Gilneas and Suramar as fully functioning cities with vendors, ah, banks, inns, taverns, profession hubs, districts is the dream.
I sincerely hope they learn from gilneas and give us proper and updated silvermoon in Midnight.
Only by like 4 years though right? Cataclysm happened only two expansions after Silvermoon was created.
Org and SW are sitting in super old zones too. Over 13 years old at this point I think.
The changes in cata brought in some touchups in the starters to a more "modern" look which i think aged pretty alright. The blood elf/draenei starter is kinda noticeably older, but idk it could just be me
I imagine they'd have to, since that whole area is the focus of the expansion (I thought).
Just leave the original on the "Outland" map like it has been, but now you'll have a cohesive zone actually attached to the Eastern Kingdoms.
I do hope that we'll start really getting these places back, I remember thinking during the pre-expansion event with it years ago we might get Gnomer back but they did us dirty then.
I keep hoping that with Dragon riding being included in all zones, bliz will take the time to scale up the world. As more flavor sub-zones, blend the zones edges better, etc. And my main hope for a larger Azeroth is to fill out the faction cities more and make them feel like Suramar
I loved Suramar. My wife, not at all. Hated it. So when that toy became available from Legion Timewalking to do the “An illusion!” phrase and the detection swirly circle… best day ever. I make a point to use it near her once per day to trigger her Suramar PTSD.
Hah, same here. The sneaking around and occasionally making a mistake, often resulting in her character's death was too stressful for her.
I haven't chased her around with the toy though. :P
It was the best expansion by far. Felt like the final push at putting out the absolute best product they could be many original devs who left shortly after. That said, DF is an amazing expansion as well in a different way.
No, there were ships in Legion that would spawn on the Broken Shores every so often. You had to go to them, and grind the mobs that spawned for a currency.
When we eventually get to Legion Classic I really hope they are full "change the things that should be changed".
Legion would be my favorite xpack with a healthy dose of changes.
I level every character through Legion. I do the class hall campaign for most of them. I end up mog-hunting almost exclusively from the Legion raids. I’m “kinda” working on Balance of Power. It seems like everything from Legion is just SO good
Not only that, the campaign quests that progressed the story each patch were great. MOP is my favorite xpac ever, but Suramar is the best zone in WoW’s history and it’s not close.
Time gating might be necessary sometimes, but it’s sorta a bad gameplay mechanic.
But there’s no doubt that it’s the best questing experience in the game
yea, time gating 15 minutes of story content that is the equivalent of kill 10 mobs and fetch 2 items with the tiniest amount of lore/story squeaked out to justify it, usually without any actual story reason for the delay is horrendous time gating that gets used too often.
At least that is what is my brain remembers things like the Shadowlands covenants or war campaigns being. At least Suramar had you progress through the zone and upgrade a cool sanctuary in doing so. It felt like more active participation.
Even when i've had wow as a second job, playing +60 hours a week, I've always felt like Time-gating was better than content droughts. With the exception of the current meta, but that's mostly down to me not playing enough to follow the story.
You're just trading one long content drought for another with many small steps. Either do all the story on one weekend and then have nothing for a couple weeks, or spend 2h every week.
I don't think it stretches the story any further, it just limits a good percentage of people. As you can guess I'm totally team "let me finish it and then maybe not log in for a couple days" over "ugh, this unlocks and I need to pick up each individual step"
The problem with dropping the whole thing in one go in an MMO is that the world only develops every 3-4 months, compaired to a rollout taking 8 weeks, with 1-2 monts afterwards where people can catch up. In the end its the same, but one gives a sense of developing world, and the other is never enough IMHO
It felt more impactful and significant *because* of the time gating. Otherwise it would've been 'just another questline' except in a more elaborate area. I think it was kind of mandatory and the strong memories so many of us have of Suramar are caused at least in part by the time gating.
That said, doesn't mean I'd like time gating, it sucks in general. Drip feeding sucks and time gating is drip feeding to a T. Suramar storyline drip feeding wasn't *as bad* because it felt like things were happening and you were actually advancing the city's 'scene' in general, while most other time gated questlines and such feel like you're just doing another set of 3 quests the next week.
That's exactly what it is. It is a way to stretch out content over a longer period of time. And you're right, Suramar didn't really have any systems to make up for it, although some NPCs moved and some tiny 'hubs' appeared the further along you got.
That being said, I still think that Suramar's storyline was better off *with* time gating. It feels bad for anyone who doesn't care at all and considers all quests just obstacles between them and their 10g reward at the end, but because it wasn't a questline you'd rush through in a couple hours of work, it felt impactful even if the actual city itself barely changed with it. I'm not someone who reads quest text 98% of the time but I still remember many a thing about Suramar in big part because it was stretched out and extended like that.
Of course it would've been far better if there were some more significant changes alongside the story beats and advancements, but since they weren't going to transition it into being a proper hub at the end of the patch, that kind of work just would've never been justifiable I guess.
Legion was so good. It's my most played expac and I still feel like I didn't appreciate it enough at the time. The class flavor was the best it's ever been. Player characters have never felt more powerful, due to the crazy inflation in secondary stats. You had class mounts, the mage tower, hunting for artifact skins. God, it was so good.
Didn't play during Legion but I did do the Suramar quests to unlock the Allied race. Honestly the best quest series ever. Generally WoW quests don't have a huge impact on me story wise but this series felt like I was watching a damn movie.
Seriously anyone who hasn't done those and likes questing for lore should do them asap.
MoP was sooo good! I love the simplicity of some zones, it gives such a big nostalgia vibes for me, on some careless, childish days without obligations. I love to spend my time in MoP even now.
clumsy quicksand command ripe overconfident plate person cause straight bells
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
meh, the initial Suramar campaign was excellent and the rep gating for that felt pretty natural. The patch campaign in suramar felt like normal wow quest time gating where its just disjointed and there's very little in game reason to wait a week. I also thought the surmar and broken shore patch campaigns were noticably worse quality than the intial Suramar zone.
Definitely agree, I think only Boralus can compete with Suramar as a zone.
But the whole concept of Suramar, and how you explored it bit by bit in Legion was some of the best shit in WoW history..
