Why i Think Legion Was so Well Received by Players...

[Whatever Dude]

Cool story, sorry I'm able to look at it logically.

The primary reason Cata failed was a lack of content, content that was cut, and a lot of the content that made it in being rehashed (like ZG and ZA), not because it didn't cater to soccer moms and disabled vets enough. The "hard" dungeons were nerfed fairly early into the expansion's life cycle. Tier 11 is considered a fantastic tier of raiding, and Firelands is regarded as one of the best raids ever by top tier raiders, something I am sure you are far from being.

Unsurprisingly, you have no idea what you're talking about.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

I think World Quests almost single handedly saved WoW end game.

I hated world quest because they were so unpolished and a lot of them were vague. which meant I needed spend a lot of time on wow head. If I need to hunt a giant crocodile name him after his location. Here is an example sea water lock jaw. Where do you think that's located by a large or small body of water. I saw male demons with female demon sounding nice and vice versa it was fucking annoying because it kept breaking my immersion. There was a fucking corrupted tiger named goddamn Vargas how the fuck does that make sense...

I'm not hunting this shit randomly so why the fuck is there no details what so ever... I'm clearly helping someone or something for the vast majority of world quest. Why can't you write clues in the description... I don't understand.

[Deleted]

Wish I knew, really.
To me Legion is definitely the low point of modern WoW expansions (Cata and onwards), I can't stand the extreme time-gating, randomness, removal of loot tables in favor of TF procs, uselessness of professions and the general need to grind stupid AP points and legendaries in order to be "viable". Disclaimer: I unsubbed during Legion.

Since majority of the playerbase is solo questers, I'd imagine the World Quest system is single handedly responsible for the longevity of the expansion, I can't really think of any other reasons.

For the "hardcore crowd" - it introduces endless random grinds for points, high-score tables for m+ to compete on - and I guess that's enough to trap the feebleminded. Perhaps that also equals "success" in some way.

To me, these are all huge negatives. But I guess in the eyes of Blizzard and normal consumer, they are "wins".

[HuxNeva]

Legion was great because it made 'alternative' content (read, anything but raiding) a viable game-play option in an MMO. Titanforging made it all possible. Yes, doing a million WQs, or thousands of M+'s will not get you a full Mythic tier lvl gearset, but at least it wont let you stare at just a blank wall of no-progress. Even though chances of actually getting upgrades might be small and diminishing, at least there's hope.
WoD didn't fail because of not trying to innovate. It's just that the way they innovated there was awful. Having basically a 'Garissonville' Facebook/phone game as the 'alternative' to raids was received with all the bile it deserved. All the world content, questing and dungeoning people love was as dead as a doornail after the first 2 or 3 weeks.

[Deleted]

The primary reason Cata failed was a lack of content, content that was cut, and a lot of the content that made it in being rehashed (like ZG and ZA), not because it didn't cater to soccer moms and disabled vets enough.

Don't try to pretend you know the reasons 10 year old expac failed. You don't have any data at all to show. You don't even know if it was "a failure". Maybe it met all the targets it was supposed to meet. You don't know - so don't try to sell your anecdotal opinions as a fact here. You have no idea what you're talking about.

[VyersReaver]

Subs keep setting new lows with every xpac after Wrath until they just stopped reporting it.

Seems like you both can't prove anything. How do you know they are not increasing, if they stopped reporting those numbers?

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

Don't try to pretend you know the reasons 10 year old expac failed. You don't have any data at all to show. You don't even know if it was "a failure". Maybe it met all the targets it was supposed to meet. You don't know - so don't try to sell your anecdotal opinions as a fact here. You have no idea what you're talking about.

That was blizzard reasoning for it failing they usually make a post about why the expansion was mishandled after each expansion. They cited that spent to much time on leveling experience and it didn't bring in enough players to just the effect it had on end game content. It's a known fact that even the company acknowledges. Ill link a source tomorrow but I'm going to bed.

[Blamblam41]

I think World Quests almost single handedly saved WoW end game.

Dailies with epic quest rewards was really only a marginal improvement over what we had. I'd honestly take valor points over WQs.

OT: There are a lot of interesting systems that Legion adds, but it's not really new or interesting. My biggest problem with legendary and artifact systems were how they essentially pruned the classes just to give you everything you got taken away back with a new flavour weapon.

Mythic+ has its own problems too, though it's mostly because of the toxicity of the games community (even though that effects the games experience and should be designed with that in mind, Blizzard doesn't care about people being toxic in an MMO.).

