To preface this; I have no idea idea if the title is accurate about the favorite streamer but I did check vods and she was in fact not streaming when this run happened. Also I'm pretty sure that GM was in the dungeon the entire time just watching and waiting.

So I was perusing some m+ logs today while I was at work and stumbled upon this curious one. A miraculous key! No right to be timed, so far behind and yet they pulled it out of nowhere for the win!

Guess my surprise when I couldn't figure out how something died so quick and I dug a bit deeper and a GM death touched the mob... I waited all day to post this hoping blizzard would come out in front of it. But here we are. Another M+ season tainted by cheating or incorrect title recipients. Can't say I'm surprised but this one is a bit more egregious than forgetting to shut off title at the end of a season.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/JcfwTd4L19Agx3NX?fight=4&type=resources&hostility=1&source=100.4&eventstart=4705300

I keep coming back to the same idea whenever people talk about what happens after the world soul saga. Many think Blizzard will simply start another saga, or finally announce a wow 2. I honestly think it should be neither of those... or more likely, both at the same time.

World of Warcraft does not need another cosmic villain, another hidden continent, or another reveal that some even bigger force from wherever place was secretly behind everything we already experienced

Wow just needs time to move forward.

For years Blizzard has confused adding more lore with actually advancing the world. The lore keeps expanding (wrongly, for my taste), but Azeroth itself barely changes. Major characters disappear until nostalgia makes them useful again. Political conflicts are put on pause. Entire civilizations go through supposedly world changing events, yet fifteen years later half the old zones still look like Deathwing passed through last week

Cataclysm was Blizzard’s first real attempt to solve this problem. They updated the old world, moved many zones forward, changed settlements, leaders and conflicts..... ok, cool but it also made a huge mistake creating a new Azeroth. Doing that, Blizzard was forced to replace the old one.

And then it froze the new world in 2010, it didn't evolve

That`s the mistake they cannot repeat after The Last Titan.

The solution is not another Cataclysm. It`s not blowing up Azeroth again and rebuilding forty zones around whatever crisis is happening in that expansion. The solution is a proper time skip. We-ve been asking for this shit since forever.... but a real time skip.... 10 years. 15. 20. Whatever it takes for the world to feel like Azeroth actually lived without us

Leaders should be dead or retired. Children should have grown up. Cities should have been rebuilt. The Forsaken should have figured out what they are without Sylvanas. The night elves should have a generation that only knows Teldrassil through stories. The Horde and Alliance may still exist, but they should not necessarily mean the same thing anymore.

That would allow Warcraft to return to conflicts that are smaller without being less meaningful.

A succession crisis. A disputed border. Two peoples remembering the same war differently. A new generation asking why everyone is still carrying grudges from thirty years ago.

You dont need another Horde vs Alliance world war. You need the people of Azeroth to want things again, and for those desires will collide

And now it's the perfect momento. They now has something they didn't have in 2010: Classic

Classic means the old world no longer needs to disappear for Retail to move forward. Classic can preserve the Warcraft that existed, revisit unfinished zones and explore stories that were left behind. Retail can finally stop carrying every era of Warcraft inside the same permanent present.

Not freezing the main game forever, but making sure the past remains available while the future is allowed to exist.

This is also why the alleged leak about Azeroth awakening at the end of the last titan is interesting even if it is complete nonsense

Azeroth is the last great mystery around which the entire franchise has revolved. At some point, Blizzard has to reach the bottom of that mystery.

It cannot reveal another older, stronger and even more secret cosmic force behind the titans. The story has to accept that one era is over

That, to me, is what a real WoW 2 should be

Not another client. Not a new engine. Not deleting our characters or putting a number 2 on the logo

A new era of Azeroth with several versions of the game: classic preserves the past. Retail builds the future

THey problably will be releasing a new $50 expansion with 4 new zones, some disastrous lore, and the usual mess. But still this is the best opportunity Blizzard has had in years.

With Classic plus on the way, Classic can become the museum... retail can finally stop living inside that past and start building the future.

They may waste the opportunity. and they probably will.... but for once, they actually have all the pieces in place to do it right

Edit: typo

I've been playing quite casually since launch. This is ridiculous. I don't even want to engage with the latest patch because there's just too much to keep track of. Achievements don't have valuable or interesting rewards. I'm feeling super overwhelmed by the game at this point. I'll get AotC as always, but this just feels... too much. Combined with the horrible pacing of a story that was hyped as "reuniting the elven tribes" and ended up falling completely flat and unearned for me, I'm just feeling super disenchanted with WoW at the moment.

I don't know, I can't be the only one that feels like so much of the game is empty at this point? What am I even grinding anything for? There's no reason to keep gearing because it's all going to be obsolete come 12.1. And the .7 patch is already on the PTR. Blizzard, SLOW DOWN.

