It is relatively bad. With a tons of world events, rares that need a group to be done somewhat efficiently, it is a nightmare if you dont do everything in the first week or two of something being introduced, and some things cannot be obtained in the hype time of a event. At this moment if you missed something from events from earlier patches its nightmare to find group since most of it cannot be done solo. We need this type of events to be doable solo after a minor patch.
Very well written, for me personally Zaralek Cavern is much worse than Korthia.
One of the worst for me.The changes they made to rares in Zaralek Caverns, attociously low droprate of manuscripts and hiding a super unique bear form behind a once-a-week chance with ludicrously low droprate tells me everything I need to know about Blizzard’s view towards collectors.They have not learnt anything, they still have their old habits.“Respecting” players’ time lasted about one patch.I wanted to farm the weekly hunt mount on many alts, but then I saw absolutely no one does hunts anymore. And if you want to solo it, you need to fly around clicking on 16 nests or so on. It’s mind-numbingly boring. No consideration was made for lack of players participating in their failed public events once a zone becomes irrelevant to most after only one patch.At least Superblooms cured my isomnia.
Yes I love this expansion ,but absolutely hate the Azerothian Archives , its a waste of time and no fun at all for me . Love the way we did archeology by digging and finding things in a relaxing way whilst getting also exp. to level up following the green light with alts. As for profession knowledge I think its far to slow to get to unlock all of them , especially for alts to get the points to complete is nearly impossible. Follower dungeons are amazing , hopping this will expand to heroics and even raids if possible. Most of DF is enjoyable and fun.
I certainly think some things are definitely better than they've ever been, in regards to respecting player time. There are, however, some things that need a lot of improvement still.I'll start with what I think has been done well:First of all, I think having customizable mounts is awesome. The whole idea behind the system is great and I think, for the most part, it is quite realistic to obtain the majority of the appearances you want in an amount of time that isn't awful. However, I have some critiques about Zaralek rares and the likes in the section below.Secondly, I think it's great that they're introducing more bad luck protection. Just the idea itself is healthy, even if not all of the implemented forms of bad luck protection have worked very well.The best world event they did during Dragonflight, from the standpoint of collecting items, was the Time Rifts. They provided the best kind of bad luck protection they could in the form of a vendor. Never got that mog, toy, mount, or piece of gear? That's alright, just get the currency you need and buy it directly.Like the article said, it provided a very clear path for collectors to work towards and it ended up being way more respectful to player time because of it. I personally hope they learn the most from how they handled it during the TIme Rifts and the Emerald Dream.I also think the Trading Post as an idea is great. It's a nice, simple excuse to bring in a lot of items that have existed in the game files for years (or new items that don't fit in with current content thematically) to the players.And now for what I think needs to improve:I think the Trading Post is a really good idea and there's a lot of good about it, but I really wish they'd let us have more tender throughout the month. It feels really limiting, and not in a great way, when you're a mount collector and feel constantly obligated to grab the mount. I've wanted to get numerous weapon transmog but usually can't because there's a mount -- not that I'm unhappy there's a mount, it's just that I wish we had more tender.I think my biggest criticism, again in regards to collecting items, is how much more difficult it becomes to collect said items after the content they're attached to has died in popularity (in particular when it's something like Zaralek rares and can't easily be soloed for a while - especially annoying for drake manuscript collectors currently). This isn't a problem unique to just Dragonflight of course, but it feels very relevant because of how many open world events they've done this expansion. I think the world events are nice and I don't want them to go away, but they need to tweak how it works for solo players and how the drop rates are.Moving onto bad luck protection now, I mentioned up above that it's good that they're introducing this more, but there's a couple problems with how it currently is for some items. I think their implementation of bad luck protection for the holiday events hasn't been enough and usually serves as a point of disappointment or aggravation, rather than satisfaction. The X-45 Heartbreaker bad luck protection, for example, is awful. In my opinion, no mount should be below 1% drop rate, unless it's something endlessly spammable like the Infinite Timereaver (although a mount like that should have some sort of bad luck protection too).I wish they would just introduce more bad luck protection into the game fullstop. I don't think farming raids endlessly and mindlessly for one or two specific things is very engaging or rewarding. I wish they'd introduce a system akin to the seedbloom vendor in the Emerald Dream or the Time Rift vendors, where you can progress towards something specific and actually buy it (basically like how they do it in FFXIV). So, let's say they had a vendor for each old raid with some sort of item to chase after (maybe legendaries included too) - each kill of the last boss gets you a token. After X amount of kills you will have X amount of tokens. I don't think a super rare mount should take more than a year to acquire. Less with alts. People putting in effort should feel rewarded, rather than being sent to RNG hell and having to kill a boss.I look forward to The War Within! I hope they learn from how things have been going and really keep listening to player feedback about all of this.
