World of Warcraft: Legion Leveling Review

Introduction

I have spent a lot of time playing World of Warcraft as evidenced by my 259 mounts, 684 pets, and over 22,000 achievement points (before Legion). I am no stranger to this game and thus my review will primarily focus on what is new to Legion rather than be a review of the game in its entirety.

Within the game I play as a Death Knight. I have been a Death Knight since I started playing World of Warcraft at the start of Wrath of the Lich King. I raided some in Wrath, and then all through Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, and Warlords of Draenor. I will be raiding again in Legion, which will be the subject of another blog post.

The content of this review will focus exclusively on the leveling experience in Legion. My next review will dive into the endgame content once you reach max level.

Something to keep in mind while reading is that things may have changed since this review was written. Some issues raised may no longer exist. Online games such a World of Warcraft are constantly being patched and updated to fix existing bugs and also to streamline the rough patches.

First 15

I load into the game, so far no lag, which has been a problem in the past with a new expansion. Time to teleport the city of Dalaran. Here we go!

Right away I’m being led to my class hall, which is the floating ziggurat Acherus. I’m not really sure how I feel about it to be honest. On the one hand it’s hard to say there’s anything that feels more like a home for the Death Knights than Acherus, but on the other hand the whole place feels kind of stale since we’ve been in and out of this place so much in the past. There are a few structural improvements, but for the most part it’s kind of the same. It would have been nice to branch out into someplace new, but on the flip side it’s hard to argue with having a floating base (it works for Dalaran after all). I guess I’ll just say I have mixed feelings about it all.

Now I have the choice of which artifact weapon to pursue next. I know from my research that no matter what artifact I choose I can get the other two at level 102, so since I’m leveling I choose the Blades of the Fallen Prince, which is my Frost damage specialization. I’m told where to go and eventually find myself back in Icecrown Citadel.

Not only does the place bring back some memories (I did raid Icecrown Citadel), but this definitely feels like a very Death Knighty (totally a word/phrase/whatever) place to go. I pull the first set of mobs and holy hell they hit hard. I feel like I should be doing this as Blood spec.

I get to a pair of gargoyles who turn to stone once I defeat them. Now I’m faced with two switches. It actually takes me a moment to realize that I’m supposed to Death Grip the stone gargoyles onto each of the switches. I think this is the first time ever that I’ve been required to use Death Grip. So many quests in the past have to be tuned around all of the different classes, so the designers can’t require Death Grip since other classes don’t have it. But this is a questline for only Death Knights, so I can (and will have to) do only Death Knight things. I think this is the first time in a long time that I’ve actually felt like a Death Knight.

Speaking of only Death Knight things, what else do I have access to that might help me? Maybe something that can deal with the ridiculous amounts of damage I’m taking? Oh wait, that’s right, Control Undead exists. Just to preface this, Control Undead is an ability that Death Knights were given during the pre-patch for Mists of Pandaria. We’ve gone through two whole expansions since then, and not once in all that time has Control Undead ever been useful. Most of the places where you can use it, it’s easier and faster just to kill everything. And the places where you would want to use it, everything, including undead mobs, are immune. I, and probably every other Death Knight, don’t even have the ability on my bars since I can never use it. So I try it out. Well, it certainly helps some. Again, for the first time since Wrath of the Lich King I really am starting to feel like a Death Knight.

Now that said, I’m still taking a lot of damage. I decide to switch to Blood (tank) spec and see how it goes. Things go much smoother after that. I get to the throne at the top and Bolvar, the new Lich King after Arthas’ defeat, is giving me instructions. I’m actually very much against what’s happening now. Why am I taking instructions from the Lich King? Wasn’t the whole entire point of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for the Death Knights to break free of the Lich King’s control? Shouldn’t Mograine or Thassarian or someone like that be giving me instructions?

