Demons without Sargeras - Still a massive threat

[Magnagarde]

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?

I imagine they're keeping him in reserve for the expansion which will heavily feature Bolvar and the Scourge.

[Aucald]

How convenient for a nice invasion, a quest hub, even a raid.

As opposed to? If the Legion was supposed to be opposed in this expansion there would need to be a way to do that - I'm not sure what you're angling toward with this at the end of the day. If Argus were completely inaccessible and/or impregnable then that would be the end of the storyline with no possibility at all for success.

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Like I said, he does basically nothing except for the starting quest where he helps me taking out the only effective anti air the legion has. Oh and he kills Xera, so there is that.

Which is a lot more than you initially gave him credit for. Not to mention all that he did prior to that - helping with Gul'dan, aiding in the Cathedral, generally around the Broken Shore, aboard Kil'jaeden's ship, etc. etc.

I knew the moment Blizz had announced that we are going to Argus to kick the Legion's ass that it is going to be stupid even for WoW standards. So I'm not even surprised or dissapointed. I'm kinda glad that we have the whole legion dismantled and all their leaders killed so that we can go back to more believeable villians which are totally in our reach to defeat without deus-ex-machina writing and the villains being idiotic.

I'm not really sure what you were hoping for? The story since MoP had been arrowing in the direction of confronting the Legion once more. They couldn't really drag out the story of the Legion essentially forever - there was always going to be a tipping point where we confronted and so defeated them. Ever since the subtle retconning of Sargeras' motivations and the reveal of the Void Lords as the quintessential "bigger fish" to the Legion I've been aware the Legion's days as primary antagonist were numbered. For better or worse, their story as a primary chord in the Warcraft universe is over - much like the how the Lich King did so much to define the early days of WoW, the Legion has been the villain waiting in the wings during its middle age. Now we see if the Void and whatever horrors it holds serve as a suitable foil as WoW enters its old age.

[Deleted]

Demons as well as the Scourge have turned out to be a massive joke of a threat, even at full power they're not even dangerous, we've defeated them like they're ants. Now Deathwing however is a different story, we needed deus ex machina powers to defeat him.

[Dagoth Ur]

Not sure if it was at their strongest. Kil'Jaeden did not want to wait anymore, ignored Sargeras order and unleashed invasion on Azeroth the way he thought he could and then in final bits, Sargeras appears and just barely, we save the Azeroth. What if we were few hours late? Bye bye Azeroth.

They probably made KJ give into desperation too early. I half expected now that The Deciever is leading the invasion, he's gonna come up with some crazy unconventional strategies to fight us compared to how Archimonde ran things while he was in charge. Maybe they even planned something for him, but 7.2 turned up how it turned up so it got scrapped or something.

[Deleted]

You get the Doomhammer from a dejected and depressed Thrall who no longer feels worthy of it, and receive the Ashbringer from a broken and dying Tirion who fell in one-on-one battled against a raid boss (that the collected PC's and heroes on the Broken Shore also fail to kill). I agree that power creep is indeed a real issue insofar as WoW goes, but do you think your character is strong enough to take out a vitalized Thrall, a uninjured Tirion, Khadgar, Jaina, or anyone of the other racial leader or champion NPC's? I would say you're sorely mistaken - powerful the Champion PC may be, but not that powerful.



Azeroth already had the claim to fame of being the world to twice halt a Legion advance on the world, once during the War of the Ancients and again in the Third War. After the Legion's defeat on Argus and the banishing of Sargeras we might indeed go on to become legends on an interplanetary scale. But as I said previously, we didn't get out of the battle unscathed ourselves; not with Azeroth gravely wounded by Sargeras in a final, grievous attack.



I keep hearing that refrain, but I don't quite understand how you're applying in this particular context. You want the NPC's to take the place of the PC's and basically be the ones who do everything to move the plot forward? Well in that case you're not playing a game anymore, you're more or less watching a movie in which you play a minimal or perhaps no role in what's happening. That doesn't make for good or immersive gameplay. Playing Legion I don't feel as if the world or the events revolve around me, nor any kind of weird pubescent wish-fulfillment. I do feel like I play an intrinsic and critical part of what's happening, though; as Champion of a given Order Hall I participate in the events that form the plot of the game. There's a vast strata between wish-fulfillment and the essence of indulging in fantasy, and one of the reasons that people play games is to immerse themselves in otherwise impossible events, settings, and roles. I still play second fiddle to the true movers and shakers of the story, though; and nothing I've encountered thus far makes me think people consider me more heroic or more legendary than Khadgar, or Alleria, or Turalyon, and any of a litany of other marquee NPC's.

