World of Warcraft: Legion has just completed the first big leg in its delivery of content.
You're here because you might be looking for someone to share their thoughts on this
expansion.
Or you're not playing WoW currently, and you're wondering if now is a good time to
jump in.
Hey it's Soul, and I'm going to give an almost review of World of Warcraft: Legion.
But reviews of an MMO are hard, aren't they?
The Legion experience will be very different if you've played it since its launch or
just jumped in during the last month or two.
And it really gets complicated when it comes to different people's playstyles.
On top of that it's difficult to give a review when MMOs change constantly.
Legion has its core components in place but a lot's changed since its announcement a
few years ago, up to where we are as of March.
So throughout this video I'll hope to answer two questions: Has Legion been a good expansion
up to this point?
And is Legion worth picking up now?
So let's set things up.
The World of Warcraft has carried the boon and burden of being the number one MMO for
years, defining an MMO generation, and maybe even holding it back from innovating.
With every expansion it's been pressured to change things up, to stick to its roots,
to revolutionize and innovate or refine and polish or just give up and release Legacy
realms.
For every review you'll see of this game including this one you'll find no less than
fifty fans who disagree.
The World of Warcraft over its 12 plus year history, is a perfect flaw.
It's an anomaly of a success, a perfect storm of design, timing, and luck.
But when you break WoW into a sum of its parts you see the details, the cracks in the armor,
the flaws that both marr and define it as a game.
But so many will compare its iterations based on its expansions.
Legion follows in the footsteps of Warlords of Draenor, an expansion that, in so few words,
was a weak delivery.
In a way, you'd want to think that after an expansion like Warlords, which is often
argued specifically as having too little to do except raid and diddle around in front
of a table, Legion has got to be a better expansion, right?
The answer is yes, but it's not because Warlords set the bar so low.
Granted, by comparing the first five months of Legion against the first five months of
Warlords we can say that Legion has delivered more raids, dungeons, world bosses, organic
content platforms and available activities to do on a daily basis.
If we look at Legion as a vessel of potential, it certainly has it.
We'll soon have the Tomb of Sargeras and Argus to look forward to while Warlords'
last major delivery of content came in the form of Tanaan Jungle and Hellfire Citadel,
which in my opinion, was still a good raid, but with regards to premier content delivery,
that was about it.
But let's move away from the comparisons, otherwise we'd be here all day.
Legion ought to be measured on its own merits and not compared to an expansion that's
demonstrably worse.
Nor should it be compared to any other expansions or Classic WoW.
Legion brings players a delivery of content and progression paths that's borderline
overwhelming in its ambition.
More than any expansion, Legion has empowered players with choice, which has so far proven
to be a double edged sword; it's liberating for some, but a door to endless gameplay for
others.
Let's start with the featured content.
The Demon Hunter has been a long awaited class to finally be introduced in World of Warcraft:
Legion.
It was more than an obvious choice to bring in the glaive wielding, demon slaying edgelord.
As the third class to be added since WoW's launch, and the second "hero class," it
was predictably met with mixed reactions despite the fanfare, nostalgia and the inclusion of
its godfather, Illidan Stormrage, making his return.
Some players were unhappy that this iconic class only included a melee and a tank specialization,
making this the first time a class only had two to choose from.
Blizzard came back to state that despite their efforts, they couldn't come up with an effective
third spec, be it another melee, ranged or even healer, that fit the class' theme and
fantasy.
Nonetheless the Demon Hunter is here, and is reasonably well represented among the raiding
community, including the reigning World First guild, Exorsus.
Looking away at representation at the higher skillband, the Demon Hunter is just fun to
play.
It somehow has its own unique feel thanks to the usage of sigils and demonic abilities.
Even what I thought was just a gimmicky gliding skill proved to be part of the Demon Hunter's
iconic look and feel.
Every class and spec is given its own unique, named weapon to complement its role in Legion,
naturally to either directly or indirectly beat up bad guys, who we know as the Burning
Legion.
