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EmeraldNightmare

Annotation: Because I didn't play through the majority of Mists of Pandaria or Warlords of Draenor, this review is best treated as a comprehensive update on how WoW has evolved over the past four years rather than a strict list of changes introduced solely in Legion.

Globe of Warcraft launched nigh exactly 12 years ago, on November 23, 2004. I played Earth of Warcraft for roughly seven months before it launched, as part of the closed beta plan, and and so from its 2004 debut until 2022. I quit not long afterward the Mists of Pandaria expansion shipped and was gone until August, 2022 (I wrote a separate story detailing what it was like to come back to the game after and so long abroad). World of Warcraft: Legion is proof that a 12-year-sometime game can still notice ways to introduce and improve itself, and it's got the strongest storyline of any previous entry.

WoW has ever told a story, but the plot has never been peculiarly solid, and it's typically played out in a handful of brusque cutscenes. Legion, in dissimilarity, weaves its story through specific quest lines of the campaign, and information technology ties together major themes and heroes from WoW's entire history. World of Warcraft: Legion tasks players with defending their homeworld of Azeroth against the extra-dimensional Burning Legion, and the titular Legion plays for keeps. Heroes dice in this expansion, and they aren't comic-book deaths. You lot're playing defense from the beginning, struggling to hold back the tide of an invasion already well underway.

One major mechanic introduced this expansion is that of Artifact weapons — the most powerful weapons ever created on Azeroth, and entrusted to your character in a desperate attempt to fifty-fifty the odds. Blizzard created many of these items specifically for Legion, merely longstanding weapons of lore, like Ashbringer and Doomhammer also make appearances. Leveling up your antiquity weapon is one of the major ways that heroes gain ability in Legion, over and above striking the increased level cap.

Each specialization within each class gets a custom quest chain for their artifact weapon (three per class, in every case but Demon Hunters, which have two specializations). The Retribution Paladin quest chain begins at the tomb of Uther the Lightbringer, a hero from Warcraft 3.

Each specialization within each class gets a custom quest chain for their artifact weapon. The Retribution Paladin quest chain begins at the tomb of Uther the Lightbringer, a hero from Warcraft iii.

With Legion, Blizzard took another step towards making your hero experience more than powerful than they ever have before. As function of the introduction to the expansion, you lot are declared the leader of your respective grade or group. While this is somewhat undermined by seeing a agglomeration of Paladins or Warriors running around with the same title equally y'all, information technology'southward actually a smart move that makes a great bargain of sense. For most of the by 12 years, WoW players accept been positioned as fundamentally weaker than the NPC bosses or allies they interact with. This explanation has fabricated less and less sense as fourth dimension goes on. If you've beaten most of the raids ever released in Earth of Warcraft, you've killed 3 Old Gods, battled extra-dimensional fiends, defeated the undead Lich King and his relentless Scourge, crushed the Legion'southward efforts to invade Outland, broken the Throne of Thunder, thwarted the mad dragon Deathwing's quest to terminate all life on Azeroth, and prevented the invasion of your homeworld by an army from another timeline.

We are, as they say, Kind of a Big Bargain, and it's squeamish to see Blizzard comprise some nods to this as part of Legion's entrada. It's a testament to how well the game'south narrative arc works that these promotions and weapons experience similar necessary steps, non meaningless awards. In Legion, anyone is on the chopping block, including faction leaders and NPC heroes that have assisted yous through multiple games.

Paladin-Order

The Paladin Club Hall.

If I had to summarize Legion's gameplay in one sentence, it'd be this: World of Warcraft Legion is meliorate than any previous iteration of the game at getting out of its own way.

In the past, World of Warcraft relied heavily on the thought of physicality. If you wanted to craft an particular, you had to have the materials to do so on your character. If you wanted to queue for a PvP battlefield, you needed to visit a battlemaster. If you wanted to discover other people to group with, you had to either belong to a guild or travel to one of the upper-case letter cities and hang out in conversation, hoping to detect people who wanted to run the same dungeon you did. Many of these constraints had begun to loosen earlier I quit playing, simply Blizzard has connected improving the game in the intervening four years.

The result is an MMO that's been vastly expanded and streamlined compared with the game I left, and many of the elements of the game that I disliked accept been ameliorated. Corpse runs — the exercise of running back from a nearby graveyard later on you die in a dungeon or raid instance have been largely eliminated from grouping content. The LFG (Looking for Group) finder has been expanded and now covers PvP, a wider range of normal and heroic dungeons, and offers the choice to create your own custom groups for specific instances (5-homo dungeons) or even raids (x-man+ dungeons). It's never been easier to observe people to play with or to encounter which quests and areas you oasis't completed.

This flexibility has been extended to the Broken Isles (that'south the new area) itself. Instead of progressing from less-hard to more than-hard zones, you cull where you want to travel and the game adjusts the level of the enemies y'all encounter to match your ain. The default UI now includes the option to search your bags for specific gear, and bags can be tagged to concur specific items when you find them. The hazard and periodical guides offer tips and advice on what to do adjacent, items in your depository financial institution are automatically counted as beingness in your inventory when crafting gear, and certain collectibles, like mounts and pets, are now shared business relationship-wide rather than being locked to specific characters.

Maiden

Venture back to Karazhan if you dare — the Maiden of Virtue still awaits you.

In the past, monsters ("mobs" in MMO parlance) could only be struck by one player; now up to five players tin can receive quest or kill credit for any given mob. The Sale House has been unified across servers, making information technology easier to discover rare items, and loot in five-human dungeons and raids doesn't have to be distributed past random rolls or through guild-specific loot distribution methods similar Dragon Kill Points (DKP). There's a new personal loot organisation that awards gear to individuals rather than forcing people to roll confronting each other, and it's available for all dungeons and raids if raid leaders wish to employ information technology. Players can purchase upward to three Seals of Cleaved Fate per week and spend them on additional loot rolls from specific bosses if a particular detail you desire to acquire doesn't drop for y'all the first time effectually. If you lot delete items or are hacked, there are now tools for restoring lost items or characters that you can employ yourself, rather than relying on a client service representative to assist you lot out, and cantankerous-server groups and raids make it easier to find people to team up with.

