wow Alt-friendly Azerite Essence System Coming Next Week

[Starym 3,800]

 

It seems this week is Blizzard's "listen to the community outcry" week, as we'll be getting some help with the much maligned Azerite Essences, as well as the extra Corrupted items that were announced yesterday! Starting with resets next week (March 17th/18th) we'll be able to get essences on alts directly from MOTHER if we got the rank 3 on our mains. Alts will now receive a new currency in most Visions of N'Zoth activities, which can be spent to get the rank 3 essences directly.

Read all of the details below:

Azerite Essences for Alts (source)

Building on a great deal of feedback and discussion, we’re working on an update to the game. With the next regularly-scheduled weekly maintenance in each region, players who have earned a given Rank 3 Essence on one character will be able to directly obtain that Essence from MOTHER on any subsequent characters.

When playing an alt character that is missing Essences that have already been earned on a different character, most ordinary Visions of N’Zoth activities, such as Horrific Visions, Assaults, raid bosses, Mythic Keystone Dungeons, or BFA Season 4 PvP, will award a new soulbound currency – Echoes of Ny’alotha. These Echoes can be brought to MOTHER in the Heart Chamber, and exchanged directly for eligible Rank 3 Essences. While ordinarily each specific Essence must be learned in order to unlock it for other characters via MOTHER, all Essences associated with Nazjatar and Mechagon reputations will be available if any other different character has earned any of the Essences available from that reputation.

Our goal with this update is to preserve the efforts that players put into unlocking a given Essence through its associated activity the first time, while offering subsequent characters far more flexibility in pursuing that goal. We’ll have additional details in a forthcoming hotfixes update that goes out around the same time as maintenance, but we wanted to let the community know ASAP that this change is in the works.

As always, thank you for all your feedback on this topic!

And here's the official tweet as well as Ion's:

We’re working on an update to the game. With the next scheduled weekly maintenance in each region, players who have earned a given Rank 3 Essence on one character will be able to directly obtain that Essence from MOTHER on subsequent characters.https://t.co/ZHmukg0SAq

— WarcraftDevs (@WarcraftDevs) March 12, 2020

@ACCTWIDEESSENCE And now your watch is ended.https://t.co/Jzy6SvPjWX

— Ion Hazzikostas (@WatcherDev) March 12, 2020

We will be able to buy R3 Azerite Essences on alts more easily come next week.

[Ragingwolf 310]

And then the playerbase rejoiced in unison

Edited March 13, 2020 by Ragingwolf

[Dejo93 1,023]

Took them long enough. Now just get rid of Ion and that'll be just great

[Valhalen 1,484]

This is a godsend. Took them long enough, but now I finally got a solid reason to level up alts.

[Halock 156]

That is excellent news. I'm so glad they got around to this. Perhaps I'll actually gear up some alts before Shadowlands now.

[Bobbis 208]

I am glad, but Reddit is going to be... interesting for a week or 3. 

[Perak 25]

Nice ? … it will quell the whining of ppl for exesive time spend on alts farming. And at the same time it has a nice balance to it as well, so its not for free as well ? i like it ? getting all essences i spend time /nerves and blood (on some ofc) to get on rank 3 to be able to get them even on rank 1 on alt and then spend some small effort to get rank 3 as well is welcomed change :). Not need to farm and w8 for Xweeks to get it as well on others chars cheer ? (finaly can enjoy all my 12chars wheever i want with minimum downsides ? )

Edited March 13, 2020 by Perak

[SidonisAntares 290]

35 minutes ago, Perak said:

Nice ? … it will quell the whining of ppl for exesive time spend on alts farming. And at the same time it has a nice balance to it as well, so its not for free as well ? i like it ? getting all essences i spend time /nerves and blood (on some ofc) to get on rank 3 to be able to get them even on rank 1 on alt and then spend some small effort to get rank 3 as well is welcomed change :). Not need to farm and w8 for Xweeks to get it as well on others chars cheer ? (finaly can enjoy all my 12chars wheever i want with minimum downsides ? )

It's not really excessive whining considering EP essences are still one of the BiS minors for a majority of specs.

[Dorleyn 0]

Too little too late for a lot of us who already did the grind on multiple alts ?

[darkgreenwax 412]

I wish they would just do this at the start of an expansion.

Why punish players who like to play multiple characters?

Or arguably worse, players who care to experiment with different classes or builds at the start of an expansion, because they didn't get a chance to play in beta?

Nearly each expansion launch, after the first month I begin to fall behind as I try to dabble in other classes. I don't mean min-maxing them through max grinding, but just playing through the whole course of initially grinding out whatever AP system they have. That is admittedly my own choosing, absolutely, I just don't know why they punish players who don't sink everything into 1 single character (yes I know the actual answer - more time sink = more sub time).

 

But with the same thing now as they did in Legion, I'd feel better usage of my time to just show up only for the x.3 patches ?‍♂️

[Crackklaus 5]

nice what would be also nice would be a hotfix so that u don´t have to do the hole damn qest chain for that damn cloak ?

[Deadly 2]

This is great news, however my biggest question is - how much does each Rank 3 essence cost and how many Echoes will be obtained from each activity? If we are simply trading one grind for another, this doesn't help us much.

Edited March 13, 2020 by Deadly

[PatrickHenry 293]

great change for the Altaholics

[huldu 3]

Too little too late. Those of us who had alts already have the 3 ranks *grinded* up, over and over. This is something for newer alts but who the hell levels a new alt NOW? I'd imagine the majority of people leveling alts right now to not even have a rank 3 essence. 

[Smash 16]

On 3/13/2020 at 9:43 AM, TyZone said:

I wish they would just do this at the start of an expansion.

Why punish players who like to play multiple characters?

Or arguably worse, players who care to experiment with different classes or builds at the start of an expansion, because they didn't get a chance to play in beta?

Nearly each expansion launch, after the first month I begin to fall behind as I try to dabble in other classes. I don't mean min-maxing them through max grinding, but just playing through the whole course of initially grinding out whatever AP system they have. That is admittedly my own choosing, absolutely, I just don't know why they punish players who don't sink everything into 1 single character (yes I know the actual answer - more time sink = more sub time).

 

But with the same thing now as they did in Legion, I'd feel better usage of my time to just show up only for the x.3 patches ?‍♂️

Actually, since the last few expansions have been so alt un-friendly, I find myself spending less time on the game. Even taking breaks from subbing. So, they are losing money by having such "single character" experiences from me, and probably from many others. I used to play non-stop and max each class and keep it geared up. Gave me more to do without ever feeling burnt out or like I was falling behind others.

I personally feel they switched stances because they were afraid of how easy it was for the top 1% to have multiple highly geared characters and all the split runs they were doing. They changed the entire loot process over it and pushed things into a hole for only playing 1-character. It's shitty to get something that is 5 ilvls higher than what I have equipped before, but horrid stats and I can't trade it to another Guildee because the 1% was abusing the gear trading system to funnel gear. I personally never cared that the 1% did that. It never impacted gameplay on any level and those that gave up gear and time, was their own choice to do so for the 1%. Really never saw a problem with it in the first place.

I'm really hoping their promises of Shadowlands being alt friendly is true. I would personally love to get back to keeping my Alts at max, gearing them in patch relevant gear and not feel like I'm falling behind by spending some time playing an Alt.