Why would anyone be excited over WoW Legion?

[BloatedGuppy]

I quit at the end of MoP when Blizzard basically gave the finger to all the ten man raiding guilds. From what I have seen, they've been making wall to wall terrible decisions ever since, so I don't see any reason to go back, even though I miss my old raiding buddies.

As someone who has always been an advocate for smaller groups and smaller raid sizes, I'm curious why you'd have an issue with the modern day raiding format. It's more friendly to small guilds and small raid sizes then it's ever been.

 

[CritialGaming]

WoW is an interesting case. Everyone likes to talk shit about how terrible the game has become, but in reality WoW is still the game it has always been....for the most part. People complain that there is no sense of community, no sense of progression, no challenge, etc. etc. But the game is 11 fucking year old!

Let me explain something. After 11 years, you should already have a guild and friends that you've been playing with for year by now. You know why WoW feels like there is no community? Because everyone you know has quit the game. It has nothing to do with LFR, LFG, or standing in your garrison. IT is simply that the people you knew, don't play anymore so the game is full of memories that you can't ever recreate. Hell that is WHY LFR, and LFG exist, so that you can meet and play with new people. So you can try and make new friends.

The game is too easy? Fuck that shit. I am currently raiding in WoW and the boss mechanics are so complex and crazy now, that they make all those pre-Wraith raids look like jokes. Raiding is harder and better than it has ever been.

Progression, there isn't attunements anymore, and the catch up mechanics do make the game feel like there is no curve really. But that is a by-product of the dewindling community. Players don't have as much of a dedicated raid group anymore, especially not a group willing to go back through the previous tiers to get up a new member of the group. So the catch up mechanics.

Frankly it is the age of WoW that's killing the game. People are simply moving on.

Legion does a lot of awesome stuff, but it also has some questionable things in it as well.

First off the class design is mostly awesome. New animations and spells are so incredibly cool looking and feeling. The frost DK's, Fire Mages, and Warlocks all feel insane to play.

Sadly the Demon Hunter, the brand new draw for people into the game. That feels like a load of ass. It's like they had no idea what to do with ANOTHER melee class, so all the abilities feel weak and disjointed. It wasn't fun for me at all.

The Artifact weapons have a lot of awesome flavor to them. Some classes clearly have better Artifact than others from a lore perspective, but the principle of the weapons is cool. I just wonder how they are going to make the rest of the armor in the game feel interesting, since weapons will not drop throughout the expansion, they are going to have to step up armor design and set bonuses to make players feel good about getting gear.

We will have to see. I've been playing WoW for a long time and it is just starting to blur together to me. It isn't bad really, it's just old and no amount of new content that basically is the same cycle we've have since the beginning is going to fix anything.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

We will have to see. I've been playing WoW for a long time and it is just starting to blur together to me. It isn't bad really, it's just old and no amount of new content that basically is the same cycle we've have since the beginning is going to fix anything.

Amen to that.

Your post leads me to believe you've played some Legion Alpha...any idea how the 5 man content is shaping up?

 

[CritialGaming]

We will have to see. I've been playing WoW for a long time and it is just starting to blur together to me. It isn't bad really, it's just old and no amount of new content that basically is the same cycle we've have since the beginning is going to fix anything.

Amen to that.

Your post leads me to believe you've played some Legion Alpha...any idea how the 5 man content is shaping up?

I am in fact in the Alpha. The five man stuff is really cool looking. It's also kinda brokenly hard too, so it is overtuned as fuck. Hard to tell what the actually challenge will end up being because right now, trash just one-shots tanks. However the bosses that work are fun, the mechanics are interesting and the look of the dungeons is better than ever. It seems like they want the 5-man stuff to keep people's attention for a long time, especially with the modifers to difficulty you can get now. Once they tune it right, it will be interesting to see.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I am in fact in the Alpha. The five man stuff is really cool looking. It's also kinda brokenly hard too, so it is overtuned as fuck. Hard to tell what the actually challenge will end up being because right now, trash just one-shots tanks. However the bosses that work are fun, the mechanics are interesting and the look of the dungeons is better than ever. It seems like they want the 5-man stuff to keep people's attention for a long time, especially with the modifers to difficulty you can get now. Once they tune it right, it will be interesting to see.

