Nobody talking about Suramar? Could be Legion's saving grace.

[Dross]

Suramar seems like a wonderful concept. Content for the sake of content! Something that makes WoW feel more like an RPG and less like a facebook game.

For those that haven't paid attention to it, let me sum it up:

-Max level only zone.
-200+ Quests
-Very little in the way of gear or artifact power rewards. Mainly just gold rewards, and they'll probably throw some cosmetic stuff in there at launch, making the zone pretty much totally optional.
-Story driven quests, not "Fill up the bar" quests.
-Larger zone than it looks due to underground tunnels and such, will take a long time to fully explore.
-Questing for the sake of experiencing a story, not as a means to reach an end.

I'm not seeing much discussion on here, or the official forums, or on youtube from content creators. Only Preach Gaming has made a comprehensive video on the subject.

I don't have privelege to post videos yet, but I assume y'all can figure out how to go on the youtubes and find Preach's video about it.

So basically, we have a completely optional zone available at max level, full of lore-heavy quests that are there solely for the sake of enjoying the questing content itself instead of a means to be rewarded with gear. It's the complete opposite of Tanaan Jungle which was a boring grind for gear and gear upgrades.

While this doesn't seem to be alt-friendly, I think this is the right direction for the game. WoD tried to be alt-friendly, but ended up being alt-intensive. If you weren't running multiple garrisons, you were way behind in making gold compared to those who were.

Now I'll have content to experience for a while after launch. I imagine after launch I'll be levelling, then running dungeons and doing world quests for gear so I'm ready to raid ASAP. Then after I start raiding, I'll have something to explore and experience in between raids.

This zone also has potential to be a system for adding more post-launch content. Maybe they'll revamp the zone for 7.2 and advance the story.

What do you guys think?

[TheWindWalker]

Did I miss something because if I check Suramar on WoWhead it only comes up as 236 quests with a ton of them clearly being flags/triggers and not actual quests. Looking at the rest of your list, I think you may have accidentally combined World Quests and Suramar, a bit as well.

Still, yeah I'm really happy to have a max-level zone available right from the get-go.

[Dross]

Did I miss something because if I check Suramar on WoWhead it only comes up as 236 quests with a ton of them clearly being flags/triggers and not actual quests. Looking at the rest of your list, I think you may have accidentally combined World Quests and Suramar, a bit as well.

Still, yeah I'm really happy to have a max-level zone available right from the get-go.

Ah yeah, I pulled the number from Preach's video, should've tried to find the specific number before posting, will correct.

[DarkAmbient]

I'm not against the concept as such, but it seems like a one-time thing, i.e. because of the size of it combined with the lack of rewards it's not something you're going to want to repeat on alts.

[Exilian]

I couldn't be happier with Suramar. Honestly I don't care when people say it's not alt friendly, cos fuck alts! Orienting the game towards alt progression is a big part of why WoW got ruined - it's easier to make a zone / expansion alt-friendly than to make it worthwhile for your main to do for a long time.

I get that people want to experience different classes, most of us probably do, but that should be a privilege, not a right. If you want to have 2 functioning classes, it should take double the effort, not 1.2 times. But back on topic.

There is a plethora of ways to acquire gear in Legion, Suramar just being a story-driven zone is a wonderful change of direction that has, from what I have seen so far, received a great deal of praise. I think cosmetic rewards would be icing on the cake, for example instead of the 5th/6th artifact skin being an in-game store purchase (as some suspect - and fear - it will be) it should be unlocked by completing Suramar. Also they could, as you said, revamp it in a later patch, just like they did with the Vale in MOP but on a larger scale so as to impact the story more. Overall it's a massive thumbs from me to Blizzard, honestly Legion just keeps looking better and better with every new piece of info we get.

If you're interested I've found two other threads on this subject:

1) http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ling-over-lore

2) http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...r-an-Epic-tale!

[Varaben]

I'm not against the concept as such, but it seems like a one-time thing, i.e. because of the size of it combined with the lack of rewards it's not something you're going to want to repeat on alts.

I, for one don't really care for or expect blizzard to make content that I really want to do on alts. Doesn't that just beg people to get burned out repeating content? I'd rather they kept my main so busy that I didn't even bother with alts.

[kamuimac]

-Very little in the way of gear or artifact power rewards. Mainly just gold rewards, and they'll probably throw some cosmetic stuff in there at launch, making the zone pretty much totally optional.

you answeared youself with this - no char progress = worthless content.

[Exilian]

you answeared youself with this - no char progress = worthless content.

You've got more than enough alternatives to progress gear-wise in Legion. Lore and story are your rewards in Suramar, with a few cosmetics on top, and that's a better reward than anything you could hope for.

[Aeula]

If the story telling is good then I can see myself repeating it quite a few times on alts, just like the domination hold questline.

