Blizzard going out on a limb once again

[Deleted]

Legion has very little gameplay *with all the announcements*. You look into the announcements and you see the majority of them are crap like artifacts, which add no gameplay.

Revamped challenge modes to give them longevity and proper rewards; revamped world content similar to D3 bounties, class hall chains (which seem to be class-specific lore quest chains), and finally a reversal of the trend of less and less 5-mans per expansion.

Are these things not "content"? Explain.

Btw to implement and test them and to implement and test the content related to artifacts (order halls, artifact cosmetics, follower quest chains) unlocking the artifacts/starter quests first would be... really helpful, no? Agree, disagree?

That's why they are focusing on specs and artifact weapons, to at least get all the specs into the game in a playable form. They're close to that (there are, what, 4? specs NYI? likely 1-2 builds from now we'll get them too). And they have around half a year to deliver, with the caveat that what you see on public alpha is of course weeks behind whatever they have done internally.

So, yeah. The sky is *obviously* falling. /s

[Irian]

Legion has very little gameplay *with all the announcements*. You look into the announcements and you see the majority of them are crap like artifacts, which add no gameplay.

Yes, half of *that* shit isn't even in the game yet, and some of the specs aren't even in the game, absolutely, you are right. Although that's not my point, my point is that all that shit taken together is small and uninteresting and will be small and uninteresting when they finally finish, even if they don't cut a thing. I mean, I am not exactly thrilled with changes to PVP, although I might be willing to try, but they are not gameplay, and 90% of what they announced are things that are not gameplay. Where are things I could do, eh? A few zones, some instances, a raid. Old, old, old, small (not a lot of zones, not a lot of instances), it will get very boring very quick. (No, let's not start with "what it is you want then", there are tens of threads on that, go and read them if you want to know, go and check what previous expansions added - brawler's guild, pet battles, achievements, for god's sake.)

And if you think they are going to add tons of significant new things that we currently don't know about, wake up. Yes, the product is far from finished. We still know pretty much everything it will contain.

We know that there will be dungeons, raids, an artifact system with experience and cosmetic systems and a lot of optional stuff tied to it, a class hall, class quests, some reputations and a new challenge mode system, farmable legendary world drops as well as a transmogrification wardrobe. Past that, we know barely anything at all.

There have been countless models for stuff like mounts that currently have no discernable source, and from what I've seen on Legion several locations in the world that also haven't been implemented and as far as I'm aware there are even entire sections of zones that aren't available yet. I wouldn't even call you pessimistic, you're irrational.
Do I think Legion will be amazing? Hell, I don't know. Nobody does.

[Deleted]

All I see from the Legion beta streams is new spell graphics and heavy focus on the artifact weapons. Anyone else feel like they are once again wasting so much development and resources into something they are hoping will be a huge hit, just like they did with garrisons. I just don't think they realize that the most of the WoW population could care less about these things. We need more end game content, a reason to explore the World. They build up so much excitement around these things and it's fun for the first two weeks until you hit max level and there is not much to do.

Would it be to much to ask you to speak for yourself and not me? Because i very much disagree.

As they discovered with diablo, a thing that can keep you interested in your class is changes to rotations based on gear. Which is one of the things theyt put more work into in Legion. Its a really good idea.

Why are you complaining they are upgrading graphics?

Would you also complain if they didnt? Just to have something to complain about maybe?

[rda]

Revamped Challenged modes to give them longevity and proper rewards; revamped world content similar to D3 bounties, and finally a reversal of the trend of less and less 5-mans per expansion.

Are these things not "content"? Explain.

They (challenge modes and 'revamped world content') are content. The problem is that that's not a lot. Part of it is that most of what they have is just additional difficulty modes and / or additional rewards, that builds on the small amount of content that is really the meat of it all (like instances). It's like when we had that financial crisis where banks tried to get more and more and more leverage out of the same money (I am simplifying things here, obviously) and it bombed in the end - Blizzard selling the same things over and over and over will bomb out the same way.

[Melkorr]

Not at all. The fact that you are so moved to make a thread on this topic proves how far gone this community is that you are willing to IMMEDIATELY associate any of these things immediately as negative.

Its a shame too, because Blizzard really did under-deliver with WOD but you equating them spending time on cosmetics to meaning a lack of "end game" is just proof that this game will never recover no matter what.
Some people just want way more than they deserve and no matter how much they are given they will never be satisfied.

I've been looking for this for so long!! THANK YOU!

[rda]

Why are you complaining they are upgrading graphics?

Would you also complain if they didnt? Just to have something to complain about maybe?

I don't know about the person you are quoting, but I wouldn't complain if they left graphics as it is and concentrated on adding more content.

