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

[unbound]

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

And hamburger is almost exactly the same as a steak, right?

Yes, BfA is based on many of the same things as Legion. In fact, many of us have pointed out that BfA can be accurately described as either Legion 1.5 or, more cynically, Legion 0.5.

Just like hamburger to steak, while the components are indeed the same, the execution and experience are different because of the details, not the high level components.

Legion, being the steak, was better for a number of reasons.

While many of the specs persisted, most of them had one or two elements removed (or dramatically changed) from the rotation in Legion. Thus, it is a simplified (aka ground up) version of what was better.

There were finer touches in Legion, such as better elements of the professions (including the fishing system and that artifact).

Furthermore, as much as people malign the legendaries (and I actually agree with the respect of how you got them initially), those legendaries had significant and interesting impacts to approaches and even rotations. They added some interesting flavor to the playstyle.

As for your list, most of that list has been true for more than just Legion...you pretty much just described WoW in general for many years now. So that's like saying your breakfast of dry cereal is really no different than a plate of bacon and eggs because they are still just food.

An important element you are forgetting is that, for the elements that started in Legion, is that as much as you might like one type of food, it does get old. Running back to back expansions with almost exactly the same key portions (same spec rotations, same mechanics, same M+, and same AP grind) does not continue to make it great.

It demonstrates a distinct laziness on the part of the company you are choosing to do business with. Why would you continue to pay them that premium price when they switched from giving you a nice juicy steak to ground chuck? Sure, it's still beef, but to argue that hamburger is the same (or, worse, argue that it is better) than steak show a certain lack of perception, or perhaps a lack of experience. If you never tasted steak, maybe you do indeed think this hamburger is awesome...

[Alaenore]

That's because azerite gear was such a shitty system that they panic added essences as a bandaid because they knew they were going to abandon the expansion early once they realized what a shit state BFA was in.

So they added a whole new system and skills that they have to balance because they were abandoning it. That literally isn't what "abandon" means.

[McNeil]

Legion had better new features like mythics, class campaigns, Suramar and mage tower when compared to warfronts, island expeditions, allied races and horrific visions. Some of their decisions like Azerite armor, GCD and more randomness (even P2W) stats for gear really brings down the expansion. Thats not to say Legion didn't do stuff wrong either, I really hated the legendary system, start of the AP grind, smaller continent (only 4 leveling zones) which also feels very disjoined, issues with the story, awful terraining to the point that flying was actually a blessing, reusing Dalaran as a capital, and personally I really hated being seen as the ''chosen one to save the universe'' theme which just doesn't fit into a MMORPG.

BFA is like a 4/10 and Legion a 7/10

[TragedyAnn]

While they both have world quests, I think the world quests in Legion were far more rewarding.

Even after all my rep was capped, I'd typically always do the daily PVP world quests (usually a handful a day), because they rewarded a decent chunk of honor, and I'm not particularly fond of grinding battlegrounds. PVP world quests are entirely gone in BFA.

I'm also a big Pet collector, and the pet battle world quests were FAAAAR more rewarding in Legion. There are far more pet world quests which award useless garbage and no pet currency in BFA. I don't vividly remember if every pet quest in Legion awarded pet tokens (been a while) but I do at least remember that far fewer awarded garbage. I want to say in Legion they at least all awarded currency or leveling tokens. Furthermore the pet tamers in Legion actually netted you a decent chunk of XP for defeating them - Wheras the Pet Tamers in BFA award next to no XP. To this day it's still more efficient to grind XP battling Legion Tamers than it is to battle BFA Tamers. To this day, during the bonus Pet XP weeks, people will basically grind Legion tamers nonstop and completely ignore the current BFA Pet content. What the hell is the point of repeating Pet Battles you can't level up on?? Especially when they reward lame rewards.

[Video Games]

Suramar was great and argus was cool. I also miss my 20 million dfa crits

[Zenfoldor]

I can answer that question. To me, Legion was the best xpak ever released and BFA the worst.

The simplest answer is that Legion was finished when it launched, and BFA didn't feel finished which caused a chain reaction of players leaving, ruining the game for many(because their friends left early).

Also in Legion it felt like many new things were introduced and tried, while in BFA it felt like all the new stuff fell flat and all the old stuff was just like Legion but slightly worse. This created a feeling of disappointment, when tied in with many people leaving the game, felt really bad early in the xpak.

Of course this is just my opinion.

Edit: Also the reward systems really took a hit. No fun long term rewards(besides nerfed AP, ugh) at start of xpak plus no set bonus made a really tough sell to keep doing daily's everyday...and if I'm not motivated to log in every day, either I better be in a raid commitment, or I might start not to log in at all. No class hall which was kinda fun, and the war campaign was just a chore. Thinking about it now, I could write a few dozen pages on this topic, lol.

