Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Are You Ready for Grindfest 2015?

I must first say that I am not adverse to grinding and actually like it.  So there is a fair deal for me to look forward too with the patch but from the people I have spoken too they don't seem to be as welcoming as I am to having to grind things out.  To most it seems work is a four letter word.  Well, it is, but you know what I mean.

There are a lot of things to do if you choose to participate in it when the patch gets released, as currently is happening on US servers as I write this and will on UK servers tomorrow, but the question will be are these the things people actually want to do.  I personally see a few issues with some of the things they are adding, some of which are not actually my issues but issues none the less.

So what do we have to look forward to and will you do the grind to get it?

Apexis Crystals:

The main part of grindfest 2015 is going to be the collection of apexis crystals as the catch up mechanic for gear.  On T2 (Tanaan or Timeless Island 2, if you will) the mobs can drop pieces that you click on to create a piece of 650 item level gear and there is an upgrade item that can make that 650 piece of gear a 695 piece of gear.

For many raiders this might be good for one or two or maybe even three slots at most but even at that the number of people that will find no real use for this are an extremely slim few. I'd hazard a guess that less than 1% of the player base could not find at least one piece that a 695 that would be an upgrade for them.

So I see many people taking advantage of gearing up a bit this way.  I know I will be doing so on my alts.  Heck I have a few alts that hit 100 and never left their garrison that even a 650 piece alone would be an upgrade.

But this is really where we step into grindfest 2015 and why this post has the title it does.  If anything I call it a grindfest because of this very reason.  You can grind yourself to full 695 gear and if you are not a raider or want to gear alts that does not raid, this is exactly how you can do it.  Not quite as good as valor, but a much better substitute than the original apexis gear that came with the expansions release.

This gear, when upgraded, is a higher item level than LFR gear which will be attractive to most and is the entry level of of normal mode hellfire which makes for a suitable stepping stone should you not be a raider and want to consider jumping into raiding.

The thing is that unless you want to sacrifice your mental health, your physical hygiene and the relationships with your family and friends, it is going to take a hell of a long time should you wish to gear up completely this way in one sitting.  I would not suggest it, really, but it is entirely possible, if you are willing to grind grind grind.

The base baneful pieces that turn into 650 items can drop from mobs all across T2 but the upgrade to 695 pieces will need to be purchased for 20,000 apexis crystals each.  Sure you will snag one along the way from a quest but outside of that you will be grinding for a long time to get every single slot 695 if that is what you want.

If you do not get lucky enough to get the base baneful pieces to drop you can also buy those base pieces for 5,000 apexis crystals each and 10K for a weapon version.  So you can get everything even if you are unlucky with drops, which I actually love the see.  It might require a bit more work on your part to grind the crystals needed but to have a net under you to protect you from the random number generator demon is a pretty nice addition if you ask me.

For me my alts that I do not raid with will be dabbling in T2 after I am done with my main getting all the achievements and reputations I desire.  I can see them spending a fair deal of time there just killing stuff over and over for apexis crystals.  Yeap, grinding in the grindfest.

My main will skip this part of the grind of course because I will be actually raiding with it and raid gear from late normal and higher is better than 695 so there is no need to do this grind with him but I am really interested in this for alts.  Finally a way to get raid ready without needing to raid to get raid ready, which never made sense to me to begin with.

I will of course do the grind for the mount and other goodies on my main as that would be the character that will most effectively be able to grind apexis crystals.   Just a matter of logic there, using my most powerful character to do the heavy lifting.  In the process I am sure I will get a fair deal of baneful pieces which I can turn over to any fresh 100s that might come along later effectively meaning that any character I hit 100 with from that point on will start at a 650 item level.  Interesting enough this is exactly the item level required to queue for the new raid.

Fair warning once again however, if you plan on gearing up this way it will be a very long and drawn out grind.  But at least there are many more ways to gain apexis crystals now on T2 and the older stuff with the daily and the missives is still there should you wish to speed it along even more.

