Why do the people that enjoyed Legion not enjoy BfA?

[javierdsv]

Class were fun, story was built upon them.
Oh and you were a powerful being.

I also liked WoD (and I'm serious).

[Valette]

Atleast for me, class design carried legion. It didnt really matter to me if the content I was doing wasnt the best, playing legion's version of shadow priest in that content made it fun. In bfa thats no longer the case.

[vipers]

On legion every class got really long quest chains and there is nothing like that on BFA

[EternalBany]

I LOVED legion
shit made me delay job hunting for months and months, like old days
BFA quit after BIS heroic gearing

[Safebet]

Here's what the situation is for me:

I don't feel any connection to my character or the world in which my character resides. Legion was steeped in class fantasy. We were offered an opportunity to really identify with our characters; not just with a spec that we liked, but the class as a whole. The entire expansion built upon that class fantasy and wove it into one of the more well defined story lines in the epic that WoW has become.

Much of what made Legion feel special was what made the player behind the avatar feel special. We had amazing legendary items with unique abilities that felt good to use or enhanced our power. We had these powerful historic meaningful weapons that oftentimes literally spoke to us. There was also a real sense of momentum; as though, throughout the entire expansion, we were all commonly moving toward a climactic moment that would leave us all in awe of our accomplishments.

BFA stripped away a lot of what made Legion feel special. My initial hope was that it was all being taken away so that it could be built again. So far this has not been the case. We've been left with a shell of a game and nothing feels special or immersive anymore. All of our amazing legendary items are left to rot in the bank. Our weapons were tossed aside, their stories are now dust.

I still log in most days; I still run old content, I still keep up with M+, I still run along the Conquest cap treadmill, I just don't feel like any of it has any impact on the world outside of whichever instance I happen to be in at the time. My contribution as a hero is no longer recognized and that removes my sense of purpose. I guess I'll keep logging in and doing those daily activities out of habit for a while; but, when I do finally get bored? I don't think I'll feel much of a sense of loss about never logging in again because I won't really be losing anything - it's all already gone.

[Weeps]

Me, personally have not enjoyed this game in a LONG time. I believe it has been bad since WotLK. I am, however, confused why people seem to love Legion and hate BfA.

Let's compare BfA to Legion for a moment:
It has the same dungeon systems. Correct.
It has the same mythic+ systems. Wrong. Can't gear swap anymore.
It has the same raiding systems. Correct. Raid systems have largely remained the same over the course of many expansions.
It has the same looting systems. Wrong. Personal loot only now.
It has the same PvP gearing system. Partially correct. You don't have WQs that boost PVP honor points.
It has the same PvP rank system. Correct.
It has the same world quest system. Wrong. Initially it didn't have paragon rep. It offers little to no incentive to do emissaries.
It has the same titanforging system. Correct.

Legion had way more to do, quest wise. The slow drip of Suramar quests was brilliant as it made people feel like there was something to do every reset.

Legion had Mage Tower. EPIC experience and you got new weapon skin.

Legion had legendaries drop from Emissaries.

Legion class design was much better, especially regarding the GCD.

Comparatively, Emerald Nightmare, Helya, Nighthold blow Uldir and BoD out the water.

BFA largely sucks because of the rotations feeling so clunky and choppy. GCD change was vicious bullshit thinking.

If there was no GCD for PvE, I can promise you more people would enjoy the game.

[RobertMugabe]

am i misremembering or wasnt legion also considered bad until late in the xpac?

You remember it wrong.

I mean it was surely considered bad by some people, which is normal, of course not everyone is always happy about something. BUT Legion has never received the amount of hate that BfA has already gotten. I'm sure most people have considered Legion as a good expansion. Some people have even been calling Legion the best expansion ever after the launch hype.

[Lochton]

Class design really suck in BFA.

All the systems ADDED in BFA sucks. Azerite armor, Warfronts and Island expeditions. Shit, shit and shit.

BFA should not get credit for the good systems added in Legion.

Tough luck, it is on the docket for BFA too.

And honestly, Island Expeditions are one of the better things but needs more development.

[Alvito]

This is also something I don't understand.

BfA a just a reskinned Legion, yet Legion is still considered as a good expansion.

