Massive — World of Warcaft: Legion Is A Refreshing Reset

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World of Warcraft has undergone a multitude of changes over the last decade, adding options for finding groups, different difficulty modes, daily quests, garrison housing, and tons of new dungeons, raids, and zones. In many ways, Legion is a form of “WoW’s greatest hits,” drawing upon some of the most famous and impactful characters from the extensive lore, bringing back one of the great invasion threats, and morphing and refining with great success many of the systems that players have had issues with over the years. 

Legion truly offers something for players of all types, from the ultra-casual that logs on once a week to the hardcore player that’s putting in multiple hours each and every day, and it does so without making any sacrifices. Legion is the best expansion World of Warcraft has seen since the venerable days of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, making it worthy of notice for lapsed veterans or players looking to finally see what the MMORPG that made the genre mainstream is all about.

Legion immediately takes to task one of the more contentious systems that became overbearing during the Mists of Pandaria expansion, the concept of daily quests. Instead of being a laundry list of chores players feel compelled to do in order to progress, the daily quest system has been completely changed and turned into something called world quests. World quests have taken a page out of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls’ book and the adventure/bounty system, offering players the chance to wander the expansion zones seeking out whatever they’re looking for, whether it’s gold, equipment, resources, or crafting materials. Instead of feeling forced into doing the same tasks over and over on a daily cooldown, these world quests populate with new opportunities every few hours, creating a constantly interesting and engaging board to scope out tasks of interest. Blizzard’s borrowing from Diablo works astonishingly well here; I have never been so excited to pull up my map and plan out my next move.

Players of Warlords of Draenor are familiar with the garrison system. Many loved Blizzard’s take on housing at first, but the system lost its charm over time as players became confined to their homesteads, logging in simply to pick up materials and sending out minions on missions for cash. The fresh take on the garrison system here is the class order halls, a themed area for each class to work on a story-driven campaign. The mobile-game style follower missions are still in play, but the roster you work with is much smaller, meaning you won’t have to log in every few hours to make sure you’re getting the full benefit. Instead, management of your order hall cane be completed in brief sessions once a day or so, and once a week for the really big upgrades, leaving you free to enjoy more interesting adventures out in the world during the rest of the time. The introduction of a Legion mobile companion app on smartphones to assist with your class hall functions is a massive boon, and something that would have helped a lot in Warlords.

Players receive an artifact weapon shortly after completing their initial specialization chain, a critical and flavorful piece of equipment that simultaneously adds an additional “talent tree” for players to explore, and which provides an additional advancement system that offers continual and measurable power long after the level cap of 110. These weapons are recognizable and legendary items from Warcraft history, including items like the Doomhammer, the shards of Frostmourne, and the Ashbringer. Players find relics instead of traditional weapon drops that they can slot in on these powerful items, and the issue of cosmetics is handled with an achievement system that allows for a multitude of styles and colors to keep things from getting stale. The artifact weapon system succeeds admirably by adding an additional “experience bar” that players can work on in the endgame.

The leveling zones in Legion all scale with the player, so they can be completed in any order as players advance the story. It’s a cool system, but with the process so streamlined, I feel like leveling alts could risk being rather boring when hitting all the exact same zones and beats. However, each class has its own artifacts and class campaigns, which may help to alleviate some of the sense of repetition.

The endgame is presented in a fashion that facilitates any kind of player from solo to raider. Those that just want to play alone and keep progressing can hit up their world quests and collect emissary rewards. Of more interest to players like myself is the introduction of mythic+ dungeons that function somewhat like rifts in Diablo III. You can take a dedicated five person group into challenging content and come away with rewards that are on par to raid loot. Raids will still exist for those looking for more traditional multi-group challenges, but for those like me that are looking for difficulty but don’t want to play on a set schedule, five person content is the sweet spot.

Legion is a massive undertaking that could end up suffering from a problem WoW has had for years, that of the content drought between expansions, but with the promise of Karazhan and an additional raid already on deck, Blizzard already has the best content addition in half a decade on their hands, and the potential to deliver even more.