Earlier this week I had the pleasure of attending the Blizzard Summit. With the arrival of the Warcraft film in addition to World of Warcraft: Legion right around the corner, Blizzard Entertainment invited press to come to Irvine and spend a couple days with them. I couldn’t pass up such an opportunity.
During day one I saw the premier of the film, which reminded me how much I love Warcraft. With Warcraft dominating my mind, I was glad that the next morning I was able to play Legion for a total of three hours (you can watch me play in a video below), in addition to talking to Blizzard employees about the game.
I am happy to report that Legion has the potential to become a truly exceptional expansion. Below I’ll share my thoughts on some of the systems I explored in addition to new information I learned.
Dungeon Emphasis
Over the past several years World of Warcraft‘s endgame has evolved to become heavily focused on raids, in some cases at the expense of other types of content. For example, Blizzard has invested a metric ton of resources into the Looking for Raid system, raids with more than 10 bosses, and epic stories that branch across raid boss completion.
While raids will still be an important element of World of Warcraft‘s future, Blizzard has decided to invest a lot more time into dungeons. It’s developed scaling Mythic dungeons that allow progression PvE players to spend the bulk of their time clearing dungeons in smaller groups. It has also created a large number of dungeons that will be accessible from the get-go, ranging from Eye of Azshara to Halls of Valor.
This is something that many fans of World of Warcraft have been asking for in recent years. In my experience, it hasn’t been since Burning Crusade that dungeons are something worth revisiting after acquiring all their gear during the initial weeks after an expansion or major content update release. Blizzard wants to change that, and everything I’ve seen leads me to believe that it will be successful in its goal of making dungeons more meaningful and attractive.
Ultimately, dungeons provide an accessible, more concise way to have your skill and teamwork tested, and in a format that is perhaps more intimidate and memorable than other PvE options.
I’m a Demon Hunter, Hear Me Scream
I played through the entire Demon Hunter starting area for my second time while at the event—I also completed it at BlizzCon 2015. As many others have stated, it’s an incredibly fun class. The glaives are a flashy weapon that makes face-to-face encounters thrilling. You’ll likely find the class so enjoyable that you’ll want to stay in combat as much as possible, and for that the high mobility of the class, with its options to double jump, glide, and transition between enemies quickly, will accommodate you.
I tried out the Vengeance tank spec this time around and enjoyed its ability to retain AoE aggro. Thre’s great synergy between the skills, particularly when it comes to those that are mobility-oriented. I suspect that while the Demon Hunter may not be able to mitigate damage as well as a Warrior or Paladin, it will be superb as an off-tank and dungeon tank when it comes to picking up and clearing groups of enemies.
World Quest Entertainment
World Quests are a huge element of Legion‘s repertoire. These are quests obtained from your Class Hall that send you out into the world to complete tasks. Although they might sound like the quests we’ve seen in Warlords of Draenor, they function much more interestingly thanks to their breadth.
World Quests come in many shapes and forms. Yes, there are kill quests, but there are also dungeon activities, pet battles, and outdoor PvP. While playing a level 110 Paladin at the Preview Event I was tasked with killing a rare spawn; my friend received a very different quest. Every day will be different, resulting in less redundancy.
Outside of their large quantity, World Quests succeed in incentivizing high level players to head out into the zones of Legion instead of sitting around in town. Due to the way that zones scale with your level, all of them will be viable locales for you to visit in order to complete World Quests no matter what level you are. The result is a world that feels larger.
Class Trials
Character Boost has become a big part of modern World of Warcraft, as it has been the most reasonable way for new players to catch up with veterans, and for veterans to play new classes without investing a month or two going through the same leveling experience they completed years ago. Over time Blizzard has found that a small number of players have been dissatisfied with their class choice for Character Boost. In response, it will introduce Class Trials.
How Class Trials will work is when you Character Boost you will have the option to “try” a class for the full duration of Broken Shore (2-3 levels) before committing. This will allow players to make more informed decisions on which class they play, a neat addition.
The Beauty of Artifacts
Myself and a friend at the event had a chance to play a level 110 Paladin, Mage, and Hunter. Although we performed different tasks across all these characters, the one thing we always did is head to the Class Hall for our respective character and check out the Artifact weapon options.
Put simply, Legion‘s Artifact weapons are the greatest demonstration of skill from Blizzard’s art team that I’ve ever seen. The weapons are remarkably beautiful, and every class has multiple unlockable options with a set of color choices. Even the Mage’s 1H sword options were downright spectacular. Players are going to look more flashy than ever in Legion, that’s for certain.
