The Tomb of Sargeras prelude 'story' is such a let down

[Nalorakk]

And the dull stepping stone of mid-Legion's storytelling is almost entirely why I barely log in.

I played all the way through WoD when all we really had was dull stepping stone after dull stepping stone after... nvm there wasn't another stone; I didn't mind it. I enjoy the game's mechanics (still do), but with Legion everything before the Broken Shore has been so engrossing and enjoyable. This just feels like half a filler season when things were just getting good.

By comparison, it's too difficult to swallow committing and wanting to see it through. While I'm sure Blizzard has more solid story content left in Legion, I'm hardly holding on because I know how easy it would have been to half bake a story than just hand out weekly timegating breadcrumbs.

Instead of livelihood among the cast of characters in Legion, they're empty while non-demanding questions go unanswered.
Instead of feeling like returning to the Broken Shore was a significant yet difficult step in fighting back against the Legion, I'm wondering why they're sleeping during "THE BIGGEST LEGION INVASION EVERRRR" because we aren't doing anything important right now.

All it could've taken was a few more lines of voice acting and an intern mashing X, Z, C and a bunch of vowels to make a demon's name which proved to be a stepping stone towards opening the Tomb of Sargeras.
What about the housekeeping chores?
What's happening in Orgrimmar/Stormwind during this?
What lingering troubles remain in the zones most heavily impacted by the initial invasion?
Are Illidan and Malfurion avoiding each other?
How is the general Horde reacting to Sylvanas's leadership / Alliance to Anduin's?
What are other significant characters that have fallen out of the spotlight up to e.g. Cairne, Jaina, Tyrande and so on.

Almost all of these things have little value in the progress towards defeating the Legion, but they matter a hell of a lot more than "open 10 boxes", "get me 100 gems", "do 3 missions (woah)". Other than sentimental encounters like Malfurion and Illidan reuniting, they require very little presence and clarity in writing.

Instead there's an illusion of progress (none if you don't even bother reading quest text) while we twiddle our thumbs for the next raid. The weekly quest unlocks feel like they do more harm than good; they quite plainly state Blizzard recognised a hole in current content outside of raiding and filled it with stale air instead of something with juuuuust a little bit of substance.


TLDR: I care too much and expected more from a large corporation just because they threw me a bone with the other parts of Legion

[Pull My Finger]

Seems like you picked some random thing to complain about.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Blizz has admitted they dropped the ball on story for 7.2. They promise to do better so we shall see. I hear the Chromie quests are quite good.

[Rotted]

What about the housekeeping chores?
What's happening in Orgrimmar/Stormwind during this?
What lingering troubles remain in the zones most heavily impacted by the initial invasion?
Are Illidan and Malfurion avoiding each other?
How is the general Horde reacting to Sylvanas's leadership / Alliance to Anduin's?
What are other significant characters that have fallen out of the spotlight up to e.g. Cairne, Jaina, Tyrande and so on.

You could literally apply this (bar the illidan one and rephrase the invasion one) to any of the wow expansions,

[Nalorakk]

You could literally apply this (bar the illidan one and rephrase the invasion one) to any of the wow expansions,

Definitely, but in Legion it felt a little different since there was more focus on the current events as the story progressed. It felt like they were recognising where things went wrong before and trying to fix it up.

Since the initial charge onto the Broken Isles was directed at the Nighthold, after securing that there was the opening for smaller stories within the world.

[styil]

Blizz has admitted they dropped the ball on story for 7.2. They promise to do better so we shall see. I hear the Chromie quests are quite good.

I thought they admitted to dropping the ball in WoD and promised to do better in Legion. Or do we have to wait until 8.0 or 9.0 for them to do better?

[Evilmoo]

You are asking blizzard to actually do their job and provide meaningful lore background to what is happening?
HAHAHA.

[Nalorakk]

You are asking blizzard to actually do their job and provide meaningful lore background to what is happening?
HAHAHA.

7.2 (so far) aside, they've done well with the rest of Legion.

[Evilmoo]

7.2 (so far) aside, they've done well with the rest of Legion.

Suramar probably, rest was... lackluster.

They even have two identical quests for invasions (highmountain) with exactly the same trash to fight one before the scenario and another just as a first quest in the scenario

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I thought they admitted to dropping the ball in WoD and promised to do better in Legion. Or do we have to wait until 8.0 or 9.0 for them to do better?

Story-wise overall, Legion has been Blizz's best effort to date. Suramar by itself has been the most ambitious in-game story Blizz has ever attempted. The order hall campains have told a grand story that can only be seen in its entirety if you play every class.

They kind of forgot this element for 7.2. We got some filler quests and a new daily area, but nothing much to advance the story. Ion admitted in an interview that he had dropped the ball. I expect at least some effort to handle this part better in 7.2.5.

[Nalorakk]

Suramar probably, rest was... lackluster.

They even have two identical quests for invasions (highmountain) with exactly the same trash to fight one before the scenario and another just as a first quest in the scenario

Invasions are 7.2 and like the rest of the patch are dull.

[Deleted]

They promise to do better so we shall see.

hahaha. how many times have they promised to do better only to disappoint yet again now? i've lost count.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

hahaha. how many times have they promised to do better only to disappoint yet again now? i've lost count.