As for the whole novel vs. game thing, I actually agree with you. I think there are a lot of characters and a lot of story-arcs that would be better understood and better received if the information from the novels was actually represented in-game where the majority of people could consume it. A great example is Vol'jin and Taran Zhu, characters whose in-game portrayals are threadbare and misleading when missing the development they receive in "Shadows of the Horde." I respect both of these characters a great deal more than most having read that novel and getting a look into their minds and worldviews, and it puts many of their actions and words into a context I would otherwise lack.

What are you on about? we manged to avenge the death of Tirion by actually in the end killing the demon who resulted in him dying and as I said before to you they gave up/died and when we took up the mantle we persevered and won vs the Legion by doing what these two heroes of "legend" were suppose to do meaning at the very least we did their jobs better than they have/could have (Thrall gave up and Tirion died aka failed). The game keeps portraying the results of 99% of all our personal efforts to the point that when we were drafted into our factions armies (Broken Shore fiasco) before we gain any greater lvl of agency compared to what we have afterwards as a huge fail and once we have say and do our thing as most of our opposition losing by a landslide. With the closest thing to a non pure victory is us retreating from Aggramar on Argus and tbh before we got teleported away I was under the impression that my character was gone whoop is his ass. The thing is there is nothing wrong seeing us LOSE a fight/battle as you need to win many of those to win/lose a war.

And really? what about vanilla, TBC and WOTLK ? hell even cata and MoP as I feel even these are lesser offenders there we were heroes and adventures who came along and helped out the people in charge in a story were they called the shoots and we helped(helped being a big word here) make it happen for them to that of the story being they failed and we come to pick up for them not being able to pick up the slack dont you get it? I find it totally mind boggling not that I am the wielder of the Ashbringer as a long time paladin player in WoW but that I that's right "I" am the highlord of the the fucking the fucking silver hand. If wotlk is anything to go by and the fact that the silver hand is actually way bigger as it brings in ALL the faction bound paladins on top of what remained of Tirions own forces from WOTLK essentially makes the player paladin a HUGE military leader in every single sense of the word, and one that without a shadow of a doubt played a role in pushing the Legion back and ultimately defeating it(no just you character power but your power as a leader). Even WITH the faction bound paladins leaving the silver hand for BFA you are still by all means military leader of an actual army post Legion that is if all the paladins that feel faction bound feel that's bigger than what we all went though with Legion as a collective brotherhood/sisterhood. Ultimately you still mattered even in xpacks like TBC and WOTLK to the overall story arc (lets face it vanillas story wasent exactly umm there so to speak) we did all of this without being leaders or commanders but being the champions of our heroes who can have story arcs and character development and gain more emotional investment than what you have with your character because of the amount of time you have on it on /played.


Now after Legion I KNOW I can pick up if Anduin/Sylvannas dies and no one takes his/her places after all my paladin is a battle hardened commander (WoD) and a class leader that later on led entire armies to bear on the Legion (in Legion ofc). I dont know why my character would WANT to join either side as war just causes more destruction to the members of my class order and after all I am LEADER not a king/tyrant so my goal should be to see to the best of my men&women who serve under me and to honor the spirit of Tirion who kept himself neutral. Also don't get me wrong I in general don't like orcs but that's me but I wouldn't do something like that as I have a position that is bigger than my own personal greverences. And lastly I would like to point out another thing you might say "well ALL of the are leaving and disbanding since the Legion are gone" nope plague lands are done yet there are still undead and demons out there even in the wake of the Legions defeat not to mention if you think ZERO people are going to stick with you after you being the leader that helped in person and on the battlefield to best the Legion then sorry but that a weak ass argument to pull. These are just SOME of the huge assgapping planet size plot holes giving our characters such HUGE and important roles rather than us getting X and Y artifact and being our class halls penultimate champion(that's right we could have been the best/strongest of our class and still be given all these artifact weapons).

[Arrashi]

snip

All right, lets get to work.

Illidan is all over argus...and by this you mean he appears in intro and than just stands in antoran vastes, doing heroic deep of fighting one or two felbats. And then he stands and look at our torment on heroic coven.
Magni fights...literally one demon. That all he does.
Turalyon and others help us kill singular random demons.
Thats...not much. I mean for an argument of "ships full of legendary heroes that can threaten legion" i would at least expect turalyon going all out iron tarkus on gorothi worldbreaker. As it is, our jolly part didn't seem world threatening.
And no, those characters, dont need to be main focus. They should hovewer do something that justifies their presence and makes it memorable like velen does. Not just assisting us with few mobs.

