Legion – Intro quests – disc priest, ret paladin

I got back to trying some more intro/artifact quests this week. I logged into my paladin and decided to go at the retribution one as his first spec. How could I pass up Ashbringer? I wanted to see how we would get it back from Tirion’s unfortunate demise.

No spoilers, but it was pretty fun. I don’t really feel at home playing ret, so it was a little rough to get through. But the story was interesting and compelling and I enjoyed it. The paladin class order hall feels awesome, and the ceremony to anoint you there is very well-done.

On the other hand, the discipline priest scenario is basically the same as the arcane mage one, which I have already done. That was a mild disappointment. I was hoping to get a unique scenario for each spec. There were a couple of different features – I had to use Mind Control once as the priest and there was a point where I had to outheal some damage – but the layout and events were the same.

Looking forward to trying a couple more this week. I may even try to level my paladin a bit so I can go for the tank artifact.

Gold Making – powerlevelers only?

One of my favorite pastimes in WoW is making gold. I don’t do it by “playing the auction house”, or buying low/selling high. I have always done it through simple crafting. I find the crafted items that have a big profit margin, buy the raw materials from the auction house, make the item, and sell it. I’m not min/maxing my profits or being a so-called “goblin”. I make a steady income. It has gotten me to the (old) gold cap, mostly through inscription and enchanting.

I’ve been basically locked out of this activity so far, since didn’t speed level. The ability to get higher ranks of crafting recipes is something you don’t seem to get until level 110, and since those allow you to craft using fewer raw materials that is where the real profit happens. I’m just going through my max level crafting quests now, and I guess those recipes will be available to me soon. In the meantime, the big profits made by selling to first-week raiders are passing me by.

I’m not really complaining. Just lamenting that I’m missing out due to a change in the way crafting is done. I read in various forums when people say that they have already made hundreds of thousands of gold in the first few weeks of Legion, and I feel like I’ve missed out.

 

Feeling overwhelmed

I’ve mostly been playing my mage alt (although if that’s the class I play most, then isn’t that sort of not an alt?). He’s at 110 and is working through the Suramar storyline.

When I hit 110, I prioritized (1) crafting quests, (2) Mage Order Hall story quests, (3) Suramar quests, (4) World Quests. As a result of that prioritization, I have barely touched World Quests. I’ve been at 110 for 4 days or so and I think I’ve done two World Quests.

The sheer number of them on the map is intimidating. I look and realize what a huge time commitment it would be to try and do even a good fraction of them. And then I do something else.

Now, in my Mage Order Hall storyline, I have gotten to a point that requires me to complete 30 World Quests. Bleh. I feel like my progress is going to grind to a halt while I slog through these.

I keep hearing from people that the World Quests are a highlight of the expansion. I don’t have enough experience to judge, but they look to me to mostly be “kill a bunch of these things” or “kill this one guy that you can’t solo”. Maybe I’m wrong. Time will tell. I should be able to dig into the world quests this weekend, since I’m not yet able to do much else – not high enough item level for heroics and certainly not ready to raid yet.

On the other hand, I love the storyline quests in every zone. I get so wrapped up in reading the quest text and following along that I don’t want to stop to do other in-game activities.

Too soooooon

I’ve just gotten my first character to level 110. I have yet to step into Suramar or do a single World Quest. I have not run a heroic or mythic dungeon. I have not crafted anything at max level or used obliterium to upgrade gear.

The raids haven’t opened yet, so even the most hardcore no-life powerleveler has yet to exhaust content.

I don’t want to hear that Patch 7.1 is on the PTR. I don’t want to hear about what’s coming soon. I don’t want to think about all the stuff that I’ll be able to do later when I’ve got so much to do now.

You’re stressing me out, Blizzard.

 

Now I’ll see if Legion holds up to repetition

When I jumped into Legion at release, my plan was to try playing a bunch of alts simultaneously. The reason for this was the artifact weapons and the lore. I haven’t completely followed through with all of the classes (yet), but I have spent at least some playing Legion content on 5 characters – rogue, druid, priest, monk, and mage.