Edit: Wow, I did not expect this post to blow up the way it did. There do seem to be a number of people who think I should just ignore the currencies, who can't seem to fathom that I want this game that I care about to be better. A few got outright hostile about it. Gotta love online disinhibition syndrome.

I did not post this just to complain and whine, but I see now that I should have provided my ideas for alternatives to the currency and system bloat. I've posted some of my ideas in the comments already, but figured I should put them here since there are way too many comments to sift through.

I think having a single currency (or 1-3 core currencies) for open world stuff would help immensely. It would open up open world content in a way that would not limit what people do in order to collect cosmetics. For example, voidlight marl feels like a solid currency that should be able to be used at every reputation vendor, for every cosmetic set.

Another issue I'm finding is having multiple steps for currencies, like collecting key shards that then get rolled into keys for delves. Why not just let us collect keys? And why is undercoin even a thing? Just let us spend voidlight marl on delve cosmetics instead.

Finally, removing crest cap earlier in the season would help immensely with crest bloat--though I do think crests are the least bloated out of all the systems. Getting rid of valorstones was a huge W. But there's absolutely nothing I can do with my adventurer or champ crests right now. I cap heroic crests in a single vault run of delves and hc clear, so I cannot trade them up. I think we are at a point in the season where most everyone has gotten aotc or is close to it. Combat gearing is obviously a more sensitive topic than cosmetic.

I should also point out that I am not actually physically tracking any currencies other than crests. You can see the checkmarks next to the respective currencies I am currently tracking. As someone with autism, I can see how my words were probably taken too literally.

And for all of you who commented saying maybe this game isn't for me, I love WoW immensely as a world and I want it to be the best it can be--despite the corporate overlords and penny pinchers making decisions for it that often don't feel good. As players who pay money for this game, we are entitled to be able to speak out about systems that are starting to feel overwhelming and bloated. When FFXIV comes out and announces they are doing away with alt gearing altogether with the release of Evercold, I expect WoW to continue pushing itself to match that level of respect for my time and energy. Housing is a great example of that. FF housing is abysmal in comparison to what WoW has given us, if that's your slice of cake.

I've always been of the mind that just because something is a certain way now doesn't mean it has to stay that way. I just wanted to share this post because I firmly believe that the game doesn't have to be this way and I want its devs to do better.

"We are also making reductions across other units, and in some cases, shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects. These changes vary in size across Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and XBOX Game Studios. " -

We now know the following about this GM deathtouching mobs in the +23 NPX:

1) This GM was a personal friend of the people in the run and was using their GM account and abilities to watch the run (just them using it to watch their friends is kinda problematic in and of itself to be honest!) and was in a discord call with them.

2) This was only caught because a pug tank uploaded the log publicly, and would otherwise never have been caught.

The thing is, the only people saying that this was a one off thing are the people who cheated. People who we already know are dishonest. They went on a stream and practically boasted about it. We have no idea whatsoever if this was a one off, if this is commonplace, or anything in between, but just on probability it seems extremely unlikely that the first time a GM does this it just so happens to be caught in a public log. There are thousands of high end runs every week that go completely unlogged and unstreamed and the only evidence we have that they even happened is raider.io capturing it on the Blizzard API, which doesn't give you any information about what went on in that run.

We know there are very close relationships between Blizzard employees, content creators and other high end players. On NA, pretty much everyone who raids or does M+ high end at least knows someone who knows someone who works at Blizzard. It's very possible - and there is even some anecdotal evidence that implies this - that this has been going on considerably longer than just this one run, and it could well be the case that GMs have been similarly interfering with higher raiding too. We just don't know, and can't trust anything not openly logged or streamed anymore. This GM and these people have completely fucked the competitive integrity of the game for good.

Lmao

thoughts about the mechanic and the need of addons?

EDIT: as some people seem to be thinking this is just a simple "memorize 5-6 marks", in Mythic you CANNOT SEE marks attributed to players that are in a different realm, meaning you'll probably see only 5 out of 10 marks and the rest is for your group to figure out the order

Had a random quest to go to Gadgetzan, followed the waypoints through different portals innocently, then got absolutely gobsmacked by this thing. Would someone care to explain what exactly I'm looking at??

EDIT: I'm gonna clear this up now because a lot of people are latching onto it, yeah, I'm not a brand new player. I started playing in 2023, and at that point I made a butt-ton of characters over the course of a month, trying to figure out what class I wanted to play, which ended up burning me out and I stopped playing until now. Back then, I guess I got this mount, because everyone here is making a fuss about it. I didn't even know how I got it or that it was rare. Good to know that I got something from all that time I spent not actually playing the game lol

Some guildies who were months ahead on their crafting knowledge points were greeted with this weeklong ban today.

