…though if it _is_ you and the reason you haven’t responded is because you had a heart attack due to the massive wall-of-text I sent, that’s totally understandable *whistles inconspicuously* (also ofc understandable that you’re busy, I just wanted to confirm it’s you so I don’t scare innocent women with my massive walls-of-text..not that you’re not innocent, but…you know me and you know that rambling on with big walls-of-text is kinda my M.O. so you should be prepared for it XD)
I think that is me but I’ve just remembered (I’m so sorry I forgot) that skype threw a hissy fit a few months back and basically locked me out of my account. I tried to reclaim it but they said I hadn’t provided enough proof that it was really me ??? so I created a new one using my email – spy [at] still-searching.net
Heh “don’t release I’ll res” – love it! Though truthfully that just lampshades the issue of the fact that players die thousands of times but if you die in a cinematic (I think this was another Dark Legacy comic I do love those) then you are dead forever. Otherwise why can’t these lore figures just get ressed all the time? I see NPC’s dying and I’m like “flash of light” “redemption” no?
Once upon a time I would absolutely have agreed with you. To be honest I don’t know why I don’t /shrug. I’m loving the Legion expansion and *ducks rotting fruit* world quests are awesome. I seriously love that mechanic, I think it’s great and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll be ported in an identical fashion to Battle for Azeroth. There is loads more variety than the same daily quests all the time. The emissary quests add bonuses, so do invasions, if I feel like doing them.
Heh I always get “The Wardens” token from Kirin Tor because they don’t have a zone so no rep from questing, and there’s no emissary/invasion either. I’m getting close to revered now so I’ll unlock flying soon which is cool. I want to level my professions up to make mounts/pets/toys but I’m lazy, flying makes farming easier. I’m sorry that the game changed on you and you don’t like it anymore :/ I felt the same at the beginning of Warlords which is when I took my 2.5 year break. It seems mean to say “if the game stays like this then I’ll stay subbed” when you feel the opposite but that is kinda how I feel. I like how accessible the game feels now, like there’s a lot of variety in things to do, and I can make progress in every session. Hopefully blizz can find a middleground!
Ah ^^ Funny thing is you show up as being online, technically ‘Away (on a mobile device)’. So I’m not sure what’s going on there, even if you were logged in on an old phone you no longer use, surely you’d be logged out or at least considered logged out once the battery died? Oh well.. =P
Ye, they’re raiding for sure, otherwise like you said they’d just be dead for good..
Eh, it’s probably that it’s still new to you, I loved it in the beginning as well, like world quests where some amount of quests chosen from a bigger pool so you don’t get the same every day, and gear-wise lfr is still lfr, but with mythic+ dungeons you can gear out to raid equivalent gear (except sets) from just running dungeons if your group is good enough, scaling zones and so on. They did a lot of great stuff in legion, too bad WoD felt like a dud since they spent so much time on legion and just half-assed WoD to pull it off, but I guess that’s alright now.. Any way, no matter how good things are, you still get tired of it after a while, especially since they went to the other extreme compared to WoD. There wasn’t much to do in WoD (I even started doing pet battles because I had nothing else to do =P) but in legion, every time I logged on I had a long list of stuff that “needs to be done” so it ended up feeling more like work than a game after a while =S That’s ofc partly on me, but it’s how I’m wired and I can’t really stop thinking that way so.. *shrugs*
Ye I used to take Wardens as well, there is some way(s) of getting it later on, but it’s a faction you kinda run in to in the later stages of levelling, and tbh I might just be thinking of the times there are Warden wq’s on the map plus running the 2 or so dungeons that give rep with them..
Ye, flying always makes everything easier ^^ and ye, I wanted to get mounts and stuff as well, but I ended up not getting most of them actually.. Don’t really remember why, though it might’ve been that I did the math and it was cheaper to just buy them and I just didn’t want to because I _could_ make them on my own, but I’m not sure.. =S
Well it’s not so much that I don’t like the game anymore, I just grew tired of legion since it ended up feeling like a job, the list of things to choose from felt like chores to be done and it’d make me feel bad if I couldn’t get them all done on a day. The thing I said at the end was about the new races/skins as in I don’t like that they’re gated with “old” rep and I certainly don’t like the fact that it’s a lot harder to get the rep for alliance chars compared to horde chars =P