People get burnt out of features that they once enjoyed. People also don't like feeling forced to do things. One of Legions srengths was the many ways you could do things and overlapping rewards. A good example is the pvp WQ. In those you could check off a quest for an emmisary, get AP, get honor towards a new honor level which meant more AP, gold, toys, mounts, achievements or wpn skins. Now things are seperated. The original version of islands are the best example of that. Azerite gear is a big, huge, monumental miss for a lot of people also.

[Weeps]

Here's what the situation is for me:

I don't feel any connection to my character or the world in which my character resides. Legion was steeped in class fantasy. We were offered an opportunity to really identify with our characters; not just with a spec that we liked, but the class as a whole. The entire expansion built upon that class fantasy and wove it into one of the more well defined story lines in the epic that WoW has become.

Much of what made Legion feel special was what made the player behind the avatar feel special. We had amazing legendary items with unique abilities that felt good to use or enhanced our power. We had these powerful historic meaningful weapons that oftentimes literally spoke to us. There was also a real sense of momentum; as though, throughout the entire expansion, we were all commonly moving toward a climactic moment that would leave us all in awe of our accomplishments.

TLDR; BFA stripped away a lot of what made Legion feel special. My initial hope was that it was all being taken away so that it could be built again. So far this has not been the case. We've been left with a shell of a game and nothing feels special or immersive anymore.

I agree 100% with this post. Legion had so much more to do, much more immersion.

[LCDArcade]

I don't think I've genuinely enjoyed and spent time playing a WoW expansion since MoP. Mostly likely not because of burnout or growing older but rather the poor direction the game devolved into. I started playing in BC when I was 15 or so. I'm 27 now and still wish I could play the game but it simply isn't fun. TBH I think it's more a single player game now than an MMORPG; it's all about doing your own thing now and getting lucky enough to get the highest random titanforged loot.

[Alvito]

am i misremembering or wasnt legion also considered bad until late in the xpac?

Depends on who you ask. The AP grind, tf/wf nonsense and the rng of legendary items certainly pissed people off. I still think the masses enjoyed it more than most expansions. Following WoD helped a lot with that too, easy to look good when you are standing next to a hideous wretch of a person.

[Weeps]

You remember it wrong.

I mean it was surely considered bad by some people, which is normal, of course not everyone is always happy about something. BUT Legion has never received the amount of hate that BfA has already gotten. I'm sure most people have considered Legion as a good expansion. Some people have even been calling Legion the best expansion ever after the launch hype.

It is the best expansion in my opinion (Legion).

The only gripe people had about Legion was 2 things.

1) Legendary drop system which was corrected towards the end to a Token System. If it were a token system from day 1, it would've been much more AMAZING.

2) The AP grind and having to go in and physically submit AK. But all of this was rendered negligible as Blizzard made AK an automatic weekly upgrade, like it is in BFA right now. AP became stupid easy to farm so it wasn't needed after a certain amount of points.

PVP was fun as fuck, doing those WQs.

[RobertMugabe]

This is also something I don't understand.

BfA a just a reskinned Legion, yet Legion is still considered as a good expansion.

Because BfA is not a reskinned Legion. BfA feels like Legion 0.5. All of the stuff that was brought over from Legion has become worse in a couple different ways (especially the Artifact/Azerite system and most importantly the class design) and none of the issues that Legion had were fixed. And we've overall received kinda less content (except if you play both an Alliance and Horde toon then I guess you have more leveling content tho).

It is clear that Blizzard has focused a lot on Warfronts and IE, which are both very unpopular game modes.

[Alvito]

I don't think I've genuinely enjoyed and spent time playing a WoW expansion since MoP. Mostly likely not because of burnout or growing older but rather the poor direction the game devolved into. I started playing in BC when I was 15 or so. I'm 27 now and still wish I could play the game but it simply isn't fun. TBH I think it's more a single player game now than an MMORPG.

It also isn't uncommon to no longer enjoy things from your childhood to the same degree as an adult.

[LCDArcade]

It also isn't uncommon to no longer enjoy things from your childhood to the same degree as an adult.

Well I can agree with that to some degree, but to be fair I still enjoy all the same cartoons I did as a kid today haha.

[RobertMugabe]

It is the best expansion in my opinion (Legion).

The only gripe people had about Legion was 2 things.