Hint for people looking to collect apexis crystals for the purpose of gearing up or any other reason they might want them.  When taking the daily from your garrison, buy a missive for the same exact quest.  Start it and then go do the daily.  You will do the daily once yet get credit for finishing it twice effectively doubling your apexis crystal intake.  Can't beat that with a stick.

So are you ready to grind?  Sure hope so.
Reputations:

Might as well call this one flying because most people will be grinding out these reputations with the sole purpose of getting them to revered so they can activate flying when it is released.  Flying or not this is something I would start to tackle the second the patch comes out because, as I mentioned, I dig that sort of stuff.

While there are some mobs to kill that give reputation for one of the factions, daily quests available for all of the factions, the continuation of the garrison campaign that will offer up some reputation along the way, a weekly quest and an item drop that is not soulbound and can be farmed for or purchased off the auction house if you wish, I still see a major issue with the reputations.

The problem is I see them suffering from the same issue that people had with the reputations in mists.  They are something people will consider them mandatory.  And if you want flying at some point, guess what, they are indeed mandatory. 

People never had an issue with the dailies in mists even if blizzard misread the situation and that is why we had not dailies this expansion, they had a problem with them feeling mandatory.  If people wanted to buy valor gear, they had to do the dailies, if people wanted to get crafting profession patterns, they had to do dailies, if they wanted something from shado pan or august celestials, they had to do golden lotus dailies first before they could do those dailies so you had to do dailies to open the ability to do more dailies, and this is what people disliked.  See the problem here.  It is not like it is a bad thing to make people work for something but if there is something they want put behind a wall of something they do not like they will feel it is mandatory.  Once something feels like they have to do it the fun level of doing it greatly decreases for most.  So needless to say I do not see this going over well.

For a bit of good news, if you log in daily and even if you get absolutely zero drops for the bonus reputation pieces, it will take only three weeks to get to the revered reputation you need for flying.  The better news is that if you are doing all Tanaan has to offer, you will get some drops for the reputation pieces which will make it a shorter grind.

My personal goal is exalted with all factions by this weekend.  With as many alts as I have that I will run through this and open up the shipyard and start there I am hoping I will get enough of the reputation items to drop.  I'll send them all to my main and be exalted and done with it relatively quickly.  If the drop rate is like it was on the PTR, I don't see this being a problem at all thanks to me having ten level 100s on my mains server currently.


Professions:

A long long time ago on a blog not so far way I suggested that people not drop their gathering professions.  I said, you will still need them in the near future.  Do not think this garrison flow of resources will last forever because it won't and you do not want to get stuck having to level up a gathering profession again.

I do hope most people listened to me because, as I said would happen, your gathering professions are needed again.  And they are needed a lot.  If you are just making gear for yourself, making gems and such, or looking to make some gold selling things you will need a lot of felblight this patch and felblight comes from one place and one place only.  Gathering while on T2.

Picking herbs, mining nodes, skinning beasts, and even fishing can all get you felblight at what seems to be near a 10% chance (based on what I read, I can not confirm or deny that number).  Which means that you will be gathering a hell of a lot if you want to upgrade some items.  And felblight is tradable which means even if you do not need it, it can be a massive gold maker as soon as you start collecting it.  Even more so seeing the numbers of felblight needed.

Lets take my gun for example, the crafted one.  If I want to upgrade it to 690 from 675 I will need 30 felblight among other things and if I want to level it up to 705 from 690 I will need another 60 felblight bringing my total required felblight to 90 to upgrade one single item.

At a 10% drop rate that would mean my herbalist would need to pick 900 herbs to see 90 felblight.  Hope you have your grinding gloves on because your fingers are going to be raw from picking flowers.

