Demons without Sargeras - Still a massive threat

[Saverem]

It wasn't a conquest, it was bribery.

Lol, you're trying REEEAAAALLY hard to push your agenda and have resulted to grasping at straws now.

They took over an entire planet, distorted it into Fel and ruins, turned its people into powerful soldiers and their Titan into a battery. It's conquered by every sense of the word.

You can say Sargeras manipulated 2 of the 3 leaders with sweet talk, but the end result was a conquered world and a central hub for the Burning Legion.

[Arrashi]

Lol, you're trying REEEAAAALLY hard to push your agenda and have resulted to grasping at straws now.

They took over an entire planet, distorted it into Fel and ruins, turned its people into powerful soldiers and their Titan into a battery. It's conquered by every sense of the word.

You can say Sargeras manipulated 2 of the 3 leaders with sweet talk, but the end result was a conquered world and a central hub for the Burning Legion.

Actually he bribed 2 leaders, and like 95% of population. The rest either ran away....or menaged to survive for 25k years. Which makes it even less impressive.

[Magistrate]

It would maybe be better if they made invasion points places on Azeroth. For example instanced parts of Ironforge or Orgrimmar etc. Invasion points made Legion look like even bigger dofuses who invade other worlds when they're already struggling with Azeroth and defending Argus.

To be fair, those other planets were probably in the works while they were stomping us on Azeroth, long before we started thrashing them. We really didn't start to turn the tide until Tomb--Gul'dan's whole thing was mostly a selfish endeavor, not a Legion one.

[Saverem]

Actually he bribed 2 leaders, and like 95% of population. The rest either ran away....or menaged to survive for 25k years. Which makes it even less impressive.

Again, you're trying to bend the argument to fit your beliefs instead of actually looking at it objectively. So there's no point in arguing with you. Believe what you want.

[Ielenia]

So yeah, we infiltrated their home world and imprisoned their leader.

The same thing happened with the Scourge, with Scourge armies still being numerous enough to sweep Accross Azeroth.

That said, Illidan did not do a Bolvar and did not become leader of all demons, so I assume they would still continue to be a threat to us, after all the Titans were not able to completely rid the galaxy of them, how could we?

By their accounts, they still control most of the galaxy, having burned or infested countless worlds.

Are we to expect more legion invasions, or do you think they are gone for good?

You're forgetting something important: the infinite army is no longer infinite. Without Argus, if a demon dies, it is dead for good. No more respawning in Antorus.

[Arrashi]

Again, you're trying to bend the argument to fit your beliefs instead of actually looking at it objectively. So there's no point in arguing with you. Believe what you want.

The only thing that was bend (over) was legion itself, given how they took it.

[Aucald]

Quite frankly there isn't much diffrence. DW caused cataclysm that was reflected in almost every zone. Sargy....reduced silithus population from 10 to 2, and put a must see tourist attraction there. Other than that it seems to have no real effect. And yeah, azeroth is "dying" but its not like it will have any consequences, and she will get better anyway.

Deathwing causing a few lacerations to Azeroth's surface pales pretty significantly to having its primary vital organ (the world-soul within it) being skewered by Gorribal. As for the effects of Azeroth dying - it remains to be seen how profound the effect will be. It just happened and its already causing pretty significant effects all on its own, so I think you're seriously underscoring the significance there.

But it could be better written. It could win battles, even losing the war. But they always lose. They can't win anything even once. They can't have single competent character that does something well, even once. Everything ends for the best.

"Show don't tell" is a principle of good storytelling for a reason. Legion could destoy 345362436464365623 worlds. And it would still not make up for their hilarious failures.

And just because other (often crappy) fantasy settings do that, doesn't make what blizz writes any better.

