Legion is unfriendly to returning players from previous expansions

[Tiev]

i cant stop laughing when anyone claims to play vanilla/tbc and claims to not have had a problem to grind all the shit in vanilla yet minimal farm in legion is suddenly problem for him - i wonder how you farmed resist gear back then if farming ap is too much .

I can't stop laughing when anyone forgets that people who played vanilla back in 2006 were likely teenagers back then and are now grown adult with the SAME INTERESTS but a boatload less time. Back then the target audience was likely almost exclusively kids and young adults/teenagers. Now, it has expanded.

[melodramocracy]

If you're looking to simply level and see the story, the gating the game has in place really doesn't pose much of an issue until you get to Suramar.

And as always, I'm not sure what folks expect to happen in a persistent world game designed for long term play.

[Deleted]

Ah yes, that is understandable. And a pretty big fail by Blizzard. You do not gate that kind of character power solely behind RNG. That is bound to frustrate players.

Erm.. okay. I would not be willing to dedicate THAT amount of time to a videogame anymore. ESP not if all that "work" becomes meaningless whenever they release the next box. Guess I'm becoming old.

Hence why some people have a problem with it.. granted that is only true for a few classes still.. some are to do with just a few %.. and that that point.. its not worth caring about.

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Pure, unadulterated bullshit.

Shoulders and boots for subtley pre nerf.

bracers for outlaw pre nerf

boots for assasin pre nerf.

Want me to go on?

[Deleted]

Hence why some people have a problem with it.. granted that is only true for a few classes still.. some are to do with just a few %.. and that that point.. its not worth caring about.

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Shoulders and boots for subtley pre nerf.

bracers for outlaw pre nerf

boots for assasin pre nerf.

Want me to go on?

Please do.

[Heladys]

Horsecrap, it's one of the easiest times it's ever been to return.

[mingarrubia]

It's called playing the game....Why on earth do you feel you need to complete 6+months of content asap.

Because those "6+months of content" are nothing more than an artificial barrier that prevents him from participating in the actual relevant content of the game as it is designed these days (aka the latest released raid).

[Jazzhands]

Because those "6+months of content" are nothing more than an artificial barrier that prevents him from participating in the actual relevant content of the game as it is designed these days (aka the latest released raid).

My mage was doing ToS pugs after two weeks at 110. There's no real gating these days. Your third weapon slot comes in like, two days, and you can still do things like LFR and Broken Shore during that time. The only real gate is gear, and gear comes easier this expansion than ever. Well, and our crappy community that doesn't want to put in any real effort, so you get things like LFM TOS N 915 LINK AOTC

Edit: Even flying comes really quickly. Just do the Broken Shore campaign and WQs and you'll have it in less than a week. I also find it pretty sad that you only consider the most recent raid to be content. For someone that started in 7.2 and never did Suramar, is Suramar no longer content for them?

[Fheng]

the only issue where people are punished is legendaries. That is legit the only thing that is overly fucked about this xpac for pve. The rest of it is actually pretty decent.

[mingarrubia]

I also find it pretty sad that you only consider the most recent raid to be content. For someone that started in 7.2 and never did Suramar, is Suramar no longer content for them?

It is content indeed, just not relevant content anymore.

[Seranthor]

You originally said:



which most people would read as a calendar week. But when challenged about this you then tried to give the impression you meant a week played, giving your own example of 139 hours as evidence of 'minimal effort', something which most normal people would find laughable.

139hours over the course of 11 months is 24minutes a day... Now go back and read what they've said they've spent most of their time doing... yea... that counts as minimal effort.


A further example... my warrior hit 95 a week ago today (25July), same Warrior hit 110 YESTERDAY (31July) (7hr 42min played to get from 100 to 110)... and is already at 43 traits on an empowered artifact. Yes, AP is THAT easy to get.

[mireigi]

The issue is that there is only so much you can do to farm any one thing at a time, since, after completing all quests in all areas, further farming in those areas are locked behind World Quests. Or there is a 1 day cooldown on running a specific heroic/mythic instance for that one item you desperately need (usually a relic).

There was a lot more grinding in Vanilla, true, but you were able to choose when you wanted to do it. Want a whole day farming Timbermaw reputation? Go ahead and do it, you won't lose out on reputation from the other factions. Want a whole day of running Dire Maul North to get that trinket you need? Go ahead and do it, you aren't met with a lockout for doing something specific.