This was one part of a paradigm Blizzard calls "class fantasy," which may or may not
have obtained a meme like status, but this was a partial answer to players' outcry
for more class or spec specific quests that were around in previous expansions.
Artifact Weapons serve as both an instrument of pain as well as a content delivery system.
It's essentially a weapon that gains experience well beyond the character's maximum level,
clocking at 110 in Legion.
It comes with its own questline to develop and later, upgrade.
To supplement the boredom of otherwise having only one weapon or dozens of Ashbringers flailing
around, numerous skin unlocks have been made available since Legion's launch, with more
to come in future patches.
The artifacts weapons themselves encompass the history of Warcraft itself, partially
embedded thanks to its games and books, but most of the weapons have a story created specific
to its deployment in this expansion.
Weapons like the Ashbringer and Doomhammer are easy to identify, but what's Ebonchill,
if not a kind of iced latte?
Each of the few dozen weapons available to all the game's classes and specs were given
its own backstory or additional story to back up existing lore.
Some weapons feel more epic than others, but personally I applaud the effort if not the
result.
Artifacts gain experience through Artifact Power, a progression currency that is obtained
through various activities and strengthens the weapon as well as the character's stats
throughout the expansion's lifetime.
It's been marred by the player sentiment around the social pressure, or need to power
up the weapon as quickly as possible, even though there have been systems introduced
since Legion's launch that help speed this process along for latecomers, alts or for
players who just want to enjoy the game casually.
The features of the Artifacts and its progression defines a system that frees players from feeling
forced to meet a daily or weekly cap of activity, and instead, farm or grind to their content.
On the flip side we can also look at the system as a long, long race to the finish, a challenge
to players' self control and maybe a test against human limitations.
I've reviewed this system exhaustively over the months and have decided that this is an
attempt by Blizzard to do a lot less hand-holding when comes to a player's personal progression,
and as usual, conduct their own study to see how a system like this plays out.
It's my opinion that the system may be an evolution of more dated progression systems,
but in one way it threatens to draw a line between vague labels like casual and hardcore.
Players just coming into Legion will have a speedier experience when it comes to powering
up their weapon thanks to a few mechanisms, so you can get closer to the action as soon
as you hit level 110.
This has been Blizzard's thing for a while now, to not want to punish players who happen
to join in during an expansion's lifecycle as opposed to the very start.
Each day, more and more players are obtaining the current maximum ranks for one or more
of their weapons, much like how a player runs out of options to spend Valor points on.
Future content hopes to further enhance the overall longevity of the system with more
milestones to hit, skins to unlock and ways to catch up.
The reaction to the eventual shifting of the goalpost has been mixed among players.
Those who think of progressing through their artifact weapons as a race to complete see
this as an endless grind.
On the other hand, those who play under the premise that they will always be a little
bit stronger at the end of a play session see this as a more passive, automatic system.
It's been stated by Blizzard that this feature isn't likely to advance to future expansions,
but the question remains as to what if any components of this system will.
I'm skeptical about holding onto such an iconic weapon, but I really dig the idea of
having a weapon that we build up over a long period of time, as opposed to replacing it
as soon as we kill the next boss on our best in slot list.
It brings back the feeling of role playing again, and I hope I get to see myself creating
and powering up a weapon or item entirely of my choosing.
Legendary gear isn't new to WoW.
They've come in various forms of delivery and inclusiveness.
In the most previous expansion they were more of a companion item; it came in the form of
a single ring that advanced over the course of the expansion's story.
In Legion there are dozens of legendaries available, but only obtainable through chance,
and not a pre-defined event or quest.
Legendaries are, at the moment, the most visible centerpiece of dissatisfaction among players
who don't like this or any system that limits control of their own destiny.
It's nothing new; results from a random number generator or RNG have been around the
block for a while now, but having zero control over the drop rate of a highly coveted item
is a thorn on the side of players under the influence that gear = power = success.
This might not be the majority mindset of WoW players, but it's certainly a reasonable
argument that has warranted a response from Blizzard, even if they're small steps that
come in the form of craftable and targeted legendaries in a future patch.