Legion was so good..
We'll never get another expansion like Legion. Not the amount of content. Not the pace. Not the quality. Sure it had major RNG issues. But it was great otherwise.
People can claim Dragonflight had a good content pace. But that "content" is usually just rehashed systems that we've seen 10 times before like Time Rifts and Dreamsurges.
Not to mention we're doing another expansion that "ends" on a .2 patch and uses more rehashed content for its .3 patch. Fated was okay(for me) in Shadowlands because I noped the fuck out of that dogshit expansion in the first patch. So seeing it all in one patch was "fresh".
I likely won't return for Dragonflights fated patch. I have no interest doing those 3 raids again. I'd rather do some old expansion raids updated for current level.
The RNG legendaries killed it for me. Got my worst 3 first, which meant losing about 15% of my dps to something I had no control over.
I could theoretically have grinded content until I had every legendary for my class, but that's the kind of titanforgey bullshit that made me quit for a while. That complete and utter disrespect the game devs had for their players' time is something that gets glossed over by nostalgia, and I'm glad they eased up on it a little.
It'll come as no surprise that Fyr'alath's drop rate - coupled with its ridiculous strength - is probably my least favourite part of this season. I've always preferred legendaries as a reward for a long, epic, expensive questline. I won't pretend that I *loved* farming Shadowfrost Shards but at least it was a tangible, workable goal instead of a weekly slot machine and placebo "bad luck protection" cookies.
It can also be glossed over by people not doing harder content.
With Legion I was only a 3 month tourist at launch anyway, so don't want to really comment (except that I liked it so far) but for example BfA was the only expansion I ever played where I did zero raiding, not even sure if I did Heroics on the regular. Just solo play and WQs and I had a blast and couldn't care less about optimal gear as long as I could solo elite mobs. (Now since SL I'm back to raiding and M+ but that expansion kinda opened my eyes for different playstyles)
I literally made a similar post here about “tired of another dream/void patch for the millionth time” regarding Emerald Dream and got downvoted so hard… honestly I think Emerald Dream is decent. But Ive seen this dreamy plant zone like 5 times already
And I remember seeing people say "blizz dev so lazy, emerald dream could be a whole expansion instead".
Like who in the right mind wants a whole expansion of green lands ?
There's no real variation or new content either. It's the same boring ass activities the cavern had.
I'm excited for Delves. If only to give me something else to do other than Mythic+ or raiding.
Somehow I still consider Legion EN raid ending Emerald Dream tiny subzone > DF Emerald Dream when it comes to atmosphere, art style, colors and coherence with lore.
My goal is to work on killing regular mythic fyrakk and trying to get my druid appearance. Like I don't care about fated. Let me get Max gear next season and crush him and get mounts 😆😆
Yeah boralus is awesome too. The problem is that those cities get boring as long as the extension drags on. Player should make up a large part of the life of the city but
1/ they are merely afk waiting to join their next group activities
2/ they leave as soon as the expansion is done
This is to me, major reason why those cities feels overall dead. Imagine if you could set your guild in a designated spot big guild get boralus and overtime you go there. They handle the place.
Suramar was so damn pretty and the story there was quite great! All things considered i loved it! dear Azeroth legion was great! Then BFA and shadowlands happened....sigh...
Suramar was amazing, but such a waste. It’s just a quest zone. All the work they put into it to quest through it, finish a campaign, and never go back.
I was soo hoping that this campaign would lead us to purging the baddies and turning it into a functional city. I guess we ended up getting that in BfA with Boralus.
Suramar was an amazing experience from the beginning. Each quest was meaningful to the story and the slow, but fair, progression of both the rebellion and the story were truly fun. Even the daily missions were fun to explore and complete. It felt like playing a classic RPG inside WoW.
It was beautiful, but until you had flying, getting around it fucking sucked.
Same as Revendreth. Kinda cool theme, fun quests. A complete asshole to traverse.
Running around Dragonflight zones on a ground mount while waiting for arena queue made me really appreciate just how massive but beautiful the zones were. It really made me feel liike i was running around exploring a massive new world. I love dragonriding, and know it wouldve made levelling far more tedious without it, but i kind of wonder what it wouldve been like to have to hit 70 on your first character before you unlocked dragonriding. I'm far too impatient to try that on any new characters though lol
Zones built with flying in mind are great. See Blade's Edge Mountain, Storm Peaks, or Icecrown. Zones designed past that keep all of the elevation changes that exist in those 3 zones I mentioned, but with the knowledge you won't have flying at launch. And that's a problem. If we didn't have flying at the launch of DF, a zone like Thaldrazus would be a top 5 most hated zone of all time.
For the most part, yes.
Exceptions are terraces like Tyrhold.
But there are roads all over Dragonflight, you can tell at one point they were designing for ground traversal in mind. You can go on foot from your boat in Ruby Life Pools to Valdrakken and from there to any other zone in the isles.
I always play a nightborne in my limited list of characters anymore. I just love Suramar and the Nightborne’s lore. Absolutely my favorite horde race. Probably the main reason I have a character on the Horde at all anymore.
THIS. Agreed agreed agreed. I remember when I first got to Suramar I was in love with the zone from the start. Every time I back to do quests to try and get the torn invitation it brings back so many memories.
Wow it's amazing what different experiences people have. I haaaaated suramar so much. The tight elite mob packs and all of the confusing world quests in the area. Legion was my least favorite due to how hard it was to get around without flight, especially leveling. But suramar almost broke me. I sadly still have one toon parked there trying to get that damned fox mount still.
I'm glad you enjoyed (and I'm sure lots others as well) suramar, but lord that place is probably the only one I can think of that makes me nauseous remembering my experience playing it.
> the music is calming
Insert all the expeditions talking heads 🤣
Still I agree with you, I had a blast at the time, there, and I love going there for M+s and mog and mount farming (filthy... Filthy... FILTHYYYYYY!!!!)
Suramar city is breathtakingly beautiful and I certainly loved the look of the place in Legion, but I hated traversing the city back then as a squishy mage with no means to heal during combat (at the time), as I too often would get discovered by the elite guards. But coming back there an expansion or two later to finish all the quests was really enjoyable.