It would be nice if they added some cosmetic rewards (A mount at the end of the quest chain or something?), but still. From what I'm hearing it's going to be great.

[Aggrophobic]

An end game zone without gear in a game that for the most part is about getting better gear. I'm not sure why I would go there at all to be honest.
Don't get me wrong, I really like what I've seen of Legion so far but I don't see the point in not having actual rewards that people care about.

Dungeons are cool though and the raids looke nice (haven't been part of any raid tests yet though).

[DaveL]

Inb4 this turns out to be just like Shattrath city in WoD..

[Nevcairiel]

The zone only unlocked quite recently, so reward structure may not be fully in place yet. At the very least I would expect the conclusion of the storyline to rewards the typical artifact power that the level up zones had as well. I would also imagine that rewards include reputation to some degree.

While questing for the story is fun for some, having some basic rewards would be nice. Nothing to make people start screaming mandatory, but maybe just some basic 110 gear (think green, to fix up some of those slots you may have a bit lower) and a few odds and ends here and there.

[Echo of Soul]

Very little in the way of gear or artifact power rewards. Mainly just gold rewards, and they'll probably throw some cosmetic stuff in there at launch, making the zone pretty much totally optional.

I think this might be why people won't want to do it. And if it's part of the flying meta achievement I'm betting you'll have a lot of highly offended millennials on the forums crying bloody murder

[IxilaFA]

I, for one don't really care for or expect blizzard to make content that I really want to do on alts. Doesn't that just beg people to get burned out repeating content? I'd rather they kept my main so busy that I didn't even bother with alts.

The contradiction between those two aims always amuses me. People want content that will last them the whole expansion and then complain when they can't do it on their alts. Pick one or the other.

And yes, I'm sure they're not all the same people, blah blah blah, but it still goes to show better than anything that one person's aims in this game almost always competes with another person's. The best Blizzard can do is give all types of players their own progression path they can enjoy and hope that it's enough to tide them over, or that they will delve into other areas of content and try those out. Otherwise people just can't expect Blizzard to make alt-friendly content when the primary complaint about WoD was how all the content was done too quickly and was ultimately pointless.


As for nobody discussing Suramar, it's because it would be a positive topic. People don't make positive topics about WoW anymore, even if they enjoy the content. I don't blame them when every thread to discuss content that someone might enjoy gets turned into a "this content sucks, here's why blah blah blah" thread instead. Look at how quickly this thread was hit with negative commentary, and very few people on MMO-C point out the negative and point out the positives at the same time. It's always negative negative negative, this sucks, give up Blizzard, WoW is dead lulz.

[Supercool]

Inb4 this turns out to be just like Shattrath city in WoD..

Shattrath was a distant promise that never materialized. I swear some of this Legion doomsaying is really pissing me off. I get that people are skeptical after WoD, but holy hell can people stop comparing content which currently exists on Alpha and is being tested and iterated on almost daily with vaporware that was briefly mentioned at a Blizzcon panel and never even made it to WoD beta? No, they're not going to cut Suramar.

- - - Updated - - -

Incidentally for those concerned it won't be alt-friendly, the questline required to unlock the world quests in Suramar is a bit shorter than the main questline of any of the leveling zones, though I wouldn't cry if it were made account-wide.

[Smank]

I for one love thar the main reward of this zone is story. There are a million ways to gear up in wow, so why not just have one zone that doesn't shove gear down your throat.
One of the things that pisses me off is that when people don't like something in wow, blizzards go to answer is to fill it with tons of rewards that force you to do it. Now with Suramar, if you don't want to do the zone, you can skip it. It's a zone that's all about story, and a really good story at that.
TL;DR if you want gear, do anything else, but if you want a good story, this is an amazing zone

[beanman12345]

you answeared youself with this - no char progress = worthless content.

I'm not totally against this, but lore is like the worst part of this game. Most of this questline will probably get reconned in the next book or expansion, so I'm not gonna get hyped over this yet.

The only reason I'm not totally against it is more content is never a bad thing. But lore being as bad as it is, and being the only reward, definitely apprehensive about this idea.

[Video Games]

You've got more than enough alternatives to progress gear-wise in Legion. Lore and story are your rewards in Suramar, with a few cosmetics on top, and that's a better reward than anything you could hope for.

That is the most worthless reward I could hope for.

[Exilian]

That is the most worthless reward I could hope for.

And it's the most worthy reward I could hope for. If you don't like it, don't play it. Simple, no?

[Video Games]

And it's the most worthy reward I could hope for. If you don't like it, don't play it. Simple, no?

No. If you don't like it you give it a fair criticism otherwise nothing will ever improve. And before you tell me I didn't do that, there's no point unless I posted something in the alpha forums which I can't do.