I did mention this was grindfest 2015 didn't I?  Well, it sure is and you can see why I say this stuff is going to sell for a fortune on the auction house as soon as the patch comes out if you choose to not collect them for your own uses.  People will want to upgrade things and being the only way to gather any felblight is to have a gathering profession and do that gathering in T2, it might be a bit slow to start collecting decent amounts.

No, you can not get this stuff gathering in your garrison.  No, you can not get this stuff filling barn orders.  No, you can not get this stuff out in the world other wise.  No, you can not trade in primal spirits for them.  The only way to do this is to grind your little heart out with your gathering profession on T2 and only on T2.

As for the new patterns for the professions, no need to worry unless you are a jewel crafter, you just have to wait for your profession vendor to spawn in your, or someone elses, garrison and buy the patterns.

Sorry jewel crafters but no such luck for you.  You will have to get out there and earn your new patterns.  No easy path to the new gems.

You will get a quest that sends you to get the first pattern, which will cost you 1000 apexis crystals, which at this stage should not be an issue for most.  After you finish that quest and get the versatility gem it is time to go collect the others which will require you getting a drop off a raid boss, a drop of the last boss of a mythic dungeon, getting to rank 6 in the brawlers guild, killing Rukhmar and getting revered with a faction so you can buy it.

Yes, you read that right.  Blizzard has tied in optional content to now be required content.  You will need to do the brawlers guild up to rank 6 if you want to make the mastery gem.  Sadly for me my two current jewel craters are both tanks and tanks only.  Not sure if I will be able to get rank 6 on them.  I do have a hunter that is a jewel crafter but that account has been inactive since cataclysm and I have no intention of reactivating it just so I can easily get to rank 6.

I am not sure I like this part of the whole process.  You should not need to do optional content to get an important pattern like this.  I have not even done brawlers guild on my main this expansion.  I got to max rank last expansion when it first came out.  All they did was mix up the same bosses so I have no desire to do it again, never the less do it on a tank.  I guess I'll take the challenge and see if I can do it, but honestly I should not have to.  Did blizzard forget that the brawlers guild is supposed to be optional content?

For those that really do not want to try there is a bit of good news however.  You have a small chance of learning a pattern you do not know when crafting one of the others.  So if you do manage to snag some of the others when you make them you might discover one you did not get.  So I guess there is that as a fall back, just sadly it is a fall back based on the random number generator which, by default, makes it bad design.

Now you might end up grind materials to make critical strike gems so that way you can learn the mastery gem.  I am sure that is making some people so very happy.

Shipyards:

The new version of followers is more time intensive and needs more resources required.  This, to many, might end up seeming like another grind but at least with the shipyard you will not be feeling the need to log in every 30 minutes to optimize it.

But that does not mean that there will be no work required.  Yes, shipyards will need some grinding too.  Killing rares can net you some oil which are needed to build ships but some of the better ships which will greatly increase your chances of success will require achievements, reputations or upgrading your shipyard.  So it will not be as simple as do quest, get follower, send on mission.  Nope, you will need to grind out those ships and then when you can make those ships they cost resources and take an hour to build.

Missions are fewer and longer, much longer, and have a much higher rate of failure, so no 100% on everything like with followers this time around.  And unlike garrison missions were failure is not such a big deal failure in a shipyard missions results in a destroyed ship and the need to rebuild one costing more resources and more time.

Longer missions, less chance of success, real penalties for failure and this is lining up to be a hell of a lot more involved than follower missions were.

Thinking maybe you will skip this?  Not if you want to finish the legendary quest line you won't.  The only way to complete the legendary quest line is to finish the shipyard missions that get you the required items for it.  So much for garrisons being optional content.

There are four rare elites that spawn every hour on T2 and I suggest you make it stop number 1 to kill those to get a head start on your shipyard as they all have a 100 percent drop chance to give you oil to get things rolling.  So yeah, rare hunting is now required too.  At least if you want to get a leg up.  And do not forget your regular follower missions as some of them now award oil as well.  Shipyards will be a bit more work than followers were, at least that is how it is looking.

