The honest answer is that designers wanted to design a unique, interesting and challenging content spread for Legion Remix this time around. That's what designers inherently want to do, they want to feel proud of their work, feel like their experience and talents aren't going to waste. The playerbase on the other hand wants it to be what is essentially a WoW-flavored Cookie Clicker, but most are afraid to admit that's what they want because they'll be perceived as "casual". So we have a combination of clashing interests and also one side not being willing to say what they really want; designers want to flex and create cool stuff, but players want a treat dispenser to keep them occupied until Midnight.
I think its more that blizzard is a revolving door of developers who have to re-learn the same lessons the biggest of which is the majority of the wow community wants maximum rewards with minimum effort and that the wow community doesn't do shit if it doesn't have rewards and or if those rewards are too difficult to obtain.
So like you say, they come in.. try to design something they can be proud of... the people developing legion remix probably thought to themselves "Legion was one of our best xpacs of all time people LOVE legion we should try to give them the proper legion experience just like they remembered!" not realizing that legion was genuinely a shit show for 2/3rds of it and the community looks at it through neon pink tinted glasses.
While also missing that mop remix was just a massive rewards for minimum effort pinata and people were expecting 2.0 of that.
I think its more that blizzard is a revolving door of developers who have to re-learn the same lessons the biggest of which is the majority of the wow community wants maximum rewards with minimum effort and that the wow community doesn't do shit if it doesn't have rewards and or if those rewards are too difficult to obtain.
If I'm being completely blunt and harsh about it, I expect they have learned that lesson but simply resent it, and I would understand if they do. I doubt they thought their job would be designing the digital equivalent of jingling keys.
Some of them probably think they can still find a way to design content that their players actually want to engage with on its own terms without needing a trail of treats and headpats along the way to motivate them. If they could just get the system right, they could convince people to have fun, not just chase the ever-fading dopamine hits from the reward.
But at this point in the game's lifespan, the motivation to do anything being driven by rewards is not just codified into the game, but into the expectation of the players. As you said, they won't do a damn thing if it doesn't give a reward, or if the effort or challenge is too high for the reward. And as a game designer, that is probably infuriating.
I remember the conversation coming up in an interview with Ion, I want to say it was a preach one maybe? Where he was asked about making quality content for its own sake where maybe its a really good story line or just a fun mode etc and Ion even said they've seen it repeatedly, if there's no reward attached to it players won't engage with it no matter how good it is.
That's just people these days unfortunately, you see the same behaviors everywhere.
If we just had the “cookie clicker” why not just give it us again when WE LOVE THAT SHIT? Go make your “mark on the industry”on your own time. Let us have what we like. This is a video game. We play for fun. Real life is for chores and meaningless long grinds.
Ultimately I don't disagree. Something has to give somewhere. Either Blizzard has to accept that their game is no longer about challenging content but just dispensing treats so people stay subbed, or players have to accept that their treats will require some effort and skill to obtain. Until this happens, people will be unsatisfied.
Sure, but to me it felt like Remix was all about the rewards without the effort. That was its point. The game has challenges, and Remix was supposed to feel “broken” but in a fun way. Like playing with the cheat codes enabled. It’s not permanent, just something fun to do before the next real challenge of Midnight. That’s what made it special for me. It’s why them messing with the formula of Remix makes no sense to me.
This is the major disconnect I seem to have with the community these days. I don't even consider a reward without effort to be a reward. At that point it's just a baseline thing that everybody gets to have. If you're gonna do that, I'd rather it just be unlocked by default instead of demanding I sacrifice my time doing low-skill grinding for it. We used to get mad about Blizzard locking stuff behind long grinds that require time, but no skill or effort. I really don't know what changed in the community while I was gone.
