So, after the disappointment of Warlords of Draenor, everyone was hoping that Legion would offer a fresh shot in the arm and do away with all the nonsense that the former expansion introduced. Well... it did and it didn't.
THE GOOD: It is better than Draenor! To be fair, Legion has done a bit of a reset of the clock. Instead of WoD +1 we have something more like Pandaria +1. DAilies have been replaced with World Quests, which are essentially a random daily that changes every so often. There are dozens of them, but you'll quickly see repeats. These are unlocked at max level.
Questing is still fun and there are some very well done story based quests that do get you involved in the world quite nicely.
THE BAD: Though they have done away with the majority of the garrison malarkey, the command table has returned! Yes, because apparently Blizzard think that nothing increases immersion like clicking on a spreadsheet-like UI and dragging/dropping things into slots. Speaking of immersion, most classes have been horribly mucked about with in order to "increase class identity" and... yep... immersion! However, despite the decent beta, no real effort at balancing classes was in evidence at launch, leaving some classes pretty useless.
I have no idea why Blizzard still continues to do this. The game has been out for twelve years and they still haven't got the basics sorted out. By now they should be making tiny changes and iterations based on over a decade of having worked it out. But no...sweeping changes and massive imbalance issues are the order of the day, it seems, with each new expac.
Then there is the Mythic plus concept, or as I like to think of it... Let's get the suckers to go through the same content repeatedly in the hope of getting a slightly better hat. Why would anyone want to run the same dungeon over and over again? It is the definition of madness.
THE UGLY: Oh God! The RNG! It burns! Everything is RNG now, because Blizz think it is more fun for players to randomly be rewarded for playing the game, than it is for them to have clear goals and objectives.
The Legendary item is a particularly egregious example of this stupidity, with a chance for such an item to drop from a variety of sources. There have been people who have managed to gain multiple legendaries whilst others who have played the game more, have none. That's RNG folks! Except that it all malfunctioned badly, leading to people who had already got one getting another and then another, due to a bug in the code. Remind me again why they bother with beta testing?
THE EVEN UGLIER: Artifact Power and weapons. Good God! If ever there was a way to lock players into one character, this is it. In fact, not just one character, but one SPEC! See, you gain AP as you play and put that power into your artifact weapon. You gain new abilities and increase the weapons item level.
So what is wrong with that, you say? Well, beyond a certain point, it become almost impossible to effectively change spec, let alone class, without requiring you to gather that AP all over again (it is spec-specific in so much as once you've put it into a weapon, it can't be recovered. You have to grind all over again, during which time, you guild mates are all getting further and further ahead of you in the power stakes.
It also makes playing alts a tiresome task. They have promised catch-up mechanics later on in the xpac, but by then, most will have given up and unsubbed, I think. Difficult to tell for sure, of course, because Blizz are, these days, too embarrassed to show us the sub numbers, for fear of upsetting the shareholders.
And it is all so pointless, because Blizz don't seem to know what they are going to do with the things in the expac beyond Legion. They dissemble too much, methinks. I'm expecting that, like most items from a previous expac, they will be replaced with greens in the next installment. Whilst this is fine for things you just get as drops, when you have put so much effort into a weapon by grinding AP, it will come as a bitter blow to some, I think, when the penny drops.
THE WTF: Gating of basic quests, class progression quests and profession quests behind dungeons and sometimes raids. I really have no idea why they thought alienating the casual players (who make up the majority of the player base) was a good idea by making much of the content inaccessible to them. I get it, it is an MMO, not a single-player RPG, but that isn't how a large proportion of the players actually play the game.
OVERALL: The expansion is better than WoD. However, that is like saying that a dried up dog turd is better than a freshly laid one. Once you break through the surface, its all the same. The questing is more of the same. Dailies have become World Quests. The Garrison is now the Order Hall. Profession are still tedious to level. There is no real originality going into this game. No new systems or mechanics. Just a lot of endlessly repeating content you've done before.
CONCLUSION: Better than WoD, but ultimately disappointing. Nothing new to see here. A superficial expansion that relies heavily on RNG to keep players playing and make them think there is more to the end game than there actually is. Lots of what can best be described as "busy work" to distract players from noticing how little actual content there is. I strongly doubt the retention figures will ultimately be any higher than WoD. Disappointing.