Killing with Honor
As much as I enjoy PvE in World of Warcraft, I’ve always been a PvP driven player. I am happy to report that Legion has the most significant additions for PvP players that the game has seen in years, perhaps since Vanilla’s introduction of the honor system or Burning Crusade‘s Arena patch.
Legion‘s new talent point based system includes 50 levels to obtain. Every few levels you will acquire a new passive or active skill that makes you stronger in PvP. These skills have a noticeable impact on the game environment, making your effort feel rewarded. That said, they only affect non-ranked PvP, so they won’t cause imbalances in ranked competitive matches.
If you play enough, then eventually you’ll reach the honor level cap of 50. At this point you’ll need to decide whether you want to Prestige, unlocking unique rewards such as mounts and transmogrification equipment, or stay at 50 and remain highly competitive. It’s a Call of Duty-esque system that will help myself and many others remain interested in battleground PvP well beyond acquiring our full set of honor gear.
Putting the Order Back in Halls
Let me just get this out of the way: Order Halls are nothing like Garrisons. I know some players have been worried about this, but they function in a way that is much better.
For one, Order Halls are social. I found myself surrounded by other players in the Paladin Order Hall during my play session (as seen in the video below), and since they belonged to the same class there’s a sense of community. They are also varied. I was able to visit a distinct Order Hall for each class that I tried, and they are beautiful in addition to being designed to perfectly capture the design language of each class. Lastly, they don’t have a ton of Garrison Missions that you constantly need to attend to. While there are quests to be acquired within each Class Hall, some of which employ Followers, they are smaller in number and make use of the game world.
This feature does a few things for World of Warcraft. For one, it helps to emphasize class individuality. Every hall has a distinct vibe, and is exclusive to that particular class. It also helps to push players out into the various areas of the world. Every Order Hall is separated from the others, so while Paladins might spend a great deal of time in Eastern Plaguelands, Rogues dwell in the Sewers of Dalaran. It’s also great for leveling alts, if only to gain access to the halls that you want to see for yourself in person.
The only complaint I had with Order Halls during my play session that a few were much harder to reach than others. For example, a portal to the Paladin Order Hall is located directly in Dalaran. Meanwhile, the Hunter Order Hall had no portal in sight, and none of the Blizzard employees that I spoke to at the event knew any better way to get to it than to spend valuable time flying to Highmountain. I suspect this will change by the time release arrives, though.
Greater Longevity
I was one of millions of players who enjoyed Warlords of Draenor at launch. Sadly, post-release patches have been handled in such a way that content droughts have been the norm. Remaining invested for long periods of time has been a rarity.
Blizzard is fully aware of this and has been preparing to make Legion a fulfilling expansion for all players, including those who remain subscribed for its full duration. This will be achieved through several methods, including more frequent patches that introduce compelling content. These patches are likely to end up being smaller than what we saw from Warlords of Draenor, but at the very least they will continuously introduce new activities to participate in. Expanding upon the World Quest system will be one element of these patches, in addition to ultimately introducing more than a dozen dungeons and three raid tiers.
I perceive the greater diversity of content through additions such as the new Honor System and focus on dungeons helping tremendously with play value. Post-launch patches will simply be the icing on the cake.
Demon Invasion
Prior to the release of Legion on August 30th, a “major pre-expansion patch” will debut similar to previous expansions. This patch will include many things that prepare the game for its new additions, including an Azeroth-wide event.
In the case of Legion, this event will be a Demon Invasion. Areas such as Hillsbrad Foothills and Azshara will have high level demons appear. Your goal will be to defend Azeroth against the demonic attack by killing demons, including those of high rank. Your success will grant you multiple rewards including an achievement and Nethershards.
Beyond the Demon Invasion it’s said that the Demon Hunter class will be released alongside the update as well as some of Legion‘s feature set. So, you may want to plan to come back to World of Warcraft sooner than August 30th, or at least Blizzard wants you to.
Transmog with Ease
I had a chance to play around with the new Transmogrification interface. It’s housed within the “Collections” menu, and similar to the other panels is highly intuitive. Essentially, you can take any item in your possession and add it to a set of collected gear that will remain with you forever.
From the panel you can view individual pieces and create custom sets. Due to its ease of use, collection of gear in addition to customizing outfits is certain to become much more attractive to more players.
Harbingers Animated Series
Blizzard shared its plan to release several animated videos in the near future that showcase iconic characters such as Illidan in narrative pieces. I had the opportunity to watch the first one, and enjoyed what I saw.
These videos will be around five minutes in length and have a sort of “stop and go” style of animation where sequences are pieced together with still frames, although the camera moves around and special effects move around the characters. The art is beautiful, and if nothing else the videos will serve as a way to help introduce players into the world of Legion.