They won the biggest and first engagement of the war, decisively and to the combined forces of the Horde and Alliance's considerable detriment. They destabilized both governments and had saboteurs in place right alongside the remaining leaders that required an 11th hour save by the Demon Hunters showing up. They invaded the Exodar and nearly sacked it until the Champion arrives as the acting cavalry and clears house. They had agents in the Kirin Tor that nearly succeeded in defeating them from within. Where you see the Legionfall forces roflstomping the Legion with laughter I see more skin of our collective teeth victories, where without an appreciable helping of luck and skill victory could've easily been made into defeat.

I think that in your rush to judgment, either for humor's sake or because you legitimately don't see it, you've seriously overlooked and understated the Legion threat. The Legion can't make a proper showing or be important if you dismiss their every victory out of hand and see their every loss and conclusively and absolutely total when in actuality it wasn't.

Yup, and once again, we will solve the problem and everything will work for the best. Being nuisance, doesn't make you an impressive villain.

If you're saying that the main problem is that we'll win in the end, then I'm not really sure how to help you. It's a video game and a fantasy story, so of course the good guys are going to win against overwhelming odds and seemingly implacable foes. That's pretty much how high fantasy stories and video games *work*. There's some considerable gray areas and intrigues I've tried to outline above, and some defeats we might suffer along the way. But even though we don't win every battle we're still going to win the proverbial war. If we don't then the game is pretty much over.

[chrisisvacant]

You're forgetting something important: the infinite army is no longer infinite. Without Argus, if a demon dies, it is dead for good. No more respawning in Antorus.

Incorrect. Demons have respawned in the Nether since infinity. Antorus was made to amplify the respawn rate to provide an army that could not be suppressed.

[Aucald]

Man, this lifeless ice-world won't invade itself.

The Legion "Invasions" aren't really about the Legion trying to conquer and/or destroy the visited worlds in the first place. They're more about us invading Legion strongholds and side-campaigns to hamper or hinder their efforts. On Val, the world in question, they're not invading the ice-world for any specific purpose. It's a gulag that they're running with captured enemies being encased in ice and interrogated by the mess of Inquisitor demons hanging around - which is what the objective of freeing the prisoners is really all about. On Cengar the Legion is suborning powerful magma elementals to use in their war efforts, which we turn around and destroy. On Sangua they're draining the life essence of a massive planet-sized organism within the world because its blood may become a powerful reagent for their experiments, so we show up to take out their experiments and kill the ones involved. Bonich is just being strip-mined to feed the Legion's war-machine fabrication, Aurinor is being invaded to investigate and experiment with its strange temporal properties, and Naigtal is having its powerful indigenous lifeforms subverted as well.

[Magnagarde]

We supposedly always need a Lich King, but what about Sargeras' substitude? Someone will have to emerge. Either that or there'll be a massive void takeover of the resulting... void in power. I can see the Nathrezim returning to their void worshipping.

[Aucald]

We supposedly always need a Lich King, but what about Sargeras' substitude? Someone will have to emerge. Either that or there'll be a massive void takeover of the resulting... void in power. I can see the Nathrezim returning to their void worshipping.

Well, Mal'ganis is pretty powerful and unaccounted for after his cameo at the Broken Shore - I find myself a bit concerned by his conspicuous absence in Legion and by the fact that he was on Azeroth when he disappeared entirely from the plot. Oh, and the major nations of Azeroth are fighting with themselves again - so that's an odd coincidence, isn't it?

[Ielenia]

Incorrect. Demons have respawned in the Nether since infinity. Antorus was made to amplify the respawn rate to provide an army that could not be suppressed.

Incorrect? Do you have a source for that? Because it's being established, in-game, during the Argus questline, that Argus is necessary for the resurrection of demons. "Without Argus, the infinite army will become finite."

[Arrashi]

Deathwing causing a few lacerations to Azeroth's surface pales pretty significantly to having its primary vital organ (the world-soul within it) being skewered by Gorribal. As for the effects of Azeroth dying - it remains to be seen how profound the effect will be. It just happened and its already causing pretty significant effects all on its own, so I think you're seriously underscoring the significance there.