Ships will also have two equipment slots which you will need to buy items to equip in those slots that can be used to counter specific things.  You will not be succeeding at any missions if you can not counter things, it is just that simple.  One problem however.  The thing is not all equipment will be available to you even if you have the garrison resources that would be needed to buy them.  You would first need to get the blueprints for them and you know what that means right?  Grinding rare mobs to get the blueprints for counters to drop.  Having fun grinding yet?

Is it worth doing?  As I said you need to it complete the legendary quest line, so that makes it a yes, but if that did not sell you the shipyard missions can get you raid level loot, a pet and heirloom rings.  Got me sold, I will be building mine on all my characters ASAP, grind or not.  Not to mention Captain Grumpy does have a nice ring to it doesn't it.

Other Stuff:

There is a lot more to 6.2, but the heart and soul of 6.2 is grindfest 2015 on T2.  Not to be remiss I'll give a short run down of some of the other things being added that could or could not be considered grinds by some.

Legendary quest line finishes:
- The quest line comes to a head thanks to our shipyards and gets us all a ring that was a suspect design choice, to say the least.

A new raid: Hellfire Citadel. 
- Could be considered grinding new gear and many of us will partake in that.

New battle pets:
- You will need well over 1000 of the pet battle tokens, hope you have been saving up, or that will be another grind for you, as well as having more new drops and world catches out there.

New world boss:
- At least this one drops gear better than LFR level, even better than early normal bosses, but still not in the style of mists world bosses that were such a huge success.

Retuned dungeons:
- Mythic versions being scaled up to be harder and timerwalker dungeons tuning your level down.  Just reskins basically but should be fun for at least a short time.

Lots of little stuff like pepe costumes, darker nights, bonus weekends, etc, surely not a grind but hey, it is something even if it does not fit the grindfest 2015 motif of this patch.

My plan of attack for today:

Open up things on my main and start on the reputations.  Then cycle through alts to at least open up T2.  Then tank mythic skyreach on both my druid and my warrior, for the jewel crafting pattern.  After that, depends on what I am in the mood for.  I would like to gather my 90 felblight for my gun upgrade first but it all depends on what the gathering competition looks like.  No rush however as yesterday was the ore trader which means the ore trader, and the pattern for my gun, will not be back for 5 days anyway, so I have some time.  What are your plans?

36 comments:

  1. On the PTR you got 10 Felblight for killing the new world boss. So there is one way to get some without gathering. May actually encourage people to do those bosses past the first week!

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    1. Nice, 10 100s means 100 felblight and a new upgraded gun nice and easy for me. :)

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  2. I have been on T2 for the past two weeks and have noticed a few things. The felblight drop is horrendous from mining on the PTR. I have mined 243 ore and received 1 felblight' I presume the drop percentage will be improved on live from mining to the 10% you read.

    There were no announcements across T2 to indicate when the 4 champions spawn. So it may be quite frustrating trying to find them alive. Hopefully some addons will be updated to make us aware when they spawn.

    The fastest way to get reputation is to form a farming group. The northern region and the southern region of T2 are filled with elites and take awhile to bring down; a clothie will die quickly in these areas if alone if not raid geared. Much more efficient to run T2 in groups of 5.

    Buy the treasure map as soon as you get the reputation to honored. It will make it easy to get one particular rotating daily quest done very quickly.

    Crystals drop at a much quicker rate and the dailies provide larger numbers of them in T2. I think if you burp while in T2 you might even get crystals for it. Getting the 150k crytals needed for the mount does not appear unrealistic. I have acquired 36K in 2 weeks on top of the 60k I came to T2 with. Just plan your crystal purchases according to your own priorities and you can easily get a piece of gear a weak with doing minimal dailies. However, you can get 2 pieces if you farm a lot as bonus quests award them.

