Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
The way buildings can demoralize or impact you in many ways, the same way games can have an impact on your psychology.
If they don't make gold to feel worthy, they will fail to create virtual world...
At least in Vanilla, if you are serious raider, you were spending gold on consumables mainly, it did have this great vibe although it can be done better. I am just wanting to speak for consumables and how it can be done. If you make 1 flask that gives +100spell power, its not enough I am sorry... when you can stack 10 buffs on top of your character, then you know you made something good, also keep in mind that it was not needed in vanilla at all except naxxramas patch... but it did help a lot.
WoW was obviously your first MMO. You were playing WoW not actually knowing how to play an MMO efficiently, and so were just doing what you already knew. You understood the concept of working for money, and so you found an in game job. You understood the concept of needing to buy consumables (food) and so did.
You aren't ever going to get that experience again in any MMORPG. Even if someone released a game with the exact same economy as vanilla WoW, you won't get that experience. This is because that experience was due to your lack of experience in MMO's, not because of the economy WoW had. You now know how to spend gold in an MMO better than you did back then, you know how to make gold in an MMO better than you did back then. Because of these two factors, no game will ever give you that same gaming experience again - it just isn't possible.
When people disagree with something even if they are majority it does not mean that system is bad. They complained about covenant system in Shadowlands too, but that's because they were looking at it very shallow, that covenant system gave players opportunity to learn lore like never before, they did complain about alts and power of covenant spells, but they were never giving whole opinion on it, instead of it they were being very shallow. You can't criticize something and be one sided.
Same thing goes with consumables, because Asmon and his community said so, it does not mean its bad system, in fact its superior idea to any other convenient design because it is core of RPG tradition and because of it you had meaning to go out in open world and farm / PvP while farming, it would feel dull if open world was useless and if you only went there to PvP.
You are right, I will never have same experience, but I knew how economy worked because I played vanilla in 2019 and I started TBC on private servers in 2008. Back in 2008 I had no idea how professions worked, so I never farmed professions or gold, since it was PvP pserver, we only had 1 raid from phase 1 and we had BGs and Arenas, I was never into raids because of it, I never played raids before, I started raiding in Legion and that was some 6 years ago... But yea, I miss those old days when I had no idea what to do, I did not even have pet until level 41 when friend came into my house to see how I am doing and he told me about pets and he did pet questline and got me 41 elite white tiger, I will never forget that, we were laughing so hard because he knew how I was leveling and it was pure hardcore to level hunter without a pet, because you are not doing ranged attacks and pet is not tanking dmg, that was back in 2008... In 2019 however I knew everything and without guides I understood farming gold pretty quick, I did have help of my friend too, so whenever I did not understand something I asked him and he did guide me. So yea, I will never have that exploaration experience that I had in 2008, I would enter zone with ?? lvl mobs and get 3 shotted, just because I wanted to roam around and explore zone before I even get to that level, now I understood mechanics and design of MMOs and we all follow that path, no more virtual reality, just pure gameplay. It will never be the same...
The meaning comes from the things you get while farming, not from what you use during that time. WoW's best gear came from dungeons where there was no pvp, so it was inherently meaningless (outside of lore implications). To remedy this Blizz decided to frontload that farm by making people grind shit they didn't want to grind (random consumables and world buffs). And from the things I've heard, quite a lot of people had to literally stop playing the game after getting ready for their raid, because their readiness would be in danger if they had continued playing the game.
To me that sounds asinine. There's no meaning in a pointless grind that then leads to you not playing the game for a long period of time. There're games that have done raid preparations better and the process itself was way more integrated into the overall economy of the game and different styles of gameplay. Most people on this forum support Intrepid in their desire to get inspirations from those games instead of WoW.
