As we’re one hour away from BfA launch I’m reliving the hype from many other expansion launches. I’ve only pulled an all-nighter for one so far (Wrath of the Lich King) but I’ve tried to be around for the midnight launch for most of them. Some where smooth. Others not so much. I’m not going into this one with high hopes, mostly because even if you get through you’ll be fighting so many people over quest mobs it may actually be impossible to get going for quite a while. Instead I opted to take tomorrow off and use that to get some leveling done. I know some of my friends are going to go all night and I say good luck to them. Me, I’m going take it easy, explore, do quests and enjoy the ride. As usual.
Did I get everything done I wanted from Legion? Not by a long shot. I got my 36 Mage Towers done and all my Class Hall mounts but I still miss a lot of hidden appearances for my Artifact weapons. I’ve never properly finished the Chromie scenario. I’ve not taken part in the riddle mounts. I’ve not raided Tomb of Sargeras or Antorus properly and I never got my desired Mythic +15 done. I’m not that fussed though. I can go back for mounts and weapon skins. Pets and toys. Achievements that don’t go away. There’s always content to do and content to go back to with so many expansions.
So right now I’m saying goodbye to Legion and hello to Battle for Azeroth. May your content bring me joy. I’ll see you all on the other side!
So with BfA ever edging closer (only 9 more days!) I’d like to give a small update on the BfA prep goals that I had set for myself. I tried to keep them doable and I actually made a lot of progress in the past two weeks.
1. Class mounts. I’ve actually done all of them except Mage! I’m currently doing the questline on Mage though so I will probably get that done tomorrow and I can officially close this chapter. After doing 11/12 I have to say that there are some massive differences from class to class in how they obtain their mount. The easiest ones literally only have a scenario to complete while the harder ones are prefaced by a series of quests. All in all I’ve found it quite enjoyable to do and I’m quite pleased with myself that I’ve gotten them all done so fast.
2. Professions/Profession Quests. This one mostly regarded my Paladin and her Alchemy. I’m quite happy to report that I’ve cleared out all of the Alchemy Quests in my Questlog! I’m also 6 days away from unlocking every single Legion recipe. This because I need to do “Wild Transmutation” to discover the last few things I’m missing so yeah. I’ve also been making some profit by selling flasks that I needed to make to level up. I’m at 100/100 Alchemy/Herbalism for Legion and I’m ready to tackle BfA profession wise. Other than the odd profession quest here and there on my other characters I consider this goal to be done.
3. Emissary Quests/Honor Grinding Unfortunately this has fallen quite to the wayside. I’ve been focused a lot on getting some other stuff done but with my last Class mount looming on the horizon I think I’ll have more time to do these.
4. The Chromie Scenario Same as number 3 really. I will have more time the coming few days because no more other class shenanigans. I’m taking my Warrior through and see how it is. I’ve heard rumours that with the whole stat squish and pruning it’s become rather easy, but we’ll see.
5. Level an Allied race I’ve been working on this actually! I’ve made a baby Nightborne Warlock who is currently sitting at level 30. I’ve chosen to go the Stonetalon Mountains > Southern Barrens route for leveling for now. I’m throwing in the odd dungeon here and there but try to keep my play time limited. I don’t want to burn myself out leveling when there is a new expansion right around the corner. I may reach close to level 50 when BfA launches and I think I’ll be stuck there for a while, but I’m progressing. Slowly.
I think I’ll do one more update the evening of the BfA launch. For now though I’m going to enjoy finishing off the final things and taking it a bit slower in general. Because in 9 days we’ll be off to a new adventure!
Now that we’re less than 10 days away from BfA launch I figured it would be a nice time to take a look back at Legion as expansion and highlight some of it’s highs and lows for me personally. I’d like to talk about my favourite, and least favourite, storylines. Which expansion mount looks the most amazing (hint, it’s a Class one!) and what I found most disappointing overall. So without further ado, here is my Legion in a nutshell!
Shadow Raven mount and end of the Rogue campaign.
Most awesome class campaign: Rogue Yup. Kind of a shocker isn’t it? I’ve not played Rogue seriously since Wrath of the Lich King and as class it was the last one to see max level and probably my least favourite up untill that point. But holy hell Blizzard did such a masterful job with the storyline here. I have to admit that the class hall itself was a bit of a letdown (I didn’t particularly enjoy any of the Class Halls overall) but the story. Oh the story. And all the iconic characters. I loved the whole thing surrounding Matthias Shaw. I loved staging a pirate type coup. And I especially loved the Class Mount involving me assassinating targets in Horde (or Alliance, depending on the side you play) capitals. It was all very well done and 100% Rogue.
