Now hear me out, we are reading Blizzard wrong or they are reading us wrong

Or both, but let’s put that aside.

In my opinion; the new Mythics, along with the ‘one crafted item only’ rule, are falling bad in the seasoned player community for one, and only one, reason.

Players are still in a ‘choose class and meta type’ mindset where they want to work to the best performing class and meta fitting their playing style and lore preferences based on influencer’s tier list and guides.

Having the best gear, and thus Mythics, are a requirement to make that work for them and they are, rightfully, upset that this is no longer working in a predictable way.

Where randomness relied on hitting affixes in the past, it now relies on hitting items in the first place. Let alone it coming with the proper affixes.

Blizzard, on the other hand, rethought the proces for their players but may have forgotten to consult and sway their players and build support for their changes (stakeholder management is key in acquiring sustainable change).

Their thoughts; what if you just play the class of your lore preference freely, unguided and during play you would find all these incredible items to fit your class. That would lure you into adapting your meta style to play with what you found. Self-found only is likely just there to help support this thought train.

The one crafted Mythic rule fits this philosophy as a glove; complete your well outfitted character with one crafted item as a cherry on the cake. In the eyes of Blizzard it would open up the game to be more versatile, experienced in different ways, explored by players instead of directed by influencers.

It even explains the pain of the Warplan not being account wide; not creating another character for your items but changing directions for your current is the goal.

Now did they read the room wrong? Perhaps so. Perhaps it still requires getting used to.

But what they did can be understood, even though even I don’t (yet) like it.

But that is also part because the not so perfect, to be kind, execution. It raises all questions about in-game rewards involving sparks, the randomness of the Mythic upgrade path and the necessity of the Warplan progress being character based.

For scoping this post I have left out the utterly terrible seasonal theme and mechanics and the terrible interaction between standing in one place and abundant, overpowered after-death effects but let’s be fair, it is not helping these changes.

In my opinion the effort is worth applauding but requires some serious adjustments. Only time will tell if those adjustments are enough to sway the player base in approaching the game differently or that the direction leads to a dead end while plumbing the active player count.