What made Legion better?

[ro9ue]

Both BFA and now SL are very clearly less popular than Legion and this reflects my own personal opinion.

I was subbed for the entirety of Legion ~2years. BFA just a few months and SL I just resubbed but can't bring myself to log in or care, even with a new patch on the horizon.

A few things stand out to me, but curious what everyone else thinks:

- A new class, the iconic Demon Hunter
- A simple, but nostalgic story hook. Legion was a generic big bad and finally returned
- It took place on Azeroth (so did BFA, but SL feels... "out there")
- M+ and WQ were just introduced. Dungeons and the outdoor world were previously completely obsolete after reaching a certain ilevel. M+ and WQ now are considered boring and tedious, but is that because the quality has gone down or really just the novelty wore off?
- Heavy class focus made alts appealing. You basically had a uniquely flavored experience on each class with it's own mini-story and perspective on the larger conflict, as well as a chance to finally get some class specific mounts, titles and cosmetics.
- The entirety of the end game systems felt holistically intertwined: Class Hall + Class Campaign + Class Artifacts.
- Artifacts had a ton of cool challenge, hidden, PVP, etc looks to collect for 36 different specs over the course of the expansion

[Vellus]

I think you listed off the main points. Owning prominent weapons from lore was cool, having Illidan back as an anti-hero was cool, and having an embellishment on the burning legion who was always thought of as the "big bad" of WoW was cool.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Rose tinted googles.

When legion was current it got endless flak just like every other current expan.

[WowIsDead64]

Dunno. Because "perfect" game design => not fun. Fun comes from things, that are made purely for fun, not for game design purposes. In most cases fun things are a little bit "broken" in terms of game design. Problem is - fun things don't keep players subbed. BFA and SL - are just Legion 2.0 and 3.0 with all fun things cut, but with all grind/RNG/time-gating kept in game. Blizzard think only about profits now. They don't want to make content just for fun, so it won't pay off. They make content, that keeps players subbed. Sad thing, but it's grind/RNG/time-gating, that keeps players subbed, not fun content.

[Rendark]

Well seeing as we are only about to get the first patch in SL i can't say if its better then legion. It is better then BFA but that's a low bar.

Legion was the start of the we need to waste as much of the players time as we can that they mastered in BFA. SL may not have much in it right now but i'm liking it more the legion.

[darklogrus]

It followed an expansion abandoned in beta..

[Nathreim]

They didn't give up before the expansion launched like WoD. At least the launch BFA stuff was good Shadowlands feels entirely soulless (pun not intended).

Blizz seems to have really dropped the ball on SL this setting has so much more potential and Blizz is blowing it. I want to see the Ancestral Lands where the Pandaren Tauren and Orc spirits should be going. I want to see the Light's afterlife. I dont want to see blue bird people or yet another druid inspired area thats not the Emerald Dream.

Bastion just sucks and the story is inferior to what we already knew about Spirit Healers and Valkyr. No one gives a shit about the Jailer he sucks as a villain.

On top of everything Sylvanas seems to have been ruined just to give us this terrible expansion she should have never been Warchief much less Garrosh 2.0 in BFA. We could have got to SL without all that instead we lost two capital cities and a bunch of good characters (of which the Horde had few left already).

[Big Thanks]

I believe the answer is pretty simple.

Was the expansion that felt the most "FRESH" by introducing a lot of new things...some were so good we still have it today.

From the top of my head...
World Quests
Mythic +
Legendaries for everyone
Covenants are Class Halls 2.0

Cant remember more...but it felt pretty fresh at the time...felt good for its time i suppose

[Hellobolis]

i think the big things were that a lot of things felt fresh/new. M+, WQ and even the artifacts.

but by BFA and SL the novelty had worn off and fixing the annoyances and innovating of M+/WQs was going slow while at the same time both BFA and SLs main expansion features were very poorly received.

[Big Thanks]

a lot of things felt fresh/new. M+, WQ and even the artifacts.

LOL we said it at the same time (>_<)

[chiddie]

Dunno. Because "perfect" game design => not fun. Fun comes from things, that are made purely for fun, not for game design purposes. In most cases fun things are a little bit "broken" in terms of game design. Problem is - fun things don't keep players subbed. BFA and SL - are just Legion 2.0 and 3.0 with all fun things cut, but with all grind/RNG/time-gating kept in game. Blizzard think only about profits now. They don't want to make content just for fun, so it won't pay off. They make content, that keeps players subbed. Sad thing, but it's grind/RNG/time-gating, that keeps players subbed, not fun content.

Grind is not an “issue”, but it has to be rewarding.

The game has nothing for the player who wants to progress without having to group and heavily depend on others.

I stopped playing SL 2 months ago and went back to Diablo 3 after 5+ years. The endgame feels so much fun and rewarding compared to WoW that is just unbelievable. I know they are different games but given D3 has not a monthly fee so it has less obligation to find new things to get you playing it for years, the difference with actual WoW is astonishing.

[munkeyinorbit]

What is missing is a clear reason to go back and do older content at any level. This was legendaries. Legendaries turned out to be the wrong reason as it turned into frustration for a lot of people but at the very least it kept the earlier patches somewhat viable.

What SL and BfA lack was a reason to raid at all. For the 98% of the players that don't raid mythic raiding has become obsolete. There is no point. You get better gear, and if you believe some people here, a lot quicker than you ever did in a raid.

