Legion is unfriendly to returning players from previous expansions

[oplawlz]

Literally no issue at all getting an alt caught up or returning account. The AP is so fast now that you can have a character maxed out with minimal effort in a week. The only grind is Concordance and no one is farming it because of how small an upgrade it is for too much work. So once you get to 52 on your weapon you're basically caught up.

Did they change something? I thought you had to get one character to an artifact knowledge level before you could buy tomes.

[Eon Drache]

Did they change something? I thought you had to get one character to an artifact knowledge level before you could buy tomes.

on a fresh character AP levels now take 5 hours instead of 5 days as the default. So yeah. On a fresh account it will take you right over 8 days to go from lv0 to lv40 Artifact Knowledge.

[Razorice]

Dunno.
I've been playing casually since the beggining of WoD and I really can't say that Legion is that grindy at this moment. Yes, it might have been on launch but now it's a piece of cake. My main is 922ilvl while my other 10 alts are 985-902ilvls with concordance.
Here's what I do on every single alt:
Leveling 100-110 can be done in 5 days assuming you only do invasions and some Bonus Objectives.
Hit 110 go straight to Broken Shore, finish that shitty scenario and go farm some caches/mini-bosses/Nether Portals for Dauntless Tokens.
You can also buy a few 850 pieces of AH, they go for 1-4k a piece if you aren't that lucky.
Boom - In a few hours you're 850. Q for Cathedral so you get an 860 relic and maybe some other shitty gear, then proceed to Q and do all of the raids apart from ToS.
You now should be around 855-860 if you're lucky with Nighthold and now you can do ToS. Between the Queues start doing Daily quests to keep those resources rolling and start doing your Class Campaign. Class Campaign takes 2 days to complete due to "omg hardcore gating of missions" with 3rd relic unlocked you should easily get around 870-875ilvl.
From all the raids you've done and assuming you had AK40 you should now be around 47-48 traits.

[Enkrypt]

i cant stop laughing when anyone claims to play vanilla/tbc and claims to not have had a problem to grind all the shit in vanilla yet minimal farm in legion is suddenly problem for him - i wonder how you farmed resist gear back then if farming ap is too much .

"Suddenly" a problem? You do realize there's upwards of ten years between Vanilla and Legion, correct? Nothing sudden about that transition. And comparing resist gear to the endless AP grind is apples to oranges. One is finite, the other is not.

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I'll admit the micro-grinds are real in Legion. As someone who has also played since Vanilla, who remembers grinding 1000g for the epic mount, the excruciating materials needed for the dozens of enchants you needed as well as raid materials, I can attest to the differences of the expansions rather vividly. Legion offers smaller-scale grinding than older iterations of the game. I think the payoff back then was greater, which made the effort required seem diminished by comparison. In Legion it's smaller grinds for smaller payoff, and essentially there's no end to it. This is the product of no-lifers grinding the game until they ran out of things to do and begged for more "perpetual" content. The illusion is that you have to do all of it.

The game is vastly different, there is no denying that. I think the word "grindy" is subjective. Leveling cooking, to me, is grindy. Getting AP for my weapon, while endless, doesn't feel grindy, to me.

[unbound]

i cant stop laughing when anyone claims to play vanilla/tbc and claims to not have had a problem to grind all the shit in vanilla yet minimal farm in legion is suddenly problem for him - i wonder how you farmed resist gear back then if farming ap is too much .

Not completely accurate what you are arguing here.

The primary problem with Legion if you were to just try playing now is that you have a time gated sequence of things that you have to do. Heck, he clearly states it..."Legion has WAY too much time-gating.", and he is right. This is very different than grinding to catch up in Vanilla / BC. Heck, we got people fairly fast-tracked up to current gear back in BC multiple times. I was personally involved back then, so I know that to be true.

With the proper support, you could play near your friends' gear level within a few weeks back in BC. Run Kara with a good guild that is reasonably geared, and lots of those drops are things you could take for catch up. Kara key itself could be done in a couple of hours. Run some dungeons for additional gear, and flying is obtained via simple purchase after max level.

Now, not a chance. No matter how much support you get, it is a terrible grind for AP to fill out your stats. It is a terrible grind to get to flying. It is time-gated nonsense just to open your 3rd relic slot. And to be reasonably competitive, you have to get 2 legendaries...and that is based on a pretty low percentage drop (I have a couple of alts that still don't even have a single legendary despite more than reasonable game play time).

Sorry, OP has a reasonable point. And either you never played Vanilla / BC, or you have a very twisted view of the reality from those days.

[Mhyroth]

Come on... OP doesn't even believe in his words...

