In spite of some obvious flaws, like good gear being far too easy to acquire (which has been a problem for a while now), I'm looking forward to diving in to this expansion sometime in October. It is interesting to me, though, that Blizzard still continues to make the mistake of tying different aspects of the game together in a way that forces players to participate in activities they don't enjoy in order to access the content that they want to play.
There's that now famous post from a Blizzard rep that was posted in the official forum thread, where thousands of players were voicing their displeasure at the imminent return of mission tables in Legion, wherein the rep talks about how some people do enjoy the mission tables and how every activity in the game, from questing to raiding, is all enjoyed by a minority of players. Well, if Blizzard understands that each activity only pleases a fraction of their playerbase then why the fuck do they continue to design their game in a way that ties these activities together?!! Wouldn't it make more sense to have every aspect of the game be optional? Come on, Blizzard. Pull your head out of your ass already! Mission tables don't need to be tied to artifact progression. People who want to craft don't need to be pushed into questing. It's very frustrating to see them get so many things right and yet still fail to comprehend this simple concept.
Agree. I realized the other day when I was given an Archaeology weekly that required I do a dungeon run, that every aspect of the game. Every Single One has you going through dungeons. With the possible exception of Fishing and maybe Cooking, if you do anything in Legion, you will be doing dungeons repeatedly. They are not optional if you want to progress in any direction.
I don't understand what the excitement is about this expansion that some returning players think this is the best in years. I played for a month and enjoyed some of the stories but didn't think it was compelling enough for me to want to stay. The dungeons and new features don't seem to much of an improvement from the last two expansions and I felt the world to be empty compared to the last two expansions story-wise. If you live and breathe Illidan than I'm sure this is the expansion for you but I think the last two were better (plus the class abilities seem pared down too far in Blizzard's quest for 'simplification').
Very fair list of pros and cons. My main issue is that the artifact grind makes playing other specs, and especially alt characters, seem way too prohibitive. I'm an altaholic but I've barely played anything other than my paladin for the last month.
I can see it now. Gets account wide artifacts then creates an alt character. Later, "Hey, there is nothing for me to do! Lazy Devs".
Nope, there's nothing exciting about the artifact grind.
You don't like mmoRPGs. Find another genre.
Well true to both but for a theme-park mmo you need a compelling story line and fun diversity of activities that distracts you from the grind. I understand WOW is one of the mmo's full of variety but from an expansion perspective I didn't feel the same immersion of the last two (especially Pandaria). There are MMO's that havfe awesome story telling where your quest is actually always having you involved in a meaningful plot like Elder Scrolls Online or Secret World rather that collect 6 flanks of boar meat every other quest.
I've played since Nov. 2004 and the game has changed a lot over the years.
This expac is a huge disappointment once you get leveled. I don't feel like it is catering to "casuals" at all. Most of the subs for WoW were casuals and the changes that have been made have caused most of them to leave - 10 million to be exact. RNG spewing all over everything has made it unappealing to the hardcore elitist, too.
They stripped trade skills so they are worthless, created a daily quest system called world quests and the grinding goes on, but that's to be expected. Class halls? LOL! Give me back my garrison any day compared to that garbage.
Add to all of this the horrible idea of RNG damage and you've got a real stinker for an expansion. Have some RNG on top of your RNG and then some more RNG.
I give it a big thumbs down, but I'm sticking around because I LOVE this game!
"All of this activity, however, comes with a large amount of grind attached. All of these systems are intertwined in Legion with content to, for instance, progress a profession, gated behind a dungeon or a raid or embedded in world quests. With this in mind, it will remain to be seen how many players have the patience and the stamina to endure the vast amount of grind that each represents and is repeated over and over when alts are considered."
This is how I've come to feel exactly. I've really enjoyed the expac so far but the grind is really starting to set in. I have about 2 weeks left on my sub but I don't think I'll be renewing it.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
Probably the hardest thing about being right about something is waiting till others come to the conclusion that you were right.