I don't mind the way Azerothian Archives is done, as an event that's for a small patch (x.x.5). But, first it's not very alt-friendly and second, they overshoot a tonne with the vendor prices. Delves give me PTSD from Torghast, I hope it's very different.
Nope, but really WoW's been terrible for collectors since BfA or so when they started adding more random spawn chance random drop chance rares around Mechagon. It's what made me quit and give up on it. Then there's the trading post where you can't get everything...
Generally speaking, they made a lot of mounts easier for who didn't get them yet: tcgs, world bosses example which were hard but possible, or stuff like tyrael, spectral wind riders, old raf mounts which were absolutely impossible to get, and it looks like they're moving away from very low drops, notice how the cobalt shalewing had a super low drop rate initially and when people complained they fixed it; it took a decade for world bosses.It's obviously an insult to people who farmed this stuff before they made it easier, on other hand if you take for example world bosses, they should've NEVER had a 1 in 2k drop imo, so for example I'd have been fine if they had been 1 in 100 from the start, so imo this moving away from super low drop rates is a good thing, since people should be able to do other stuff and play other games but this while still being able to collect stuff.Perhaps getting all obtainable mounts at a given time will be a much more common feat than in the past, which can be considered good or bad.
The archive stuff just isn't for me. Only thing I would maybe want is the mount and even then its not a great looking one and its ground. The rest of the cosmetics I don't care much for.
What makes an expansion good for me is if the storyline is interesting and the quests are fun. So mostly I would say this has been a very enjoyable expansion. Only place I don't like is Zaralek Caverns. Although that may be because I seem to dc there a lot :) I like collecting to a point but IMO theres way too much stuff to collect these days, nearly every item is just another plus one that I get and then forget about.
Dragonflight is one of the worst expansions for collectors, maybe even the worst. Dragonflight is trash.
stop the Casino-gameplay, RNG for sake of "chase" is almost gambling.for long-time collectors the reward ratio decreased since SL due to the literal abundance of collectibles "timegated" behind RNG - to claim respecting players time in its current state is hypocrisy. as there is literally 6-digit abundance of (RNG) collectibles. explore further or apply already valid deterministic options like skill-based and curency reward, but STOP THE RNG MADNESS (esp. dont lock achievements like treasures and rares to it).to not loot is not fun, but often frustrating. personally, after 750 mounts and 750+ toys i refuse any RNG grind, cuz i dislike gambling, but like gaming.
Eh... I get that they were trying to add more for the playerbase to look forward to but it was implemented extremely poorly in my opinion. More doesn't always mean better. Especially with the limited time like the Trading Post? They're just expounding on WoW's seemingly eternal love affair with FOMO. Sometimes I just wanna log in once every few days/week for a half an hour without feeling like I missed out on something that piques my interest.Luckily I've rekindled my own love affair with the original PSO and man, that's just 2000 ancient dungeon-crawly fun.
Mount collectors are completionists. There needs to be actually rare stuff in the game to fill that niche, and the fact that they basically destroyed the rarity of all the iconic and elusive mounts (pandaria WB, Love Rocket) basically is spitting in the face of all those collectors who spend YEARS farming them. Personally i obtained those mounts from BMAH, as a mythic raider and booster that wasn't too hard to do when i did it, a few years back. If i was someone who had 10k attempt before dropping Sha, i would be properly pissed and rightfully so. The whole concept of "rare" mounts died this expansion, as i can think of more than an handful of mounts now that are less than 1/200 chance. Higher % drop across the board doesn't necessarily mean "good", and the "prestige" associated with being a proper collector with all those rare mounts is now gone. The only silver lining was the introduction of TGC items basically given away for free as twitch drops, of which i am a big fan, because i am fundamentally opposed to spending thousands of Euro/Dollars per mount in order to complete my collection, even though i can see the disappointment of someone who did and now sees his valuable mounts being given away for free.
For mounts - defo not. Especially the start was almost as bad as WoD. Shadowlands was ten times better with a huuuge amount of new mounts and recolours. Some of it might be excused with them wanting to give the dragonriding mounts a spotlight, but I really hope they get their %^&* together and give us 50+ mounts per patch again with TWW.