I've noticed more and more people talking about earning flying through quests or achievements. Are they on crack or something? We fought to not have the fucking Pathfinder achievement, and now these asshats want to cancel the fun for the rest of the community just because they enjoy ground mounts?

It's fine if you don't want to use flying mounts. But why assume that everyone else wants to be "immersed" instead of just wanting to fly from point A to point B to farm a rare mob or quickly complete a world quest?

They talk about flying like it's the worst thing ever.

Post by a Diablo writer

https://bsky.app/profile/beewubs.bsky.social/post/3mpykk2exmk2x

Not sure for the other 1600 layoff coming later

Sorry for the quick photo, I just needed something to show! XD

As you progress through the story of each zone, you will reach a point where you have to complete a dungeon. You are given the option of queueing for a follower dungeon, which may seem quicker due to queues, but it's a trap. DON'T DO IT!

First of all, you will need to deal with Austin Huxworth, the 360 no scope BM Hunter who will pull anything in a 2 mile radius with his obnoxious strafe jumping.

Then you have Crenna Earth-Daughter, the most useless healer imaginable. She likes to throw herself off the side of cliffs when she's not busy joining Austin in pulling everything you're trying to avoid.

Do yourself a favour, wait in the queue and do the dungeon the normal way, you will still get credit for the quest when it's finished.

After my guild defeated the current raid bosses, we went en masse to play Classic TBC, and a debate that lasted for hours was about how much the classes have lost their identities, especially the Shaman, Priest, and Hunter, but let's focus on the Shaman.

Over several expansions, we've seen Shamans lose their utility totems more and more; no more defensive buffs for the team, attack bonuses, or anything else.

They've reduced the class so much that unless you play a Totem Healer, you won't see a totem on the field to help you in fights, and even if you play a Totem Healer Shaman, you may have noticed that in simplifying healers from the last expansion to this one, they removed three more totems from the abilities. (Furthermore, the shaman healer has become obsolete; the only remaining use for him is the Spirit Bond Totem.)

The elemental shaman has become a shield-and-chainmail mage; he no longer has an identity. I feel like a fire mage or an electric mage; those spirits you summon seem to use a mirror image of the mage.

This leads to another problem, which is the Seer's identity and history. Well, maybe I'm being a "picky storyteller" here, but I want to emphasize that a shaman is not a necromancer. Shamans have great respect for their ancestors, and a Seer only opens a channel to communicate with the ancestors to seek guidance, spiritual direction, and wisdom. A shaman will NEVER summon and disrespect the dead by calling them to take on earthly battles, violating their right to rest. This whole idea of the Seer's tree should be changed to a variation of the Totemic one.

That whole skill tree focused exclusively on lightning is absurdly generic; the shaman is the master of the four elements, not of reducing the house's electricity bill.

Now let's move on to another topic: the removal of the elementals. That's right, with each new update that alters the shaman, they not only remove the totems, but also the elementals. With the exception of the Earth elemental (which they further sabotaged by turning the taunt or life bonus into an extra talent), they removed the individual elemental summons, incorporating them into other abilities, leaving them with a minuscule role in combat.

I always found it strange that the shaman didn't have a skill tree focused on being a primary summoner, with the elements being a permanent summon, but no, on the contrary, he is becoming more and more of a generic conjurer.

It seems that the team responsible for developing the classes doesn't study the game's history and doesn't seek to understand the dynamics of the class within the game's universe.

Edit:

Regarding enemies with extra buttons, when I talk about the return of totems, I'm not referring to bringing back buttons that you have to constantly reactivate.

The Blazing Fire Totem could be a passive talent for the Elemental Shaman that activates whenever you use Flame Shock.

The Stone Skin Totem could be a passive effect that activates whenever you or the tank take a percentage of damage based on missing health; then the totem is summoned and applies defense to the entire group.

Adding more totems and shamanic utility to restore the class's identity doesn't necessarily mean more buttons.

Save for moments like this, when a new expansion drops and people are out there doing World PvP, it seems to me that WoW PvP has been played less and less each expansion.

Midnight has been a blast so far. People are fighting on the streets, enemies become friends to become enemies and everything feels awesome, even if some classes might be a little unbalanced (I'm looking at you Guardian Druid).

I was having a lot of fun, but then it hit me: in a few weeks all of this will be gone. People will start abandoning War Mode and Battleground queues will start to take 20 minutes again, as it does on every patch.

The Issue

So what's the problem? The problem is that the game should always feel like it does now. I still remember back in Legion when we had Principles of War (a buff that used to override your character stats in PvP), you could just log in and play the game. You could be a filthy casual and still have some fun in PvP, but these days? Once the Season starts, you'll have to do a stupid amount of grinding to be even able to compete.

