We Are Many

First impressions of World of Warcraft: Legion, after a month of Beta and a few post-100 levels.

Minor Spoilers Ahead.






It's all right.

There's slightly more new stuff than Warlords of Draenor, but it's nothing too fancy.

Demon Hunters are very fun, but I don't have much of a desire to focus leveling one over the classes I've come to love.

Like every other expansion, there are class changes I like and class changes that seem misguided. No strong opinion either way.

I don't like the fact that they killed off the main leaders of the Alliance and Horde. I always loved Vol'Jin, and I feel he was underused. Varian was a great example of good character development - I HATED Varian in Wrath because he was a racist warmonger. Then in Cata, it was like "He's still kind of a racist warmonger, but he's better than Garrosh." In Mists he mellowed out a bit and in Warlords he followed through with what he learned to turn into a true reasonable authority figure. Now he's gone, and I feel sad.

Of course, Varian contrasts with Jaina's "development", and as much as I commend Varian's arc I proportionally condemn Jaina's. Jaina Proudmoore, over the course of these expansions, went from THE voice of peace to a worse warmonger and vessel of hatred than Garrosh Hellscream. Seriously. And her excuse? The bombing of Theramore in the leadup between Cata and Mists.

Really? That's like if someone who spent their life as a Muslim rights activist became a slobbering Islamaphobe because of 9/11. It would be like me advocating rounding up and executing everyone of German heritage because of what the German government did to my people in World War II. It doesn't make any sense, that person would know better than to demonize an entire group due to the actions of a few individuals regardless of how much power those individuals hold.

And it's between her and Genn Greymane as to why there's still an Alliance/Horde conflict here. Only them, no other. Because the Horde had to pull back from the Broken Isles assault when Vol'Jin was mortally wounded, Greymane and Jaina feel the Horde "betrayed" the Alliance. At least Anduin, as the new king, and Prophet Velen give the Horde the benefit of the doubt they deserve.

As for the artifact weapons, I actually love the concept and the questlines and lore surrounding them. They're all really fun so far. I still don't really like being shoehorned into a specific weapon. I don't mind on my BM Hunter, since hers is a gun and I've used guns with her since her creation, but my Elemental Shaman has had a staff since level one, and now he's stuck with a single fist weapon and a shield. Again, it's a COOL Fist Weapon and Shield, and I loved what I had to do to get it,  but it just seems out of character.

I still don't know how I feel about zones leveling with you, but I'm leaning in favor right now simply because it solves an issue I feel the last two expansions had with how little choice of zone progression you had. Vanilla has ridiculous options. BC, Wrath, and Cata are basically split it half and you can mix-match. But Mists and Draenor had everyone go through the same zones at the same pace. Here it's everyone doing the same zones, but they can choose the order. We'll see how much it helps.

Order halls are cool. They capture the feel of classes, and there's less of a sense of upkeep than with the Garrisons (which I actually liked doing on my main, but felt like too much on alts).

I haven't approached anywhere near endgame progression yet, so we'll see how the story goes. I just hope there's more content than in the last expansion.