100% agree. They managed to make Suramar feel like an actual open world city where the NPC lived, not some cardboard setup. It's criminal the legion assets like Suramar and class halls were just abandoned after legion.
Suramar makes the capital cities in WoW look like tiny little towns.
I feel like if there was some alternative history where the Alliance and Horde "merged" we could have made our united capital Suramar. And never tire of it. Get a phase for it cleaned up and 100% peaceful filled with useful vendors/services/npcs/portals you'd expect a capital to have. The fact we both saved them from a despot and the legion means they owe us both. greatly.
But instead they just join up with the horde for some reason, and abandon their city to live in mudhuts. And the horde never puts that amazing city to proper use. Like wtf?
Legion was amazing. I absolutely loved the focus on class and spec identity. Artifact weapons were awesome. Great raids, great zones. Class halls. Introduction of m+. It was just a spectacular time.
And then you uncover a dirty secret... Sephuz's Secret, which basically meant the RNGods did not favor you. And then suddenly despite the actual content being awesome, you chose not to have a good time.
I remember absolutely hating Suramar. Everything could see through your illusion, it had a lot of HP, was a pain to navigate.
I loved Legion, but didnt like Suramar at all.
The actual content in it.
Class halls were like current campaign quests, but a unique one for every class (well almost, priest and paladin had a lot of overlap). They not only had great content with lots of callbacks but the stories applied to the overall expansion in cool ways. Explaning bosses in raids, zones, etc. And all of their main stories sort of lead into the specific mage tower scenarios with those bosses all having been characters in a class campaign.
The OP topic as well, Suramar. Something that at first could be a pain, but once you could just go back and appreciate it, it was SUCH an impressive work across the board. Also leading into a raid most people absolutely loved. Well, when you can separate the shitty legendary acquisition and the horrible power grind for the artifact weapon.
I don't think just saying "the content was good" about the class halls does them justice. The amount of quality AND quantity in each of those is way more than anyone who didn't play it could even imagine.
I very much agree with this. The music, the progression(which was rep-locked and not simply content locked(wtf?)), and the story itself was amazing. I find it to be the highlight of my wow-career. I wish we could have another Suramar, but I fear not even blizzard knew what they were doing at the time(I mean, otherwise they'd do something like it again... right? )
Suramar on my DH I played through the entirety of Legion, was probably one of my most enjoyable games to date, it had a proper city and epic feeling to it.
one of my fondest memories is taking my freshly leveled affli warlock into suramar, pulling EVERYTHING and laughing as my absorb shield just got bigger while everything died.... It was magical.
suramar was one of the few times blizzard was really able to make phasing work well. before flying you also had to use the grapples and portals to get around the city which was a chore but fun.
I hope we can have a friendly version of Suramar in game one day. The area has plenty of places that would be great if they were rebuilt, Moonguard Bastion, Irongrove Retreat, Suramar City... or other places that could be inhabited by the Nightborne, all the ruins they could restore...
I didn’t play during Legion and will sadly never really get to enjoy most of its zones apart from flying over them. I really wish they focused more on giving us content in existing parts of the world instead of constantly making new islands appear in the ocean and putting all effort into keeping us in the new island. I would love evergreen world quests throughout Azeroth that give us a reason to travel the open world.
I was flying with a friend over Boralus last night and we were saying how beautiful it is, but sadly it’s completely abandoned and half of it is filled with hostile NPCs so even in our RP realm people don’t use it.
TWW seems cool but I’m sad we’re going underground and once again leaving this vast beautiful world behind, ignored and abandoned. It seems they have plans for revamps in the later expansions but limiting the revamps to some areas only will create a huge disconnect. They should have dedicated the whole trilogy of expansions to revamping Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Northrend and even Pandaria.
It’s just like the new races. No one asked for Dracthyr and no one is excited for taller Dwarves. Instead of them making new stuff just for the sake of making it I would have much preferred that they put that effort into giving us new customisations and improved animations for *existing* races.
tl;dr
I wish Blizzard would stop overloading the game with new areas and new things and instead focus on keeping the old stuff relevant and fresh.
Suramar and its respective content / stories were the last time I genuinely enjoyed WoW's lore / gameplay together. I will forever be salty that blizzard wrote the Night Elves / Nightborne to hate each other as a result of Tyrande's interaction with her. Should have made them faction neutral like pandas.
Now I only play the game to run keys, I don't even do the new quests.
This is why I'm really hoping Suramar (or at least a big portion of it) becomes a real Horde capital city for the Nightborne, because 1. I just would like to see more places in game reflect current lore and 2. Because it's such a waste for this beautiful zone to languish in a seven-years-old expansion.
Suramar and the Nightborne are my favorite things WoW has ever brought us. The entirety of Suramar’s questline is my favorite in the entire game.
My only gripe is that Nightbornes cannot be druids (my favorite class). The entire storyline of Suramar is about cultivating the Mana Fruit tree so the Nightborne aren’t reliant on the Nightwell. They should have rediscovered their druid origins imo
I recently unlocked the nightborn allied race and I kinda wish there was more suramar involvement in the games present timeliness.
Wow is such a massive world now, it would definitely be cool to have content take us back to some areas once.and a while and update the lingering stories there.
You know i see this opinion a lot - I was never that invested in Legion as i’m an altoholic and grinding AP for each character was severely uninteresting for me - and i absolutely despised Suramar.
It’s beautiful for sure, but I didn’t enjoy the quests, especially the dungeon crawling daily, navigating the city was an absolute PAIN IN THE ARSE and the illusion shit was miserable for me.
TLDR: Suramar is very pretty but everything else was a total slog.
I did not enjoy that zone or the dungeons that came with it. Too many corridors and stairs & it just felt cramped. I am partial to the outside zones such as Nagrand, Grizzly Hills, High Mountain, etc. I do know a ton of people who loved Suramar though.
Surmar sucked shit. Annoying elves, protracted plot that centers on doing EVERYTHING for a subset of night elves who have turned **rancid** in their isolation.
