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

[Guidance]

It's simple at this moment after everything and after BFA Launch and SL alpha-beta-launch (when blizzard start doing very well and them stopped answering feedback and fixing problems to work on only gods knew what )

And how blizzard reputation and trust is right now, people think that even with high amount of time and feedback blizzard can do shit in the end, so it will probably be worst with less time and feedback

If it was before BFA, after legion or wotlk people will probably think differently

Maybe they were working and hiding things like last 3 boss from last raid ? Can but hard to believe

Tbh Wow community is really toxic (like almost everything in internet or make with people ) but we also have a lot of people who work very well for free, look at class discord they can make thousands of simulators, try to fix bugs etc

If the right people get a chance I think it will be better with feedbacks than without it ... So in the end it's not just about time and more about players trustworthy in Blizzard

Sorry my bad English

[Pakheth]

Which is kind of ironic, since MoP had a pretty shit story/setting but some banger raids and some of the most on-point class mechanics ever.

But yeah, the side stuff sucked giga ass - farming and doing dailies was not a fun time to fill your expansion with.

To you perhaps but a lot of people found both the setting, story and the farm fun. Dailies got fun too after the first patch(Golden Lotus can burn in hell) and Thunder Isle is still praised as one of the best outdoor contents Blizz has ever done and it was mostly dailies. The story of Pandaria was also well told because we had a narrative throughout the whole thing in the form of Lorewalker Cho. Not to mention the faction war was handled pretty well.

[crusadernero]

Because there is still no even alpha to be tested by players and all we got is 5min video of a new race showing 'new flying'... and they want to release it in less than 6 months.

Maybe they need less time testing cause there aint new systems tied to player power to balance out a whole lot. In previous xpacs it was LOTS of legendaries(Legion), Azerite gear & AP) and in SL it was the covenants.

Think about it. What do we get in 10.0? We get all the usual stuff; Leveling, quests, mobs, dungeons, raids, gear. Then theres the whole flying thing, that is not tied to player power. That means its less frustrating for players cause theres no balancing to think of. It just gotta work.

Theres no player power system at max level.

The only big thing for 10.0 is the talent tree revamp. If they have come far along with that, it should be fine. Especially if this talent tree system is something they want to continue with for years.

[Xerberous]

Legion was great from the very beginning. Why? It was Warcraft. The moment in the intro cinematic where Sylvanas and Varian noded at each other was as Warcraft as a moment can. It draws you in, it made you want to play the f***ing game. Where some mechanics (e.g. the way the legendary items were handed out to the players) broken in the beginning? Yes! But the foundation of the expansion was great and everything else you can fix - what they did.

On the other hand, SL and BfA showed very clearly that a bad foundation results even with hard work afterwards in a mediocre expansion at it’s best.

[AlmightyGerkin]

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.

Do make some valid points. Believe people saying legion was great cause of WoDs failure
Everything tied to the garrison was pretty lackluster and they toned it down a bit in legion. Do agree with you on your points you made. AP should had a cap and the tokens could sell for a gold and people I think would be happy.

Wish the legendary system was never implemented or done something entirely different. Hated getting stomp by the same class with close to the same gear just cause he had the BiS legendary and I didn't.

[MrLachyG]

Wrong.

Legion BECAME good. It didn't START good.

In fact it started TERRIBLE. The legendary system was predatory and abusive, with hidden caps and diminishing returns to artificially gate fully randomized acquisition with ludicrous power disparities - forcing people to run multiple identical characters just to gamble on drops if they wanted to be competitive.

In addition, it had the single worst opening raid in WoW history, a raid so terribly tuned it was cleared on US before EU even had their reset. And with class balance so off they had to do some emergency redesign of core talents to get things even remotely in balance (hi there Warlocks).

Later on, Legion had some great stuff. Nighthold was a fantastic raid. Soaking memes aside, Tomb was also quite good. Legendaries were eventually fixed with a vendor. M+ was a new exciting paradigm shift for endgame content.

BUT ON LAUNCH, LEGION WAS TERRIBLE.

If anything, it's an argument FOR people's fears about DF, not against them.

yeah I totally agree. people complain about timegates now? Legion was full of them. the class order hall questline was heavily timegated, became far less so later on in a .1 or .2 patch. the world boss spawns were all over the fucking place - you had 12 of them, some of which dropped great items like that trinket, recipes or weapon appearances for your artifact - they never fucking spawned though. I think it was 7.1.5 before they put them on a schedule, possibly even 7.2.

[Pamir]

Legion was great from the very beginning. Why? It was Warcraft. The moment in the intro cinematic where Sylvanas and Varian noded at each other was as Warcraft as a moment can. It draws you in, it made you want to play the f***ing game. Where some mechanics (e.g. the way the legendary items were handed out to the players) broken in the beginning? Yes! But the foundation of the expansion was great and everything else you can fix - what they did.