Honeymoon is over kiddos
Good thing about WoW is within 6 months, they'll dumb down all the progress you made up to that point. More than likely raise the cap on heirloom, add a resource cache to your order hall and lower the cooldown/price on artifact knowledge to make it easier to bounce between alts. And dont forget flight.
Lol, artifact grind, really. It s so minimal, people are so soft nowadays, even in games.
Weapon DPS is so ridiculously important that I feel like this is much better than relying on a RNG weapon drop that you could get the first week of progression, or it could take a month of kills. I don't understand the complaints about it either.
Probably the hardest thing about being right about something is waiting till others come to the conclusion that you were right.
Honeymoon is over kiddos
Good thing about WoW is within 6 months, they'll dumb down all the progress you made up to that point. More than likely raise the cap on heirloom, add a resource cache to your order hall and lower the cooldown/price on artifact knowledge to make it easier to bounce between alts. And dont forget flight.
If that's true, how would you say Legion compares to Warlords of Draenor, post-Honeymoon?
If we're being objective, Legion will pull ahead financially over WoD due to the psychology associated with Artifact Power. This "pressure" many people will feel to keep their class up to date with it until its capped drives some more than others. I feel WoD has only done 2 things better than Legion which was 75% of its story and the leveling process (both points are obviously subjective). Legion has more long term busy work due to the "endless" need of artifact power and how interesting World Questing can make the open world. Ultimately, its just the same raise x to get to y to get to z formula, just a little more long winded.
Legion isn't very good, most of the content doesn't have any substance and most of it is a mash up of classic, BC and Wrath pretty much. All just rehashed boring themes. This game needs some new blood at the helm badly. Granted Wow lore has never been stellar, but the current game is just awful as far as lore goes. Oh, and this everyone is the savior of the world crap just kills my interest in this game as well.
How much have you played of it? Have you reached 110 yet on any characters? Do you PvP or raid in WoW? How about mythic and mythic + dungeons?
Whenever I see a post like this., it screams, I haven't played at all yet I have very strong opinions.
I'm level 110 on 2 characters, I've cleared all the mythic dungeons on 2 characters. I did some mythic plus, unlocked Suramar and leveled my professions to max. So yeah, I played quite a bit. I also hate what they did to pvp, having set stats after 12 years just kills pvp for me.
Family member persuaded me to join them in WoW, and i did give it a try for a week or so, but, it just wasn't that much fun, not that i didn't have any fun in the game at all, but i just didn't like the artifact weapons much, and the classes themselves were just too simplistic, not that they weren't challenging to play, they were, but not in a fun way, i levelled several of my characters up to varying levels between 101 and 103, but after the first 'forced' dungeon, in azshara i think, i just couldn't be bothered to carry on, i don't have a lack of fun games to play so sticking around in WoW wasn't going to happen, maybe i'll try again next year, though i think i am pretty much done with WoW now for good.
i can't agree on your crafted gear comments. You can craft (or buy and upgrade) a full set of (every slot) crafted gear to i850 (i855 in 7.1). Not only that but when doing so you can get the perfect stats for your spec. Most "Core" players don't have 850 in every slot and when they do, it's lucky if it's the right stats.
Crafting in this expansion is more relevant than its been in years, and rewarding financially in game for crafters as well. Not only that, but the way the crafting quests and unlocks were done is better than what I've seen since vanilla.
Family member persuaded me to join them in WoW, and i did give it a try for a week or so, but, it just wasn't that much fun, not that i didn't have any fun in the game at all, but i just didn't like the artifact weapons much, and the classes themselves were just too simplistic, not that they weren't challenging to play, they were, but not in a fun way, i levelled several of my characters up to varying levels between 101 and 103, but after the first 'forced' dungeon, in azshara i think, i just couldn't be bothered to carry on, i don't have a lack of fun games to play so sticking around in WoW wasn't going to happen, maybe i'll try again next year, though i think i am pretty much done with WoW now for good.