[antelope591]

Many things were better in Legion although most of them are subjective. My reasons for liking Legion are a few. The main one obviously being classes. BFA classes are basically gutted versions of Legion classes. Fire mage for example needs Mechagon bracers, essences and specific azerite just to get back to where it was in Legion. Until 8.2 it was in a pitiful state. Same story with many other classes. Secondly, Legendaries did at a lot to classes even though their aquisition was busted for most of the expansion. Azerite was supposed to replace legendaries, artifacts and sets. It doesn't even replace Legendaries by themselves. Lastly, I enjoyed M+ more in Legion. The dungeons were better and people weren't so dead set on the "meta". It was more of a chill activity and didn't feel mandatory like it does in BFA due to the OP weekly chest.

[barrsftw]

Legion introduced a lot of new stuff/systems. The very fact that they were new made them interesting.

New Class
Mythic Plus for Dungeons
World Quests + Emissaries
Artifact Weapons (unique for every single spec)
Class Halls (unique for every class)
Non-linear questing(you pick the order of the zones you level in)
PvP Prestige Ranks + rewards
Legiondaries(which, IMO, was a failure overall)
Mage Tower
Allied Races(even tho they required pre-purchasing BFA, I still consider them Legion feat, given that the lore of the races was entirely Legion-centered and so were the requirements for their unlocking).
+
Story and Involvement, all around you could see important(even some Legendary) Lore figures working with you, and even recruit them as followers.

Now Battle For Azeroth continued with most of these systems, but instead of improving them, it actually somehow made some of them worse.

New Allied races - that turned out Ok.

Mythic Plus for Dungeons - kept the same level, no complaints.

World Quests - same again, no complaints.

Artifact Gear- that one is questionable, Blizzard did not get rid of the grind for AP that most of the playerbase hated, even screwed it more at some point(I remember at the start, when people couldn't use the inner Azerite Traits, because their neck wasn't high enough level). The good thing is, that you now have to gather AP for only one item instead of 2-4(depending on how many specs the class has), the bad thing was that the Traits were still poorly balanced between themselves. Another minus is that you cannot customize the appearance of your neck the way you did with the weapons. Not to forget the Essences and Alts. So overall for me its a step down compared to Legion.

Class Halls- Replaced with War Campaign, which is not even close in quality, we get 2(Horde and Alliance) instead of 12. Overall a big step down.

Questing - Basically you were tied to the 3 zones of your faction + 3 mini campaigns in the enemy faction's zones. IMO, a little step down compared to Legion, but nothing serious.

PvP Prestige - They made it account wide(good) with the very same rewards from Legion(bad).

Legiondaries - Removed them entirely, which is great.

Mage Tower- We got Horrific Visions instead, which doesn't give every single spec a new and unique transmog, but can drop gear instead, so it evens it out, IMO.

Something else that BFA did different than Legion, is that it also cut the number of armor appearances available to the players. In every other expansion we had different one for each class every tier, now we have one for every armor type - DKs, Warriors and Paladins share one, etc. Which is a HUGE letdown.

Island Expeditions- Looked great on paper, but in reality got really boring, really fast. It's just the scenarios we had since MOP, with a twist. They have many pets/mounts/transmogs tied to them tho, which is nice, overall.

Warfronts- They are nothing like what they were announced to be. We were supposed to participate in a mix of an old school RTS kind of gameplay with some M+ elemets, something completely new. Instead it ended up being raid-wide scenarios from MOP. For one of the main selling points of the expansion, it's absolutely not worth it.

Spot on analysis IMO. My one addition would be although the WQ and M+ systems were great, they didn't really improve on them at all which is disappointing. You would expect them to improve on them in some way instead of keeping them exactly the same. Nothing new about them, nothing to get excited about.

[MasterHamster]

In Shadowlands you'll have people saying BFA was better

That said I at least kept playing through Legion (only thing keeping me was tier sets, legendary hunt and artifacts really),
while BFA was the nail in the coffin.

Never have I felt less interested in playing the game or the overall progression of my character(s), when I know that each content patch is entirely self-contained ("seasons"), nothing I do in the current patch will make significant difference in the next, unless I raid on a high level.
I really have no idea what pull factor BFA has for non-raiders, other than hunting transmogs so they can look pretty while bored in Boralus.
If they remove the ladder, I won't care about actually trying to climb the steps.

[Martymark]

To me story is the most important thing in the game.

Legion had a lot of great stories, like Suramar.

Meanwhile the BFA story was awful, with tons of characters acting mentally insane just to shove the hackneyed plot forward.

