Start working on your relics <3

[Colorful]

snip

You just described FFXIV, and pretty much every other MMO that promises features that are too large and ends up downscaling them. Personal housing, removing a dungeon for airship exploration, lackluster PvP for the sake of PvE content, etc. They're not the driving force of the entire expansion either, so I don't know where you got that from. They're a major feature, sure, but claiming that's a bad thing is like claiming the additional Gold Saucer content is also a bad thing as it takes development time away from other things.

I don't like most things Blizzard has done with WoW recently, but that's no reason to be cynical towards everything they do. Their artifact system is a step up from FFXIV's relic, whether or not they copied it from FFXIV doesn't matter as FFXIV has copied literally almost everything from WoW.

[Intaki]

You just described FFXIV, and pretty much every other MMO that promises features that are too large and ends up downscaling them.

Not to the sheer extent that Warlords of Draenor did.

[Gunspec]

I don't like most things Blizzard has done with WoW recently, but that's no reason to be cynical towards everything they do. Their artifact system is a step up from FFXIV's relic, whether or not they copied it from FFXIV doesn't matter as FFXIV has copied literally almost everything from WoW.

I pretty much washed my hands of WoW due to how I felt they were handling the story and characters. They make big changes to the world, but often represent those changes only in books. Major characters and "moments" in the franchise get badly mishandled, and at any moment 90% of the lore is being ignored by the dev team.

I guess this is why I'm so cynical about this relic upgrade thing. Each specialization of each class gets its own storyline for the relic, and it appears that some of these storylines will involve BIG changes to the story lore. Magni Bronzebeard appears to have been revived. Tirion Fordring appears to have been killed. Thrall decides for some reason to pass his weapon on to a new champion. Multiple classes start poking around the frozen throne, converting the lich king's power into their own weapons, and probably bumping into Bolvar in the process. The relics belong to such important people and powerful locations that virtually every major lore point is going to need some updating.

I just don't believe Blizzard can handle this adequately. Either most of the lore will just be ignored, with books detailing why people are alive or dead, or Blizzard will scale back the feature (as they did with garrisons) so that the base relic just magically appears in your hands without explanation.

And the relic really will be the central feature of the expansion, because they aren't planning on having any other weapons in the expansion. Dungeons, raids, quests, etc will all drop components for upgrading the relic, so if they drop the ball on the "feature" there will be no way to play the game properly. That isn't comparable to features in FFXIV that you mentioned, because stripping any of those features out wouldn't make the game unplayable.

[Moonleg]

They're not the driving force of the entire expansion either, so I don't know where you got that from.

As I understood what I have heard in passing there will BE no other weapons in that expansion. You either have the relic - or you have a weapon from the PREVIOUS expansion. Possibly a leveling weapon, I don't know.

That sounds like a pretty driving feature to me if it's true.