We are Legion

Good news: Content!

Bad news: Nothing to do with Star Wars - I'm on a sabbatical from the galaxy far, far away in case people are wondering but I hope to come back to my Jedi News column this September.

In the meantime, I just watched my first YouTube Livestream. Guess what it was about!





So, for the record, I'm still not in a place where I can post as regularly as I'd like, but for the first time in several months I have things I want to say and time to say it in this venue.

With work taking up all of my energy, I've been unwinding by playing Blizzard's incredible new game Heroes of the Storm (and doing another just-for-fun game goal which I plan on talking about in a future post). I also finally started getting back into World of Warcraft, though I still haven't touched my high level toons in a long time.

Frankly, while I liked the leveling of Warlords of Draenor, the level-cap content left me feeling burnt out moreso than ever before. The reworking of professions to lessen the grind eventually made it more of a grind with feeling like you have to log in each day to reap all your benefits. Plus, not being able to fly REALLY REALLY MAKES DOING TOP-LEVEL ANYTHING HARD.

I almost want to just give up on raiding, except I want at least one toon to see the full story, so I will be getting back into the swing of Feyd. Weth will abandon her legendary and raid quests in favor of farming legacy dungeons/raids for fun. Now it's just a question of finding enough uninterrupted time during the week TO raid - it will likely be an every-other-weekend thing and probably won't start for another month or so.

Now, I started playing WoW during the latter half of Burning Crusade. Wrath of the Lich King was announced, but had not yet come out, so I needed time playing the original game before I became psyched for Wrath. Cataclysm excited me from day 1 and remains my favorite expansion. Mists of Pandaria got me almost but not quite as excited as Cata, and I loved it almost all the way through.

Warlords on the other hand, I remember having no reaction to - In fact, I think I never bothered to write about it here, though I had planned to. As more information came out I became intrigued, but I didn't feel the spark I felt for the others, and while I do enjoy a lot of it I do have to say it's my least favorite.

So Blizzard announces that not only are they going to announce their next expansion, it'll be live. So I made sure to request a slightly earlier lunch so I wouldn't be interrupted while finding out what is next in store for Azeroth.

What we got is World of Warcraft: Legion.

And how excited do I feel about Legion?

More excited than for Warlords, but there's still a half-and-half quality for me about it. I'm intrigued to see where it goes, and there are things that excite me. But much of it gives me pause at the same time.

On the one hand, with its new Hero Class and unique Class Order storylines, this expansion looks to be returning to a more alt-friendly atmosphere that helped me fall in love with the game and that Warlords was sorely lacking. Plus, the fact that each class and spec will be getting famous artifact weapons is VERY appealing to me.

On the other hand - the class we're getting is Demon Hunter, a class many fans have been demanding since the game's inception but one that I always felt was a little redundant. And while they do look fairly cool, they also look like they're making Demonology Warlocks obsolete - and I notice a distinct lack of race options in what we were shown, making me nervous a bit about the level of customization.

Furthermore, there are hints that something big and bad is going to happen to a LOT of major lore figures and the world itself to justify us taking up their artifact weapons in their stead, and I'm not sure I'd like a "Rocks Fall Everyone Dies" ending to the main cast of Warcraft - especially if they decide to make it a Cataclysm-style world revamp (which - fine for just the players playing that level range, but don't force it on the lowbies and take away our quests again. It was mostly fine in Cata to streamline leveling, but once was enough).

Lastly, and I'm split evenly down the middle with how I feel about this, this feels like WoW's swan song.

We finally get a Burning Legion invasion of Azeroth, we're wielding legendary weapons as the heads of class orders, Sargeras' Tomb plays a major role, the Emerald Dream is appearing, Queen Azshara is hinted at an appearance, Demon Hunters...this all feels like we're getting the kitchen sink grand finale.

Which...I would be fine if WoW ended its advancing story and gave me time to level all my alts with a clear end goal, but...I worry what may happen if WoW "ends", and how long they'll allow it to remain up. I can always go back and play any video game I own from way back when, but MMOs work a bit differently - many have been completely shut down never able to be played again. I can't imagine that ever happening to WoW and I hope I'm just being paranoid about this.

In the end, as I said, this prospect is far more intriguing than the last time around, but it's still not gripping me the way past ones did.

Or like Heroes of the Storm is doing to me now. Honestly, that freaking thing is addicting.