What exactly makes some people say Legion was good but BfA is bad?

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Rose-tinted goggles and falling for the final patch. (Though to be fair, that did make Legion better, and BfA has failed miserably from start to finish, rather than just the start.)

Legion was absolutely terrible during its first two patches, just about as bad as BfA has been. But then they actually attempted to fix things, and the dim-witted ignoramuses of the world were all "omg best exp evar!!!" People, as a whole, are so fucking gullible that it's embarrassing.

What's embarrassing is ranting on and calling people who don't share the same opinion with you "dim-witted ignoramuses of the world". There are better way to express your dislike of something than insulting the players.

[Kalisandra]

Fuck me, i'm a proponent of flying right off the bat, but content like Suramar made be appreciate that there was no flying initially because it would've ruined the experience.

Likewise. Unlike WoD it was top level content that worked without flight. If flight had come along with 7.1 or 7.1.5 (and required finishing Suramar on one character) rather than 7.3 it would've been wonderful.

This thing where we don't get flight until way into the expac (i.e. when people start leaving in droves) is just BS, and it makes Blizzard look niggardly.

Which, by the way was something I thought was amazing about Legion, especially after WoD - Legion's spec design and the gear, etc. by and large felt generous and powerful. Not every spec had this, but for many during the pre-patch when things were being leaked you'd look at data-mine of a weapon and go "Holy S**t! No way is that going live!", and yet quite often they did go live with the apparently over-powered stuff we saw in the beta. The same goes with the legendaries. Yes, how they dropped initially blew, and some being enormously better than others was an issue. However, for many specs once you had a decent range you'd want to swap them around for different content, so you could have some fun with them. I used to do WQs and such on my Elemental with Prydaz (shielding neck) and Roots of Shaladrassil (heals you when you don't move) and tank all sorts of stuff that Shamans have no business getting punched by. It was tons of fun.

BfA doesn't have any of that. Half the specs rely on the azerite healing and shielding to do their WQs, etc. without getting stomped (or did before massively outgearing it), and their effects just aren't that special, let alone unique.

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Rose-tinted goggles and falling for the final patch. (Though to be fair, that did make Legion better, and BfA has failed miserably from start to finish, rather than just the start.)

Aside from fixing the legendary lottery and the raid, I didn't like the last patch. Argus was a terrible questing zone, IMO, though Mac'Aree was very pretty.

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Lastly, about class design. Legion pruned some speccs, but it gave them artifacts. While i dislike rental power systems, at least artifacts did it decently. Some powers like affliction warlock or balance druid ones had actual decision making to make the endgame package interesting to master. Bfa deleted those and brought... Nothing. Azerite almost never gives you more decisions in combat, it rarely even changes the rotation. Its a strategic gearing choice and little else. Some classes were ruined by taking away the many artifact traits which bound them together, with blizz not even seeming to notice. Affliction without artifact is watered down and simple. Holy priests have lackluster single target tools and lost a ton of fun synergy in their aoe healing which made them satisfying. Legion brought us rental power, but BFA made it suck.

Affliction had at least two workable builds in Legion, and the artefact effect was interesting to manage (I thought, anyway, because you generally couldn't keep it up constantly, yet it wasn't just a cooldown). Now it's much less interesting, and seems to be all about managing the cooldown. What was wrong with the 'cooldown' being 'get five shards, make sure Agony won't fall off, pop artefact ability, drop 5x UA'? Affliction is supposed to be a DoT class and thus about split DPS and sustained pressure and DPS, not about burst.

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The ones that were "better" in Legion required Legiondairies to do well. Legion was full of RNG and was absolutely terrible.

Leveling was better in WoD.

Sure there might've been less content in WoD, but what content it did have blew Legion and BfA out of the water.

And I quote "There's a lot of content, but there's not a lot of GOOD content"

WoD had good levelling content, and they hadn't yet killed the Ret of late Cata/MoP completely. Pity they messed up Elemental and took a while to fix it, but that's normal. The problem was lack of content once you hit the level cap. Also, Ashran just blew.

