There's a little more than a week left in Legion Remix, and a few days ago I finished my last achievement for this special mode. According to Data for Azeroth, Bringing Order to the Isles is now the rarest achievement I've got to my name, with less than one percent of all accounts having earned that one. That's rarer than even some of the old achievements I have that are no longer available, such as Champion of Ulduar or The Ancient Keeper, though I expect a few more people will get those last few quests in and tick the box before Lemix ends.
Bringing Order to the Isles required completing all class order hall quests for all classes, meaning both the basic campaign and the quest chain for the special class-specific mount. I had a lot of thoughts on these but I think I'll save those for another post because obviously twelve different storylines and mounts are a lot to talk about!
For this post I'll limit myself to the general experience of playing Legion Remix, especially compared to MoP Remix. Here's my final roster of timerunners and their /played time:
- Kinta, blood death knight: 4 days, 18 hours
- Flerence, havoc demon hunter: 14 hours
- Clar, mistweaver monk: 10 hours
- Axal, discipline priest: 12 hours
- Floo, fury warrior: 6 hours
- Bith, beast mastery hunter: 10 hours
- Bosan, retribution paladin: 14 hours
- Fangry, feral druid: 8 hours
- Whie, affliction warlock: 11 hours
- Tenderpaw, assassination rogue: 9 hours
- Rockpaw, elemental shaman: 7 hours
- Emb, fire mage: 6 hours
I felt a bit stumped initially, having to create twelve new characters when I had just levelled one of each class to 80 this expansion, but eventually I simply opted for some race/class combos that I'd never played before. Coming up with a fitting transmog for each one was actually the hardest part. As you can see, comparatively little play time was required just to level up and get through all the class order quests, with my death knight main being the only one with a significant /played time due to the fact that she did all the zone storylines, dungeons, raids and other achievement-related activities. And yes, I mained a tank again, how strange. It wasn't a choice with a lot of intent behind it; it just kind of happened that way.
Overall, the experience of levelling twelve new alts in such a short time frame felt weird. It's not that it's difficult exactly, what with how fast it all was, but from a gameplay experience it was honestly kind of terrible. I quickly gave up on even trying to sort out my action bars or understanding my talents, because it was all flying past way too quickly anyway. I just tried to remember a handful of buttons on each character and that was it. I'm someone who very much enjoys levelling alts in general, but the way Blizzard actively encouraged you to pump out new ones at speed in Lemix just felt weird. There isn't even a semblance of RPG left in playing that way, you're just trying to catch them all like some sort of Pokemon trainer, while also collecting and discarding shinies like you're in Diablo. It's bizarre.
In general I think I preferred the way the Remix experience was a bit more free-form in MoP last time around. I'm sure all the new structure they introduced for Legion helped with player retention, as the staggered content releases forced you to come back every so often if you wanted to see and do all the things, while the endless infinite research assignments for gear tried to hook into that part of your brain that likes to do dailies, way harder than anything in MoP did. And it worked, including on me! But it also shifted the experience towards being a bit more chore-like as opposed to the way MoP Remix just gave you all the content and was like "have fun, you figure out what you want to do".
And well, there was the whole "levelling twelve characters" side of it of course, compared to the five I chose to level up in MoP. It's weird because the moment I learned that Lemix was going to be a thing, doing exactly this in order to see all the class order halls was something I immediately considered, but only as a kind of "wouldn't it be crazy if I went that hard" type of idea. The fact that Blizzard put levelling one of each class in with the standard achievements for this event felt like it shifted the goal posts in way that I didn't really enjoy, and it's not something I'd ever want to do for a limited-time event like this again to be honest. They asked me to play this one a lot, and I did, but now the only direction for my investment to go in future Remixes is down.
But I guess that's Legion in a nutshell, isn't it? I already observed previously, after levelling through it for the first time in Chromie Time, that I could see why people loved it so much when it first came out, what with the expansion's coherent theme and steady progression with ever rising stakes. Revisiting Suramar was a delight, as I genuinely enjoyed seeing that story and all its characters again. (I love Oculeth!) But after Argus... where was there even left to go?
Doing all the class order halls this time around only drove home just how badly Blizzard screwed this up, actually. It kind of reminded me of how Bioware more or less made you the most powerful person in the galaxy during SWTOR's Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion. It was insane, something that was always going to be a terrible idea in an MMO, even one with a personal story in which you are the hero, because it was a high that wasn't sustainable and climbing back down from that peak was always going to feel bad. (People still grouse about it ten years later.)
And Legion (which actually came out around the same time) did a very similar thing with the artifact weapons and class order halls. I'm not sure the quest to deplete your artifact weapon is still in the game, but basically giving you the Ashbringer and then making you throw it away was always going to feel bad, no matter how they spun it. But the class order halls are just as bad in my opinion! These should always have been a permanent feature, not something for one expansion only.
For any character that was actually played during the Legion expansion it must have felt utterly insane to, I dunno, ascend to Skyhold in the heavens (as a warrior) and then just... stop going there once BfA came around. Same with the "Highlord" paladin no longer caring to hang out under Light's Hope Chapel. It's just nuts that they built the player character up to this level and then just shrugged and expected you to move on from it without a second thought.
I guess in that way, Legion Remix mirrored the vibe of the original expansion. All those achievements to level one of each class made sense in the context of all the unique class-specific content, but no other expansion has that much of it, so it wouldn't make sense to ask people to do it again in whatever comes next, and I expect it will feel somewhat less exciting. My bet is on a Wrath of the Lich King Remix next, to get us ready for returning to Northrend in The Last Titan (the expansion after Midnight).