The current director of the World of Warcraft has admitted that Legendaries are a flawed
system due to the items themselves and not so much its drop rate.
Some Legendaries provide some utility while others provide a significant damage boost.
This has led to the obvious perception that obtaining a dps legendary is good and everything
else is bad.
Couple that with an uncontrollable chance of them dropping and you have a recipe of
social toxicity between haves and have-nots.
Blizzard is making efforts to blur the differences between these dps and utlility legendaries
in a number of ways.
Personally I think that for new and casual players, Legendaries are a neat bonus to enjoy
whenever they drop.
And if they don't, it's nothing to really sweat over.
Let's move on to where Legion will take players, to the Broken Isles themselves.
With little doubt, more effort and detail has been put into building the Broken Isles
than in any previous continent introduced in WoW.
Each turn you take can lead you somewhere, and rewards you with a rare encounter, a treasure
chest or mini event.
Nooks and crannies are peppered throughout the zones that help players cut through the
beaten path even if flight won't be available until after completing a lengthy series of
objectives in an upcoming patch.
Thankfully there's an item that helps you get around at endgame, too.
New lighting and graphics effects have also brought about more vivid colors and maybe
more importantly, darker nights.
Another strong delivery of voiceovers helps shape the day to day experience, although
some voices are more enjoyable than others, and even the biggest fans can only handle
harpies for so long.
Legion's strongest and most immersive delivery comes in the form of the full on city that
was created in the Suramar zone, complete with a zoo, winery, and a lot of guards.
It's easily one of my favorite World of Warcraft zones of all time.
But a plus and a minus regarding the Broken Isles as a whole lie with its density.
The zones thrive with activity thanks to daily activities and their relatively close proximity
to one another, but somehow Legion continues a direction by Blizzard to shorten the physical
gaps between points A, B and C. This's just speculation but I feel like it's related
to the ever constant debate on flight which won't be accessible until patch 7.2, and
the design of traveling between objectives.
The world of Legion feels almost too dense.
In any story, there's an origin, a journey and a destination.
It's been argued that flying compromises the journey, but I question whether or not
the high density of the Broken Isles has also helped compromise the experience.
Meanwhile, dungeons and raids continue to push the boundaries of WoW's engine with
contrasts of themes.
From the depths to Helheim to the Halls of Valor, from the Nightmare to the Nighthold,
you see a lot of thought and care went towards building this world.
Legion continues a tradition of taking several dungeons and inserting them into the game
world to really bring the world to scale, and I find that really cool.
Instances like the Eye of Azshara, Court of Stars, and even the Trial of Valor and Nighthold
raids are viewable out in the open world and used for their own quests and other activities.
Of course, there is no game without an adequate story, and Blizzard went pretty far, perhaps
too far, with trying to deliver a story that paints the urgency of a Legion invasion.
Heroes fell and Legion starts off with a desperate search for items called the Pillars of Creation
that will stop the Legion's invasion and their efforts at destroying the world.
Meanwhile we're sidetracked by the looming Nightmare, an incursion from Hel, a Naga invasion
and of course, the Horde/Alliance conflict.
It's pretty loaded.
For players like me who enjoy a decent story, I can say it's a decent story considering
what there is to work with.
Every class and spec has a story to work with thanks to Class Orders, basically a club for
each of the 12 classes complete with their own questlines and characters who all decided
that since the Alliance and Horde can't stop killing each other, Class Orders will
take up the reins of defending the world, and we players get to be the leaders of our
Order.
Nice promotion, even if I don't want it.
With our Class Orders come Order halls, a special little clubhouse for our special little
club.
Every class gets a uniquely themed instanced zone, with very different levels of scale
and spectacle.
Sure, a lodge in the mountains and a hidden society under Dalaran is cool.
A giant church under a much smaller one is a bit tough to swallow.
But there are order halls in space too, be it a spaceship, interstellar temple or another
freaking planet.
