Rant incoming. I guess I’m in a bit of a WoW binge at the moment (completed the “run 4 Mythic dungeons for a shiny item” on four toons, went to a few old raids for transmogs, caught up on a few very old achievements) and I’m currently really, really, really annoyed that progress isn’t shared.
Sure, back when I had one main on Horde from Vanilla to Pandaria it was all no problem (well except doing Heal and Tank Challenge Mode) and of course my main had all of them, but I mained an Alliance Demon Hunter in Legion, an Alliance Paladin in BfA, and an Alliance Warrior in Shadowlands while still doing some rep grinds on my old main. Yeah, now it’s a complete clusterfuck, especially with the four covenants in Shadowlands where I kinda have one “main” for the sake of Covenant stuff/zone and also sometimes one char is just more progressed on one daily/World Quest than the other. There’s no really good way to track this either, I need to do the parasol WQ 5 times more on one toon, 6 times more on another, good luck remembering that without a spreadsheet – why can’t it be 10 in total?
The other thing is the cross-realm thing, and while I don’t begrudge the people who can now happily use their toons, why did this only come in 2022? I did not have any meaningful presence on the Alliance side except one Rogue until 2014 and then after my return I levelled up at least one of every class there. And in general (and I agree this is my fault) I could’ve transferred some of them earlier when I switched to the German server where I’m playing now, but now I’m kinda stuck with all my Horde toons with shitty equip on my original server, five more 60s (two of them important to me) on that same server, but Alliance side. I already paid for the 8 transfers bundle (and used up 6), but still. Why did I have to leave all my Horde legacy behind from late 2016 until early 2022, and now – even mid-expansion- I could’ve finally continued to use them?
So yes, it’s my own fault, but in contrast to FFXIV (lame, always a comparison with this game) – nothing here would’ve been my own fault except if I had wanted to reroll on a different server group, and then I would have 2 characters to maybe transfer, but realistically not needing to do it, and not one per class and faction. Hell, I’d gladly accept 12 transfers over 24.
And the last pet peeve, I love how the Armory keeps track of your boss kills from older expansions… just that you’re never allowed to go in there again for transmogs if you want to conserve e.g. your original Pandaria raid progression, which means I always need to farm transmogs on alts of the same class (I’m lucky that only Trial of the Crusader had faction-specific sets afaik), but I will admit that this is 100% a me problem and only really affects Rogue/Warrior/Shaman, but I’m not actually collecting transmogs on SO many classes and I have enough Rogues and Warriors.
So, what’s the point now? I don’t know what Dragonflight will be and if I will play, and then which toon – I will probably stick to an Alliance char in my guild just for logistical reasons and because the damage is done and I’m now attached to some of them already as well. The achievement thing is probably digging up which character has the best progression already, per achievement, and continue from there… or just not bother at all, which seems to be the best course of action, really.
Can I really change anything about this? No. Is it my own fault? To some degree, I could’ve just tried to find a Horde guild. But having moved to a guild where my friends play (and it is Alliance), that’s not my fault – this is squarely on Blizzard’s asinine imagined conflict thing, and all the per-character stuff plays against that as well. I guess that’s enough ranting, in the end I’m still having fun playing the game, but I would have invested so much fewer hours… so I guess it is indeed in their best interest to keep the people busy… until it’s enough and they quit.
This is Blaugust 2022 – post #10.
I will say I’ve been surprised by how crappy retail’s achievement system is nowadays. First off, it’s plain buggy (e.g. getting “one hundred quests completed” pop up two minutes into playing a new character and stuff like that) but the way the achievements are still character-specific but also not is just endlessly confusing to me.
Hm, I don’t think it’s that bad except for a few quirks, but I guess if you’re used to looking at it for years (even after my long break) you can already predict how it will misbehave 😉
Fully agreed on that new char thing, my guess is that they changed something with the way starter quests and the level squish works, but who can know for real? In general I’d say I don’t get weird achievement popups very rarely, just playing my old toons that were not boosted in the current expansion, but I had my fair share of those.