1) Legendary drop system which was corrected towards the end to a Token System. If it were a token system from day 1, it would've been much more AMAZING.

2) The AP grind and having to go in and physically submit AK. But all of this was rendered negligible as Blizzard made AK an automatic weekly upgrade, like it is in BFA right now. AP became stupid easy to farm so it wasn't needed after a certain amount of points.

PVP was fun as fuck, doing those WQs.

The AP grind was only an issue for a small number of people and has never been this widely discussed as some issues with BfA have been. As a then-mythic raider, I was never grinding AP specifically and none of the guilds on my server have required that.

The discussion about the legendaries has also mostly died down shortly after release. I remember that around patch 7.1 most people have stopped talking about it.

But yeah, also overall the best time I ever had in WoW was also during Legion, but it was during 7.0-7.1.5

[Fayenoor]

Things BFA did right:

1. Got rid of IWIN RNG Legendary crap system from Legion
2. Balanced the dungeons better for M+ runs.
3. Put in place better catch up mechanics for alts and offspecs.
4. Reduced AP grind significantly compare to Legion

Things BFA did wrong:
1. No signature feature this expac. Warfronts dont cut it. So it seems like an extension of Legion. Legion had Artifact, WOD Garrisons etc.
2. Lack of definitive reason to raid; the best loot still drops outside from high level M+ which are often easier to get than loot from raid.
3. Wow seems to be significantly moving towards a 5-man gaming model and reducing the scope of the larger raid content.
4. Story seems lukewarm. Uldir was a pretty meh instance. BoD is awesome.
5. Most of BFA so far seems to be a bridge, intermezzo to something bigger, grander.

Remember that Legion really took off with the Nighborne campaign and Suramar. And Nighthold was absolutely superbly done. Maybe BFA will take off with what's to come next if and when they do the Black City and Aszhara/Nzoth storyline as has been speculated.

[Ungeir]

As someone who enjoyed Legion, except horrific class balance and how Death Knights had horrible class mechanics:

- Legion had more interesting story and theme. BfA has almost no story and the faction war narrative is the dumbest and most hamfisted it's ever been.
- Legion had artifacts - which were much more interesting than Heart of Azeroth and Azerite Armor. They had cool visuals, a collection mechanic, quests and lore.
- Legion had Suramar. The zone and campaign had more content and was more interesting than the war campaign.
- World Quests and Invasions were a new kind of content.
- Mythic Dungeons introduced a new system.
- Legion dungeons were not trashfests. BfA dungeons are so trash heavy they made me not want to do Mythic Dungeons at all.
- Class mechanics are so terrible and obviously left to rot that it's almost impossible to enjoy even the interesting content of BfA.
- BfA seems to treat the player as a spectator to the cast of NPCs acting out the story. Legion had the player fighting alongside NPCs - this time around we're errand boys, minions and spectators.

BfA has Islands as the single new system, and they are not much more than a MoP scenario with randomized trash. The time element is a terrible fit for a new system of randomly generated content - and I suspect it's there simply to mask how shallow the "random" element is. Warfronts are just plain old scenarios - extremely long escort quests that you can't fail.

I think calling BfA a reskinned Legion is not really accurate. It's worse on almost every level and it's a shame, because I strongly suspect that this was caused by Blizzard simply not allocating enough developers to the project. Whether they put them on other game projects or Classic is far more of a resource sink than they are willing to admit, doesn't really matter in the end.

Legion had so many good things I could accept the ugly parts (class design and mechanics - slow and sparse content update schedules). BfA is so horrible, that I am not sure if they can bring me back with even awesome patches.

[Nerovar]

Legion class design was much better, especially regarding the GCD.

It was better but it wasn't much better. Sure, GCD changes are complete shit. But so were the Legion class "overhauls". It's what happens when some devs decide to throw 12 years of class development in the garbage can and start anew. Classes in Legion felt like you were stuck in low level for the entirety of the expansion. BfA is no different in that regard. Specs are boring and mindless, there's no meaningful interaction between abilities, no interesting mechanics... not even interesting spells.

I think players were really hoping for Blizzard to build on the pruned specs to give them at least some semblance of depth but they simply did nothing with the classes (except for removing Artifact Weapons). It's like they don't have a team for class development at this point.