Even professions have a questline and narrative built around them to deliver a more meaningful
experience than to simply learn skills from a trainer, but I've got to admit that from
an alt standpoint, this can be kind of a pain in the ass.
The environment, story and questing experience is wrapped with a scaling system that applies
to each of the Broken Isles zones and dungeons with a few exceptions.
In a nutshell, creatures will always match the player's level regardless of what zone
they travel to, and players will encounter creatures the same way even if their levels
are different.
Despite the technical complications behind the level scaling system, it's created a
natural experience for players who all experience the world similarly, whether they just landed
on the Broken Isles or they're at max level.
And it feels pretty cool.
In a way you can think of the story and questing experience to be like an open world game that
allows the freedom to go almost wherever you want and not worry too much about your current
level.
The success of this system has started numerous conversations among players asking for this
to apply to the rest of WoW's previous content in order to breathe renewed life into these
old zones.
Another part of the success comes from the fact that leveling just doesn't take very
long at all, and in fact it doesn't matter thanks to the scaling.
Levels are just a brief prerequisite to accessing more story and gameplay that would otherwise
feel disjointed if you were able to say, jump into raids and high level dungeons from the
get go.
Other features made their way into Legion, including more pets to capture and tame, and
the return of the Brawler's Guild.
Players now have wardrobe interface that saves your earned cosmetic gear, and with the WoW
Token system, not only can players purchase gametime with gold, they can resell that gametime
for Battle.net balance.
Professions have had different individual impacts in Legion.
As stated earlier, building them up involves a series of quests that take players to different
zones and even instances.
It's a nice and immersive approach, but as an endgame system I feel like it falls
flat.
Professions are supported by a rank system that improves your ability to efficiently
gather or craft, and especially for gathering, a lot of luck is needed in order to rank up
and receive bonus resources for whatever they harvest, which in my opinion is okay.
Cooking on the other hand, didn't receive the same treatment, subjecting players to
rely on pure chance to learn more efficient recipes by depositing resources into what
I consider a panda shaped black hole.
Armor crafting professions in my opinion got a significant nerf to their ability to make
decent gear.
Previously, players were restricted to either craft or wear a set amount of crafted gear
in order to not trivialize other paths to gearing.
Legion's crafting allows players to wear any number of crafted gear and upgrade it
with a special forge, but this comes with a fatal drawback: its maximum potential appears
to be trivial compared to what's possible at endgame.
In short, armor professions, in comparison to consumable professions and gathering, fall
short of my expectations.
But let's jump ahead to the endgame, shall we?
Starting with PvP, a massive overhaul was done with the gearing system in that it was
outright removed.
In its place are stat templates that activate when in instanced PvP like arenas, and the
only external influence comes from whether or not you have a high item level.
Even then this doesn't make a huge difference.
Also replacing it is a prestige-like system that rewards players with titles and other
cosmetic accolades once enough honor has been earned.
This has done strange things, most notably to water down the feeling of obtaining powerful
gear designed strictly for PvP combat.
On top of that, obtaining this gear has so far been entirely by chance in the form of
strongboxes and other mostly random elements.
Many players haven't responded well to this approach due to the unreliability of the gearing
system and as a consequence, an unreliable feeling of accomplishment.
Changes will come in a future patch, allowing players to take unwanted gear and basically
trade them in for something more desired.
Meanwhile while brand new battlegrounds weren't released or announced for launch, remixes
of previous battlegrounds will launch in the near future.
Most players at max level will participate in a system known as World Quests, an ever
rotating selection of hundreds of quests based on the adventures players took part within
each zone.
This is one of a few new content platforms in Legion that deliver a continuous nag of
there being something to do, as world quests will appear every few hours as opposed to
each day.
WQs share similarities to quests previously completed while leveling but include new activities
including basic kill and collect quests, and PvP objectives as well as non combat WQs like
completing profession work orders, collecting resources and cheating at a shell game.
To not overwhelm players, WQs are sorted into requests by emissaries that appear each day,
asking players to complete a number of WQs related to their needs.
