So, AP grind, burnout, etc!

There's this misconception that the grind itself is necessarily bad, or that "hardcore players" hate the grind. I don't think it's true. I actually think it's pretty damn healthy to have things to do in-game to actually progress your character. On that regard, I might even agree with the 7.2 direction of actually increasing the grind and going back to diminishing returns gated by AK, instead of .... whatever system these paragon traits were. It has a lot of drawbacks, mainly that at any given poitn in time you wonder why the hell you're even bothering to play since anything you're currently doing will be made more or less irrelevant in barely a few weeks, but that's another can of worms.

The problem of the grind has never been the numbers or the concept itself; the problem is that you're essentially forced to repeat it multiple times on X characters because absolutely nothing has been done to rein in split raids. Grinding a single spec to 54 before NH was extremely easy and barely even an effort for anyone really trying in a hardcore guild. I don't have alts, so I've done it barely even doing Maw runs. I had around 200 M+ in total done when I got my 54th point, which is not high at all by any means. 2 specs? Quite more tedious, better prepare all those Maws. 2 specs, and then also keep up to date with an alt so the alt isn't completely useless in split raiding? Veeery consuming. Keep up with 5 alts while still farming all those necessary Maws? Kill me.

The thing is, people aren't really keeping up with 5 alts because they intend to play 5 characters on progression. A few oddball people do (account sharing wink wink), but they are aliens for the most part. For the most part these characters have no purpose beyond funneling loot to mains.

Don't you think it is completely backwards that a mythic guild, aiming towards getting world first, prefers wasting precious hours running multiple splits of the same raid on heroic even though mythic is available to progress on? Before even hitting a brick wall of any kind?

Don't you think it is completely backwards that the huge majority of the preparation time is spent on characters that won't be used for anything but split raids, and most likely won't even be considered seriously for potential class stacking?

Don't you think it is completely backwards that people can reach ridiculous ilvls that quickly, rendering most upgrades moot if they don't titanforge?

Of course, the most simple solutions don't necessarily solve the problem entirely. The approach to take is not to try to cap or restrict players into being "unable" to split - you will never be able to do that. There will always be some nutjobs who will play multiple accounts or multiple characters just to bypass whatever restrictions.

Pushing personal loot only? People will just make X mains of the same class and pick the luckiest one. Note that people already do that with legendaries to a certain extent.

Pushing hardcaps of 1 raid/week/account? People will just make new accounts ($$$), and this brings a lot of negative aspects to the rest of the playerbase.

The actually accurate solution is to simply disentivize the splitting itself by changing the effort/reward ratio. It's actually okay if you gain an advantage of some sort through splitting. That advantage just needs to come at a heavy price, so that you're not necessarily in the wrong for not commiting to them, and preferably even in the right.

Little thought experiment, let's say the following changes were implemented...

- Mythic released the same week as Normal and Heroic (downside: you lose 1 week on the patch release cycle, oh no)
- Heroic and Mythic sharing loot lockout (feel free to split Heroic if you want, but you're locking yourself out of Mythic gear)
- Reduce ilvl gap between instances slightly, putting new Heroic loot much closer to old Mythic loot (and not 15 ilvls higher). Add a weekly quest that grants two or three tokens (tied to the weekly coin quest, maybe?), those tokens can be used to warforge/titanforge an item up to a maximum boost of X in total. Realistically, for the average raider that doesn't do split and probably won't be getting too many items in a single week, this changes virtually nothing. However, for the split-raiding dude who usually gains 7 or 8 items in the first week and is already decked out in full Mythic gear+titanforges, this change means he'll actually only be able to boost and equip two of them, which is not that big of a reward for all the time investment. And even less of a reward if they're actually locking yourself out of Mythic loot in the process, on top of "wasting" tokens on non-Mythic loot.

So, humor me. Find me a single downside for the casual playerbase in these simple fixes, and find me a single guild that would still massively split raid in those conditions (to the point of requiring 5 to 6 characters per raider, minor splitting will always exist, esp for tier sets and so on, same with class stacking using useful alts. it's unavoidable. it's also not what is making people burn out.)

Is it true to a certain extent that players are to blame for escalating that armsrace over the years? Maybe.

Is it wrong for players to exploit those loopholes that are exceptionally rewarding in terms of loot? Of course not. Players will do what they do best, aka beating game devs at their own game when it comes to min/maxing.

It is perfectly conveivable to create a world where split raiding isn't a thing and people simply bang their heads against mythic bosses on their mains without going through all the current hoops of splitting and preparing 5 characters. Pretending it is not possible or that it would come at heavy costs is simply dishonest. You just need to try adressing the problem instead of leaving it grow rampant for years.