I disagree. I think the forums are more negative AND more positive. This place is where all kinds of players come to voice strong opinions.
In some ways it reminds me of Yelp. There are lots of negative and positive reviews on Yelp but not as many “meh” posts. That’s because you don’t bother to write something if you don’t care one way or the other.
The game has a huge middle ground that we rarely see here: People who just play the game. People who would never go to Blizzcon or check out the forums or r/wow or any fansite other than those necessary to clarify play.
If WoW was politics, GD gets the voters who go to political conventions for both parties and the game is full of people who don’t vote at all.
It’s so amusing to see posts that cite Legion as a good expansion and get zero pushback for that claim. The whining you’re seeing about Shadowlands now is NOTHING compared to the salt factory that was GD during Legion.
Suramar, Pathfinder, having to do Suramar to complete Pathfinder, infinite artifact power, RNG Legendary system, being “forced” to run Maw over and over, being forced to run Maw over and over with 3 fire mages (i miss getting stupid numbers on trash in LFR with F+B, but I like invites more), Suramar, Broken Chore, farming Nethershards to do Mage Tower, getting pwned at the Mage Tower, Suramar, WHY IS MAGE TOWER ON A TIMER, timegating the story, locking allied races behind reps, no flying on Argus, Netherlight Crucible.
Even accounting the difference is partly because so many salty players have left the game, I still think SL will be remembered fondly. It’s just the nature of GD to endlessly complain about something or other
Legion legendaries, Suramar, Broken Chore, infinite artifact power, timegating the order hall/Argus story, the centrality of mythic + to gearing/legendaries are all side things?
I think we have a different perception of what defines a “side thing”.
Yes, these were side things; the core of Legion was great unlike Shadowlands.
I mean, you even harm your case when you say Broken Shore was Broken Chore. Broken Shore was positively received for the most part and it was great to see Blizzard build on it over the course of the expac with Mage Tower. The latter trait is something they almost never do (build on existing feature) and they need to do it more often.
Most of these were complained by a minority. People cried against infinite artifact power b4 they realized the curve was so high it basically made no difference.
You had numerous post stating that Legion was good even back in the days. Very rarely see this in SL.
Also I don’t remember Brocken sore to be complained about. Must be a really tiny minority.
I think he is referencing how some people initially hated how “grindy” BS was but for the most part, people enjoyed it and were too busy playing the game to notice.
And in the years that followed, people’s hate for BS amplified when they had to run it mindlessly for class mounts. Running dead content mindlessly will make people resentful of it.
Come on, the legendary system was one of the main features of Legion, and it was universally hated for locking powerful items behind RNG (a mistake Blizzard doubled and trippled down on with the Azerite system in BfA, for reasons best known to them). Suramar was the main non-raid/pvp/dungeon content when the game dropped, Broken Shore in the first content patch. Pretending these are side things is asinine: if not them what was the “core” of Legion? Raids? Raids are almost always good, and CN is well received? Mythic +? People complained more about Mythic + in Legion than SL b/c mythic + was the best way to get gear: players tend to gravitate toward the best route for gearing, and if they don’t happen to like it they’ll dislike feeling pressured to run unenjoyable content. You’re seeing that with PvP now. The order hall? SL has that too, the only problem with that in SL is linking unique powers behind it causing dissonance between cosmetics and PvE play.
Because that’s what people on GD called it? Just like the somewhat less clever “Choreghast”.
I enjoyed it. /shrug
I feel this applies to most complaints on GD though?
Also you abandoned the point about my examples being “side” content.
Legion was far better than Shallowlands. The occasional whining from min/maxers feeling “forced” to grind AP was nothing but an occasional distraction on GD and were quickly downvoted.
The core was Artifact Weapons, Order Halls and the new class. I really cannot fathom how anyone would see “legendaries” as a core feature. It was along the vein of tier set/set bonus. Do you call tier gear a “core feature”?
If you pick a random WoW player (incidentally, the majority of the game’s playerbase) off the street and ask them about Legion’s core features, they will not say “legendaries”. Only on these forums and hellholes like reddit which is infested with wannabes will people bring it up.
I mean only time will tell which is better but Legion at this point was more compelling by a factor of a 1000 than SL in terms of core system (Artifact), class balance, storyline (this one is huge; SL is garbage), and overall outlook.
The only place SL trumps everything before it is in PvE. Legion’s dungeons were forgettable at best, sucky at worst IMO.
This forum serves as a place for people to vent their criticism. It’s mostly negative all of the time.
Okay, I’ve thought about this, and the bigger issue imo isn’t whether or not the legendaries were a “core” feature- it’s someone labeling them as a “side” feature, which I think is absurd and asinine. Whether or not we can define Legion legendaries as “core” gameplay is beside the point when the implication, I took anyway (given the context of the response to my OP) was that they were an unimportant part of the game criticized only by people looking for something to criticize- which is absurd and incorrect. Legendaries were clearly a major feature, which is what I disagreed with. If you want to dispute them as a major feature, well, have at it, I think that’s silly. Tying a significant boost in power to your character to low world drop rates was something disliked by #elitists and #casuals alike, making it a useful du jour argument in expressing dissatisfaction with the game.
I guess my original mistake was falling for the assumption that the distinction between “core” and “side” gameplay mattered. For example, bringing up the Order Hall in this context is a bit odd to me, since SL reintroduced the Order Hall (as a “core” feature) and -outside the relatively major complaint of tying imbalanced powers to a single Order Hall- has been well received.
