World of Warcraft’s Legion has brought me back to a place where I love Warcraft again almost as much as I loved Wrath of the Lich King and Burning Crusade. I quit WoW during Cata and Draenor. I liked Pandaria, but I was at a cross-roads. I leveled my priest 1-85 in holy, and at Pandaria, leveling holy was impossible. I hated shadow spec, so I started an Enhancement Shaman and have not looked back.
Since the announcement of no new content in Draenor a year prior to the release of the next expansion, I was convinced that Draenor was more of a testing ground and not an actual expansion. Follower missions, world quests, and bonus objectives made their way back into Legion following Draenor. These elements are handled better in Legion, but of course, they had 2 years of gamer feedback to work with.
Love: Class Halls
I love the personal feeling class halls have like garrisons without all the work of a garrison. As a Shaman, my class hall is the in the Maelstrom, accessed by a portal on Dalaran’s flight dock. Because the Maelstrom is outside, mounts are allowed to move around in the the class hall.
Hate: Class Halls
Yep, as awesome and conveniently located as my Shaman class hall is, I cannot say the same for all classes. My hunter’s class hall is a mountain lodge in Highmountain that I have to fly to every time I want to go there. It’s completely out of the way, and I can’t set a hearthstone to it. Also, since the class hall is a lodge, it’s an indoor location and mounts cannot be used. This is really unfortunate since hunters no longer have Aspect of the Pack (a running speed boost) like they used to.
Love: World Quests
There’s nothing that gets you addicted to do doing dailies faster than seeing a quest reward pop up for piece of gear higher than you’re currently wearing. Kudos, Blizzard.
I like the world quest reward system in which you complete four of one type to get a large rep chunk and artifact points. It makes rep feel like less of a grind. Except Nightfallen. And there’s always dailies to do in the rep you want, so it’s not like you have to wait for the bonus to build it.
Hate: Caves
If I wasn’t a Shaman with a ghost wolf form, I would probably hate this even more than I already do. I find the terrain in Legion to be really rocky and dynamic, which is cool, but finding cave entrances is a huge pain. Cough, Highmountain, cough.
I had a Jewelcrafting quest with multiple parts scattered throughout all the Azeroth areas. One was located in a cave in Highmountian. The clue I received in my quest didn’t specify which cave, and judging by the mark on my map, there were three possible caves I could comb through. After running through several of the caves and dying, I finally looked up a walk-through video on YouTube to find the correct cave.
Love: Artifact Weapons!
As an Enhance Shaman, I now wield Doomhammer and an off-hand that belonged to the Earth Mother. Since I use Stormstrike and Crash Lightning a lot, I have the crackling lighting skins on them, and they are love. I like the artifact power system, even though I am also a healer and have to divide my points between two weapons.
Hate: Artifact Weapons
That said, I hate that the artifact weapons hold you hostage into one spec. I put my Enhancement spec on hold while I dumped enough artifact points into my healing weapon to get it raid-worthy. I have a lock friend who started Legion as Affliction, only to realize his dps output in dungeons was lacking. He bit the bullet and switched to Destruction, having to build his weapon level up from square one. Meanwhile, all the point on his level 15 Affliction weapon were essentially wasted.
Surely Blizzard can come up with a way to make switching specs permanently less of a waste and dual-specs less work.
Love: Fishing
Fishing is fun again, as fun as fishing can be. I’ve always enjoyed fishing as a low-key activity to do when none of my friends are on vent, and it’s late, and all my are dailies done. Pop a movie on one screen and dig out the fishing pole on the other.
The last time I really enjoyed fishing was Lich King, even though I did all the main achievements in subsequent expansions. On that note, Blizzard, please make my Jeweled Fishing Pole account bound!
I love the “secret” floating island to fish for drowned mana with all the rep rewards to get. I really love the artifact fishing pole, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Hate: Water
Water levels are the bane of gamers’ existence. I thought Blizzard learned from Vash’jir that underwater questing was a bad idea. That didn’t stop them from implementing the water area of Suramar with a line of quests. Water is always a pain to navigate and fight in, and it doesn’t help that the mobs are so close together. And not just mobs, but rare spawns and a world boss.
I do acknowledge that Suramar is meant to be not just a difficult area, but arduous. Perhaps that’s why they put the water area in, because getting Nightfallen rep is meant to be a pain-staking process.
Love: Clothing Collection
As soon as the Legion changes were implemented prior to the Legion expansion launch, I cleaned out my three bags of tabards with a giddy smile.
Hate: Achievements
So this isn’t Legion specific, but please, please, Blizzard, make achievements account wide. As I mentioned above, I switched my main halfway through Pandaria. With it, I forfeited all of my exalted reps and achievements I did on my priest, including Loremaster and fully-explored maps.
In Closing:
Despite the few things I wish to see changed or don’t like about Legion, I am glad that I am back to loving a game that I have given 9 years of my life. Because Legion has made some big changes for the better, most of my WoW friends have come back, and that alone has made playing a joy again.
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