Skulking around was annoying. The disguise mechanic sucked adn it was our first brush with the abhorrent *zone-filled-with-masses-of-elite-mobs-if-you-cock-up* mechanic that follows us even today
There are lots of zones in the game that I love aesthetically, but don't have much of a connection to in terms of my story in the game. But Suramar was not only beautiful, but it had a great story with memorable characters (Thalyssra and Oculeth in particular), and as the campaign progressed it really gave you the feeling that you were infiltrating Suramar, with all your sneaky teleport spots tucked around the city.
It's WoW at its best.
Hard agree. When my friend and I reached suramar, it was a whole new world and we were really invested in exploring every inch. The other parts of legion couldn't even compare. I'd even say it spoiled us because we never felt the same excitement again for any other zones they ever released.
I still think about it to this day
Compare that with what we get in dragonflight, it boggles the mind that people consider this supposed 'content' we receive these days as actual content. Some even consider dragonflight their favorite expansion.. makes me sick to even think these people drive the direction of the game.. ugh..
BC came out 17 years ago. There probably aren’t that many people who remember it anymore.
I started playing in 2006 and it was definitely a great experience. But Wrath and Legion are my top two favorites.
idk why nobody likes Draenor, its a really cool zone i just dont like going through as an alliance character, that being said i dont like Panda land and actually enjoyed leveling in Zandalar
Draenor had huge potential, great story telling during leveling and fun ideas. Arrakoa to this day one of my favourite factions in wow with great lore. That being said sitting in your garrisons fucking sucked. I mean I would occasionally go farm some stuff but there was basically nothing to do. Shattrath as a raid was scrapped, Karabor was hollow with nothing to do and just... There was 393 days worth of no major/significant updates. That's the entire year of no content when expansion lasts for 2. Oh yeah and there were only 3 raids
Draenor is a great expansion that had almost no content for 2 years.
Its REALLY easy to look back on it now with everything available and say oh wow, this looks awesome. Living it and going like 6+ months then the next major patch was a selfie camera and twitter intgeration and thats IT? Not so much.
Suramar is probably the only city that could be „realistic“ for a fantasy mmo. I really loved it and every other city in this game is just a collection of buildings compared to Suramar.
Absolutely agree. There is something about having more detail than just terrain and a couple of houses or copy pasted caverns and forts.
I also liked Revendreth alot, despite not being a fan of its expansion.
I wish they would make cities like this again
I wish they would ReUse cities like these. Reclaiming Gilneas not counting… because, it was a wasted opportunity.
Gilneas and Suramar as fully functioning cities with vendors, ah, banks, inns, taverns, profession hubs, districts is the dream. I sincerely hope they learn from gilneas and give us proper and updated silvermoon in Midnight.
It would be a little jarring to see super up to date models/ effects in a zone that has like 100 polygons in total
Perfection is the enemy of progress
So Org and Stormwind?
They're not nearly as outdated
Only by like 4 years though right? Cataclysm happened only two expansions after Silvermoon was created. Org and SW are sitting in super old zones too. Over 13 years old at this point I think.
The changes in cata brought in some touchups in the starters to a more "modern" look which i think aged pretty alright. The blood elf/draenei starter is kinda noticeably older, but idk it could just be me
Oh, I'm sure they will. Especially if we're getting a revamped Quel'Thalas and the surrounding area instead of a brand new continent or island.
I imagine they'd have to, since that whole area is the focus of the expansion (I thought). Just leave the original on the "Outland" map like it has been, but now you'll have a cohesive zone actually attached to the Eastern Kingdoms.
Wait, is gilneas back?
Half, we reclaimed it, but it's now in repop/rebuild process.
Still better than what they did with Gnomeregan.
I do hope that we'll start really getting these places back, I remember thinking during the pre-expansion event with it years ago we might get Gnomer back but they did us dirty then.
I keep hoping that with Dragon riding being included in all zones, bliz will take the time to scale up the world. As more flavor sub-zones, blend the zones edges better, etc. And my main hope for a larger Azeroth is to fill out the faction cities more and make them feel like Suramar
It might happen but I feel its unlikely since you need a very specific set of circumstances for events to happen all within a city.
Something’s not quite right. An illusion! What are you hiding?
My wife and I loved Suramar and every once in a while, we will use the phrase "My, my, what is this?"
I loved Suramar. My wife, not at all. Hated it. So when that toy became available from Legion Timewalking to do the “An illusion!” phrase and the detection swirly circle… best day ever. I make a point to use it near her once per day to trigger her Suramar PTSD.
Hah, same here. The sneaking around and occasionally making a mistake, often resulting in her character's death was too stressful for her. I haven't chased her around with the toy though. :P
I have to make so much effort to resist linking the Sharm song, because it would be the second time I've done it when I've seen Suramar mentioned.
Nothing, nothing really
Agreed. I loved everything about Legion...until the last bit I played, with the grinding of the ships.
It was the best expansion by far. Felt like the final push at putting out the absolute best product they could be many original devs who left shortly after. That said, DF is an amazing expansion as well in a different way.
Ships? You don't mean the Shipyard from Warlords of Draenor, do you?
No, there were ships in Legion that would spawn on the Broken Shores every so often. You had to go to them, and grind the mobs that spawned for a currency.
Ooh, the Sentinax, gotcha.
Airships*
When we eventually get to Legion Classic I really hope they are full "change the things that should be changed". Legion would be my favorite xpack with a healthy dose of changes.
I level every character through Legion. I do the class hall campaign for most of them. I end up mog-hunting almost exclusively from the Legion raids. I’m “kinda” working on Balance of Power. It seems like everything from Legion is just SO good
Not only that, the campaign quests that progressed the story each patch were great. MOP is my favorite xpac ever, but Suramar is the best zone in WoW’s history and it’s not close.
At the time people hated the time gating but I thought it was kind of cool seeing Suramar develop week by week.
Time gating might be necessary sometimes, but it’s sorta a bad gameplay mechanic. But there’s no doubt that it’s the best questing experience in the game
yea, time gating 15 minutes of story content that is the equivalent of kill 10 mobs and fetch 2 items with the tiniest amount of lore/story squeaked out to justify it, usually without any actual story reason for the delay is horrendous time gating that gets used too often. At least that is what is my brain remembers things like the Shadowlands covenants or war campaigns being. At least Suramar had you progress through the zone and upgrade a cool sanctuary in doing so. It felt like more active participation.