A pure example on the topic - a friend of mine who was the first to play WoW started in TBC, played in WotLK, killed Lich King and said "That's it! I killed him. Im done with the game"
One month ago he got so bored and after read the patch notes for 7.3 he decided that "fighting" the legion is worth his time again.
He resubed. I guided him throw and now he is 915 ilvl with 2 bis legendaries and 57 traits with flying unlocked. And you know what the best part? He plays like me - 2-4 hours a day, after he comes back from work, from 19 to 23 tops. AND he said its too easy... Can you believe that? No you can't, cuz you read so many posts about this topic so you decided to cry about it too:
"Legion has WAY too much time-gating. Way too many single-expansion timesinks. Too many bars to fill. Too many Arbitrary Magic Fun Points to grind. Not enough things carried between characters or specs." - boo hoo! You had to play Legion when it launched. Then you would have know the true meaning of those quotes.

It is way way easier now! You do not know anything about time gating. I will give you one simple exmaple. Its called Artifact Knowledge Levels.
At launch you got one level every five days, where now you get one level every, what is it?, 2 hours!!!

All those bars to fill and all those magic points to get are all in your head. No one except you yourself can force you to fill those bars.
But let me tell you one secret - You can just play the game and they fill by themself. Remove your focus from "filling bars" to "playing game" and your virtual life will be a lot more enjoyable.

So you boosted a friend ? Congrats !
Now try the same thing alone. I had the same discussion with someone else yesterday and of course you can be up to speed in 2 weeks with 930 ilvl, but that's impossible solo.

[Thoughtsinchaos]

I see these threads pop up quite often, and it's ironic that this is happening right now, considering that Legion actually does an incredible job every raid patch of catching people up who have taken a break from the game, or are deciding on leveling a different character. This game has always been a massive time sink, though, and it's been that way since beta. There just comes a time in every gamer's life where he has to make choices on what to spend his free time on, especially when they're working full-time or are raising a family.

[Armourboy]

I've played this game from start to finish and every point in between. The way it is set up now it isn't that bad, it all goes fairly quickly out side of the normal grind stuff you have. I am not someone who plays a ton of hours either, I might play maybe 20 hours a week on a good week, 5-6 on a bad, although I can go several days in a row without logging in.

The mission board stuff doesn't take long at all now, most of those have been nerfed down to only take an hour or so to complete for the class hall stuff. The rest now is mostly just dungeon runs, which you should want to do anyways. There are rep grinds, but those have always existed and are par for the course. AP there is no reason to grind, just use it as you get it, you will catch up soon enough. You can be up to 890 ilevel pretty quickly, and that's without farming for the shards or whatver they are called now.

Legion was pretty dang grindy at the start, that I will admit. As it stands today though, it's not bad at all, and a good chunk of the time sinks have been reduced in some way.

[TheFirstOnes]

Good. They need time to progress.

[jtstormrage]

My only alt reached 892 in 10 days from WQs, world bosses and some normal pugs. The problem is you, not the game.
The legendaries I agree with, the system is best described as "ass".

Good information. I have levelled three alts and they were all about that item level in around a week or 10 days.

However, I find that to be too much catch up time. If you don't like "catching up" and just want to play different characters, then that is all "dead time".

Increasingly the player base is in their late 20s or 30s. Not all but many. This game is 13 years old. Many people do not have the time they had when they were students to play this game.

If levelling and playing alts is what you enjoy, this game in its current form requires too much investment to do that as much as was possible in previous expansions.

In MOP and WOD I played 5-6 alts and loved it. Now I really struggle with 3.

I know people will say "well you have to farm/earn gear, you don't just get free stuff". Unfortunately, I don't have the time or the will any more to maintain my existing characters and level and gear another 2-3 (which I would love to do - I have 3-4 level 100 alts which I would love to play).

I therefore have to choose between characters and, like many, I choose the ones I have already started, rather than abandon them for others.

[tratra]

i cant stop laughing when anyone claims to play vanilla/tbc and claims to not have had a problem to grind all the shit in vanilla yet minimal farm in legion is suddenly problem for him - i wonder how you farmed resist gear back then if farming ap is too much .

People do get older. In vanilla I used to play minimum 12 hours a day. Now I only got 12-16 hours a week for playing as other things take over.

Wow itself as a game, is relying on its old customers/user base. I don't think its gaining any new people, as kids etc tend to play games that are repetitive but you can take a break every e.g 30 mins (lol,cs etc you can just play 1 game go away, return and play more, wow is not like that especially if you go for a raid).

To answer to the OP, yes content is gated, not as much as legion start, but you are not alone in there. I re-subbed 2 days ago, logged in, tried finding what there is to do to get up to speed, saw the massive list of things and I was like meh, can't be bothered at this time. They need to find a way to ease the transition of a player coming back to someone that has been playing the past 1-2 patches continuously and knows everything.

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I rarely agree w/ you, but, mate, what you've just said is so true, I'd even upvote your comment if we had +/- here on MMOC

Again as said to the other guy, when we were playing vanilla we were in College, with unlimited time to shink into the game. We still want to enjoy the game from time to time, but having family, kids, job etc doesn't allow you to play more than a few hours a week.

