Why do the people that enjoyed Legion not enjoy BfA?

**Eazy** · 2019-02-11, 09:59 PM

From the lore point of view:
Legion had Illidan and demons.
Bfa has... conflict?

From the gameplay point of view:
Legion had better classes gameplay.
Bfa has Azerite armor.

**Daan** · 2019-02-11, 10:02 PM

BfA has kinda the same class designs like in Legion, but without artifact weapon and legendaries. That feels bad, that is bad. Azerite armors are boring. Class halls and spec specific artifacts would be a nice thing to hold and build on - but instead they made them useless with BfA and give us no more char progression.

**Concequence** · 2019-02-11, 10:12 PM

Originally Posted by Greyvax

The existing systems that were new in legion were fun in legion because they were new. Mythic+ and artifact weapons were a huge hit.

The new systems and bfa were poorly executed. At the beginning, you could only do a warfront once every 3 weeks. That was bad. By the time they fixed that whole mess and added another warfront, most people who quit during bfa had quit by then.

Warmode isn't content, its just toggleable pvp which already existed.

Azerite system is just a watered down version of artifact weapons, and is much more frustrating since once again its RNG dependant getting the right pieces of gear with the traits you want.

There's nothing interesting about island expeditions. They should have been MoP scenarios reborn with clear objectives, and instead its just "do stuff till the bar fills up".

Warfront's were slow to release. But they are nice, I like that they have daily quests now. Easy way to get some nice gear, something to look forward to every couple weeks. It's decent at least.

Warmode is the best new thing by FAR. Bounties are incredible. The rolling invasion content is good, its the same shit over and over, but it's not the same dailies all the time. Plus there is always PVP ... 100% of the time. Which can be good if you play into it a bit. Ive not enjoyed pvp as much as I do now... Its the best ive ever seen the pvp in wow.

Azurite is just plain trash. The bonuses are trash, stacking the bonuses is trash. The lack of Class sets is trash. Its like I have three pieces of gear that are never warforged, that dont have any stats on them, but give me some really meh bonuses, that don't really change when I get a new set. It's confusing, its messy, the progress is clunky... the activation of gear "tiers" makes it feel bad when you get new gear. This is the true low point of the expansion. Legion Weapons looked good, and continued to change and evolve in a way that was fun. So many nice skins to earn. It was really good. (Mage tower was awesome too)

Islands are... islands. Just a side activity to get more Artifact power. I know there are stories in them, but they executed them poorly. It would have been better as Scenarios. Tell the story, give us Azurite as part of the standard reward for playing through the story. Make it fun to optimize the steps. Or at the very least, give us several stories on the island, and allow us to choose a path through the island to complete it. It just seems like its there... like a underbaked feature, It seems like they did not have time to make it much more than what it is. Which is sad. It could be much fuller content. Neutral effect on the expansion as a whole.

**Zenfoldor** · 2019-02-11, 10:15 PM

Originally Posted by Evaddon

This is the WoW community...they cry over and dramatize everything no matter how big or small they blow it out of proportion they even did it with Wrath, which is an expansion everyone (nearly) puts on a golden pedestal

Its usually best left to ignore the many many many complaints people shit out, because lets be honest. Most of the time its whining or bitching and not talking about the actual issue or why said thing is bad or why said feature needs work. *shrug* Its nearly all subjective and accounts from the individuals experience and how they choose to play the game.

Reading this thread, there seems to be some pretty consistent themes. Lack of long term goals, unfulfilling reward structure, gameplay sluggishness, and class design.

The first two and last two are heavily interconnected. It would lose a little context, but to simplify that even further, class design and reward structure are the two main problems here, imo.

It is hard to figure out what is good or bad about the game from the community, because there is a lot of noise. However, a lot of people see those class design and reward structure issues as things which were much better in Legion, imo.

Simply being fun and rewarding can make a huge difference.

**Concequence** · 2019-02-11, 10:15 PM

Originally Posted by Daan

BfA has kinda the same class designs like in Legion, but without artifact weapon and legendaries. That feels bad, that is bad. Azerite armors are boring. Class halls and spec specific artifacts would be a nice thing to hold and build on - but instead they made them useless with BfA and give us no more char progression.

OMG I forgot about Legendaries. What the hell is up with that... each Tier used to come with a legendary... they didnt even do that.