    The biggest issue in the first two weeks will be respawn rates. On the PTR, respawn rates were incredibly fast and I can't imagine that continuing. A farm group could clear out an entire area and the place would be completely respawned as you finished killing the last straggler. With a 100 players in the same area, I can't even imagine the lag that might occur.

    Last observation: get the "Skull of the Mad King" as quick as you can. It makes travel very quick around Draenor and T2 very efficient and has a separate cooldown from Aviana's feather.

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    1. Wow, that is a horrible sample drop rate. Even worse than a guild mate that said he mined for an hour and got 4. Pretty brutal, I do hope they increase it.

      I am guessing you will need to camp them. They are supposed to be an hour respawn so if you can track when they die it shouldn't be too bad to get there in time for them to spawn. Sort of how people were doing it for hulon on T1 to be ready for him to spawn.

      I tend to buy the most expensive thing first. I like getting the harder things out of the way to make everything else later seem easy.

      I will have to see out the skull, thanks for the advice on that one. Will look it up.

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    2. http://www.wowdb.com/items/127669-skull-of-the-mad-chief

      http://www.wowhead.com/spell=187451/skull-of-the-mad-chief

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    3. Jessiehealz - Skull of the Mad Chief Item Guide (World of Warcraft)

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fmpd1NCa-g

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  3. Read through the changes and thought "Yup, about what I expected from Bli$$ard".

    What do Blizzards designers do in their meetings? Do they actually brain or do they just spend time shutting each others dicks in the door?

    Getting a new PC this week, I'll not be installing WoW on it.

    I rapidly grew to hate grinds during vanilla and TBC. I can't stand 'treadmill content'. I get really bored really fast and just leave the game.

    Even worse, this looks like you need to be grouped to do this treadmill (maybe I'm wrong) and for someone who predominantly plays solo it means "cya blizz, acct cancelled kkthxbye".

    I can hear the purists screaming "M means multiplayer!!! playing solo is wrong!!!". Bullshit. M just means many people online at once. Compulsory grouping for this "pre-flying" content will really dent sub numbers as once the initial surge passes the place will be dead.

    And the non-raiders! Yup, those bads who have horrible gear and don't 'play properly'. another slap in the face from Ion Gonnakostus.

    This is amusng to watch tho, Blizz really don't seem to know what they're doing and are grabbing at 'basement straws' desperately.

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    1. I prefer to play solo as well. Which is what makes playing a hunter so great. I am my own group. Pet is the tank, mend pet is the healer, I do DPS. It makes the game so much more enjoyable or me. I think if I did not play a hunter I would not like the game at all.

      At least they are giving us a reasonable way to get somewhat decent gear this time for non raiding characters. On expansion release they spit in the faces of people that did not raid. So it is a step in the right direction in my opinion even if a small one.

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    2. You do not need to group to do any of it. It is just faster, more efficient if you group. The elites in the north and south can be soloed, but you will need to be using potions and food to keep farming. If you pull more than 2 in either of those areas and are not above 670 in gear - you will die. So slow and careful will get you through the dailies, it will just not be the most efficient.

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    3. Slow and careful is always good advice when entering a new play in any RPG. Heck, in any game really.

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    4. @GE

      Yeah, hunters are mandatory for soloers now. I was using a human hunter as my mage and arm warrior both kept getting killed against "super mobs" during levelling (the flamethrower guy in karabor, for example).

      As for reasonable, it depends on the individual and how bored they are willing to get in order to make progress. I personally can make progress on other games instead and not get bored.

      @Anon 1:25
      That's not so bad then, but it sounds like the Timeless Isle grind to me, which I despised. Made one trip there on a lev 90 and never went back again. Hated it.

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    5. @Speedy

      Hate to say it but the reason I refer to Tanaan as T2 is that is is timeless island 2. So it is not that it "sounds" like it, it "is" it.

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    6. One of the reps that you will need on T2 requires farming in the south at 30 rep/kill. Just like on T1 where you had to farm the npcs on the rise near Jakur to gain rep and the npcs in the South hurt. So yes Tanaan really is Timeless Isle 2.

