World of WarCraft’s new expansion, Legion dropped on August 30th and since then millions of WoW players – myself included – have taken the journey to the new Broken Isles questing zones on our way to level 110. With a week’s worth of playtime under our belt it’s time for our World of WarCraft: Legion First Opinion look at the game.
First off, as someone who basically “came of age” in WoW during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion (first hit the level cap, first gear grind, first raids, etc.), having the main hub as Dalaran again hits some nostalgic notes. They didn’t just copy/paste it over, either, as Blizzard updated the graphics and changed the layout around a bit. Once you leave the safety of Dalaran, you are able to select any of four zones to level in, and they all scale to match your level, meaning you can do them in any order and at any time and they will always match your current level. This has the side effect of never feeling overpowered, which is something I personally miss – back in Wrath of the Lich King for example, when I went back to Howling Fjord after battling through Storm Peaks at level 78, it was nice to be able to basically brush off the zone’s level 69-71 mobs.
Another scaling issue is that there are zero lootable weapons in Legion. You get your class and spec’s unique artifact weapon early, and that’s the only weapon you get for the entire expansion. The lore and story quests behind the various artifact weapons are nice but I miss the “ooh!” moment of finding a weapon upgrade – it just isn’t the same finding new belts and gloves. The class based order halls are, so far, more populated garrisons. You only really stop by whenever you need to upgrade your artifact weapon and send followers on timed missions for rewards, so it isn’t somewhere you’ll be spending much time.
Despite these level and loot based nags, the leveling grind itself is fantastic. The zones are great to explore with tons to do, and they are visually stunning, as well. I first started in Highmountain, home of a breed of Tauren, but you as could easily go to Val’sharah for a glimpse at druids trying to recreate the Emerald Dream on Azeroth or climb Stormheim’s ragged peaks. The quests still lean towards “kill X creatures” or “collect X creature bits” but they usually go fairly smoothly and keep you moving around the world so you are never bogged down in one area for too long. Just beware the stealth elites. I have been killed more than a few times when I’ve been snuck up on by a five story tall elite-level mob. It brings back Fel Reaver nightmares for Burning Crusade vets, only they exist in just about every zone in some form or another.
With a lot of content yet ahead of us before we can render our Final Opinion review, it already looks like Legion may be the best WarCraft expansion since Wrath of the Lich King. Check back soon for our full Final Opinion review.