**threads** · 2019-02-11, 10:19 PM

dungeons are worse
classes are worse
zones are worse
idiotic pyramid horde town
AP grind is worse
rewards are worse

**huanjia** · 2019-02-11, 10:41 PM

I can only speak for myself, but there are quite a few reasons that I enjoyed Legion far more than BFA (which at this point, I'll probably be echoing). While I don't necessarily think BFA is the "worst expansion ever" yet (that's still Cata, tyvm), I do think it's pretty poor for a multitude of reasons. I will say that I do have fond memories of WOD, and while it sunk because of how little content was actually put into it, it didn't change the fact that there were a lot of great systems that partially redeemed it.

For starters, I feel like class design in BFA is total shit. I'm an altoholic and have tons of fun switching it up from time to time and focusing on different specs. With BFA, I've found that so many specs that were a blast to play in WOD/Legion were changed drastically for no apparent reason and made far less fun than they used to be. I understand the concept of modifying specs to play a little different over time but it feels like there was generally no QA and all feedback was ignored (or the feedback from high level players was ignored specifically). Part of this is how a lot of specs were positively influenced by having specific legendaries that would augment the rotations in Legion (such as having the class ring for Ret Paladin so you could take Divine Purpose + Crusade), then losing said effects without the team realizing that maybe certain talents should be baked into the class. Ret without divine purpose feels like the slowest thing in the world and is a FAR contrast from how fast paced it felt in Legion. This is obviously only one example but there are plenty other specs that got ravaged by poor design thanks to the removal of artifact abilities or the inability to take two talents from the same row any longer. The GCD change certainly didn't help. Who doesn't just love arbitrary changes to established systems for the sake of enhancing nothing at all but making it feel worse to press your buttons?

This also plays into one of the larger overall issues of BFA, which is power progression. In Legion, you actually felt like a godslayer. It isn't very good design for you to be at this level of power for about a year+ before the devs decide "we have a narrative problem with how powerful you are, time to make you obnoxiously weaker". Sure, you could say that there is a "reset" so to speak with the launch of every new expansion and you have to climb again, but it's never felt as horrible and blatant as it did with the transition to BFA. When you take away ultra-powerful artifact weapons, tier set bonuses and the effects of two legendaries and replace them with... nothing, I think you've got a problem. That problem was exacerbated by the stat squish that came with it, but overall it just doesn't feel good to me to get significantly downgraded "just because".

Mythic+ is probably my favorite activity in WOW; I raided hardcore from Vanilla through Wrath and then again in DS, MOP and WOD and now I'm at the point in my life where you couldn't pay me to get in voice with 19 other people who won't shut up. I've turned into the grumpy old man with this game and really only want to play with my small (dwindling) group of friends that I've stuck with throughout the last 14 years, so Mythic+ is the perfect solution for us. Mythic+ in Legion was pretty damn good, mostly because all the dungeons were incredibly enjoyable. They were mostly fast paced, had fair amounts of trash and there were never any affixes that made me think "UGH THIS WEEK SUCKS". It was an awesome way to get (nearly) the best gear in the game without having to devote an outrageous amount of hours to the game, which doesn't particularly interest me at this stage in my wow career. Of course, with BFA they had to fuck it up with a majority of dungeons that are incredibly uninteresting or outright irritating. Forcing Tyrannical/Fortified on ALL keystones starting at 2+ instead of starting at 10+ was a huge mistake and an unncessary hindrance that grinds your runs to a halt. Pacing was PERFECT with most of the Legion dungeons; if you needed to level up a key to 10+, you could have that ready to go in about an hour. Try doing the same in BFA; I remember in the first few weeks STRUGGLING to +3 a 5... and that's if we were in a dungeon that isn't filled with horseshit mobs (like Shrine of the Storm). This was such an asinine change that NO ONE was asking for, but felt like it would be a good idea for no reason whatsoever. I seriously hope the turnout for the MDI is lower than effort so the message could maybe be received loud and clear that their design decisions for BFA M+ were not good. It's wishful thinking at best.