Hard is okay. It would be interesting (and fun, IMO) to get back to an era where one actually had to communicate, mark, interrupt, use CC, etc to progress through 5 man instances, wipes were possible, and success was not a guarantee. This would be palatable if (and only if) rewards scaled appropriately. While I think Mythic dungeons were a step in the right direction, it was way too easy to over-gear them, and while I wouldn't necessarily qualify them as "face roll" I don't think approximating heroic difficulty at launch is much of a win in the "bring challenge back to 5 man" column. I'm not a vanilla purist, but one of the things I do remember fondly is spending hours inside UBRS/LBRS, Stratholme or BRD and feeling a huge sense of camaraderie with the group and accomplishment if we got through it. It was the same phenomenon raiders lust for, but without the cat-wrangling and 50 AFK's an hour involved in piloting 20+ people.

I don't suppose you've spent any time checking out Priests? I main Disc at the moment and they're turning my spec on its ear.

 

[CritialGaming]

I am in fact in the Alpha. The five man stuff is really cool looking. It's also kinda brokenly hard too, so it is overtuned as fuck. Hard to tell what the actually challenge will end up being because right now, trash just one-shots tanks. However the bosses that work are fun, the mechanics are interesting and the look of the dungeons is better than ever. It seems like they want the 5-man stuff to keep people's attention for a long time, especially with the modifers to difficulty you can get now. Once they tune it right, it will be interesting to see.

Hard is okay. It would be interesting (and fun, IMO) to get back to an era where one actually had to communicate, mark, interrupt, use CC, etc to progress through 5 man instances, wipes were possible, and success was not a guarantee. This would be palatable if (and only if) rewards scaled appropriately. While I think Mythic dungeons were a step in the right direction, it was way too easy to over-gear them, and while I wouldn't necessarily qualify them as "face roll" I don't think approximating heroic difficulty at launch is much of a win in the "bring challenge back to 5 man" column. I'm not a vanilla purist, but one of the things I do remember fondly is spending hours inside UBRS/LBRS, Stratholme or BRD and feeling a huge sense of camaraderie with the group and accomplishment if we got through it. It was the same phenomenon raiders lust for, but without the cat-wrangling and 50 AFK's an hour involved in piloting 20+ people.

I don't suppose you've spent any time checking out Priests? I main Disc at the moment and they're turning my spec on its ear.

Hard is okay. But this isn't hard. This is impossible. When a trash mob, can one-shot the tank, that isn't hard. That's broke!

Overgearing is something that happens throughout and expansion's life. Even in BC, once you were in T6 gear, the heroics where nothing to you. The problem is that once you are in raid gear, you often have no reason to do a 5-man unless you are helping a friend's alt or something. So I wonder what they will to to keep the 5-mans relevant throughout the expansion. I would imagine some sort of gear scaling like they did with challenge modes will help keep players from being too OP for them. But we will see.

Sorry no I have not touched the priest. Healing makes my brain hurt and I don't understand it.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Hard is okay. But this isn't hard. This is impossible. When a trash mob, can one-shot the tank, that isn't hard. That's broke!

I guess it depends on how the tank got one shot. I think it's okay to have mechanics that can cause that, so long as they can be avoided/interrupted. And I think it's okay for trash PACKS to run over a tank. If a single mob on a single auto attack gibbed the tank, and it wasn't tiers of difficulty ahead of when that tank should have been attempting it, then yes...that's bad.

