What happened between Legion and BFA?

[dacoolist]

People called legion worse than Wod with that ENTIRE major patch with a SELFIE cam... also, if your counting subs even tho its bs: Cata lost more subs in a quarter than we even have subs total today (little bit of an inside mmo-c.com joke btw)

So when people complain about BFA because they suck ass: they never experienced tru shit like back in WoD (besides pvp) and back in Cata (besides rag.. I GUESS? Oh yeah xmog lolol)

BFA is only bad if you’re a shitter - sure its no Wrath or Mop or Legion.. but its better than cata/wod could ever fathom

[Saltysquidoon]

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

How do you like to play wow?

[Pakheth]

SNIP

More or less agree with all of this. And like many others have pointed out BfA feels like Legion Lite. Some same systems but less of everything.

[crakerjack]

Everyone is different. There's always going to be various opinions on what's going well and what's not going well. I somewhat wish blizzard would just alienate all the people who play WoW like it's a single player game and force group content on everyone, but that's just me. I love group content, so when they add solo content, I'm taking back and it's harder for me to get into it. I love raids, so if an expansion released nothing but raids, like 2-3 raids per tier, I would love that expansion assuming each raid wasn't just slapped together. Others who don't enjoy raiding would hate it.

That's why I prefer older expansions like tbc/wotlk because raiding was the main focus and you had to group up with others. Sure you could play solo, but you wouldn't achieve much. It doesn't make my opinion any more or less right/wrong than anyone else. We all have different preferences which will influence how we perceive expansions.

[Rendark]

How do you like to play wow?

I like to stop playing it at some point. With AP and titanforging there was no end to the road.

[Kathranis]

I like to stop playing it at some point. With AP and titanforging there was no end to the road.

Sure, if you refuse to stop playing until you max out AP and have max Titanforged gear in every slot. But that is not required to clear the top level content in the game.

[TheRainman]

Yep, pretty much agree on all points.

[Rendark]

Sure, if you refuse to stop playing until you max out AP and have max Titanforged gear in every slot. But that is not required to clear the top level content in the game.

Maybe not but it doesn't feel good to be under powered. Before legion i could get my power from doing the thing i loved to do, raiding. Then when i had all the gear i needed, farmed all the rep and was done with everything i wanted to do with that patch, i could stop. Just log on to raid until next patch. With legion that all ended. Now there was no end point, no time to stop because if you do stop farming AP or gear you may fall behind.

That's why i hate legion. It killed everything i liked to do in wow with AP, titanforging, legendaries and rep loot boxes.

[Schattenlied]

Legion was an excellent expansion.

This is very much opinion, I hated Legion more than WoD because they needlessly "revamped" and butchered every single class I used to enjoy (which was about 80% of them) in the name of "class fantasy" that in every single case actually ignored and destroyed the class' established fantasy.

Legion also introduced us to the infinite AP grind and reintroduced excessive RNGForging that has plagued the game since, and gave us the Netherlight Crucible, which was a proof of concept for Azerite Traits... Legendaries were also a complete fucking mess for 60% of the expansion.


So, yeah, Legion was shit. IMO.

What I say we should be asking is what the fuck happened with the dev team in Legion? Legion had plenty of content but the class design team was pants on head retarded... No amount of content can make up for having to play it with garbage classes, especially when that content is plagued with shitty systems like infinite grinds and the trainwreck that was Legiondaries.


Edit: and as Softbottom says below, they need to stop trying to reinvent the wheel every expansion, doubly so for class design.. They had good classes in MoP, only tweaked them a little bit in WoD, and then they fucked them up spectacularly in Legion by trying to reinevent them into things they never were and no one asked for.

[Softbottom]

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.

Where they went wrong is they try to reinvent the wheel every expansion. They need to stop doing this.

[Monolithi]

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

And it was best for me, legendary rng included. And thats fine, we have different taste.
Problem is some saying Blizz is not listening to “community” feedback and here we are, two players with exactly opposite things we like.

[Marrilaife]

So when people complain about BFA because they suck ass: they never experienced tru shit like back in WoD (besides pvp) and back in Cata (besides rag.. I GUESS? Oh yeah xmog lolol)

Oh look another person peddling their opinion as ultimate truth...

I played WOW for 13+ years and I legit had more fun in Cata and WOD than now.

Why? Class design is one thing. Less pressure to fotm reroll to meta crap that only got worse after MDI / world first streaming became popular.

Some classes were genuinely more fun back then than now. Less grind to get alts up to speed with no essence / corruption / ap / other tacked on systems. Yes, the grind got nerfed now, but now I don't have any more energy and patience left to deal with this xpac and alts. Every xpac I enjoyed playing alts, BFA killed it. Some classes are complete trash until you get specific setup of azerite traits and essences and this should be in talent system not locked behind gear grind.

Also if I got BIS gear I knew it was the best piece until next patch / expac none of the titanforge / tertiary stats / corruption bollox.