As it is, there seems to be very little direct effect. As it is, its more about people going ham to stripmine it, rather than any damage caused by sargy.

They won the biggest and first engagement of the war, decisively and to the combined forces of the Horde and Alliance's considerable detriment. They destabilized both governments and had saboteurs in place right alongside the remaining leaders that required an 11th hour save by the Demon Hunters showing up. They invaded the Exodar and nearly sacked it until the Champion arrives as the acting cavalry and clears house. They had agents in the Kirin Tor that nearly succeeded in defeating them from within. Where you see the Legionfall forces roflstomping the Legion with laughter I see more skin of our collective teeth victories, where without an appreciable helping of luck and skill victory could've easily been made into defeat.

I think that in your rush to judgment, either for humor's sake or because you legitimately don't see it, you've seriously overlooked and understated the Legion threat. The Legion can't make a proper showing or be important if you dismiss their every victory out of hand and see their every loss and conclusively and absolutely total when in actuality it wasn't.

Nearly, almost, those aren't too encouraging words. You can almost score 1000 times and in the end you are still virgin. 4th place is almost podium and yet you don't get medal. Almost achieving something isn't an achievement. Them almost winning, doesn't make them intimidating.

The issue is that blizzard has absolutely no understanding of writing nuance, role of detail and very poor understanding of what they can and what they can't do.
You list broken shore as this "big" victory of legion. And yet in this victory...most important people got away. In reality they killed varian, tirion (almost off-screen) and vol'jin who dies after it. Other than it few soldiers. But in the end most characters of importance runs away, and legion does nothing other than generic "Hahaha despair mortals !!!"

And if you only add some imagination, you can make it much more crushing defeat. Remove majority of important characters that won't die. They aren't needed. Increase amount of regular soldiers. Make fight last longer, with news of more and more groups being crushed coming. Make a real desperate stand. Have PC and sylvanas/genn escape through last second portal, and be 2 only survivors of this massacre. See ? Not hard, and yet its already more impactful.

How about suramar ? Why not give it bad end ? Decimate the city, kill off majority of nightborne, completely destroying their civilization, and having few survivors join blood elves. In the end story goes the same way as it went, yet legions presence and story in suramar would be much more impactful.

Blizzard shows time and time that they can't get anything right. They are almost like anti-falcom with their utter inability to create well paced story that holds itself together.
Wanna get some examples of them getting things wrong ?
1) Antorus demon quick regeneration - its completely meaningless. We never fight named character twice, so its never coming into play. And endless army has enough grunts without it. And yet it exists, as another super power that is meant to make them cool, but in the end only makes their defeat more pathetic.
2) Them being defeated by 2 ships of draenei - because you know, it was hard to copy paste 2 vindicaars on each skybox to show that army of light is massive and actually make it look like something that could threaten legion.
3) Army of light being only draenei - because actually living to idea of army of survivors by creating 2 more models or even "lightforging" something like ethreals, arrakoa or any existing model was too hard.
4) You raise some valid points with invasion points but in the end the point remain - for all we know they are uninhabited, and that doesn't make them too much of invasions. And for all laziness of blizzard, it could be solved by...adding some ruins ? And if twisting some existing doodads or retexturing them is too much of work, how about using same trick as they use in argus, and put destroyed cities in skybox ? But that would once again require thinking.
5) Then you have all "cool" factors like them having spaceships (for some reason), pure stupid factors (like them not being able to secure argus).

If you're saying that the main problem is that we'll win in the end, then I'm not really sure how to help you. It's a video game and a fantasy story, so of course the good guys are going to win against overwhelming odds and seemingly implacable foes. That's pretty much how high fantasy stories and video games *work*. There's some considerable gray areas and intrigues I've tried to outline above, and some defeats we might suffer along the way. But even though we don't win every battle we're still going to win the proverbial war. If we don't then the game is pretty much over.