The problem with tirion is that..he just is there. He isn't part of story, and his death quite frankly has no effect on it. Its blizzard just using him for an emotional moment since they may as well after he finished his own story. Tearjerker will be tearjerker.

Vol'jin is even worse because you can clearly see blizz just wanting to get rid off him. Varian is much better than those two, but once again, his death doesn't have enough consequences. We don't hear lamentation of women. Anduins role is once again downplayed, and he himself has no role in legions downfall. In the end, as story went, them dying had absolutely no impact on how story went. So its difficult to attribute their deaths to be those great legion validating victories. They were mostly your generic deaths to make you mad at villain.

And i do find varians death super dramatic. Its very...bishie. But seriously, its not about it not being sad, its about it not being such great legion victory.

As for rest of deaths:
Ysera is xavius not legion.
Neither is cenarius. And he got better.
Morgaine death has nothing to do with legion. Its more or less "im darion morgaine and this is jackass" going wrong.
As for rest of those characters...who ? I mean, if we gonna treat killing rable as some achievement, then yes, even legion seems threatening.

And "causing some damage" isn't really what i would use to describe activities of "world ending endless army".

When im talking about legion armade i don't mean the one from pre expansion event. Im talking about all those ships we see in netherspace in karahzan. Hell, 2 of them participate in fight, while many more warps in and out.

Its not about them not expecting counter-attack, its about them clearly not being able to deal with it any way. We straight up waltzed in and out. You would think that with proffesions like "portalmancer" they would be able to...sound allarm ? Recall some forces ? Not get overwhelmed by 2 ships of draenei ?

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They probably made KJ give into desperation too early. I half expected now that The Deciever is leading the invasion, he's gonna come up with some crazy unconventional strategies to fight us compared to how Archimonde ran things while he was in charge. Maybe they even planned something for him, but 7.2 turned up how it turned up so it got scrapped or something.

Its hilarious that he seems to be on verge of tears when we reach avatar in ToS. He is like "Why can't i win for once". It also seems that description of that mini-ship pet may be very lore accurate. KJ really needed something to cheer himself after all his losses on azeroth.

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Seriously reminds me of this.

The biggest challenge was getting ourselves motivated to actually lift our asses and end legion threat.

[Dagoth Ur]

Its hilarious that he seems to be on verge of tears when we reach avatar in ToS. He is like "Why can't i win for once". It also seems that description of that mini-ship pet may be very lore accurate. KJ really needed something to cheer himself after all his losses on azeroth.

He's probably the guy I feel most bad about. Gul'dan at least had his gloat moment at the start when he melted Varian. KJ honestly felt like those 4th wall breaking characters that know they cannot win so he just came to Azeroth hoping he would get killed.

After that 7.2 trailer I though "oh shit now we pissed KJ off" but then Legionfall didn't get its own campaign and KJ ended up being just another cool raid boss name.

[Arrashi]

He's probably the guy I feel most bad about. Gul'dan at least had his gloat moment at the start when he melted Varian. KJ honestly felt like those 4th wall breaking characters that know they cannot win so he just came to Azeroth hoping he would get killed.

After that 7.2 trailer I though "oh shit now we pissed KJ off" but then Legionfall didn't get its own campaign and KJ ended up being just another cool raid boss name.

I half expected him to go all out "Why are we still here ? Just to suffer ? The body i lost, the gul'dans i lost...its its like they are still here. You feel it too don't you ?"

[Aucald]

What are you on about? we manged to avenge the death of Tirion by actually in the end killing the demon who resulted in him dying and as I said before to you they gave up/died and when we took up the mantle we persevered and won vs the Legion by doing what these two heroes of "legend" were suppose to do meaning at the very least we did their jobs better than they have/could have (Thrall gave up and Tirion died aka failed). The game keeps portraying the results of 99% of all our personal efforts to the point that when we were drafted into our factions armies (Broken Shore fiasco) before we gain any greater lvl of agency compared to what we have afterwards as a huge fail and once we have say and do our thing as most of our opposition losing by a landslide. With the closest thing to a non pure victory is us retreating from Aggramar on Argus and tbh before we got teleported away I was under the impression that my character was gone whoop is his ass. The thing is there is nothing wrong seeing us LOSE a fight/battle as you need to win many of those to win/lose a war.