After two weeks, I still don’t have a max level character. The mage is 108 and the rogue is 106. The other three are 101 or 102.

However, I have now seen all of the leveling zones. My rogue has done Val’sharah and Stormheim. My mage has completed Azsuna and Highmountain. So now, from this point forward everything up to Suramar is going to be repetition. Will it hold up? Will it still be fun? What are the annoying quests that I will hate doing over again?

Not to be “that guy” but leveling makes me nostalgic for vanilla WoW. Not the obscure quest objectives or the “kill 10 boars” part of it, but the pace. I fondly remember how leveling was a milestone, and a zone took more than an hour or two to complete. I recall that reaching max level was a distant goal that beckoned, and reaching it was something to be proud of. I remember “ding!” in guild chat.

Today, with 110 levels to work through, such a structure could never hold up. Plus, there is a lot of emphasis on endgame by a large part of the population.

But still, the fact that I have seen all of the leveling content in two weeks after launch is a little sad.

Legion – Intro Quests – warlock (is it possible to fail?)

I did the Demonology Warlock intro quests and artifact weapon.

I will say that I had a blast. The demo lock quest is pitch perfect with the class theme. The order hall full of your army of demons is awesome. I think this was my favorite one so far.

However… I neglected to read up on the extensive changes to the demonology spec that happened in Legion. I went into the quests not knowing what any of my buttons did. As a result, I was doing a whopping 6k dps through most of the questline. When I popped cooldowns I think I broke 10k briefly.

And yet I made it through just fine. Which begs the question – is it possible to fail these questlines? How badly would you have to play to get stonewalled by the quests?

Legion – Intro quests (warrior, more mage, more rogue)

Arms Warrior

I had heard some good things about the warrior class hall so I did that one next. Honestly, I wasn’t that impressed.

Let me say first that I don’t play my warrior. He’s been Arms spec since level 1. I started it because at low levels it was fun. Charge and Victory Rush make for an active playstyle. As the levels went on it got somewhat repetitive and slow. I would routinely stop playing him for months at a time.

That said, I cannot see why the warrior class hall would have a Norse theme. I’ve never really understand why Blizzard decided to go so Norse-heavy in the lore as it is, but they doubled down in the warrior class hall with Odin and val’kyr. It just didn’t connect for me.

Plus it had little in the way of warrior flavor. The druid and rogue class halls clearly identify with their characters. The mage hall looks like it could have been at Hogwarts. The priest one is a bit bland, but seems churchy. Maybe warriors just don’t have a clear enough identity as a class, which hampers the theming of the class order hall.

On top of that, the location for the artifact weapon questline was the same as the priest one, which I already did. So there was no new content for me there.

Fire and Frost Mage

I did the other two artifact weapons for my mage. The fire one was fun, in large part because playing a fire mage is a blast. You have so much fire stuff exploding all over the place. Plus the trip to Icecrown Citadel is a great throwback for any long-time WoW player. Even though I don’t normally play fire spec, I had fun with the quests and the things I had to do.

The frost one was neat also, but perhaps the weakest of the three mage questlines. Travel to the Broken Isles to kill some demons to finish a ritual. It was touch-and-go for me, as I have no idea how to properly play a frost mage, and it got pretty tough at the end (although I never died). I think I am fond of the nostalgia that some of the other questlines had, taking you to the Nexus and ICC and such, and the frost one didn’t go that route.

Outlaw Rogue

It is funny that, with the rogue being my most played class, that I died in the first few seconds of this questline. I stealthed out onto the beach, thinking that this was just another sneak quest. Whoops! Surprise land mines.

This one was fun, much like the other rogue artifact quest. Some stealth, some combat. A good mix, and not just grinding through killing things. I think the assassination quest had a better mix of activities, but no complaints here.

 

So far, my personal ranking of the class order halls and artifact quests so far would be

1. assassination rogue
2. resto druid
3. fire mage
4. outlaw rogue
5. arcane mage
6. shadow priest
7. arms warrior

Do we need a guild web site anymore?

