What happened between Legion and BFA?

[ro9ue]

Legion was an excellent expansion. Leveled every single class to cap, played them all quite a bit. 36/36 Mage Tower collected. Finished all class campaigns, mounts titles. Then BFA hits. On the surface it appears it took a majority of the Legion foundation and then ADDED Warfronts and Expeditions. So how could it be worse?

Had a while to think about it at this point so here are my thoughts:

Blizzard saw Legion was successful. Their thought process was ok, keep every system we had: WQ, M+, campaigns, and a rental artifact and then ADD new stuff like Warfronts and Expeditions. This could only be better than Legion because it's all the same stuff but NOW MORE.

Where they were wrong: It was the quality and breadth of those systems that were successful. Let's make some comparisons:

- M+ and WQ remained relatively the same so let's leave those aside for now. I'll come back and mention those later.

- Artifacts vs Heart of Azeroth and Class Halls vs War Campaign. These should be separate, but it's hard to separate the Artifact system from the Class Halls... and that's sort of the point I want to make here. The Artifact + Class Hall system went perfectly hand in hand. It all had a cohesive vision. There was a focus on each class, they all had an Artifact to pursue based on their specialization... through their class hall. The class titles, class mounts and Artifact skins all tied back into the class campaigns. One solid neatly packaged piece of content.

Now compare that to BFA. The Heart of Azeroth and War Campaign were actually separate storylines. EVERY class got the Heart of Azeroth. There were only two War Campaign stories, Horde and Alliance. These systems weren't really replayable in any meaningful way for each alt. There were different class-specific Azerite Traits... but a) no class campaign, b) no class titles, c) no class mount, d) no laundry list of artifact skins for each alt to obtain... and Heart of Azeroth had zero cosmetic rewards involved at all e) every one no matter your class sat on the boat in your faction city to do missions and didn't have a fresh new class-specific environment...

So ultimately, if you played just two characters you got the full BFA experience. If you played during Legion, there were a ton of reasons to play every class, so at least 12 different characters. Even if you waited until the end of the expansion and got catch up gear, you still had the artifact skins, campaign, mount and title to go after.

This is sort of a generic point about RPGs, but it's applicable to WoW. A player's race and class choice needs to be important. These are the biggest decisions a player makes in an RPG, and if there's really no meaningful difference in experience, a huge piece of player expression is lost. It's true that mechanically over time, each class feels less and less unique. Homogenization is definitely a thing that plagues this game. And if the devs are interested in balance over differentiation, it's clear that as long as you provide some flavorful distinction as in the Legion campaigns and artifacts, that can bandaid over the underlying mechanical blending of the classes.

- Legiondaries. Most people hated the RNG. But then they introduced the Wakening Essences. Fixed? Just launch it like that. Nope... they just cut it completely.

- Warfronts and Expeditions. I'm going to lump these two together because I want to make a single point about these. If my early point about the Artifacts and Class Halls vs Heart of Azeroth and War Campaign didn't come across, basically I'm saying that the quality of these systems matter. Warfronts and Expeditions, IMO, are terrible new systems, but FULL of really great ideas. And IMO what they should've done here was instead of tacking on Warfonts and Expeditions on top of existing systems, use the stuff they designed there to beef up CORE, EXISTING stuff we already have.

IMO - Warfronts could've been a really neat way to explore Epic Battlegrounds. Resource gathering UI improvements, spawning units, upgrading units. But let's be real, as a singular PVE scripted experience... these suck. They are absolutely awesome the first time you play them, and the cool factor rapidly diminishes there after. However if this was a PVP experience where you had a ton of players involved... with 3 lanes... like a MOBA... you'd basically be making Smite PVP in WoW (which is actually really fun). PVE oriented players can strategically cap monster-guarded flags and gather resources. PVP oriented players could push contentious points. Warfronts should basically just be a style of epic battleground to me, not a separate system.

Expeditions. I always liked the idea of random encounters in PVE content. It keeps stuff interesting. But there was IMO one major flaw. They made these the 'PVP-ish' thing, where even in the PVE content you were being rushed to collect Azerite in competition with the other team there. The AI here is really cool. The randomization of mob types is cool. My view on this is the same as my view of Warfronts. Warfronts could've just been a new thing on top of an old system... battlegrounds. Expeditions could've just been a new spin on Dungeons.

What would a Dungeon with the Expedition system be like? They could use any existing Dungeon layout. You populate it with random mobs, and block off certain passageways to make the way you crawl through the dungeon different any time. Take BRD for example. You do a BRD expedition... it scales to your level. A bunch of 120s can do a BRD Expedition. You can find totally different situations:

1st time you enter BRD Expedition - The caves are crumbling, stones are falling from the ceiling. The dark iron dwarves are bunkered down. Troggs have taken over. Because the dwarves are taking cover, certain gates and doors are locked. You have to go in and kill the troggs. The expedition phases can spawn random magma beasts that awaken, tunnelers, etc. The Expedition isn't timed, it's over when you kill the boss Trogg.

