Legion: a critical view

[Magemaer]

As you know, and my signature still tells, i'm quite critical of Blizzard's recent years misteps and i was waiting this expansion without much hope. So what do i think about Legion?

So let's start with the 3 most positive points about Legion:

1-Lore moving foward
This has been a complain i made over and over: they decided long ago (about wotlk) to develop Azeroth's story in a way that doesn't finish it within 2 or 3 more expansions. They want the franchise to live on. And that ins't necessarily a bad thing. BUT THE STORY NEEDS TO MOVE FOWARD. They attempted to sell expansions based solely on "hey it's WoW in a nice setting" with a side story largely irrelevant and it didn't work out well.
Well, Legion is moving things foward, and, hell, it looks awesome.

2-Endgame character progression
This had been a major problem with WoD that a lot of people brought up: where is character progression? You go out, you do stuff, and your character is more developed after that. This is core to the RPG experience: you do stuff not only for the sake of doing, but because it moves you foward.
Well they're bringing it back in grand fashion: there is artifact power, there is the new honor system, aside from the usual item hunt. I'm really happy about it, if they pull this right this is gonna be awesome.
But i hope they add more developments after you capped your artifact and rank. Something like the old badge system, so you can do dungeons etc even some time into the expansion and get rewarded? It should be less rewarding than the first system, which you already capped, it shouldn't feel mandatory, or it'd be a chore, but it should bring you something.


3-De-homogenization
This is huge. They've been homogenizing classes for years, and on top of that WoD pruning made, in some sectors, class design really poor and boring.
Now they're splitting pvp, adding development through Artifact AND heading towards de-homogenization. They'll try to make each spec more unique and, hopefully, add more depth. This is looking good guys. This gives room for some awesome developments for both the pve and pvp scene. It's the right direction, it comes down to execution now.


Now other more controversial points:

-Reharsh
There have been complains about reharshing things. Sure, they are bringing back to the forefront characters we presumed dead and buried, such as Gul'Dan and Illidan. But these are awesome characters, we want to hang out a bit more with them. Really, it's about HOW things are done. If they bring stuff back just because (gimme $$$), yeah it sucks. But if they a character or a place that still have a great story or a great experience to offer- hell yeah!!! That's why i loved most of the Caverns of Time dungeons, and why i still lament that the Well of Eternity raid was cancelled.
It seems to me that Illidan still has a lot to offer. He is a major character very tied to the Legion and to Azeroth's main storylines. It's not only about capitalizing an iconic creation, but giving fullfilment to a story that felt incomplete in Black Temple's closure.

-Artifacts? Single player experience?
I'm not sure about Artifacts. It might be an interesting thing of this expansion, or it might be meh and pointless. We'll have to see. But a lot of people brought up concerns about everyone getting these amazing items lore-wise, and that it's too single player oriented and i'd like to comment on that.
SINGLE PLAYER IS A MAJOR ASPECT OF WOW. It has always been, from the very start. The game and story was shaped that way. You may fight or join others, you may interact. Or you can have your time alone having your adventure.
Leveling and questing are for most a single player experience, and when they are cool this is one of the best experiences in WoW.
I don't see giving these artifacts to players as an issue. Lore-wise, these adventurers are at this some of the most proeminent heroes of the world. Duplicate items? You could see two sulfuras, or atieshes on your major town before. Difference being that this time they're giving them to all players to experience in their own WoW adventure, instead of as a major reward for a few victorious raiders. Autist much? Yup, but fun.

-Amount and diversity of content
Now the elephant in the room. So far the plan is looking preeeeetty good. But will we be bored after a month of expansion? Will we have things to do? Will we be getting out in the world?
One, if not the, most positive things about MoP is the amount of content they brought. Treasures, rare hunting, reps if you're into that, pet battles, brawler's guild, challenge mode, etc. This is the right direction: giving a diversity of content AND character progression.
Now the thing is: can they still produce awesome content to be experienced? Can they also bring diversity? In the end it comes to this: produce amazing content and players will be hooked after the initial hype, fail to do so and they'll leave in mass.
If they put the amount of talent and care here as they put on MoP, with this far superior lore and setting, with character progression, this expansion might just be the best thing ever. It might just make WoW that big again.


