Wow Legion WoW BfA – Game Gold Fast

From WoW Legion to WoW BfA – Why “More of the Same, But Better” Doesn’t Work

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Story: A Solid Step Up
Azerite: A Problematic Rehaul
World Quests: More of the Same, but Not Enough
The Systems Comparison
Conclusion

Introduction

After the stellar performance of World of Warcraft: Legion, Blizzard had some decisions to make regarding their next expansion. Legion had some innovative new systems that really shook up the core gameplay loop of World of Warcraft, something that the stale previous installation – Warlords of Draenor – really struggled with. Legion had its fair share of issues – a breakneck patch schedule left large swathes of dead time between updates. It also struggled with a very RNG heavy legendary item system as well as higher than 10 item level random upgrades known as titanforging, which had players in an uproar for a good portion of the beginning of the expansion. Blizzard sought to remedy those issues in Battle for Azeroth, but to keep those innovative systems that did make Legion great. Did Blizzard really do enough with the new expansion to keep players engaged though? In this article, I will explore some of the changes and whether BfA really is a step up from WoW: Legion.

2. The Story: A Solid Step Up

In World of Warcraft: Legion, players took on the overarching threat of the Burning Legion, something that has been looming over Azeroth since the days of Warcraft III. The larger-than-life expansion saw you fighting space demons, wielding legendary weapons, fighting on top of space ships, and even travelling to another world.

In Battle for Azeroth, Blizzard decides to take it back several notches and have a more focused, character driven story. Rather than space ships, players are more focused on building a real navy. Instead of space demons, players are pitted towards the other faction – bringing the War back into World of Warcraft.

Arguably, this is where Battle for Azeroth improves over Legion. While story is certainly more subjective to judge than the more concrete game design decisions, most people agree that Battle for Azeroth has had a very commendable narrative experience. With in-engine pre-rendered cutscenes littered throughout the leveling and endgame and an ongoing War Campaign guiding players through every inch of the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance, players have felt more engaged with the story than ever before.

3. Azerite: A Problematic Rehaul

Legion also had the new Artifact weapon system, where instead of seeking out a variety of different weapons throughout the expansion, players had one single item per specialization to focus all of their effort into. With quests tied to the acquiring and upgrading of their artifact weapon, players felt especially connected to a strong identifying part of their specialization and class. With the artifact weapon came the artifact power system, a new form of endgame progression that rewarded players for doing just about any activity with small, incremental upgrades to their weapon. This revolutionized the way many players approached endgame content. While most people would simply become uninterested in an activity if it no longer provided an upgrade, players in Legion always had that draw of at the very least being able to make a little bit of progress on their artifact weapon.

While Battle for Azeroth keeps the artifact power system, it makes a few key changes. Instead of an Artifact weapon, players focus their artifact power gained into the Heart of Azeroth, a neck piece everyone gets when they first start out the expansion. This neck in turn powers Azerite gear in the chest, head, and shoulder slots. Azerite gear has been a controversial topic in Battle for Azeroth, with many players finding the system to be nowhere near as engaging as powering their artifact weapon, and the systems for obtaining this gear has been rife with issues.

This is an example, I believe, of Blizzard trying and failing to keep an old system that worked well and improve it to its own detriment. They really felt that the endgame progression system of artifact power worked well to keep players engaged in the content, but wanted to improve or at least change the effects that artifact power would give. They did not feel that they could do artifact weapons for two expansions in a row, and have said several times that artifact weapons were a Legion system, and that they will stay in Legion. To solve that issue, they decided to change it into Azerite gear.

The problem here is that the system design created for artifact power really only works for artifact weapons. Artifact power comes in small increments, but that worked in Legion because most of the time you were making small improvements to your weapon. Only later on in the progression did artifact power ‘soft cap’ and feel like you didn’t really get anything when you got a large chunk of artifact power.

Compare that to Battle for Azeroth’s azerite system, which front loads the majority of the reward. Without much effort, all of the most important parts of azerite gear are available to you. This makes receiving artifact power feel much less worthwhile and sometimes feels like you aren’t receiving very much at all when you do receive artifact power. Legion did have that feeling at times where you were getting 5% of a level to achieve a 1% increase in a stat, which did not feel very good, but BfA certainly did not improve on that issue. Legion also had that feeling that you were contributing to something unique and powerful when you put artifact power into your weapon. Battle for Azeroth does not share that, as every single person has the Heart of Azeroth and that neck piece does not feel like the powerful item, but instead a secondary benefit to the azerite gear.

4. World Quests: More of the Same, but Not Enough

Legion also brought with it an innovative new approach to the daily quest system: World Quests. Essentially just daily quests with a more randomly generated approach, World Quests brought players a good source of continuous content while having a much more robust system that would take much longer before players got bored.