We only kill Krosus as part of a *raid*, a literal battalion of Champions all equipped with Artifacts of extreme power. If you discount death as "failure" it's not really a wonder you're not see any drama or registering losses in the narrative sense. Every example of strife, adversity, or near-death consequences just seems to be brushed under the rung as unimportant or non-relevant. And I don't think Champion pulled their weapon in the sense that they were going to stomp down Aggramar himself - we know from Aggramar being a raid encounter that a single PC wasn't going to make much a dent in him. The hero was preparing to fight, sure; but it would've been a completely lost cause and it's sheer luck that they get teleported out before Taeshalach smears them across the surface of Argus.

And really? what about vanilla, TBC and WOTLK ? hell even cata and MoP as I feel even these are lesser offenders there we were heroes and adventures who came along and helped out the people in charge in a story were they called the shoots and we helped(helped being a big word here) make it happen for them to that of the story being they failed and we come to pick up for them not being able to pick up the slack dont you get it? I find it totally mind boggling not that I am the wielder of the Ashbringer as a long time paladin player in WoW but that I that's right "I" am the highlord of the the fucking the fucking silver hand. If wotlk is anything to go by and the fact that the silver hand is actually way bigger as it brings in ALL the faction bound paladins on top of what remained of Tirions own forces from WOTLK essentially makes the player paladin a HUGE military leader in every single sense of the word, and one that without a shadow of a doubt played a role in pushing the Legion back and ultimately defeating it(no just you character power but your power as a leader). Even WITH the faction bound paladins leaving the silver hand for BFA you are still by all means military leader of an actual army post Legion that is if all the paladins that feel faction bound feel that's bigger than what we all went though with Legion as a collective brotherhood/sisterhood. Ultimately you still mattered even in xpacks like TBC and WOTLK to the overall story arc (lets face it vanillas story wasent exactly umm there so to speak) we did all of this without being leaders or commanders but being the champions of our heroes who can have story arcs and character development and gain more emotional investment than what you have with your character because of the amount of time you have on it on /played.

If your argument is that the game has a problem now that the PC's function as leaders (of a sort) and this somehow hobbles or limits how the story can be told, I would partly agree with you. I acknowledge and accept there has been a feeling of power-creep as concerns the PC Commander/General/Champion for some time. But if the argument is that this sense of power-creep somehow invalidates every loss, failure, or enemy victory then I don't agree - for all the reasons detailed above and earlier. We *have* lost engagements - we've had serious losses as a matter of a fact. That we won the day through skill, well-applied power, a generous helping of luck, and the active participation of a pantheon of literal demigods should also be taken into account.

Now after Legion I KNOW I can pick up if Anduin/Sylvannas dies and no one takes his/her places after all my paladin is a battle hardened commander (WoD) and a class leader that later on led entire armies to bear on the Legion (in Legion ofc). I dont know why my character would WANT to join either side as war just causes more destruction to the members of my class order and after all I am LEADER not a king/tyrant so my goal should be to see to the best of my men&women who serve under me and to honor the spirit of Tirion who kept himself neutral. Also don't get me wrong I in general don't like orcs but that's me but I wouldn't do something like that as I have a position that is bigger than my own personal greverences. And lastly I would like to point out another thing you might say "well ALL of the are leaving and disbanding since the Legion are gone" nope plague lands are done yet there are still undead and demons out there even in the wake of the Legions defeat not to mention if you think ZERO people are going to stick with you after you being the leader that helped in person and on the battlefield to best the Legion then sorry but that a weak ass argument to pull. These are just SOME of the huge assgapping planet size plot holes giving our characters such HUGE and important roles rather than us getting X and Y artifact and being our class halls penultimate champion(that's right we could have been the best/strongest of our class and still be given all these artifact weapons).

I am sure the PC will continue to have a critical role to play in BfA and beyond - we're actually already aware of a major part they play in the form of serving as a diplomat to the Allied Races who will be joining us in BfA. But that argument is really neither here nor there, as we're talking about whether or not the Legion ever constituted a threat to us, and in the more general sense whether the narrative actually highlights the struggles that the heroes must go through in order to achieve victory.

[yetgdhfgh]

If they cant invade worlds thanks to argus being no longer a port i suspect they will be about as much as a threat than that 3 zombies in eastern plaguelands is!!

[SirCowdog]

I'm just waiting for Illidan to step up to Sargeras and take his helmet, saying: "There must always be a Dark Titan!" as he puts it on his own head.

xD

[Dastreus]

Over the months spent on Argus, I am sure we've perma-killed thousands of Demons, since they died in the Nether. Just gotta kill them if on Azeroth, then kill again in nether.

