Legion expansion was a great example, so too is BFA but to a lesser extent
But during legion, WHERE was the legion?
Leveled an orc to 1-100 and there was no legion anywhere. Durotar, Orgrimmar, Barrens...even elwynn, stormwind and westfall...no legion. Where was this massive invasion? Why couldn't anyone see the invasion until close to max level?
BFA...horde vs alliance. Where are the battles waging across the landscape? Where is everything? Finally at 110 you see the conflict...1-109 levels of an unchanging world
And that is the game breaking issue of WoW
An unchanging world
Sandbox MMOs rarely have this problem. Its mostly themepark MMOs. But for WoW, this problem is so obvious and in your face that its hard to ignore. The world literally never changes.
Blizzard can't fix that either without redesigning every zone like in cataclysm. And that would obviously not be worth the time and money that would be spent doing that every expansion if they want to release one every year like call of duty used to do.
During the legion expansion it was built up to be this huge invasion...and even at max level there was barely any invasion. Where was all the LEGION? But again, not easily fixed if on a budget with limited time and money
of course, many themepark MMOs have this problem. But for WoW's game ending events like legion or massive conflicts between horde and alliance...its pretty obvious to see that the conflicts can't actually be seen from in-game but only read about in lore and books.
Sure some stuff we saw with the legion, but no massive invasion like it was supposed to be or legion ships bombing azeroth with ships covering the skies. just a tiny invasion was developed for the expansion, when in lore it was a massive invasion on a global scale
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Comments
It's easy
It has LFG tools, grouping is a mini game
To many expansions, its like a jigsaw puzzle
Classes are simplified to child like
It's like an apple turned into a banana... It's not World of Warcraft anymore, it's something else.
Changing the entire world to fit with current expansion? Not so much.
I was very disappointed that the legion invasion was like a drop in the pond. It was too abstract, there was no invasion at all what so ever. The best invasion was pre-release event...but then nothing after that. Why didn't the rest of azeroth get attacked by legion when it clearly showed a huge fleet of legion ships going TO azeroth?
But that can't be fixed without changing the entire game world over and over to match the current invasion/event of whatever is going on. BFA granted is a lot better at showing that (at least horde side) than they showed in legion. And I'm pretty sure that would cost 100s of millions of time and money to keep changing the world over and over, and if they want to be call of duty and release an expansion every year...not really possible.
I think classes being simplified is a big problem though. My take is they want the game to release on consoles, and they need less buttons and simplify things to be a better console MMO.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
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