Legion and Dragonflight: the polar opposites

Legion

People loved Legion and still remember it fondly to this day.
There are good reasons for this: it had great zones and storylines with mainly Suramar, a constant flow of new content, iconic themes and characters, decent stakes, and a nice atmosphere.

But there is no denying that it introduced many game design philosophies that have been very harmful to WoW as a whole, and have continued to make the game worse even after it was over:

  • The AP grind
  • Borrowed power systems
  • Titanforging
  • RNG legendaries
  • Heavily time gated content
  • The player character being the chosen one
  • The removal of PvP vendors for some reason
  • Class homogenization and oversimplification

Most of what everyone disliked about BFA & SL was the direct result of the Legion approach to game design. These two expansions were very much Legion’s offspring. They share its core DNA, and that’s not a good thing.


Dragonflight

Dragonflight won’t be remembered very fondly, even though it basically saved the game by making a lot of very good decisions when it comes to game design.
The word “evergreen” has become quite trendy these past few months, even making an appearance at Blizzcon, and to me, it embodies what we should remember Dragonflight for.

Dragonflight is not perfect. For many, it’s not enjoyable right now: the content is meh, the lore is meh, there’s not a lot of exciting stuff about it - whereas this was Legion’s strength.

But…
Dragonflight got rid of the mandatory chores.
Dragonflight got rid of borrowed power systems.
Dragonflight made gearing more deterministic.
Dragonflight finally split PvE and PvP.
Dragonflight introduced permanent content with Dragonflying and the Trading Post.
Dragonflight brought back many great class spells and abilities.

Legion was fun in the moment, awful in the long run.
Dragonflight is the opposite. Dragonflight is the anti-Legion.

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Legion is one of the best expansions overall idc about the rollout that made you guys suffer back then . right now if you go & play legion you’ll have an amazing time but dragonflight will be remembered as the empty lore killing boring expansion with the worst raids(thematically), ugliest cosmetics, awful storyline & worst open world content in the game’s history
Dragonflight killed mmo part of the WoW

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Yeah no. The lore of Dragonflight is bland and forgettable, but it’s nowhere near as harmful as that of:

  • Legion: For making us the Chosen One, wielder of Ashbringer, the one true leader of our entire class.
  • BFA: For ruining Azshara and N’zoth, both huge threats who deserve their own expansions but got deleted in a Kamehameha within a single patch.
  • Shadowlands: The Jailer being behind literally everything and ruining the concept of Death itself.

You want to criticize Dragonflight, go ahead.
But the Legion saga did way more damage to the lore than Dragonflight ever could.

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all of these things were fun & engaging = what a game should give
dragonflight is boring and bland . legion saga at least made people enjoy the story. that is more important than accuracy since this is a game and not a book. dragonflight killed wow’s lore being a good part of the game .

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dragonflight lore is like a filler episode of animes were you can remove the entire thing and no one would notice except the world tree stuff

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Man.
https://youtu.be/a_iHOJ1Ezr0?t=63
A literal Kamehameha.

They got rid of a vilain teased for over 10 years in a single patch, with a Kamehameha.

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Yeah it was very fun and engaging, like a sledge hammer in an antique store.

it was a bit rushed yeah but still exciting, look at that amazing video & now compare it to Fyrakk LMAO

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Yeah okay, you’re just arguing in very bad faith right now.
Take a look at the like/dislike ratio on that cinematic to see how “exciting” it was for the community.

Yes, Fyrakk is lame, but it doesn’t matter because he wasn’t built up for decades, and he had barely any impact on the story.
Unlike the Jailer, Fyrakk isn’t behind every event in the History of Warcraft.
Fyrakk is just some fire dude who wanted to burn stuff. Lame, forgettable, but not damaging to the integrity of the WarCraft lore like the lame death of N’zoth or the very existence of the Shadowlands.

yes that’s why this is the worst expansion. damages can be repaired but if you make people lose interest in wow , that’s when lore actually dies not after some controversial choices. nobody cares about wow lore anymore except the loreheads , back then every wow player knew at least what they’re doing in the story. i didn’t play legion when it was out but even i knew what was going on because it was interesting.
it will be hard to get people excited about wow lore again after this mess.
being angry at the lore choices is better than losing interest

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Nah I’m pretty sure that lore dies after you retcon it.

I don’t raid, therefore, I don’t talk about raids.
You didn’t play Legion. Why do you talk about it?

I lost interest in the lore after being angry at how bad it was.
There’s no “fixing” what these 3 expansions did to the lore. The mistakes are too big.

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i did play it afterwards and have done many things in legion. like i said, rollout issues that you constantly complain are not important after an expansion ends. the legacy on the other hand continues

no you’re still interested in what’s going on i see you comment on df lore that means you keep checking it. many people stopped caring about it after realising how bad it is with almost zero exciting things happening after 3 back to back expanions with huge storylines. good or bad.

Yeah, absolutely not. Shadowlands is the worst expansion for lore, and it’s not even a contest. Shadowlands ruined the Lich King, turned the entire concept of death into a joke, and had one of the worst villains in gaming history. The DF lore may not be very interesting but it hasn’t actively ruined anything, and it’s given us an excellent antagonist in terms of Iridikron.

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how many people do you see talking about iridikron and how many were there talking about SL lore ? i legit never see any story talks about wow like i used to. people are losing interest that’s worse than them being mad

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It ruined way more than just the lich king, pretty much every villain we have had can be trassed back to the Jailor, even Sargeras and the burning Legion.

No. You didn’t experience the systems back when they were current. They have been removed. You have not experienced Legion, you’ve just quested in the Legion zones.

You saying that “you played Legion” is the same as if I said that I know how TBC raiding was because I cleared the Black Temple last week on my retail character.
It’s complete nonsense.

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Then you haven’t been looking hard enough. I’d seriously recommend watching the video on SL lore from Captain Grimm because it’s a classic.

Many people on YouTube talk about the lore, Nobble87 is the big one.

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when you search ''dragonflight lore ‘’ on youtube you only see a handful of channels talking about it and when you search ‘‘shadowlands lore’’ you can clearly see there were many more. they didn’t even bother talking about DF lore which is the worst thing that can happen to a story

? i know every piece of lore why the hell should i care about how easy was it to obtain artifacts or not when we’re talking about lore here . i experienced every existing legion system including invasions

pretty much carrying it all by himself with the other guy that i forgot now

he has multiple videos on shadowlands and none for dragonflight , see my point ?

The thread is about the expansion as a whole.
Seeing as you have not played through it, and have no idea how it actually was, your opinion is quite irrelevant.

You can’t judge what you have not experienced.

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