[Aucald]

Illidan is all over argus...and by this you mean he appears in intro and than just stands in antoran vastes, doing heroic deep of fighting one or two felbats. And then he stands and look at our torment on heroic coven. Magni fights...literally one demon. That all he does. Turalyon and others help us kill singular random demons.

He's *active* in the zone and doing things - your only nitpick is the limitations on what he's actually doing. Illidan isn't running around wrecking major NPC's because that's kind of the player's job in the sense of actually playing the game. Though I admit I would've liked to see more in that vein, more activity and general organic liveliness, I also recognize that that's been a foible of WoW's game systems from pretty much day #1. You can make the same argument for Magni in Antorus - but at least he is there, and he's active. If you take scale into account (which is always something one should do with WoW in general) it's tough to say just how many demons that actually stands for in his total time there. Turalyon actually accompanies us as a temporary guardian type NPC (still a novel rarity in WoW) as we saw through the Talgathi forces. Not too mention helping out in Krokuun and Antorus.

Thats...not much. I mean for an argument of "ships full of legendary heroes that can threaten legion" i would at least expect turalyon going all out iron tarkus on gorothi worldbreaker. As it is, our jolly part didn't seem world threatening. And no, those characters, dont need to be main focus. They should hovewer do something that justifies their presence and makes it memorable like velen does. Not just assisting us with few mobs.

So the argument is one of scale, not actually of presence? Sure, I can agree that in hindsight there was more that could've been done to add epic touches here and there. Illidan and Turalyon teaming up to take down the patroling Garothi Worldbreaker is a good example. Having a recurring vignette where they accompany you in clearing out an area of demonic proxies with witty banter and repartee. Those would all be nice things to see in the future, and I hope we do see things like that. What I am saying was that Legion's presentation and storytelling is actually a bold step forward from the rather static and "on rails" type storytelling we've seen in the past. Is it the end-all, be-all of storytelling? No it is not, but it's an improvement, and one I hope is carried forward. The impression I get from this back and forth is that you desire more to whip it to death for its flaws, beyond the pale of what I consider fair criticism. Fair criticism would be to say that the Legion as an antagonist didn't live up to the hype across the years, and I would agree that's a somewhat fair sentiment to have. But to say that they simply fell over before and offered no challenge at all, and that nothing was sacrificed to achieve victory? That facts themselves don't bear that out.

The problem with tirion is that..he just is there. He isn't part of story, and his death quite frankly has no effect on it. Its blizzard just using him for an emotional moment since they may as well after he finished his own story. Tearjerker will be tearjerker.

I'm not sure what you're looking for there. I've explained how he's part of the story of the Broken Shore previously, and his death definitely has an effect for those who play through the Paladin Order Hall campaign (at least those with any kind of investment in the story to begin with). Fair's fair if you were personally unaffected by it, but don't presume to speak for everyone in the same breath. I was surprised and shocked to see Tirion go - and it served the purpose (for which I think it was meant) of underscoring just how high the stakes had gotten. This whole "he died for the sentimental lulz" tack just seems irrationally cynical, at least to me.

Vol'jin is even worse because you can clearly see blizz just wanting to get rid off him. Varian is much better than those two, but once again, his death doesn't have enough consequences. We don't hear lamentation of women. Anduins role is once again downplayed, and he himself has no role in legions downfall. In the end, as story went, them dying had absolutely no impact on how story went. So its difficult to attribute their deaths to be those great legion validating victories. They were mostly your generic deaths to make you mad at villain.

And i do find varians death super dramatic. Its very...bishie. But seriously, its not about it not being sad, its about it not being such great legion victory.

I can agree with you in part, here - I also felt as if Vol'jin's death (especially the manner in which it played out) felt somewhat artificial or external. Not as much in that the developers wanted to get rid of him, but in that his death was a required parity to Varian's death. If an Alliance leader dies then a Horde leader must also die. But that quibble aside I don't agree at all that their deaths had no impact on the story. They're literally *part* of the story's fabric - the failure of the Horde and Alliance at the Broken Shore leads to the formation of the Order Halls and sets both Legionfall and the Argus campaign in motion. I don't know where this whole notion of "generic deaths" is coming from - if your High King is reduced to ashes by the most visible villain of the story-arc (and presuming you care at all about the story in the first place) then you're going to have a reaction to it. And given all the various threads we've had about it here, and the fact that it's still being talked about and analyzed from every angle, I think it's safe to say their deaths go well beyond being generic or having no impact.

As for rest of deaths:
Ysera is xavius not legion.
Neither is cenarius. And he got better.
Morgaine death has nothing to do with legion. Its more or less "im darion morgaine and this is jackass" going wrong.
As for rest of those characters...who ? I mean, if we gonna treat killing rable as some achievement, then yes, even legion seems threatening.