The boss (no spoilers, I promise) showed up for me to fight. I did the fight as Blood, and really there wasn’t anything that made me feel like I should have been Frost. The boss summons a bunch of small adds, presumably for Howling Blast to eliminate, but Blood Boil works just as well (or maybe even better). I defeated the boss and earned myself my first artifact weapon. The moment is appropriately epic and I really do like the look of the Blades of the Fallen Prince. I’m a little sad that all throughout this questline there was no mention made of the fact that I own (and was carrying) the legendary weapon Shadowmorne. At the very least an extra piece of dialog would have been nice.

At this point I’m past 15 minutes since I began the expansion, but I do want to go a bit into the start of the leveling when it comes to more normal questing.

Now I have a choice of where to go first on the Broken Isles. I choose Stormheim. I honestly chose it because I wanted the shoulder enchant they have once you reach revered with the Valarjar (which admittedly turned out to not matter since you can’t get revered until well after you hit max level). Of course, right away I’m told that I’ll be given control of Sylvanas’ fleet, which I am all about. Let’s do this!

I get into the first zone and immediately get attacked by the Alliance. So much for unity between the Horde and the Alliance. Also, given how insanely hard the enemies in the artifact weapon quest hit, these enemies barely even touch me. Why the huge discrepancy?

There are other players in the area. For a moment I’m worried about having to fight for quest mobs, until I remember that everything is now shared tag. It’s amazing how much more enjoyable the game is when players are considered “grouped” without having to go through the hassle of making a group. Second best decision Blizzard ever made. (Scaling Normal and Heroic Raids being the first.)

And that is the end of my second fifteen minutes. So far I’m having a lot of fun. Time to keep going and see where Blizzard takes me.

Story

As with all questing in World of Warcraft, the leveling experience is extremely dense with the lore of the game. As per usual, players are introduced to a number of new characters while also meeting a number of familiar faces. What’s new this expansion though is the introduction of artifact weapons and, more importantly, class quests. Blizzard is trying to restore the core of each class by not only creating questlines that are unique to each class, but even creating unique gathering areas for each of the different classes.

While the class quests for the Death Knight certainly make me feel like a Death Knight, I felt that there wasn’t anything that made each of the different specs feel unique. As I mentioned above, I ended up finishing the Frost scenario as Blood spec, and I did the same with Unholy. Nothing about the gameplay for either of the damage spec scenarios made them feel particularly unique to that spec. Unholy at least should have made a big deal about having a pet, but it didn’t. Of course storywise they felt very different, but the gameplay just wasn’t there to back them up. Still, I enjoyed them, but I would like to see some more effort being made to make me feel like I need to be Frost spec when doing the questline for the Blades of the Fallen Prince.

Also, I found out when I started leveling an alt that Unholy Death Knights and Balance Druids run the exact same quest for their artifact weapon. This completely undermines the feeling of uniqueness the second time around.

The storyline does a very good job of making the invasion of the Burning Legion feel like a global event. In the pre-patch, players had to defend different areas of Azeroth from demonic invasions. Then, everyone began to focus primarily on the Broken Isles as they hunted for the Pillars of Creation. But even with the search going on, the story still took players away from the isles to different areas of the world. This was especially true of the artifact weapons as players interacted with a wide host of characters from Warcraft’s past. All of this helped make the threat of the Burning Legion feel more like a global event rather than something solely isolated to the Broken Isles.

Something that helps sell the idea of the artifact weapons is the way in which the other NPCs in the game acknowledge their existence. Some promise to help empower your weapons with their blessing, which usually takes the form of relic upgrades, while others express their awe at the power of your weapon(s). There’s even a boss in one of the dungeons that has a special voice line if there’s a Druid in your party. The boss accuses the Druid of bringing corruption and how the boss will take the weapon for his own. All of this helps to reinforce the feeling of importance players feel as they wind their way through the story of the Broken Isles.

