Bought a month of WoW and I'm regretting it. So far it's /pretty much the bad to meh parts of Draenor but less story elements. I have no idea what's going on or what an Aegis is, or why the vrykul are there, or what and who Odyn is, or anything about anything. At least it's streamlined, the introduction to the base stuff is just Odyn (a giant) just saying "You are the greatest warrior who has ever lived, you shall command my armies" and there you are. I remember a book where the hero came to a city and the entirety of the story of his time in the army was "he was the best at everything", and then the book just went on with him being commander of whatever. That is what WoW is. Has been to some degree in the past, but now they're not even trying.
Also, the fundemental design of Legion is not very fun if you are in it after everyone else. Missions and followers and whatever is fine, but not when there's an expansion to get through after that. There' no point to do anything.
Have played some Classic, and crapnuckles it's so much better, apart from stack sizes. I really,
really miss old WoW, and not just because [nostalgia].
EDIT: Ok. Ok. I'm very slightly drunk (poor mans pina colada) and I've played Classic for about 30 minutes now and the feeling of progression, adventure and just being alive in the Warcraft universe already surpasses everything since Warlords of Draenor, and that is as an orc hunter, my original WoW character so I know exactly what to expect. I played a human paladin on a private Lich King server some years ago and that too was amazing. In Legion (I haven't bought Battle for [world] yet) I am a few hours in and literally everything (hyperbole) in it is bewilderingly silly. Where did WoW lost its footing? I would argue that it was the industrialization that was the first step, and it began pretty much with WotLK. Everything became easier. More flight points, faster leveling... Which frankly is very sane, because that is how reality works. As Terry Pratchett put it (paraphrased): Whenever an impassible mountain top was conquered by climbers some years afterwards old women would go up there for a cup of tea and walk back afterwards to look for their glasses. It only makes sense that the world moves on. How can an area stay a hostile wilderness after ten thousand hunters have eradicated everything in it? I was in favor of the retooling that Cataclysm brought, and I was very much in favour of Pandaria, because it was a "real" place (as in its existance made sense; the island of Legion doesn't make sense) and the fundemental premise was ... nice. The panda people liked drink and food, and because of the arrival of the Horde and the Alliance that lifestyle was interrupted. A main thing was a big brewery was shut down because of hauntings and infestations! And it still had that sense of adventure about it. And it was just ... nice. The valley that Grommash turned to crap was nice. A lot of it was nice, and how the niceness was interrupted and how you as a player could restore the general niceness. I quite liked that premise, and the older I get the more I appreciete niceness. Nice endings. Things doesn't have to be grim and blarght and shit to be good.
Anyway. It used to make sense. A fundemental problem with Legion is actually Draenor. Draenor was definitely the shark jumping moment in WoW. Time travel is always tricky and requires a great deal of effort and thought and care to make sense, but none of those things sell subs or games apparently. I get the appeal of a returb to Beyong the Dark Portal, but ... no. It had some points and at the time I didn't think it bad as such, but that was probably predicated on a feeling that it wouldn't last. But it did. It so much did, and Legion (as far as I've played) took the stupid things from it and ran with it. I still don't know what an Aegis is, in this context. The major sin of Draenor was the butchering of crafting. It probably started earlier, but Draenor was like a final nail. Crafting used to be special, it used to mean something. A part of that is probably due to achievements. The ability to craft cool stuff and the journey to be able to craft those different things (because it used to be a journey; you had to find different teachers in different locales and go down different paths and actually work for the recipes) was more or less replaced by achievements. The achievement was no longer the recipe (or the feat, or whatever), it was the achievement points that came with the fullfillment of the deed. I sort of like achievements though, but not if they are to be for *everything*. A plaque for something you spent time on is fine, but it has to be a bonus to make sense. Natural quest/story progression is not an achievement.
In the end I blame Guitar Hero.
But I digress.
EDIT again: Also a main problem with everything in life is the lowest common denominator, and it's nearly impossible to work around.
EDIT REDUX: Also I blame movement. The easier it is to move around, the smaller the world becomes. Fascism (and Leto II) and all of that.
Multi player has dominated my life i see for a long time now ..hehe