Least awesome class campaign: Death Knight There. I said it. I know it will probably not sit well with many people because I’ve read nothing but praise about the Death Knight storyline but honestly I hated it from start to finish. Maybe because I was around in Wrath where the whole thing about being a Death Knight was being free of the Lich King and not following in his footsteps. Well here comes Legion and you are basically his puppet again. I hated killing and reanimating things. I hated having to bully my way to information and I sure as hell avoided any unnecessary killings when I could. I feel like Death Knights are set back by this story line and it probably is trying to make a point about how the Lich King is still evil. I just wish I had the choice to not go along with it.
Best looking Mount of the expansion: Shaman Class Mount! Shaman takes the cake, I mean hello. You’re actually riding an elemental. Can’t really top that can you?
Liquid fire mount best mount
Most disappointing Mount of the expansion: The Riddle Worm/Paladin ClassMount. This is actually a nice tie. I see people riding around on the Riddle Worms and honestly it’s just ugly. I don’t want to ride a gigantic eel out of water, if it was a water mount I guess I would have taken a bit more liking to it. But just seeing them soar the skies is a sore sight for me. I rate the Paladin Class Mount here because really, it’s just another horse. I would’ve loved to have something a bit more exotic than that. They are pretty horses in their respective four colour variations, but still rather disappointing.
Most creative encounter: Elisande, the Nighthold I’m guessing this one comes with a bit of nostalgia goggles because the Nighthold was the last serious raid I did with my guild in the expansion. I really liked the Elisande fight, even though for us it wasn’t a very steep learning curve. The fact that she resets herself while adding mechanics was a delight and I really loved dealing with all of the stuff that was going on there. Killing the right adds, dodging the spheres, it was an amazing fight overall and especially enjoyable on a high mobile class like Warrior.
Most disappointing encounter: Varimathras, Antorus the Broken Throne This one is most likely caused by the fact that I’ve only done it on LFR but man, this fight is dull. All the mechanics can be neglected and it’s just a straight up tank and spank, making it uneventful to say the least and straight up boring on almost anything but a healer class. Please don’t make fights like these anymore Blizzard.
My biggest enjoyment and biggest frustration all in one!
Best content overall: Mage Towers This should come as no surprise really. I’ve tackled all 36 Mage Towers, and the Holy Priest and Shadow Priest ones twice, and I can honestly say it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in an MMO in a very long time. Even though some of the Healer ones almost made me break my keyboard, as did Subtlety Rogue on a 1% wipe, I’ve never felt more proud of myself than when I got all of these done. It feels like it’s a testament to my perseverence but also to my adaptability and skill in this game in general. I may not be a Mythic raider but I know how to play everything and I enjoy playing everything.
Stuff I hoped would go away with BFA: APGrind The AP grind. Oh the AP grind. It was horrible. Before the whole catch up mechanics it grinded my gears so much. Alting was a nightmare because of this and even playing more than one specc was made so much less enjoyable because of the damned AP grind. I know it’s coming back in BfA in a bit more friendly form but in my opinion Blizzard should have done away with it alltogether.
What Blizzard needs to do more in future expansions: Storytelling like the Class Hall campaigns I think one of the most outstanding things in Legion were the Class Hall campaigns. Even though some may have had better stories than others (I’m looking at you specifically Monk and beer related content) they all felt unique and fitting to the class in one way or another. I felt engaged in the stories for every class I did and, as cherry on top, it was excellent solo content with a splash of grouping up. It was well executed and really helped built the rest of the expansion with that base. I really hope that Blizzard will do something similar in BfA with tailor made content that you can do solo and gives fun and engaging storylines.
My beloved, and hated, Alchemy station
Most torn opinion:Professions Ahh Professions. For some reason I get the feeling that Blizzard looked at FFXIV for this. We suddenly had a ton of profession quests in Legion. And even though I enjoyed doing them it also felt like a chore to do on every new alt I made. I’m not overly thrilled on the whole 1-2-3 star recipe thing either, especially for the gathering professions Mining, Herbalism and Skinning. I can honestly say I’ve Mined a LOT on my Warrior this expansion yet I’ve not obtained all three star skills and it’s pissing me off. I like that they added more depth to the professions and I can see why they did the “expansion split” with the pre-patch but I’m not a fan of the star system and the quests get really repetitive when you do them more than once. I guess I’ll have to see what BfA brings on this front.