[WowIsDead64]

To me, BfA is almost exactly the same as Legion.

It's the same focus on world quests. One daily quest with bigger reward etc.

It's the same focus on M+. The same key system, and endless scaling of dungeons in a "modern" GOGOGO AoE fashion.

It's the same Raiding system. 4 difficulties. LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic.

It's the same questing system.

It's the same AP grind.

It's the same Titanforging system.

It's actually a bit BETTER system than the "no gear should matter in PvP", "100% random garbage ilvl PvP gear" PvP system we had in Legion.

To me, it seems like the only reason people liked Legion was because of the transmogs on your cool weapons. And people seem salty that BfA don't have Class sets (another transmog argument). Is it really this easy to make you enjoy an expansion? Cool transmogs = good expansion?

Yeah, same crap, but at least it had some motivations to do things. Legion itself aka TBC 2.0 was long awaited, DHs, class halls, not so useless mission table, artifacts, artifact talent trees, transmog sets, mounts. That's why covenants will be just class halls 2.0.

[Kalisandra]

Then you had Suramar(and the withered scenario!).

I wasn't a huge fan of the Withered Scenario at the time, though it was a bit of fun once I'd got enough stuff from it that I didn't feel I was missing out if I screwed it up. However, compared to BfA it has a huge plus - unlike the Visions (and just about everything else) it's not timed.

[Vilendor]

Let's not overlook the difference between cool, powerful weapons that you kept all expansion versus... necklaces.

Plus they were not just powerful and cool, but with their talent tree and skills they filled the gaps in the horrible class designs and made them playable. Meanwhile BFA gear is all about winning the lottery and stacking as much uncontrollable random procs as possible, but underneath the classes are still a broken mess.

[Amaterasu65]

Legion's leveling was awesome, that's about it.
Most classes required certain Legiondairies to perform, and perform well.
Pathfinder.

Legion got good on It's last patch.

This. I quit raiding in Legion because I was frustrated I wasn't getting the mfing fire wrists or TW ring. I ended up getting them last, both of them were my 2 last legendary. I even went frost during Nighthold and I kept getting shit legendaries. I was always outdps'd by my fellow mages because of one item rng didn't want to give me. Blink chest was my first one. At least it had some world utility.

[Sithalos]

They eventually fixed Legion's problems. They only made BfA's problems worse.

Also Legion didn't play like shit because of GCDs.

[Kalisandra]

Since Wrath every single current expansion has been the worst thing ever created in the history of Blizzard. As soon as said expansion is no longer current, it becomes super amazing and some of the best game play players have ever seen.

Funny, just about everyone I know thought MoP was a step up from Cata, and Legion a step up from WoD (or at least no worse). The expansions that people I know and play with fairly universally think or thought were worse, while they were current were Cata (huge step down from LK) and WoD (pruning unpopular, and once people hit cap, nothing to do) from MoP. Hell, MoP was seen as better than Cata even when it was still at the 'dailies or perish' stage.

[sam86]

Well, the poster I responded to said that "Legion did not punish alts". But it did. A lot. Each AK rank had to be individually researched, and it wasn't until patch 7.3 that AK research was removed and made game-wide at rank 41, then increasing one rank automatically per week, up to 55.

