Is Legion the best initial expansion ever?

[Ayla]

Agreed. I was absolutely delighted to revisit Dragonblight and Coldarra on my Discipline Priest legendary quest, and then go into the Nexus and have the contents be completely different but within the same map and scenery. Stuff like that really makes it feel like a World of Warcraft.

I have to agree as well. I was so angry when I heard Dalaran was being reused, but now I feel like it was okay in the end. Class Halls are decent, and revisiting the Nexus for my weapon was a great update to one of my favorite instances. I am usually pretty anti-rehash but they made it work. Plus we got Surmar city. I'll take my updated dalaran with a reluctant thumbs up, and my 'rehashed' content (like coldarra and nexus) with open arms.

[sessava]

I've enjoyed it so far. I've been taking my time and leveling multiple characters at the same time (mostly Warlock and Death Knight).

I played at the launch of Vanilla, TBC, Wrath, and WoD.

Nothing will ever replace my early memories of Vanilla WoW and the sheer amount of enjoyment I got from that but I would say I have enjoyed Legion more than any other expansion launch thus far. I really despised Warlords of Draenor's leveling experience to the extent that I could only stand to level two characters through it. I did not like the setting, nor many of the dungeons.

I don't remember being very positive about TBC and Wrath when I initially leveled through them. I hated Borean Tundra and Hellfire Peninsula.

[FuxieDK]

I like Legion so far... But levelling is waaaaay too slow..

I've spent ~15 hours, and only level 106, so far... Normally, at this point, I would be half way through first alt.. Now, I've still not done my main..

So far, I place Legion between TBC and Cata..

[Magemaer]

Hands down best expansion so far. Smoothest launch in history, the questing... Yes there were a few bugs but /reload or relogging fixed them all for me so not a huge issue.
Will the rest of the content and raids deliver? We shall see Looks very promising so far though! I'm still aboard the HYPE TRAIN

The funny thing is i wasn't on this hype train at all. I thought they had a good expansion plan when they announced it, but that was it. I was expecting another mediocre expansion, i just logged in to see how it was.
So far i'm very surprised at the quality of this expansion.

It's hard to compare which expansion you enjoyed more as it involves subjectivity. But objectively speaking, i hold that this one so far outclasses even tbc and wotlk.
As it is expected...they now have many years more of experience, better tools, more implemented systems, and so on. It amazes me how they could fail so hard after wotlk, specially on cata and wod.

[Xzan]

It feels pretty amazing so far. Was unable to decide what class to main, so I ended up just "trying out" a DH. Absolutely fell in love with it.

I like how this expansion sorts out my altaholism problem with the artifact power grind and pvp level grind. No way I'm doing any of that more than once - which tbh is for the better
Loving the class story and Order hall looks great too.
Dinged 110 yesterday and it feels like there's weeks of meaningful stuff worth doing (in WoD there were just couple days for me to do something after hitting max level... felt very dull very fast).

And, my god, the scaling of zones, quests and dungeons to match your level is mint. Feels great to be able to choose where to start the journey.

[Zoneseek]

It's right up there with Wrath so far for me

lol i remember when people said this about wod first few days

[Deleted]

Right, sure.

Like when during that first week in wrath you made it dalaran, an amazing new city in the game. Compared to this first week of legion when you made it to dalaran.........hey wait, did you get duped and resold previous expansions material? Yes, yes you did sucker.

How's that new exciting mission table?

You can try harder to troll though. 3 For effort.

[Zarc]

I like Legion so far... But levelling is waaaaay too slow..

I've spent ~15 hours, and only level 106, so far... Normally, at this point, I would be half way through first alt.. Now, I've still not done my main..

So far, I place Legion between TBC and Cata..

I started playing 0:00 on release, and dinged 110 at 16:32. So it took me about 16½ hours, and other than doing it in one session I really wasn't in a hurry. So that's on you, mate. =)

On track to be the best expansion since Wrath of the Lich King in my opinion!

[Deleted]

The zones are absolutely not enjoyable. Highmountain and Suramar have numerous caves, mountains, cliffs, did i mention caves, and the player is constantly second guessing himself which path is the correct one. WoW is not a adventure game where half the fun is in figuring out the correct path, its a grindy MMO game, people are not intrigued by "hmm where do i go now?" mindset in a MMO. Its not that kind of game. The geometry in the world is practically made for flying mounts..