The game has changed since Vanilla. It used to be that the endgame was exploring the areas you had previously skipped while leveling. It was also about gearing your character in dungeons to reach peak performance. Raiding was not something most players even considered. Today the endgame is, when ignoring PvP, running Mythic Plus dungeons, and raiding. Gearing is hardly a thing anymore, unless you want to try your hand at Heroic or Mythic raiding, or run Mythic Plus 10, or higher, dungeons.

The biggest flaw, however, is that an equal effort in time spent (hours), but on a different distribution, doesn't grant equal rewards. Player A logs on every day of the week for 3 hours, and does all the emissary quests available, for a total of 21 hours spent per week. Playber B logs on only during the weekends, playing for a total of 21 hours total as well, doing all the emissary quests available. Player A gets to do all emissary factions, yielding 7 chances at legendaries, AP, and epics, while Player B will at most have 5 chances, due to missing out on Monday and Tuesday emissaries. That hardly seems fair to player B.

[GreenJesus]

I hate the Order Hall on alts.. Having to wait for mission tables or sending out followers on missions only to realize 2 minutes later that a quest I just got requires me to use those followers that are now not available for several hours.

[Deleted]

When you have a job and a family and a lot less time to play, you gotta realize you won't be able to keep up. You can either accept it or just move on to other games that don't require this much time investment.

[Jazzhands]

It is content indeed, just not relevant content anymore.

Define relevant? Gives an ilvl upgrade? This game isn't just about chasing a number for some people. Also, Suramar gives very quick, easy AP that's not from M+/raids ect, It's probably the best way for someone new to get concordance quickly if they wait until they have high AK, which doesn't take long at all now. Seems incredibly relevant.

[Deleted]

Little background on myself for context: I've been playing Warcraft games since 1996 and became a fan of the lore since I first opened the Warcraft 2 manual when I was 13. I missed launch but I started playing WoW in February 2005. Like many of us old-schoolers I was fairly hardcore playing with friends right up through Wrath, then started falling into a more casual playstyle during Cata-onwards with long breaks as content dried up.

I was disgusted with Warlords. Disgusted. Lazy, bad expansion. We all know that. Nothing new to say. On paper I love to see what's happened with Legion. Regular content updates, something for everyone, a return to dungeons, more raids, better world content in patches, MORE patches, a seemingly-infinite flow of new stuff to do. Shame it's too grindy.

Legion has WAY too much time-gating. Way too many single-expansion timesinks. Too many bars to fill. Too many Arbitrary Magic Fun Points to grind. Not enough things carried between characters or specs.

As an example: I'm someone who loves Story. I would love to complete the zones, unlock my flying, hit all the dungeons and do Suramar, hit LFR and get the story for all the raids and do the broken shore. Unfortunately I'd also have to get my artifact traits, click on mission tables, wait for timers to count down and daily limits on quest content to unlock. These things aren't fun. They get in the way of fun. And that's a shame.

If you made it through my wall of text do tell me, am I alone? Or is the barrier to entry just too high at this point? Should a grumpy old bastard like myself that spends too much time in front of a computer for work all day maybe just give up and move on?

Well said OP. You are not alone. The disturbing aspect is that many think this means there is more content in the game compared to the game at its height ie WOTLK/TBC days. This was why vanilla servers wre so appealing. No gating, not too much to do, just focus and go go go - for hours and days if you wish. Sure you can go dungeon or pvp but it's not absurd as it is now with all the gating. As someone briliantly once said - Wow has become a log in: go through list of things to do: log out. That's not fun. The reward mechanism is fatigued by now but most were fatigued a while back.

Having too many options != so much content. It's all about quality vs quantity. Repetitive aspects to MMORPGs - is that more content or constant live rehash? I am worried the next expansion will be exact same as Legion as the business charts showed it's sustainable, there will be growth for first 2 months after next epansion and that is enough - with inevitable flagging subs thereafter - and that's ok. But one day the fanbase will revolt but as we loved Wow so much befoire we will still buy to see if it has that appeal it did in its initial version and 2 expansions after.

For players coming back it's not easy, but I don't think it should be hand-all-on plate. But I was offered a free week to come back which I accepted but before installing the game again, all addons, I thought about all those class tables, the campaigns, the followers, yes the gating and I decided it just wasn't worth logging into. I'd rather log into my vanilla server account and run around like a headless chicken for an hour.