-Going out in the world
One last thing i'd like to point is that Azeroth should be explored, not just Broken Isles. There are amazing maps out there that players barely saw after Cata. It brings a lot of memories and is, after all, the home of the characters and what they are fighting for.
Plus, it's a worldwide massive Legion invasion, isn't it? I hope they add some endgame content throughout Azeroth, such as faction hubs here and there, new reputations, treasures and such. I'd love to spend some time again in these amazing and cherished zones. It's also an oportunity to keep developing the story.


Conclusion:
Unlike the last 3 expansions, this time they have a really good expansion plan. But in the end it's really about execution. If they take this plan and do a great job, this will be absolutely amazing. If they do a poor job, it can be as bad as WoD (yeah, that low). So let's hope they still have passion and dedication in them, let's hope their talent can flourish. Let's hope they still care because a lot of gamers still do, and are just waiting for another good expansion to stay a little more in Azeroth.

[Xenofreak]

The biggest issue I have with this expansion is: "What comes next?"

Are we abandoning these artifact weapons in the next expansion? Will they follow us till Blizz finally pulls the plug on WoW? Neither of these options are especially appealing to me. I like the idea of these artifact weapons, but in a content release structure like WoW's they create serious problems. Then there's our characters, where will their story proceed from here? We've gone from pretty much nameless and faceless adventurers to soldiers to high ranking agents to a commander in WoD and in Legion we'll be "class leaders" taking over the roles of some of the most important lore characters there are. Some of those lore characters will even be taking orders from us!

They 'fixed' stat power creep with an item squish, but they're now introducing lore power creep that's going to be much harder to deal with. Though retconning isn't really something blizz has been afraid of doing in the past, they're putting themselves into a corner with some of this. A corner where if they don't put an end to our characters' story soon they will have to do some seriously ludicrous acrobatics to get themselves out of.

[Magemaer]

Regarding our characters, they're pretty much nameless heroes on the lore that already did A LOT of changing in the world. And i think that's pretty cool, it's a story being written in a living world, and we're part of it. (it also somehow fits the warcraft universe, if i remember right on warcraft 1 you become the king/warchief in the end of the campaign)

Are we abandoning these artifact weapons in the next expansion? Will they follow us till Blizz finally pulls the plug on WoW? Neither of these options are especially appealing to me.

I agree with you. By their words it seems that we're abandoning them in the end. Either they're being passed after we repel the invasion, or destroyed in the fight against endboss (avatar of Sargeras?). It wouldn't be very cool if they remained low stats in our inventory, but who knows.
Thing about these artifacts is that most of them are around for a long time, and they're being passed on through many hands. Just look at Doomhammer or Ashbringer. Our heroes will be holders for a while and pass on. Talking about which, a fitting end for our characters storyline would be sacrificing their lives after saving the world. The franchise continues, it brings closure. (that of course when and if WoW finally dies)

[Magemaer]

Btw, Ian Bates (Red Shirt Guy) did a nice article with predictions for Legion: http://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog...arcraft-legion

[Magemaer]

Updated to recent info.

[Sussemilch]

I agree with you. By their words it seems that we're abandoning them in the end. Either they're being passed after we repel the invasion, or destroyed in the fight against endboss (avatar of Sargeras?).

Get Sargeras to 5%, he casts random spell of doom
Thrall/Khadgar activates the Artifact super secret special spell
Everyone dies but the MT
The artifacts merge together to form Voltron's blazing sword
MT gains the health of the entire raid
Come at me bro

[Phunkle]

Heh, when I think back about your posts in the General Discussion Thread, this review makes me chuckle.

Edit: Misintended Quote removed. :s

[Magemaer]

Heh, when I think back about your posts in the General Discussion Thread, this review makes me chuckle.

I'm just glad this looks promissing. But, like many others, quite skeptic that they won't pull other bullshit out this time. I hope they don't.

[Pull My Finger]

Where can I buy one of those soapboxes?

[rda]

-Amount and diversity of content
Now the elephant in the room. So far the plan is looking preeeeetty good. But will we be bored after a month of expansion? Will we have things to do? Will we be getting out in the world?

This is my biggest take away and a deal finisher.

I don't see much gameplay.

We will have what looks to be pretty standard amount of quests, zones, instances and raids, but we will have no new BGs, no new professions, no new subsystems like pet battles, etc. We will have new class, which is good. We will have artifacts, which add next to no gameplay, you just do what you'd be doing and you fill that secondary XP bar that they give you. We will have changes to PVP which might be good, might be bad, but certainly don't add much gameplay either. And we will have class orders, which no one knows much about, I guess they add some gameplay, how big that gameplay is is unclear.

And that's it.