On the other hand, SL and BfA showed very clearly that a bad foundation results even with hard work afterwards in a mediocre expansion at it’s best.

do you even hear what you're saying? if it was about being warcraft, bfa intro was more warcraft than anything else, you praise legion cinematic for sylvanas and varian stuff but bfa intro was all about hardcore warcraft.

foundation argument is totally irrelevant.

legion, bfa and sl are not that different from each other anyway. we think legion is better because it was the one who brought the new features, bfa and sl is just a shallow copy of legion, thats why we dont like them anymore because we are bored and we need new stuff.

we need new core things, talent tree looks like a step in the right direction but its not enough. new flying may be fun but its a minor aspect to the gameplay. we need more changes or added things to core gameplay to make warcraft exciting again.

[Ielenia]

- Both SL and WoD stopped at the X.2 patch (Since no, X.2.5 is not really a content patch)

You don't get to decide what is and what isn't a content patch. Patch 9.2.5 did bring new content.

- Both SL and WoD seem to be lining up in about the same way in terms of "time between when things got released"

What exactly do you mean by "time between when things got released"?

- Both SL and WoD got crap (For understandable reasons)

Dude, every expansion got crap. There's not a single expansion that didn't get crap, and that includes TBC and Wrath.

I just can't get where this "it is too soon" is coming from.

Because if Blizzard plans to stay true to their claim of "releasing by the end of 2022", then we have, at best, six months left until its release, and we have no news of even alpha builds going up, meaning that we're likely to have extremely short alpha and beta testing periods which indicates we might have a very buggy first weeks of Dragonflight.

Keep in mind that previous beta testing periods ran through three to four months... and we're already entering the seventh month of the year.

[Recovery]

Legion was revealed Aug 6, 2015 and released Aug 30, 2016 - 390 days, while Dragonflight, even if it will release on the last day of 2022, will have 256 days between reveal and release.
Legion began its alpha on Nov 23, 2015 - 281 days before release. Even if DF alpha starts tomorrow, it will be a maximum of 185 days between alpha and release.

So yeah, there's a reason why people think it may be rushed. Especially when considering that these dates were probably forced by management to increase the revenue of Q2 (pre-purchase) and Q4 (release) of 2022, without much consideration regarding the state of the game.

If you think about it, there's really not all that much to test with Dragontales. The new class. Dragon riding. Raid / opening dungeons. "story progression" / leveling experience. Thats it. It doesnt seem like the game would really need a year long alpha / beta cycle. If evoker and dragon riding are well tested internally, it should be a smooth and short beta allowing for a speedy release.

[StillMcfuu]

Legion wasn't that great until we got a patch or 2 in. It's not how it starts it how it ends. Conversely BFA started way stronger than legion, but the content fell flat after a few weeks.

[Xerberous]

do you even hear what you're saying? if it was about being warcraft, bfa intro was more warcraft than anything else, you praise legion cinematic for sylvanas and varian stuff but bfa intro was all about hardcore warcraft.

BfA intro was a crazy bit*** running berserk for no reasons. If anything, this was Warcraft from 1994.

foundation argument is totally irrelevant.

Again,
Good foundation + flaws = repairable
Bad foundation (with or without flaws) = FUBAR

we need new core things; talent tree looks like a step in the right direction but its not enough. new flying may be fun but its a minor aspect to the gameplay. we need more changes or added things to core gameplay to make warcraft exciting again.

With that statement I completely agree.

[Amariw]

1)6 months with not even an alpha up seems scary. Could they pull it off? mayhaps, but their performance in recent years makes you think they need more time, not less.

2)There's just a general lack of trust. If this came after Legion or MoP, people might have been excited instead of wary because they'd assume they were gonna get something great, only sooner.

[Warning]

I think it's more like Dragonflight is Cata+ MoP.

Bfa was supposed to be Shadowlands WoD, with Shadowlands being Legion. But yeah it didn't turn out that well because the Legion Artifacts and class hall were 10x more interesting than Covenants and the Jailor was a terrible villain and completely uninteresting, from model to motivation.

They may use Dragonflight to lead into a Void Lord expansion who likely will fail again as villains because the Void Lords too aren't interesting. Similar to the old gods they likely won't have relatable motivations and their backstory and feats of strength will likely be thrown together haphazardly and in an illogical manner that undermines existing lore.

I think in general having super duper powerful enemies (way more powerful than the last guy) that'll pop out of random places and threaten the entire universe isn't fun or interesting unless there is massive ground work done. WoW has that guy already, it's Sargeras. Other threats should be more grounded, like Azshara or Nefarian.

[WowIsDead64]

No one asked you to grind it. Anima was perfectly fine and progressed fine in terms of the increases each patch. If anything that speaks volumes of the lunacy of the player base trying to grind anything. Also nothing anima related was required. It was pretty much all cosmetic short of the transportation network.