Overgearing is something that happens throughout and expansion's life. Even in BC, once you were in T6 gear, the heroics where nothing to you. The problem is that once you are in raid gear, you often have no reason to do a 5-man unless you are helping a friend's alt or something. So I wonder what they will to to keep the 5-mans relevant throughout the expansion. I would imagine some sort of gear scaling like they did with challenge modes will help keep players from being too OP for them. But we will see.

I'm of the contentious opinion that 5 man progression should mirror raiding progression, not precede it. I found it to be a howling joke that heroic dungeons gave 620 blues and raid finder Highmaul gave 640 epics, given the latter was actually easier than QUESTING content from the moment it was incepted. Mythic dungeons and their itemization suggest Blizzard is open to the idea of meaningful 5 man progression and reward. The game's content funnel was always bizarre, with everything leading to raiding and the game simply stopping if you didn't want to vastly expand your social network/group size.

Sorry no I have not touched the priest. Healing makes my brain hurt and I don't understand it.

Bah!

 

[Ryotknife]

im not expecting it to be better than BC or WotLK, but it will hopefully be better on WoD which is the weakest expansion so far. The utter lack of content, Hellscream went from orc Hitler to savior of Draenor....somehow, and I felt like they didnt take advantage of the warlords themselves (besides Blackhand). There just wasnt anything to do.

As to the skill prune from the previous expansion, I will admit im not a big fan. Maybe other classes got "situationally useful abilities removed," but my warlock and druid got essential abilities removed. I mean, i lost curse of exhaustion, a snare ability we had since vanilla, felflame an instant spell which also snares, howl of terror and deathcoil are no longer baseline. The ability pruning single handedly made me no longer want to pvp on my lock as they removed essentially all utility from my lock but gave me TWO leashes instead of one. Having one leash was bad enough. Couldnt get rid of demonic gateway though, even though it is useless 99% of the time. I mean, its so great to play as the only class without a snare, it takes quite a bit of skill to make a class toolset worse than its vanilla toolset....5 expansions in.

rant over

Well, other than the expansion itself i wont have to pay for wow, so thats nice.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

I quit at the end of MoP when Blizzard basically gave the finger to all the ten man raiding guilds. From what I have seen, they've been making wall to wall terrible decisions ever since, so I don't see any reason to go back, even though I miss my old raiding buddies.

As someone who has always been an advocate for smaller groups and smaller raid sizes, I'm curious why you'd have an issue with the modern day raiding format. It's more friendly to small guilds and small raid sizes then it's ever been.

Because my friends and I liked to do hard modes but Blizzard made Mythic 20-man only. While I would have been (grudgingly) willing to do 20, my friends weren't, and I didn't want to raid without them.

 

[LetalisK]

We will have to see. I've been playing WoW for a long time and it is just starting to blur together to me. It isn't bad really, it's just old and no amount of new content that basically is the same cycle we've have since the beginning is going to fix anything.

Amen to that.

Your post leads me to believe you've played some Legion Alpha...any idea how the 5 man content is shaping up?

I am in fact in the Alpha. The five man stuff is really cool looking. It's also kinda brokenly hard too, so it is overtuned as fuck. Hard to tell what the actually challenge will end up being because right now, trash just one-shots tanks. However the bosses that work are fun, the mechanics are interesting and the look of the dungeons is better than ever. It seems like they want the 5-man stuff to keep people's attention for a long time, especially with the modifers to difficulty you can get now. Once they tune it right, it will be interesting to see.

Have they tinkered with the PvP in the alpha yet? How is it? That's what I'm most looking forward to. I was tired of the gear chase and stratification of players via gear. I'm looking forward to the perk system.

 

[Ryotknife]

I quit at the end of MoP when Blizzard basically gave the finger to all the ten man raiding guilds. From what I have seen, they've been making wall to wall terrible decisions ever since, so I don't see any reason to go back, even though I miss my old raiding buddies.

As someone who has always been an advocate for smaller groups and smaller raid sizes, I'm curious why you'd have an issue with the modern day raiding format. It's more friendly to small guilds and small raid sizes then it's ever been.