My biggest takeaway from Legion is just how compartmentalized every single bit of story and gameplay is. Especially after 7.3.5 making the largest time sink in the game by far leveling 1-110 and their stance on flying, it really seems Blizzard cares far more about how I'm consuming the content rather than if I'm consuming it and I'm not really a big fan of their stance. Especially for a game I literally pay them monthly to play.

[Kaleredar]

The primary reason Cata failed was a lack of content, content that was cut, and a lot of the content that made it in being rehashed (like ZG and ZA), not because it didn't cater to soccer moms and disabled vets enough. The "hard" dungeons were nerfed fairly early into the expansion's life cycle. Tier 11 is considered a fantastic tier of raiding, and Firelands is regarded as one of the best raids ever by top tier raiders, something I am sure you are far from being.

Unsurprisingly, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Except we didn't spend the majority of time in tier 11 or Firelands, we spent MOST of the time in the not-so-fantastic Dragon Soul.

And while I DID enjoy the "difficult" heroic dungeons... they were a MASSIVE point of contention for people. The subscriber numbers speak to that.

Why do you think they did such a complete 180 in MoP on them? Heroic dungeons weren't even a thing in MoP; I think I ran a few of them once for the achievement and then never needed to do them again. They were tied to no rep, no quests, and rewarded nothing gear. And that's because a lot of people disliked the "difficult heroics" of early cata. Hell, even the three dungeons that released with Dragon Soul were evidence of that turnaround in stance.


And it's really quite irrelevant what "hardcore" raiders feel about certain raid tiers, especially considering that they make up a very small percentage of the community. They can love heroic ragnaros phase three to smithereens, but 95% of the playerbase doesn't see that and only knows that they've been running ZG and ZA for five months because they finished grinding those firelands dailies weeks ago.

[Deleted]

That was blizzard reasoning for it failing they usually make a post about why the expansion was mishandled after each expansion. They cited that spent to much time on leveling experience and it didn't bring in enough players to just the effect it had on end game content.

Yeah, they usually don't. They give vague musings about feedback they'v received and things they're going to change going forward. They never tell us "why the expac failed"

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

Except we didn't spend the majority of time in tier 11 or Firelands, we spent MOST of the time in the not-so-fantastic Dragon Soul.

And while I DID enjoy the "difficult" heroic dungeons... they were a MASSIVE point of contention for people. The subscriber numbers speak to that.

Why do you think they did such a complete 180 in MoP on them? Heroic dungeons weren't even a thing in MoP; I think I ran a few of them once for the achievement and then never needed to do them again. They were tied to no rep, no quests, and rewarded nothing gear. And that's because a lot of people disliked the "difficult heroics" of early cata. Hell, even the three dungeons that released with Dragon Soul were evidence of that turnaround in stance.


And it's really quite irrelevant what "hardcore" raiders feel about certain raid tiers, especially considering that they make up a very small percentage of the community. They can love heroic ragnaros phase three to smithereens, but 95% of the playerbase doesn't see that and only knows that they've been running ZG and ZA for five months because they finished grinding those firelands dailies weeks ago.

I think the problem with heroic wasn't the difficulty but the fact they were mandatory for getting to raiding and time consuming as fuck. If they went the burning crusade route were heroic dungeons were optional. I feel like they'd have been better received.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, they usually don't. They give vague musings about feedback they'v received and things they're going to change going forward. They never tell us "why the expac failed"

They have at the end of every expansion and it's not vague at all. They give a reason why it failed and sometimes what they could do better in the cases of tbc/vanilla.

In vanilla and bc they weren't happy about the amount of people raiding.

In wotlk they thought heroics and raids were to easy hence the buffs.

In cata they thought they made the came to hard which is why we got dragon soul. They also put to much resources into the new leveling experience.

I don't remember mop at all ill find a link later. The only thing that comes to mind is that they said they'd start adding more dungeons but than they also killed the reason to revisit those dungeons.

Wod they had to train new team members which resulted in a lack of content. They also killed any reason to revisit old content like valor points or justice points. They got rid of item upgrading as well. Reputation vendor didn't give epic gear anymore. It was just mounts even in tbc they gave gear on par with raids some of it being better than actual intro raid gear drops.

legion it's probably going to be the legendary system, artifact power grind, and the silly amount of randomness when it comes things like titan forging. They need to add a currency system for content with a lockout but they'll try to fight it until enough people quit.

[Deleted]

Tbh WQs and Mythic+ were the only good additions. Artifacts were "meh", legendaries sucked, titanforging ... yeah.
WoD with WQs and M+ would've been ten times better than Legion.

