So, how does this look any different than WoD going into Legion?

[loras]

Rose tinted glasses? Let’s look at vanilla: Onyxia 69 days. MC 154 days. AQ 113 days. Naxx 90 days.

Classic? Ok let’s look at classic again like you suggested. Everything dead on release day, except MC and Ony because ppl had to level first. Still dead within the first week.

Seriously? You‘re arguing that it‘s „just bad guilds“? Who‘s wearing rose tinted glasses now?

Oh yeah, time spent is definitely indicative of skill required - in a time when online social stuff (especially involving that many people) was even more niche than now. To say nothing of bugs needing to be fixed (i am too lazy to look it up, but i recall AQ having some, ZG too i think), generally poorer hardware and infrastructure and... well it's almost completely understandable why they tuned shit so leniently.

Exactly, classic showed the true difficulty; none at all.

It's rather clear that those rose tinted glasses are stuck firmly to your face.

[Diatribe]

This but also WoD wasn't as bad as people make it look imo, as well as I believe it didn't deserve it's fate. It needed more attention and content that was cut cout of it and glued to Legion to make it seem "all that much better" but it was all at the expanse of WoD.
Didnt liek it.

WoD's prime reason why it's remembered so poorly was primarily down to lack of content. What was there, was great. It just didn't have crap to do after the point where another content patch was owed (but never came).

[Velerios]

How exactly was SL "created for the 1% hardcore playerbase" though? Which of the major features are you talking about?

Covenants? Yeah, 9.0 covenants really were tailored toward the hardcore players, everyone loved them. The fact you couldn't easily change covenants in .0 was specifically made to hinder hardcore players from playing the game hardcore. It was purely made for immersion and lore, ie. stuff that many casuals care about, but almost no hardcore player cares about. Same with Soulbinds and Conduit Energy.

Torghast? Hardcore content right there. Hardcore players loved having to go to Torghast twice a week.

The Maw, Korthia and Zereth Mortis? Open World content made for more casual players, and then slapped a weekly quest on it to make it semi-mandatory for hardcore players.

Covenant Sanctum Features? Those hardcore players sure loved the Ember Court, and running around the open world with their abomination finding ways to customize it.

Mission tables? Anima farming for pets/mounts/transmogs? Treasures/Rares in open world? World Quests? Alll made for the 1%.

You would probably argue that dungeons and raids are "created for the 1%", and I'd counter that argument by saying an MMO *needs* dungeons and raids in the game, and with the very very very low difficulty of LFR and normal/heroic dungeons, raid/dungeons are made for everyone equally. Sure they need a little more time for tuning the harder difficulties, but that doesn't mean the expire expansion was made only for hardcore players.

This has been one of the most casual friendly expansions in the history of wow, I don't get that whole "blizzard only cares about the 1%" argument.


Blizzard made some choices *because of* the 1%, but almost exclusively all of those choices were made to actually harm the hardcore players, and most of the time that also harms the casual playerbase too. Still doesn't mean they made it "for the 1%"

What you are describing is content to bloat the gaming time somehow, but not solo content. Convenants was another tool to add temporary powers to the game, Torghast was good in beta, blizzard nerfed the fucking hell out of it and in the end just another time bloat where except for the legendaries there was no progression BECAUSE how hardcore-raiders would cry out of it (so yes, another thing where content was underwhelming because of them)

And you are already disqualified yourself by saying that the maw was for solo players. The maw was a shitty zone that blizzard didn't finish in time, so they added the eye of the jailor-system to make it seem that it was intended to finish it on time while the maw simply hadn't any content at all. Corthia was cut out content of a .2 patch that we never saw and Zereth Mortis: ok, one endgame zone in the whole expansion, and that not even at the start of an expansion. So in the end we got at release a trash zone with trash visuals with trash content with a trash timegated and time-limited experience and the same world-quest-shit we had since legion.

In Legion we got at first the world quests, a WHOLE ENDGAME ZONE with one of the strongest lores they have ever added into the game outside of their shitty books, a .1 patch that extended this lore quite a bit a .2 patch that was really meh (yes, mage tower wooohooo, but broken shore itself was really really shit outside of the raid) and more or less a new planet with a .3 patch, and 1 of the 3 zones was actually good.

The ember court was a tiny bit that i could accept as a solo-feature, but again: solo content meets timed shit.

Mission table, really? Mission table is the thing that blizzard intended to keep players stick on their mobile phones. Unnecessary now when Blizzard now have their own sca.. i mean mobile game. dO yOu GuYs NoT hAvE pHoNeS?