Exactly the opposite. The geometry is made for ground mounts, creating a feeling of realistic verticality and believable geographic complexity.
While I agree it's not exactly fun trying to guess which mountain path leads you to your quest giver (and some Highmountain mountain paths are really well hidden), or which cave contains that specific monster, it's not really bad design either. Yes, I get frustrated as well in specific areas with a lot of caves, mountains and guessing which side of a specific ridge your quest is on, but that (for me) is part of playing in a world I can believe in.

On your flying mount you swoop in & out, the landscape might as well be polders for all the difference it makes.

- - - Updated - - -

if you're talking about sad moments, i personally think ysera's passing was more eye watering...ysera was a well-known character. a former dragon aspect that i have invested more in over the years due to books and lore, while wrathgate made me gasp when i first saw it, in the end i didn't really know anybody that died there prior to their deaths. bolvar i haven't met prior to wotlk and i didn't even realize saurfang had a son

There were several moments that were even more heart wrenching to me, not in the least the story of Runas The Shamed, which is a rollercoaster ride of funny moments paired with one of the saddest quest endings I've ever seen.

[CaptainV]

Legion unfortunatley prooves one very sad but true fact, that WoW is a dated MMO.

In every logical aspect, Legion should be the best expansion of all time for WoW, and in many ways, it is.

But there are glaring issues that counter its best qualities. For example lets look at the bad -before- we look at what makes Legion amazing:

The Cons:

- No flying is still a thing, this is just down to a lack of imagination on blizzards side on how to make flying gated behind other content, it seems tedious to force people to level on ground multiple times through different characters.

- The "leveling" process was meant to be something you could do at a relaxed pace, at one point I was under the impression you were able to go from 100-110 in just -one- of each of the leveling zones, frankly I feel that would have worked better, as it would have been more alt friendly, and given incentive to play multiple runs.

- The Garrison "missions" are just there as clutter to delay your class campaign progression, they dont offer anything -good- at all, they are simply an annoyance more than a good concept slowing down the over all progress of your personal advancement.

- The story is a clusterfuck, while every individual plot is well written and voice acted, it has alot of inconsistant plot twists and plot lines that are obviously designed to become seeds for future expansions as opposed to focusing specifically on the Legion invading this world. As a writer, I feel the pillars of creation plot wasnt very well woven as it feels mostly like a series of random chores, as opposed to a consistant battle against an enemy competing for control of them.

- Some of the -fantasy- options they gave are terrible, for example, on a personal level, ret is just not in a good place right now nor to me personally is outlaw rogue or windwalker monk. The concept of giving every class its own unique abillities and combat style is great, its just something that needs tuning and changing here and there to really make every one of them feel enjoyable.

- While PvP does exist in end game, it feels lacking, and needs more love, theres a war between alliance and horde again, it really needs to escalate into something more explosive than border combat.


Now lets talk about the Pro's because its far from doom and gloom:


- The storylines within each campaign and story and class hall are just amazing in themselves, even if they are a clusterfuck, they have alot of depth, and some just give you so much more insight into the lore and history of WoW.

- Artifact weapons have specific mini events that are great, every experience feels just a -little- different because of it, but different enough that its interesting.

- Same goes for classes themselves, also, this is honestly the first time ive -enjoyed- playing some classes and -playing- the game again, as opposed to just rushing through storylines to find myself farming raids, once you -do- hit end game, theres -alot- of options to play.

- Demon Hunters are probably one of the most amazingly mobile classes in the game right now, and genuinley feel entertaining as an addition to the game.

- Every class hall has some love and detail woven into its design, making none of them feel entirley stale even the reused ones.

- Plenty of new content is already on its way, for at least 3 of the games aspects, world pve, dungeons and raiding.

- Blizzard has a very clear goal as to what the next expansion is probably going to be and what we will inevitably be lead into.

- Cross Faction communication is the first step to the removal of the faction conflict in pve, hopefully, other steps will be taken to continue this despite my earlier complaint about a lack of pvp.

- The story feels like a great closing chapter to alot of blizzard storylines, while opening the door to many new ones to follow. Its darker and more mature tone allow the story to tell a deeper plot about things going on in the Broken Isles.


My Hopes and Concerns:

- Blizzard has a promising future with Legion but they must exploit the hell out of it, I dont like the fact that the Nighthold is onpurposley being held back as future content just like Blackrock Foundry was.

- I am hoping that we get at least 2-3 new end game zones in Legion, and hopefully -not- just Broken Shores as an end game zone like Tanaan was.

- Artifact weapons need a bit of tuning, some class fantasies need buffing while others are fine as they are.

- I am concerned blizzard choosing to tell us outright that we will loose artifacts in the next expansion suggests they wont use them again, hopefully that wont be the case as there is a potential promising future for this style of content as a long-term investment.