Tropes and cliches, are but a skeleton. Your job as writer is putting some meat and skin on them with your own work. And blizzard doesn't really do that. Resigning yourself to "well all others do that so i can as well" is pretty poor excuse, and one that will prevent you from ever improving.
You say that "Good always wins despite the odds". Yet in many series, they try to do anything to soften that impression. To make it look like miracle, like a long going plan.
Star wars would be completely diffrent movie if instead of stealing death star plans, delivering them and then desperate mission to hit that one vulnerable spot, luke just boarded death star with few buddies, killed all its personel and then manuall set off self-destruction while slowly walking away in his shades.
And boy, blizzard did not bothered with any excuse for antorus. Other than us just being too heroic. Because it was so hard to come with...anything ? I dunno, have a warpstorm in nether that will disrupt communication and portals rendering antorus vulnerable making it once in a (10000) lifetime(s) chance. Here, i came with that explanation in 15 seconds. And it still would be better than nothing.

Legion is pathetic. It is miserable because blizzard wrote them to be. Is it because "meta" reasons ? Yes. But the fact that blizz lacks any form of foresight, self criticism, and even trace of imagination isn't really our problem. And is definately not a good excuse.

[Volardelis]

Considering most undead were not even able to speak and are still considered to be devastating to azeroth if unleashed, it seems we did not actually get the full brunt of neither the scourge or the Legion.

It is a very poor comparison to compare the scourge and the legion. One was a hive mind, the other isn't. Sargeras didn't dominate his will onto demons, unlike the Lich King and the undead.

- - - Updated - - -

Incorrect? Do you have a source for that? Because it's being established, in-game, during the Argus questline, that Argus is necessary for the resurrection of demons. "Without Argus, the infinite army will become finite."

Chronicles Vol 1. Demons reforming in the nether after dying in the mortal plane is why Sargeras and Aggramar created the Prison planet, Mardum. This was also hinted at during TBC with the daily where you had to banish demons for those annoying crystal loving ogres. As well as being mentioned after defeating Balnazzar in the cata version of Sratholme.

[Kithelle]

Haven't read through posts, but I'd assume their threat is about as good as the undead.. Meaning, they're over just ignore it after the xpac ha.

I'd say they're less of a threat than the undead for several reasons.

When the Undead kill someone that leaves a corpse that can be raised as another undead ally.

The Undead are here and are already grouped up, with Sargeras, Kil'jaden, and Archimonde not ordering the Legion they're splintered and my very well go their own way and not even give a care about the Legion anymore.

Who knows how many demons in how many different groups there are out there, will they stay connected? Who knows...

The Legion is full of demons with different thoughts and goals...where the Scourge has one goal...kill the living.

The Legion is splintered and broken...where the Scourge is a mindless killing machine...the Scourge remnant just seems more dangerous than a splintered Legion.

[Deleted]

They won the biggest and first engagement of the war, decisively and to the combined forces of the Horde and Alliance's considerable detriment. They destabilized both governments and had saboteurs in place right alongside the remaining leaders that required an 11th hour save by the Demon Hunters showing up. They invaded the Exodar and nearly sacked it until the Champion arrives as the acting cavalry and clears house. They had agents in the Kirin Tor that nearly succeeded in defeating them from within. Where you see the Legionfall forces roflstomping the Legion with laughter I see more skin of our collective teeth victories, where without an appreciable helping of luck and skill victory could've easily been made into defeat.