I'd say they made many improvements, and many more attempts at improvements, with Legion over Draenor. It's not like nothing has changed:

• More overall content
• More dungeons
• Better spacing of patches, with less time between patches
• Transmog, gear swap, and spec-change utilities keep getting better and better: I can now swap all three with one button.
• Less coccooning in Garrisons; Class Order Halls are more like quick stopovers where we see and even occasionally interract with other players.
• WoD gave us disappointment of Karabor; Legion gave us splendor of Suramar.
• M+ builds on WoD's mythic dungeons and challenge modes to offer true progression outside of raiding.

Some of their other changes have been more mixed: AP, legendaries, artifacts:

• AP means always having something to do when you log in, but highly competitive players feel trapped in grind.
• Artifacts offer nod to old talent trees and essentially allow us to keep leveling/powering up past 110, but some players complain about feeling tied to one spec.
• Legendaries are kind of like Trinkets 2.0, giving us more to strategize around which to equip for which content, but RNG and imbalance between drops has been frustrating for competitive types.

In fairness to Blizz, they have made efforts to tweak all the above. I find the AP setup for 7.2.5 to be well-balanced, and artifacts are now a breeze to rank up for alts and off-specs, but still think it might have been better to make all legendary special powers more utility/fun rather than competitive edge.

[Nero Stormchester]

The 1st week's quests were great, they were interesting (and spec specific !!) however after that its been a disappointment. Honestly after Suramar, I was expecting a new Insurgence quest line. And I get that you need some fillers, but at least 1-2 more meaningful steps would've been nice . Whereas we start meaningful and end meaningful , with fillers inbetween.
Part of the reason is that every class gets their own chain. So at the end , as we all know, each class will get a UNIQUE quest line that will reward a UNIQUE mount. That's a lot of content tbh. Enough content to fill these 11 weeks of tedious quests. But then we wouldn't have gotten epic questlines that give us mounts. See due to finite resources , choices have to be made , and the benefit forgone (i.e. insurgence style questline) is the opportunity cost. As someone with a number of alts on 110, I'm looking forward to getting the class mount on all of them, the questlines and the rewards are unique and full of lore. Unfortunately we can't have both, but I'm fine with the way they did it . We're still better off than pretty much all of older expansions. And since not everyone plays alts , im pretty Sure Blizzard said they wouldn't be doing this again , since a person who only plays 1 character gets to see 1/12 of the contents.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

The 1st week's quests were great, they were interesting (and spec specific !!) however after that its been a disappointment. Honestly after Suramar, I was expecting a new Insurgence quest line. And I get that you need some fillers, but at least 1-2 more meaningful steps would've been nice . Whereas we start meaningful and end meaningful , with fillers inbetween.
Part of the reason is that every class gets their own chain. So at the end , as we all know, each class will get a UNIQUE quest line that will reward a UNIQUE mount. That's a lot of content tbh. Enough content to fill these 11 weeks of tedious quests. But then we wouldn't have gotten epic questlines that give us mounts. See due to finite resources , choices have to be made , and the benefit forgone (i.e. insurgence style questline) is the opportunity cost. As someone with a number of alts on 110, I'm looking forward to getting the class mount on all of them, the questlines and the rewards are unique and full of lore. Unfortunately we can't have both, but I'm fine with the way they did it . We're still better off than pretty much all of older expansions. And since not everyone plays alts , im pretty Sure Blizzard said they wouldn't be doing this again , since a person who only plays 1 character gets to see 1/12 of the contents.

I'll be a bit disappointed if they never do something like this again; I have enjoyed seeing another aspect of the story each time I level a new alt. It is the most sophisticated effort at lore and story telling Blizz has ever done, imho.

- - - Updated - - -

Aren't most of the order hall campaigns available on Youtube, for those of us who really care? Maybe in future expansions they could release an official version from their own website, at some point late in the expansion when it was no longer deemed a spoiler.

[Deleted]

The Broken Isles where brought to you by NCsoft.

Double the grinding and none of the fun!

[Deleted]

Suramar probably, rest was... lackluster.

They even have two identical quests for invasions (highmountain) with exactly the same trash to fight one before the scenario and another just as a first quest in the scenario

So now one quest in one event is considered representative of the lore ? Wtf ??

People seem to expect the equivalent of a 1000-pages book of original lore for every patch. Never gonna happen, wake up...

[Nalorakk]

The Broken Isles where brought to you by NCsoft.

Double the grinding and none of the fun!

Lol, I have to agree.

There aren't even rewards that last beyond Legion - both timeless isles and tanaan were riddled with fun things.

[Evilmoo]

So now one quest in one event is considered representative of the lore ? Wtf ??

People seem to expect the equivalent of a 1000-pages book of original lore for every patch. Never gonna happen, wake up...

what?
are you even playing the game? 15 weeks of useless grind in order to "open" tomb of sargeras.

[arel00]

And it's really aggravated by the fact that we went through Suramar's storyline and the Insurgence questline before 7.2. If you set the bar that high then it's very easy to disappoint people. It's a shame honestly, they did a marvelous job with that story. I hope they catch up with the Argus bit.