Jaina: "We will slaughter the Zandalari to teach them what happens to any neutral faction that thinks about accepting help from the Horde!"
Also Jaina: "We slaughtered the Zandalari and it made them sad. We shouldn't finish off the Horde army, because if we do that they win."

[Liftinmammals]

Not really sure. I personally didn't enjoy Legion much at all. Then again I have yet to play BFA so I can't compare it.

[Mendzia]

Both are dogshit.

[Vanka]

Legion was ok only in the the end because with addons and auto grouping you could trivialize every world boss and world quests and invasion points and get them over with in seconds.

That, along with the removal of the artifact point grind, meant that you could bypass the stupid gear grinding chore entirely and focus on the fun part, ganking people and doing some bgs on the side for variety.

I can't comment about what may have made the pve gameplay of legion better than bfa because as far as I'm concerned pve is and always was boring crap.

[Powerogue]

Clear progression of my character through effort. (artifact system vs. azerite armor is no contest. Azerite armor was a huge mistake. Essences are good though.)
Interesting goals that require gear to obtain. (mage towers, various artifact appearances)
Better class design of the classes that I play. (I do acknowledge that a handful of classes I don't play because I hated them in Legion got improvements in BFA, but not enough for me to make them my main)

You're right. A lot is the same. But almost everything that was changed was for the worse. Things I liked were removed, and the new things (normal mode warfronts, island expeditions) were not fun. That's why I like BFA less.

[Nite92]

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?

WQs were faster, like alot.
M+ had easier/less trash.
Raiding is quite similar.
Questing through all zones takes way longer.
AP in Legion gave you new stuff. For most of BFA you regrinded stuff you already had. (Higher ilvl pieces give same effects but need more Azerite levels).
Yeah TF is similar, dunno about that.

You clearly have not played both, if you do not know these differences.

[Nephys]

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?

World quests are not the problem.

M+ is one of the best features ever added to the game.

Raiding is good, probably even better on BFA than it was on Legion.

The questing system is good, its one of the few places where Blizzard actually never fails to write a good story, even WoD had awesome questlines.

Titanforging is bad, but its not the end of the world.

The only fair point that you present is the AP grind, to which people complained a lot, but still it was not so bad in Legion since you could actually play your alts.

Your assumptions to the reasons that BFA sucks are wrong, BFA is bad because it has awful story, while Legion had an amazing story, it was the expansion where we defeated the Demons that come from Wacraft 3, I really lived that story. We also had class order halls with more good stories.

Classes were a lot of fun, the artifact abilities were amazing, the Essences somewhat fill this gap but you need to grind so much that it destroys any fun they bring.

Balance for anything other than raid is nonexistant, if you want to m+ you can only be meele and resto druid.

So what an expansion needs is good story and good gameplay. The rest is pretty much on the spot.
Also the new features brough by Legion were highly successful (m+) while those brought by BFA were just chores (Warfronts and Islands).

[CrawlFromThePit]

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?

You answered your own question. BfA is the same fucking shit instead of bringing something new. It shouldn't be the same, it should be something else, innovative, fresh. The new things in BfA are all garbage. Island expeditions are shit, warfronts are shit, essence is poorly made, azerite armor are terrible. They missed the mark. Legendaries were better, the artifact weapon was way more fun than the neck, the AP grind is virtually the same thing it was shit in legion it's still shit today INSTEAD OF IMPROVING LIKE IT SHOULD HAVE.

Secondary stats scaling in Legion was more fun, being stuck at comatose lvl of haste in BfA is boring.

Class hall quests were more fun than the war campaign.

The game was slightly more alt friendly in general.

I hope that enlightened you on the truth, you can find this somewhere in the bible.

[Alcsaar]

At least Legion introduced new major concepts (Artifact Power, Legendaries, Artifacts) even if I do think the systems were absolute trash and should have never been added.

BFA just took already implemented bad systems and made slight changes to try to give them a new fresh coat of paint. Still bad systems though.

[Deferionus]

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?

Legion had the same systems but better implementations of them. Artifact weapons felt better than the heart of azeroth. The azerite armor has not been well received. M+ was new and well received. Now its just another system that will be carried over every expansion like flying, raid finder, transmog, pet battles, etc. I don't think anyone complains about WQs as I think 90%+ of people prefer it over the daily quests of the past? Maybe I am wrong there.

Another thing to consider is that Suramar was very well liked and BFA did not have a zone similar to it. And then you add in the removal of tier sets..

In short, BFA feels like Legion in a different setting with worse implementation of the same systems.

[SirKickBan]

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?

The story wasn't a total dumpster-fire, classes weren't quite as pruned down as they are in BfA, the Artifact weapons provided some interesting and meaningful mechanical changes to your class, Suramar was fantastic, and Mythic dungeons didn't feel quite as gimmicky.