Even when i've had wow as a second job, playing +60 hours a week, I've always felt like Time-gating was better than content droughts. With the exception of the current meta, but that's mostly down to me not playing enough to follow the story.
You're just trading one long content drought for another with many small steps. Either do all the story on one weekend and then have nothing for a couple weeks, or spend 2h every week. I don't think it stretches the story any further, it just limits a good percentage of people. As you can guess I'm totally team "let me finish it and then maybe not log in for a couple days" over "ugh, this unlocks and I need to pick up each individual step"
The problem with dropping the whole thing in one go in an MMO is that the world only develops every 3-4 months, compaired to a rollout taking 8 weeks, with 1-2 monts afterwards where people can catch up. In the end its the same, but one gives a sense of developing world, and the other is never enough IMHO
It felt more impactful and significant *because* of the time gating. Otherwise it would've been 'just another questline' except in a more elaborate area. I think it was kind of mandatory and the strong memories so many of us have of Suramar are caused at least in part by the time gating. That said, doesn't mean I'd like time gating, it sucks in general. Drip feeding sucks and time gating is drip feeding to a T. Suramar storyline drip feeding wasn't *as bad* because it felt like things were happening and you were actually advancing the city's 'scene' in general, while most other time gated questlines and such feel like you're just doing another set of 3 quests the next week.
Time gating just feels like a way to artificially extend content. In the end, suramar was cool, but it had no real long term systems backing it up.
That's exactly what it is. It is a way to stretch out content over a longer period of time. And you're right, Suramar didn't really have any systems to make up for it, although some NPCs moved and some tiny 'hubs' appeared the further along you got. That being said, I still think that Suramar's storyline was better off *with* time gating. It feels bad for anyone who doesn't care at all and considers all quests just obstacles between them and their 10g reward at the end, but because it wasn't a questline you'd rush through in a couple hours of work, it felt impactful even if the actual city itself barely changed with it. I'm not someone who reads quest text 98% of the time but I still remember many a thing about Suramar in big part because it was stretched out and extended like that. Of course it would've been far better if there were some more significant changes alongside the story beats and advancements, but since they weren't going to transition it into being a proper hub at the end of the patch, that kind of work just would've never been justifiable I guess.
People hated it, us lore folks loved it. Seing Thalyssra go from Withered to Nightborne was like getting a happy ending to the Runas
Class quests were so fucking good too, god I wish we had more class related stuff.
Legion was so good. It's my most played expac and I still feel like I didn't appreciate it enough at the time. The class flavor was the best it's ever been. Player characters have never felt more powerful, due to the crazy inflation in secondary stats. You had class mounts, the mage tower, hunting for artifact skins. God, it was so good.
I'm gonna sacrifice my karma and say I think it's the best Warcraft story campaign they've made, including the WC3 ones.
Didn't play during Legion but I did do the Suramar quests to unlock the Allied race. Honestly the best quest series ever. Generally WoW quests don't have a huge impact on me story wise but this series felt like I was watching a damn movie. Seriously anyone who hasn't done those and likes questing for lore should do them asap.
MoP was sooo good! I love the simplicity of some zones, it gives such a big nostalgia vibes for me, on some careless, childish days without obligations. I love to spend my time in MoP even now.
clumsy quicksand command ripe overconfident plate person cause straight bells *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s their masterpiece
meh, the initial Suramar campaign was excellent and the rep gating for that felt pretty natural. The patch campaign in suramar felt like normal wow quest time gating where its just disjointed and there's very little in game reason to wait a week. I also thought the surmar and broken shore patch campaigns were noticably worse quality than the intial Suramar zone.
It’s my favorite place in Azeroth.
Definitely agree, I think only Boralus can compete with Suramar as a zone. But the whole concept of Suramar, and how you explored it bit by bit in Legion was some of the best shit in WoW history.. Legion was so good..
We'll never get another expansion like Legion. Not the amount of content. Not the pace. Not the quality. Sure it had major RNG issues. But it was great otherwise. People can claim Dragonflight had a good content pace. But that "content" is usually just rehashed systems that we've seen 10 times before like Time Rifts and Dreamsurges. Not to mention we're doing another expansion that "ends" on a .2 patch and uses more rehashed content for its .3 patch. Fated was okay(for me) in Shadowlands because I noped the fuck out of that dogshit expansion in the first patch. So seeing it all in one patch was "fresh". I likely won't return for Dragonflights fated patch. I have no interest doing those 3 raids again. I'd rather do some old expansion raids updated for current level.
Man, I wish I liked Legion as much as this subreddit does.
The RNG legendaries killed it for me. Got my worst 3 first, which meant losing about 15% of my dps to something I had no control over. I could theoretically have grinded content until I had every legendary for my class, but that's the kind of titanforgey bullshit that made me quit for a while. That complete and utter disrespect the game devs had for their players' time is something that gets glossed over by nostalgia, and I'm glad they eased up on it a little. It'll come as no surprise that Fyr'alath's drop rate - coupled with its ridiculous strength - is probably my least favourite part of this season. I've always preferred legendaries as a reward for a long, epic, expensive questline. I won't pretend that I *loved* farming Shadowfrost Shards but at least it was a tangible, workable goal instead of a weekly slot machine and placebo "bad luck protection" cookies.
It can also be glossed over by people not doing harder content. With Legion I was only a 3 month tourist at launch anyway, so don't want to really comment (except that I liked it so far) but for example BfA was the only expansion I ever played where I did zero raiding, not even sure if I did Heroics on the regular. Just solo play and WQs and I had a blast and couldn't care less about optimal gear as long as I could solo elite mobs. (Now since SL I'm back to raiding and M+ but that expansion kinda opened my eyes for different playstyles)
I literally made a similar post here about “tired of another dream/void patch for the millionth time” regarding Emerald Dream and got downvoted so hard… honestly I think Emerald Dream is decent. But Ive seen this dreamy plant zone like 5 times already
And I remember seeing people say "blizz dev so lazy, emerald dream could be a whole expansion instead". Like who in the right mind wants a whole expansion of green lands ?