Xavius is partially allied with the Legion (as evidenced by the presence of demon support at the Temple of Elune), and regardless of his true allegiances the death of Ysera and the suborning of Cenarius play well into the Legion's hands. Darion dies in the counter effort, albeit not directly against the Legion. He still sacrifices himself for the cause of the Death Knight Order Hall, which is still the defeat of the Legion and the protection of Azeroth. As for the rest I think you're simply discounting them as unimportant again. The charge was that no one died in the effort against the Legion, and the point is that multiple people did, some of them quite well-known and some of them newer characters.

And "causing some damage" isn't really what i would use to describe activities of "world ending endless army".

When im talking about legion armade i don't mean the one from pre expansion event. Im talking about all those ships we see in netherspace in karahzan. Hell, 2 of them participate in fight, while many more warps in and out.

Its not about them not expecting counter-attack, its about them clearly not being able to deal with it any way. We straight up waltzed in and out. You would think that with proffesions like "portalmancer" they would be able to...sound allarm ? Recall some forces ? Not get overwhelmed by 2 ships of draenei?

It's a relatively lightly defended target due to being overextended and fighting their Crusade across an unknown number of fronts (far more than just Azeroth at the moment as demonstrated by the Invasion Points). The Vindicaar and Xenedar represent a surgical strike on the Legion's homeworld, not too dissimilar to the tactic of the Trojan Horse being used to get inside the defenses of Troy. While the Legion is busy with their invasion of Azeroth (and elsewhere), and capitalizing on the fresh loss of their remaining leader Kil'jaeden, the forces of the Legionfall Concordance (Azeroth's best of the best) and the Army of the Light's elite and battle-hardened forces conduct a series of missions in the heart of enemy territory to cut a hole into the defenses of the primary fortification of the enemy and source of their power to cut off the head of the beast while its limbs are otherwise occupied.

And we don't "waltz in and out," as I've said before. There are sacrifices we suffer and losses incurred as the operation is carried out. If not for the aid of the Titans we wouldn't have succeeded at all - Argus would've crushed the Champions of Legionfall himself and that would've been the end of Azeroth. Even in our victory we have loss. Xe'ra was destroyed in a desperate gambit to effect the campaign as she thought it best, Illidan was lost in the Seat of the Pantheon as Sargeras' jailer. The Pantheon itself is lost for much the same reason, sealing themselves within the Seat to contain Sargeras for all time. Azeroth is wounded and its world-soul left bleeding out in a final spiteful and retributive strike by the Lord of the Legion. BfA starts us off on quite a bitter note, all told - our lot far worse than anything implied by "waltzing in and out" or the Legion taking it like a chump.

[Charge me Doctor]

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.

scourge has some sort of hivemind, burning legion does not. Without argus, access to portals, costant fighting between their ranks they'll be as dangerous as Orks without a warboss in wh40k

[Hubbl3]

I'm not really sure what you were hoping for? The story since MoP had been arrowing in the direction of confronting the Legion once more. They couldn't really drag out the story of the Legion essentially forever - there was always going to be a tipping point where we confronted and so defeated them. Ever since the subtle retconning of Sargeras' motivations and the reveal of the Void Lords as the quintessential "bigger fish" to the Legion I've been aware the Legion's days as primary antagonist were numbered. For better or worse, their story as a primary chord in the Warcraft universe is over - much like the how the Lich King did so much to define the early days of WoW, the Legion has been the villain waiting in the wings during its middle age. Now we see if the Void and whatever horrors it holds serve as a suitable foil as WoW enters its old age.

I was hoping for a believeable immersive story and a bittersweet victory. And that didn't happen. We kicked the Legion's ass so hard that it's not even funny anymore. They have accomblished nothing at all while losing everything. Our heroes are cracking jokes and being smug in the face of a full scale invasion and we lose basically no one and nothing.

For example I was surprised how Val'sharah started. The nightmare corrupting the ancients, Cenarius and Ysera and we are forced to kill all of them, and Malfuriun gets kidnapped? Wow! Didn't think Blizz would really go that way.
But then Ysera does not really die and gets "ascended" or whatever by Elune and even helps us in the Xavius fight. Cenarius just get's cleansed by the Malfurion after we distract him a little bit and Malfurion has time to crack jokes and talk shit at Xavius while he is a captive... what? Oh and the rest of the ancients are happily chilling out in the dream. The zone started so good and then everything that happens does undone in the raid and the dungeon.