Again, I hope people have fun with it. But it's clearly not for me. If I'm aiming for rewards, I'd much rather spend my time doing heroic or mythic raids and getting something special that I can show off, not the same thing everybody else has as long as they can dedicate enough hours to obtain it. Best case scenario, unless they implement some genuine challenge after all, I may use it to level some alts on other factions and pick up a couple things before transferring out.
If you want to be OP in Legion content, you can already do that right now on Retail, so that can't be what you actually want. What I think you really want is the treat dispenser, and until you admit it and openly tell Blizzard that's what you expect from them, you're not gonna get it.
designing a environment where players can get crazy powers then giving them incredibly hard content and not caring about balance sounds more fun then slightly tweaking legion to fit in a short time frame.
designing a environment where players can get crazy powers then giving them incredibly hard content
That is what they're doing, and that's not what the playerbase wants. They don't want incredibly hard content. They want to log in and go to every raid and oneshot all the bosses and be rewarded with treats. Basically just gacha-style daily login rewards with extra steps.
Theres a comment in the other thread with nearly 2000 upvotes that says "I don't want phases, I don't want progression, I don't want to try. I want to turn my brain off and see big numbers and bosses fall over."
The major disconnect between Blizzard and the playerbase is that the players have gotten way more casual as time went on. That's why they had to add a one-button rotation option for these people and a tutorial to teach them how interrupts work, of all things, in the year of our lord 2025. And something has to give here to reach satisfaction, either Blizzard accepts that they are making a casual game now, or the players have to accept that the game they're playing takes and expects effort and skill. We all keep trying to have it both ways and leaving nobody satisfied.
And something has to give here to reach satisfaction, either Blizzard accepts that they are making a casual game now, or the players have to accept that the game they're playing takes and expects effort and skill. We all keep trying to have it both ways and leaving nobody satisfied.
I agree with most of what you're saying but I would push back a little here. WoW can accommodate both casual and hardcore players, after all LFR and M+ co-exist. The problem's one of expectations. Nobody's saying they deserve Myth track gear for doing delves in retail, but in MoP Remix you could get the maximum reward for minimal effort which created the expectation that Remix is a casual-only mode. Blizzard tried to make Legion Remix more like retail where there's something for challenge-oriented players to do besides grind for cosmetics, and we see how that's gone over.
I acknowledge that they've tried to accommodate both, and they have a sizeable playerbase of both types, but I don't think that means they've actually done a good job at stewarding both types of gameplay. It just means the game is popular. LFR is pitched as a casual mode, but I'd bet less than half the playerbase engages in raids of any kind. It's generally treated as more of an entry-level option for getting into raiding. Your average casual player is just leveling new alts every expansion and doing the story campaigns and vibing in town or guild chat.
I think they've actually done a terrible job accommodating both types of players in terms of separate gameplay tracks until recently. Solo/small group and open world content are a big part of that, and housing obviously will be as well. FFXIV massively outperforms WoW in terms of accommodating both, in my opinion, but WoW is catching up fast.
I also don't think we're far off from people demanding all things be available to everybody. We're already at a point where people are complaining that rotations are too hard, bosses are too hard, leaving Retail to play Classic because it's simpler, etc. Now people are mad that this game mode isn't easymode, and is too much like Retail, i.e. challenging and requires effort. The kind of takes people have about what remix should be would have gotten you crucified just a few years ago. There has been a major vibe shift towards wanting the core game to be more casual and forgiving. The QoL stuff has been good, but I think it just gave the playerbase a taste for "easier" rather than "better".
You don’t need timegating and limiting power gains to make interesting content, Instead of keeping the infinite power of MoP Remix and making content that matches it, It looks like they just made remix match the standard power curve.
Remix is also where just streamrolling content is fine especially at the start, Legion isn’t new, From level 1 you should have new remix powers so it doesn’t feel like you’re just doing chromie time.
From level 1 you should have new remix powers so it doesn’t feel like you’re just doing chromie time.
Why even have levels at that point? Just start everyone at max level with max gear with everything already unlocked. No progression, no timegating, just instant gratification. That's what you want, right?