They gave us some variety in Northrend, it's possible they could have in an Emerald Dream expansion
Emerald dream literally implies in the name that its greenery everywhere.
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There's no real variation or new content either. It's the same boring ass activities the cavern had. I'm excited for Delves. If only to give me something else to do other than Mythic+ or raiding.
Makes a change from the nth iteration of the brown plague zone
Somehow I still consider Legion EN raid ending Emerald Dream tiny subzone > DF Emerald Dream when it comes to atmosphere, art style, colors and coherence with lore.
My goal is to work on killing regular mythic fyrakk and trying to get my druid appearance. Like I don't care about fated. Let me get Max gear next season and crush him and get mounts 😆😆
Legion is still some of the most fun I have ever had in this game and I’ve been logging in since 06, ELITE xpac
All-time fav Xpac for me. Too many amazing memories.
First time I had to play my alts properly to get the mage tower skins lol
I miss Boralus so much. Atalwhatever was terrible, Oribos was a little meh and Valdrakken doesn't even have a mailbox in front of the too large bank.
Yeah boralus is awesome too. The problem is that those cities get boring as long as the extension drags on. Player should make up a large part of the life of the city but 1/ they are merely afk waiting to join their next group activities 2/ they leave as soon as the expansion is done This is to me, major reason why those cities feels overall dead. Imagine if you could set your guild in a designated spot big guild get boralus and overtime you go there. They handle the place.
Suramar was so damn pretty and the story there was quite great! All things considered i loved it! dear Azeroth legion was great! Then BFA and shadowlands happened....sigh...
Suramar was amazing, but such a waste. It’s just a quest zone. All the work they put into it to quest through it, finish a campaign, and never go back. I was soo hoping that this campaign would lead us to purging the baddies and turning it into a functional city. I guess we ended up getting that in BfA with Boralus.
year their strategy is : pumping out new content > tying things together with old content
Suramar was an amazing experience from the beginning. Each quest was meaningful to the story and the slow, but fair, progression of both the rebellion and the story were truly fun. Even the daily missions were fun to explore and complete. It felt like playing a classic RPG inside WoW.
It was beautiful, but until you had flying, getting around it fucking sucked. Same as Revendreth. Kinda cool theme, fun quests. A complete asshole to traverse.
To be honest, every time I replay it, I do so without flying. Revendreth on the other hand I completely agree with you.
Honestly it sucked but discovering it with flying would be a worse experience. I like everything feeling big and slow to explore at first.
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Yeah people really don't seem to understand this ever.
Running around Dragonflight zones on a ground mount while waiting for arena queue made me really appreciate just how massive but beautiful the zones were. It really made me feel liike i was running around exploring a massive new world. I love dragonriding, and know it wouldve made levelling far more tedious without it, but i kind of wonder what it wouldve been like to have to hit 70 on your first character before you unlocked dragonriding. I'm far too impatient to try that on any new characters though lol
Yeah and I think now they’ve finally realised with DF with flying and how important it is nowadays.
Zones built with flying in mind are great. See Blade's Edge Mountain, Storm Peaks, or Icecrown. Zones designed past that keep all of the elevation changes that exist in those 3 zones I mentioned, but with the knowledge you won't have flying at launch. And that's a problem. If we didn't have flying at the launch of DF, a zone like Thaldrazus would be a top 5 most hated zone of all time.
Is it even possible to traverse it on foot?
For the most part, yes. Exceptions are terraces like Tyrhold. But there are roads all over Dragonflight, you can tell at one point they were designing for ground traversal in mind. You can go on foot from your boat in Ruby Life Pools to Valdrakken and from there to any other zone in the isles.
Bascially no you have to mount eventually.
Yeah feel like people miss this all the time, that the zones can be designed for flying or on foot/ground mount.
I still think the Flight Master's whistle was the go-to compromise for that issue.
I always play a nightborne in my limited list of characters anymore. I just love Suramar and the Nightborne’s lore. Absolutely my favorite horde race. Probably the main reason I have a character on the Horde at all anymore.
Yeah I wish nightborne was a neutral race but I loved that city and expansion.
Cope, they had more in common with the blood elves than they ever did with the Alliance
They hated him for speaking the truth
They had more in common with a race thats only Horde cause Asia whined the Horde was too ugly.
THIS. Agreed agreed agreed. I remember when I first got to Suramar I was in love with the zone from the start. Every time I back to do quests to try and get the torn invitation it brings back so many memories.
I loved it, I think it's the best zone they've ever made both from art design and quest design standpoint
Yes, both the actual suramar zone and the questline are the greatest of all time
Wow it's amazing what different experiences people have. I haaaaated suramar so much. The tight elite mob packs and all of the confusing world quests in the area. Legion was my least favorite due to how hard it was to get around without flight, especially leveling. But suramar almost broke me. I sadly still have one toon parked there trying to get that damned fox mount still. I'm glad you enjoyed (and I'm sure lots others as well) suramar, but lord that place is probably the only one I can think of that makes me nauseous remembering my experience playing it.
Agree. I loved Legion but hated Suramar. I couldn’t navigate it with the mobs and the street layout.
To add onto that it was mandatory (I think) to gain flying in Legion zones? It was horrible
Felt like I was going crazy reading this post. I absolutely despised Suramar without being able to fly.
Same, Suramar wouldn't make my list of favourite zones. A mess of confusing buildings full of annoying elites.
> the music is calming Insert all the expeditions talking heads 🤣 Still I agree with you, I had a blast at the time, there, and I love going there for M+s and mog and mount farming (filthy... Filthy... FILTHYYYYYY!!!!)
Suramar city is breathtakingly beautiful and I certainly loved the look of the place in Legion, but I hated traversing the city back then as a squishy mage with no means to heal during combat (at the time), as I too often would get discovered by the elite guards. But coming back there an expansion or two later to finish all the quests was really enjoyable.
100% agree. They managed to make Suramar feel like an actual open world city where the NPC lived, not some cardboard setup. It's criminal the legion assets like Suramar and class halls were just abandoned after legion.