2nd time you enter BRD Expedition - You need to get to the vault to get the Heart of the Mountain. First you have to get a key for the gate mechanism from the Dark Iron dwarf guy in the gladiator ring. But first he wants you to defeat a couple bosses. Then you fight your way down, dealing with magma and fire elementals and malfunctioning iron guardians.

3rd time you enter BRD Expedition - Grimtotem shamans are there and are trying to summon Molten Giants and bind them to their will.

etc etc


IMO these are the major failures of BFA:

- Resting on their laurels of Legion, and probably not really understanding WHY the Legion stuff worked out so well
- Thought they could just phone in those Legion systems again, and focus on adding new things on top of everything else.
- They need to focus on what are the core WoW systems and just make those good. Not keep trying to add more things to the pile. Expeditions should've been a new iteration on Dungeons. Warfronts should've been a new iteration on Battlegrounds.
- Classes either a) need to actually be unique or b) have enough experiences with story, environments or flavor that make them a fresh experience. Option A can't happen in this game. Too many roles have been deleted. There's no room for a Buffer (sorry Shaman identity). There's no room for Crowd Control (Sorry Warlock and Rogue identity). Unqiue pets we don't feel like balancing (sorry Hunters)... etc. So it has to be option B. I don't ever see them backtracking in any major way on homogenization. Nothing in Shadowlands will change this. So they're going to need to keep adding Class Hall/Artifact style flavor and story so there's a reason why I'd play each and every class.
- M+ and WQ are good systems but it was copy pasted and nothing seemed to be improved or iterated on.

Now I rest.

[Zantera]

You don't need a massive wall of post for this. If you look at Legion's placement among the expansion it came out after WoD which was deserted half way through and before BFA which felt like Beta when it came out.

[Yuli]

Good post. Makes sense to me.

[Tyron]

Keep in mind that every expansion is designed by different teams (that's why many people are hyped about SL). Also, BFA at launch was practically Early acess in the systems side, it shouldn't have shipped until they had a good idea about what they wanted to do with Azerite gear.

[unbound]

IMO these are the major failures of BFA:

- Resting on their laurels of Legion, and probably not really understanding WHY the Legion stuff worked out so well
- Thought they could just phone in those Legion systems again, and focus on adding new things on top of everything else.
- They need to focus on what are the core WoW systems and just make those good. Not keep trying to add more things to the pile. Expeditions should've been a new iteration on Dungeons. Warfronts should've been a new iteration on Battlegrounds.
- Classes either a) need to actually be unique or b) have enough experiences with story, environments or flavor that make them a fresh experience. Option A can't happen in this game. Too many roles have been deleted. There's no room for a Buffer (sorry Shaman identity). There's no room for Crowd Control (Sorry Warlock and Rogue identity). Unqiue pets we don't feel like balancing (sorry Hunters)... etc. So it has to be option B. I don't ever see them backtracking in any major way on homogenization. Nothing in Shadowlands will change this. So they're going to need to keep adding Class Hall/Artifact style flavor and story so there's a reason why I'd play each and every class.
- M+ and WQ are good systems but it was copy pasted and nothing seemed to be improved or iterated on.

Now I rest.

Your first, second, and final bullets are really the crux of the issue. BfA is largely just a big dot release for Legion. Blizz got super lazy all around.

Even smaller elements demonstrate the large gap in effort. Fishing had its own activities in Legion with an artifact that provided some interesting benefits. Nothing like that exists at all in BfA. While cooking in Legion was rather stupid with the guy burning food constantly, it was at least an effort compared to BfA where there isn't even a cooking fire at the trainer.

And the major problem with M+ and WQ is that while they provide something interesting initially, long term they have you burn through content so rapidly that it becomes very boring. They were lazy, kluge fixes and should have been reconsidered, not just reused mindlessly.

[Doffen]

Well said.

To me it seems they just wanted to go with the flow after seeing Legion being so successfull. Just look at classes. Legion took away stuff, but added stuff as well. While in BfA they removed stuff and didn't add anything. Azerite Armor needs to take the biggest hit. It just wasn't enough, and it doesn't seem they thought it through. It was the system that was gonna go with class design in BfA but it wasn't nearly enough. Most traits did and does not do anything for the character you are playing and thus homogenize play styles across the board.

Essences were a good band aid, but in hindsight it should have been the major system from launch with a more engaging talent tree, like Artifact Weapon had.