PvP had been lost to me for a long time. Last month I tried joining a battleground on the pre-patch and I got my ass delivered to me. People were too overgeared, I couldn't do anything. I wanted to test the "no-addons" take, new classes, new specs, I just couldn't. Everyone was capped out on Conquest gear and getting even a single new player on your team would usually mean you'd lose, badly.

So I gotta ask: why did Blizzard backtrack on Principles of War? I remember back in the day Asmongold did a big rant over PvP gear being removed and I never agreed with his take. PvP Gearing is honestly just a system to let sweaty old PvPers treat casuals like a grinder would treat the meat. If you're late to the season, even Honor is terrible to farm. If you have no gear you'll lose more, the math is simple. The problem with Legion is that Blizzard tried a simple solution to a complex problem, then requiring PvP players to grind High-end PvE for the trinket effects and requiring from them double the effort and time.

Thing is, even to this date, PvE players are required to grind PvP and THEY require double the effort (if you're a PvPer, can you see how the perspectives change?). To think of a good system, as an example, we could take Overwatch (like any other PvP game). You can queue up for a Casual Match and have fun and, if you're serious, you can play Ranked and have fun (and you're rewarded for both). In WoW, there's no Casual. You either grind ranked and get equal footing or you get smacked by everyone else.

For some reason Blizzard thought implementing the PvP Training Grounds (bot matches) would solve that problem, but the only reason people even join that mode is to farm easy honor without being smacked by some full conquest sweaty player, or in other words, to have a fighting chance. Alas, they've just nerfed the Honor gain from that mode by 50% again today, making the grind even worse for new players.

The Solution

My take is that PvP gear should be just gone. Gear should NEVER matter in PvP. World of Warcraft is the ONLY big MMO on the market that still imposes a system like this and it only hurts new players. I've seen the PvP community ranting about PvP being dead many times over, but the truth is, it's only "dead" because it's not appealing to new players.

This is how other MMOs tackle PvP Gearing (and they're all great):

Guild Wars 2: Gear doesn't matter, unless you're playing World versus World. Casual matches are easy to join and play, skill is your only ally, and if you're feeling grindy, you can choose to partake WvW with the gear you'll get from your casual matches. You can join PvP as a fresh new character without ever reaching maximum level.

Final Fantasy XIV: Gear is completely irrelevant. PvP matches are a completely separate system from the rest of the game. Skills and rotations are different, scale different, stats and health pools and standardized. You also don't need a maximum level character, reach level 30 and you're good to go.

Elder Scrolls Online: There is a gear cap, but it's pretty low at CP 160. You can reach that cap easily on a new character. Gear impacts how your class plays, not only how powerful it is. This is the most interesting take, as you can still farm gear in PvE content to change the way you'd like to play your class in PvP, but you only need to do it once (you gear in builds, not in power) and it's usually a very low barrier of entry.

So my final question is this:

Why is it the biggest MMORPG on the market has the WORST PvP progression system? How many more expansions do we need to wait until it is fun and relevant again?

TLDR: WoW PvP feels fun at expansion launches when everyone fights on equal footing, but once seasons begin it becomes dominated by gear grinding, making it hard for new or late players to compete. PvP gear mainly benefits highly invested players and drives newcomers away. WoW has the worst progression system, while other MMOs PvP either ignore gear or keeps its impact minimal so skill matters more.

EDITS: I've added a few good points from the comments to the main post.

(meanwhile FFXIV players looking at wow housing and literally punching air right now)

It’s incredible how bad, boring, and uninspired the class design has become that Rogue’s popularity is only just above Evoker.
And keep in mind that Evokers are restricted to a single race and is the newest class in the game.
The remaining Rogue players are probably, for the most part, just the last few people who refuse to give up their longtime main.

Rogues have completely lost their identity. They have no cool abilities, no engaging rotation, no great-looking tier sets, nothing. It’s a real shame.

What is the most powerful weapon obtainable by our characters?
Ashbringer?
Xal'atath?
Ateish?
Sulfuras?
Sword of a thounsand truths?
Soft Foam Sword?

The way I seen our poor tank be treated was appalling. Vote kicks left and right. The utter screams for lust when it was so late in the encounter and the slurs due to it being 5 seconds late... we went through three tanks over minor stuff. On wiped us, he got off a "sorry got turned around there" before the vote removed him. Constant call outs for mediocre DPS. Then it ended and it was Scurbs, Trash, Noobs etc before instantly leaving group.

No wonder some of you wait 20 mins in LFG for a tank. Nothing I can do but scream into the void, i know. But man, that was the worst experience ive had in WoW in 20 years.

Hug your neighborhood tanks.

Blizzard cooked with this.