So a comment I see fairly often is that legendary items are too easy to get and everyone having one diminish their legendary status. To be honest, they have a point. The problem is that I don’t know a good solution.
Let’s say we go back to the idea of ultra rare raid drop legendaries. Is the legendary BiS? If not than why is it legendary? If so then will it make mythic+ and PvP players more competitive and this making many feel obligated to raid to get it? Also would it be for one class or all? If only for one class, or maybe a few, will it make that class more competitive and rank higher than other classes?
I just have the sense that the modern WoW community is more competitive, for good or ill, and would find unfair any advantage a true legendary item would give.
Also take all of this with a grain of salt. I’m a proud LFR raider who won’t get legendaries unless they are free handouts.
How do you think people should earn legendary items?
Legendaries are… problematic. The issue is that legendaries should feel powerful, but this results in them being pigeon holed into one of two statuses:
Hard to get and thus time gated (old legendary system)
Easy to get but thus mandatory (new legendary system)
I’m not a big fan of either system as they present their own unique issues. I personally think option 1 makes legendaries feel the most flavorful and awesome, but it also means most people will never get one.
I think a legendary should occupy a new equipment space. Imagine players getting a new paper doll slot space i.e. relic that has no item level, but is instead an evergreen slot that is progressed more horizontally. Perhaps players can work to upgrade special relics that can eventually become legendary that give cool powerful passives, like DoTs or HoTs lasting longer or cooldowns recovering faster, as well as possible passive effects like spell effect footprints or wings or a holy time or a cool quiver.
But Blizzard doesn’t seem too keen on the whole horizontal progression system or feeling like you need to farm old content (i.e. old expansion to get the ‘BiS relic’) so I doubt they would go for something like this.
I do like the idea of having more evergreen systems. Not sure if it’s the right call for legendaries though. But that’s because classes seems to change so much between expansions that that they would probably change the ability. But hopefully Blizzard will try to make a more consistent class structure with Dragonflight.
Ya know it’s hard to say. I think the coolest way to do it would be to have one of something that people could find. Once solved the first person to get it has one and none else can get it. But that creates a lot of problems blizzard might not like. Like account selling.
But have wholesale legendary items just aren’t, well, legendary. I think it might be best just to have them randomly where they make sense. Though having them be a random boss drop doesn’t seem interesting either. I like them semi tied to quests like vanilla and cata legendary items but not tied to raids or m+. Having them be farmable is kind of whack.
I’m going to say it. I liked artifact weapons in Legion. If everyone is going to have a damn legendary, we might as well be able to customize it while having it part of the story in some way.
Well, I’m using big air quotes here. Horizontal means all content is relevant so you can choose what you want to get. Ideally newer content would have as good if not a hair better stuff, but naturally people are going to sim and eventually an old item under such circumstance will sim to be 1 or 2% better or whatever, and thus most of the community will immediately consider that to be ‘mandatory’.
My idea is basically like how old relic slot items work but adjusted to be relevant at any level. So you could farm old content for something you want, or do new content. They could also potentially lock old content like the mage tower appearances to prevent old stuff from being “”“mandatory”“”, but players generally disliked locked content.
The other option is to make legendaries purely cosmetic, like how GW2 does it.
To me, the Underlight Angler is pretty close to the perfect legendary.
Available to everyone, required modest dedication to the relevent playstyle, but not obsessive dedication (it was something you could reasonably just stumble across even if you didn’t know it existed; and it was something you could even obtain on alts).
And, even after you get it, there is still an upgrade path to it.
It’s something I’ve seen a few times. Though I saw some discussion on this yesterday or the day before which prompted this thread. Can’t remember which one though.