Yes, lot of people got the feeling that Legion wasn't made to provide the most fun, but keep you subbed for as long as possible. They had to do something against people canceling their sub after 4-5 month and this is what they came up with. Instead of keeping you going with fun stuff, it's rather time-gated content that prevents players from taking a break. Blizzard isn't Blizzard anymore, but has transformed into Activision and it shows with Legion.
And i'm afraid this isn't even their final form, but there is worse to come.
Family member persuaded me to join them in WoW, and i did give it a try for a week or so, but, it just wasn't that much fun, not that i didn't have any fun in the game at all, but i just didn't like the artifact weapons much, and the classes themselves were just too simplistic, not that they weren't challenging to play, they were, but not in a fun way, i levelled several of my characters up to varying levels between 101 and 103, but after the first 'forced' dungeon, in azshara i think, i just couldn't be bothered to carry on, i don't have a lack of fun games to play so sticking around in WoW wasn't going to happen, maybe i'll try again next year, though i think i am pretty much done with WoW now for good.
Yes, lot of people got the feeling that Legion wasn't made to provide the most fun, but keep you subbed for as long as possible. They had to do something against people canceling their sub after 4-5 month and this is what they came up with. Instead of keeping you going with fun stuff, it's rather time-gated content that prevents players from taking a break. Blizzard isn't Blizzard anymore, but has transformed into Activision and it shows with Legion.
And i'm afraid this isn't even their final form, but there is worse to come.
Yes, lot of people got the feeling that Legion wasn't made to provide the most fun, but keep you subbed for as long as possible. They had to do something against people canceling their sub after 4-5 month and this is what they came up with. Instead of keeping you going with fun stuff, it's rather time-gated content that prevents players from taking a break. Blizzard isn't Blizzard anymore, but has transformed into Activision and it shows with Legion.
And i'm afraid this isn't even their final form, but there is worse to come.
The artifacts in themselves is a good idea though but I don't think it is enough. Long term fun is not easy to add for a new expansion to any game and you can't let the long term focus make the game less fun overall.
I think Blizz need to rethink the long term fun strategy, artifacts is a small step in the right decision but they will also need to consider why vanilla and the early expansions were so much better to keep players long term, and I don't think the reason is just that the game was newer then or that players have changed.
Well, this is the only expansion in which I have actually cancelled my sub a week after launch. I made it a whole two months in WoD! This expansion though, I made it to about level 107 before I stopped. I'm already bored with it and the only thing that this expansion did was make me wish, again, that they would just launch a true vanilla server. For myself, I feel this is the last nail in the coffin. Its been real and its been fun, but its never been real fun.
I quit before getting to max. The content is still ridiculously undertuned, both the questing and the dungeons. The environments looked nice, but the gameplay unfortunately left no memorable impression. RIP
i can't agree on your crafted gear comments. You can craft (or buy and upgrade) a full set of (every slot) crafted gear to i850 (i855 in 7.1). Not only that but when doing so you can get the perfect stats for your spec. Most "Core" players don't have 850 in every slot and when they do, it's lucky if it's the right stats.
Crafting in this expansion is more relevant than its been in years, and rewarding financially in game for crafters as well. Not only that, but the way the crafting quests and unlocks were done is better than what I've seen since vanilla.
Because of this and the fact I focused on the crafting quests as soon as possible, I was the first person in my guild with full 850 in every slot (by far). I had to spend about two evenings and a Saturday farming leather and blood of Sargeras for upgrades and spent some money on Obliterum as well. In addition I had to craft and sell the things I could make for the money, but it all equaled out.
Because my item level was high quickly, the quality of the world quest drops improved for me. I was getting base rewards of 835 to 840 + items (starting item level) from world quests when most of my guild was still seeing 805+ or 810+ as rewards. I had a much longer time with world quest rewards Warforging and Titanforging up to and over 850.
