Legendary Questline - Business-focused design?

[Raiju]

I think it was a business focused decision and quite successful: apparently, MoP lost 100k subscribers. That's a lot but still a lot less than I expected and than we saw during Cata. I think the legendary quest chain kept people regularly logging on and running LFR in particular across each patch. Yes, it disadvantages late comers but typically it won't be a decisive disadvantage. The non-raiders can slowly catch up if they want or just skip it. The raiders can still raid without the legendary in most contexts (I know my server is terribly short of raiders, so lack of a legendary would not be an obstacle to joining a raid team).

Last quarter lost 100k subscribers. I believe MoP has lost around 1 million

[Lanthanum]

The whole way that the quest was designed was to extend subscriptions and get people running LFR regularly. Blizzard know that you need the more experienced raiders in the group to help LFR be successful (see the current state of SoO LFR for example, as Flex has impacted) and by putting the progression of the questline within LFR, it encourages people to run it.

Personally, the whole grind was one of the factors that led me to quit just after 5.3. The obscene amount of RNG was truly soul destroying and I hope that Blizz learn a lesson from this experiment.

[Majestian]

I'm two Titan Runestones shy of moving on toward the end of the quest line, but honestly (since I'm an LFR hero unconcerned with min/maxing DPS and whatnot, and I don't care that much for achievements), I'm really considering stopping once I get the epic cape since legendaries cannot be used for transmog. Lame excuse or not, transmog is one of my favorite features, and I've assembled a few sets I like to use.

[Serissa]

I don't really miss the time when only gms/officers could have the legendary...

Let me guess - you was one of these officers?

This post is more about asking "Do you think that motivating people to stay subbed for a larger portion of the expansion was a factor in deciding to go for this type of legendary acquisition?"

Yep and it was very smat decision. imo

[Spotnick]

It takes 2 month of full-clearing LFR each week. That can ruin one's experience pretty easy. It's tedious, grind-like and outright annoying because of 90% of LFR population.
LFR is much worse of a catch-up than any heroic dungeons was for anyone that wants to actualy catch up and raid, not to raid-with-bad-while-catching-up.

Well, you don't have to do LFR at all if you don't want to, I see plenty of people do groups for normal raids to get legendary items, and there must be plenty on openraid as well.

You should be thankful LFR is there for it though, you have no idea how horrible it was to drag 9 of your guildees to go do Firelands just for legendary drops once we were in Dragon Soul even 4 months into it to complete legendary staves. I did Firelands waaaaaaaaaay too much.

[Mini]

I like the design, but I wish the parts from previous patches could be accomplished more quickly by people who wanted to invest additional time (like having the quest items drop from multiple LFR clears per week). I'm part of a serious raiding guild (13/14H atm) and I know we have lots of people who just aren't coming back to the game because they know it will take them 3+ months to be raid viable, even if they play 24/7 and that's just not appealing.

There's another contingent of casuals in our guild who have quit because running LFR every week on every alt and suffering in bad groups has caused them to stop liking the game. "But why don't you just not get the legendary?" - because it's the point of months of quests... in some sense the peak of the expansion. So if they can't get that reward with an enjoyable experience, why bother playing? This situation has improved with Flex though, allowing these types to do pug runs that are typically much less painful than LFR.