Why was Legion considered so successful?

[Azerate]

A lot of the systems that we have now were introduced back then, and people like fresh things more.

Also, it's possible that the influencers did not yet realize how much money can be made on being negative

[Voidwielder]

Suramar, Class Order Hall Quest lines and the depth of the lore for the non-main story related things (as mentioned before), Artifacts, Mage Tower.

Also the dungeon design allowed for much better gameplay, you can tell in BfA dungeons that they are made using bullet points of ''must haves for M+''.

[Naiattavain]

legion really busted rogues down into the ground i don't like legion at all. can't seem to find a good balance between everyone else and their entertainment.

[Rogalicus]

Also the dungeon design allowed for much better gameplay, you can tell in BfA dungeons that they are made using bullet points of ''must haves for M+''.

This was already apparent in Legion, especially in BRH with low effort halls full of trash.

[KainneAbsolute]

I enjoyed Legion quite a lot, I was interested in getting the artifact skins, the class mounts. I did raids, pvp, mythic dungeons, mage tower, etc. I was really happy to get new legendaries and try small variants in my builds.

With raiding and mage tower, many times I didnt notice I reached the next day!

[vsb]

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"?

Legion was the worse expansion in the WoW. BfA is much better for comparison.

[rohoz]

streamer hivemind decided it was good so people here unable to form an opinion on their own agreed.

[Stardrift]

Because character progression wasn't as bad as how BFA's character progression currently is.

Every piece of gear we get becomes obsolete by a weekly quest. Or, now, fucking benthic gear. Something you get and can upgrade just for doing world quests.. What a joke.

Not to mention M+ is still in the game for some reason.. What a cesspool the pug community is surrounding M+. Bunch of overglorified LFR heroes.

[Popastique]

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"?

Have played every expansion so far, and Legion been the best of them. Lorewise ( class halls and quest lines associated with them ), artifact weapons ( how they look, abilities they improve, etc. ), nice raids and atmosphere overall.

[Kaver]

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"?

I had fun in Legion. I don't have fun in BFA outside of mythic raiding. I don't know if I think Legion was one the best expantions, but it was definitely better than BFA imo and here is why:

New is always better
Legion brought a lot of new systems to the table:
- M+
- World quest
- Legendaries (the way they were in Legion)
- Artifact weapons
- Class halls
All these systems were new and exciting.

What did BFA bring to the table? Warfront and Island expeditions... BFA didn't give us anything new to be excited about. They even made some of the systems from Legion worse.

Class Halls - Leveling Alts
Class Halls were just a fun addition to the game. It made it more interesting to level your alts.

Dungeons were better
That's my opinion.

M+ was better
This might be connected to the dungeons, but I also think the M+ system was more fun in Legion.

More things to do
Maybe this was based on arbitrary systems, but the fact is that there was a lot more to do in Legion.

Class design
The classes were more FUN to play in Legion. MORE FUN.
I understand the logic reasoning behind the GCD changes for example, but what does logic matter in a video game if it's not FUN. Blizzard should make design choices based on what is FUN for the players. Not based on what would make most sense on paper.

In the end it boils down to "fun". I had fun in Legion. I don't have fun in BFA.

PS. Someone needs to teach Blizzard the saying: "If it aint broke, don't fix it!" :P

[Puupi]

Without legendaries and if all the content would have been pushed out in a timeframe of T minus 1 year - Legion would have been a 10/10 expansion.

[Aggrophobic]

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"?

It wasn't though. It didn't do much better than WoD.
What you read on here does not represent how the average player feels about the game.

For me, Legion was the worst crap they've ever made.

[Gasparde]

WoD was shit. Legion wasn't immediately shit, big plus. Legion also improved on a lot of stuff over its course. And BFA then took most of these improvements and threw them away.

Worldquests were new and not done to death. One woulda thunk they would improve on the concept instead of making it even more tedious and mundane but ultimately forcing everyone to always keep doing them 24/7.

M+ was new and not killed with fucking fire due to stupid MDI esports bullshit. Fucking MDI and esports viewer experience ruined BFA dungeons. Much like the seasonal affixes none of it is designed to be fun or engaging, it's all just there to make the MDI look kewler.

Specs with artifacts actually felt somewhat complete. You noticed that every spec was pretty much 100% designed around having a maxed out artifact and after like the initial 2 months specs really came together nicely - sure, they were still pruned to death and a shadow of their former selves, but they worked (add to that, that we didn't have to deal with stupid GCD bullshit on everything). BFA took artifacts away and dared to prune specs even more, dumbing down every single spec to the dullest and most mundane state it's ever been. Also, legendaries + artifacts + tier sets while fucking BFA has shit ass Azerite armor with bullshit 'your Frostbolt has a chance to deal 5 extra damage' passives.

The time gating was already there in Legion and it already felt like a mess there too. I don't know anyone who liked the Suramar rep gate that relied on you doing 6 world quests every day for a month to get to exalted, followed by like 8 weeks of 3 new quests every single week. And I don't know anyone who liked the fucking retarded Broken Shore where it was a motherfucking single fucking quests per week for like 2 months. Argus felt like a step in the right direction because there were tons of worldquests to do, so you could at least progress somewhat quickly, but the weekly story quest bullshit was still there. Again, one would think they'd take all the feedback given and improve upon it, but no, fuck you. It's more of the same shit, at times even worse.