THE GOOD: It is better than Draenor! To be fair, Legion has done a bit of a reset of the clock. Instead of WoD +1 we have something more like Pandaria +1. DAilies have been replaced with World Quests, which are essentially a random daily that changes every so often. There are dozens of them, but you'll quickly see repeats. These are unlocked at max level.
Questing is still fun and there are some very well done story based quests that do get you involved in the world quite nicely.
THE BAD: Though they have done away with the majority of the garrison malarkey, the command table has returned! Yes, because apparently Blizzard think that nothing increases immersion like clicking on a spreadsheet-like UI and dragging/dropping things into slots. Speaking of immersion, most classes have been horribly mucked about with in order to "increase class identity" and... yep... immersion! However, despite the decent beta, no real effort at balancing classes was in evidence at launch, leaving some classes pretty useless.
I have no idea why Blizzard still continues to do this. The game has been out for twelve years and they still haven't got the basics sorted out. By now they should be making tiny changes and iterations based on over a decade of having worked it out. But no...sweeping changes and massive imbalance issues are the order of the day, it seems, with each new expac.
Then there is the Mythic plus concept, or as I like to think of it... Let's get the suckers to go through the same content repeatedly in the hope of getting a slightly better hat. Why would anyone want to run the same dungeon over and over again? It is the definition of madness.
THE UGLY: Oh God! The RNG! It burns! Everything is RNG now, because Blizz think it is more fun for players to randomly be rewarded for playing the game, than it is for them to have clear goals and objectives.
The Legendary item is a particularly egregious example of this stupidity, with a chance for such an item to drop from a variety of sources. There have been people who have managed to gain multiple legendaries whilst others who have played the game more, have none. That's RNG folks! Except that it all malfunctioned badly, leading to people who had already got one getting another and then another, due to a bug in the code. Remind me again why they bother with beta testing?
THE EVEN UGLIER: Artifact Power and weapons. Good God! If ever there was a way to lock players into one character, this is it. In fact, not just one character, but one SPEC! See, you gain AP as you play and put that power into your artifact weapon. You gain new abilities and increase the weapons item level.
So what is wrong with that, you say? Well, beyond a certain point, it become almost impossible to effectively change spec, let alone class, without requiring you to gather that AP all over again (it is spec-specific in so much as once you've put it into a weapon, it can't be recovered. You have to grind all over again, during which time, you guild mates are all getting further and further ahead of you in the power stakes.
It also makes playing alts a tiresome task. They have promised catch-up mechanics later on in the xpac, but by then, most will have given up and unsubbed, I think. Difficult to tell for sure, of course, because Blizz are, these days, too embarrassed to show us the sub numbers, for fear of upsetting the shareholders.
And it is all so pointless, because Blizz don't seem to know what they are going to do with the things in the expac beyond Legion. They dissemble too much, methinks. I'm expecting that, like most items from a previous expac, they will be replaced with greens in the next installment. Whilst this is fine for things you just get as drops, when you have put so much effort into a weapon by grinding AP, it will come as a bitter blow to some, I think, when the penny drops.
THE WTF: Gating of basic quests, class progression quests and profession quests behind dungeons and sometimes raids. I really have no idea why they thought alienating the casual players (who make up the majority of the player base) was a good idea by making much of the content inaccessible to them. I get it, it is an MMO, not a single-player RPG, but that isn't how a large proportion of the players actually play the game.
OVERALL: The expansion is better than WoD. However, that is like saying that a dried up dog turd is better than a freshly laid one. Once you break through the surface, its all the same. The questing is more of the same. Dailies have become World Quests. The Garrison is now the Order Hall. Profession are still tedious to level. There is no real originality going into this game. No new systems or mechanics. Just a lot of endlessly repeating content you've done before.
CONCLUSION: Better than WoD, but ultimately disappointing. Nothing new to see here. A superficial expansion that relies heavily on RNG to keep players playing and make them think there is more to the end game than there actually is. Lots of what can best be described as "busy work" to distract players from noticing how little actual content there is. I strongly doubt the retention figures will ultimately be any higher than WoD. Disappointing.
