Legion: A return to Fun?

[hulkgor]

Hey, be optimistic all you want. Everyone was optimistic in regards to WoD, a return to the 'roots', definitely more 'fun', see how that work out.

So yea, who knows at this point. Wait and see.

[Kezotar]

Lol, wod 2, you clearly have no idea what is in legion for the launch. Keep believing though maybe in 10 years blizz will give you your legacy servers.

Keep believing that Legion will be any good. You're nothing but a hypocrite.

[Akka]

That 9 months of BT was only mistake in my eyes that happened from vanilla and TBC. I started to do drunk raids and BT speed runs (im not stopping for mana anywhere!) that was semi fun... for a while

And even this "only mistake" was only relevant for very advanced guilds who managed to clear BT during this time. I think it was about 1,5 % of the playerbase or so - for everyone else, BT was either still in progress or not even reached.
Content to do !

[Turtlewithnoshell]

I feel like Legion might truly be returning to the entire point of WoW that was lost along the way: Having fun.

Crisper bouncier numbers, fun specs, personalized playstyles and equal desire among classes/specs.. The new animations, textures/models, and spell effects breathing new life into the game, and allowing us to cut off the thread that is our perception of what WoW USED to be via the link of old textures and animations we associate with the past.

I totally believe Legion could be the expansion to make WoW truly, naturally fun again.

Thoughts?

Agreed, looks like we're getting back out in the world.
Can't wait, really like the idea of progressing constantly rather than one time a week.

[Deleted]

Keep believing that Legion will be any good. You're nothing but a hypocrite.

How am i a hypocrite, if i played the alpha? I know what's in the alpha and i could name a lot of things that are new and cool features that they added.

[Sencha]

Well we have been disappointed so many times so ... wait and see.

Remember, garrisons were fun on paper. But people got bored after two weeks.

[Thenatural]

To begin I want to say that, for the most part, I lurk here and on the official forums, because after playing this game for 12 years, it gets tiresome hearing about the death of WoW, as if it were orchestrated, at the end of every expansion. I feel like I should finally add my tiny little opinion on all of the ridiculous negativity (some of it warranted, some not).

As on objective observer, who has learned to avoid general forums as much as possible, I hope there are others like myself who look at all of these horribly negative posts that come like tidal waves, some even going so far as crying conspiracy on Blizzard's part, as just, well, insane.

For one thing, there were a LOT of us who were keeping a very close eye on WoD towards the end of MoP who expected a "weaker" expansion due to a number of factors. It really felt like an expansion that was going to be a necessary evil, something to really balance out and begin to acclimate players to something other than the standard formula that everyone hated in MoP and cata. The stat squish, character models, experimenting with housing (Which is what it was, a feel for what the players might want, and at first, a number of people thought the idea was pretty good. I honestly did not know, personally, a single person who thought that garrisons were going to be perfect, or frankly, even that good in their first form), all come to mind as examples. I assumed with all of the new, the really good stuff would be in raids, and in my opinion, as someone who has raided since the beginning, these raids and encounters in WoD were incredibly fun and very challenging.

As for Legion, I am really looking forward to it, the pieces are all in place now, and if they make the changes that are being described with things like mission tables, and class identity, and can keep the interesting and fun raids, with a slightly more expanded arsenal of world content, it could be very good.

I think they could space out content a bit more with possible 5-man releases relevant to the upcoming raid tiers (even just two or three), that could start off as Mythic only, or even just tough heroics, that could offer things that would help people get ready for the next raid. They could offer slightly better weapons, or even quests based on those dungeons that could upgrade previous tier gear. Allowing for people who have completed the Mythic version of the raid to get a slight edge on hardcore progression, and others a chance to be a bit more powerful when the new content releases.

Even something like instanced bosses throughout the world could be cool. That's one of the things I liked about TBC and wrath. You could finish an entire raid with your guild by Wednesday, and still feel like your guild has a lot to do before the next reset.

