The newest expansion for World of Warcraft has officially dropped and as you all know is called “Legion”. I’ll spare you any details on what little of the story I know, basically Illidan, demon hunters, and Gul’Dan is still a bad guy that no one can seem to get rid of.
Just as a disclaimer this is a pre-review or early review. I have not played enough of the game to give it an accurate score or review of the whole Legion experience, but I wanted to provide some first impressions for those on the fence as to whether they should buy the game or not.
As I logged on yesterday to get my hands on the new content I was pleasantly surprised to find there was a queue timer where I had to wait 15 minutes before I was allowed in. I say “pleasantly surprised” because that means that people were online in the server. It’s not as if WoW was going away anytime soon, but there is no disputing the dropping subscription numbers. Now to be fair every expansion has had this type of bump where people show up, burn through the content in a month, and then find another game to play so ask me in a month how the servers look and feel and I might have a different answer. As of today, one day after release, things are looking up and the servers are full of players on their way to level 110.
My first few hours of play were very enjoyable. I was playing on my Blood Elf Rogue, Outlaw Spec, and right when I logged into the game I was met with a quest to get things started with my class hall. The class halls are the new garrisons for those of you that played Blizzard’s previous expansion, Warlords of Draenor, but without the downside of it being a lonely town that only you hang out in. Class halls are full of others that are as you can deduce…the same class as you. Rogues were running around everywhere, both Horde and Alliance. Grabbing the first quest inside you get to choose which legendary “Artifact Weapon” you want to pursue. The Artifact weapons are basically the new progression system in Legion. Talents stop at level 100 and after that you customize the talents or artifacts in your weapon to customize your character. As far as I can tell the progression of the Artifact Weapon is fairly linear and if you are a min-max type player such as myself, you will have one path to go in order to max out your stats or best abilities. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, it just means the customization really isn’t there if you are looking to be competitive in PVP or a truly effective team member in PVE because you will have to take a certain path.
One thing is for certain about the Artifact Weapons and that is that most of them are aesthetically pleasing and give you a sense that you are a very powerful hero. The beauty of the transmogrification system is that if you don’t like the way the weapon looks, you can change it on a whim. After you choose which Artifact Weapon you want to pursue, which is actually a choice of which class specialization you want, then you are off on a fairly quick quest to obtain the weapon. The Outlaw Rogue swords were obtained by commandeering a pirate ship from an undead crew and then killing their leader in a cave she was hiding in. The quest was quick, fun, and gave me my first piece of new gear in the new expansion.
After you finish your quest for your Artifact Weapon you learn how to level it up and how to upgrade it and then you are shipped off to the Broken Isles to start questing. One of the nice features they have implemented is scaled mobs on the Broken Isles. This means that you can choose any of the 5 locations to start your questing and the mobs will be scaled to the level that you are. You can join up with a friend who may be further along at level 106 and you are level 100 and you can both do the same quests (as long as he hasn’t done them before) and not be affected by your level difference at all. One of the downsides I found to this was due to me being on a PVP server. Typically when you are leveling, all the players on the other faction are leveling in the zones of the appropriate level so the guy who is level 109 is not in the same area as the guy who is level 103. With this system in place that isn’t the case and I was ganked several times by those higher level characters, but that is the risk you run while playing on a PVP server and I will look to return the favor to lower level Alliance players in the near future. Quests are typical MMO quests, find this, kill that, take this here, etc. Blizzard tries to make some unique quests like one where I got a backpack and had to fill it with some green goop because this goblin wanted it for some odd reason. If you have played WoW before, this shouldn’t be a surprise to you and it is just part of the leveling process that we have all come to expect.
Dungeons are also a viable way to level as usual and a way to obtain gear and money and even artifact power to level up your Artifact Weapon. As a DPS, the queue times for the Dungeon finder were about an hour long so it wasn’t really viable for me to solo queue that way but if you can find yourself a healer or a tank or preferably both then you can get instant queues all night long (or if you are a healer or a tank solo queueing you can get pretty fast queues as well).
There are loads of other features that I haven’t even mentioned here including PVP and crafting which I plan on diving into this week. I will keep you updating on that since there is a whole new PVP talent system aimed at evening the playing field for PVP so it isn’t so gear based as before. Overall I think the Legion expansion it taking World of Warcraft in a direction that it has long needed and is pandering to fans in a good way to show us that Blizzard is listening to us and our suggestions and complaints.
Follow Up 1
During day 2 of my play through Legion I made my way through 4 dungeons.I joined the dungeon finder queue with a healing spec paladin friend of mine and we made our way through the new Legion dungeons. They were all created very beautifully. All 4 were vastly different and they were associated with the different zones available for leveling in the new zone, the Broken Isles.