And the rest you mentioned is group content, not solo content

[enigma77]

Well Legion was great because they were innovative and bold. And because you never ever ran out of things to do.

But since then the community has railed against "borrowed power" and progression systems so Dragonflight will probably be another empty raidlog expansion like Shadowlands. Basically Blizzard has apparently decided it's better to have a game where there's little to do than one where for some there is too much to do. Bad choice.

[Slybak]

WoD's prime reason why it's remembered so poorly was primarily down to lack of content. What was there, was great. It just didn't have crap to do after the point where another content patch was owed (but never came).

Not enough to do and too much time spent not doing it.

WoD simultaneously was the shortest expansion (21 months) because so much content was cut early to save development time and it could launch before 2015 started, but had the longest gap between the last raid patch and the next expansion (14 months) because of Legion's comparatively long testing phase. The "an expansion every two years" policy basically screwed it on both ends.

[neescher]

snip

Even IF everything you say is true (and it absolutely isn't, but let's ignore that for a minute), literally nothing you wrote in your post is any proof or even hint that "Shadowlands was made for the 1% hardcore players". Nothing, unless...

And the rest you mentioned is group content, not solo content

...unless you think, "group content" means "made for the 1% hardcore players". Then seriously, you're in the wrong genre.

[FAILoZOFF]

WoD's prime reason why it's remembered so poorly was primarily down to lack of content. What was there, was great. It just didn't have crap to do after the point where another content patch was owed (but never came).

Exactly what I was saying, WoD had part of its resources "stolen" and transfered over to Legion, no wonder the other one appears to be superior in terms of content when one had say 75% of its intended resorces while the other had 125%...

[WowIsDead64]

That's not FOMO.... that's "I want this but I don't ever want to do what is required to do them". FOMO applies to temporary things. The mission table is yet again 100% optional and has nothing to do with alt unfriendly. You want a team of mains with a fully operational max level table that is pumping out gold for you.

Also, whole Covenant system is one big FOMO BS. There are several kinds of currencies. All are time-gated. All are very limited. But player can spend one of them to be able to grind other ones quicker. This forces player to grind as much of this currency, as possible, even if he don't want to focus on it now or may be wants to grind it in long term manner.

[Velerios]

Even IF everything you say is true (and it absolutely isn't, but let's ignore that for a minute), literally nothing you wrote in your post is any proof or even hint that "Shadowlands was made for the 1% hardcore players". Nothing, unless...




...unless you think, "group content" means "made for the 1% hardcore players". Then seriously, you're in the wrong genre.

It isn't, but the difference is that blizzard focus not on group content, but mythic+ high keys one and mythic raiding, and that is 1% content all over.

[neescher]

It isn't, but the difference is that blizzard focus not on group content, but mythic+ high keys one and mythic raiding, and that is 1% content all over.

And which of the points I listed is "focused on m+ high keys and mythic raid"? Not a single one.

[Fkiolaris]

What people don’t remember is that legion was hated at launch.

People hates legendary’s

People hated Ap and grinding it for every spec.

Class design was bemoaned in a lot of places (Sud rouge sv hunter Demo lock)

People hated that the suamar dungeons were rep locked

People hated the changes to PvP with ilvl scaling and the preset stat templates.

People hated needing multiple relics for weapons.

About the only things legion got praise for at the start was the amount of questing it had and even then people hated that it was time locked. Every thing else legion gets praise for is there rose tinted glasses coming into play or didn’t come till near the end.

I am glad to see that someone else remembers it for how it actually was before 7.2 and especially 7.3. Plus, I would add to the above all the moronic requirements and time-gating from the mission table, with special "praise" going to that quest that you had to simply click once a day for 5 days - the kind of utter crap you would expect in a mobile game, not an MMO on PC with a sub. Honourable mention goes to the Broken Chore questline where at one stage you had to give Khadgar 2500 of whatever currency it was and you got back from him 2499 of it and then had to wait for another week for the "exciting" continuation of the story - Ion getting in early with the RPG-aspect of the game and all that .

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I am glad to see that someone else remembers it for how it actually was before 7.2 and especially 7.3. Plus, I would add to the above all the moronic requirements and time-gating from the mission table, with special "praise" going to that quest that you had to simply click once a day for 5 days - the kind of utter crap you would expect in a mobile game, not an MMO on PC with a sub. Honourable mention goes to the Broken Chore questline where at one stage you had to give Khadgar 2500 of whatever currency it was and you got back from him 2499 of it and then had to wait for another week for the "exciting" continuation of the story - Ion getting in early with the RPG-aspect of the game and all that .

