WoW Legion, Last Impressions

12 September, 2016. 2,200 words.

In this post I will share my thoughts on the new features found in Legion. This will probably be the last time I talk about WoW since, barring a last minute change of heart, I’m planning to let my subscription end today, the 12th.

A brief character status update: In case you’re wondering, the brick wall hits in Suramar, the fifth zone. That’s where the grind begins and you’ll start wondering why you ever came back to WoW. This is the exact quest that did it for me:

I went looking for other fun things to do. For my Hunter, there is the Unseen Path quest line, but it also bogs down in a heavy-sigh-inducing grind at this quest:

Not to mention the quest to complete five 24-hour plus Missions.

Eventually I found some more quests in Suramar, in Moon Guard Stronghold (which was a navigational pain in the butt) and in Suramar City (which looks very similar to Draumheim), but my heart wasn’t really in it. I was watching television most of the time I was going through the quests.

Artifact Weapons

The basic idea is to get a weapon that you “level up” with mostly passive traits (as opposed to leveling up your character). I’m very ambivalent about the concept. Honestly I’m weary of never-ending “skill trees” in games. I don’t want to pick whether my weapon is better at one thing or another thing. I want my weapon to be equally good at everything. In any case, I don’t see where the Artifact system adds anything particularly great to the WoW experience. It just adds complexity for complexity’s sake in my view. If I had a choice in the matter, I’d go back to regular old boring, simple weapons.

Thankfully you can transmog your Artifact weapon, so if you’re like me and you hate the idea of being a Beast Master stuck with a gun, you can change it to a bow.

Class Halls

In a previous post, I hoped that the different class paths would provide some variety for alts. Well, that hope was dashed on the rocks and drowned in waves pounding over said rocks. There’s a unique quest line for every class specialization, to get your Artifact weapon, and that’s basically it. Beyond that, the main purpose of Class Halls is upgrading your Artifact weapon. But in leveling from 100 to 110, there’s little reason to upgrade your Artifact, so visits to your Class Hall are largely irrelevant, except to pick up occasional quests that start there. (There’s nothing functional in the Class Hall, like mailboxes or trainers or banks or anything, so Dalaran is always going to be your better choice as a hub.)

Maybe Class Halls were designed for people who liked Garrisons and managing those missions. Sort of like an optional Garrison component. (Like the Pet Battle system. If you like it, it’s cool, but if you don’t, you can safely ignore it.)

Zone Level Scaling

This is a neat feature, although it had little practical impact on my game. The only real effect is that you can decide which order to play the zones. But there’s only four zones to choose from, so it’s not a tremendous difference.

(A more cynical view of level scaling would be that it makes the milestones of reaching levels 101 through 109 somewhat pointless, as no new territory unlocks upon reaching those levels.)

Transmog

By modern MMORPG standards, the new WoW transmog system for customizing your wardrobe is still a bit primitive, but for tourists like me, at least it’s within the realm of feasibility to change outfits. Given that you only get one gear set from Legion’s questing rewards, it’s a good thing, too.

Honor Talents

I discovered when I reached 110 that there are yet more traits available to customize your character, over and above the regular Traits. These are for PvP, though, so I ignored them entirely.

Bonus Objectives

I think these were in Draenor but just in case, I’ll include them here. (I don’t remember so many being in Draenor.) These are the larger quest-like objectives that you get just by entering an area, somewhat like public quests, except they are solo objectives for you alone, and typical reward Class Hall resources. At first I enjoyed them and finished all of them, but then I started to resent how much time it took to finish them among other competing players. When I realized that Class Halls and their rewards were somewhat pointless, I started to skip the Bonus Objectives.

For some reason, these Bonus Objectives stop at level 110. I guess at that point they turn into World Quests.

World Quests

From what I can gather, these are what you’re supposed to do in WoW for the next two years, until the next expansion. Basically you run to a spot on the map and do what it says to do, and then you get a reward which is usually either Class Hall Resources or Artifact experience or gold. They are somewhat similar to levemetes in FFXIV, except they are spread out all over the map.

My choice to continue subscribing depended a lot on whether these things would be fun, and to be blunt, they aren’t. They are a treadmill of time-killing chores with negligible rewards (at least, rewards that are meaningful to me). I’ve heard they are better than the usual endgame status quo in WoW, and if that’s true, I’m very sorry for the folks in the WoW community who are unwilling or unable to try other games. Better to leave until the next expansion, when Blizzard will give us all the gear we would have gotten, without having to suffer through all this drudgery.

Companion Mobile App

It’s pretty cool, but as described above, Class Halls are not very interesting or necessary, and the missions therein feel very pointless to me. Therefore, the companion app is mostly an exercise in using up a phone battery.

Zones

I can’t remember enough about each zone to give individual reviews. But in general, I enjoyed the smaller scale zone stories and mini-stories found in side quests. (I generally prefer each quest to be its own self-contained short story anyway.) Often I find WoW to be too over-the-top silly, but I didn’t run into much of that, for which I was thankful. The overarching Legion story did not hook me, but I’ve never been invested enough in Azeroth to care whether the Legion destroys the world anyway. (The scenario at The Exodar was pretty cool, though.)