Because my friends and I liked to do hard modes but Blizzard made Mythic 20-man only. While I would have been (grudgingly) willing to do 20, my friends weren't, and I didn't want to raid without them.

Even if mythic was scaled down to 10 man....could you do it? Mythic guilds are extremely rare, to the point where you basically had to raid 15 (if not more) hours a week. If you are not in the top 5% of pvers in terms of skill, you dont stand a chance of getting into a mythic guild. There are more mythic guilds out right now in WoW, but that is because Hellfire Citadel has been out for almost a year.

 

[Rawbeard]

"how dare you like something I don't like but can't stop obssessing over!" - OP

 

[MCerberus]

I'll probably play it, put a month of game time in it, note the complete desolation of my old social circles in the game and leave after doing the story because the only sign that the game world isn't a desolate lonely waste land is the auction house and the racist trolls in trade chat.

And knowing Blizzard they'll have made crafting somehow less useful this expansion

 

[The Philistine]

The setting looks fun, the artifact weapons at least look interesting, and the raiding model has continued to improve over the years (flex raid is awesome for casual guilds). Not sure how Blizzard's focus on class fantasy will pan out for gameplay. But then I'm one of those players who's stuck around purely for the raiding, and haven't had to pay a sub directly for nearly a year thanks to garrisons raining gold and WoW tokens, so my standards aren't that high.

 

[chrissx2]

I love WoW's artstyle. I would only play it to see the new locations. Beside that, there's nothing else that would bring me back to the game (well, maybe old friends). The game went downhill for me after TBC.

 

[VincentRollsRoyce]

Great job OP, well thought out post slamming ol' Blizzard. They don't care about us one bit, all they care about is gaining as much money as possible for their flash cars and flash houses. Just like this BS insta level 100 boost. Now all we get is noobs in battlegrounds that don't know how to play their class whatsoever and help us lose, of course.

If they knew what was good for them they'd actually open up some legacy servers, that's where the money is Blizzard.

 

[CritialGaming]

Hard is okay. But this isn't hard. This is impossible. When a trash mob, can one-shot the tank, that isn't hard. That's broke!

I guess it depends on how the tank got one shot. I think it's okay to have mechanics that can cause that, so long as they can be avoided/interrupted. And I think it's okay for trash PACKS to run over a tank. If a single mob on a single auto attack gibbed the tank, and it wasn't tiers of difficulty ahead of when that tank should have been attempting it, then yes...that's bad.

I'm of the contentious opinion that 5 man progression should mirror raiding progression, not precede it. I found it to be a howling joke that heroic dungeons gave 620 blues and raid finder Highmaul gave 640 epics, given the latter was actually easier than QUESTING content from the moment it was incepted. Mythic dungeons and their itemization suggest Blizzard is open to the idea of meaningful 5 man progression and reward. The game's content funnel was always bizarre, with everything leading to raiding and the game simply stopping if you didn't want to vastly expand your social network/group size.


Bah!

Personally I feel like LFR should drop blues. Epics should only be gotten through raiding and high end pvp, period. I think the biggest problem with WoW right now, is that nothing feels special. You get epics basically handed out at every turn, tot he point where basic quest rewards can become epic now. People want their gear to mean something, they want raiding to mean something.

And it doesn't mean shit right now.

All these different raid difficulties really hurt the game, because it opens up raiding to everyone and anyone....And frankly Raiding ISN'T and SHOULDN't be for everyone.

Mythic difficulty should be the only raid difficulty in terms of mechanics. With numbers tunes properly so that intro level gear can down bosses. Because when raiding was at it's peak, there was only one way to raid. One difficulty.

There is the time arguement, that people shouldn't have to commit to raiding for hours a night in order to progress. This is false. You never NEEDED to raid hours on end every night. A Casual guild could clear Black Temple in TBC raiding one or two times a week for only a couple of hours a night. The lack of time is not a reason, it's an excuse.