[Vaelorian]

And even this "only mistake" was only relevant for very advanced guilds who managed to clear BT during this time. I think it was about 1,5 % of the playerbase or so - for everyone else, BT was either still in progress or not even reached.
Content to do !

Actually more players then 1.5% did BT. BT and other raids were SEVERALLY nerfed at the end of TBC. They did this so that even mediocre guilds would be able to enter and progress in higher raids. Honestly it allowed me and my guild to kill Sargaras in Sunwell. We were at 50% of Sunwell before the nerf came and honestly at the time, my guild wasn't exactly the best guild in the world.

[Flurryfang]

That’s a neat way of summarising it, but my “triforce of good design” is a bit simpler. Content should be three things:

- Easy to pick up.
- Hard to master.
- Fun to play.

Warlords content failed on at least one of these things, and invariably flunked more than one. The risk-reward ratio is equally important, particularly when you’re going to make something painful. For example, it’s a basic truism that players will do something painful if the rewards are good; thus, you can make painful content. If something is painless, then it doesn’t need to have good rewards.

As soon as you make something painful, and the rewards aren’t worth the effort (see: Reputations), players are going to ignore it entirely. Ion Hazzikostas admitted that reputations were tacked on at the end and were rubbish as a result, but that didn’t excuse the mistake nor make them do something different with the reputations in Tanaan Jungle.

Warlords, to me, was the perfect storm of bad design, a lack of content, and a horrific story that simultaneously car-crashed into ditching half of its players – most likely many more than that, given that Blizzard no longer tell us subscriber numbers.

I think if you asked the designers, and they answered honestly, they’d admit that Warlords of Draenor was a calamity. There’s barely anything they can take from it.

While i support the entire design philosophy of "Easy to play, hard to master", i do think it is something which is extremly hard to get right. You can fall on the other line very easily since its balance is thin like the blade of a knife.

Every action, that you make in WoW, needs a reward, of course. The reward is what have made me farm Alani, do insane achievements for Stormbreaker titel and farm Pit of Saron just to get the Battered Hilt. But i will also say, that sometimes the reward dont have to matter that much if the content is good enough...aslong as there is some kind of reward anyway.

Reputations in WoD was a complete disaster. The only reputation i could get my head around was the sabrestalkers. They were a reputation, that was focused around a single thing, and gave very few but for completionist, important rewards. Every other faction tried to give bad rewards, for doing boring content. There was no unique gear, no unique mounts or unique options from these reputations, which is pretty much the only things which can make me enjoy killing 7500 mobs O.o

I know, that if you asked Ion, if he was proud of WoD, he would proberly say sorry to you. Most of the devs would proberly do so aswell, but while they are under contract, they would not dare being honest with us.... Yet i don't understand why WoD had to be so bad? Something must have gone horribly wrong under its production. The world of Dreanor is a world made of jigsaw pieces, but they are put together all wrong. Most of the story is just patchwork, stories are ended too soon and major characters are gone unused. It seems like, even with a huge development periode, very little was finished to completion.

I am really looking forward to seeing, in 5 years or so, blizz devs talk about what chaos had occured at blizzard during the development of WoD

[Aggrophobic]

I feel like Legion might truly be returning to the entire point of WoW that was lost along the way: Having fun.

Crisper bouncier numbers, fun specs, personalized playstyles and equal desire among classes/specs.. The new animations, textures/models, and spell effects breathing new life into the game, and allowing us to cut off the thread that is our perception of what WoW USED to be via the link of old textures and animations we associate with the past.

I totally believe Legion could be the expansion to make WoW truly, naturally fun again.

Thoughts?

Indeed. It's really looking good so far.

[Deleted]

I hope so, although I gotta say that having fun in WoW is mostly linked to playing with friends.

If my buddies will play Legion, I'll have fun. If I will be "forced" to mix with the random crowd... it could be problematic.