That is not what we see in game at all the bolded part is there to show you what we actually see which is them "almost" doing something 90% of the time rather than them gaining anything the guy has a point in that bigger stuff happened to the horde/alliance in BFA with factions actually losing their capitals than what happened when the legion tried to invade us and that is all due to "us" the heroes/champions or whatever you want to call us showing up and reking whatever threat is at hand. If anything the broken shore proved more how useless all the big lore characters are and how little it would mean if they would ever die as we can just pick up and do a better job at it than they could seeing as once we get established as class/order leaders we defeat the legion something we were not before the broken shore fiasco. The best part is how bad Blizzard is at writing now a days so the lvl of investment you feel for characters so little considering that they are flat out badly written tripe or that they destroyed characters that already were good from WC3 like Thrall and Jaina. What Legion has thought me is this and only this we are better and stronger than the lore characters, which all comes down to them almost NEVER showing and almost always telling.

[Aucald]

As it is, there seems to be very little direct effect. As it is, its more about people going ham to stripmine it, rather than any damage caused by sargy.

Magni Bronzebeard: Champion... 'tis good ta see a familiar face in these dark times.
Magni Bronzebeard: Since returnin' from Argus, the cries o' Azeroth have been... overwhelmin'. Such pain...
Magni Bronzebeard: I don't know how ta fix this. Not sure anyone does. But we gotta keep tryin'.
Magni Bronzebeard: The storm's gatherin', (name). If we don't find a way ta heal Azeroth... nothin' else is gonna matter.

That seems pretty serious to me, coming as it does from Azeroth's selected mouthpiece. YMMV, though.

Nearly, almost, those aren't too encouraging words. You can almost score 1000 times and in the end you are still virgin. 4th place is almost podium and yet you don't get medal. Almost achieving something isn't an achievement. Them almost winning, doesn't make them intimidating.

This issue is that by your implied metric, nothing save their complete and total victory would make them intimidating. You seem to be implying that only with success (a success that I add would require Azeroth's total decimation) can they be considered threatening. That's just not how it works. "Nearly" and "almost" are still better measures than "complete failure" and "utter defeat."

The issue is that blizzard has absolutely no understanding of writing nuance, role of detail and very poor understanding of what they can and what they can't do. You list broken shore as this "big" victory of legion. And yet in this victory...most important people got away. In reality they killed varian, tirion (almost off-screen) and vol'jin who dies after it. Other than it few soldiers. But in the end most characters of importance runs away, and legion does nothing other than generic "Hahaha despair mortals !!!"

Are you saying Tirion, Varian, and Vol'jin *aren't* important, then? Commander of the Silver Hand, High King of the Alliance, and Warchief aren't "characters of importance" while the other racial leaders manifestly are? It kind of seems like they're suffering the same implied issue as detailed before - because they were defeated and killed off they are now complete jokes of characters while the survivors of the conflict automatically assume paramount importance nigh immediately.

And if you only add some imagination, you can make it much more crushing defeat. Remove majority of important characters that won't die. They aren't needed. Increase amount of regular soldiers. Make fight last longer, with news of more and more groups being crushed coming. Make a real desperate stand. Have PC and sylvanas/genn escape through last second portal, and be 2 only survivors of this massacre. See ? Not hard, and yet its already more impactful.

Hindsight is always 20/20. These are great ideas for a future battle where they want to up the stakes, I won't discount that. But if you argument is just "well, it could've been done better" it isn't much of an argument. That's pretty much always true, but instead of despairing over what you didn't get and being critical in hindsight, perhaps you could find merit in what you did get and take it for the gradual evolution that it is. That's the main difference between criticism used to build a thing up as opposed to criticism leveraged just to tear it down.

How about suramar ? Why not give it bad end ? Decimate the city, kill off majority of nightborne, completely destroying their civilization, and having few survivors join blood elves. In the end story goes the same way as it went, yet legions presence and story in suramar would be much more impactful.

Likely because they wanted to retain Suramar for exactly what it is being used for in 7.3.5 and BfA, the launching-off point for the Nightborne and their racial capitol. That's a lot of art assets and wonderful ambiance just to lose completely at the end of an expansion.

Blizzard shows time and time that they can't get anything right. They are almost like anti-falcom with their utter inability to create well paced story that holds itself together.