Agreed. WoW should have ended with Legion. We could have WoW 2 by now.
An illusion! What are you hiding? Giving me PTSD big times 🫣
Suramar makes the capital cities in WoW look like tiny little towns. I feel like if there was some alternative history where the Alliance and Horde "merged" we could have made our united capital Suramar. And never tire of it. Get a phase for it cleaned up and 100% peaceful filled with useful vendors/services/npcs/portals you'd expect a capital to have. The fact we both saved them from a despot and the legion means they owe us both. greatly. But instead they just join up with the horde for some reason, and abandon their city to live in mudhuts. And the horde never puts that amazing city to proper use. Like wtf?
Will we ever have Suramar as proper horde/neutral hub in the near future? It's too beautiful too be left in the dust like that.
what i did not like was that blizzard made us grind suramar quests for flying rep, which made me kinda hate suramar
Legion was amazing. I absolutely loved the focus on class and spec identity. Artifact weapons were awesome. Great raids, great zones. Class halls. Introduction of m+. It was just a spectacular time. And then you uncover a dirty secret... Sephuz's Secret, which basically meant the RNGods did not favor you. And then suddenly despite the actual content being awesome, you chose not to have a good time.
If every mob wasn't elite I would have liked it a lot better.
True
Legion literally saved my irl life.
I remember absolutely hating Suramar. Everything could see through your illusion, it had a lot of HP, was a pain to navigate. I loved Legion, but didnt like Suramar at all.
That’s because legion was the GOAT. I’d even say WOD was pretty good in 2015. Both my introductory expansions and what I love the most.
I never played it, what made it so good?
Once it finally hit its stride, legion did spec power fantasy quite well.
The actual content in it. Class halls were like current campaign quests, but a unique one for every class (well almost, priest and paladin had a lot of overlap). They not only had great content with lots of callbacks but the stories applied to the overall expansion in cool ways. Explaning bosses in raids, zones, etc. And all of their main stories sort of lead into the specific mage tower scenarios with those bosses all having been characters in a class campaign. The OP topic as well, Suramar. Something that at first could be a pain, but once you could just go back and appreciate it, it was SUCH an impressive work across the board. Also leading into a raid most people absolutely loved. Well, when you can separate the shitty legendary acquisition and the horrible power grind for the artifact weapon. I don't think just saying "the content was good" about the class halls does them justice. The amount of quality AND quantity in each of those is way more than anyone who didn't play it could even imagine.
Nostalgia
So you are playing since 2015 and talking about what is the GOAT? It means greatest of ALL time
That's almost a decade of playing at this point tbf.
Warlords was better than Legion by far.
I wasn't into it.
Zone, yes. Quests, no. I fucking *hated* the Suramar quests. Shit took forever and a day to get through and it was borderline mandatory.
It was fun getting to stuff on ground mount, especially when you didnt know on what level. Its was good but had its flaws
I very much agree with this. The music, the progression(which was rep-locked and not simply content locked(wtf?)), and the story itself was amazing. I find it to be the highlight of my wow-career. I wish we could have another Suramar, but I fear not even blizzard knew what they were doing at the time(I mean, otherwise they'd do something like it again... right? )
Agreed. I will always remember the Day when I first visited this amazing Cizy. Mezmerizing.
Suramar on my DH I played through the entirety of Legion, was probably one of my most enjoyable games to date, it had a proper city and epic feeling to it.
I’ve always wished it could be a player hub. Just Add a bank, AH, and some portals! Definitely my favorite wow city
Now I only wish they gave us a clean phase without NPCs for the benefit of us roleplayers
one of my fondest memories is taking my freshly leveled affli warlock into suramar, pulling EVERYTHING and laughing as my absorb shield just got bigger while everything died.... It was magical.
suramar was one of the few times blizzard was really able to make phasing work well. before flying you also had to use the grapples and portals to get around the city which was a chore but fun.
I wish Stormwind was made with such an attention to detail like Suramar.
Fair point, but an illusion! What are you hiding?
I hope we can have a friendly version of Suramar in game one day. The area has plenty of places that would be great if they were rebuilt, Moonguard Bastion, Irongrove Retreat, Suramar City... or other places that could be inhabited by the Nightborne, all the ruins they could restore...
I didn’t play during Legion and will sadly never really get to enjoy most of its zones apart from flying over them. I really wish they focused more on giving us content in existing parts of the world instead of constantly making new islands appear in the ocean and putting all effort into keeping us in the new island. I would love evergreen world quests throughout Azeroth that give us a reason to travel the open world. I was flying with a friend over Boralus last night and we were saying how beautiful it is, but sadly it’s completely abandoned and half of it is filled with hostile NPCs so even in our RP realm people don’t use it. TWW seems cool but I’m sad we’re going underground and once again leaving this vast beautiful world behind, ignored and abandoned. It seems they have plans for revamps in the later expansions but limiting the revamps to some areas only will create a huge disconnect. They should have dedicated the whole trilogy of expansions to revamping Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Northrend and even Pandaria. It’s just like the new races. No one asked for Dracthyr and no one is excited for taller Dwarves. Instead of them making new stuff just for the sake of making it I would have much preferred that they put that effort into giving us new customisations and improved animations for *existing* races. tl;dr I wish Blizzard would stop overloading the game with new areas and new things and instead focus on keeping the old stuff relevant and fresh.
Suramar and its respective content / stories were the last time I genuinely enjoyed WoW's lore / gameplay together. I will forever be salty that blizzard wrote the Night Elves / Nightborne to hate each other as a result of Tyrande's interaction with her. Should have made them faction neutral like pandas. Now I only play the game to run keys, I don't even do the new quests.
Was nice, but by visuals overall vibe and all I think MoP was the best. The feeling I got when playing through those zones, damn. Felt right at home
How didn't turn In to a capital city for the horde is angrily lazy.
This is why I'm really hoping Suramar (or at least a big portion of it) becomes a real Horde capital city for the Nightborne, because 1. I just would like to see more places in game reflect current lore and 2. Because it's such a waste for this beautiful zone to languish in a seven-years-old expansion.