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    7. @GE

      Yeah, I guessed it was T2 from what I read about it and that really put me off going back.

      TI sucked donkey balls tbh. I hated it. I would almost rather try to kick a hungry lion in the nads than do Timeless Isle again.

      Blizz focus too much on "This is the way you MUST play!!!" and ignore the variety in their customers. They have been deluded into thinking that the elitist forum warriors are a representative cross section of their customer base and will suck up to them until the point that bean counters begin clearing their throats to announce job losses.

      Still, there's always something morbidly fascinating about watching a train crash. Blizz are crashing the WoW train right now.

      Blizz make me think of the creators of Wildstar. It was meant to be a superhard "no scrubs, proper players only" mmo and it tanked. Going free to play soon I think.

      Blizz need to be less arrogant and pay more attention to the customers, not just the forum warriors and basement fanboys.

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    8. I liked timeless island for what it was. It would have been nice for something to do for a short time and I liked the chests with gear in them for alts too. But it was limited content, it got boring really fast and this will, most likely, too.

      Wildstar was a really fun game, I liked it, but it is that hard big group mentality that made me stop playing. For a secondary game, which is what wildstar was to me, I would never get anywhere solo, so there was no need to play it any longer. Too hard core like that loses your bread and butter, and that is the casual player. Blizzard is making the same mistake.

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    9. Exactly. People take the casual players for granted, thinking "yeah, yeah, cya next month scrub". It like they are thinking "They're just bads, they'll just stfu and give us money like they are supposed to so real players can have fun".

      I've worked in IT and in Sales and Insurance. You never, NEVER, take your customers for granted. Their money is the oxygen a company needs in order to keep breathing.

      If I treated clients with the contempt that Blizz do theirs, I'd be fired. My feet wouldn't touch the ground. Blizz are too sure of themselves, too cut off from the casuals.

      The forum warriors sing a song of bullsh*t and Blizz lap it up.

      With flying being ruled out the other month... then the pie was opened and the birds began to sing... pro-fly rage and cancellations.

      But Blizz learn't nothing. Just throw the casuals a grotty old bone and hope they hush down for the 'grown ups' to talk.

      FF14 never caught my eye much as it still looks too group oriented.

      I tried Wildstar and hated it. Like Tera and Aion. It lacked the certain spark it needed to draw me in.

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    10. I think of any of us screwed up the way the people that are running the warcraft franchise right now are we would be fired. I am amazed most of the lead designers still have jobs after the 3 million loss of subs in the first quarter. I would have been sure a few head would be rolling over that.

      Kind of goes to show the parent company really does not care about this franchise any longer if they are not going to be active about keeping it relevant.

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    11. Indeed, it seems that WoW has had development cost minimized and it is being bled for easy cash to maximize profits before it gets axed.

      When it is axed though, WoW2 (whatever it will be, maybe World of Starcraft) will suffer from the reputation damage and end up going down the pan as a result.

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    12. A companies reputation is a huge factor in this type of business and I believe they hurt theirs a lot recently with the no flying fiasco.

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    13. Absolutely. Reputation is a big factor in gaming and once a company get a reputation for being Suits then many people who would previously have tried their product based on their name alone will avoid them outright or hold back and wait for fellow gamers reviews and/or game flop to happen.

      Sad, but it looks like Activision will kill WoW rather than any of WoWs competitors.

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    14. I've always said that if wow dies it will be because they killed it themselves.

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    15. I also noticed the timing of 6.2 to boost sub numbers for the end of Q2. Very curious as to the impact of this.

      This is more of an experiment in trying to give the forum warriors an "Everythings ok!!!! Yay!!!" flag to wave for the Q2 report.

      I stick by what I've said tho, Blizz have done terminal damage to their reputation with WoD and papering over the cracks will only carry them so far.

      Is it quiet in game atm? When I left (a few months back) things were getting seriously dead.