Even at this point I still have the highest item level in my guild and I'm still wearing more than half my slots crafted.
With 7.1 they are allowing you to upgrade your crafted pieces to i855 as well.
I'm not sure if you never got your higher tier recipes, or if you're just not a crafter in general, but I'm still making bank on my crafted items every day. It may be because this is one of the best ways to gear an alt or just the best way to gear quickly all around.
It lost my attention quite fast. The storyline was pretty good, then you hit max level and do everything in a bad copy -> pasted GW2 style. World quests are a bore.. Even more so when you've done the same quests more that once, it turns into a snoozefest of repetitiveness.
It's the same thing every expansion, or should I say "reset"? Nothing really gets expanded. They just raise your level cap which means that your progress is reset. new dungeons are fun the first time, boring the second time. Mythic dungeons are nothing but a gear check since skills required for this game now is pretty much 0. (moving away from stuff on the ground does not = skill)
And world bosses are pretty lame, you can barely tell the difference when you see a world boss and a elite mob. The first time I joined in killing a world boss, I wasn't even aware that it was actually a boss untill halfway through. Some people get 2 or more upgrades each week from them, while others get nothing.
There's a reason why Nostalrius and vanilla WoW was so popular in general. Items used to have value and a name that you would actually remember. In my 20 days of playtime in Legion, I upgraded gear more often that I changed my socks. It becomes unrewarding. Farming artifact power takes mindless busywork into a whole new level... Follower missions are still the same. Nothing to comment on here since I don't have any interest in playing Facebook games.
PvP battlegrounds are even more faceroll now than ever before since even more skills have been removed and none have been added.
The good thing is that you can do the world quests with your friends and upgrade your gear through mythics. If your friends aren't online then play something else.
Legion gets a 5/10 from me for trying, but it's just a bad copy of Guild Wars 2 now. Go play that instead if you want a decent experience.
There's a reason why Nostalrius and vanilla WoW was so popular in general. Items used to have value and a name that you would actually remember. In my 20 days of playtime in Legion, I upgraded gear more often that I changed my socks. It becomes unrewarding.
The game just showers you with gear now, progression in the game feels so cheap now.
i can't agree on your crafted gear comments. You can craft (or buy and upgrade) a full set of (every slot) crafted gear to i850 (i855 in 7.1). Not only that but when doing so you can get the perfect stats for your spec. Most "Core" players don't have 850 in every slot and when they do, it's lucky if it's the right stats.
Crafting in this expansion is more relevant than its been in years, and rewarding financially in game for crafters as well. Not only that, but the way the crafting quests and unlocks were done is better than what I've seen since vanilla.
Because of this and the fact I focused on the crafting quests as soon as possible, I was the first person in my guild with full 850 in every slot (by far). I had to spend about two evenings and a Saturday farming leather and blood of Sargeras for upgrades and spent some money on Obliterum as well. In addition I had to craft and sell the things I could make for the money, but it all equaled out.
Because my item level was high quickly, the quality of the world quest drops improved for me. I was getting base rewards of 835 to 840 + items (starting item level) from world quests when most of my guild was still seeing 805+ or 810+ as rewards. I had a much longer time with world quest rewards Warforging and Titanforging up to and over 850.
Even at this point I still have the highest item level in my guild and I'm still wearing more than half my slots crafted.
With 7.1 they are allowing you to upgrade your crafted pieces to i855 as well.
I'm not sure if you never got your higher tier recipes, or if you're just not a crafter in general, but I'm still making bank on my crafted items every day. It may be because this is one of the best ways to gear an alt or just the best way to gear quickly all around.
Making money at the start of any expansion of any game is always high. Honestly, money shouldn't be a factor if people were playing a few months out of the entire time WoD was released before they nerfed garrisons. I think most people leaving the game dont care about the money making aspect of it.