Doing this earns a snazzy reward, but of course players can complete WQs to their heart's
content.
I think this is a brilliant if incomplete system that takes advantage of the entirety
of the Broken Isles zones as opposed to earlier expansions that used a significantly smaller
piece of real estate for repeatable content.
A rotating system of rewards ensures that collecting nuts and squirrels won't always
give you the exact same reward, offering players opportunities to complete different quests
for the rewards they want.
Legion brings players a wide array of dungeons with a lot of fun and varied encounters.
From a haunted stronghold to deep underground caves to basically Asgard, Legion's dungeons
help to once again serve as a capstone to the questing experience in each of its zones.
Dungeons have always played a part in WoW's endgame but until now it only felt relevant
up to a certain point.
Legion brings us Mythic Keystones, a special modifier that turns a Legion dungeon into
a timed challenge mode, and with awesome loot to go with it.
Imagine a dungeon where bosses hit twice as hard and apply a healing debuff with every
attack while the party has to constantly watch the ground for volcanic explosions, and this
is on top of the boss's normal abilities.
This is another content platform that builds the premise that for players not interested
in the sometimes unforgiving requirements of raiding, completing high level mythic keystone
dungeons is a reasonable alternative that balances challenge and variety with fewer
logistical hurdles.
Of Legion's content platforms, this one is definitely my favorite.
It's kept dungeons relevant after having gone through expansion after expansion of
farming trivial heroics time and time again for little to no gain.
Like so many things in Legion, keystone dungeons offer a choice to push player skill, challenge
player's ambitions to quickly farm, or both.
In a very welcome addition that hasn't come since World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, new dungeons
have been introduced during the course of the expansion.
Karazhan, a old favorite raid from the Burning Crusade days, returns in the form of a dungeon.
Meanwhile a new Legion-themed dungeon will make its way to live servers in an upcoming
patch.
In the past I was less thrilled with dungeons being introduced mid expansion because of
the short shelf life dungeons used to have, but thanks to keystones and timewalking, these
dungeons will continue to be a worthwhile investment.
Except for Violet Hold.
Poor Violet Hold.
Of course, what's an expansion without some solid raid content?
Following a generally positive streak of solid raids that came since the start of the Mists
of Pandaria expansion, Legion brings a strong delivery of higher end PvE that, while it
wasn't without its hiccups and balance missteps, has been a generally gratifying experience.
Players tackled the Emerald Nightmare, endured the Trials of Valor and purged the Nighthold
of Legion influence.
The top end band of raiding pushed the boundaries of Blizzard's raid design as usual, exposing
a tuning flaw at the end of the Emerald Nightmare and the Trial of Valor, Legion's first two
raids.
The Nighthold raid was very well received by the raiding elite without significant hiccups
and is a satisfying conclusion that will take players to the next chapter in the defense
of Azeroth.
All of this PvE content, the raids and dungeons and world quests and all of its variations
make for a lot of options for WoW's diverse playerbase.
At endgame there is a lot a player can do in a single day.
This came after Blizzard sat down with themselves and pointed out the obvious, based on their
previous experiences.
Eventually, as players progress into higher content, they say goodbye to the activities
that were no longer worth the rewards that came from them, no matter how easy they became
thanks to obtaining better gear.
In other words, older content had to make way for new content, and this older content
was largely forgotten while in the same expansion.
Blizzard had a goal to challenge that process and try to make all of their activities relevant.
The hardest content in the game still gave out the best, most prestigious rewards, but
endgame activities should always have a value to them, even when it's pretty transparent
that farming easy content should not get you the best gear at the same rate.
Mythic Keystones did the job for dungeons with its wide spread of options, but what
about everything else?
Blizzard made the decision to implement a random bonus attribute called Titanforging,
which is probably going to be looked back on as a controversial feature for players,
but probably a necessary system, or at least a first step, to achieve Blizzard's goals.
Titanforging is an item level bonus that can occur as soon as you kill a boss, open an
emissary chest or otherwise receive loot.
