Legion does a lot of things right that Warlords of Draenor did wrong

[Deleted]

1) Bonus quests and apexis dailies are basically switched around. Bonus quests in WoD were there for leveling and had objectives, apexis dailies were for end game and were simply 100% bars. In Legion, bonus quests are world quests and are for endgame. The 100% bar quests are for leveling and serve as a bonus to complement quests you are already doing in that area.

2) No flying in WoD was pointless because there was nothing to do and they missed the opportunity to show the community the advantages of not being able to fly. In Legion there are things that wouldn't work with flying, like the world quest in Azsuna, where you have to use the bubbles to get to the top of the building. Or the grappling hook in Stormheim. Also, they put things in like flightpoints that make sense. Like when you go to the Warden island in Azsuna, and you wanna do a world quest, it's an elite area, so you will have a hard time getting through the first time, but there's a flight point on top, that, if you're there for the first time, you can get, and then every time you return to the area, you can fly to the top and drop down to where you need to go, avoiding having to go through the whole area EVERY time, which feels like a great reward and like you unlocked something.

3) Tanaan Jungle as a max level zone felt uninspired, with barely any story taking place, only having 100% objectives and a few campaign quests. Suramar is an awesome zone with a great story, great characters and a great environment. The Nightborne and Nightfallen are awesome. Characters you can empathize with, even the Nightborne, because a lot of them are actually against the Legion, but dare not to speak out, out of fear of being thrown out of the city. Suramar city looks amazing. It's gorgeous. I wanna live there. The whole zone looks stunning.

4) The old apexis dailies (100% completion bar) are utilized in a better way. You don't have to kill as many things as you did in WoD, which, when you have to kill dozens of mobs and the bar only ever advances a tiny bit, is really tiresome and demotivating. In Legion, it's a lot faster, and since you get them in areas where you are leveling up, you are just doing them on the side, while also doing real quests. Also, doing them at max level works well with other people leveling up, cause you can kill the same mob some low level character is killing for his low level quest, and you can still both get credit for it, for whatever you are doing in that area, be it quests to level up, or world quests at end game. It encourages helping each other, especially with the new tag system.

5) From what I can tell professions for the most part don't have these awful cooldowns on things you can create. And there are no profession buildings like the herb garden and the mine to devalue mats.

6) Daily quests always felt like more of a chore. Something you needed to do each day, because you could only do a certain amount each day, and you had to make sure you don't miss out on any. With world quests, it doesn't feel like that at all. There are always some world quests. They are on different timers. There is no "I have to do these quests until the reset happens real quick, and then the whole things starts again". It feels so open and free. You just log on, see what rewards interest you, and just do the quests you want to do. It's the best thing that happened to WoW in a long time.

That's as much as I can think of right now. I'm sure there's more stuff. Overall it just really feels like they've learned from their mistakes and took it as a chance to improve on things that went terribly wrong in WoD, even though they had good intentions at the time. I guess sometimes you just have to try something, risk something, and see how it goes, and WoD was simply a failed experiment.

[AlmightyGerkin]

Some valid points there Sylvani, but for your 2nd one they're going the same route as they did with flying in Warlords. Have to work for flying which I find is a good thing. Cause by the time 7.4 (Maybe im not sure what they will end at) a good percentage of players have explored the content legion has given us. Achievement is called Broken Isles Pathfinder Part one. So what they have for part 2 and 3 which may reward flying is going to be interesting.

[Sinzaram]

I'm confused by all the comparisons between Tanaan and Suramar.
You shouldn't compare launch content with patch content.
Tanaan might have been the relevant world content by the end of Warlords, but does that mean we should compare Suramar to Timeless Isle or Molten Front or Argent Tournament or Isle of Quel'danas? I don't think any of those are valid comparisons.

Should try to compare Suramar to launch max level content, like Vale of Eternal Blossoms and Klaxxi, or Tol Barad daily zone, or Oracles vs Wolvar in Sholazar Basin, not the patch content that comes months/years after the launch day.

I'm not arguing Suramar blows all previous max level content away and is amazing though. :P

[ItachiZaku]

The only point I agree with is #4. I pretty much disagree with the others. 4 though, is kinda big, cuz it w... man, i don't want to think about those hour long bonus zones from WoD.

[Flarelaine]

That's as much as I can think of right now. I'm sure there's more stuff. Overall it just really feels like they've learned from their mistakes and took it as a chance to improve on things that went terribly wrong in WoD, even though they had good intentions at the time. I guess sometimes you just have to try something, risk something, and see how it goes, and WoD was simply a failed experiment.

Nice summation of what I feel about the exp.

[Al Gorefiend]

You could make this thread the same way comparing WoD to MoP too. The only good thing that came out of WoD were the character models (and even those feel incomplete for some races). WoD was just a lackluster expansion and a prime example that Blizzard's "this isn't a democracy" attitude doesn't work for the health of their game. Legion feels like they scoured a suggestions forum and threw in a bunch of stuff people liked about WoW and look, it's shaping to be the best expansion ever.

Like, who asked for Draenor? Nobody. I've never once seen a "you know what would be cool? Going to an alternate dimensional Draenor where it happens in the past but also doesn't and its in our current timeline and its all orcs".

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

the order halls are much better than the garrisons in that they dont give away eeeeeeeverything. 2 weeks into wod i was already hardcore leveling alts, just logging into my main to raid and do garrison shit. so far in legion i almost feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff i need to do on my main, and i love it. not raiding hardcore in legion so i get to enjoy the broken isles on a more casual level, its been awesome so far.

[Eurhetemec]

That's as much as I can think of right now. I'm sure there's more stuff. Overall it just really feels like they've learned from their mistakes and took it as a chance to improve on things that went terribly wrong in WoD, even though they had good intentions at the time. I guess sometimes you just have to try something, risk something, and see how it goes, and WoD was simply a failed experiment.

All very well said and I agree completely. I think there's been a steady improvement in the design of these sort of elements since MoP - there have been other new elements that didn't go quite as well - but Legion has dumped the most problematic elements (MoP's farm etc. lead to the Garrison - Blizzard specifically said so - but Legion has really cut that all down).

[Lane]

2) No flying in WoD was pointless because there was nothing to do and they missed the opportunity to show the community the advantages of not being able to fly. In Legion there are things that wouldn't work with flying, like the world quest in Azsuna, where you have to use the bubbles to get to the top of the building. Or the grappling hook in Stormheim. Also, they put things in like flightpoints that make sense.

I disagree. Everything Blizzard has done since removing flight has felt like trying to compensate for the lack of it. The fact that they have had to add toys two expansions in a row that mimic a pale version of flight verifies this for me. Same thing with grappling hooks. It's like, "We don't want players to fly, but we don't want to design terrain where everything can be reached on a ground mount, so... grappling hooks?" Plus, I don't care for the 'jumping puzzle esque' direction they've gone with since WoD either. It works in GW2, but doesn't really in WoW, and I don't like it as an excuse to keep flying disabled.

Like, who asked for Draenor? Nobody. I've never once seen a "you know what would be cool? Going to an alternate dimensional Draenor where it happens in the past but also doesn't and its in our current timeline and its all orcs".

I wanted to see a pre-destruction Outland. Not particularly alternate universe though. However, had someone pitched the idea of WoD to me I would've said no.