With Legion being such a massive success (compared to the recent previous expansions), it makes me wonder why they would deviate from that formula by such a drastic degree.
Makes me wonder if they were testing what was more popular, the class fantasy, or the AP system.
Since BFA practically got rid of the class fantasy in every way possible and went more towards individual players and factions again, but kept the same system and then failed miserably, I can only convince myself that this was a test.
I personally would love to see more of a class specific expansion, maybe even a mix, why is my character (class) with the Horde/Alliance? What does it mean to the Horde or Alliance to have my character?
To keep guilds still in the mix, they could have class only mechanics during some boss fights, rather than have the same fights (do damage, avoid mechanics, do more damage, win), they could have specific encounters for fights where, hunters need to flair to see certain mobs to buff the raid, don’t have a hunter? no problem, have a shaman lightning bolt and chain lighting some pillars to weaken the boss. Just make it so they can’t all be done at once and give the class(player) a debuff that doesn’t allow them to do it again for a little bit.
Obviously that is just an example, Each class gets a mechanic that can help the raid, so no one is left out.
I don’t know, I just think it would be more enjoyable, to give classes a sense of self worth, kind of like the mage tower before the nerfs.
This whole expansion seems like a test 8.0 with the Islands
Then 8.1 with the Mechagon dailies with a single world quest on a small map and the spare parts drops.
Then 8.2 with the dailies with the multiple world quests and lvlling companion that will never leave Naz.
Then 8.3 with two daily zones with dailies, a single world quest and visions to grind.
Maybe they are trying to figure out which system sucks people in more, like a mobile developer. Gotta get those whales!
No. Pretty sure 7.2 taught Blizzard that focusing too much on class-specific content results in most players feeling like there isn’t any content. Because most players don’t play 12 classes. That’s why we didn’t go that route in BfA, and it’s why there’s 4 storylines tied to player choice instead of 12 tied to classes in Shadowlands.
imo the biggest failure of this xpac is the essences, azerite traits and corruption system. you have all dps running around with a lot of the same abilities and it’s pretty lame. it’s stupid to me when you have so many classes using the same abilities…and the fact that these abilities do such a large portion of their damage just makes it worse. go back to tier gear please…this was an utter failure
I think the fact that they relied on class-specific content only in 7.2 wasn’t great, but Legion’s class-specific content made the expansion so replayable. I think I leveled every class through Legion, and I had a blast doing it.
I think we need more class-specific content, but I do agree that it shouldn’t be relied on as heavily, especially if that gets in the way of doing other content.
What would be pretty cool if the AP system was on your character instead of a piece of bling that will drag down your ilevel if you don’t give it come cra- azerite all the time.
15 years now Blizz always feels like they need to reinvent the wheel with every expansion. Let’s redesign the classes so people have to learn them all over again. Let’s throw out mechanics that worked perfectly well so we can put in new mechanics for the sake of being different. BfA feels like the time when none of the ‘different just for the sake of being different’ ideas they threw against the wall actually stuck.
I honestly do not know why Blizz is so against keeping things around that worked in the past.
Since Legion, I’ve developed this theory that there are two dev teams that swap between main and sub.
Vanilla: started as a buggy mess. Ended with a bang, even if few got to experience it. BC: interesting if clunky. Most endgame was a buggy mess.
Wrath: hugely popular. Though long content drought at the end. Cata (endgame 80-85): uninteresting and generally disliked.
MoP: popular success on almost all fronts. Incredibly lore packed. Large content patches. WoD: released half finished. massive content droughts.
Legion: rough start, lore heavy, ended with a bang. BfA: Lore plays like a poorly written tumblr fanfic from start to finish. Ending felt rushed.
So if the trend holds, Shadowlands should be another hugely popular success.
Legion is the average guy standing between two hideous-looking friends: He looks good because of who you have to compare him to.
When MoP and Wrath amble by, you start to notice that Legion has some very unattractive features.
By the way, Cataclysm is the guy sitting in the corner who has had so much plastic surgery he can’t blink anymore. Don’t look! He’ll stalk you if you look at him.
Cata was disliked initially because people viewed dungeons as too hard and therefore “not for them” after an expansion of mostly super easy dungeons. The final 3 weren’t super easy but by the time Cata was gearing up to release they were because people were overgeared like crazy.
Personally, I believe the harder dungeon experience was literally the best thing about Cata.
Anyway, that aside, I don’t think most people had any strong negatives to say about Cata until the very end. People didn’t like Deathwing as a fight. Dragon Soul was actually a really solid raid and probably STILL has the most unique mechanics in the game to some extent. But it had a bad final boss so everyone craps on it unfairly. And guess how people remember an expansion? By the end. Cata wasn’t bad. Madness of Deathwing was.
It was also crapped on like crazy while current. It had huge swaths of people who avoided it entirely because of Pandaren and the east asian themes. It had a ridiculous amount of semi-mandatory dailies in 5.0 that basically no one liked. It killed any remnants of the old Talent Trees.
And, yes, it’s my favorite expansion. But to say it was a popular success on all fronts is just not true in anything but hindsight.
Fair
Didn’t think the start was that rough, but yeah, still, fair. LOTS of complaints about too much RNG with Legiondaries and reduced viability of offspecs due to AP going into the weapon and not the character, but overall I agree it was received positively, even while current.
Agreed, although story is hardly BfA’s biggest issue. I acknowledge that it’s generally seen as a poor expansion.
Nah.
They did improve BfA over time but mmo market is pretty risky and most games with a bad initial release either die or are completely revamped. BfA just improved its azerite systems and had some really nice fights but IE and warfronts were completely gutted making it’s major features pretty null at this point.
Hopefully the new team got some valuable experience with it. Or not and we can just you know not play the game when we don’t like it. I literally quit till 8.2