Legion had its flaws but garnered a lot of good will by implementing several new promising features and showing a new and steady content stream for the game. Things weren't perfect but people appreciated the new pace and expected things to become even better. Spotlight, BFA, they took half of what made Legion good, dumbed it down, added a bunch of shit no one cares about and carried over all the annoying shit from Legion while not improving a single fucking thing. Add to that that not a single non-reworked spec feels any better to play than their Legion pendants and you have the most pathetic expansion ever. I'd take WoD with fun specs and only logging in 3 times a week to raid over the shitty mess of BFAs trash classes and 12 months of permanent AP worldquest and island grinding.

[beanman12345]

Legion had the same amount of being crapped on as BfA, as WoD as Pandaria as Cata, its only after the expansions are over when you can see how it ended and came together that some are looked fondly by some and some still just sucked for most.

[Zafire]

Partly it was a reaction to Warlords which for non-raiders there was a lot of not much anything to do. A lot of the systems were fresher in Legion. Expansions are usually judged by their predecessor expansion and having something to do in Legion was a 180 from Warlords. Expansion theme was better too.

I'm surprised to hear that. I didn't raid or do Arena that expansion and I had a lot to do. It was mostly due to it being extremely alt-friendly. The more level 100s you had, the more gold earning potential you had. Building up your garrison to have all your followers with the +gold trait took 2 months or more. Questing was rewarding, because you got followers. You couldn't really tackle missions without followers to throw at them. I was effortlessly buying tokens, and I always had a reason to login a couple of times a day. I started WoD with only three classes 90+, and I ended WoD with every class in the game 90+ and six level 100s.

Legion was the exact opposite, as you were taking away from your main (less artifact power, less chances at legendary, etc) by leveling an alt.

[blahdiblah]

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"?

Legion did things we had not seen before.
the AP system was new, the WQs was new, mythic+ was new, the orderhall stuff was new or atleast revamped enough from WoD garrisons that it didnt feel like a fucking facebook game.
oh and we actually got new abilities (artifact abilities) PLUS we got the "old" talent-system back with the artifact weapons.

we got more storylines that told us more about the oldest night-elf society (suramar and the highborne) including more background-story for tyrande, illidan and malfurion and ofc you had the whole dadgar vs guldan. we visited historically important places like the broken isle and tomb of sargeras that havent been seen since WC3 and we fought kiljaden. we defeated sargeras too and actually restored the god damn titan council.

and every major patch, only had 77days between them. so there was alot more content in general and things to do/prepare for even though your timegating was still drip-feeding that content to you. blizzard said they felt like they couldve stretched the content over a longer period. hi BFA. obviously that was a very very very VERY bad idea.

TL;DR i could go on actually but at this point i think u get the idea.. legion did new things, in the right/decent way, and content came out in a steady stream. Legion wasnt perfect, though. but it was still 10times better than BFA

[Puupi]

I'm surprised to hear that. I didn't raid or do Arena that expansion and I had a lot to do. It was mostly due to it being extremely alt-friendly. The more level 100s you had, the more gold earning potential you had. Building up your garrison to have all your followers with the +gold trait took 2 months or more. Questing was rewarding, because you got followers. You couldn't really tackle missions without followers to throw at them. I was effortlessly buying tokens, and I always had a reason to login a couple of times a day. I started WoD with only three classes 90+, and I ended WoD with every class in the game 90+ and six level 100s.

Legion was the exact opposite, as you were taking away from your main (less artifact power, less chances at legendary, etc) by leveling an alt.

What did you do outside of your garrison in WoD?

[Zuvio]

The last patch or two made it tolerable, which for WoW is a "success." At the beginning it was horrible no matter what any sycophants or self-deluded posters try to claim to the contrary.

No, it wasn't.

- Sycophant

[Doffen]

Class Halls, progression-system(artifact weapon), better story, legendaries, Mage Tower and mythic+. On my side players came back in droves, having steadily declined since cataclysm, and more so in both MoP and WoD, while Legion brought people back.

Someone said first 6-9 months of Legion was horrible, for me it was like playing back in TBC again. Haven't had so much fun, or spent so much time playing since back then. Kind of says a lot for me. Must have 20 days /played in Suramar alone the first 3 quarter. Great times! First part of Legion progression actually mattered, in the end they gave stuff too easily away. Just like they do in BfA now, it's too easy.

[GreenJesus]

Class Halls, progression-system(artifact weapon), better story, legendaries, Mage Tower and mythic+. On my side players came back in droves, having steadily declined since cataclysm, and more so in both MoP and WoD, while Legion brought people back.

Someone said first 6-9 months of Legion was horrible, for me it was like playing back in TBC again. Haven't had so much fun, or spent so much time playing since back then. Kind of says a lot for me. Must have 20 days /played in Suramar alone the first 3 quarter. Great times! First part of Legion progression actually mattered, in the end they gave stuff too easily away. Just like they do in BfA now, it's too easy.

My first two legendaries were Aggramar's stride and then sephuz's secret so maybe I see the "progression" of early legion a bit different than you do. Once you got your first 2 legendaries it was basically game over since blizzard made it nearly impossible to get a 3rd or fourth one.