[Relapses]

Nothing, imo. Early Legion is the worst experience I've had in this game since I started playing in TBC. It represents the only time I quit the game because of the way it played rather than real life circumstances. I simply burned myself out.

Later Legion seemed like a much better experience but I never got to experience it.

[Azerate]

Legion was when the wow content creators starting to gain more and more popularity. 2016+ in general was the time of crazy growth of youtube and similar internet media. In Legion everyone was still mostly just talking about the game they've liked for years. By the time BfA released, they realized they get more views and clicks by being negative and toxic about the game, and by overstating its flaws and focusing on complaining about things they don't like as opposed to stuff they do enjoy. More than ever, it became a fad to shit on the game and complaining about insignificant things.

[Marxman]

The content. Just the content. The class halls, the artifact quests and lore, the class mounts, the mage tower and associated mogs, the dungeons, the world content. All *much* better than anything we got in BfA or SL.

Legion systems design was a fucking dumpster fire just like BfA (and worse than SL by a mile), but it had an assload of good content that completely masked the problems of the systems for most people.

Personally, I don't think Legion was better than SL. SL suffers from a lack of content and very poorly designed content. Legion was the opposite, suffering from awful systems.

[MoanaLisa]

For one thing it came after Warlords. For another they redid some systems to insure that people had stuff to do.

When legion was current it got endless flak just like every other current expan.

Partially true. Having new stuff to do, especially after Warlords, got the expansion off to a really good start. That matters.

On the downside the class fantasy stuff was a problem for some people. My main since BC had their story changed to the point where I didn't really know her any longer. That doesn't matter to a lot of people but if you've invested years into a toon and then Blizzard comes along and says, "Nope, they're someone entirely different than you thought" that's a problem.

[Soon-TM]

The way I see it:

• It came after the unmitigated disaster that was WoD. Almost everything was going to look good compared to that trainwreck of an expansion.
• All the class specific content, which included spec specific artifacts and storylines, was a very welcome addition. Gameplay-wise, not having to depend on RNG for the weapon slot was great for all classes, but especially for the ever popular melee dps.
• A cool, well-known foe. The Legion >>>> Sylv or Tentacle Boi in BfA, and >>>>>>>>>>>>> compared to the Blue Man.
• WQs and M+. Not only they were brand new systems at the time, but also both were strictly better (i.e. less tedious and more rewarding) than their iterations of BfA or especially SL.
• No Jaina, almost no Anduin, almost no Thrall, and remarkably little of Sylvanas. Every time one of those shows up, you know it's cringe time. Sure, MALFURIOOOOON MUH LUUUUUV was quite eye-rolling, but still not as bad as what came later.

Of course, it had its crappy parts as well: all classes/specs' toolkits were mercilessly pruned in order to make room for those nifty artifacts (and the consequences were felt during early BfA), wildly imbalanced RNGdaries, terribly restrictive AP farming during the first half of the expansion, just to name a few things. But BfA cut out all the good parts while keeping the bad ones, and SL... Well, it really feels like another WoD.

[Itori]

I thought legion was pretty fun compared to most post activision expansions mainly because dh felt like they were experimenting with a more action based class and hoping they were going to change up the game a bit.

The artifact weapon system was also great because it felt like a new step forward and honestly i was playing ff at the time and they have a relic system which is locked behind content patches to upgrade while WoW it felt like the weapon progressed by the week and i enjoyed that.

[Ragnarohk]

Both BFA and now SL are very clearly less popular than Legion and this reflects my own personal opinion.

I was subbed for the entirety of Legion ~2years. BFA just a few months and SL I just resubbed but can't bring myself to log in or care, even with a new patch on the horizon.

A few things stand out to me, but curious what everyone else thinks:

- A new class, the iconic Demon Hunter
- A simple, but nostalgic story hook. Legion was a generic big bad and finally returned
- It took place on Azeroth (so did BFA, but SL feels... "out there")
- M+ and WQ were just introduced. Dungeons and the outdoor world were previously completely obsolete after reaching a certain ilevel. M+ and WQ now are considered boring and tedious, but is that because the quality has gone down or really just the novelty wore off?
- Heavy class focus made alts appealing. You basically had a uniquely flavored experience on each class with it's own mini-story and perspective on the larger conflict, as well as a chance to finally get some class specific mounts, titles and cosmetics.
- The entirety of the end game systems felt holistically intertwined: Class Hall + Class Campaign + Class Artifacts.
- Artifacts had a ton of cool challenge, hidden, PVP, etc looks to collect for 36 different specs over the course of the expansion

Class halls/weapons, Mage Tower and Suramar/Nighthold were the only good part about Legion.

[WowIsDead64]

Fun content - is just extra content, that is made just to make game more fun.

Example: new class. From players' perspective it's very fun, because it brings large amount of things to game, like new playstyle, new visual style, new story, etc. At the end it's very RPish. As for me, RP - is not that weird stuff, that happens on RP servers, like talking some special way, otherwise you would be banned. RP - is when you imagine, that you live as your character. And new class brings large amount of new RP stuff into game. But at the same time new class is disaster from game design's point of view. According to "perfect game design" devs have to keep number of classes as minimal, as possible. Because they have to invent new game mechanics, otherwise they would need to take them from other classes or copy-paste. They have to balance all that classes somehow. And at the end new class doesn't keep players subbed. Back in old days, when leveling was considered to be content, new classes were used to make players level new characters from scratch. But now class is just a bunch of mechanics. And therefore investing money into new class isn't profitable.

That's why it's more profitable to make 20 new WQs to grind, than one new class.