After reaching 100 I had no problem until I got to a quest that ended to a place that went no where, literally, the quest turn-in point was indicated to be in the middle of no where. Other classes had a turn-in at a nearby village for that quest, no problem.
It may have been a game bug, however, because the issue was with my favorite class, I became so frustrated that I logged off and removed the game from my drive, it was that frustrating.
Others may not experience the issue I had, however, for me it was a game changer.
Intel Core i7 7700K, MB is Gigabyte Z270X-UD5 SSD x2, 4TB WD Black HHD, 32GB RAM, MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning LE video card
After reaching 100 I had no problem until I got to a quest that ended to a place that went no where, literally, the quest turn-in point was indicated to be in the middle of no where. Other classes had a turn-in at a nearby village for that quest, no problem.
It may have been a game bug, however, because the issue was with my favorite class, I became so frustrated that I logged off and removed the game from my drive, it was that frustrating.
Others may not experience the issue I had, however, for me it was a game changer.
It was probably a simple fix that easily could have been googled. Kind of extreme to log off and delete the game because of a simple issue. I have 7 level 110's now and haven't had any such issues.
Family member persuaded me to join them in WoW, and i did give it a try for a week or so, but, it just wasn't that much fun, not that i didn't have any fun in the game at all, but i just didn't like the artifact weapons much, and the classes themselves were just too simplistic, not that they weren't challenging to play, they were, but not in a fun way, i levelled several of my characters up to varying levels between 101 and 103, but after the first 'forced' dungeon, in azshara i think, i just couldn't be bothered to carry on, i don't have a lack of fun games to play so sticking around in WoW wasn't going to happen, maybe i'll try again next year, though i think i am pretty much done with WoW now for good.
Yes, lot of people got the feeling that Legion wasn't made to provide the most fun, but keep you subbed for as long as possible. They had to do something against people canceling their sub after 4-5 month and this is what they came up with. Instead of keeping you going with fun stuff, it's rather time-gated content that prevents players from taking a break. Blizzard isn't Blizzard anymore, but has transformed into Activision and it shows with Legion.
And i'm afraid this isn't even their final form, but there is worse to come.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
Comments
Agree. I realized the other day when I was given an Archaeology weekly that required I do a dungeon run, that every aspect of the game. Every Single One has you going through dungeons. With the possible exception of Fishing and maybe Cooking, if you do anything in Legion, you will be doing dungeons repeatedly. They are not optional if you want to progress in any direction.
IMHO, this is the epitome of anal headroom.
Well true to both but for a theme-park mmo you need a compelling story line and fun diversity of activities that distracts you from the grind. I understand WOW is one of the mmo's full of variety but from an expansion perspective I didn't feel the same immersion of the last two (especially Pandaria). There are MMO's that havfe awesome story telling where your quest is actually always having you involved in a meaningful plot like Elder Scrolls Online or Secret World rather that collect 6 flanks of boar meat every other quest.
This expac is a huge disappointment once you get leveled. I don't feel like it is catering to "casuals" at all. Most of the subs for WoW were casuals and the changes that have been made have caused most of them to leave - 10 million to be exact. RNG spewing all over everything has made it unappealing to the hardcore elitist, too.
They stripped trade skills so they are worthless, created a daily quest system called world quests and the grinding goes on, but that's to be expected. Class halls? LOL! Give me back my garrison any day compared to that garbage.
Add to all of this the horrible idea of RNG damage and you've got a real stinker for an expansion. Have some RNG on top of your RNG and then some more RNG.
I give it a big thumbs down, but I'm sticking around because I LOVE this game!
This is how I've come to feel exactly. I've really enjoyed the expac so far but the grind is really starting to set in. I have about 2 weeks left on my sub but I don't think I'll be renewing it.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
Good thing about WoW is within 6 months, they'll dumb down all the progress you made up to that point. More than likely raise the cap on heirloom, add a resource cache to your order hall and lower the cooldown/price on artifact knowledge to make it easier to bounce between alts. And dont forget flight.
