Why was Legion considered so successful?

[Gorronor]

It something for everyone and, if you did something, anything, it was rewarding.

>Most of the raids were top-notch and entertaining, with amazing art direction in the armor sets that people had reason to go for, i.e., Nighthold Pally set really stands out to me personally.
>The class direction, while pruned talent-wise, made up for this by immersing you in Class Fantasy and giving you hours of additional content to do. These storylines also involved characters you hadn't really seen in a long time or in great detail. Compare the Horde War Story having Nathanos everywhere to having to go save Aponi Brightmane on a Legion prison world or having to work alongside Magatha Grimtotem to prevent an ancient artifact from falling into Legion hands.
>Suramar. Just everything about Suramar. Was there annoying time-gating? Yes. Was it worth it for what we got in Suramar? Arguably, yes. If all time-gated content was on par with the Suramar experience, I'd venture that people would be more okay with it.
>The dungeons were fun to run, and M+ offered semi-casual/semi-serious players the opportunity to take part in end-game level content without having to take part in raids. In a way, M+ was what casualization should be: something that doesn't negatively impact the experience of hardcore players while offering something difficult, albeit accessible and rewarding, to more casual players.
>PvP was rebalanced. People forget how horribly imbalanced WoD PvP was and Legion managed to fine-tune it back to a more manageable and balanced imbalance.
>World Quests were a refreshing take on dailies and were fun. They were rewarding too, and you had reason to want to take part in them, but you were not limited in your choices.
>It wasn't WoD

I think one of the under-recognized failings of BfA is how unrewarding playing is compared to the drop in content compared to what Legion offered. World quests aren't worth the effort it takes to get to them, Warfronts and Island Expeditions aren't entertaining or rewarding enough to take part in, the Heart of Azeroth isn't really worth the depressing AP grind it takes to maximize it, the story isn't really rewarding to take part in. It's not rewarding to log-on to a laggy zone, to do unrewarding amounts of damage on mobs and bosses that offer unrewarding loot drops, for unrewarding world quests, that offer unrewarding returns on effort investment. I spend an hour doing a bunch of world quests, spending most of that time on loading screens, for 300 faction XP, 30g, and a piece of garbage equipment that I have no control over what it may be. Legion was rewarding, whereas BfA is not.

[GreenJesus]

It wasn't besides the theme of the BURNing legion. It was a disaster but was sandwiched between WoD and BFA so it's looked at fondly. legion was a shit show hid behind an epic theme just like wrath. Legendary acquisition, leveling zones being mostly isolated from each other, 7.2 "content" besides mage tower, emerald nightmare being easiest raid ever released, the netherlight crucible and Argus gear vendor being SUper rng, ridiculous titanforging and arcanocrydtal being OP whole expansion for many classes, the army of the light only being draenai when it was teased they were supposed to be a mix of tons of different races across the cosmos, illidan never meeting tyrande/Malfurion, an illusion what are you hiding, aff locks and boomkins being broken on mythic coven, the difficulty curve on Avatar and Kiljaedan requiring tons of rogues, pvp had templates and you couldn't choose stats anymore, classes were pruned and started a trend of "rental gear" to make up for shallow class design, world quests just being "find star on map and kill it with *insert one of 5 talking head voice lines*,And more!

Oh yeah.. Turalyon being a draenai weeb and Alleria being a "void elf" /spit

[Zandalariprelate]

Single player content was a huge deal for many people(table mission, halls, artifacts, challenge tower, etc) and the AP was a nice hamster wheel when they got it right in 7.2

[Khaza-R]

Legion was only successful in the sense of adding tons of new things to the game and attracting attention.

But as a whole, it wasn’t a successful expansion. 7.2 and 7.3 while good didn’t really keep the interest of the playerbase

[HordeFanboy]

Legion is the worst expansion
It destroyed class and gameplay design

[Prozach]

legion was a shit show hid behind an epic theme just like wrath

You kind of lost me there. Even the purists agree that Wrath was a great expansion. And the comparison couldn't be more inaccurate; the game is drastically different now than it was in Wrath and back then it retained most of the Vanilla/BC mechanics, if not the best iterations of them.