Wanna get some examples of them getting things wrong ?
1) Antorus demon quick regeneration - its completely meaningless. We never fight named character twice, so its never coming into play. And endless army has enough grunts without it. And yet it exists, as another super power that is meant to make them cool, but in the end only makes their defeat more pathetic.
2) Them being defeated by 2 ships of draenei - because you know, it was hard to copy paste 2 vindicaars on each skybox to show that army of light is massive and actually make it look like something that could threaten legion.
3) Army of light being only draenei - because actually living to idea of army of survivors by creating 2 more models or even "lightforging" something like ethreals, arrakoa or any existing model was too hard.
4) You raise some valid points with invasion points but in the end the point remain - for all we know they are uninhabited, and that doesn't make them too much of invasions. And for all laziness of blizzard, it could be solved by...adding some ruins ? And if twisting some existing doodads or retexturing them is too much of work, how about using same trick as they use in argus, and put destroyed cities in skybox ? But that would once again require thinking.
5) Then you have all "cool" factors like them having spaceships (for some reason), pure stupid factors (like them not being able to secure argus).

1.) I don't myself really understand how the Antorus thing works with demonic regeneration or reincarnation. I didn't really view it as making the Legion any more or less pathetic, per se; I just don't understand the intent and agree it's ill-defined in the story.
2.) Goes back to the argument of quality vs. quantity. The Vindicaar is a ship full of Azeroth's champions and heroes of legend, whereas the Legion except for a few exception is more an endless swarm of interchangeable mooks and grunts. The Army of the Light has also been winnowed down to pretty much its best and brightest, the remaining elite troops headed by Turalyon and Alleria. That *is* a legitimate threat to the Legion. Hell, it even proves to be a legitimate threat to a nearly-realized Titan in the end.
3.) Not sure what else it would be? It counts a Human, an Elf, and the odd inclusion of a redeemed Nathrezim in it, too. Not having a bunch of different Lightforged races was probably a budgetary or time restriction, and also plays into the whole notion of the Allied Race system that was no doubt in rough draft form when the Argus content was being designed.
4.) So you're saying they could've been more complex, detailed, and had additional story to them? I agree with you, but they're also fairly minor bits of content and they probably opted to put the time and effort in elsewhere. If I had my druthers I'd like pretty much everything in WoW to have X% more polish applied to it, but I also understand the need to focus on specific things in the name of meeting deadlines and budgets.
5.) It's difficult to "secure" a world when a powerful hero has turned your own technology against you and used it to open a planet-sized rift right next your homeworld. It would be akin to trying to have a bunch of soldiers secure the walls and battlements of your castle when your enemies emerge from a giant sinkhole they've engineered right inside your castle's walls. The Legion doesn't have enough craft to create a barrier big enough to stop the now-invading Azerothians, not to mention that they're already using many of them to try and stage their own invasion.

Tropes and cliches, are but a skeleton. Your job as writer is putting some meat and skin on them with your own work. And blizzard doesn't really do that. Resigning yourself to "well all others do that so i can as well" is pretty poor excuse, and one that will prevent you from ever improving. You say that "Good always wins despite the odds". Yet in many series, they try to do anything to soften that impression. To make it look like miracle, like a long going plan.

Star wars would be completely diffrent movie if instead of stealing death star plans, delivering them and then desperate mission to hit that one vulnerable spot, luke just boarded death star with few buddies, killed all its personel and then manuall set off self-destruction while slowly walking away in his shades.

And boy, blizzard did not bothered with any excuse for antorus. Other than us just being too heroic. Because it was so hard to come with...anything ? I dunno, have a warpstorm in nether that will disrupt communication and portals rendering antorus vulnerable making it once in a (10000) lifetime(s) chance. Here, i came with that explanation in 15 seconds. And it still would be better than nothing.