The other excuse I see a lot is, "I pay my sub like everyone else, so I should have access to everything." This excuse is bullshit. Because even if a raid is hard. Even if a raid requires attunement. EVERYONE had access to do them, ALWAYS. Everyone could do Naxx in Vanilla. You had to put in the work and you had to put in the effort to not only get good enough as a player, but also raid lower tier raids for the gear to get you in the door to Naxx.

"Oh well but content should be gated by time commitments." Bullshit. Can you raid without getting to max level? No! That's a time commitment. Can you beat the Witcher 3 without a time commitment? No! That game is crazy long. Games are a time investment no matter what you do. Some games don't require a lot of time out of you, like Rogue Legacy, or Call of Duty quick matches. Other games require a shitload of time. Especially if you want to be good at them, just look at DOTA 2 or LoL players. That's a shit ton of time invested.

Same is true with Raiding.

Stop rewarding people for doing nothing. It's fucking stupid and it's why a lot of the old school hardcore players don't play anymore. They feel their efforts are useless. They don't stand out for beating the Sunwell, because everyone beats it now. Make the raids challenging in a single difficultly across the board. If you insist on keeping LFR mode, don't let it give epics, blue gear or badge currency only.

This change in difficulty will force people into real groups, real guilds, and shockingly....they'll make real friends as they take on these challenges. These relationships are what has propped WoW up for 11 goddamn years. That's what Blizzard needs to promote with this game again. It's an MMO, and you should HAVE to play with people. LFR is like raiding with Bots.

 

[CritialGaming]

Great job OP, well thought out post slamming ol' Blizzard. They don't care about us one bit, all they care about is gaining as much money as possible for their flash cars and flash houses. Just like this BS insta level 100 boost. Now all we get is noobs in battlegrounds that don't know how to play their class whatsoever and help us lose, of course.

If they knew what was good for them they'd actually open up some legacy servers, that's where the money is Blizzard.

Noobs in Battlegrounds loose you the game?

Question for you. If you care about winning in PvP that much, why do you not form an organized group?

Blizzard has supported and built this game for nearly 20 years (including initial development). They might be fucking it up, but to say that they don't care just proves that you are simply ignorant.

 

[Ryotknife]

There is the time arguement, that people shouldn't have to commit to raiding for hours a night in order to progress. This is false. You never NEEDED to raid hours on end every night. A Casual guild could clear Black Temple in TBC raiding one or two times a week for only a couple of hours a night. The lack of time is not a reason, it's an excuse.

The other excuse I see a lot is, "I pay my sub like everyone else, so I should have access to everything." This excuse is bullshit. Because even if a raid is hard. Even if a raid requires attunement. EVERYONE had access to do them, ALWAYS. Everyone could do Naxx in Vanilla. You had to put in the work and you had to put in the effort to not only get good enough as a player, but also raid lower tier raids for the gear to get you in the door to Naxx.

"Oh well but content should be gated by time commitments." Bullshit. Can you raid without getting to max level? No! That's a time commitment. Can you beat the Witcher 3 without a time commitment? No! That game is crazy long. Games are a time investment no matter what you do. Some games don't require a lot of time out of you, like Rogue Legacy, or Call of Duty quick matches. Other games require a shitload of time. Especially if you want to be good at them, just look at DOTA 2 or LoL players. That's a shit ton of time invested.

Listen, I liked TBC raiding model too, but this part is just not true. A casual guild could NOT clear black temple. A casual guild would be lucky to clear the previous tier of content (Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep). A lot of the bosses had massive gear checks. My guild was one of the better ones (although not the best) and we raided about 10 hours a week, we only got halfway through BT. In fact, my guild would be considered casual back then because we only raided 10 hours a week whereas "hardcore" guilds raided 20 hours a week if not more.

Now, yes I liked the TBC model because there was always something to look forward to. Nowadays you do raid A for 6 months until raid B comes out then you never touch raid A again.