[anon5123]

emerald nightmare being easiest raid ever released

...but that's not Naxx10/25.

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it retained most of the Vanilla/BC mechanics

No it didn't. WOTLK is where the class homogenization really started happening.

As a whole, WOTLK was good (except naxx10/25 being woefully undertuned and ToC being the worst raid ever created), but it's where the game really started to change from what it was in vanilla/TBC, and then Cata is what pushed it over the edge into what we have today. There's a reason why the term "wrath baby" was coined.

[unbound]

Honestly, I saw the same sort of gating, rep grinding, types of questing and content in genera--albeit with a different protagonist--that I do now. What was it that earned it "one of the best xpacs in WoW"?

Substantially more work was obvious.

Heck, just look at the professions alone in Legion...it was all there from launch. There was even a legendary fishing pole. In BfA, it wasn't until 8.2 that they added much of interest to professions.

Compare the artifact as well. The necklace is little more than static stats (only now are they looking to add essences as Blizz panics over the massive sub loss), and while you might be critical of the artifact weapon from Legion, there was clearly a lot more effort put into it from the beginning of the expansion which gave a power and some optional paths...and you could play with all two through four different ones for your class.

Legion brought class halls which included more interesting table missions, as well as a much more compelling Order Advancement system. Most of the time in BfA, I was seeing only 2 to 5 missions on the table for the same boring things, and the War Campaign Advancement system is largely pointless (mostly impacting scenarios...er, Warfronts); and nothing comparable to the class halls.

Most of the classes and specs in Legion got rather notable changes from WoD. BfA changed very little for most classes compared to Legion, and many of those few changes made the classes worse.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't see Legion as the best expansion at all. But to call BfA essentially the same as Legion is to ignore some major differences.

[Daffan]

Honestly, I saw the same sort of gating, rep grinding, types of questing and content in genera--albeit with a different protagonist--that I do now. What was it that earned it "one of the best xpacs in WoW"?

Because WoD was so bad ppl saw it with ruby lenses.

Legion was pretty meh too (Same core problem as all Modern WoW) but it dressed real nice.

[Andonais]

Because WoD was an abomination and anything compared would be good.

[RobertMugabe]

Honestly, I saw the same sort of gating, rep grinding, types of questing and content in genera--albeit with a different protagonist--that I do now. What was it that earned it "one of the best xpacs in WoW"?

tbh the only shitty gating I remember was the 7.2 Broken Shore questline, but other than that Legion didn't really have that. I mean sure Suramar was time gated as well, but it was locked behind rep (which we've always had) and each "step" always unlocked a lot of content. Same thing with Argus (and it was also fully unlocked after 3 weeks).

Also Legion is well recevied, simply because it had, well... a lot of good content and it really felt fresh. BfA is like Legion in most ways, but it kinda offers less good content at max level (BfA has the quantity because of Warfronts and IE, but both of these features are bad) and overall the gameplay feels like a step backwards.

[GreenJesus]

Substantially more work was obvious.

Heck, just look at the professions alone in Legion...it was all there from launch. There was even a legendary fishing pole. In BfA, it wasn't until 8.2 that they added much of interest to professions.

Compare the artifact as well. The necklace is little more than static stats (only now are they looking to add essences as Blizz panics over the massive sub loss), and while you might be critical of the artifact weapon from Legion, there was clearly a lot more effort put into it from the beginning of the expansion which gave a power and some optional paths...and you could play with all two through four different ones for your class.

Legion brought class halls which included more interesting table missions, as well as a much more compelling Order Advancement system. Most of the time in BfA, I was seeing only 2 to 5 missions on the table for the same boring things, and the War Campaign Advancement system is largely pointless (mostly impacting scenarios...er, Warfronts); and nothing comparable to the class halls.

Most of the classes and specs in Legion got rather notable changes from WoD. BfA changed very little for most classes compared to Legion, and many of those few changes made the classes worse.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't see Legion as the best expansion at all. But to call BfA essentially the same as Legion is to ignore some major differences.

As well as the fact the legion class campaign had a clear goal of defeating the legion. The war campaign feels pointless since we know we are just going to fight our own faction again anyway and the whole thing feels pointless. Literally Every thing we achieved in 8.0/8.1 was undone by the alliance in 8.1 or a traitor pen pal of Boi King.