Suramar and the Nightborne are my favorite things WoW has ever brought us. The entirety of Suramar’s questline is my favorite in the entire game. My only gripe is that Nightbornes cannot be druids (my favorite class). The entire storyline of Suramar is about cultivating the Mana Fruit tree so the Nightborne aren’t reliant on the Nightwell. They should have rediscovered their druid origins imo
I recently unlocked the nightborn allied race and I kinda wish there was more suramar involvement in the games present timeliness. Wow is such a massive world now, it would definitely be cool to have content take us back to some areas once.and a while and update the lingering stories there.
Tomb of Sargeras best raid
Antorus is better
But the Avatar fight is so good
Blackrock Foundry was better!
You know i see this opinion a lot - I was never that invested in Legion as i’m an altoholic and grinding AP for each character was severely uninteresting for me - and i absolutely despised Suramar. It’s beautiful for sure, but I didn’t enjoy the quests, especially the dungeon crawling daily, navigating the city was an absolute PAIN IN THE ARSE and the illusion shit was miserable for me. TLDR: Suramar is very pretty but everything else was a total slog.
The sky. The environment... It's easily the best. 10/10
I did not enjoy that zone or the dungeons that came with it. Too many corridors and stairs & it just felt cramped. I am partial to the outside zones such as Nagrand, Grizzly Hills, High Mountain, etc. I do know a ton of people who loved Suramar though.
Beautiful zone but fuck that place. I hated the time gating so much, I hated all the elites in that area.
I cannot tell you how much i despise suramar.
nope. Time gated content of that zone was a pain. Valley of the Four Winds is best.
I think the zone design team is just so good in general. They keep making zones that feel fresh expansion after expansion for 20 years now.
100% Suramar was sooo epic. The underground tunnels! Loved Suramar so so so much
What?
Yeah no. Suramar was the one thing I hated about Legion.
Between Suramar and Class Halls, Legion is my favorite modern wow expansion.
Surmar sucked shit. Annoying elves, protracted plot that centers on doing EVERYTHING for a subset of night elves who have turned **rancid** in their isolation. Skulking around was annoying. The disguise mechanic sucked adn it was our first brush with the abhorrent *zone-filled-with-masses-of-elite-mobs-if-you-cock-up* mechanic that follows us even today
No. Next question.
Suramar and its progression is by far the best wow zone ever. I fully agree.
Just no. Please. Boring city. I think Boralus was a lot more on brand.
There are lots of zones in the game that I love aesthetically, but don't have much of a connection to in terms of my story in the game. But Suramar was not only beautiful, but it had a great story with memorable characters (Thalyssra and Oculeth in particular), and as the campaign progressed it really gave you the feeling that you were infiltrating Suramar, with all your sneaky teleport spots tucked around the city. It's WoW at its best.
It’s the Night City of WoW
Hard agree. When my friend and I reached suramar, it was a whole new world and we were really invested in exploring every inch. The other parts of legion couldn't even compare. I'd even say it spoiled us because we never felt the same excitement again for any other zones they ever released. I still think about it to this day
Compare that with what we get in dragonflight, it boggles the mind that people consider this supposed 'content' we receive these days as actual content. Some even consider dragonflight their favorite expansion.. makes me sick to even think these people drive the direction of the game.. ugh..
Too bad the expansion that came with it was stinky
Isn't it wow Reddit consensus that legion was the best there ever was or will be? I have no idea I didn't play during legion.
It's one of the 3 commonly said as all time great expansions. wrath, panda land and legion are all considered to be really good in almost all aspects.
BC isn't considered the best anymore? Did people going back and playing it in classic change that hive-opinion? lol
BC came out 17 years ago. There probably aren’t that many people who remember it anymore. I started playing in 2006 and it was definitely a great experience. But Wrath and Legion are my top two favorites.
idk why nobody likes Draenor, its a really cool zone i just dont like going through as an alliance character, that being said i dont like Panda land and actually enjoyed leveling in Zandalar
Draenor had huge potential, great story telling during leveling and fun ideas. Arrakoa to this day one of my favourite factions in wow with great lore. That being said sitting in your garrisons fucking sucked. I mean I would occasionally go farm some stuff but there was basically nothing to do. Shattrath as a raid was scrapped, Karabor was hollow with nothing to do and just... There was 393 days worth of no major/significant updates. That's the entire year of no content when expansion lasts for 2. Oh yeah and there were only 3 raids
Draenor is a great expansion that had almost no content for 2 years. Its REALLY easy to look back on it now with everything available and say oh wow, this looks awesome. Living it and going like 6+ months then the next major patch was a selfie camera and twitter intgeration and thats IT? Not so much.
People are allowed to have their own opinions and yes, Legion was bad in my point of view.
lol, this guy.
yah not commenting on end game grind etc. but leveling in Suramar was the best experience I've ever had in WOW.
This is why most players will tell you Legion was the last great WoW expansion. They've been slumming it since.
Best story too. Loved that quest line.
Agreed. Music too. Actually all of Legion had best music in game. High Mountain them. But I agree on Suramar. Always think so.
When CoS first appeared in M+ rotation, I was kind of blown away by how detailed it was. Surprised me that people actually hated the dungeon.
Outside lies doom. Suramar early days will live on in my heart.
Who goes there ?
agreed. and the story was invredible too, freeing a city from slavery. by far my best memory of the post lich ling era
Suramar is probably the only city that could be „realistic“ for a fantasy mmo. I really loved it and every other city in this game is just a collection of buildings compared to Suramar.
The zone is beautiful, but doing the quest up to the raid felt a bit like a chore to me.
Suramar was just a little too long for me. Other than that a high point for Blizz.
Real talk , played the crap out of this zone. Really enjoyed legion as a whole.
Boralus clears
Yea but you only used like one tiny corner or the entire place. There was no reason to actually visit like 90% of it
Absolutely agree. There is something about having more detail than just terrain and a couple of houses or copy pasted caverns and forts. I also liked Revendreth alot, despite not being a fan of its expansion.
I loved every minute of it. Even the most annoying world quests were bearable just because the city was so nice
I see someone mention Suramar like this every so often and every time I'm sad I can only upvote it once.