Darkheart Thicket was particularly eye popping. It is a beautifully dark dungeon that reminds me of Spider-Man Symbiote with the thicket taking over everything in the area and corrupting. From the regular enemies to the bosses to the atmosphere, everything is as detailed and polished as you expect from a Blizzard game. The difficulty on the regular dungeons is pretty easy and forgiving. Our healer never runs out of mana and we can pull large groups of enemies without much trouble. We had a death on the team that was only due to the tank not moving out of a pretty potent poison on the ground. For dungeons meant for leveling and getting some decent gear upgrades it is a great option to break up some of the grindy monotony of questing.
Follow Up 2
I spent a good portion of the holiday weekend watching and reading coverage of PAX West, which you can find right here on Enemy Slime, and playing hours upon hours of Legion. I got to max level, 110, in one afternoon. Questing is the fastest way to level up quickly and efficiently. I would guess that it takes the average person around 10-15 hours to go from level 100 to 110 which isn’t too bad. As most MMO veterans will tell you, once you hit max level that is when the game truly starts and that is most definitely the case with Legion. Once you grind out those 10 levels you open up an entire world, literally, of things to do including world quests, PVP honor system, building up your class hall followers, etc.
World quests open up the entire Broken Isles with quests that are on a timer in each zone. The quests give things such as gold, artifact power to continue leveling up your artifact weapon, gear, and class hall resources. All of these things are worth pursuing and depending on what you feel like going after you have the choice of which quests to do. I spent most of my time on these world quests once I hit 110 and it was a very rewarding experience. That carrot on a stick so to speak was very much dangling in front of me the entire time and I was happy to keep grasping for it.
The PVP honor system is a new system in place to give you PVP specific talents which only affect PVP fights. It is part of Blizzard’s effort to balance out PVP, but also make sure you are rewarded for your efforts. When you do anything PVP related such as world PVP quests, battlegrounds, arenas, etc.you are given honor which helps you level up your honor talents. You start at level 1 and as far as I can tell you go up to 46 or maybe 50 gaining different talent choices along the way. The talent system is identical to the regular class talents you obtain while leveling except these are PVP centric and are only active when you are in PVP combat. To stick with my theme here, this too is a rewarding experience that kept me coming back for more to keep pushing my honor level higher and higher. I will have to continue to play PVP and get my honor level all the way up before I can give an accurate response on how balanced the PVP is with these new talents and if there are any stand out problems. As things are now I feel very powerful as an Outlaw spec Rogue and I am able to dispatch most enemies in PVP battle 1v1, but that is how Rogues have been since the beginning of WoW so not much has changed there.
Building up your class hall is an integral part of the Legion experience and another way Blizzard keeps you hooked and wanting more. It is very similar to Garrisons from the WoD expansion without the downside of feeling alone. As I discussed in my initial impressions, class halls are full of different players all working on building up their class hall. Blizzard has done something amazing with the way they can make things visible to some players and not to others even though you can see each other since you are standing in the same spot. I know that sentence doesn’t make much sense so let me try to explain. All throughout the World of Warcraft there are times when players are in the exact same physical space (virtually physical space) yet what you see in front of you may be different because I am a level 110 Rogue who has collected more items for the class hall than this level 102 Rogue has. I can see the extra things I have collected but he can’t even though we can see each other in the same room. It is a great way to make sure players don’t feel alone in their own zoned area while also tailoring the visual world to represent the achievements you have made as an individual player. The class hall executes this exact thing wonderfully. In order to build up your class hall you need to gather Class Hall Resources which can be obtained through quests, dungeons, and treasure chests scattered throughout the Broken Isles. You use these resources to send your followers on missions to level up and to also give you special rewards. We learned during the WoW Legion panel at PAX that there is also going to be an app releasing soon that will allow us to manage our followers and class hall from our phones which is exciting. Allowing you to manage your followers on the go and have the rewards waiting for you when you return to the computer is a welcomed addition.
This review is already getting to the point where I am sure anyone still reading is wondering when it is going to end. I could write at least 3000 more words on what I have experienced in this new expansion thus far and I still would not be able to cover everything I have done. That alone speaks to the vastness of Legion and what can be done in this new world. The new expansion into the World of Warcraft universe is truly a renaissance for Blizzard’s heavy hitting franchise and one that I will be playing for a very long time to come. I would highly recommend this game to anyone who has ever played World of Warcraft in the past and even those new players (if such a person exists) who has never played the game before and is looking for a fun MMORPG experience.