Val’shara had one of the more memorable and touching zone stories as I recall. I also remember Val’shara seemed very small compared to the other zones, and I got very confused after wandering into something like a PvP arena (Black Rook something I think?). I had to Hearthstone out of there twice after I got stuck in a section from which there was no apparent exit. After that I abandoned that quest line.

I remember thinking Stormheim was unusual in the way it was divided into a Norse area and a Greymane-versus-Sylvanas grudge match. It didn’t seem to “flow” from one story area to the other. Getting thrown into Helheim was an interesting twist, though, and it was pretty amusing to see all the people packed in there running around helter-skelter. The cut scene of Greymane facing off against Sylvanas was very cool. (Wish I could see it again.)

I don’t particularly care for the Taurens and their not-so-subtle Native American shtick, so that bogged down my enjoyment of Highmountain. (It always makes me slightly uncomfortable and worried that I’m indirectly supporting racism.) The scenario where you relived Hulm Highmountain’s exploits was pretty hilarious though (a clone army of Hulms!), and it was cool to see the Nesingway hunting party again. (I haven’t seen them since Stranglethorn, so that was one of the most nostalgic moment of the expansion for me.)

All of the zones are visually beautiful. There are so many places where you simply have to stop and take a screenshot. In fact, many places actually look … hold onto your hats … realistic. Particularly areas of Stormheim.

At this point, though, I have to wag a finger at WoW, as I do most MMORPGs, for not having sufficient screenshot controls. How many times would I have loved to be able to pan the camera viewport up or down, left or right? Every time, that’s how many. And the names! The cursed, stinking, rotten names that don’t go away when you hide the UI. Eventually I just started playing with most names turned off. (I know there’s supposed to be macros to hide all that stuff before taking screenshots, but I don’t have enough patience to deal with that just for this one game.)

Dungeons

This is the first time I’ve ever done any dungeons in WoW at the time they were released. I didn’t do any dungeons in Draenor, the only other expansion I played at launch, because I don’t remember there being any quests that led you into dungeons. Or maybe I just ignored them. Or maybe I did them and totally forgot about it. I honestly don’t remember much of anything about my time in Draenor.

The Broken Isles questing is organized such that the last quest in each zone takes you into a dungeon which finishes up the story and grants you the widget that Khadgar sent you to the zone for in the first place. I did the four dungeons at the end of the first four zones, two twice, one three times, for a grand total of seven dungeon runs. They were noticeably more complex than the dungeons I’ve done leveling from 1 to 70, but they weren’t exactly hardcore either. Deadly Boss Mods and previous MMORPG dungeon experience got me through most of the mechanics without much trouble.

Most runs were 20-30 minutes, but one of them took about 40 minutes to get through-I think it was the one in Highmountain-and I felt like I was going to die of impatience by the end of it.

Interestingly, more than one of those dungeon runs included a Demon Hunter tank. Demon Hunters have been pretty popular on my server group. I’d guess a very healthy percentage of players decided to start out with a Demon Hunter, instead of continuing an existing class.

One difference I noticed in dungeons is a lack of need or greed rolls. The game automatically selects which person gets the loot, and only that person can loot the item from the boss. It’s a nice addition. I don’t know if that’s new in this expansion or if it’s been in the game a while, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it.

I’ve heard people complaining of dungeon queues, but I was in every dungeon as DPS within seconds, up until Saturday, the 10th, when I spent hours and hours waiting to get into Eye of Azsuna to get Advanced Corks.

Launch Issues

There were none for me. It was a totally flawless launch. One of the few things I do remember from Draenor was a lot of bugs, so this was a big improvement for Blizzard.

Wish List

I miss the pre-expansion Invasions. They were by far the most fun part of the expansion for me. Unless I’m missing something, there is nothing like that in the Broken Isles. They should bring them back. If nothing else, invasions would provide an alternative path to leveling from 100 to 110. (Once-in-a-blue-moon Kosumoth world bosses don’t count.)

I would have liked to see a lot more variety in the look of gear received as quest rewards. You only get one set of gear as an option, with minor color variations, all the way through. It made quest rewards totally unsurprising and humdrum. “Oh look, it’s another weird ring-shaped halo head piece for my Mage, same as before.” If you want anything other than “Standard Legion Class X” gear you have to grind dungeons or raids or transmog it up.

I mentioned this in my other post, but I would love to be able to read text from previous quests, replay cut scenes, and/or replay voiceovers and exposition, particularly exposition that happens during travel times. WoW tends to deliver story in very specific ways, and if you miss it or blink at the wrong time, you’re out of luck. I just want a little more control over the way I consume the story.

Curiosities

Why does the Dalaran Hearthstone sort to the bottom of my bags while my other two Hearthstones sort to the top?

Conclusions

Overall Legion is a fun expansion if you enjoy leveling in WoW, which I do, in short bursts. It is very much still WoW, though. It has not magically transformed into a new MMORPG. It’s still worth about one month of gaming enjoyment. But there isn’t enough “newness” in the expansion to make me want to continue a subscription.

In conclusion, I’ve seen a big chunk of the new stuff, I enjoyed it, I took a lot of great screenshots, now I’m ready to unsubscribe until the next expansion.