I would debate that mainstream population of MMORPGs have no idea what RPG should look like, this is reason why we have so many bad MMOs out there, its because people over the years requested convenience on top of convenience and it all adds up to disaster. AoC looks promising because they are building virtual world instead of lobby game that does not require you to go out in open world and prepare. This is why I was giving them only one idea from Vanilla WoW and that is consumables. If they make it like this it will be great. Imagine if you could craft 3-4 buffs alone via your materials and only master alchemist could craft 1-2 powerful flasks that you would buy from them. What if we included enchanting to be similar to consumable buffs, instead of making them last permanently we could say that it is better for it to last 3-4 hours, so you had to prepare for that, enchanting every piece of gear for more power. It all adds up, we could include other professions, like sharpening stones from blacksmiths or something else, maybe open world grind in elite areas for runes that drop on 10% chance, increase mana by 30% of something. This all could add up to gameplay because open world would feel immersive, it would have so much importance to farm and sustain your character, this should be core of all RPGs, because RPG is sustaining/progressing your character and I would also add if there is PvP on top of it in open world, it all adds up even more. It will feel like virtual reality instead of this MMO being lobby theme park MMO where gold has no value whatso ever.
To conclude - mainstream people suck and their ideas are the worst for improvement of MMORPG scene. We should focus on old-school traditional approach to designing MMOs and I hope Intrepid understands me why sustaining character is important. I really hope some dev is reading all these comments, because they will notice that you are arguing about some things that do not have any argument to my post. You don't want to grind, and you sound like every mainstream person. I did not mean to grind 30 hours per week, but like 1 hour before raid, that is reasonable and that is why wow was such a masterpiece because they had balance between traditional RPGs that were very grindy and more modern approach that was more casual, later on Activision company bought blizzard in 2008 and they started removing all traditional design, now WoW ended how it ended and only minority of addicts are left as a population (with some newer zoomer players)
World Buffs were great idea, but they did not utilize it properly, in classic 2019 in last patch they came up with an idea for fixing that design, instead of picking WBs and logging off, players had chance to save those WBs via some engineer toolkit that you could buy from some NPC vendor for 10g, so if there were 5 WBs you needed 50g, its almost 1hr of farming just for WBs, not insane, not very grindy, but gold had meaning, enough so that you don't buy whatever you want... OFC if you farmed for 6 hours per day, you would have more and more gold with each day, but I am talking from casual perspective - I farmed 1hr per day and I was not gaining gold, but I had enough to spend for raids to raid properly and not slack behind. 1hr per day is reasonable to farm to sustain your character, however in those MMOs that I played after classic, I had no meaning to farm gold at all, imagine playing RPG and not sustaining your character, its bad design 100%. Mainstream suck!
But what we also want is the separation of said grind, so that more people could enjoy the game. So that a casual alchemist who plays 1h a day can enjoy the game as much as a hardcore grind raider does. Which seems to be the same thing that you propose buried sometimes somewhere very deep in your comments about wow and consumables.
Which is why I keep telling you that a lot of people on this forum agree with you, but just want a much better system that you're proposing. This system would still have valuable consumables and would still have valuable currency, but it would be deeper than just that. So you're saying that the system was shit, until they fixed it 15 years later. Got it.
Is now better ? no...
You use covenant as proof that even if people dislike they can be false, with one argument : the covenant system allowed to get lot of lore... because it is impossible to give lore other ways than that ? i mean wow amnaged to give lot of lore informations outside of MSQ. Be it with side quest from loot... (quel delar quests gave few lore information for example) or simply NPC discussions. Blizzard could give the same amount and kind of information we got thru covenant...
Covenant was another stupid uninteresting grind with systems to limit the pace of this grind (because of bonuses... avoid a too large disparity between the most hardcore farmer and others )... As was azerite or AP before it. Because blizzard is now unable to design a game to keep people in.
The lore thru covenant is not a "good thing we got from covenant" but "a thing to justify covenant, and help people to accept this shitty system"
Also, WoW is a game where doing alt is a really interesting things and the game push to it (with various bonuses to have alt getting level faster after first character) but it is just a trap when all those system are so heavy time consuming. . . People clearly explained it, and far more deeper also... You just didnt want to listen or read those.
So goes for the wow economy who was never loved, always considered at best an average one.