Unlike Warforging, which is a smaller item level bonus that also exists in Legion, Titanforging
is a very large bonus.
In short, drops have the small chance of turning what's otherwise a normal dungeon or world
quest drop into a maximum Titanforged piece of gear on par with hard-earned loot from
mythic raids.
It sounds crazy, and in practice it has been, with stories going around about players fetching
gear that would otherwise have no business dropping from a regular dungeon.
This is on top of the possibility of Legendary gear dropping.
In defense of this approach I'll once again bring up Blizzard's desire to keep activities
relevant.
When you take an activity like say, completing a round of WQs, add in awesome things like
the chance at Titanforged and Legendary drops and add in a constant source of progression
that comes with Artifact Power you now have an activity that's always relevant.
Blizzard wanted to give players a reason to do whatever they want and come away from it
feeling just a bit more progressed than they did before.
There's nothing wrong with that until we step back and look at the many different levels
of dedication that exist between players.
Grinding and RNG are the trigger words of this expansion, and represent many of the
negative feelings from players regarding this type of reward system.
It's easy to sympathize with the feeling that gearing could feel endless because even
if something nice dropped, maybe it could have been better.
Maybe a Legendary could be lurking around the next corner so you might want to farm
that one or two or seven more dungeons.
But that feeling is pretty darn subjective and doesn't apply to every player of WoW
in the same way.
In the context of a review it's more fair for me to admit that yeah, Blizzard's definitely
opened themselves up to criticism by making a system that effectively denies fulfillment
but until Legion, WoW's endgame system has mostly summed up to "raid or die," thanks
to the hard caps on rewards below raiding, and alternative systems like crafting and
valor points didn't do much to make activities like dungeons very attractive.
Preventing activities from becoming totally irrelevant is a step in the right direction.
But giving the chance for some of the best gear to drop from trivial activities, even
a small one, feels misleading.
Blizzard hoped that this system could bring back those feelings of awesome moments, but
instead the system backfired, creating a warped sense of expectation that snowballed into
a gambler's obsession for some players.
This system of chance threatened to define Legion.
In my opinion though, it fortunately has not.
The last part of the review isn't directly on the game but the people behind it.
Blizzard's developers and community managers have been more outspoken than they've ever
been with a stream of live Q&As, posts, tweets, and blogs, though I can't say with confidence
that it's been a consistent stream.
Like any game with millions of players invested into a few dozen different classes and specs,
playstyles and attitudes, and I guess there are only a few of those, Blizzard continues
to struggle to reach out to these players who feel like they're forgotten in their
own microcosm.
A lack of robust patch notes, responses to specific concerns and misunderstandings mean
a lot for public perception, even if the large majority of players don't pay attention
to such things.
As someone who's kept track of ongoing news constantly, I can get behind that sentiment
but I stand by my earlier statement - they're talking to players more than ever.
It's just that they might be saying things or making changes players don't like, and
it's hard to say whether it's because they're not listening, or are cognizant
that these complaints from players don't speak for the majority.
So ultimately, how is Legion?
Legion makes WoW the best it's been in years.
It brings technological advances that fans have been yearning for.
It's a spectacle on a scale of detail that previous expansions ought to be jealous of.
It's daring, as all expansions have been, bringing systems to keep the game fresh while
trying to keep its identity after over 12 years.
It does sit on a bed of controversy with its randomness but it's not enough to convince
players to not give it a try.
Maybe the pendulum swung too far this time, but personally I like having plenty of options
available to me.
And it's only been six months.
We're not done yet.
Should you play Legion?
Absolutely.
Legion has fully embraced the idea of letting new players get closer to the action.
Pick up a box, boost a new or existing character to 100 and get started on the Broken Isles
right away.
Systems that help you catch up to your friends faster are there in Artifact Knowledge, WQs
and more ways to catch up will come soon.
And it's fun.
Fight the Legion.
Have an adventure.
Make some friends.
Thanks for watching, and Stay Breezy.
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