Legion Lore wasn’t actually good. Stabbing the planet was not good. Alleria & Turalyon’s thousand year Crusade was not good. Torching various story threads entirely (eg, Emerald Dream) was not good. “Biggest Legion Invasion Ever!!” ended up feeling very underwhelming and inconsequential. Summoning the Legion through an AU Lorelol Gul’dan was not good. Retconning the Broken Isles was not good, etc.
While Suramar was a gem, the continent as a whole felt totally inorganic, like stitched-together theme parks.
The fantasy was mid, level design was bad, class design was atrocious.
Well, we all have different opinions. I had sooo much fun playing Mistweaver and guardian Druid (besides one patch if I remember right, where it felt like we were forgotten). The mage tower was awesome and the class halls.
The only negative part for me was keys being introduced, I was like “meh” but I am in the minority with that.
I wish they did more grand scaled, fleshed out cities like suramar
Vanilla has class fantasy. SoD builds on that class fantasy. Legion feels so peak because it feels like it expands on the roots of the game.
Simply put you are your class first and foremost, so class fantasy makes the game feel like an actual RPG. Before faction or race, the most immutable and important aspect of your character is their class.
It’s not about “coming together.” It’s about the fact that Tauren Paladins exist as a technicality and are canonically sun-worshipping Druids. What in the Hell are they doing hobnobbing around with an order of Knights & Priests founded before the Second War?
I played a lot of other classes too, more than ever because of the special mounts and I felt immersed into the world - but those are my top two favorite specs and I think their halls are s tier. My favorite was the hunters lodge tho, you?
well since they are druids they are in tune with the soul of azeroth. like magni was. thats a proper boon to anyone. and they are wearing paladin stuff so they are indeed in that vein
I mean, you can clap for bells & whistles if you like, but there’s something fundamentally wrong with forcing Sunwalkers into the Silver Hand. Just like there’s something wrong with an international Assassin’s guild that is just so important (but has never done anything and subordinates all existing spy agencies)
Vanilla had it, and it also spent 5 years in development and also most of outland was built during vanilla development.
I’d love it it be a strong way the game is made every expansion.
I’m just stating my guess on why it’s not, and it’s never really been in follow on convent except Legion.
SoD since p1 feels like crap with almost every “new” rune just being an ability that already existed at some point in retail. I’m glad they’ve added some class specific stuff, that has been cool. But they’ve also barely added much of anything in terms of new art, models, zones, animations, etc. (lol incursions) that are labor intensive so they can spend some time actually making something. It’s also x9 instead of x13.
I’ll agree with you there. That’s sort of just a WoW problem. Other than EK/Kalimdor or Northrend I struggle to think of any continents that felt cohesive but also varied enough to be interesting.
Honestly, one thing I can say for Shadowlands is that at least each realm was a separate realm so we got diversity without that stitched together vibe.
It sounds like you know the lore way better than me. I thought it was an amazing xpac and again, the halls just made it so special and the world feel more alive and immersive.
I personally also hated suramar. I hated all of highmountain, and Aszuna. Argus was a cool planet to explore but I hated the lore around it. I wished the Legion killed sylvanas or something too, nope.
But I loved most of the order hall campaigns for meele plate wearers. I hated that theres a demon who got the light blessing him, to me he looks ugly as hell, and it makes zero sense that a legion minion decides to join the Silver hand.
I feel like basically every new expansion continent is going to feel “stitched together” because they want to have vastly different environments that could never actually be next to each other in the real world all in the same location because it would be boring to have a new set of zones that all look and feel very similar.