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    16. Well... the whole of WoD is one big Timeless isle. With the rep grinds and the treasures and the no flight.
      And it is so because people LOVED Timeless Isle and expressed it to Blizzard. I recall a poll on MMO-champion asking which patch they loved the most (from MoP I think) - it included Timeless Isle, Isle of Thunder, the Landing thing. And Timeless Isle was top by a huge margin. People loved the alt gear and the different pace and the stupid pvp ganking and rares all over and jumping mini games.
      God knows why they didn't pick Thunder Isle - I loved that one. had properly scaling rares, had opening scenarios, had different dailies you could pick, had the key scenario. I got bored with Timeless week one - did the treasures once, didn't need the gear, never liked camping or grinding so I don't have those rare achis and the Shaohao rep. Only stepped foot exactly 12 weeks for the 4 pets and only for the pets. I was pretty pissed off when I saw how much people said they loved it, because I didn't get it and still don't.

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    17. Not really in my option but I catch your drift. All of warlords could be called T-lite. Because it is not as good as timeless island. The rares, except for a few, are not repeatable. There are not repeatable treasures that you can do each week. The events are not repeatable. So warlords world is actually not as good as T1, and that is saying something.

      I think it was another case of blizzard not actually reading the posts, just the headlines. Like they removed dailies because people said they hated them but they never actually read the post to see it was the gating they hated, not the dailies themselves.

      In the case of T1, people did love it. They loved it when it was new, fresh, never before seen. They loved gear being handed out like candy, they loved the free sha crystals they got from that gear, the loved hunting for drops from repeatable rares and events, they love it. But blizzard stopped reading there and didn't notice they quickly got tired of it.

      I did the rep early on and I still pop back there with the trinket from time to time to try and get drops from the rares I never got them from, but thanks to blizzard and their retarded CRZ none of the rares are ever up. They really need to remove that crap from the game.

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    18. @Speedy

      The timing was to save their butts.

      They were bleeding subs like crazy and FF14 was on the rise despite having been out a long time with no expansion yet.

      FF14 was releasing an expansion on the 23rd, if blizzard did nothing to combat that than FF14 could have possibly passed warcraft in number of active subs.

      So they released it early to compete with them. A solid business move, but not the best for the players in my opinion.

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  4. While I am not a grind aficionado like you, I don't generally mind it that much. I can even enjoy it some.

    However...and maybe it is just your phrasing or maybe Blizzard just broke my good will towards them, everything you wrote makes me so disinterested in continuing to play.

    I'm going to get to Tanaan and work on the stuff that is needed for flying. And after that, I really doubt I'll do much there ever again.

    The loss of ships with medium to high replacement cost bothers me for some reason. I'm honestly not sure what it is. The gambling? Maybe, but something else?

    If the rep grinds for flying drag on too much or are unenjoyable (especially the cat one I think), I can't see myself subscribing for much longer. At a minimum, I'm done with buying expansions at full price. IF I buy the next expansion (which I'd put at about 50/50) it will be when the price drops and the general nonsense is over.

    https://tomeoftheancient.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/qa-music-and-squatters/

    Kind of said a lot of how I'm feeling right now. I hope that I'm wrong on all of this. The the grind for rep won't be too bad and that once I have flying opened up I'll want to keep playing. But so far, it just doesn't feel that way.

    Sorry for the rambling and maybe I need a nap :)

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    1. I wrote it, of course, with my spin on the grind and the fact I like it. So I can see how someone that does not like the grind might feel it is a little blah at best.

      I do hate the loss of a ship part from failure and not being able to get 100%. With my luck, which does not even exist, I see myself replacing a hell of a lot of ships in the near future. I can see how this could be a big deal, and a big grind, for a casual or part time player. Not sure how well that will go over for someone that spent a week gathering the resources because they do not log in daily to lose them all at once. The ship loss is not 100% of course, just that you could lose it, if you do, it would really suck.

