"Class fantasy" is super important, and why people loved Legion

Community General Discussion
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It is genuinely baffling that Blizzard didn’t capitalize on the biggest win that Legion had going for it; it’s complete focus on “Class fantasy”.

For many players, it is the only time in the game they actually wanted to play multiple classes. Not because “oh this class has a better rotation” or “this spec is S-tier this season”. No, it’s because every class truly felt like a totally different experience.

And that is something sorely lacking in WoW today.

When every class is doing the same quests, wearing the same gear, pursuing the same rewards, and mostly functioning the same in their given roles – really, what’s left for you to actually latch onto, as a player?

For a long time, people actually identified with their chosen class. Your favorite class very likely said something about you as a person, and Legion was the first time that promise of actually experiencing your class was finally fulfilled. If you played a Druid, you finally got to run around doing Druid things, engaging with aspects of the world or the story that you felt were most engaging.

One of the worst things that Blizzard seems to be taking from D&D is “your character is whatever you want it to be”. Because unlike an actual tabletop RPG with your own personal DM, no game could ever possibly hope to cater to every single person’s fantasies. So Classes exist to fill those various archetypes.

Without Class-fantasy, a DPS-spec Death Knight is really no different than any other class in the game. The game never references your class, it never asks you to do things related to it, your class’s themes are not present anywhere. Even the armor-designs these days are themed around drop-location, not Class, meaning that while we have a whole lot of dragon-themed armor (which, to be clear, are still cool sets), there’s nothing that says “I’m a shining Knight of the Silver Hand” or “I’m a fallen crusader of Lordaeron”. Armor is all agnostic because it has to be, because none of it is designed exclusively for any class.

So… I hope this feedback is heard, and more importantly, felt. I would LOVE to see Class Halls made relevant in some way again, perhaps as cosmetic-only Renown tracks. The game doesn’t need to revolve around your class, but it should at least be acknowledged. Give each class their own quest-line about what they’re doing in each expansion, why current events might concern them (or even planting seeds for future events, or having their own side-stories).

Also, it serves as a great way to introduce and maintain characters in the story. It’s always good to have a “representative” for your class, much the same as it is important for each race to have a Racial Leader; characters that exist to showcase just how freaking cool these classes and races are (how many people made an Orc Shaman because of how cool Thrall was?).

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yes, bring back magic arrow lone wolf mm hunter

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i hope midnight brings back that class fantasy focus to it. it would also be a decade since legion when it releases. a 10th anniversary so to speak

full on class inspired armor sets, class halls again. would love to see it

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The class fantasy focus in Legion was amazing and it’s sucks so little goes into class unique content.

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There is some class acknowledgement, its just become rarer, like dks get unique dialogue in dragonflight for some quests.

The bird loa in the emerald dream will also call you by your orderhall name, such as deathlord or arch druid.

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Yep I still remember the story of Thoradin and how he weilded Strom’kar the Warbreaker in order to keep a void monster called Zakazj from wreaking havoc on Azeroth.

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Class Halls were bad for the story.

Lore characters got robbed of development (Deathlord Arthasxd cannot meaningfully interact with the story, the plot beats should have gone to someone like Darion canonically).

More generic classes ran into problems with their specific order halls as well. For example, while Demon Hunters, Death Knights, etc. have a very strong class fantasy, Rogues really don’t. Something like an international assassin’s network doesn’t really fit with the rest of the story & it begs the question why haven’t we seen these people active before? Why’d they all just retire the moment a global war breaks out?

Nevermind questions like “Why is my Troll mage hobnobbing around with the Kirin Tor?”

If you want class-specific quests (eg, “Rogues, go assassinate X target”), that’s fine. If you want order halls back, no thank you. They might work out kind of okay for Death Knights, but my more generic classes, like Warrior, felt totally lackluster.

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The Rogue class story was fantastic and class halls were great for the story.

If anything lots of characters got more development or introduced because of order halls needing to have a “cast of characters” than the alternative.

If I had to pick between an expansion focusing on one of the Omega faction heroes “saving Azeroth’s world soul” or a bunch of Flynn Fairwinds and Vanessa VanCleefs doing non-cosmic adventures I’d choose the latter every single time.

Player character identity is the most important story element in an RPG, and class is arguably the biggest part of that. Far more so than race or faction or “whats going on in some main story staring The People on the Cover of the Box.”

Class stories in legion also did a really good job of making the player feel like they had an impact because they were smaller scale. At no point in time does it ever make since that we go into a raid with Khadgar and Jaina and Thrall and we’re supposed to believe that we, the players, are the ones who are really needed to bring down the big bad.

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Your entire premise falls apart right at the end, here:

You can have class fantasy without class exclusivity, and Class Halls made everyone into a specific archetype. Oh, every Warrior is a chosen of Odyn and leader of the Valarjar? Weird, pretty sure my Tauren Warrior did it to serve her people, and my Vulpera did it for easy money.

A better way to do Class Halls would be as a ‘Meeting of the Minds’ kind of deal, where leaders of the class from all races convene as a kind of trade show or convention of sorts. This also helps lay the groundwork for expanding the class among the races, as NPCs of races that might not be able to access that class yet could be seen talking to and showing curiosity in the class’s methods.

‘Your character is whatever you want it to be’ is what attaches the player to their character. Otherwise, we’d just be another unit pumped out of the RTS barracks to go die. As I’ve said many times, this mentality doesn’t work in an RPG where you can create your own character.

