General Zod

Anyone still play this?

My wife and I are still both very active on it. Are we the only ones?

My guess is now that you have a shipyard this next expansion will allow you to sail to a new land with the regular assortment of new zones and whatnot. Probably a new race and/or class as well. Announcement is tomorrow (Thursday 8/6).

DaveNinja

I didnt buy or play the current expansion. If my wife ever gets a new computer, maybe we'll both play again.

Groucho

I've heard a lot of complaints about the current expansion, so I imagine they're eager to retain customers.

General Zod

Yeah the current expansion was a real game changer (literally) in many ways with the Garrison, changes to professions, and being able to gear up without having to Raid. Since it is just my wife and I that play and we don't do raiding and stuff it was ideal for us and we really liked it - but for those who live by raiding they didn't like that you could get some high level raid armor just by completing a follower mission.

What I'd personally like to see in the next expansion is something the original Everquest did which was to allow smaller groups to do dungeons by sizing them down. They were still very challenging and your chance for mega-loot wasn't as high as it would be if you did it in a full group but it still allowed us to do dungeons at our level without having to join a PUG. Not sure we'll ever see that with WoW but..

covenant

Another expansion so soon??

I just bought the recent expansion in July, and haven't really scratched the surface yet. I never raid and haven't did a 5-man in years. I'm pretty content to just level and explore.

joeblow69

I have completely lost faith that blizz has any idea what they are doing anymore based off how they've handled this expansion. I've got 9 months of free token time built up, but not even sure I will use it. The next expansion announcement needs to include some extreme humble pie along the lines of:
"These are all the reasons that we totally borked WoD. And these are the things we are doing to rectify that in the next expansion".

Then, MAYBE, I'd consider buying the expansion. But not if they are going to charge $50 again. I still feel ripped off having to pay that extra $10 for 1/2 the content that we usually get in an expansion.

Krayzie

I haven't played since Burning Crusade. My favorite instance was the DM North Tribute runs. Anything like that now?

funkyryno

Hard to believe this game is still going strong nearly 11 years after its release.

I got back into a few years ago for a short while with a friend. The magic was gone, but I did have some fun playing the PVP games.

Draven

I literally bought the last expansion last week and haven't even cracked the box. Finally had some free time to tackle it. Is it worth even opening? I'm also more of a solo player.

joeblow69

The latest expansion pack has really tanked subscriptions:

joeblow69

Most people seem to agree that the leveling experience is great, but once you get to 100, there isn't much to do besides raiding. The new daily quest mechanic is basically this:

"Go to spot X, and kill guys and click on things until the meter gets filled up".

And do that over and over again until your eyes bleed.

General Zod

Well for my wife and I who either play together or solo based on what our schedules are the last expansion has been our favorite so far because it's much easier for us. We don't pvp or raid or do dungeons and Draenor doesn't require any of that to get good items. I think for the more hard core players that's what they don't like about it.

But there's a Garrison and you can have a bodyguard which is almost like another half a player helping you and they re-did crafting so you don't have to skill up to the high levels just to make something decent.. so in my opinion there's a lot of positive change. But most all of those changes fit in with my playing style so.. I wouldn't expect it to make everyone happy.

Draven

Hmm...I'll probably give it a try. I get bored at higher levels because I don't raid or PVP, so giving me something else to do in it for awhile is fine with me.

funkyryno

Judging from the graphic, the recent expansion packs give a short jump in subscribers, but they're unable to stop the downward trend (not surprising). Looks like subscribers are close to where they'd be if the expansion pack had not been released.

General Zod

Yeah so they can only pack so much into an expansion. People get on and rip through it and then get bored and leave again. They just release Tanaan Jungle a couple of months ago as an additional zone to the expansion and I think that was a good move to kind of keep people interested. However based on the chart.. not sure how good that worked.

joeblow69

Did you really enjoy Tanaan Jungle though? Apparently, they got the message that most people didn't like their new style of dailies, but it was too late in the cycle to change it for Tanaan, so it's just more of the same crap. I did one days worth of dailies there, and that was enough for me to quit the game.

General Zod

Well I guess it really depends on your playing style. Yes I like Tanaan because my wife and I log on, grab the dailies, and crank 'em out in about 30 minutes. With the crystals we upgrade our armor a little bit every day so the dailies wind up going faster and we can start tackling some dungeons by ourselves. So for us it's a daily progression thing that doesn't take much time.

Having said that.. there's only so much these developers can do for the end game. There's still rares, events, pet battles, timewalking dungeons, mythic raids, pvp events, etc.. but there can only be so much until you sort of have to keep doing dailies. For those that like to raid and stuff I can totally see how this is horrible for them. They probably get all the latest and greatest stuff in a month and they don't need the dailies and so there's nothing to do to really interest them. Hopefully this next expansion will offer more for both playing styles.

joeblow69

I actually think the dailies they had in MoP were vastly superior to what we have now. The only issue with the dailies was that valor gear was locked behind the daily rep, so it felt like you HAD to do them every day (along with the double gate locking which required the golden locus FIRST before you could grind the others).

What they have now just seems lazy. "Go here, and do 'stuff'". Thanks!

Also, Tanaan is a huge zone ... why couldn't they fill it up with quests, like any other quest zone? Why does it always have to be dailies? I'd like to see a huge quest line which opens up dailies.

AND, I think their catchup mechanism seems really lazy. Mobs that just randomly drops high level gear? I much prefered Wratch and Cata catchup ... where you actually ran dungeons for gear. (seems there is no reason to even bother running dungeons in this exp, which is a crying shame)

OH, and the LFR gear being crap and ugly by design killed any desire for me to run it on any of my characters. Hopefully that is something they are changing next exp.

Ok, I'm done ranting I will be watching the announcement, but don't have high hopes for it.

joeblow69

Well that was kind of underwhelming:

New Hero Class - Demon Hunter!
New Continent - The Broken Isles
Artifact Weapons
Class Order Halls
Adventure to Level 110
New Dungeons and Raids
New Honor System

Sounds like there's a Q&A coming up on Sunday, that should give us some more interesting details on how they are planning on fixing the WoD mess.

General Zod

I agree with you Joe. Wasn't too much to really get my excited about.

Then again this doesn't seem to be an expansion targeted towards the way I play. Draenor was about building up my own army and going out and causing trouble and this one is about joining a bigger army and going out and causing trouble. Since I don't PVP and don't raid or do dungeons really most of the new exciting changes don't affect me. And I don't get excited about new classes anymore - Monk broke me

But new lands to explore and the newer weapons are nice. But overall.. meh.

Edison

My daughter and I are still playing, we bought the WoD expansion at launch. I have my main character (Mage) up to level 100 (only the second time I've been at the cap). I hit 80 during WotLK, but never caught back up, started WoD around 86. My boosted character from the expansion (Hunter) is at 98, and it seems as though I'll get another boost to 100 with Legion.

We mainly do solo adventuring, but team up on some quest, and will do dungeons with a PUG. I've liked Draenor as it fits our playstyle pretty well too, like General Zod mentioned. I enjoyed the Garrison, but don't like the Shipyard as much. I also liked that I could do professions, and gathering professions that I don't normally do in the Garrison.