It's all very sad. Blizzard could get this back on track with some big (needed) changes but we are stuck in groundhog day now for last 5 years+. Such a waste. But the figures satisfy the business team. We are the guinea pigs.

[Otaka]

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Not to mention attunments which really gated content behind time.

You dont seem to understand what "timegating" means.... it means that content is gated behind real life time which means no matter how much you play you simply cannot do that content because its not open.
Attunements were never timegated... you could finish them as quickly as possible, the only thing required was effort. Thats not timegating, thats progression.

Black Temple attunement for example, you had to do a bunch of quests and then kill a few bosses in other raids (Alar and Rage Winterchill... both are FIRST bosses in a raid so not that hard to do since first boss is always supposed to be easiest), do some more quests and you are done... no timegating at all in that quest chain, it only requires effort to do... and obviously it was a guild effort since killing raid bosses cant really be done alone.

You could do any tbc attunement in one day no problem... but did you need to? not really... doing black temple before hyjal or the eye is kind of a long shot, you will end up killing the first bosses in earlier raids anyway before you try black temple.

Attunements gave people a goal to do just like many other things back then... these days the only goals we seem to have is grind every content you can in hopes of getting a legendary, and you cant choose which one you get, and raid progression.
No solid goals that gave you a solid guaranteed reward in the end. Its sad... suramar and broken shore questlines were cool but timegated, which means you literally had to wait a week to be able to do the next part because blizzard didnt release the entire questline day one.

It was quite ridiculous... a new week starts, you are excited to continue the storyline and end up doing 1 quest and.... thats it... wait another week to be able to do more... that was kodocrap. This timegating is getting ridiculous... its why i unsubbed for 2 months and then returned so i had something to do for a few days when multiple quests had been unlocked.


PS. legion is still a fun expansion but it has its flaws and some of them are major.

[Katchii]

Expansion in general are "unfriendly" but I disagree somewhat with your assessment regarding all of that stuff being un-fun. I agree completely on the Mission table time gated shit being un-fun. Especially at this point in the expansions life cycle with many missions or quests being nerfred, there's not much worse than hitting a seemingly arbitrary time gate for your Class Hall story line. At some point that's the only thing you have because leveling is otherwise very quick especially with upgraded Heirlooms. I reached 110 on my Hunter recently in just ~6 hours over a couple days and still had half my Class Hall story to go through, and a lot of that was the stupid do 4-5 follower missions. Granted at this point, the majority of those missions are only 1 hour (rather than 8+ as they were at launch), but still.

Everything else though I found great, especially the zone stories. I'm a sucker for story and IMO Legion story overall was entertaining. Doing it on more than one toon though is tedious. But a fist timer into Legion? I thought it was great.

[Fabinas]

Difference in grinding in vanilla and Legion.

Grinding in vanilla was a goal. I grinded UBRS for the mage chest, i never got it after running it a million times but it was a set path towards a goal. I grinded Guardian of Cenarius rep in sillythus, it was a loooong grind, but there's a clear path towards that goal.

Grinding in Legion is stupid and all the Diablo devs in the WOW team as well as in the Diablo dept should just be fired, that's how much i hate those morons. You want that legendary bracer/shoulder/ring? Well... do the content for that RNG chance to get that RNG legendary. You want that BIS piece from Neth Lair? Well.. grind +10 for that RNG weekly and pray for that RNG Titanforged+socket. Maybe you'll get that RNG Titanforged BIS relic, maybe you won't get diddly squat.

I could go on but that's the gist of grinding in Legion, not to mention that time gates. Yeah, let me level that Paladin to 110 real quick but cock block me for 1 week to get my 3rd relic. I would sure love to do the Suramar quests for the sweet sweet AP after the AK boost from my main but NOPE! Cock block the quest lines and force me to grind rep for something i already saw.

RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG + Time gate, good stuff Diablo guys.

People want a diablo MMO when it's already here :/

In total agreement with your post. Good luck in enduring it. I have quit after 12 years of non stop sub.

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What time gating barriers, exactly?

The only time gate barrier I see is (if you didn't play this expansion at all) is Artifact Knowledge 25-40, which is going to take a bit longer but that's just 'more power', really. It doesn't affect gameplay at all, besides killing things faster.

It affects your efficiency in group content as well. If that's low, you get kicks or no invites. You cannot dismiss it as a non existent issue.