People complained... even top end players had no fun spending more time in endless and no fun grind... Because consumable was mainly from alchemy and cooking, so mainly gathering hebs and fishing... spending hours and hours doing this are no fun. Doing this more than raiding is absolutely no fun. And remember that food as elixir doesn't last if you die. So, during BC, flask became more and more used, and in WOTLK became the standart alchemy buff. The pots are limited also. On one side, it made easier for blizzard to know stats people will have (because all use same so) and other side, they reduced time spent... This one of rare good thing in wow casualisation . . . (while duty finder, short dungeons, no more open world dangerous area, are some of many bad decisions for the same goal)
This grind was stupid, not fun, and you was doing it instead of going to battleground, roleplaying, exploring the world... I dislike M+ system, but i think most players have LOT more fun doing M+ than gathering herbs to do raid... Because yes, this is the difference. When people spent around up to 10 hours grind for 1 guild raid session, they were not doing challenging content... Now, reduced to 2h grind for a week of challenge content, it allow them to spend more time on those challenging content as... M+ which is quite popular.
This is why consumables are not the best way to make the economy living... (and wow is the proof of it in fact). It has to be part of economy, but a small part.
Also, you are totally and deeply focus on WoW design... in few days, Dragonflight will be released and people will begin to gather herbs to craft flasks for raids and M+. The amount of herb will begin at 0... and grow, it will grow endlessly, until the next expansion. There is no sink of anykind in wow. so the global amount of herbs in bank will increase until the next expansion is soon.
The nodes will destroy part of player's gathering : after a winning siege, buildings and banks are destroyed, which is a BIG loss of all was gathered. This simple fact known by players will have a big impact on economy, even before the first node destruction.
Even if we say "ok, wow has a really good economic system", Even if we admit it, there are various thing in AoC that will totally change how economy work from WoW. Imagine wow in the "good old times" you remember, but each time a leader is killed, all player of the race lose 20% of what they had in their bank and bags... Are you sure the wow economy you remember would be the same ? And this is ONE difference, not the only one.
or get good, learn to manage your resources and abilities and work with what the class role is.
Consumables cheapens the players attribute and purpose of attributes. I get it, ppl want to be an alchemist, bah humbug but w/e.
Imaigne doing all of wow content without mana/hp pots, world buffs and exlixirs. Now you must work even harder and smarter AS A TEAM. New ways of dealing with the mechanics of bosses without the crutches of consumables.
Bosses should be straight up GEAR CHECK and DISCIPLINE CHECK. Consumables reduces gear check barrier. fuck that noise. get gud, l2p.
and as for Steven: Being a Dungeon and Dragon player, from DM to DM - you know how rare and expensive HP pots is in the game. Most of the time, its not even used to heal someone to full, but to revive, It's basically a Pheonix Down....
Management resources in D&D is highly important and that should be brought back.
There is a massive difference from experience D&D players who quickly learned, trying to balance and give away high magic items, trinkets, weapons and armor completely destroy the Challenge Rating and makes things harder to figure out for future encounters.
Whereas low magic campaigns, one with strained supplies of HP potions being in short supply and costly, changes how players play and how more depth is created. Fights are meaningful, interesting, deadly, yet balanced.
The problem with vanilla WoW is that professions largely didn't matter. Outside of making consumables, you didn't actually need to make anything.
This is why other games had much better economies, all professions mattered.
Yes, I totally agree with you, crafting professions were not end goal except some recipes, some crafts could be crafted in phase 1 (launch) and they lasted until phase 4 and that is some 1 year of progress. I do agree that it might sound stupid, but game had full surprises gearing wise, it was sandbox in that way that even 40level tailoring crafts would last until they are replaced in raiding.
I am also saying that consumables were only good sustaining grind in vanilla, and even if you did not have alchemy, you needed gold to get materials for your guildie to craft it if you wanted to save money, so you had to farm and there were many routes to farm, it was not only matter of gathering, you could farm gold in dungeons via looting runes, you could decide to go stratholm dungeon and farm orbs that are used for blacksmiting high end recipes, or you could farm gold in open world via mob grinding that drop elements from elementals or flasks from timber bears or even chimera elite farm meat, or even orbs from nagas or sea creatures (clams that have % chance to drop some orbs), these are all farms without profession and I liked these farms the most because it was chill to do, because combat was similar to EQ99, but not as hard core. I mean even as 60 lvl hunter I would kill mobs for 10sec or more that are 57 level, I would lose mana and I would have to drink every 2mins, it was relaxing, not aoe grinding like newer mmos, this is why I like vanilla wow.