The big reveal yesterday at Gamescom was the next expansion for World of Warcraft, called Legion. Lots of coverage on other sites, Massively OP had a live blog going on and a good summary of the main features. There’s also the teaser trailer from Youtube:
The presentation had some highlights for me as an ex-player of the game:
- The admission that Blizzard screwed-up by making 5-man dungeons throw-away content – they should be present and meaningful throughout the leveling experience.
- The idea of artifact weapons was interesting, more character customisation is always a good thing.
- The lore is a real mish-mash but some bits interest me, in particular the Titan and Vrykul references.
- Finally the chance for druids to customise their appearance, but will Balance druids be ignored yet again or will they too get the cool new skins?
My thoughts after watching the reveal stream were along these lines:
- The continued orcs (Guldan) & demons theme doesn’t excite me, it feels like Warlords of Draenor part II.
- Demonhunters will be using a rage-style mechanic, I really dislike that mechanic in WoW.
- The class hall is Garrisons version 2.0, no details as to whether they’ve learned any lessons from the impact Garrisons had on the Draenor era of the game.
For the moment I’m left ambivalent, I’m not that tempted to jump back into the game based on this reveal alone. Maybe when I see more details I’ll consider it. I’d need a free boost to level 100 though as I’m not buying Draenor and grinding through 10 levels just to get to content I want to play. I watched my husband play through the storylines on his computer so I really don’t need to see it myself.
Let’s hope the artifact weapon grind won’t have too heavy an emphasis on super-directive play – previous legendary item grinds felt like Blizzard forcing me to do content I wouldn’t normally touch (PVP, LFR etc). If there are options as to how you develop the weapon then I’d be much more interested to give this expansion a go.
GamingSF 
A couple of things:
– The issue with Dungeons in WoD was that they were irrelevant after a week or so at end game. This they “say” they will fix.
– From what I’m reading, it’s only Cat & Bear getting the looks; probably as you can see weapons on Boomkins (and a lot of people use that heathen glyph anyway). Awful if they don’t at least finally update those models though.
-I guess WoD will be moved into the base pack when Legion is released, so you shouldn’t need to buy it. There’ll be a level 100 boost with Legion apparently and it “sounds” like Demonhunters will finish their stories at 100.
– It “sounds” like you can earn artifact power to upgrade your weapon through most endgames content – so hopefully that will be a choice of quests, dungeons, raid, pvp etc. and nothing forced.
I really like the sounds of the Class Spec questlines and the focus on class, hopefully this will give some depth and variance to the classes; and I love that they will send you out to old zones and highlights from past expansions. I’m already excited to go finish levelling my alts so that I have them ready to see the different chains. I do worry though that Healers won’t be able to level in other specs without being able to level their healing weapons – but hopefully that won’t be the case. We’ll see.
I do wish this wasn’t about the Legion; but it does sound like we won’t see many Orcs, so hopefully it will feel different to WoD.
I really hope that they allow you to get the artifact for all the specs you play, I would really hate take the Ashbringer for my Retribution spec and then not being able to get the tanking one when I normally level as Protection.
I’m sure they will – my worry is whether you have to be in the right spec to level it. E.g. do I HAVE to quest as Mistweaver to level that weapon rather than questing as Brewmaster
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The overall reaction seems pretty lukewarm, myself included. There’s a lot of cool ideas, but also a lot of potential pitfalls, and a lot of cut corners. Demon hunters only having two specs is a huge disappointment — every post launch class has been pure melee; would it have killed them to add a bow spec?
I do like the idea of artifact weapons, and a lot of the new locations look really cool, but after the debacle of WoD, I find it very hard to be excited. We’ll see.
Regarding dungeons, I would like to point out they had the exact same rhetoric at the start of WoD, and five-man content became even more irrelevant than ever. I’d like to believe it’s true, but I’m taking it with a huge grain of salt.
Also, not sure if you’re aware, but balance druids can already customize their appearance quite a lot with the Glyph of Stars. Not that an updated moonkin form wouldn’t be nice, but they already have more visual options than feral and guardian druids.
I did a big huge blog post on Legion if you’re interested in my in-depth thoughts: http://superior-realities.com/2015/08/06/world-of-warcraft-legion-announced/
Glyph of the Stars is the “heathen glyph” I mentioned above. It is a foul corruption and should never be used by any respectable Boomkin! 😉
Great blogpost and I pretty much agree with your sentiments throughout. 2 specs on DH really sounds like cutting corners and the non-Legion stuff sounding the most interesting is spot on! A real shame they didn’t just make Azshara the baddy.
It does feel like this is going to be the other half of the content of WoD. Hopefully the spec stories will be good at least and the weapon levelling will be good and not just a copy of talents / path of the Titans.
Btw, you may have seen since your blog – Chiltern’s interview with Icy Veins implies that Warlocks may be losing Meta or at least a lot of it is going – as you suspected 😦
Overall the announcement was better than I expected in so far as the emphasis on class identity is long overdue, enough with the homogenisation of the classes! May be a bit weird if Alliance and Horde characters are in the same class hall though – it works for Druids but can you really see Orc and Human Warriors being that comfortable together?
@Meznir: Yeah, an expansion with Azshara as the main villain is long overdue.
I did see the bad news for demo locks. I guess the advantage of how little I play WoW these days is that I’m less invested, so I’m not as enraged as I could be, but it’s still a low move. I like warlocks and demo despite pets, not because of them, so I reckon my days as a demonologist are over. I considered replacing my warlock with a demon hunter (my lock is already pretty much a demon hunter RP-wise), but then my character roster would be entirely melee, and I don’t want that. Might go back to destruction, but it’s such a turret spec these days, and I hate that. Maybe affliction? I don’t know.
I question the wisdom of another massive class shake-up, especially since this seems the biggest one yet. I do kind of hope rogues get an overhaul, though — we badly need one. A ranged spec for rogues has always been my dream, but historically Blizzard tends to have trouble remembering rogues exist, so I’m not holding my breath.
@Telwyn: Truthfully I never understood the uproar over class homogenization. WoW classes still feel a lot more distinct from each other than they do in most other games I play. Really the only cause for complaint I see is that a few classes (mostly just rogues, mages, and hunters) have way too much similarity between their specs.
I also don’t think it’s very weird for class halls to be cross-faction. The Horde/Alliance conflict has basically no basis in lore and has always been nothing but a justification for PvP. It’s always been the case that we unite with the other faction against the big bads, so this is just the logical continuation of that.