And I've forgotten to say, that there are many examples of FOMO in SL. For example mission table followers in Torghast. It takes long to level them, so it's good idea to get them ASAP. But what if I don't want to do Torghast right now? And SL is full of such things. They overlap. And as result they create very alt-unfriendly environment.

[Dejiko]

5 months of public testing isn't enough? Really? And what is really changing? I don't see anything that's changing that would require much testing at all.

I outlined and listed several things which require testing, extended both over periods of time, and also application/implementation.

Given that feedback has also been failed to be considered in time prior to launch, yes it doesn't seem like it's enough time.

Blizzard has a track record and a history of being headstrong, arrogant and dismissive, it would just be a shame if those impressions were confirmed yet again.

But who knows, could turn out great at launch, however experience would paint quite a different picture.

[arkanon]

I outlined and listed several things which require testing, extended both over periods of time, and also application/implementation.

Given that feedback has also been failed to be considered in time prior to launch, yes it doesn't seem like it's enough time.

Blizzard has a track record and a history of being headstrong, arrogant and dismissive, it would just be a shame if those impressions were confirmed yet again.

But who knows, could turn out great at launch, however experience would paint quite a different picture.

But you are making a HUGE assumption here - that more time would in any way impact their decision making. They had feedback during bfa from the moment some systems were announced. They just kept saying "just wait till you see the fully fleshed out system!". Even with constant and consistent feedback, they chose to push forward with it anyway, only making requested changes in the final patch of the expansion.

We have multiple expansions of this as evidence that they will not make any meaningful changes once alpha / beta starts, and yet your entire argument is based on the assumption they will.

History is not on your side.

[Alkizon]

And Legion was phenomenal.

Legion was great

Some of threads like this ↓

13. Some thoughts about "best expansions"(and the worst one, also WoD&MoP&Cata&WotLK) +(+/+/+)+/+/+/+

want to make a word with you:

Considering this - no, and it's not just simple "no", but rather even squeamish and puzzled, however, confident one.

[Flurryfang]

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.

This might seem like a repeat of WoD when you look at things in the way of time and game quality, but things are different this time, very different.

First of all, Blizzard have come out and said that work have been slowed down by Covid, and some devs have also said out loud, that because of the accusations on Blizzard leadership, there were periods of time where little work was being done WoW at all, we are talking about several weeks to months here.

So its not quite clear, that having SL be a short expansion, is something that has given Dragonflight more time to be developed. Dragonflight also has a shorter development cycle for any newer WoW expansion, so you could even say that even less time have actually been spent on it.

Also, what made Legion so different from WoD was not that WoD was bad, it was that Blizzard could clearly see from a very early stage, that they had to rethink how they designed the game from WoD to Legion. It was a short of wake-up call and they listened to it, and were open about it too.

Im not really seeing the same rethinking for Dragonflight. Sure, they have admitted that Talents need to change and that borrowed power is a thing that needs to take a break, but those are things that are gonna take a long time before we really feel the effect. As we can see from the talent tree, Dragonflight is not gonna add much compared to Legion with its huge "talent tree" which was the artifacts, and we are still gonna lose covenant powers we had in SL.


All in all, when you look in vacuum, it might look like WoD going to Legion, but when you zoom out in the bigger picture and analyse on what actually made Legion such a big change from WoD, we are not seeing anything close to the same stuff as back then. Which is why people are saying "Maybe give this a bit more time".

[BeepBoo]

It was though.

It wasn't. It was alright. Raids were satisfying, initial quest playthrough and music were fine as expected.

World quests can go die in a fucking fire.
Forging can go die in a fucking fire.
Azurite power can go die in a fire, get resurrected, then eat cyanide, then burn in hell for the rest of forever.

Azurite gear? Garbage.
Getting a shit legendary instead of your BiS dps legendary? Enjoy a 25% hit to performance! Absolute garbage.
The way they turned the burning legion homeworld into a sidequest show the size of a single zone instead of making THAT the next xpac? Utter. Garbage.
And the absolute worst offender: NL crucible. Fucking what? Like Azurite wasn't bad enough, now we get random gear shit that (again) has huge impact on performance? AND we have to level THAT up? Absolute worst thing ever introduced to the game.

The aesthetics and story were fine. The systems, endless grind, and heavy reliance on RNG for massive amounts of power make it the absolute worst xpac for me.

Fuck Legion.

My ideal xpac is a raid every 2-3 months, some good dungeons, and EXTREMELY deterministic gear. WOTLK was about the only xpac that did nearly everything right. And, while ICC was long-in-tooth, every other raid drop was perfectly timed JUST before the previous raid got stale and people dropped off the face of the earth.

[ohwell]

And I've forgotten to say, that there are many examples of FOMO in SL. For example mission table followers in Torghast. It takes long to level them, so it's good idea to get them ASAP. But what if I don't want to do Torghast right now? And SL is full of such things. They overlap. And as result they create very alt-unfriendly environment.

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.