[Flurryfang]

You can't get clean, it's in the addict's nature to have that gap in their soul that only that particular drug can fill. Or maybe you can try replacing it with another drug. Or you can try and be clean for awhile, but for what? Is the sweating and the dissatisfaction really worth it? Just join the dark side and be happy.

You can also check out my sig, it includes WoW in it

Well alchohol worked for a time, but it is a more pricy drug then my cocain >< The reason why i try to get clean, is because i want to believe that i can leave my thing when i want Its a dream, i want to complete xD

[Deleted]

Well we have been disappointed so many times so ... wait and see.

Remember, garrisons were fun on paper. But people got bored after two weeks.

Garrisons weren't fun of paper, many people said it was a facebook game from the get-go

[Turaska]

A return to Garrison more like it.

[Darkeon]

While I do admit it's sounding promising, WoD looked like it would be a badass expansion too.

And I won't claim that I didn't get my money worth with the 3 or 4 months I played, it simply fell short of what I would expect from a MMORPG.

So, this time, I'll wait a couple months in into Legion and, only then, make my decision - all while hoping for the best.

[Deleted]

While I do admit it's sounding promising, WoD looked like it would be a badass expansion too.

And I won't claim that I didn't get my money worth with the 3 or 4 months I played, it simply fell short of what I would expect from a MMORPG.

So, this time, I'll wait a couple months in into Legion and, only then, make my decision - all while hoping for the best.

No, it didn't, people who thought WoD was going to be a good expansion were the emotional ones, are the same people who bashed MoP over pandarens and thought WoD would be a better expansion because "Hurr Durr orcs so badass", anyone that looked at the features thought it would be an inferior expansion, and the same people who think it's smart to be over pessimistic about Legion awhile it is still emotional bullshit

[dope_danny]

Go look at the thread before warlords launch. half the people calling it garbage now were saying the same thing.

At this point im not buying a wow expansion till i've seen what post launch support it gets. My faith in their quality control doesnt inspire the "m-maybe it can be like the good times again!" brand loyalty responses anymore. Either its good and its a return to form and i buy it or a month after launch everyones saying how its as bad as warlords -or with things like timed progression like the 14 real day perk unlock timers in the garrison 2.0 system its actually worse in terms of 'sub traps instead of new content' like the garrisons and then i know not to waste my money.

At this point i cant imagine why a product still in alpha 4 months before retail launch -especially when they have said "dont panic these things you are seeing arent set in stone" which means this close to launch a lot of it is still unfinished ideas let alone finished content- warrants hopefulness.

Expect the worst and hope for the best. Worst case you spend a month playing catch up in a really good expansion, or you just save your money as everyone else screams on forums about how blizzard shit the bed again, no loss if you didnt spend anything yet.

[Allenseiei]

TBC had 5.
WotLK had 3 (Plus VoA).
Cata had 3 (Plus BH).
MoP had 3.
WoD had 2 (one of which was disabled for the first three months of the expansion.




And? WoD not having any was still less scenarios and thus less content than the previous expansion.




I think you mean the mythic modes? (CM gives transmog gear IIRC?) they were better than heroic yes, however they weren't in at launch and the previous system of the 5 man heroics rewarding valor that could be spent at vendors for epics was much better.




Heroic 5man items were still good in WotLK and Cata (especially WotLK as the end bosses could drop epics), it was LFR that made the blue heroic gear redundant.

So you are counting 1 boss as a "raid"? I at least dont, since we are talking about lasting content, 1 boss raid is not lasting content.
TBC still followed vanilla system where raids were already in the game before release, but they were heavily gated. Here you should also add Hyjal, since it was there at release too. Realistically doable? Karazhan and 1 raid boss (gruul) for many weeks and then TK + SSC. "But it was there at the start", I thought we are talking about doable content and only karazhan and gruul (13 bosses) were actually doable since magtheridon was overtunned and nerfed eventually much later.
WotLK 1º tier was a rehash garbage except malygos and sartharion.
Cata had 3 different scenarios but only 13 bosses. They were very small raids in comparison.
Mop had again 3 scenarios, 16 bosses.
WoD had 2 scenarios, 17 bosses. With BRF being the first big raid in the first tier since karazhan.
All the VoA and BH are compareable to world bosses since there weren't any then. They were just zerg fests for free loot.