- Im hoping future artifacts exist in the form of broken/corrupted/stolen or simply faded versions of the weapons we possess now, possibly being reforged, or us finding new ones to replace them. E.g. Gorehowl for Fury Warriors both Garrosh -and- AU Grom's.

- I also hope over time blizzard works towards giving -every- class a healer and tanking spec, as it would offer more play options for different styles of tanking/healing and encourage more people to step into the role if they had more options tailored to their playstyle for that function, rather like overwatch.

[Koloss]

you didn't even register that you spent your initial artifact quest revisiting cataclysm, pandaria or some other random bit of previous content

Well if you pay 0 attention to story it feels like this, yes. But i for example as a Destruction Warlock had to go to Tol Barad for example, because there were locked up demons there which i had some business with. There were also some Warlocks near Scholomance, because why couldn't they be at Scholomance? The book of Medivh was there, i went for it. These stuff completely made sense and it was a clever use of old story, it made those areas feel like they have importance and completely made sense in the story of the artifact. If the game were IRL, demons in Tol Barad wouldn't be any weaker than the ones in Broken Isles.

[LovesToSpooge]

Where is the "high quality lore"?

[thilicen]

I've never had more fun questing for levels, never have I had a more story-driven zone than Suramar (nor anything that comes close visually, never have I had so much to do at end-level, never have I seen a smoother launch. Yes, this one's the best yet for sure. Hopefully what comes next will be just as good.

[Vorkreist]

LFR and the retarded 4 difficulties raid structure is still in the game so no, wrath remains the best exp.

[Sundreamer]

There were several moments that were even more heart wrenching to me, not in the least the story of Runas The Shamed, which is a rollercoaster ride of funny moments paired with one of the saddest quest endings I've ever seen.

damn, it must have gone over my head, the last thing i remember was him sitting in the mana pool weakened and warning me of the guy that's coming...what happened afterwards?

[glowpipe]

It is the best expansion they released. Its better than wrath. Wrath was not that good when it came out. It became better towards the end with the small hickup that was trial of the Champ/crusader. Wrath felt better cause wow was better recieved back then. Thats all.

If legion will live on and become better or worse than other expansions at the same time intervals remains to be seen.

[Khaduran]

Best expansion so far. Having so much fun. I'm just sad I have to go to work

[Deleted]

Regarding the "recycling of old content", I think this is a very good indicator for if you should be playing the game anymore.

If your order campaign took you to old places and you appreciated being taken to these places (either because of nostalgia or because you'd never seen them before), appreciated the reasons why you were taken there etc. then you're still enjoying playing WoW.

If you found yourself annoyed that you had to go back to those old zones to complete a quest, all-the-while spitting the name of the devs and hating every moment of it... why are you still playing WoW?

This game has clearly become a glorified spreadsheet to some folks. Just a bunch of numbers to increase in as short a time as possible. It's a game, if you don't enjoy it why are you playing it?

With regards to the OP's question, it is certainly the smoothest launch I can recall (having been there for all of them) despite some concerted DDoS attempts to hobble it. The zones are interesting and visually distinctive. The dungeons are a good length and some of the bosses have interesting mechanics. The world quests and class order hall campaigns are giving me plenty to do.

Not sure how I'm going to handle playing an alt... :S

#AzerothProblems

[SkyTides]

It was a very smooth launch - well done to the server teams there.
I've been really taking my time leveling and so far I'm loving the cinematics and how the story leads up to the dungeon in each zone. The world and music are beautiful as always.
The order hall command table stuff is a bit meh at the moment, but its more of a background thing anyway.
Only thing I'm sad about is the lack of mounts: I'm usually planning which reps to grind at the start of an expac, but so few of them sell any

[Deleted]

damn, it must have gone over my head, the last thing i remember was him sitting in the mana pool weakened and warning me of the guy that's coming...what happened afterwards?

You didn't stay? After you turned in the quest, where he's in the mana pool at Azurewing Repose, he finally succumbs to the effects of his mana addiction. In his final moments, shivering while losing his sight, he calls out to you in one of the best voiced snippets in the history of this game, apologizing and closing with the following words "Thank you my friend, for letting my last few hours mean something", before turning into one of those mindless Withered Nightfallen.

It's a sad fate. There was some good in him and we, the hero, were the only ones who saw it in his last sane, conscious hours.

Azsuna is the best zone they ever created from a storytelling perspective. There's several questlines (Court of Farondis, Azurewing Repose) that lead to a great moment of catharsis when you find the Tidestone and save Senegos.