This might be controversial, but I actually really enjoyed the Legendary hunt in BFA. While I will say that it was incredibly frustrating for the first several months post-launch (nothing like getting a Sephuz 1.0 as your first legendary for your prot paladin!), it eventually evolved into something incredibly fun. It felt nice knowing a nice little present could come from virtually any content. I could understand how that might drive certain types of people completely insane when they feel like they have a physical -need- to farm all content all the time to get the best legendaries they could, but for a semi-casual player, it was an incredibly fun system. I think they could have handled it a whole lot better from the get-go by actually implementing a targeting system like they claimed there would be, but overall I still think it was a positive. In BFA, I feel bored not having that carrot on a stick. They didn't even bother to give us a MOP or WOD style legendary to work for; were there people who legitimately hated the cloak and ring quest chains? Do people not like having something cool to show for your journey throughout an expansion? It just feels like completely laziness. I have ZERO incentive to enter any raid ever... which goes into my next point:

No more raid sets. While at first I thought that this would be fine considering I didn't enjoy raiding anymore anyway, I find that it's incredibly lackluster to see these horrifyingly bland armor sets that they just shat out. You don't know what ya got til it's gone. All the Uldir ones look so terrible; I challenge anyone to find any tier set that's even close to as boring as any of the 4 Uldir sets (mythic or not, I don't care). Molten Core sets are more interesting than those abominations. I will admit that the mythic plate Dazar'Alor set looks pretty good if you're a DK, but every other set looks... not much better than the Uldir stuff. Again, this is pure laziness. Maybe it's because they had a billion artists working on Legion in the wake of Titan's cancellation and them moving all their devs back to WoW during that time, and maybe now at this point all their best artists are back to NOT working on WoW now so they're just shitting out whatever the interns throw together, but that is certainly a downgrade from Legion.

I'm not really super invested in the narrative thanks to years of incompetent writing, but I think the lore in BFA is an absolute low point. I don't consider Legion's story high art by any means (in fact I'd say it was mediocre at best; an excuse to move us from point A to point B), but it was leaps and bounds more interesting than what we're going through now. I love listening to the devs try to spin the negativity as "FANS ARE JUST REALLY SPLIT ON SYLVANAS!!!!!" You made her into a cartoon villain without even giving the slightest hint as to where exactly you're going with this. Sylvanas was one of the more interesting characters from Warcraft 3, so I find it incredibly disappointing that our only options are Garrosh 2.0 or Grom 2.0. We either rebel and kill her, or she inexplicably has some "plan" which involves everyone just forgetting all the awful shit she's done and is suddenly everyone's friend. Maybe they can even have her say "WE WILL NEVER BE SLAVES!!!" to N'zoth or something, really drive the point home that whoever is writing wow's lore has no fucking idea what they're doing anymore (nor do they care... which would be fine if you weren't also trying to sell novels and comics and lore books and whatever the hell else). Things aren't much better on the Alliance front, which might just have the most boring questing and narrative ever. I love my Aryan king, don't get me wrong... but do we really have to have the most cookie-cutter black and white narrative of all time? Horde bad. Alliance good. GOT IT. Oh shit, incoming curveball... villain is here to make you forget all about it! SNORE. Just delete factions already, ffs. This shit is not interesting anymore, and it feels regressive post-Warcraft 3 story.

What is there to say about the Azerite system that hasn't been said 10000000 times before? At least they've stated that by 8.2, it will be a lot different and your neck levels won't be a hindrance any longer for traits. The artifact power system in Legion certainly wasn't that fun early on, but once artifact knowledge kicked into high levels, it was totally fine and not very irritating. It's shocking that they learned nothing from how much people complained about the AP grind in Legion yet made it even worse with BFA.

Missions are pretty horrible now, but they've also always been pretty horrible. While they served a reasonable purpose in WOD and could actually be quite fruitful, I found that they were pretty inconsequential in Legion and waaaaaay more so in BFA. I feel no incentive to do really any mission ever, so why is it even still in the game? Too stubborn to admit defeat over a failed system that is universally hated?