And there was no goddamn world quests, once a faction got to exalted I could forget they existed. Now you want to get cloak on alts? Grind invasions on each of them every week to get the vials. I have 1 alt that I play (normally I'd play like 6 on the last patch of xpac) and still when I had to go through the part that required 3 vision runs then 4 vision runs to get to rank 15 I was forcing myself to do it, it wasn't fun, it felt like a chore.

And Darkshore warfront is the most boring, scripted, no-way-to-speed-it-up piece of content. Even MOP "heroic scenarios" felt better to do. Stormgarde I find more tolerable, I spent 80% of the time cutting trees and building upgrades then just rush the main gate. Darkshore? Nope, had to sit and fight on the main road for 30 mins. And if your group was "too good" and pushed too fast before you had enough upgrades on the base, the whole event had a high chance to completely bug out and waste 30 mins of your time.

I'd rather sit in my garrison and have more fun than doing majority of the BFA's "inventions" in the area of "content". Hell, to this day I still use WOD garrisons and probably get more use of them than the whole BFA professions. Medallions of the legion still sell 5k a pop despite Blizzard announced old pathfinders will no longer be needed for flying after Shadowlands levelling revamp.

[kaminaris]

BfA is legion improved in pretty much all aspects.

People complained about AP because it was powerful, gigantic numbers token based system that was spec specific. BfA ap power is way less important, class wide system that retains normal numbers.

Class halls, tons of content impossible to see unless you make 12 alts. Making milions of gold just by having alts. No more of this crap, you get to see the story with just one char (or two if you make double agent) and no more free gold.

Legendaries with absolutely retarded acquisition and soft cap. Well in the end once you got your BiS ones, that gear slot was dead. It doesn't make sens to make them purchasable as it practically makes it a purchasable-talents-that-kills-a-gear-slot.

6sets - another 4/6 dead slots, no way to get them outside of raids. Azerite gear with only 3 slots, no way to forge, that also has vendor and is obtainable thru pvp and raids.

Island expeditions, OPTIONAL new type of content

Warfronts, OPTIONAL new type of content

Much improved M+, legion M+ was basically boring meatgrinder. Trash was literally a trash.

Titanforging made into proper shape (drop reduced, chance reduced making it truly a bonus)

And finally binding core aspects of class into item, any person with enough gray cells knew it will not end up well.

BfA doesnt rest on legion laurels lol, it improved and fixed all the shit that legion introduced.

[Gaidax]

6sets - another 4/6 dead slots, no way to get them outside of raids. Azerite gear with only 3 slots, no way to forge, that also has vendor and is obtainable thru pvp and raids.

I'm generally with you, except one small piece. I think class sets were really great to make you feel a bit special and different from other pleb classes (I'm warlock main, we almost always win transmog lottery when it comes to sets).

I do think Azerite Armor is great, exactly because it's basically a flexible set that you can tailor to your needs. Its downsides are down to pure mechanics like spec switching and acquisition.

BUT I certainly miss the visual diversity class sets offered - it definitely was nice to have 3 cloth sets options per raid tier as opposed to only one, even if that one is pretty good. BFA sets sure look very nice, but having only one set per raid tier across all clothies and then maybe another odd set from Warfronts is not so nice.

[Powerogue]

Pretty much everything wrong with BFA was the absence of something that worked great in Legion.

[Nathasil]

Just want to add two things to this topic:

1) Legion vs BFA: I cannot really understand how some people claim these expansions are in some way related. The heart of Legion was the Artifact weapon - which was different for every SPEC - and class Order Halls - which were different for every CLASS.
What does BFA lack ENTIRELY? Content that is different for ANYBODY. There is nobody left playing Alliance so the half-assed Alliance content does not even count as a second route, either.

2) PvP Warfronts: That would have been a bullet-proof way to make the expansion even worse- which would have been an accomplishment, really. With one faction being completely dead after 10 years of total neglect adding faction-based PvP content is a sure way to lead one faction into long Qs and the other into instant-losses. Imho PvP works best if it is independant of factions - which would not have befitet the motive of BFA. And that's where i see the very first mistake they made with the expansion before anything else...to make it about the factions.

[kaminaris]

I'm generally with you, except one small piece. I think class sets were really great to make you feel a bit special and different from other pleb classes (I'm warlock main, we almost always win transmog lottery when it comes to sets).

I do think Azerite Armor is great, exactly because it's basically a flexible set that you can tailor to your needs. Its downsides are down to pure mechanics like spec switching and acquisition.

BUT I certainly miss the visual diversity class sets offered - it definitely was nice to have 3 cloth sets options per raid tier as opposed to only one, even if that one is pretty good. BFA sets sure look very nice, but having only one set per raid tier across all clothies and then maybe another odd set from Warfronts is not so nice.

There is absolutely no reason to not have visual class sets with azerite armor. For example like ToV ensembles worked. You gather coins from bosses and buy class set.