It actually is kind of a miracle, if you think about it. Remember too that storming Antorus isn't the end-all, be-all of defeating the Legion - it's not like our success in Antorus suddenly renders the Legion defunct and all the demon vanish in Fel-colored smoke. The idea of taking out Antorus is to ultimately make it so the demons can be defeated - removing their source of regeneration (or the acceleration/extension of their regeneration, however it actually works) to make them a threat that can be dealt with by conventional means. The destruction of Antorus is itself the shadow operation that makes ultimate victory possible. Being able to seal away Sargeras is more or less an unexpected bonus, and not why we're initially there to begin with.

I'm also not sure what you mean about accessing Antorus - that actually took a build-up that spans pretty much the entirety of the Argus zones and storylines. Finding the weapon from the Krokuun area that you attach to the Vindicaar, eliminating the heavy weaponry and foundries of the Antoran Wastes, and finally securing the Crown of the Triumvirate to power-up the Vindicaar so that it can create breach in the fortress that originally couldn't even be approached without certain death. There's a lot more to the story of how we get from A to B than you seem to think.

- - - Updated - - -

That is not what we see in game at all the bolded part is there to show you what we actually see which is them "almost" doing something 90% of the time rather than them gaining anything the guy has a point in that bigger stuff happened to the horde/alliance in BFA with factions actually losing their capitals than what happened when the legion tried to invade us and that is all due to "us" the heroes/champions or whatever you want to call us showing up and reking whatever threat is at hand. If anything the broken shore proved more how useless all the big lore characters are and how little it would mean if they would ever die as we can just pick up and do a better job at it than they could seeing as once we get established as class/order leaders we defeat the legion something we were not before the broken shore fiasco. The best part is how bad Blizzard is at writing now a days so the lvl of investment you feel for characters so little considering that they are flat out badly written tripe or that they destroyed characters that already were good from WC3 like Thrall and Jaina. What Legion has thought me is this and only this we are better and stronger than the lore characters, which all comes down to them almost NEVER showing and almost always telling.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. When the PC arrives at the Exodar Rakeesh and his soldiers have the run of pretty much the entire vessel and the survivors are all huddled under a dome of Light barely being maintained by no less than Prophet Velen - it's a pretty dire situation no matter how you look at it. As for the NPC deaths at the Broken Shore, I would say that yes, they certainly do seem to matter. No matter how powerful the PC Champions might prove to be they ultimately can't lead either the Horde or the Alliance, and they're not a replacement for Vol'jin, Varian, Sylvanas, or Anduin in the larger scheme of things. Power alone is not always the ultimate decider of who leads, and while the PC Champions are powerful it is more than likely that NPC heroes of legend would wipe the floors with you in a contest or a duel. The death of the heroes at the Broken Shore is designed to legitimize the Legion as a true and imminent threat to Azeroth, and the PC can't and doesn't simply replace them in any capacity.

[Dagoth Ur]

The Legion "Invasions" aren't really about the Legion trying to conquer and/or destroy the visited worlds in the first place. They're more about us invading Legion strongholds and side-campaigns to hamper or hinder their efforts. On Val, the world in question, they're not invading the ice-world for any specific purpose. It's a gulag that they're running with captured enemies being encased in ice and interrogated by the mess of Inquisitor demons hanging around - which is what the objective of freeing the prisoners is really all about. On Cengar the Legion is suborning powerful magma elementals to use in their war efforts, which we turn around and destroy. On Sangua they're draining the life essence of a massive planet-sized organism within the world because its blood may become a powerful reagent for their experiments, so we show up to take out their experiments and kill the ones involved. Bonich is just being strip-mined to feed the Legion's war-machine fabrication, Aurinor is being invaded to investigate and experiment with its strange temporal properties, and Naigtal is having its powerful indigenous lifeforms subverted as well.

That's actually true now that I think about it. Maybe it would've been more clear if they made Legion use those assets on Argus or in broken shore invasions, like those subverted magma colossals or those mushroom guys.