[Granyala]

Compare Talador to the original Terokkar Forest, for example. Talador's graphics are obviously far superior from a technical standpoint, but the zone just doesn't 'grab' my attention in the same way as Terokkar Forest did, or even the original Ashenvale.

I found both zones equally beautiful and immersive.

Shattrath is such a lovely place. A shame that all they did with it was plop a few daily quest mobs in.

[Deleted]

They (challenge modes and 'revamped world content') are content. The problem is that that's not a lot.

In principle you are right (although the question is, what *completely new* gameplay could an MMO offer that WoW doesn't yet have in some form?), but I disagree that it's not a lot. The thing is we don't know yet. The "new" CMs can easily translate into longevity, because the system is essentially endless - the idea is to have scaling enemy levels AND random modifiers, with (hopefully) decent incentive to tackle more challenging variants. This is an improvement over Greater Rifts that just scale in level and that's it. With the random modifiers they teased it's more like Warframe sorties, I guess?

Same for bounty-like world content. Whether it's a lot or not a lot remains to be seen, because it depends on implementation. If they're just like Tanaan, but spread out all over the world, then indeed they won't be a lot. Conversely, if there is some creative use of game mechanics, and/or some lore tidbits of interest (Tanaan was notably devoid of lore, all of its quests were "go there, kill everything, because why not") and/or some rewarded challenge in them (e.g. "see how many waves you can take, more waves? better reward!"). We have no idea at this point.

I'd say that both of these types of content also lend themselves to easier growth in patches. Bounties are ez pz - you just add new ones to existing hubs, or add new hubs, or tweak/expand existing bounties and rewards. CMs - add new key modifiers. Also note that this solves the problem of keeping dungeons useful throughout the xpac, which means maybe Blizz will have an incentive to invest in them again, rather than making them relevant for a couple of weeks and then abandoning them (it bit them in the ass hard in MoP and in WoD, they tried to turn it around with mythic 5-mans ofc, but that was a band-aid fix at best).

Now, I'm not really super optimistic and indeed it *IS* possible that bounties will be just Tanaan "grind to fll the bar" crap all over again and that CMs will be a poor man's implementation of GRifts. But I'm willing to give them the benefit of doubt and just wait and see. Because in the end, I kinda like this game, I think a lot of it was good (MoP, for example, was good, and it's not like it was ages ago, so Blizz still has the potential to make content that I find enjoyable).

[Deleted]

I don't know about the person you are quoting, but I wouldn't complain if they left graphics as it is and concentrated on adding more content.

Yet there are a lot of people complaining abotu the outdated graphics of wow

[Deleted]

What I am getting at is that each expansion, Blizzard comes up with a new idea that they believe is incredible. They then just invest so many resources into it and are taking a gamble if it'll work or not. For me, I am just setting my expectations very low. I honestly think the whole artifact system and class halls is going to end up being a bust. No offense, but I don't think anyone and even me for that matter, deserves a lore weapon. I can't justify supporting Legion if the philosophy behind the game is minimal effort, high reward. No, I'm not a special snowflake and no I don't believe only certain people are deserving of special entitlements, but I'm a firm believer you should have to earn things, and it's much more rewarding when you do.

The thing is, you have no idea how much resources they're allocating to each update. You literally have no idea the work that goes into certain things, also how the teams are divided and projects are assigned. Everything isn't black and white, just because they have a team on a certain update, it's not to say the other teams productivity slows down in the slightest.

[lavaalamp]

Like your posts?

#burn

#feelthebern I couldn't help it.

[TheLimonTree]

What I am getting at is that each expansion, Blizzard comes up with a new idea that they believe is incredible. They then just invest so many resources into it and are taking a gamble if it'll work or not. For me, I am just setting my expectations very low. I honestly think the whole artifact system and class halls is going to end up being a bust. No offense, but I don't think anyone and even me for that matter, deserves a lore weapon. I can't justify supporting Legion if the philosophy behind the game is minimal effort, high reward. No, I'm not a special snowflake and no I don't believe only certain people are deserving of special entitlements, but I'm a firm believer you should have to earn things, and it's much more rewarding when you do.

Care to cite some examples outside WoD? You claim this happens every expansion so what was their egg basket for BC, or Cata?

[Bosen]

This is just negative speculation. What if you get what you want and the stuff you're seeing in alpha? It's safer to predict the negative and expect disappointment, because at least you'll feel you were right if you are disappointed, but what if your point of view is so skewed that you'll be disappointed, no matter what? Is that a better feeling than having hope and then being let down?

[Deleted]

I welcome the graphical updates in a big way. I represent the segment of players that really zoomes in close to his character and even walks through some zones.

Exploration is a big part of how I play Wow and graphics is an important part for my immersion.