If the gap period where they stick a Remix came sooner, I'd have bet money on Warlords Remix prior to Warlords Classic coming out, but that's not going to happen since Warlords Classic will likely drop at the end of the calendar year. However, a Wrath Remix might be a good bet, especially since what's going to happen to the Anniversary servers after TBC Classic is kind of an unknown. The only commitment to the Anniversary servers was that they would progress to TBC Classic, so either way a Wrath Remix will satisfy those who don't want to do the Classic route but want to experience Wrath again. One thing in Wrath's favor is that Northrend is completely independent of the Cataclysm remake of the Old World, so you don't have any dependencies like you would with a TBC Remix.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, if it's not Wrath, it could be BfA Remix. Blizzard seems set on rehabilitating poorly perceived expansions, and it would make sense for BfA to be next from that alone.
What "dependencies" are you thinking of re: TBC Remix? It's almost exclusively in Outland so not really influenced by the Cata world revamp either.
DeleteAlso, what are you referring to with "rehabilitating poorly perceived expansions"? As far as Remixes go, MoP was a bit of a flop at launch but was already reframed as a pretty successful and well-loved expansion many years ago (with subscriber numbers similar to Burning Crusade). And Legion is by many considered the best of "modern" WoW's expansions as it is.
There are quests that were removed in TBC because of dependencies in the Old World (Thrall was no longer the leader of the Horde). The most notable ones were the "Thrall Goes to Outland" chain and the chain informing Thrall that the Maghar still survive and follow the Old Ways. They may have been minor quests compared to the grand scheme of things, but I certainly noticed when leveling a toon in post-Cataclysm Outland. There may have been more quests that interacted with people in the Old World, but Thrall's removal as faction lead caused the most changes.
DeleteMoP is the expansion that began the massive exodus of players, and especially among Classic fans it has been a perpetual punching bag. I have noted the rehabilitation of Mists from portions of the community, but bring up Mists in the Era/Anniversary crowd and ex-WoW players and that expansion still gets a big thumbs down from them. Having been the last expansion that I personally interacted with, I really disliked the direction Blizzard was taking the game and given that my home server's population had plummeted to the point where it was considered a "New Players" server, I was not alone in that perception. The guild I was in basically evaporated about 4-5 months into Mists, with most of them simply vanishing from the game.
I'll admit that was a mistake about Legion, because I was focused on Mists as a Remix target, but when you get down to it that with the exception of Legion, the post-Cataclysm expansions have been very hit or miss by the community. Legion had the acclaim, but beyond that the post-Cataclysm expansion reactions from the larger community tend to be very up and down once you get past the raiding scene. I guess you could say that Blizzard's focus on what makes a good expansion is pretty obvious in hindsight: make good raids and a host of sins are forgiven. For a little while, at least.
Much of the initial criticism of was due to burnout because of the six-month beta. Remember Blizzard was scared of the upcoming launch of Swtor (laughable in hindsight, of course) so they gave away a free copy of Diablo 3 and full beta access to everyone that committed to a year's subscription to Wow.
DeleteBy the time the MoP beta came out many people were tired of the Dragon Soul raid so they jumped onto the beta and played it extensively up to when MoP released. At that point the thought of redoing all the work they had put into the beta just turned everyone off. MoP didn't recover from that start, plus at the end there was a third long dry spell with a raid, Siege of Orgrimmar. (ICC and Dragon Sould being the other two.) Blizzard learned a lesson to not allow unlimited access to the betas for a long period and to not let end-of-expansion raids outstay their welcome.
@Redbeard: Ah fair enough, I didn't think of that one. Still, I don't think that would really be an obstacle. Just like they simply left the Vale of Eternal Blossoms in its destroyed state for MoP Remix and are only letting us re-experience the old quests from the unspoiled Vale in MoP Classic now.
DeleteAnd I know that Mists was a turning point for many Classic fans where they decided that the game was no longer for them (even if they'd made it through Cata). It's where I originally stopped myself, after all! But from that point of view, everything that came after is bad simply because it's not the good old days - I think the base that actually stuck around had a very different perception of things.
The 'retiring' of the weapons was such a letdown. We understood we wouldn't be taking the weapons into the future, but the way they did was so poor. Instead of effectively putting the weapon in a glass case for the future we just kind of sort of stripped them of all power. Even the cinematic was poorly done as you had just two other classes there killing off their weapons instead of all twelve classes. After all the effort we put into them to just see them whimper out. :sigh:
ReplyDeleteThis was the start of many people complaining about Blizzard using and removing borrowed power systems. About how unsatisfying they felt as a player, how much they felt like the systems just gave our time and efforts through an expansion a middle finger.
Having the Order Halls continue to be involved in the game, if only occasionally would have been excellent. Even if it was asking our halls to do things off-scene would be a nice acknowledgement of what we did.
I can see a Wrath Remix next, though a return to MoP remix with the lessons learned from Legion Remix might work too. (Though my hope is to see a Vanilla Remix just to be able to get some of the things I don't have from there. ^_^)
Many thanks for postings. I had 12 characters leveled and done what I thought was the class order hall campaigns, but it turned out be missing the class mount quests.
ReplyDeleteI was able to finish these fairly quickly, so now I am too having that achievement.
As for a next Remix expansion, I agree Wrath would be best.