Is Legion the best initial expansion ever?

[Magemaer]

We can't judge the expansion as a whole, we'll have to see how it unfolds. But at this point, it seems to outclass every other expansion.

Leveling:
All zones were enjoyable, the world is beautiful, there's plenty of high quality lore.
Dungeons:
The 8 initial dungeons are a blast (for me, specially maw of souls and halls of valor). There are 3 difficulties to climb. In a few days you can unlock two more dungeons and soon there will mythic+.
Class fantasy:
Needless to say, it delivers like no expansion has ever delivered. I can say i'm loving my class hall, my artifact weapons and my class campaign.
World content once max level:
There are world quests all around, the system worked pretty well (specially with the group finder tool). There is a whole zone to progress that is absolutely great. Suramar reminds me of the Island of Quel'Danas, but many times better.

Add to all that the revival of professions, Dalaran sewers, rares and treasures, and so on. The only mediocre thing about Legion is pvp, which has always been mediocre.

There's just so much to do, and not just anything, but actually quality content.

In compare, the other expansions had:
tbc: amazing leveling content, load of quality content once max level (get max flight, reputations, dungeons, heroics). It's the one that best compares to Legion, and it's outclassed hard.
wotlk: breathtaking leveling content, amazing zones, but little to do once max level and dungeons were too easy (initial raids too).
cata: amazing leveling zones minus twilight highlands, difficult engaging heroics (that didn't work too well with group finder), but basically nothing to do once max level
mop: so-so leveling zones but meh lore all around, ok dungeons, more world content, plenty of reputations that didn't work out so well, treasures, rares, and challenge modes. It was a solid attempt at max level content out of raids; it was perfected on future patches.
wod: so-so leveling zones, great cinematics, rofl lore, ok dungeons, boring as hell apexis world content, otherwise max-level content was sitting in garrisons. Just atrocious.

As you can see Legion gets leveling right as the first expansions did; as tbc, dungeons are great and relevant for progress; it also took what mop did right regarding world content and perfected it. And it had a smooth launch.

[Deleted]

It's right up there with Wrath so far for me

[Kazlofski]

It's right up there with Wrath so far for me

I can only imagine if back then we had world quests in wotlk zones... and MoP zones... oh god...

[Deathquoi]

I can only imagine if back then we had world quests in wotlk zones... and MoP zones... oh god...

World Quests is something that now I wish we had had all along. All those times I was running around Shatt/Dal/Stormwind/Shrine in circles!

[Kazlofski]

World Quests is something that now I wish we had had all along. All those times I was running around Shatt/Dal/Stormwind/Shrine in circles!

Exactly! so much storytelling we could have had... especially with wotlk I am thinking now... damn what a shame :P

[Deleted]

Easily the best so far. Not even the nostalgia glasses crowd can claim Wrath had a more compelling first week experience.

[thelightthatstrays]

No, what you have in Legion is lazy recycling of content. You're just thrilled because it's been a year since there was anything to do. So thrilled that you didn't even register that you spent your initial artifact quest revisiting cataclysm, pandaria or some other random bit of previous content. ...and that you keep doing it in quests throughout the expansion. Lazy Legion Development is really offering nothing new but reskinning the same old content. .....that mission board in your order garrison is screaming it at you.

It's not been a week and the grinds haven't set in yet. But they will, they will. People went nuts in short order over the mop dailies. The artifact six month grind is going to dwarf those cries.

Legion is starting with half the players wod did. Half those people will be gone by the end of the year.

[Magemaer]

No, what you have in Legion is lazy recycling of content. You're just thrilled because it's been a year since there was anything to do. So thrilled that you didn't even register that you spent your initial artifact quest revisiting cataclysm, pandaria or some other random bit of previous content. ...and that you keep doing it in quests throughout the expansion. Lazy Legion Development is really offering nothing new but reskinning the same old content. .....that mission board in your order garrison is screaming it at you.