Just prior to Legion, Blizzard aggressively pruned grade abilities, focusing each talent specialization within a grade effectually a handful of key abilities and aggressively pruning a number of powers. Exactly what changed varied from form to grade, and some classes were reworked more drastically than others. Some of these changes remain controversial within the community and it's entirely possible that you lot may not like a former main class if you come back to the game after years abroad. It took a few weeks before I truly felt at home playing a Paladin again, and my Demonology warlock notwithstanding feels very strange compared with the character I played back in Cataclysm and Wrath of the Lich King.

Experiencing the expansion

The only reason to take several months to play an MMO before reporting dorsum on it is to feel the content, so that's what I've done. I've leveled a character from 87 (pre-Legion) to level 110 and so run the dungeons and raids currently in-game, upwards to and including the recent Return to Karazhan patch that took a 2007-era raid dungeon and retuned it for Legion and five-man groups. I've run normal, heroic, and mythic dungeons, and I've participated in several larger raids.

Gear and level progression is vastly smoother than it used to be, even compared with expansions like Wrath of the Lich Rex, and Legion gives players multiple ways to gain ameliorate gear. Outset, information technology offers a sustained progression through five-man dungeon content. Normal dungeons are used to introduce bones mechanics and encounters, and are suitable for players of any skill level. Heroic difficulty introduces new mechanics and a modest difficulty increase, and rewards higher-level gear. Mythic difficulty makes the dungeon significantly harder (with a commensurate improvement to gear drops). Beat a mythic dungeon, and y'all'll earn a keystone that allows y'all access to a more than difficult version of a dungeon that drops yet better gear. Mythic dungeons above the start difficulty level have their own distinct mechanics and time limits and the gear you earn rivals raid-dropped gear one time your mythic difficulty level is high enough.

Second, raids themselves are accessible via LFR, or Looking For Raid. LFR raids are significantly easier than their normal or heroic counterparts, but they besides give y'all a chance to get your feet moisture on basic versions of the content and to familiarize yourself with some aspects of the fight. Some raids are also subdivided, so you tin can join a grouping that's going to tackle specific bosses rather than trying to consummate the entire instance in 1 go.

Third, at that place are new World Quests. These are daily quests offered in every zone, although you lot'll receive a bonus for completing four WQ'southward per day for a specific random faction. These tend to reward gold, artifact power, or guild resource for completing class hall missions, and the gear you can earn from them is comparable to some mythic gear and better than early raiding gear. Blizzard has also committed to increasing the quality of the gear you can go from these quests every bit time passes, to ensure that new players can still prepare effectively and play through endgame content. Players who don't want to run instances, period, tin therefore still earn new equipment. Put all three options together, and you lot've got a flexible, friendly MMO that doesn't ask you to spend a mandatory 3-5 hours running dungeons or raids. The slideshow below steps through some of the new content — you tin click on any slide to open up a larger version of it in a new window.


After Blizzard took hedge-clippers to the talent copse of various graphic symbol classes and subdivided the iconic abilities that were left, enough of people were afraid that the game would feel fundamentally dumbed-down every bit a result. I was initially concerned virtually this myself, since Normal and Heroic dungeons presented so petty in the mode of challenge. In hindsight, I needn't take worried. Mythic dungeons are more than difficult plenty to present a challenge, and raid bosses often have mechanics that keep the entire group moving to address additional creatures that spawn during the fight, avoid hazards, or respond to various boss abilities. I however miss certain Paladin abilities, like Hammer of Wrath and Exorcism, but I also see what Blizzard wanted to accomplish by aggressively pruning abilities away — it gives them the freedom to add complexity in other areas.

On the whole, these changes have made Legion the best expansion Blizzard has ever built.

Conclusion

Twelve years. Twelve years ago, a new Paladin named Tovah took her commencement steps across the courtyard of the rebuilt Northshire Abbey. What a long, strange trip information technology'south been, even with 4 years carved out of it. The World of Warcraft that boots upwardly today is a far cry from the game I started playing manner dorsum then, and I won't prevarication — sometimes I'm cornball for the guildmates or battles of yesteryear. I might not desire to return to the world of vanilla WoW, but I understand why there's a movement in WoW calling for legacy servers that are tuned to previous versions of the game. Virtually of the time, however, I've been too decorated having fun to notice.

Should you lot play World of Warcraft: Legion? That depends. Despite reinventing many aspects of itself, WoW all the same has a detail pattern that revolves around races and classes, and there are other games, similar Concluding Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, that implement these ideas rather differently. Information technology's hard to predict if whatsoever given MMO will exist one person's cup of tea. This is the prettiest version of WoW I've ever played, simply the original code base is now 12 years old, and despite the ongoing efforts of the tech squad, you sometimes encounter evidence of that. But as far as polish, the boss encounters and raid fights I've seen have been fantabulous, fifty-fifty if I'd all the same similar to see a few more erstwhile abilities return. World of Warcraft today is more fun than the game I started playing 12 years ago, and it's amend than the game I quit four years ago — so good, in fact, that I've got no plans to quit again.

If you've never tried an MMO, WoW is a great place to showtime. If you left years ago but have been thinking about trying it again, you lot may be surprised at how much the game has changed for the better. It may never return to the 12-one thousand thousand subscribers of its superlative in 2022, only the world of Warcraft is however evolving and improving.