Now I have been playing World of Warcraft for going on 5 years now. I started in Burning Crusade and it took me a year and a half to get to max level on that first hunter. The game has come quite a long ways since then. I've seen talent trees go from 60 point trees with massive choice and easily found pitfalls to a small choice between 3 abilities every 15 levels. I've had numerous max level characters and downed most raid bosses when they were relevant. With all this change comes consequence though. WoW's subscriber have dropped significantly since february and even more since an era like Wrath. This begs the question what is wrong with WoW?
The way I see it with how many complaints there were in Cataclysm about having nothing to do Blizzard over corrected and gave us way to much to do, so much so that it seems completely overwhelming. Think about this for a second. I no longer have the time to raid with a guild and stick to a strict schedule so I spend most of my time using things like LFR to gear up my character. My main is a warlock and right now there are 4 count them 4 sections of Throne of Thunder to do if I want to maximize my valor and gear chance. On top of that there are long queues and what seems like a small chance of actually getting gear considering how long the runs take. Now you can supplement this small gear drop chance with Mogu Runes Of Fate which give you a second chance at getting gear off a particular boss. But the problem with that is now I am forced to do a set amount of dailies to get my charms for the week just to get these runes for that extra chance. All of this is on top of PvP, Heroic Scenarios, and trying to valor cap.
This all leads to my main issue with the expansion and what I think is wrong with WoW at the moment. Since all of that work needs to go into just my main character every week just to gear and play what about alts? I'm used to having several decently geared alts plus a well geared main every expansion I very much enjoy dabbling in healing, tanking, dps, and PvP but the problem is to gear up your alts you have to go through this same grind. To gear up my warrior alt he also has to run LFR, do dailies for his runes of fate, get his elder charms (now by other means since you cant get them from lesser charms), and buy gear with valor (which is all gated behind rep rewards). Not only that but in expansions without things like LFR I still feel that it was easier to gear an alt just because you could get last tiers epics for points. But now you end up in the conundrum of having too much to spend valor on and not enough valor coming in. Right now my warrior while trying to gear up has the option of spending valor on last tiers epics (at a discount), this tiers epics, and upgrading current valor gear. That is just way to many outlets for valor and the fact you can only accumulate 1000 valor a week (slowly I might add) which leads to burnout and the feeling there is too much to do.
Now enough about the rant here are some solutions. Blizzard why did you change the paradigm that had been working so well since Wrath? Allowing people to get last tiers epics for justice points is such a great way to help people gear up alts and fill holes. Not to mention it keeps dungeons relevant and people in the system since currently there is almost no use for justice points besides the honor conversion. I understand that LFR is a fantastic thing, but it feels like such a chore when there is little reward. Why not let LFR give 125 valor for each run why on earth is it giving only 10 more valor than your first heroic with 2x the headache and time commitment? And to help gearing further why can't LFR bosses drop justice points as well or have each cache award justice points? And why not let there be an alternative quest to get Elder Charms/ Mogu Runes of Fate? I don't feel that I should be punished because my alt still needs Elder Charms to gear up or I don't want to do dailies every week to get my runes. What I think Blizzard really needs to fine tune is giving players enough to do and not going overboard. Having things like rep gating and valor grinds is fine at the start so people don't get bored but the 2nd and 3rd time going through it just makes it a pain. Thanks for listening and to WoWInsider for the idea.