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No they weren’t.

What’s a generic class?

I disagree with this.

You get the weapon of Thoradin, the first human king of men, who gave his life to hold back Zakazj from destroying Azeroth with Strom’kar the Warbreaker (sword with about as much importance as the Ashbringer, the only difference is that instead of Undead cleaving it was killing Trolls), and unified the scattered human tribes. Thoradin is an incredibly important character I wont get into, many quests in Cataclysm were inspired by him, in the game you’ll see multiple statues of him, and he actually made an effort to make peace with the Elves of Quel’Thalas. Everything in Arathi Highlands, he created that, the first kingdom of the humans, the great wall he built to keep Amanit trolls out, that was all him! All who held the name Lothar are literal descendants of his name! The weapon itself is a breathing entity that fed on the shadows of Zakazj for centuries due to the elven magic that was placed on it by the elves of Quel’Thalas. Strom’kar itself has a hidden feature that causes trolls to be afraid of you when you get close to them in game.

You get Scale of the Earth warder aka the Blackwyrm armaments, which is a literal Shield crafted out of a Scale from Deathwing himself by a legendary Vrykul king who took it into Battle and won fight after fight with it. Magnar Icebreaker, the king in question, was so crazy he wanted to tackle Ulduar to reclaim it for the titan, he suprised attacked the highborne in Suramar and did a whole lotta stuff to keep the Nerubians from emerging onto the surface. Ultimately he was betrayed by Vrykul who were his closest confidants and were Helarjar, they ended up killing his own son, and in a final fit of rage he slayed many of them until his death.

You get the Warswords of Valajar, the title of Valajar has an incredibly powerful meaning, as it is Odyn’s personal army of titan-forged personel in order to protect Azeroth. These swords were influential as Ingvar was the first of the Valajar to hold them against minions of the Old God C’thun, where he died cutting down the last minion in the cave they encountered. Helya then shortly after sealing the Halls of Valor in a separate plane had passed the warswords onto Vigfus, a powerful leader of the Helarjar, an army made in mockery of Odin’s Valarjar, which you then subsequently reclaim.

Yet you have the audacity to say that it’s lackluster? Yeah okay. Also, the Halls of Valor are literally decorated in GOLD and in HEAVEN like a Valhalla, we even have our own arena and have the Valkyr at our disposal. The whole theme of the our order hall is inspired by the Vikings of old, there is no other order hall like it man.

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Nicely said. This did make legion amazing imo. I wish they did something like it or even update the old class areas each xpac :pleading_face:

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I think class halls need to come back as evergreen content

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Pretty sure they’re doing that with one of the Hunter’s Heroic Talents.

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Class fantasy is important.

Which is why I am so happy they made the dark shaman set for all classes.

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There was no class fantasy in Legion, it was all specialization fantasy. Specializations were no longer what the name implies: specializations, as in a class specializing in a one specific area. Fire Mages became almost completely separate from Arcane and Frost. Same with nearly every other class. Dragonflight has mended that rift a bit, but it’s no where near where it used to be.

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I just want LiLi Stormstout and Vanessa VanCleef to follow me around being awesome again.

The followers were so friggin great.

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I’d love to see them bring back class halls or something similar, I love playing those quest lines, well minus the mission table parts. But even aside from that, having more class specific dialogue in quests would be cool. Reactivity to who you are in the game is great world building. I still like the NPCs reacting to the artifact weapons.

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Wasn’t Legion the last Expansion that each race had their own unique casting animation as well? Man I miss those. Draenei, Darkspear, Goblins (Males) had some of the best, and paired with the right class/spec, you either King Pin/Big Lebowski or Ryu from SFII.

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Imo, the biggest problem with the legion design was it was spread too thin.

One weapon for each spec was a TERRIBLE, idea. It diluted too much the focus. You had amazing and iconic weapons like Ashbring, Doomhammer and other dumb ones that you never heard about, but somehow they were amazing powerfull.

Would it be much better if you had ONE weapon, that changes and adapts to your spec, and don’t say nonsense about not making sense when we had dozens of appearances

It was too much work, for Legion, they had to do it because WoD screw things up, but i doubt they will ever do something so big again.

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I distinctly remember Legion being absolutely hated on during the beginning. “Worse than Cata” definitely was said at least as often as “Shadowlands sucks.”

Class Halls were cool, but it was clear some were winners, and others were losers. Warriors had Valhalla and Hunters got some random cabin in the mountains. Class Halls literally were a 1-shot idea. You can’t “remake” Class Halls now; though, you can “re-use” them. But that wouldn’t fit in the “theme park” design of WoW expansions.

Artifact Weapons were cool. And Artifact Weapons led to BFA feeling like a downgrade for your toon. You lost a huge part of class identity when you moved into BFA. I know many people loved the idea of Artifact weapons, but it wasn’t a great idea to attach so much emphasis on your toon to a non-evergreen item. However, there were positives to that idea as well, including from that same point of view.

Playing alts on Legion was miserable too. A lot of the friendlier system designs we have now stem directly from Legion’s over-reliance on focusing on your main. Account Wide everything would have removed likely half of the major complaints. The game was super alt-unfriendly up until 7.3.5; praying for a good legendary was all you could really do outside of grinding trillions of Artifact Power.

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