Forshadowing for Argus. The Death of Xera doesn't matter, our heroes are being smug and are just passively standing around or "helping" us in minor quests and that we obliterate the entire Legion doesn't come with any price at all because they are all idiots.

Yes the Legion had to end some day. But I'm not sure why you are satisfied with how it ended or how they are portrayed in-game. The entire thing is just dissapointing.

[Kelathos]

Without Sargeras in command, without Argus as a re-spawn factory, perhaps Demons are more of a chaotic natural force instead of an organized and rapidly re-spawning army? Maybe Fel is an ever present and slowly spreading corruption through the cosmos, and it was Sargeras that honed and sharpened it into a finely tuned killing machine. Without him and his war machine, the threat of fel infused creatures just isn't what it used to be?

[corebit]

It's hard to translate the level of threat and danger the Legion (or any other villain) conveys in an MMO. To truly do that the game would have to include systems like permadeath and make even small Legion mobs as elite and require a group of adventurers to defeat.

[Kiri]

It's hard to translate the level of threat and danger the Legion (or any other villain) conveys in an MMO. To truly do that the game would have to include systems like permadeath and make even small Legion mobs as elite and require a group of adventurers to defeat.

That. During the first assault on the broken shore we likely lost thousands of lives without even permanently killing a single demon. Tonnes more died holding back demons while we were taking out the high-value targets in the Tomb and in Antorus. But that is literal background noise. All that we experience in the foreground is killing demons. Always playing as the special one simply means one loses sight just how dangerous threats are to 99% of the population.

[Deleted]

For an enemy to be powerful and menacing, they have to have more and proper wins, killing characters who are important, winning battles. And these things you have to experience directly in the game. Either through quests or cutscenes. The death of more important characters already fails, because Blizzard is way too lazy and bad to even create more interesting ones. Aside from that, Blizzard showed some battles, but why, if you want the Legion to be menacing and strong, did we not see some Battles who went like the Halls of Reflection, where we have to flee, because we stand no chance. Especially on Argus itself or / and in the Antorus Raid. It simply comes of as a total joke. The same the Void Lords and Azshara and N'zoth will be, if Blizzard doesn't change that.

The whole concept of this infinite army is retarded from the get go. In WC 3, the Burning Legion was described as very large, but not they were also intelligent, strong, hard to beat and their average soldier was a lot stronger compared to the average soldier of most other races. This part might still be true. The average Man'ari Eredar seem to be a lot stronger compared to the average fighter of the playable races. The Heroes need legendary weapons, Titan Artifacts and in the end the direct help of the Pantheon to succeed. But still the point above stands, who don't see the strength of the Legion or feel threatened. Even at the Broken Shore, you already new that this will probably be the only more or less major victory for the Legion. No comparison to their actions in the War of the Ancients or in WC 3. With WoW they're no longer all of that. They seems neither to be particularly powerful, nore do they use competent tactics and strategy's. And they only count on their infinite numbers and that they can get revived. Such an enemy is boring as fuck. It doesn't have to evolve, it doesn't have to learn anything. And truly, it wouldn't have had the successes the story mentioned. Like conquering most of the universe (which i doubt anyway, because there seem to be fully void corrupted planets with massive Old Gods on them, right next to fucking Argus). Such a force would have been defeated long before. Sometimes i think the minds of the Blizzard Employee's are those of little kids, who find an unending, numberless army, which brings not much else to the table, cool and impressive. But these are grown men and women. Hard to comprehend for me, this whole fiasco of WoW Villains in general.

Another big part which is missing for me are epic duels between Demon Commanders and named Heroes of Azeroth or Groups of named Heroes. In which those Heroes get stomped or have major losses. Why for example does the Army of the Light, these crappy Draenei who didn't manage to accomplish anything mayor against the Legion for thousands of years, not lose any named NPC's. And why is the Draenei Ship full of named NPCs, while most see barely any action. Why does Blizzard never use these oh so dangerous Raid Bosses outside of the Raid, where they could show up und kick the ass of the player and the allied NPC's. Why? Mysteriously, the Heroes and named NPC's of Azeroth can move around on Argus, from the Vindicar and back to it, but the really big Demon "Heroes" are nailed to the spot in their raid. I barely have any words to describe this nonsense. It clearly shows Blizzard is either lazy or super uninspired. Or both. Or they don't really care for the Lore / Characters really. Probably all of it. Otherwise we wouldn't have this result.