[Osmeric]

Legion was so-so. PvP in Legion, for example, was a disaster.

[Asrialol]

Legendary system that actually created incentive to do (repeatable) content.

[iamthedevil]

It was refreshing and engaging.

[Soon-TM]

Legion had many of the flaws of BfA, but not as severe. It also had a !@#$load more content, which was generally good (Boring Shore aside), and the theme was one of my favourites ever. Bonus points for rightfully tossing the AvH nonsense aside, it was old by then and should have been abandoned lorewise after everyone was cuddling together in order halls - another of Legion's high points. It is really baffling how they were forgotten after Legion...

One day, I am the !@#$ing Archmage, leader of my Order, and the following day a freaking puppet from Sylvanas is bossing me around as if I was a newly recruited grunt ffs.

[Marxman]

I think a lot of people forget how bad 7.0/7.1 were. There has never been a grindier, more frustrating era in the game. AP and Legos were absolutely horrid systems until 7.2 and 7.3 significantly improved them (by making them less grindy).

People seem to only remember the good stuff, like the Mage Tower, the Class halls, the Artifact progression later in the expansion (when the grind was severely reduced). 7.3 was a fantastic era of the game, despite some terrible systems design (Titanforging, Lego RNG, class design). Legion as a whole though, while finishing strong, was not a great expansion.

[ro9ue]

Here are the big factors for me:

- Introduction of World Quests.
- Leveling in any zone in the order you want.
- The feeling that at any time doing any content you could receive an extremely powerful item - Legendaries. It wasn't perfect, but I think if they did the Wakening Essence system from the start it would've been received much better.
- A really good level cap questing zone with Suramar.
- Unique experiences for each class with Artifacts, class hall campaigns, mage tower challenges and skin collecting.

[ZebrasRule]

I think a lot of people forget how bad 7.0/7.1 were. There has never been a grindier, more frustrating era in the game. AP and Legos were absolutely horrid systems until 7.2 and 7.3 significantly improved them (by making them less grindy).

People seem to only remember the good stuff, like the Mage Tower, the Class halls, the Artifact progression later in the expansion (when the grind was severely reduced). 7.3 was a fantastic era of the game, despite some terrible systems design (Titanforging, Lego RNG, class design). Legion as a whole though, while finishing strong, was not a great expansion.

There were complaints during 7.0, sure. Mainly about legendaries, because that affected everyone. But it didn't matter, people were still playing. M+ was fresh and new and very engaging and there was always a reason to do all types of content, because you might get a legendary or you needed to grind AP.

BfA is different because people have left this time, instead of sticking around to complain in between their multiple runs of Maw. Legion, even if it wasn't perfect, had the x factor that kept people around. BfA doesn't have that. I think they thought islands would be that - very popular, and something people would want to do over and over but they failed hardcore.

[RobertMugabe]

I think a lot of people forget how bad 7.0/7.1 were. There has never been a grindier, more frustrating era in the game. AP and Legos were absolutely horrid systems until 7.2 and 7.3 significantly improved them (by making them less grindy).

People seem to only remember the good stuff, like the Mage Tower, the Class halls, the Artifact progression later in the expansion (when the grind was severely reduced). 7.3 was a fantastic era of the game, despite some terrible systems design (Titanforging, Lego RNG, class design). Legion as a whole though, while finishing strong, was not a great expansion.

What?? 7.0-7.1.5 was easily one of the best experiences I ever had in WoW. I used to raid heroics, Karazhan and do +10's and it never felt to me I had to grind anything. Legos and AP came simply by playing the content I enjoyed and I never felt that I was behind for not mindlessly grinding out anything. The content itself was also amazing. The dungeons and M+ were already great in 7.0 and 7.1 made everything even better with the Nighthold, ToV AND especially Karazhan which was an amazing 5-man "raid" with a lot of replayability.

- - - Updated - - -

- A really good level cap questing zone with Suramar.

A Suramar-like zone is really what BfA misses. I really don't understand why they haven't added it... like was Suramar poorly received by the community or did they really think that the War Campaign could replace both Suramar and the Class Hall campaign?