At one time, I thought that the silence in my guild chat was just a symptom of a dysfunctional/dying guild. Now, though, I hear that this is fairly characteristic of a lot of guilds around the game. Guilds serve almost no purpose now for casual players. The default method of running dungeons is through LFG, and the default way for running raids in LFR. No need to talk to your guildies. The only time guilds are necessary is for organized raiding and Mythic dungeons. Even for those, you can use the Group Finder tool in game or a service like OpenRaid and avoid restrictive guild ties.

In the long tail of Warlords, I allowed my guild web site subscription to lapse. No one was using it – hardly anyone in the guild was even playing actively. Now that Legion has gone live I thought I would reactivate it. But to what end? I have no immediate plans to start recruiting, and it is not clear that we need it for any communication if we have no plans to raid. I can’t see any reason that people would use the web site.

So, the silence in guild chat continues…

Optimistic or pessimistic?

I remember it well, back in 2014. The hype about the new expansion was intense. Garrisons are cool! New zones are beautiful! Blizzard has knocked it out of the park! That lasted about two weeks before people started complaining.

I’m not defending Warlords… people complained because there was a lot to complain about. It is possible that Legion is simply much better.

I am wondering, though. In a couple of weeks, when players have finished many or all of the artifact quests and leveled through the new zones… will Legion get the same treatment as WoD did? Is this an inevitability in the current era of gaming, where people burn through content in a week or two and then get bored and move on?

What are my goals in Legion?

I have never been a speed leveler. I remember even back in the early days of Wrath, some of my guildmates were starting to find groups to run Naxxramas and I was still meandering my way through the Dragon Wastes.

You’re only going to get one opportunity to experience the story for the first time. I read every quest, watch the cut scenes, and explore the zones.

What am I missing out on?

Well, gold making, for one. I am a pretty dedicated gold maker – not a “goblin” as some people say, but I do pretty well.

At the start of the expansion there are HUGE profit opportunities. Lots of quests require specific herbs, ores, or other crafting materials. That auction house market is tremendously inflated. Those who run through the content to level 110 can start farming those things and making boatloads of gold. I’ve heard of people raking in hundreds of thousands of gold in the first week.

As much as I like my gold, I’m sure I’ll still find profitable opportunities later.

I can’t think of anything else. Raids aren’t available yet. There are regular and heroic dungeons, but I’ve heard that the Group Finder is really really slow for dps right now, and you need a premade group for mythics. I don’t think that’s a big loss for the time being.

This brings up a big question – what are my end goals this expansion? What do I hope to do when I eventually reach the level cap?

In every expansion since Wrath, the answer was that I would raid with my guild, of course. In Legion, that is not a foregone conclusion. It is not clear that my guild will be able to support a raid group. On top of that, it is also not clear that I will be able to dedicate the time to raiding on a schedule.

My goals are (in priority order):

1. Play with my family. I have 5 immediate family members who are playing, plus myself. I hope that we can run dungeons together, do the Karazhan “mini-raid” dungeon when it comes in Patch 7.1, and maybe do some LFR together.
2. Make gold. I usually do this by crafting. It looks like crafting will be gated by level, and opportunities are limited if you’re not level 110. That means I will have to get at least 3-4 alts up to level 110.
3. Explore. I always place a priority on getting the reputation and exploration achievements. It seems like Legion steers you in that direction, anyway.
4. Raid, eventually. I would love to raid with my guild. If most of my family raids, that gives us 5-6. I know of at least 2-3 more in the guild that probably would raid. Depending on how long this xpac holds the attention of everyone else, we might be able to field a group eventually. Definitely not before October or November, though.
5. Master my rogue. There was once a time when I tried really hard to be a good PVE rogue, if not a great one. I competed against myself to max out my performance. I studied theorycrafting. In the last couple of expansions I have let that slide as I have played the game much more casually. (this coincides with the decline in my blogging) It would be nice to refocus on that.
6. Perks – the extra things that Blizzard offers for us to do, like Challenge Modes and Mythic Dungeons. I have never tried these. In January or so, I’ll take a look at where I am and where my friends are and see if something like this is viable.