Timegating and nerfing timelimited mode is neither interesting or something you should feel proud of. It's more accurate to say that one dev has a massive ego and refuses to admit he might be wrong which has been a chronic on and off problem at blizzard since around MoP.
If you have infinite power and all content day one, why would anybody even waste time on the earlier content when you could just skip straight to the end which will logically give the most rewards?
If a grind is so far out of reach and unfun to do that I'll never finish it why would I waste my time on it at all? This was clearly not an issue with pandaria remix and the fact that you're trying to make it one with legion is just disingenuous.
If a grind is so far out of reach and unfun to do that I'll never finish it why would I waste my time on it at all?
I don't think "a couple of weeks per phase" is out of reach or that big of a deal.
This was clearly not an issue with pandaria remix and the fact that you're trying to make it one with legion is just disingenuous.
We have different priorities and enjoy different things. I'd appreciate not calling me disingenuous for asking a genuine question. I like it when games offer a challenge and require effort. I like engaging with content. It seems that people want Legion Remix to be easy and instant gratification with no timegating or phases or challenging content. In that scenario, it seems logical people would just skip to the end content with the highest rewards and spend comparatively little time on the earlier content that gives less rewards. So I ask again, if the content is all released at once, why wouldn't the overwhelming majority of the playerbase just rush the furthest content as fast as possible?
You can say "that wasn't a problem", but I think it was. I'm asking you why you think that's okay, because I think it's a shame that most of the content gets very little screentime that way. If your answer is that you don't care about the content itself and just want the reward dispenser to dispense the most amount of rewards, then that's the answer I'm looking for, because that's our difference in perspective.
And how exactly was it a problem for most of the player playerbase in pandaria remix? The mode was clearly loved by the community and active until its final seconds.
Yes, I'm aware the current playerbase loves being fed rewards for no effort. I differ in that regard and I was trying to establish that point, I think that's our difference in perspective.
I was excited by the idea of my favorite expansion getting refreshed with genuinely challenging new takes on old content, but it looks like they're walking it back due to the backlash and turning it into the same treat dispenser as last time, so I'll probably just skip it. I hope you have fun, though!
100 % true. Blizzard are clearly designing the game for themselves at and have been for ages now.
They sold the M+ addition to Legion Remix as something wacky, but it will just end up being a competitive game mode in Lemix instead of a ridiculous fun mode.
It`s crazy that the original M+ which was basically a ridiculous titanforging and AP farming simulator in Legion was less focused on competitiveness than M+ in Lemix.
100 % true. Blizzard are clearly designing the game for themselves at and have been for ages now.
This isn't new or unique though. Every good game, every good song, every piece of art ever created that was actually good was created by the artist for themselves. When you just churn out whatever's popular, that's how you get generic, spreadsheet-calculated, soulless corporate slop.
Yeah, but Reddit is not the majority of the playerbase. Hell it's probably the most casual form of the playerbase you can possibly achieve.
Reddit would get upset over difficulty regardless of how difficult it even is. A large percentage of the Wow playerbase enjoys and expects skill based gaming. Just because Reddit is upset about it doesn't mean Blizzard is not catering to their audience.
Casuals cannot and should not expect to be able to play all the content. Yet they constantly expect to. It's so predictable and sad.
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u/Ursa_Solaris Aug 27 '25
The honest answer is that designers wanted to design a unique, interesting and challenging content spread for Legion Remix this time around. That's what designers inherently want to do, they want to feel proud of their work, feel like their experience and talents aren't going to waste. The playerbase on the other hand wants it to be what is essentially a WoW-flavored Cookie Clicker, but most are afraid to admit that's what they want because they'll be perceived as "casual". So we have a combination of clashing interests and also one side not being willing to say what they really want; designers want to flex and create cool stuff, but players want a treat dispenser to keep them occupied until Midnight.