There's always that nuts/unhappy-with-life person. Let's see what the actual argument is.
-Legion is lazy reclycling of content because it uses places in the world introduced previously.
This is a rpg. There is a world setting and if anything there should be way more moving around the world. I wish they introduce world quests to old zones in Azeroth. The zones are already done, but the quests are new and mostly very well done. There are in fact even some never-seen before places like the tomb of Tyr of holy pallies artifact.
SO... there is a whole new continent and Legion is lazy because you travel to known places to do exciting quests? Sorry, no.

-and it's lazy because...uhhh...garrison board! Yea!
Sure, (almost) everyone hates missions and anything that reminds us of wod. Are they lazy because they insist on their celphone friendly crap? Nope. Just out of touch.

You may of course not like WoW gaming model, or think that it should have major improvements here or there. I think that too. But within what WoW has been in the past 12 years, they're absolutely delivering their very best this expansion.

[Nifra]

Hands down best expansion so far. Smoothest launch in history, the questing... Yes there were a few bugs but /reload or relogging fixed them all for me so not a huge issue.
Will the rest of the content and raids deliver? We shall see Looks very promising so far though! I'm still aboard the HYPE TRAIN

-Legion is lazy reclycling of content because it uses places in the world introduced previously.

This crossed my mind during certain quests, like the quest lines for legendary weapons for an example... although the lore was very fitting. I enjoyed the nostalgia it brought me, thinking about all those good memories.
I also think about the new players who picked up the game... Trying to be in their shoes seeing all these amazing locations for the first time. It really opens your eyes seeing how big the world of Azeroth has gotten.

[lolpve]

It's right up there with Wrath so far for me

The first week? In Wrath everyone was whining that the first raid was a rehash of Naxx and that wintergrasp loot RNG sucked. Deathknights also ruined pvp for many months.

[Pyromelter]

Wrath beats legion.

.
wotlk: breathtaking leveling content, amazing zones, but little to do once max level and dungeons were too easy (initial raids too).

Raids were available day 1 on wrath, there were a TON of dungeons to do (yes, they were easy, but they were there), wrath also had what is to this day the best world PVP in the history of wow via Wintergrasp.

Wintergrasp was so popular, it would crash the Northrend servers. WG also is pretty much the only time you ever got PVE'ers to engage in pvp (people in my guild who literally never pvp'ed would sit in turrets and shoot at the enemy).

Wrath also was built with flying in mind, quests specifically designed around and for flight, not to mention so many small little things like the Northrend Fishing derby.

A lot of people knock wrath for 2 reasons: Dungeons too easy, and trial of the crusader sucked. To the first part, wow was built for casual play, which is part of why wrath was so well-received, it allowed 12 year olds with poor hand eye coordination, and old fogeys with bad eyesight, to succeed, instead of just the 400 apm starcraft pros. To the second, blizzard simply made a mistake and didn't let ulduar run as long as they should, TOTC is arguably the worst raid they've ever done, and that quite often pulls wrath down in hindsight.

Regarding the easy-ness of raids, wrath was the first to introduce difficulty levels to raids via hardmodes (as well as 10 and 25 mans), meaning you had more opportunity to raid, and legitimate raid difficulty levels in raids, innovative for its time.

And to top it off, the lore of wrath was the best wow has ever seen - I would grant that legion may be on par with wrath, but I haven't seen anything that quite matches up to the wrathgate.

- - - Updated - - -

The first week? In Wrath everyone was whining that the first raid was a rehash of Naxx and that wintergrasp loot RNG sucked. Deathknights also ruined pvp for many months.

The only problem with WOTLK in the first month was that SO MANY PEOPLE WERE PLAYING the Northrend servers kept crashing. Wintergrasp was amazing and not that many people were whining about Naxx, just the very few top guilds that actually had cleared it in Vanilla.

[Markhan]

Yes, I believe so. I didn't play at the launch of vanilla but that doesn't count as an expansion, I assume. I started playing sometime in mid 2005. But I am really enjoying Legion so far. There's a lot to do for everyone. I suppose there are people who have gotten as far as they can right now and are just doing world quests everyday and hoping for titanforged/legendary drops in Mythic/Heroic dungeons. I think there are enough world quests to make them feel a little more fresh than, say, the MoP dailies.

