If they remove Artifact Weapon in 8.0...

[purebalance]

Because the Vanilla playing community complained that their hard work was for naught when they picked up a world drop green that was better than their AQ or BWL gear. So they intentionally undervalued greens in Lich King, why do you think Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury and most gear from SWP still gets Scaled down in Lich King timewalking events, even though timewalking scaled you to the ilvl of the heroics of the expac. But you never even looked. Hell my guild cleared Naxx in just T6 regemmed and enchanted.

Had nothing to do with that. Keep dreaming that you're going to replace your artifact with a green. I'm done because you have your fingers in your ears like most posters on here.

[Shadowsgrace]

Had nothing to do with that. Keep dreaming that you're going to replace your artifact with a green. I'm done because you have your fingers in your ears like most posters on here.

Still bet you didn't know SWP gear gets scaled back in Lich King Timewalking. And don't need to dream, Most of my guildmates were Vanilla raiders, atleast 1/2 did raid and clear Naxx (lvl 60) and they know for fact, greens of TBC were over budgeted.

[Eleccybubb]

Meaning that they will not be expanded on in the new xpack. They will probably be like the cloaks/rings to where they work up to new max level but have 90% reduction in their effects or the effects removed all together at the new max level. Cloaks and I believe the rings had a reduction in their effects as we leveled up in the following xpack.

Ring lost power as you levelled but was still a half decent stat stick throughout since it capped at 795.

Cloak never nerfed as you levelled it. Had it's 90 values for the Flurry and other effects. At 100 it was just a stat stick. You didn't actually get rid of it until Heroic dungeons because it was 616 and Normal cloaks were 615. So it held it's time as a decent 100 starter item.

As I said it was bugged initially in that the effect was still happening at 100 which was hotfixed.

[Deleted]

It's not the damage they deal, it's the talents that they contain.

[Trollokdamus]

It would certainly feel immersion-breaking to manually replace one of the most powerful weapons in the Warcraft universe with a random green/blue. They'll probably either give us a new set of artifacts, or change the current ones into "Depleted <Artifactname>" via some sort of event.
What I'm more curious about is how the 100-110 leveling will be happening post-Legion since artifacts are the core of so many systems.

[Shadowsgrace]

It would certainly feel immersion-breaking to manually replace one of the most powerful weapons in the Warcraft universe with a random green/blue. They'll probably either give us a new set of artifacts, or change the current ones into "Depleted <Artifactname>" via some sort of event.
What I'm more curious about is how the 100-110 leveling will be happening post-Legion since artifacts are the core of so many systems.

Well they added in the ilvl 100-110 BoA upgrades in 7.2.5 so.... probably same as usual.

[Ozzyorcborne]

I hope they maintain something like this in 8.0. I really dont want to go back to having to add weapons to what is already an unforgiving gearing system. Prior to legion, weapon drops were a real bitch.

[anon5123]

I've already said if they remove the Artifacts in next expansion i am quitting the game, im getting sick of blizz taking stuff out from previous expansions,its not hurting anyone keeping them in. Like the mists of Pandaria cloak quest,if people want to feel like a snowflake then just make the reward only go to epic and keep the legendary cape special.

Im pretty sure there is a law suit as well as you paid for a product at one time and then that product has all its items removed, you have essentially been robbed of said product.

When you pay a WoW sub, you are not buying a product, you are paying for access to Blizzard's game.

You do not own your items, your character, or even your account. Everything belongs to Blizzard, you are just paying to access it.

It's all there, black-and-white, in the ToS.

Also, go ahead and quit now, since it was announced at the beginning of Legion that artifacts would be going away in the next expansion.

[Trollokdamus]

Well they added in the ilvl 100-110 BoA upgrades in 7.2.5 so.... probably same as usual.

While that may work from the technical point of view, the huge part of the story, dialogues, quests etc will be completely broken. They'll have to cut out everything related to artifacts to fix that, which is a lot.

[ChunkyCheerio]

Oh the excitement!
You, Hero of your faction, Savior of Azeroth, Destroyer of Legion, equipped with one of most powerful weapons in Azeroth find a green weapon of some Murloc you just slayed- and oh my! It's actually better than all that power contained in your Artifact weapon you used to defeat the Legion!

LMAO, as much as i do love this alternative ending.. I think our Artifacts are going to have to be consumed in the sealing of the Titan Sargeras.. It's probably going to take all of the class paragons, plus Illidan, Dadgar, and us (with our artifacts) to seal Sargeras away. In doing so.. i bet our artifacts get drained to a husk and THAT will be why we'll be able to Tmog it in the future. ...or in a sad-er ending... mount it on the wall in whatever takes form of garrisons 3.0.

[Razorice]

If you ever replaced a raid weapon with a green, you were 2 tiers behind when the expansion launched.

You do realise what I said was all in humor form right?
I'm not expecting to replace an artifact with a green weapon, however I will probably replace it with rare-quality dungeon weapon especially if it Warforges.

[Nyel]

That won't work post-Legion. In the next expansion, maybe the majority of people running alts through will not stick to their heirloom weapons and ignore artifacts, but in the one after that, most will. Making the sacrifice of the weapon mandatory won't make much sense then. What will make sense is if, when 8.0 hits with all the usual class changes, we simply get mailed new weapons just like ie. Frost DK and Survival Hunter did with Legion. We can keep Artifacts, but all the AP traits are gone/deactivated. This way blizz only has to change/remove the few quests that relate to upgrading the weapons instead of everything. And it's a one-time solution that is not going to need any further support post-Legion.

