World of Warcraft: Current Year

The only exciting thing from WoD for me was the questing, they did a really great job on all the of quests, excluding the usual bore that is dailies (and the entirety of Tanaan). The problem is that's only like 10% of the game, lol.

Not much about the content in Legion is really drawing me in, it's all about the mechanics changes and quality of life stuff:

-They are mixing up a lot of classes that felt stale or downright shitty to me in WoD. Top of the list being Disc Priest, while Shadow Priest, dps Shammies, Warlocks, DK and Warrior tanks also look pretty interesting.

-The new transmog system is also going to keep me occupied for a while. I've tried to collect a full set of tier armor for every class since vanilla, and limited bag space was usually the biggest obstacle.

-Challenge mode dungeons. I tried to put together a group of friends to do challenge modes in WoD on a casual basis, and the whole experience was just miserable. We expected everything to be tougher, sure, but forgot that our gear scaled down as well. So we jump in assuming a certain level of dps and healing that we didn't actually have. Then we run into all kinds of arbitrary restrictions that only make sense when challenge modes were supposed to be PVE Esports: Can't mass rez, can't switch out party members, can't change talents/glyphs. Finally after beating our heads against it and respeccing/swapping around our class composition we beat one and get a silver. We go turn in our daily and get a piece of shit 640 loot, when we all have mostly 645-655 gear just from garrisons; 640 filling in the rest of our slots from LFR. From what they've shown of challenge modes in Legion, they've fixed pretty much all those problems.

-Artifacts, I'm curious about, not excited. They could be Legion's garrisons, i.e. an incredibly cool and fun looking mechanic on paper, repetitive and ultimately bad for the overall gameplay in execution.

Storywise I don't give a fuck anymore. I checked out in Cataclysm when they took the 2nd most fearsome, evil, and intelligent antagonist in Warcraft history, Deathwing, aka Neltharion the Earth-Warder, the Dragon Aspect of Death, and disregarded most of his backstory, presenting him mostly just as a stereotypical giant angry monster videogame boss.

Yep, for me the class mechanics are bringing me back. Very interested in trying out the "new" DK, prot pally, demo lock, and the DH. I feel like they're actually willing to let classes and specs differentiate.

Also, I seem to just have a hardon for how they style their worlds. I enjoyed exploring Draenor, but I fucking hate garrisons.

WoW has become like any new Zelda game, I know I may hate parts but I just have a fondness for it and even the bad is polished at least. I didn't care for Skyward Sword and still enjoyed it a lot. If that even makes sense. And they have the same release timelines!

I wonder if there isn't some debate of dropping raiding altogether for tough 5 man dungeons and outdoor bosses. I mean, raiding is dead. I LFR the story now. I didn't even do normal this time around for the first time ever. There seemed to be some new discussion about alternatives to raiding.

Caeden_sl said:

Also, I seem to just have a hardon for how they style their worlds. I enjoyed exploring Draenor, but I fucking hate garrisons.

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Fucking same, man. MOP was pretty as hell, WOD was still pretty, but what they have shown of Legion is somehow a step above both of those for me. I love that we're going to see actual ancient elf ruins for once that are more than the occasional archway. Night Elves in the warcraft games have always been the most aesthetically pleasing for me, not so much in WoW to be honest.

xzi_sl said:

Fucking same, man. MOP was pretty as hell, WOD was still pretty, but what they have shown of Legion is somehow a step above both of those for me. I love that we're going to see actual ancient elf ruins for once that are more than the occasional archway. Night Elves in the warcraft games have always been the most aesthetically pleasing for me, not so much in WoW to be honest.

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Yes, it is about time we moved away from Orc architecture. Now, if they would only give Horde a good capital city with nice aesthetics that was not Org.

Alliance having superior architecture is the main reason I wish they would abolish the two faction system. At this point I bet the main reason they haven't is because the way it was coded in vanilla would make changing the two factions in one would be a massive undertaking. From what they have said about other systems that were coded in Vanilla, that game was coded in a shortsighted manner not allowing for easy changes.

I'm very interested in what they are doing with Taurens as well, they didn't show too much of the architecture and all that, but it is a big improvement over the current state. Also I want some fucking moose antlers, holy shit blizzard please

xzi_sl said:

I'm very interested in what they are doing with Taurens as well, they didn't show too much of the architecture and all that, but it is a big improvement over the current state. Also I want some fucking moose antlers, holy shit blizzard please

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$25 in the store.

I've considered starting an alliance character for the first time ever.

Did any major iconic quests or places get ripped out during Cata?

McCheese_sl said:

$25 in the store.

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fucking probably

Dem warrior changes.

Legion Class Preview Series: Warrior - World of Warcraft

No mention of Gladiator eh.

Dunno how it was post 6.1, but I suspect they'll be doing away with it.

I just was listening to a video talking about the Q&A and I totally must have missed this part, but apparently in Legion you are going to be able to play every single spec your class has, no needing to respec or anything. Pretty fucking cool.

xzi_sl said:

I just was listening to a video talking about the Q&A and I totally must have missed this part, but apparently in Legion you are going to be able to play every single spec your class has, no needing to respec or anything. Pretty fucking cool.

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Sure you can switch between them at will, but the artifact will block you from playing more than 2, and realistically you are stuck with 1. Not a huge deal for hybrid classes, but it sucks for dps only classes.

xzi_sl said:

The only exciting thing from WoD for me was the questing, they did a really great job on all the of quests, excluding the usual bore that is dailies (and the entirety of Tanaan). The problem is that's only like 10% of the game, lol.

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Yeah, the 90 - 100 part of WoD was pretty great; it just fell apart once you reached cap.

Malkav_sl said:

No mention of Gladiator eh.

Dunno how it was post 6.1, but I suspect they'll be doing away with it.

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Unconfirmed reports of a developer saying that gladiator was a test run and that it will not return as a talent for Legion.

We'll wait and see if Blizzard answers that in a tweet in the next few days.

It was alright for being a talent and not an entire spec. I think they originally wanted it for tanks to be able to go dps for shits and giggles, but it was OP out of the gate so they had to nerf the shit out of it.

I like the idea of it though, it was most certainly OP as shit for quite a long time, but DPSing with a sword and board while using your shield as a weapon makes sense imo

So what's the overall feature list we have so far?

-Artifact weapon leveling
-Scalable leveling content for 100-110
-D3 style bounties for dailies
-Class orders which also work as replacing some of the daily content
-Class revamps (ranging from minor to completely gutted and reworked)
-Transmog system and UI
-D3-style rifts for Challenge Mode revamp, offering progression to compliment/replace (depending to tastes) raids
-10 dungeons (5 during leveling, 5 more after, all to take part in CMs)
-Pre-expansion launch content to be noteworthy, a new scenario
-Demonhunter class
-2 Launch Raids - 10 Boss Raid (Guldan), 7 Boss Raid (Emerald Dream/Nightmare)
-PVP System revamp

That most of the high-level feature list?

(Edited with stuff Foggy said)

Pre-expansion launch content is a scenario to be exact.

Others:
New Class - DH
Legion-daries
2 Launch Raids - 10 Boss Raid (Guldan), 7 Boss Raid (Emerald Dream/Nightmare)
PvP System Revamp

Lawl, completely spaced on DH. What are "legion-daries"? I assume you're making a legendary joke, but I don't remember anything notable about Legion legendary(ies). Is it not just the "grind the expac for a legendary everyone gets", ala ring and cloak?

It looks like legendaries are becoming very rare world drops. They jokingly called them Legion-daries.