What you should be asking for is smaller raids with less bosses in each one.

@Scenarios were dropped because of the feedback

No, if you even played WoD at the beginning you did challenge modes for loot boxes each day. There was a daily challenge mode for a loot box that dropped 640 ilvl epics. They were at launch lol.
Valor grinding is fun? Completely subjective.

Heroic 5 man items haven't lasted almost any time since TBC. In WotLK you could clear Naxxramas with sunwell gear because it was so undertunned that it even destroyed the image of that raid and in cata they only lasted a bit more than WotLK because the introduction raids weren't shit difficulty wise.

[Deleted]

Well, re: WoD and the fact that it looked cool before release.

It *was* quite good at release. Not great, but it had some solid stuff: very nice visual design of the zones, good leveling, the garrisons were a novelty, and many people expected them to evolve.

Where the expansion failed badly was the retention. Leveling was linear, so doing it once was fun, twice - boring, more than that - hell (that's the reason for all the speed leveling strategies w/ bonus objectives and whatnot). The garrisons were absolutely mandatory and got VERY old VERY quickly, to the point of being hated almost universally. The dungeons were irrelevant after 1-2 weeks (because no useful reward was in them, not even valor/marks/anything). And it got worse from then on: no new content in 6.1, no outdoor quests of any relevance, no new story, NO NOTHING. The expansion was so barren and empty that it couldn't have been anything else than a failure.

And then, of course, is the raiding. As much as non-raiders despise WoD for its "raid or die" mentality, it didn't even do a good job catering to raiders. We got only 2 tiers instead of 3. The raids were in my opinion bland as fuck (I couldn't stand raiding BRF after spending a year in SoO... same shit, same enemies, same design, my God was that shit tedious, and HFC is more of the same, orcs orcs orcs, we just get to choose brownish vs reddish vs greenish). And of course, pulling the plug on 10-man heroic and putting in mandatory 20-man Mythic as THE only endgame difficulty absolutely ruined friendly semi-casual raiding guilds that were content enough to clear Heroic in Cata and MoP at their own pace, while forming the BACKBONE of the raiding scene. These guys - like my guild - that are not good enough for top 200, but good enough to clear everything were hit HARD by the jump in logistics, personal upheavals and different raiding culture entailed by having to double their roster. Only now, by the end of this dreadful expansion, we managed to finally somehow get back on track, and we can't even be sure this will last.

So, all in all, and expansion that started out well, then went downhill very very quickly.

Legion will start with better content imo (it will have two things WoD lacked: World Quests and Mythic+, which are both modular and can easily be expanded). But in the end, we will only know if it's good or shit when we see what Blizzard will do to develop it.

If they take the path of their successful expacks and keep adding relevant content, chances are it will be ok to good.

If they abandon it again, it will be a complete disappointment, and indeed might be the nail in the coffin some people are predicting.

[Darkeon]

No, it didn't, people who thought WoD was going to be a good expansion were the emotional ones, are the same people who bashed MoP over pandarens and thought WoD would be a better expansion because "Hurr Durr orcs so badass", anyone that looked at the features thought it would be an inferior expansion, and the same people who think it's smart to be over pessimistic about Legion awhile it is still emotional bullshit

Gonna have to disagree there.

Maybe the very small, very analyzing community would have foreseen it all. But I'm guessing that the majority of the playerbase, that follows development very lightly, all expected to have a decent-to-good expansion pack.

Most websites gave WoD a really positive review - and review websites are what we'd call not-emotional ones - simply due that the first couple months into WoD were actually a positive experience.
The most glaring issues only appeared a couple weeks into End-Game.