Hey Maddie, how do you feel about Blizz giving us the artifact weapons for one expansion before taking them away in the next? It feels kind of bittersweet to me (specifically because of all the time players spent grinding for AP, unlocking appearances, etc etc). I understand why Blizz feels the need to take them from us but it makes me wonder why we had them to begin with. I grow attached to shit easily to the idea of losing my weapon makes me really sad!

mad-maddie:

It was a bad idea. Artifact Weapons were being criticized since Legion’s launch due to the lack of weapon models, one-weapon-type per spec, AP grind and their irrelevance once the expansion ended. With BoFA coming and the artifact system going away suddenly and for seemingly no reason in terms of story, and just gameplay (even though artifact weapons were huge story-heavy weapons with unlockable lore), it just…further proves they were a bad idea. Every criticism everyone had before Legion even launched was right on the nose.

And they’re apparently taking the AP grind concept and are putting it into a new player item in the next expansion, so they’ve learned basically nothing.

Ok to be fair they said they were going to do this when they introduced them, because they didn’t want a situation like Archeology, where something that should be contained within a single expansion gets dragged into the next one and is something they have to keep updating forever.