I remember that AK became so ridiculous that, looting AP from a world chest, that would just give you roughly 25% of the AP needed to get to weapon rank 2 while leveling... would immediately grant you enough AP that would allow you to max out the base "talent tree" of your weapon, and some of the new tree.

the AP research didn't cost much, not to mention it stack? I mean they unlock (timegate) each week new upgrade in research, so if u start ur alt 10 weeks later than ur main, u can grind AP (it was AP for it right?) and research the 10 weeks in same time instead of wait for 10 full weeks like ur main did
The punishment is nowhere as bad as essence

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Beauty doesn't matter, when every thing is spread out and hard to find..... And there isn't even a flightpath inside the city, so each time you go there from UC, it takes 2-3 minutes to go to flightpath to get anywhere.

we were talking about beauty, not practicality, I love how Silvermoon look, i still don't go there of course because no flying, it is far faster to be done in TB or Orgrimmar over Silvermoon

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Since Wrath every single current expansion has been the worst thing ever created in the history of Blizzard. As soon as said expansion is no longer current, it becomes super amazing and some of the best game play players have ever seen.

can u show me a single poll that voted Legion is worse than WoD during Legion era?

[Xath]

To put it simply in legion they admitted they screwed up and it became super easy to instantly level your weapon within two world quests of hitting max. Legendary acquisition rate was vastly increased and eventually a vendor was put in that let you buy specific ones. The mage tower encouraged you to play alts as did the class campaigns. Contrast that to BFA they were told throughout beta that azerite gear was a terrible idea and needed to be reworked. The first change was adding a second ring which while needed power creaped our damage even more than was already going to happen going through basically 200 item levels starting out at around 280 upon hitting max and going up to 490 including mythic nzoth. Then we added essences on top of it which are attained by rep grinding and aren't account wide. Finally the cherry on top of the shit sunday corruptions. Over an entire dungeon Twilight Devastation does around 20% of my damage. Basically non player controlled damage that I get for winning the RNG lottery. Corruption is even worse than titanforging. Basically telling you to never play alts. The reason people remember legion somewhat fondly is the devs listened while in BFA it feels like they have just doggedly pushed their vision rather than what players want. They have also completely gone back on the idea of item level should be king.

[Kayb]

With the exception of Illidan and most things after arriving at Argus, the storytelling in general was pretty damned great. And the artwork too. That's all though. That's all I actually liked about Legion.

The only thing I liked about BFA was getting Vulpera. Didn't like anything else about BFA, least of all story.

[Chromeshellking]

Sounds like someone didn't play early Legion, when each rank of "Artifact Knowledge" had to be individually researched, one at a time, for each of your alts, on top of having to dedicate Artifact Power for each of your artifact weapons individually. Legion was extremely unfriendly in its early days.

To be fair I didnt play it at first. So ill have to concede that but over time it became more friendly. However after its run and comparing it to bfa and the amount of time legion is still superior to what bfa is now.

At least I could say each one had to research and be maintained but that system was far more preferable to me than hunting down azerite on every char and attempting to isolate the best slotted abilities and passive effects on every char. Just lightly playing 12 char for a transmog illusion from the nighthold with some of the crappy gear they have in comparison to my mage makes me appreciate the casualness of how well he does.

[jzhbee]

Class Gameplay. End of Story.
Dungeons were better. I'd rather be running Nelth's lair still than having to do Shrine of the Storm.

GCD change really fucked with me.
Artifact abilities were nice, and the removal of some are sorely felt.
Class Campaigns felt so much better than the war campaigns.
Zone design was better. I was feeling troll fatigue before I ever finished Zuldazar questing, and then it got worse. Uldir for months, ugh.

[gobio]

REALITY makes MOST people say Legion was good but BfA is bad?

The lost of sub in BFA is not a hoax, holy shit.

[Paulosio]

Class specific content such as legendary's, order halls, order hall campaigns, semi specific artifact aquisition (obviously some scenario's are shared).

Things like world quests hadn't entirely lost their novelty and didn't feel like quite as much of a chore.

Advancing the artifact level was fun while it lasted whereas for most of BFA advancing your neck just allowed you to re-earn azerite traits that you'd already had for monthse so that you could continue to use those same traits on your new higher ilvl gear.

Along with the class specific content previously mentioned, the mage tower motivated me because I wanted to earn those skins while they were available and I had fun earning them all. It gave me some challenge outside of raiding and it also motivated me to have a better understanding of how all the different classes and specs worked at least to some degree.