Battle for Azeroth very much has a ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach to World Quests. Using nearly exactly the same system as Legion, Battle for Azeroth makes only a few minor changes to the world quest system. Even with the update in 8.1, Battle for Azeroth now has incursions which are nearly identical to Legion invasions. The one thing that Battle for Azeroth has really changed is opting for a clearly visible reward for emissaries instead of caches with random rewards. Whether this is a good change is up to you – to me, while I do enjoy those days where I get a piece of gear from it, there are more frequently days where I don’t feel that I need to do the emissary at all. Compared to the latter end of Legion where caches rewarded currency that would bring you closer to get a legendary, it doesn’t really feel better. In the beginning of Legion though, caches felt pretty bad to open, frequently rewarding a bad piece of gear or a few hundred gold.

Legion also introduced the Legion Companion App, an app on your phone where you could access your class Order Hall, sending followers on missions, tracking world quests, and researching upgrades all at the touch of a screen. While Order Halls were simply a souped-up Garrison, Legion actually made real positive changes to them, bringing everyone from one class together in them, reducing some of the unnecessary systems, and tying in the artifact weapon system as a focusing point.

Battle for Azeroth does the opposite, taking a huge step back from garrisons and order halls and instead opting for a small ship with key characters to BfA’s story, and a mission table where you can send your followers to receive rewards. Everyone in your faction has the same 5 followers, and the companion app is nearly the same. The mission rewards are significantly worse than they were in Legion, which has a much larger effect than Blizzard probably anticipated. I rarely, if ever, feel the need or want to visit my mission table. Even with the convenience of checking it on my phone I still find it not worth my time. I believe this is tied to the issues of artifact power feeling unrewarding that I talked about earlier, but Blizzard has also opted out of providing solid gold missions or other interesting missions that were a part of the Legion order hall.

5. The Systems Comparison

Blizzard has responded to player’s thoughts on Legion’s aggressive patch schedule, opting for a more spaced out approach. However, while this might work if they were to re-release Legion, they might be missing the mark for BfA by taking more time in between patches. The reason why 7.1 coming out less than two months after the release of the expansion felt off is because Legion released with so much good, quality content and engaging systems that players didn’t really feel the need for more until later. Now, the opposite is true for BfA. Players have run through the content in record time because the new systems that Blizzard has released have largely been a swing and a miss. Island Expeditions, Azerite gear, and Warfronts have fallen short of expectations.

Really, consider what Legion brought to the table with its new systems:

– Mythic+, which added a whole new way to engage with dungeons.
– World Quests, which added a whole new way to engage with dailies.
– Artifact Weapons, an entirely new endgame progression system.
– Level scaling, which added many new options to how someone approaches leveling a new character

Along with its positive revamps of currently existing systems as well as new content that comes stock standard with every expansion, Legion knocked it out of the park on nearly every aspect they attempted to introduce in their expansion.

Which brings us to BfA and what it brought to the table:

– War Mode, which added a completely new approach to world PvP.
– Warfronts and Island Expeditions, a faux-PvP experience
– Azerite Gear, a revamp of the artifact system introduced in Legion
– A new Honor system, which introduced a different way to approach PvP

So when you really look at it, half of the systems introduced in Battle for Azeroth fell flat. War Mode is borderline, as it really only works when both factions are participating, something Blizzard has been struggling to get people to do. Warfronts and Island Expeditions are the biggest dud of the expansion, as Blizzard was hoping that they would provide the same level of engagement and excitement that Mythic+ and World Quests did in Legion but came nowhere near. Azerite Gear was an attempt to improve the artifact power system but also fell short of producing anything that felt fair and rewarding. The PvP overhaul has largely been approved of, but when there are so many other systems failing it is hard to prop them up.

6. Conclusion

Overall, BfA is a far cry of what people were expecting out of World of Warcraft after seeing the success of Legion. However, the expansion isn’t over. World of Warcraft isn’t over. As an MMORPG, it is constantly evolving and changing, and we could see improvements and changes to these systems that might make them an incredible addition to the game that we never saw coming. I sincerely hope that happens, because as of now World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth leaves a lot to be desired. I will continue to play each of the content patches as they come out to see what Blizzard has planned, but more likely than not I look forward to the release of WoW Classic and whatever Blizzard has planned next for the World of Warcraft.

Related topics: World of Warcraft, WoW, BfA, Battle for Azeroth, Legion, WoW Legion, WoW Review, World of Warcraft Review

From WoW Legion to WoW BfA – Why “More of the Same, But Better” Doesn’t Work