Looking at Shadowlands where they are actually working on classes, they should have done that kind of work going into BfA.

[zawyer]

Keep in mind that every expansion is designed by different teams (that's why many people are hyped about SL). Also, BFA at launch was practically Early acess in the systems side, it shouldn't have shipped until they had a good idea about what they wanted to do with Azerite gear.

What is your source on this claim? There are several quotes on twitter from actual developers at Blizzard denying this.

[Gaidax]

I mean you have people who say that Legion was a shit expansion, down to the worst expansion ever.

Go figure, these weirdos. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A lot of this sky is falling is simply the same thing as above. "Wherr dey goo 'rong"... BFA is practically Legion without Artifacts, but with better M+ instead that's it, much of this spreading of ash over the hair is just attention seeking bull really.

[Eapoe]

I think where Blizzard went wrong is expecting their playerbase to not be a bunch of edgelord whiny crybabies who complain about everything, even when a change is made to better something, and who act like everything Blizzard does is a personal assault to that one player.
No, I’m not white knighting, as I find plenty of things Blizzard has done has been bad; however, as stated, even good changes are met with scorn and dismay and how big bad Blizzard only wants money or just be on their death throes.

[Great Destiny Man]

Early legion was a rather large shitshow but they certainly improved on things over time (with the exception of adding NLC which was just pure RNG shit).

Generally speaking though when they improved things in Legion it tended to be "fine, we'll make this easier and less time consuming than it was before". BfA improvements tend to flow either way with things like essences and corruption having even MORE timegating and grinding involved.

[Gaidax]

Early legion was a rather large shitshow but they certainly improved on things over time (with the exception of adding NLC which was just pure RNG shit).

Generally speaking though when they improved things in Legion it tended to be "fine, we'll make this easier and less time consuming than it was before". BfA improvements tend to flow either way with things like essences and corruption having even MORE timegating and grinding involved.

I mean, the only genuine issue with essences on patch launch was alts. This was real shit, but other than that? They were absolutely fine. If anything, it was great - no RNG acquisition and sense of progression with pretty fast acquisition too. If you cared you had all essences you needed rank 3 within one month.

There was a little controversy about PvP essence for certain PvE specs, which imo was valid, but bottom line if you needed it - it was pretty easy to get anyway.

The only real fuckup of 8.2 was socketed benthics. That was a genuine mistake. Otherwise? Easily one of the best patches released in WoW ever.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

So... Blizzard bad?

[Great Destiny Man]

I mean, the only genuine issue with essences on patch launch was alts. This was real shit, but other than that? They were absolutely fine. If anything, it was great - no RNG acquisition and sense of progression with pretty fast acquisition too. If you cared you had all essences you needed rank 3 within one month.

There was a little controversy about PvP essence for certain PvE specs, which imo was valid, but bottom line if you needed it - it was pretty easy to get anyway.

The only real fuckup of 8.2 was socketed benthics. That was a genuine mistake. Otherwise? Easily one of the best patches released in WoW ever.

It's not that I'm saying they were inherently flawed individually, but the design has been pretty much switch in a new system to be the core focus while still having to grind elements of the old. The worst thing Legion did in that regard was NLC but as it was the same patch they made Legendary acquisition so much easier that softened the blow somewhat. Meanwhile essence grinding is still rather a pain in the ass for new or returning players while they also have to focus on corruption and cloak levels as well. It's all rather daft.

[Bumkin]

leveled every single class to cap, played them all quite a bit. 36/36 mage tower collected. Finished all class campaigns, mounts titles.

rip real life lol

[Great Destiny Man]

rip real life lol

Eh not really. If you abused invasions for levelling and did Mage Tower towards at the end of the expansion where you over geared it then both of those things were pretty trivial.

[apelsinjuice]

they only have the resourcers to make every other expansion good, WoD and BFA are filler expansions thrown away to shift development focus on new expansion, they go hard and spend more when they know they need to regain trust of the community.

[Saltysquidoon]

Azerite is a worse version of the weapon traits that had the disadvantage of also being hidden behind rng.
Most specs played the same as legion (some that were designed around the weapons) without the weapon skill and with the gcd changes so they were just less fun versions of legion.
The result was playing the game was just less fun, tthat's it; Questing, dungeons, raids and pvp were not notably better or worse than any other expansion.

[Tyron]

What is your source on this claim? There are several quotes on twitter from actual developers at Blizzard denying this.

What is my source on what? If it's about the teams thing I've read it in many interviews posted on Wowhead and in this page.

[Army Dreamer]

Legion was an excellent expansion.

Stopped reading after this.

[Rendark]

Legion was the expansion that killed the way i like to play wow. It will always be the worst one.