I know we already talked about this before, but I still feel like the main reason why many think Burning Legion felt declawed and watered down was because how they were portrayed in War3. For me, it would feel better if overall there was little more suspense and I feel like from Broken shore loss to Sargeras' imprisonment pacing was too fast. Also what I dislike is how they didn't bother to give at least one demon proper dialogue but opted for that silly threats we hear from every badguyt#1001. Not sure why they never pushed for that "We're actually fighting against the Void" angle to make Legion seem a little bit more ambiguous and less cartoonishly evil.

Realistically, "fall of legion" is probably an arc that will never feel good when fitted into one expac but considering Legion's aesthetics and theme are not as diverse as they maybe could've been, it's probably for the better. Imo they could've showed a little bit more respect for army that not so long ago was considered Warcraft's endgame.

[chrisisvacant]

That's actually true now that I think about it. Maybe it would've been more clear if they made Legion use those assets on Argus or in broken shore invasions, like those subverted magma colossals or those mushroom guys.

I know we already talked about this before, but I still feel like the main reason why many think Burning Legion felt declawed and watered down was because how they were portrayed in War3. For me, it would feel better if overall there was little more suspense and I feel like from Broken shore loss to Sargeras' imprisonment pacing was too fast. Also what I dislike is how they didn't bother to give at least one demon proper dialogue but opted for that silly threats we hear from every badguyt#1001. Not sure why they never pushed for that "We're actually fighting against the Void" angle to make Legion seem a little bit more ambiguous and less cartoonishly evil.

Realistically, "fall of legion" is probably an arc that will never feel good when fitted into one expac but considering Legion's aesthetics and theme are not as diverse as they maybe could've been, it's probably for the better. Imo they could've showed a little bit more respect for army that not so long ago was considered Warcraft's endgame.

If you look at the Legion's threat solely from the perspective of the Legion expansion, it feels quick. Yet, we have been amassing strength and fighting them on multiple fronts for the past... 15 years real time? 16?

The Legion's assault has been peppered in every single expansion that exists.

[Arrashi]

snipe

What he is trying to say is simple - legion never won anything. There never was a battle in a war that was uncontested legion victory. The one with consequences that would be visible, and undeniable. They always "almost" win. And "we barely made it" can build pressure for this long. Having one or two close encounters is ok to write villains as threat. Having 100 close encounters is not. Legion ultimately failing their every single operation makes them look like a joke.

When you look at broken shore, we lost...some soldiers. We don't know how many, we don't know how many escaped. But they killed vol'jin, tirion and varian. And then you realise that tirion was character who was irrelevant for quite some time, and died to tickle players nostalgia, not to be impactful on the world. Vol'jin also "dies for the best", and only varian is this big loss. And even then varians death is played much more as anduins personal loss than crippling blow to alliance. And given that legion failed to break azeroth spirit and ultimately lost, we can count broken shore as yet another failure.

The core problem with legion is its scale. Its not yet another band of orcs like WoD was. They aren't a cult that follows some eldritch abominations. They are endless army, bent on destruction of all live, that for past 25k years or so, destroyed countless planets and countless civilizations. This is the premise blizzard pushed at every opportunity. This is image they hyped on every step.

And this is premise legion failed to live up to. In the end they were yet another generic threat, and all the toys and powers at their disposal (and misuse of them) made them look embarassing.

They aren't enemy that should be threatened by a 2 ships of draenei and 3 lore characters. Because if they are, then we resolved this thread right here, if one subrace can handle them, demons are not a threat to azeroth anymore.

They aren't enemy that should be defeated by a frontal strike on their command. Where we valtzed right into heart of their crusade and made a mess. They never did anything that would feel like they were even trying to stop us.

In the end legion suffers very heavily from ludo narrative dissanance combined with blizzard blowing them completely out of proportion to make them look more threatening to make them look more "cool" while completely disregarding idea of "show don't tell".