Weapon DPS is so ridiculously important that I feel like this is much better than relying on a RNG weapon drop that you could get the first week of progression, or it could take a month of kills. I don't understand the complaints about it either.
i can't agree on your crafted gear comments. You can craft (or buy and upgrade) a full set of (every slot) crafted gear to i850 (i855 in 7.1). Not only that but when doing so you can get the perfect stats for your spec. Most "Core" players don't have 850 in every slot and when they do, it's lucky if it's the right stats.
Crafting in this expansion is more relevant than its been in years, and rewarding financially in game for crafters as well. Not only that, but the way the crafting quests and unlocks were done is better than what I've seen since vanilla.
They had to do something against people canceling their sub after 4-5 month and this is what they came up with. Instead of keeping you going with fun stuff, it's rather time-gated content that prevents players from taking a break.
Blizzard isn't Blizzard anymore, but has transformed into Activision and it shows with Legion.
And i'm afraid this isn't even their final form, but there is worse to come.
I think Blizz need to rethink the long term fun strategy, artifacts is a small step in the right decision but they will also need to consider why vanilla and the early expansions were so much better to keep players long term, and I don't think the reason is just that the game was newer then or that players have changed.
Because my item level was high quickly, the quality of the world quest drops improved for me. I was getting base rewards of 835 to 840 + items (starting item level) from world quests when most of my guild was still seeing 805+ or 810+ as rewards. I had a much longer time with world quest rewards Warforging and Titanforging up to and over 850.
Even at this point I still have the highest item level in my guild and I'm still wearing more than half my slots crafted.
With 7.1 they are allowing you to upgrade your crafted pieces to i855 as well.
I'm not sure if you never got your higher tier recipes, or if you're just not a crafter in general, but I'm still making bank on my crafted items every day. It may be because this is one of the best ways to gear an alt or just the best way to gear quickly all around.
It's the same thing every expansion, or should I say "reset"? Nothing really gets expanded. They just raise your level cap which means that your progress is reset. new dungeons are fun the first time, boring the second time. Mythic dungeons are nothing but a gear check since skills required for this game now is pretty much 0. (moving away from stuff on the ground does not = skill)
And world bosses are pretty lame, you can barely tell the difference when you see a world boss and a elite mob. The first time I joined in killing a world boss, I wasn't even aware that it was actually a boss untill halfway through. Some people get 2 or more upgrades each week from them, while others get nothing.
There's a reason why Nostalrius and vanilla WoW was so popular in general. Items used to have value and a name that you would actually remember. In my 20 days of playtime in Legion, I upgraded gear more often that I changed my socks. It becomes unrewarding. Farming artifact power takes mindless busywork into a whole new level... Follower missions are still the same. Nothing to comment on here since I don't have any interest in playing Facebook games.
PvP battlegrounds are even more faceroll now than ever before since even more skills have been removed and none have been added.
The good thing is that you can do the world quests with your friends and upgrade your gear through mythics. If your friends aren't online then play something else.
Legion gets a 5/10 from me for trying, but it's just a bad copy of Guild Wars 2 now. Go play that instead if you want a decent experience.
Like everyone else, I've left the game and will wait for the next expac and hope that Blizz sees the mistake of the Diabloization of WoW.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
It may have been a game bug, however, because the issue was with my favorite class, I became so frustrated that I logged off and removed the game from my drive, it was that frustrating.
Others may not experience the issue I had, however, for me it was a game changer.
Intel Core i7 7700K, MB is Gigabyte Z270X-UD5
SSD x2, 4TB WD Black HHD, 32GB RAM, MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning LE video card
It was probably a simple fix that easily could have been googled. Kind of extreme to log off and delete the game because of a simple issue. I have 7 level 110's now and haven't had any such issues.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul