First Impressions – World of Warcraft: Legion

Hmm, I appear to have entered a dreamlike state of pressing buttons and handing in quests. I must be playing a new World of Warcraft expansion. I am! And it’s Legion! But am I just enjoying new content, or is this new content actually as engaging as it appears to be?

It’s the expansion that Blizzard themselves said they’ve been gearing up for for many years. But right now it’s that new experience, the fresh scent, the tidied room – am I enjoying it simply because it’s all new to me, or could World of Warcraft: Legion be the expansion I’ve been waiting for? You won’t get the answer to the second question until the actual review when the endgame content has settled into my mind. This time I’m not focused on levelling up as quickly as possible but somehow the content has had me so engrossed at times that I’m levelling relatively quickly without even trying.

Just hours, even minutes before the expansion went live in Europe there was a massive conga line of mammoths sauntering around Orgrimmar. That’s not a joke, that’s not a quip about Taurens; I have picture evidence! The days leading up to Legion I spent many mind-numbing hours power levelling an Orc Mage to 100 using the invasions so I could play with Horde friends – believe me, I could celebrate with a glass of champagne watching the sun go down over the cliffs of Dover in lieu of that achievement. Invasions got dull, fast. I levelled that fire mage because that spec is fun, varied, and versatile; their Artifact weapon looks really cool, and that’s where we’ll start because thankfully that’s where you’ll start in Legion – unless you haven’t done any pre-patch stuff but let’s just gloss over that. As for the servers at Legion’s launch, they were near enough flawless – I had one time a loading screen took a bit longer than normal and one quest that took awhile to hand in because of the amount of players trying to do it.

So far it looks like Artifacts weave you through Legion but without jamming it down your throat much like Warlords of Draenor did with Garrisons. You start Legion off almost immediately with your story to get your spec’s Artifact weapon. Now, I’ve heard some have really boring quests to get like Doomhammer for enchancement Shaman which involves travelling to Deepholm and killing Troggs – definitely hit and miss depending on your spec. For a Fire Mage, I ended up in Icecrown fighting my way towards retrieving Felo’Melorn, a one-handed sword that also comes with an off-hand. The Artifact levels as you do; rare mobs and hidden chests across The Broken Isle drop items that add artifact power to your Artifact which in turn levels it up at certain intervals of artifact power. When you level your Artifact up you go to your class hall and essentially choose a talent to add small percentages to spells within your spec. It kind of reminds me of the old old talent system getting an extra percent here and there but really feeling like you were going somewhere. That level of reward for chests and rare mobs does a wonderful job at encouraging exploration – though the zones are very hilly making some areas appear inaccessible. Trial and error to get to that chest will always reward you with something useful.

The tech that I mentioned in the pre-patch discussion about enemies scaling to your level means that players get to choose which questing area they want to start in on The Broken Isles, and once I’d done that zone, I got to choose the next one I wanted to do. Most likely, unless you just want to do dungeons, you’ll get to all four zones by 110 and maybe complete them all. This is all well and good giving players choice of where they want to quest, but the problem I have is it’s just four zones. I’m 105 right now and have just started my third zone, so I’m guessing where I am now might get me to 108 and then the final zone will be my final stretch. I have gotten the achievement for doing all the quests in both of the zones I finished because I had no immediate reason to leave.

I mentioned before that the pre-patch shows Blizzard aren’t afraid to make some heavy punches to character and story. I didn’t choose my first zone randomly; it was the only one not chosen so far out of the skype call I was in, but it happened to be one with another heavy punch blown to a character who had been around for years, and given my realm’s name it was a heavy blow. Val’Sharah was where I started and parts of it reminded me of Gorgrond, but it was still a new refreshing experience. For sticking around in a zone you get some really great story, and that’s a great compliment considering how dull and how much of a mess the story has been in the past few expansions. A lot of it is very well voice acted which could be a problem if you just want to speed to 110 – there’re various moments of standing there while two characters talk to each other for a few minutes. Any player could very easily miss the next quest by just wondering off while those characters talk, thinking that the quest line is over.

The big question for me is once I hit 110 how soon will I want to do it again. With Warlords of Draenor I didn’t get another level 100 until I came back from a years break from the game just recently – that break mainly caused by how dull I found levelling to 100. So far the levelling experience has been fun and engaging, and the idea of every class having their own hall, and every spec having their own weapon makes playing every class an enticing prospect. Oh, quick mention, the soundtrack so far has been phenomenal. But unfortunately some of the problems with Warlords of Draenor have been brought over to Legion.

Just as always you can make a lot of money on the auction house at the beginning of the expansion. I’ve sold about 120 of a new mining ore for about 15,000g, and continue to sell ores and herbs to get a quick buck. Yes, I gave my fire mage mining and herbalism just so I could make a lot of money at the start of the expansion. Again like Draenor I’m able to get ores and herbs fine even though my profession level is about 20; it’s not like last time where you got 10 small bits which you then turn into ore, I’m getting the actual ore. Professions also have quests to be able to gather more materials from each vein; herbalism ones involve getting certain items that you get from gathering that specific herb. Each herb and ore can be levelled up through the quests to get the rare items needed for the crafting professions and to gather more efficiently. This gives you reason to keep having to go back to returning main city hub Dalaran while levelling through the expansion.

So far World of Warcraft: Legion seems like it might not let me down like the past three expansions did, but I said that about the past three expansions when they first came out. I’m waiting for that moment much like free-to-play games – “when are you going to **** me?”. Levelling is well-paced for now, I don’t know whether 109-110 will be beyond painful, but in theory the fact that I could get that level in the same zone with the same quests as someone trying to get from 100-101 means that levelling all the way to 110 should be paced perfectly the whole way – I’m not going to a set 109-110 zone where all the quests take forever like in previous expansions, I’m doing what I could have done at 100. At least, I hope so. “when are you going to **** me?” At 110 is it going to be 20 different rep grinds doing 20 different sets of dull dailies? Who knows? You’ll have to find out in the review, or until you get there yourself. Until then – You are not prepared!