So, I mentioned once or twice that I've played World of Warcraft, right?
Since it's been awhile since we've talked about it, and update is in order. The Cataclysm expansion saw most of the serious raiders leave our guild for guilds they could raid with - that expansion gave a lot of reasons for guilds to always raid as a guild, and so, eventually, our herd thinned. And because our herd thinned, I became less interested in playing. Other officers began to lose interest in the game, or in the guild, and we thinned more. During the Mists of Pandaria expansion, we only had a handful of players who logged in, and were generally surprised in anyone else from the guild was around at the same time. Ditto for Warlords of Draenor, even after a well-hyped launch. I didn't log in regularly during either of these expansions. Essentially, the steam was out of our sails, and without a certain amount of active people providing steam (analogy...breaking...down) we couldn't seriously try to recruit to get more steam providers.
But we have a new expansion, Legion. The storytelling is both literally and figuratively fantastic, the art is amazing, and the content is plentiful. I've been hyped. The remnants of the guild were, too. So I started trying to recruit. I'm back to playing WoW.
There's still a lot of recruiting to do - and I've been trying since May - but right now everyone is having so much fun with leveling and checking out the new systems and content that we aren't missing the number much. We have a couple of great new members, and a couple of great vets. It's a start that I'm grateful for.
On to Legion itself, though. For one, loads of effort have gone into highlighting the individual classes and their specializations. All "specs" have been reworked (as they usually do every expansion), but with a focus on making each spec feel different, special. Shortly after starting the content, each character begins a quest line specific to their class, and part of that is choosing to hunt down a legendary (well, artifact - Blizzard has particular names for these things for reasons, I promise) weapon tied to one of that classes specs. So yes, they have separate questing content for each of the 36 or so specializations in the game. And this game has more specs now because they introduced a new hero class, the Demon Hunter.
Stop it. I love antiheroes.
Then there are 4 leveling zones, so far one max-level zone that has loads of content that I'm nowhere close to finishing, 10 dungeons (well, 8 classic difficulty dungeons, and 2 more that are only available in the new "Mythic" difficulty). The first raid just unlocked yesterday, and there's a new difficulty system for dungeons that keeps that content challenging and rewarding even past the normal, Heroic and Mythic modes. And they've also introduced World Quests - a system that basically replaces static end-game daily quests with randomly selected quests out in the new zones that may stick around for 4 hours to 6 days, and are then replaced by different quests. Oh! And crafting and gathering professions also have large, immersive quest lines, too!
Warlords of Draenor was heavily criticized for it's lack of content. Does it show?
The main plot at the start is that the demonic horde of the WoW universe, the Burning Legion, is invading Azeroth for the third time, and they seem to know about charms, now. Invasion warships, protals, and evil green fire are everywhere, and we're in trouble. Heroes are lost. The factions are reeling. The classes are banding together across the faction lines of Alliance and Horde even as some old faction tensions flare up again. We take up our awesome new artifact weapons, and rally our factions, or classes, and the populations of the new zones - the Broken Isles - against villains who can now respawn almost as fast as we can, thanks to a giant, open portal to the demons' home, the Twisting Nether (basically, evil space).
I'm back on my warlock, my "main" since Mists of Pandaria. And even though I want to play through all the class-specific stories on all of my other characters, there's just so much to do with my main. It's a great problem to have.
I'm sure I'll gush about my experiences in game a bit more in later posts, but for now, I'd like to share a few WoW-playin' YouTubers that have helped build the hype for me.
You May Also Enjoy:
...I'm not sure why my list is full of British people, but run with it.
Since it's been awhile since we've talked about it, and update is in order. The Cataclysm expansion saw most of the serious raiders leave our guild for guilds they could raid with - that expansion gave a lot of reasons for guilds to always raid as a guild, and so, eventually, our herd thinned. And because our herd thinned, I became less interested in playing. Other officers began to lose interest in the game, or in the guild, and we thinned more. During the Mists of Pandaria expansion, we only had a handful of players who logged in, and were generally surprised in anyone else from the guild was around at the same time. Ditto for Warlords of Draenor, even after a well-hyped launch. I didn't log in regularly during either of these expansions. Essentially, the steam was out of our sails, and without a certain amount of active people providing steam (analogy...breaking...down) we couldn't seriously try to recruit to get more steam providers.
 |
| Warlords of Draenor. Pretty, but...where is everyone? |
There's still a lot of recruiting to do - and I've been trying since May - but right now everyone is having so much fun with leveling and checking out the new systems and content that we aren't missing the number much. We have a couple of great new members, and a couple of great vets. It's a start that I'm grateful for.
On to Legion itself, though. For one, loads of effort have gone into highlighting the individual classes and their specializations. All "specs" have been reworked (as they usually do every expansion), but with a focus on making each spec feel different, special. Shortly after starting the content, each character begins a quest line specific to their class, and part of that is choosing to hunt down a legendary (well, artifact - Blizzard has particular names for these things for reasons, I promise) weapon tied to one of that classes specs. So yes, they have separate questing content for each of the 36 or so specializations in the game. And this game has more specs now because they introduced a new hero class, the Demon Hunter.
Stop it. I love antiheroes.
Warlords of Draenor was heavily criticized for it's lack of content. Does it show?
 |
| Let's see how much you like green after a couple years. |
I'm back on my warlock, my "main" since Mists of Pandaria. And even though I want to play through all the class-specific stories on all of my other characters, there's just so much to do with my main. It's a great problem to have.
I'm sure I'll gush about my experiences in game a bit more in later posts, but for now, I'd like to share a few WoW-playin' YouTubers that have helped build the hype for me.
You May Also Enjoy:
...I'm not sure why my list is full of British people, but run with it.
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