      I think flying will help a lot with the desire to do things. Flying opens up the world and makes it fuller, more enjoyable. The rep grinds should not be that bad and we have time before 6.2.x comes out, so no need to really rush I guess. Move at your own pace, but from my standpoint, 3 weeks to revered does not seem like much of a grind at all. 3 weeks in game just flies by.

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    2. It is going to take me a while, I know that and I'm not inherently adverse to that. It's just...I'm not sure?

      I fully agree about how flying makes the world more enjoyable, more explorable, more real (if only there was a word for that. Emulsion?) I think it will help once I get there (although not on Tanaan) but right now, today, it feels too little too late.

      I hope today is just one of those day/pessimistic days and once I'm in there doing new things, feeling progress and such that I'll find that game that I love again.

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    3. I am really dreading farming materials today because everyone and their mother will be out there doing it.

      I am having a hard time being excited for this patch and I know why, because I am not all that excited by the entire expansion thus far, but it is what it is and I am just hoping that we move along sooner than later. That is what keeps me plugging along.

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    4. Given their giant nerfs to Missions for alts (apparently they spread all missions over all your Garrsion-having alts; Crates got nerfed as well) the carrot of Flying for your alts (and hence the main reason to put up with the T2 grind) certainly has become less appealing.

      Considering that levelling alts consitutes a major part of their gameplay for probably the majority of the player base (most don't Raid or do Rated PvP so they must be doing something else), the giant nerf may come to bit them in the behind sooner or later (hoping at sooner, tbh).

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    5. Yeah, the salvage crate nerf came as a surprise. I am sure they waited to the day of release to mention it to try and keep the forum posts about it down some. It really upset me and now gives me even less reason to log on to alts.

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  5. You mentioned the shipyards. A suggestion that might speed along your success: Send any green ships on high risk missions - if you have the resources. If they sink, no problem. On the PTR, the chance at getting a rare or elite replacement was quite good. If it holds true on live, then try and replace the greens quickly as getting a filled equipment slot with a rare makes a huge improvement in success chances. By the time you reach your tenth mission you will need multiple ships equipped either randomly or by you from drops to have any quick success. The biggest issue is that you are limited to 5 ships until you get to level 2. That requires completing 15 missions. So you really have to juggle ships to succeed until then.

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    1. Excellent tip, thank you very much. Still seems like it is going to be rather luck based which, for me, means it is going to take forever. :(

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  6. tbh I find myself more interested in retro gaming sometimes rather than what we have nowadays. The soul seems to have been ripped out of the industry now.

    I'm old enough to remember starting gaming on a Sinclair ZX81, then upgraded to an Acorn Atom, Oric, Amstrad CPC464, Amiga 500, then PC all the way.

    Not only were the games simple back then, our needs were simple too. As machines became more advanced and games became more complex we expected more in return.

    I just get this feeling that as the market has grown and a game appeals to a broader section of the potential customer base it gets harder to please customers and many are simply cast off by developers as "we're not interested in those guys. we only want X type of player", and this is dividing the community more and more.

    Maybe I'm just getting too old for this sh*t (in my 40s now). But something in gaming stinks nowadays. Not just the toxic community but the attitude of the developers. Big business, bad PR. No need for customer relations as "They'll stfu and buy our sh*t anyway".

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    1. One of the biggest advantages of 'retro-gaming' is that there are no devs around to mess about with the game you are enjoying.

      Given how big a time-sink a (MMO)RPG can be, that certainly is an issue for me.

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    2. Netherlands is right. That is the beauty of an older game. No one is messing with it. If you love how things are you can be sure that is how they are going to stay. No one saying "we are removing flight" to screw with something you might enjoy.

      Some of my fondest gaming memories were of wasteland on the C64, it was a great game. Dare I say even my favorite game of all time. That is when RPGs were made to last, to entertain, to work for a long time on. Ah, the good old days.

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