All of this takes all the excitement out of the game. Because i always know beforehand, that i will never really get my ass kicked as a player, by any villain. The only exception is the Alliance vs Horde Conflict, because in this case, we have players on both side. This makes the Red vs Blue conflict the most exciting, because the possibility of wins and losses on both sides is at least a bit higher. Although even here, in the end it always looks like nothing has changed.

[Deleted]

We only kill Krosus as part of a *raid*, a literal battalion of Champions all equipped with Artifacts of extreme power. If you discount death as "failure" it's not really a wonder you're not see any drama or registering losses in the narrative sense. Every example of strife, adversity, or near-death consequences just seems to be brushed under the rung as unimportant or non-relevant. And I don't think Champion pulled their weapon in the sense that they were going to stomp down Aggramar himself - we know from Aggramar being a raid encounter that a single PC wasn't going to make much a dent in him. The hero was preparing to fight, sure; but it would've been a completely lost cause and it's sheer luck that they get teleported out before Taeshalach smears them across the surface of Argus.



If your argument is that the game has a problem now that the PC's function as leaders (of a sort) and this somehow hobbles or limits how the story can be told, I would partly agree with you. I acknowledge and accept there has been a feeling of power-creep as concerns the PC Commander/General/Champion for some time. But if the argument is that this sense of power-creep somehow invalidates every loss, failure, or enemy victory then I don't agree - for all the reasons detailed above and earlier. We *have* lost engagements - we've had serious losses as a matter of a fact. That we won the day through skill, well-applied power, a generous helping of luck, and the active participation of a pantheon of literal demigods should also be taken into account.



I am sure the PC will continue to have a critical role to play in BfA and beyond - we're actually already aware of a major part they play in the form of serving as a diplomat to the Allied Races who will be joining us in BfA. But that argument is really neither here nor there, as we're talking about whether or not the Legion ever constituted a threat to us, and in the more general sense whether the narrative actually highlights the struggles that the heroes must go through in order to achieve victory.

What are you on about? the ONLY thing us going in as a so called battalion(if that was what actually happened) proved here is that Tirion was a fool for engaging Krusus alone nothing more and nothing less if I would go 1v1 I d die as well its not a way to measure the power lvl between these heroes of legend and our on characters that's the point is it? we did everything smarter and at the end of the BETTER than what these heroes did. I dont question that people like Thrall or Tirion are strong that but I do question the way blizzard present their actions and results compared to us seeing as we directly fill these two heroes roles in Legion. The thing is that I am using the term failure not in what it does to the narrative but to show just how powerful we actually are.

I would like to comment on a so called "boss" being a raid boss its clearly purely gameplay aspect of all of this as raids are anywhere between 10 to 30 people hell I can go do some raids now with 5 people, what is even the real versions of bosses? go look what the bosses are like when they are on farm even on mythic do they even have a chance? I think not I see them as my weekly punching bag. This goes hand in hand with why does my paladin have COOLDOWNS on abilities this makes no sense.

As for the last part did you read properly? no offense here but I said my character has power over a big ass army and if I find it not in my interest why would I even participate in up coming war at all? Nothing can make the highlord do this and there is precedent for neither side ever trying to make the last highlord join one side or the other even though the conflicts of cata and the actual war that happened in MoP happened Tirion choose to remain out of the conflict. Maybe a class leader like the hunters have lesser obligations and power and are more focused on their on personal agendas hell even the warlocks make sense to take a personal stake in all of but even then why would my/their characters care? dont you get it? I know we will have a big role in BFA thats been Blizzards MO for a few xpacks now and it is to give us a direct role in the conflicts, but now with Legion making some of the classes heads of big armies what is stopping all the champions of Legion you know the HEROES of the legion war from just going together telling both sides to clam the fuck down and then telling them something seems amiss here and for all we know demons like dreadlords could be behind what happened(I mean I dont think our characters in game know much about voidlords so). Why am I forced to run around following what either Sylvannas or Andiun tell me to do? I made the Legion look like a joke all of Legion why would I throw my position and dissreguard my own agency and power god gifted to me by Blizzard themselves?

You want to know what the Legion are now? they are NOTHING before us as I said before. They should if they had brains be running as far away as they can from Azeroth and demons that our warlocks summon into the world should know to not try to defy us. Weather or not all their commanders were at Argus matters little all as all of the VERY top were there and that in itself should send a clear message. Hell all of their forces not being there means little as the top brass of the Legion were so powerful that they could keep control over those wast armies and at the end of the we laid them low and now with Argus gone (the titan) death is like a real death you wont have demons spouting "THIS WAS MERELY A SETBACK SEE YOU NEXT WEEK MORTALS !!!"