I love the fact that they are finally doing something about it.

[Deleted]

What I am getting at is that each expansion, Blizzard comes up with a new idea that they believe is incredible. They then just invest so many resources into it and are taking a gamble if it'll work or not. For me, I am just setting my expectations very low. I honestly think the whole artifact system and class halls is going to end up being a bust. No offense, but I don't think anyone and even me for that matter, deserves a lore weapon. I can't justify supporting Legion if the philosophy behind the game is minimal effort, high reward. No, I'm not a special snowflake and no I don't believe only certain people are deserving of special entitlements, but I'm a firm believer you should have to earn things, and it's much more rewarding when you do.

That's innovation, it either works or it doesn't, but if it doesn't that means you shouldn't try it.

If you take the approach to life where you shouldn't do things because you think they might fail, you will accomplish less than if you took the risk.

[Rotted]

Do you honestly blame them?

Sure some might seem overkill but lets put it in a different context,

If they made ashbringer a normal wep, with just a few on proc effects, imagine the hate they'd get for taking such a iconic wep and making it completely normalised

[Kolvarg]

All I see from the Legion beta streams is new spell graphics and heavy focus on the artifact weapons. Anyone else feel like they are once again wasting so much development and resources into something they are hoping will be a huge hit, just like they did with garrisons.

Surprised you mention specificly the garrisons, and not also new player models and animations for all races + game-wide stat squish + server improvements + class changes/ability prunes + heirloom tab + toys tab + adventurer journal, which while important/useful were all "non-content" "features" that quite possibly took quite a bit of development time.

As far as the artifact weapons go, regarding the models/graphics they're doing just about as much work as they would do crafting hundreds of different weapon models and variations. The spell graphics might be a bit more telling, considering that's coming on top of an entirely new class, but even then so far it doesn't seem like Legion will lack graphics-wise. Unless something gets cut, we're getting a lot of visual variety and the spell graphics and attack animations while not "required" will certainly help bringing WoW a bit closer to "next-gen" competitors, which they very much want to do especially with the movie (and therefore a big chance at capturing the attention of new players) coming up.

Personally I feel that it's the systems that have the potential to "steal" more development time from a higher ammount of content. And in this case we're looking mainly at Artifact talents (based on talent trees), Class Halls (based on garrisons), daily world content (similar to dailies), new class and class changes/re-imaginings, wardrobe (again based on already existing things), new PvP and CMs systems.

There is a lot going on for Legion, and I think the artifact weapons and combat animation/graphics are from the most "dangerous" to content overall. While nothing's quite like the garrisons (which must have been a huge time sink to get working properly on an old engine), let alone garrisons on top of the things I mentioned above, and all these things are overall based on similar things instead of having to be worked on from scratch (well there was the farm, but from that to Garrisons it's a huge step up =P), it's quite possible some things might get delayed.

But everything points towards an investment on repeatable and long-term content and features, and so far it looks like it's heading the right way, even if not coming as soon as people hope =P

[cam5778]

Would it be to much to ask you to speak for yourself and not me? Because i very much disagree.

As they discovered with diablo, a thing that can keep you interested in your class is changes to rotations based on gear. Which is one of the things theyt put more work into in Legion. Its a really good idea.

Why are you complaining they are upgrading graphics?

Would you also complain if they didnt? Just to have something to complain about maybe?

Honestly, I never said I was speaking on behalf of everyone. I said most people could care less about the graphics. I highly doubt people are walking around the world to see a spell animation. It'll be entertaining for the first few days then it just become the norm. For those others, I am not complaining, I am simply stating that don't set high expectations on Legion. It's probably the reason why we have so many "this was the worst expansion to date" threads. Blizzard builds up so much hype over these new ideas and we eat it like candy.

I don't get why so many people in these threads find ways to take shots at other people. There is a difference in being constructive with your opinions and turning what someone says into a way to insult them. Does it make people feel better and tough?

[Sabever]

All I see from the Legion beta streams is new spell graphics and heavy focus on the artifact weapons. Anyone else feel like they are once again wasting so much development and resources into something they are hoping will be a huge hit, just like they did with garrisons. I just don't think they realize that the most of the WoW population could care less about these things. We need more end game content, a reason to explore the World. They build up so much excitement around these things and it's fun for the first two weeks until you hit max level and there is not much to do.

These are the type of changes that WoW needs. These sort of changes do not take away from the community or force you not to interact with the world. Of all of the changes in WoW this is one anyone should be able to get behind.

[Aeriedk]

I'm intrigued by the artifact weapons and hardly think they will be a waste of time. It will just be important that they are expanded upon. If they invest all this time in the weapon and then it has run its path by the end of the second tier then it will be boring.