[tikcol]

Well mate it is obvious that you haven't played vanilla from how you behave and your limited understanding of the game back then. What you now think of a small grind was an epic proportions grind back in the days.

As I said you can't understand what you haven't played and as a modern player you are as bad as they get. Deluded, bloated ego, ready to insult, clueless, can't connect dots, failed in life, hanging from the balls of a forum to prove himself. You are all that mate and its just pathetic.

Now keep calling me a child if you wish when you come my age you will probably short circuit and realize being young is actually a good thing unless ofc you are an idiot. Then it doesn't make a difference as you will find out.

Read your posts thoroughly, you're still behaving like a child because I caught you in a lie

[papajohn4]

i cant stop laughing when anyone claims to play vanilla/tbc and claims to not have had a problem to grind all the shit in vanilla yet minimal farm in legion is suddenly problem for him - i wonder how you farmed resist gear back then if farming ap is too much .

There is a difference between "grind and advance at your own pace" than "grind specific time each day for x days and advance exactly how the developer wants".

I rather have to kill 5000 bears and chose when to do it and how much time i will spend each day or week on this goal, rather than have to log each day and kill 20 bears for 2 months, because thats how developer thinks will keep me subbed...

Tl;dr There is grind and time gated grind.. the first can be fun sometimes, the second will never be fun

[Krakozjubr]

I hope you're not suggesting that 139 hours played is "minimal effort"...

This is MMORPG for crying out loud. What the hell is wrong with you people... 139 hours is nothing to complain about.

This isn't tetris, this isn't freaking Prince of Persia... holy crap.

[Epicawesomestmaximus]

Honestly, the only thing I hate about legion is the rng slot machine-fest that it's become. I miss the days of knowing exactly which bosses I needed to pray on and then being done with them once I got their stuff.

[Deleted]

Be delusional if you want, but Blizzard have really gone out of their way this expansion to make people play their game for as much and as long as possible... the change to reputation mounts from vendor to RNG is proof of this. I wouldn't have an issue with this if it were a F2P game, but this game's P2P... and this direction they're going in disgusts me.

I agree, I really fear for the next expansion when all the trying they did this time becomes economic data driven consistency.

[Armourboy]

People do get older. In vanilla I used to play minimum 12 hours a day. Now I only got 12-16 hours a week for playing as other things take over.

Wow itself as a game, is relying on its old customers/user base. I don't think its gaining any new people, as kids etc tend to play games that are repetitive but you can take a break every e.g 30 mins (lol,cs etc you can just play 1 game go away, return and play more, wow is not like that especially if you go for a raid).

To answer to the OP, yes content is gated, not as much as legion start, but you are not alone in there. I re-subbed 2 days ago, logged in, tried finding what there is to do to get up to speed, saw the massive list of things and I was like meh, can't be bothered at this time. They need to find a way to ease the transition of a player coming back to someone that has been playing the past 1-2 patches continuously and knows everything.

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Again as said to the other guy, when we were playing vanilla we were in College, with unlimited time to shink into the game. We still want to enjoy the game from time to time, but having family, kids, job etc doesn't allow you to play more than a few hours a week.

So you want Blizzard to build a game where you don't actually need to do anything.

I'm 40 years old, I'm married, I have a job that is not on a set schedule and I work nights to boot. If I can do this stuff with very little effort just about anyone can. It's not like I'm spending all my free time on WoW either, I spent tonight playing board games with friends.

It really sounds like lots of people have no business playing an MMO, what you need is a single player RPG that you can pick up and leave off as you wish without getting behind. If you need to take a break then you can, if you can't log in for a week then that's ok. How people expect them to build an MMO that keeps content fresh for those that are playing without you getting behind if you don't play is beyond me.

I have sympathy for those with families and such, its the reason things like LFR and LFD are things that will never go away, but at a certain point you need to realize if you quit and come back, there is always going to be a list of things you need to do when you come back. You simply can't build a halfway decent MMO for those that are playing if every little things is irrelevant and can be skipped upon coming back.

[DarkAmbient]

This is MMORPG for crying out loud. What the hell is wrong with you people... 139 hours is nothing to complain about.

This isn't tetris, this isn't freaking Prince of Persia... holy crap.

Who was complaining?

A little reading comprehension can go a long way.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

You know it's BIG difference when you are 13yo with nothing to do beside games and 25yo with a lot of RL stuff? Right?

You know you can gear up a toon in short order playing just a couple of hours per week? Right?
I hear that you feel time pressures from RL - don't assume we don't. But the catch up mechanics are real and plentiful.
I barely touch this rogue. I log him once or twice a week to do emissary quests, flip table missions... I might him run through an instance of some kind once a month. Just look at his pathetic raid progress! Yet he's 912 and could raid H today if I wanted.

Bloodsail Admiral Furrycane

The biggest limitations are the ones you build in your own mind.

[TofuBandita]

It's called playing the game....Why on earth do you feel you need to complete 6+months of content asap.