That's very little compared to MoP or WotLK. Again.

[Stellalock]

Personnally I hope these artifact weapons are a test for gear in future expansions. It looks the same as SWTOR where the stats are on the modifications you add to your gear and weapons. Then you find a look you want for your character and stick with it by upgrading your power. Trangmog is therefore no longer required as you aquire the item you want and keep it, until something cooler comes along, then you remove the mods and add them to your new item.

An example of this is I play a Sith Inquisitor, all the light armour (cloth) items look like robes like my Warlock is forced to wear, but as artifact armour can be warn by all, I have it dressed in Scout Trooper style Armour in white and green as it is a healer.

Itemisation is something I think needs to improve in wow, I want my lock to be different, but all the cloth armour looks the same except the helms and I hide the head slot. Sick of wearing a dress basically lo

[Deleted]

You make a lot of assumptions about what the new features MIGHT be.

for now i am just assuming:

-de homogenization: felt to me like that was PR talk for the spec changes we get. now admittedly turning ranged specs into melee and other such huge changes is a big deal and very balsy of them.

-artifacts: don't kid yourself, nothing will change. There will still be weapon drops, they just wont be new weapons, but upgrades to your current weapon. whats the difference if the boss drops a sword or a sword upgrade? nothing. The talents in the weapon are just the only new progression we get, but we always get some new talents every expansion. let's just hope you can transmog your artifact into current weapons, in case you get bored of the look.

-diversity of content/going out in the world: they said nothing about that at all. all they described was the leveling content.

there is no reason to assume day to day gameplay will be significantly different from WoD currently.

[Deleted]

Why are you writing all this when beta isn't even out yet? You have no idea how most of these things are going to work in-game. This post will be dead and buried by the time beta is out, so it's all a pointless wall of text, lol.

Btw, if you want to be taken serious then you might want to rethink your signature. It makes you look like you've already made your mind up about this expansion, and anything they do you will criticise no matter how pathetic and desperate you sound.

[Magemaer]

This is my biggest take away and a deal finisher.

I don't see much gameplay.

We will have what looks to be pretty standard amount of quests, zones, instances and raids, but we will have no new BGs, no new professions, no new subsystems like pet battles, etc. We will have new class, which is good. We will have artifacts, which add next to no gameplay, you just do what you'd be doing and you fill that secondary XP bar that they give you. We will have changes to PVP which might be good, might be bad, but certainly don't add much gameplay either. And we will have class orders, which no one knows much about, I guess they add some gameplay, how big that gameplay is is unclear.

And that's it.

That's very little compared to MoP or WotLK. Again.

I totally get what you're saying. If they do that and opt for lazymode development, just milking the cow in short expansion cycles without actually providing these amazing months-lasting contents, it'll "fail" despite all the other good things. By "fail" meaning huge sub drop after months.

I don't know if they're confortable with the idea of WoW becoming a strange kind of CoD. Nearly yearly expansion, bulk of people buying it, playing few months and leaving until the next. Some remain with subs. Milk some more with store. And it's deal.

I hope they don't go that way. WoW isn't a yearly single player experience, and shouldn't be looked that way. It's an immersive experience of diving in a shared world. When you pay for an expansion,if it sucks and you leave you leave with a sour taste, unlike that single player game. People will stop caring and will stop coming back. Specially if it enters maintenance mode, with irrelevant places and storylines just to keep the milking going.
This is not why subs exploded whan WoD started. What people want is for WoW to be great again. And to be great again the devs will have to actually dedicate and put content out.

[ttak82]

OP I know it's been beaten to death but I do want to correct you on this:

Something like the old badge system, so you can do dungeons etc even some time into the expansion and get rewarded? It should be less rewarding than the first system, which you already capped, it shouldn't feel mandatory, or it'd be a chore, but it should bring you something.

This never went away. And in fact it is even less rewarding than the old badge or VP system. The only difference is that dungeons dont factor much. You get some gold and GR from dungeons. U can use the GR to do missives. The missives + daily objective quests + Tanaan Jungle net you a lot of apexxis crystals - which in turn get you gear. It s less rewarding in the sense that the grind is much more, but at least you can do it through quests and not dungeons (or in the old system, raids).

Also, I agree with gameplay concerns. The only real new gameplay is from separate PvP talents. No mention of new bgs etc. Artifact system in it itself is also like a regular xp grind with new PvE talents but that's already standard fare. People will grow tired just as fast as they did with WoD unless there's some big shake up of things..