The allied race system is really not good. While I'm not opposed to the Void Elves for Alliance and the Nightborne for Horde (even if it narratively makes just about zero sense from an Alliance PC's perspective as to why the Nightborne would betray you after everything you did for them in Legion), it is beyond insulting that Mag'har, Dark Iron, Lightforged and Highmountain are SEPARATE RACES as opposed to cosmetic options for existing races. I guess they have no shame when it comes to milking people for $25 race changes (which is also insulting that it's still that price in 2019; it made plenty of sense why race/faction/server changes were a little pricey back in the day, but now we're at a point where population balance clearly means nothing so it's obviously driven by greed). I am not excited for future allied races either; filling this game with 100 playable races just inches it that much closer to "cheap korean MMO" territory. It's the most blatant cash grab yet.

All in all, I pretty much hate this expansion. I do have hope that they'll turn it around, but it seems very clear to me that they developed so much of this content on auto-pilot and really haven't put much effort into actually listening to the people who spend so much time playing their game (and it's abundantly clear that their dev team is comprised of a whole lot of people who do -not- play the game). It's hard to want to keep supporting them via my wallet each month, and I understand why so many people have fled. I wish Blizzard would just cut their losses and stop trying to save the game at this point and just make a successor already, whether that be a Diablo or Starcraft MMO or another one set in WoW's universe. I think the majority of us really are ready to just move on at this point; going from WoD to Legion was a pretty emotional roller coaster where I felt like the game was doomed and then somehow managed a spectacular turnaround; I don't know if I have the fortitude to survive another one of those moments with whatever they have planned to exceed BFA. It's been close to 15 years, just give us something new! (And anyone who says "DURR MMO DEAD GENRE" really doesn't know what they're talking about, there is no evidence whatsoever that another MMO couldn't hit WoW's peak or beyond; you're only going off of market trends that suggest the future is mobile which is NOT putting into perspective how many dedicated PC gamers are actually out there, or how many people truly long for the next WoW.)

**Powerogue** · 2019-02-11, 11:04 PM

Warmode is great, really livened up world questing. No problems with that except the faction imbalance issues that have been swaying back and forth. I also have nothing against the story, as we haven't seen the full picture yet. Cutscenes and art team top notch as usual.

Azerite is a surprisingly central problem. In Legion, I felt a steady sense of progress towards long term goals. Every single trait in my artifact was a permanent upgrade to my character's ability to reach those goals. I felt stronger with every upgrade. And with things like the brawler's guild and mage tower, I had goals to look forward to that required gear.

Now we get into BFA. With azerite gear, I upgrade a piece, causing me to have to re-grind the same traits, for no sense of progress forward. You'd think the stat buff would help, but it's all effected by scaling, unlike legion artifact traits, making me not feel any stronger. Without things like the brawler's guild and mage tower, I had no goals to look forward to that required gear. By gear being given out in a variety of non-raiding ways, my alt and raiding main wound up tied for gear at all times, making raiding feel pointless. Combined with nothing to look forward to that required raiding, I, obviously, stopped raiding.

And when I stopped raiding, once I had all the reputations that I wanted, I had nothing else to do. They've added other cosmetics since then, but it's not enough to hold my attention.

Instead, I found myself becoming addicted to Old School Runescape of all things. Where I have steady progress towards goals, permanent upgrades towards my character's ability to reach those goals, and difficult objectives to look forward to that required gearing up. In hindsight, there's no surprise at all why that happened.

**Pheraz** · 2019-02-11, 11:10 PM

I don't like the setting that much. Horde Vs alliance is crap and pirates are not my cup of tea. I like the nightelf transmog and maybe the Naga patch soon. But legion will still have a better song for me

**Otimus** · 2019-02-11, 11:14 PM

BFA at launch felt like a half baked mid-tier patch for Legion, and by the end of Legion, I was tired of Legion. It carries with it all the problems Legion has, some of them even worse, and none of the benefits (Such as the massive lack of content, whereas Legion, at launch, was frontloaded to the freaking brim with content, with content on top with extra content shortly unlocked after with even more content behind it. Legion was a content machine.)

Legion hid it's problems by covering it up with tons and tons of content. (Like, man, just the artifact introduction scenarios alone is probably more content than the entirety of launch BFA)

BFA is just what you see is what you get, and you pretty much get to see most of it worth seeing immediately. Or at least it was when I quit. I haven't come back since the new patch came out.

**pewpmeiser** · 2019-02-11, 11:15 PM

loved em both, just like ive loved every expansion before it

**Zyky** · 2019-02-11, 11:15 PM

Lets breakdown this terrible post bit by bit.