Ya id say legion is by far the most rose tinted of any expan, system wise every thing was hated until 7.3 with even things like the mage tower getting huge complaints due to legendary's trivializing some fights and nether shards farming, and while 7.3 fixes a lot of issues people still hated argus being a patch, having two similar looking areas to the broken shore, and the NLC.

[Utrrabbit]

Because other expansions that had a lot more test time in public alpha/beta turned out bad. A short time for testing, tuning and feedback is not exactly a recipe for success.

The 1 good and 1 bad this is just a garbage theory that holds 0 value.

Uh both TBC and WRATH have had the shortest beta phases to date. Even if beta came out next month it would still be more than both those.

[Fkiolaris]

Ya id say legion is by far the most rose tinted of any expan, system wise every thing was hated until 7.3 with even things like the mage tower getting huge complaints due to legendary's trivializing some fights and nether shards farming, and while 7.3 fixes a lot of issues people still hated argus being a patch, having two similar looking areas to the broken shore, and the NLC.

To be fair, by 7.3 they fixed a lot of the issues with the game systems that many players had. Not everything, but enough to make people forget about the beginning of Legion.

[Niwes]

I am just a bit confused and have found this site (Despite the amount of trolls) to be the best source for feedback that isn't silly 1 liners, so here I am to ask:

Why are there so many who claims that "Dragonflight is coming too soon" and that "This reeks of rushed" when to my memory, this just seems like a repeat on how WoD went into Legion; And Legion was phenomenal.

- Both SL and WoD stopped at the X.2 patch (Since no, X.2.5 is not really a content patch)
- Both SL and WoD seem to be lining up in about the same way in terms of "time between when things got released"
- Both SL and WoD got crap (For understandable reasons)

I get that:

A: With SL - Blizzard "broke the cycle" of having "Bad expansion - Good expansion - Bad expansion" by having BFA and SL be bad back to back.
B: A lot of s*** has happened since after Legion that has put Blizzard in a darker light and it is clear that lots of former devs have moved on.

And with this I am fully aware of and do not expect Dragonflight to be a banger or save WoW in any way. Heck, I don't expect WoW to get back on it's feet again until whatever expansion 12.X is since by that time I hope Microsoft has gotten their foot deep enough to make some actual changes. So while I am not saying that I do not understand why people are skeptical: I just can't get where this "it is too soon" is coming from. I keep seeing people being mad on the daily because "Dear lord 9.2 is going to last SO LOOOOOOOOOONG, I'm already bored" <- And yes this should not translate too "Please Blizzard, rush the game" (As that always goes down the toilet) but I just wanted to know why wo many have this "Too soon" view when this looks little to no different than when WoD rolled into Legion. Could someone who has this viewpoint explain their mentality about it since I am a bit confused about it.

wait… wait. wait. wait. wait… wait!

you really comparing a „transfer“ from „SL to DF“ with „WoD to Legion“ ??? REAAAAAALLY ?

so you are saying you get the same feeling pre-live with DF as pre-life with Legion ? REAAAAAALLY ?

i don’t know what to smoke, to make this happen for me too, but comparing „announced DF“ to „announced Legion“ is… hell, such drugs must be great!

no offense, but to me DF looks super standard, default, filler stuff and it smells not in the slightest like a „we must regain the lost players from SL“. if even, it looks more like a SL or BfA 3.0 to me.

again, no offense, and maybe this is just me, but comparing DF (or the DF hype) with Legion (or the Legion hype) is like comparing my Grandma with Vin Diesel or Dwayne Johnson, when it comes down to a „muscles, oil and bald head“-parade.

sorry,… but no. definitely not my opinion.

[shise]

People are saying it is too soon because if you take december 31st as release day we would have been in alpha by now.

Blizzard's MO of lately has been annouce new expansion -> annouce release date -> Alpha -> Beta -> Launch

What i think is going to happen is we are not getting public Alpha, and we might not even get Beta, or just a short Beta. Blizzard likes to copy what other successful games have been doing, and one of the praises FFXIV gets it is that it is all tested internally and it has very few bugs when it comes out.

Exactly.

Also, Ion clearly said that from now on, they will be releasing and developing content "on the go with players feedback".

I expect closed Alpha and a very limited Beta. Then release and a first patch where we don´t know yet much, and things will build from there. They will probably have a few different routes drawn and they will see what matches best player´s feedback.