I still hate the global cooldown changes in BFA too. I've kind of got used to them but it doesn't feel good and it affects different classes more than others. For some specs it's barely anything you are going to notice while for others it's just a pain.

[Palapop]

Are you really willing to pretend that AP in Legion up til 7.3.5 wasn't prohibitively unwelcome for alts? And that Legiondary RNG only made the AP grind worse? I couldn't even ~think~ about rerolling in NH (Mythic) because I was spending so much time grinding AP on my main. (I quit for EN/ToV and came back at the beginning of NH.) It was so miserable that I ended up quitting the game out of frustration while we were on Gul'dan.

BfA isn't prefect by any means but at least it got AP/AK right.

If you read my comment again... carefully... with a bit more attention....

You would see that I did say that you "only" had to grind AP and pray for "correct" legendary item. Which was RETARDED. But still, it was waaaay less "chores" for alt back then than it is the case right now in BFA.

[Super Kami Dende]

one of the main things that turned me off BFA was the godawful fucking story. Legion had a decent one.

[Linri]

I think Legion felt more compelling to do things during the course of the xpack, while BFA feels like a mediocre xpack with filler content that no one really likes but does anyway.

[Bae]

Since Wrath every single current expansion has been the worst thing ever created in the history of Blizzard. As soon as said expansion is no longer current, it becomes super amazing and some of the best game play players have ever seen.

Thats because people compare it to the past. When things get worse and worse you realise how better you had it.

That being said though i still hated the start of MOP. Start of MOP and BFA have been the only things that have ever made me quit the game.

[Zarithras]

1. At this point in both legion and bfa, grinding artifact power and azerite power are essentially the same. Waste a bunch of time to get 1 more point. That one more point was so menial is was barely noticed, if noticed at all.

2. And using the same weapon transmog as most people of your spec is no different.

3. Again, you're comparing early legion to late game bfa for some reason that will forever escape me. That "meaningless" level on your heart is no better than point x into concordance.

4. So there was no gear upgrades in legion? Or warforging/titanforging? Why did you purposely leave those out of your "comparison"?

5. 100% subjective, yet presented as fact. And corruption was added to replace titanforging (even though that wasnt a thing in legion according to your comparison), not because of azerite.

6. You're probably right in saying legion didnt have universally disliked systems. You are 100% wrong in implying that bfa does. Just because you and your buddies dislike something, doesnt mean no one likes it. You are not the entire playerbase.

1. I clarified this point. In both Legion and BfA end game, both AP grinds have become meaningless.

2. This is apples to oranges. Just because other players had the same artifact didn't diminish the fact that the HoA is absent from your character.

3. This point was more about early game in Legion and BfA. Leveling the artifact felt way better than leveling the HoA in the first half of each expansion. I clarified this in the next sentence, stating end game has turned out to be the same.

4. You're right, I should have left "gear" out of the BfA list since that also existed in Legion. My point being that there are many more ways to progress your character in BfA, and it's become unwieldy.

5. Ion explicitly said that essences were added because azerite didn't pan out as a progression scheme. We heard over and over that classes would feel complete once they got azerite, much like in Legion with artifacts. However, this didn't happen, so essences were introduced. Lumping corruption into this is my own conjecture, but it seems to be another layer of progression to keep players interested since class design and other progression schemes sucked in BfA. The class design argument is heavily, heavily favored towards Legion.


6. I'm not basing this off of my buddies and me. I'm basing this off of participation and general reception. You're right, saying they're universally hated is strong language. My point being that they're much more disliked than Legion game systems.

All that said, let me clarify that I didn't enjoy Legion nearly as much as past expansions either. I think a lot of what's wrong with BfA started in Legion, but the freshness of it, and the general higher quality, kept it engaging. BfA literally feels like Legion 0.5 to me, and this is a sentiment I've seen shared by many players who engage in social media.