Also, the stability of the servers during launch was great. I got dc'd twice and was able to get right back in immediately the first time and the second time, I was about done playing for the day anyhow so I didn't even try to get right back it. Maybe it was bad, I don't know. But compared to all the other expansion launches, it was the smoothest for me.

Finally, the zones are beautiful and the voice acting is great. The story is pretty good. Maybe not the best but I tend to skip over quest texts and skip cutscenes fairly often.

I'm sure at some point, I'll get bored and log out for a month like I do at least a couple times per xpac but I'm not that hardcore. That's more my own fault than Blizzard's. I get bored with a lot of great games.

The negatives? I don't like some of the class changes but I'm willing to let that pass since I know I'll get used to it like I always do. Losing flying is a minor annoyance but I believe it's for the greater good at the same time. I'm not counting that as a real bad thing but I'm trying to list all the negatives I can think of. I guess that's about it. I'm pretty impressed so far. I'll be even more impressed if we don't have to suffer lengthy content droughts.

[Deleted]

Raids were available day 1 on wrath, there were a TON of dungeons to do (yes, they were easy, but they were there), wrath also had what is to this day the best world PVP in the history of wow via Wintergrasp.

I give you Wintergrasp, but 'raids being available' isn't even a positive or negative thing. I much prefer the way they handle it in Legion - and keep in mind that they basically just reused a whole raid from Classic instead of actually making a new one. That's a huge minus in my book. Would've been nice as an option, but as the entire raid tier it seemed pretty lazy to me.

Also we had 12 dungeons in Wrath and now we have 10. Yeah, that's certainly a difference between 'a TON' and 'not a TON'.

[hablix]

And to top it off, the lore of wrath was the best wow has ever seen - I would grant that legion may be on par with wrath, but I haven't seen anything that quite matches up to the wrathgate.

What happened in Val'sharah has Wrathgate beat for me. I teared up for the first time since, well, Wrathgate. (I know this makes me a nerd on both counts.)

[thelightthatstrays]

Easily the best so far. Not even the nostalgia glasses crowd can claim Wrath had a more compelling first week experience.

Right, sure.

Like when during that first week in wrath you made it dalaran, an amazing new city in the game. Compared to this first week of legion when you made it to dalaran.........hey wait, did you get duped and resold previous expansions material? Yes, yes you did sucker.

How's that new exciting mission table?

[McNeil]

I'd say Legion is better than Cata, MoP and ofc WoD. But it doesn't reach the heights of TBC and WotLK. Its not even a case of looking trough rose colored glasses, I found both TBC and WotLK to be a lot richer in quality content. They had a lot more zones, dungeons, raids, new features and other stuff like a better sense of progression and better lore (TBC lore is pretty bad though).

But its still early to tell, and obviously a lot of people are still on board of the Legion hype train.

[Deleted]

No, what you have in Legion is lazy recycling of content.

So what if they use already existing content/zones. It's all part of the game, not using stuff that's already in the game for new content would be a waste. I would understand the complaint about reused content if there wasn't any new content, but there is. In Legion we get to experience both new and old stuff and that's a good thing.

But yeah, I guess you're one of those people that are running out of things to complain since Legion's actually good.

[Darkeon]

Pretty good initial period of an expansion, I'll give it that. Not sure about the best though, it's hard to gauge. I don't think I ever not enjoyed a new expansion.

[Count Zero]

I'm actually pretty overwhelmed by the mountain of stuff there is to do. Hopefully it feels less huge but still feels like there are things to do, after this initial heap.

[Pull My Finger]

I've enjoyed every early expansion. But this one is something special. Crazy how it all finally falls into place now. I can really see all the experimentation, the developments, the errors and the back and forth of last expansions finally being canalized into something nearly immaculate. It's like all the good and bad about the game in recent years needed to happen for them to be able to get to this point.