And why wouldn't that work? It's the easiest way to solve it. Make their "removal" mandatory for the next expansion - there's absolutely no problem in doing it this way. Even if players would tend to use heirloom weapons instead of artifact weapons from 100-110, easy fix, don't upgrade heirloom weapons to 110 and let them be stuck at 100.

[Feali]

I just hope they give us a good explanation as to why we lose them. I really want them gone! Like really bad! But it needs to be handled accordingly. Maybe we even get to customise our own weapons but without all the grinding.

[Deleted]

And why wouldn't that work? It's the easiest way to solve it. Make their "removal" mandatory for the next expansion - there's absolutely no problem in doing it this way. Even if players would tend to use heirloom weapons instead of artifact weapons from 100-110, easy fix, don't upgrade heirloom weapons to 110 and let them be stuck at 100.

Not upgrading to 110? You're a bit late for that party, since heirlooms already scale to that.

It won't work because of the quest chain to obtain even one weapon. By the time Legion is over, people will want to level past it FAST. They will do other quests that are less story-driven and more efficient xp/hour. Quite literally forcing people to go out of their way to do some specific old stuff just to progress to new stuff will never feel like a good solution. What I suggested is a far easier-to-implement solution and will feel better for everyone post-Legion.

My suggestion is simply removing or changing a few quests. Yours is implementing brand new ones with a prerequisite to complete them.

[Nyel]

Not upgrading to 110? You're a bit late for that party, since heirlooms already scale to that.

It won't work because of the quest chain to obtain even one weapon. By the time Legion is over, people will want to level past it FAST. They will do other quests that are less story-driven and more efficient xp/hour. Quite literally forcing people to go out of their way to do some specific old stuff just to progress to new stuff will never feel like a good solution. What I suggested is a far easier-to-implement solution and will feel better for everyone post-Legion.

My suggestion is simply removing or changing a few quests. Yours is implementing brand new ones with a prerequisite to complete them.

Well, then revert it back. No problem here to make weapon heirloom useless after level 100 or to put some other "stop" on it.

What? Every expansion has some starting quest. Every expansion requires you to accept a quest(line) that brings you into the new zones. Tie your weapon exchange to that quest and everybody has to do it. Your suggestion sounds a bit poor to me story-wise and gameplay-wise. Remove them and send us new weapons per mail after we did all those questlines to get artifacts? Or what was your plan?

- - - Updated - - -

it seems most likley that in the final fight we will expend the powers of our weapons to beat the final boss,(Saying it this way as to not spoil the raid) making them just useless hunks of metal. or we absorb the powers into ourselves to beat the final boss, making the artifacts useless hunks of metal
that way next expansion they can give us weapons that are weaker, but we dont feel like "wait why am i giving up X for Y"

this was the "most likely" way they said they might remove artifacts, cant remember where this was from ,but some interview along time ago when they were asked "what about next expansion"

I remember that they said that but when we think about it... how should this work? If you don't raid, there's no "final fight". And if you do, are your weapons made useless the first time you do it or the 50th time? They can't really tie it to the raid. They must tie it so a quest or task that EVERYBODY needs to do to get something in return.

[Seranthor]

I've already said if they remove the Artifacts in next expansion i am quitting the game, im getting sick of blizz taking stuff out from previous expansions,its not hurting anyone keeping them in. Like the mists of Pandaria cloak quest,if people want to feel like a snowflake then just make the reward only go to epic and keep the legendary cape special.

Im pretty sure there is a law suit as well as you paid for a product at one time and then that product has all its items removed, you have essentially been robbed of said product.

You'll be quitting because before Legion even launched they said that artifact weapons wont be in the expansion afterward... As far as your lawsuit, it will be laughed out of court...

[Planetdune]

I highly doubt they'll suddenly remove our weapons entirely.

It'll be just like any other expansion: We have our Artifacts, eventually we find a random weapon that's better from a quest/dungeon/drop/etc and bam, new weapon, Artifact can go gather dust in the bank.

How can you find better weapons than the legendary lore weapons we have now? Wouldn't it be kinda silly if suddenly vendors started selling gear better than Ashbringer or Doomhammer itself?

They sort of painted themselves in a ugly corner with giving us access to these end all powerful weapons (lorewise) and now they have to both find a (lore) reason to take them away AND a reason that suddenly other weapons are better...

[Nevcairiel]

Considering how much character power and class abilities are currently tied into the weapon, I would expect the 8.0 pre-patch to already do something about this to "prepare", not the expansion launch itself - 8.0 is when the class changes arrive, so it would fit there.

Perhaps a quest line to "drain" the weapon and give us appropriate replacements, or maybe we keep it in its "drained" form on its item level but without traits until its replaced in the new expansion.

One of the big "questions" is leveling through Legion content. I doubt they want to re-do much of it to remove the weapon references, so I would imagine they would mostly just keep it, you still go get the weapon and whatnot, which would also be inline with them saying that you will be able to obtain the appearances afterwards as well. Its not like you reach very high AP levels during leveling and once you hit 110 you would get the next-expac replacement as well.

[yetgdhfgh]

IMO blizz will remove all the perks from the weapons and they wil become worthless in the opening few quests of the next xpac

After that it will be drops and blues from the first dungeon you enter that is better.

Blizz will make baseline all the perks like BM having 2 pets etc

[Nyel]

Blizz will make baseline all the perks like BM having 2 pets etc

I really really hope so. Would be a waste of time and work and gameplay value to remove the traits entirely...