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You grinding en masse for 1 piece of specific gear =/= the game being unfriendly to returning players. You can do 99% of the games content without needing to grind. Which does not affect 99.9% of people that could return to play.

YOu literally are just complaining and trying to make people think there is a problem where there actually isn't one.

You don't get it, do you? He's complaining about the effort/reward ratio, which is an all time low in Legion, because of the overlapping RNG in rewards. Not for his damn shitty chest item.
If you're happy about grinding +100 paragon chests and NOT get a mount from them, when other people get 3+ mounts from less boxes, then i guess you'll never get it.

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Then perhaps MMORPGS aren't the best game to be playing when someone has no time and wants instant gratification?

Noone asks for instant gratification. People ask for CERTAIN gratification after CERTAIN AMOUNT of effort. i want my standard rewards after x time of play, not a chance on RNG rewards after indefinite time of play. Which is what Blizzard does now, to prolong the subs.

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As someone who hasn't played since WoD I wouldn't come back expecting people to be friendly, I wouldn't expect them to be rude or an asshole either, but frankly I rather they did, so I know from the start who I am dealing with and not bother trying to contribute to any group of the lot.

Otherwise if they aren't friendly ok, are they decent? I recognize no as I did then if I have something to prove it terms of my weight, and the ability to contribute and what not then hook me up.

Once you established your ability beyond numbers and you can roll without unreasonable expectations from the beginning, you typically by the right people will fit right in and be pretty damn valuable.

It's really that simple, sometimes peoples personalities conflict and that is what it is, but if you are over all pleasant and can put in, you should be fine. Friendliness will come especially when people want shit, then it becomes about how much they give. In those cases I have had to walk, because I realized maybe too late I was dealing with people and a group of the wrong fit.

wrong topic.

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After like 15 weapons at concordance, 10000 WQ, etc, it is starting to become burn-out inducing and impossible to "keep up".

Yes yes, before people say "self-control" , I know 100%. And I am making changes to my goals.

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That's the main issue I warn OP for, stick with 1 character and Legion's game design is fine.

I stuck with one. Still got burned out on those paragon chests. I reached a point where i couldnt bear to do even a single WQ anymore. It removed my will to pursue other goals in game as well. It made me quit. For ever.

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What grind exactly? There is no grind in Legion anymore.

Paragon chests. Nethershards for that Unstable Arcanocrystal proc. Items to upgrade my 12+ legendaries (on one char). Come again?

[TOM_RUS]

Legion is a worst expansion ever.

[Fabinas]

Agreed. If anything, I think the WoW of today doesn't hold a candle to even coming close to the Vanilla - WotLK era in terms of "having" to do things. Back then you had a minimum amount you had to do each week and if you didn't you fell behind without the hand out catch up mechanics of today. Sure, late TBC and WotLK had some catch up mechanics, but even those you had to work for. They had a badge vendor, but a single piece of badge gear costs 50 or more badges and you got a single badge per boss on heroics or in raids, that was it. Literally go kill 50 bosses if you want a single piece of catch up gear.

Today, you breeze through the leveling "experience" and before you finish two (three if you do no other content) zones of their quest lines you're max level already. After that you just go sit in your order hall, send the table out and let the table do the work for you. The table gets you literally everything you need to be near top of the line ready within a week. Do the single quest at the table for 7,500 nethershards, which takes 3 days, and you are literally decked out in gear equal to the previous raid tier, having done nothing but sit in your order hall, then talk to a vendor.

Oh wow, you can go out and do some world quests to pass the time and speed up the process as well. Literally, you can go there and auto attack the mobs a single time because others will be there doing the same quests.

If WoW today was anything even close to like it was back in the Vanilla - WotLK era, you'd have to do literally every zone, almost every quest before you'd even hit max level. Then, you'd have to hop into normal dungeons to get the gear for heroics, go through those heroics, then go to the first raid tier before you have enough gear to go to the second, and so on. I honestly hope you guys that say today is harder in any form are joking, because this game is nothing like what it used to be. It's a watered down, whack a mole, everyone sees everything Facebook level game. It literally has a phone app that you can hop on and do all the micro managing aspects from literally without having to be near a computer to actually, I don't know, play your characters to progress.

And all that gave you a sense of achievement, a clear to see and touch and use reward. Legion doesn't do this now. It's fast to give some stuff now and totally denies you other, due to rng.