[nothingsjim]

IMO, Mythic+ is the key to Legion's success.

Raiding, especially Mythic raiding feels like a second job. You have to sit down and commit several hours after work, 2/3 days per week, just to progress. Whilst in Mythic+, a small group of friends can now band together, play, and be rewarded with top tier loots. Raiding can take up to several hours, whilst M+ takes like 30mins.

[HuxNeva]

Wod they had to train new team members which resulted in a lack of content.

WoD didn't have lack of content because of a resource bottleneck, it had lack of content because all the content outside raids was either obsolete 3 weeks into the expansion for lack of rewards, or confined to what was basically a tablet sidegame.

- - - Updated - - -

Tbh WQs and Mythic+ were the only good additions. Artifacts were "meh", legendaries sucked, titanforging ... yeah.
WoD with WQs and M+ would've been ten times better than Legion.

You completely ignore why WQ's and M+ in Legion have been viable content after initial leveling: Titanforging. Take away Titanforging, and you again have a 'dead' expansion after the first few weeks of leveling up.

[Nitros14]

Legion is true grind MMO expansion for true MMO player with OCD.
Filling bars for AP, RNG above RNG - it just keeps people playing until some goal is reached. And there is another goal after that. And another...
Only players who dont like it are players with little time on their hands and raid-loggers.

I'm a raid logger. Legion is awful.

AP, Legiondaries and titanforging are the absolute worst. Cancerous game design.

[nekobaka]

Personally a return to engaging non-raid content had me coming back and staying far longer than the previous two expansions.

AP, Legiondaries and titanforging are the absolute worst. Cancerous game design.

As someone who just does non-raid content for years the RNG on top of RNG systems are annoying. No clear path of progression for Legendaries and while titanforging can be good to give life to some activities it can still screw players over who are experiencing long streaks of unfavorable RNG. They do not respect a players time both casual and hardcore.

[HuxNeva]

legion it's probably going to be the legendary system, artifact power grind, and the silly amount of randomness when it comes things like titan forging. They need to add a currency system for content with a lockout but they'll try to fight it until enough people quit.

This would be the dead of the game for all but the 'raid or die' crowd. Gated predictable upgrades to keep game play going was and is boring people out of their skull. The only proponents of such are a vocal minority of 'I don't care about the game, just raids' that want their 3x3 hours of raid a week and for the rest be 'done' as soon as possible.

[Loeve]

Cataclysm wasnt that bad. It was in mop things went downhill. I like legion world quest alot and all the quests they added for different classes.

[WowIsDead64]

I think secretly every player wanted WoW to "change" since WotlK.
Some players dont know the reason why they stopped liking WoW as much as they used to.
Thats because playing the same game for several years has consequences and even though people dont know it...they wanted "change".

What do i mean by "change"? Basically new types of gameplay. Something different.

I think the true reason why Cataclysm and WoD were not well received by the community was not because they were bad expansion. Not at all.
Its because it was more of the same. And even though people dont know it, they are tired of the "same".

Then Legion came and it was like the resurrection of holy Christ with the many new features and systems.
"Change" came. The thing everyone secretly wanted and didnt know.

I want to congratulate Blizzard on the good job they did. They trully made the game feel new and exciting.

But as a final note i want to say that we cant take this for granted. Legion was nice BUT we can't fall to the same mistakes all over again...
We can't just make a copy of Legion and call it BfA. More "change" needs to come.
My fear is that because Legion was so well received, Blizzard will think "well this is it. This is the formula we have been searching for. Lets copy it and call it BfA"

This cannot happen.
Blizzard, keep doing what you did in Legion. Bringing "change" to the game. Don't copy it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What do you guys think?
Was Cataclysm and WoD trully bad? Or people were just looking for change without knowing it themselves?
And then Legion came and everyone was happy without knowing why

Thats my Theory

Sad thing, but it seems like, what majority of playerbase need - is endless grind. They quit, when they have "nothing to do". What Blizzard try to do - to make potentially "endless" content. Bad thing - I'm one of those players, who want goals to be reachable, as it's reaching goals - that brings satisfaction to me. No goal - no interest.

[HuxNeva]

I'm a raid logger. Legion is awful.

AP, Legiondaries and titanforging are the absolute worst. Cancerous game design.

See, this was the downfall of the game. The 'raid logger'. They choked all innovation and sucked out all possible gameplay options because they couldn't be arsed to play anything but 'me raids mon'. They hate that there is viable alternative content since that means stepping outside a raid could get you a reward, and no sir, we can't have that now can we. Legion gave us this, a game besides raiding, and they hate it.