So there you have it. I could go on and on for a very long time about all the things I liked and disliked about Legion but overall I enjoyed the expansion more than I thought I would, especially without a raiding guild. I can only hope BfA shapes up to be as good and hopefully even better.
With Legion fast approaching (only 11 more days!) I’ve been getting the familiar WoW itch again. I’ve mostly neglected WoW, except logging for my Garrison gold stuff. On occassion when I wanted to play a game that didn’t require me to think too much I would log into Azeroth, kill some bosses for mounts, do some Archeology or just dailies for even more mounts, pets, toys.
This all changed with the start of the Legion pre-patch. I’ve been enjoying the invasions thoroughly on multiple characters. My warrior has gotten some awesome transmog weapons, my Shaman is gaining loads of XP as I use the invasions to level her up and I’ve been grinding out gear on my Hunter. All in all a very positive experience. It also helps that with this event the servers everywhere have more or less come back to life again. It’s nice to see a lot of people participating and just being around.
Today is also the day I caved and bought the Digital Collectors edition of Legion. I want the crossgame goodies and I desperately wanted to try out Demon Hunter, now that the big wave of them has mostly died down. Honestly I was so consumed with the Demon Hunter starter experience, the lore tied to it and the gameplay of the class itself that I completely forgot to take screenshots along the way. I’m pretty sure I’ll be making another Demon Hunter later on in the expansion though (an Alliance one this time) so I will probably take it a bit more slow and screenshot the amazing starter experience Blizzard made for Demon Hunters.
So far I do feel like the class has this huge potential to be absolutely overpowered. I love the gameplay and mobility. I love the looks. I love the lore. And yet I probably won’t abandon my Warrior for one. I’m attached to my little Night Elf berserker way too much to give her up, but I might replace my Hunter with the Demon Hunter as character to roll with on the Horde side. I’ve always loved to play Melee classes and the Demon Hunter itself is a class I’ve been looking forward to for a very long time. Ever since I saw them up on the Black Temple wielding their glaives, instructing their pupils and generally looking badass I’d always hoped they would become a playable class. Lo and behold, Blizzard made my long “player fantasy” come through. And not only with the Illidari, but also with having Illidan play another role in an expansion again. I absolutely love the character to bits and pieces and I hope we get to see more of him as Legion unfolds.
Writing
Like more bloggers I’ve been failing my Blaugust schedule. Although I really really wanted to be able to write a blogpost every single day, I just didn’t have the inspiration to do so. There’s only so much I can talk about and when you’re staring at a blank screen for over half an hour it’s time to do something else instead. I’m still struggling to find my way on this blog. I want to include some more pictures of what I’m up to in games and I want to make it a bit more informative, but I’m just not sure how. For now though I’ll stick to posting as much as I possibly can.
With Legion coming up and the pre-expansion madness being fully underway I decided to stick my nose back into WoW again for a bit to see what all the fuss is about. I think Blizzard did a really good job with how they are handling the special invasions, although the server lag is seriously dumb. I mostly just want to share some screenies I took as I was slaughtering demons in various zones.
The whole event looks impressive and gives me serious Starcraft vibes. Well done Blizzard. The only thing I’m kind of sour about is the fact you can only get the special looking weapons as you do the invasions and they are very rare to boot. I got myself a pair of 2H Warmaces on my Warrior, but that’s it. I really hope it’s not tied to what you can and cannot wield otherwise I’ll have to take out more characters to “collect them all”. I did already splurged my Nethershards on the Leather set appearance and the pet. Since I’m doing the invasions on both my Warrior and Hunter I’m hoping I don’t have to buy those appearances since I’ll be collecting the actual gear
Seeing all the Demon Hunters run around has been great aswell! Unfortunately since I don’t have my game pre-ordered with Blizzard I will have to wait for that experience untill the actual launch of the game. Oh well. It’s not that big of a deal. Atleast Blizzard has managed to pull me back into atleast two of their games for now. With the new Kharazan Adventure releasing aswell I might even try to open up a wing or two of that. Enough to do anyway!
As for all the other games… I finished up the Moonfire Faire on both my characters in FFXIV. I got all the stuff I wanted except for the Firefly Lamp since I don’t have my own estate anyway and I’m not huge on the furniture collecting. The armor, poses and the orchestion scrolls were a must have though. Luckily for me since the event has been going for a few days it has gotten quiet, which means I could easily get gold rating in the fates tied to the event. Thus “finishing” it on both my characters in <1 hour. Now I just need to get back to farming Yo-Kai weapons…