Interface

First off, I want to commend Blizzard’s back end team for the smoothest launch in the history of World of Warcraft. There was little to no lag ever during the first day of launch, and thanks to the new shard system areas felt populated but not crowded. There were only a handful of missions out of the hundreds I did while leveling where I felt I was competing with other players for quest objectives. All of the other missions it either wasn’t an issue, or I was actually happy to see other players thanks to the new shared tag system. The designers may be the superstars, but the programmers definitely deserve some accolades for their work too.

The interface for World of Warcraft is a very difficult thing to talk about because Blizzard has the single most easily customizable interface out of, I think, any game ever made. The plethora of addons mean players can make their interface look any way they want. The one big issue I did run into was in the class hall. While in your class hall, a bar appears at the top of the screen which shows your resources and the number of minions you have. I’m sure it works great on the default UI, but I and most streamers that I’ve seen put things at the top of the screen, things that are now being covered up. I looked through the options for a way to turn it off, which unfortunately there isn’t one. Of course, a day later someone made a simple addon to turn it off.

Gameplay

I cannot begin to describe how much more enjoyable questing is now that everything is shared tag. If I see someone fighting a group of mobs I need for a quest, rather than having to walk around that person to find my own mobs I can simply jump in and help them. After that, we almost subconsciously end up “grouped” as we move around together from one quest objective to the next until one of us is finished. At that point we go our separate ways and the process repeats with the next player(s) I encounter. This does so much for making the other players in the game feel like your allies rather than your opponents. This right here is easily my favorite change of the entire expansion. (Yes, even over the return of class quests.)

My least favorite zone was Highmountain, but my reasoning has nothing to do with the storyline. The reason for my dislike was the stupid elevator that goes between the upper and lower levels of Thunder Totem. The two levels are quite far apart and so the elevator takes a year and a day to go between them. This means that every time you go back there you end up having to stand around waiting for the elevator to reach you, then waiting some more while it carries you up or down. I felt like each time I had to return to Thunder Totem I found myself hating the zone a little more all because of the elevator. As a suggestion, they should split the elevator into two separate shafts. One, the “down” shaft, should be a straight drop down into a pool of water. The other, the “up” shaft, should have a totem at the bottom that creates a constant updraft of wind that launches players up the shaft and spits them out at the top. This way the elevator is always ready for players to use instead of having to wait for the platform to reach them. Also, falling/rising will be much faster than having to use the slow-moving platform.

In regards to the use of flying mounts, this time around Blizzard has decided to repeat what they ended up doing in Warlords of Draenor by not allowing flying at the start of the expansion, and then providing a series of achievements that players can earn in order to unlock flying for all characters on their account. I really like this approach personally. That said, the lack of flying in Draenor was less problematic than it is in Legion due to the existence of the daze mechanic. Any monster close to your level that hits you can daze you and force you off your mount. In Warlords of Draenor players could build a stable in their garrison that made them immune to daze. Unfortunately, such an option doesn’t exist in Legion. In the past the designers have said that the goal with daze was to make the enemies you run past feel threatening, but I don’t feel like this mechanic does what they intended for it to do. When I’m running past monsters on a mount, it’s not because I’m afraid of them, it’s because I have better things to do than waste time dealing with them. So when I get knocked off I don’t feel threatened by them, I just feel annoyed with them. Every time you get dazed it is an entirely negative experience with absolutely no upside. Blizzard gave players a way to ignore it in Warlords of Draenor, and I feel it is time they retired this outdated mechanic once and for all.

There are a lot of things that you stumble across as you’re questing. This can be anything from rare spawn monsters to hidden treasure chests to a group of murlocs racing snails. You certainly can go straight from quest to quest, but if you do you’ll miss a lot of what makes the world so compelling to experience. Blizzard is also starting to experiment with jumping puzzles, though nothing to the extent of what you can find in other games such as Guild Wars 2.

Conclusion

You will enjoy the leveling portion of this game if you like having lots of very strong stories with a whole host of characters. The lore of World of Warcraft is incredibly deep and Legion treads the craziness of it quite well. There are also a number of small moments and hidden gems that from time to time offer a nice respite from the more serious nature of major events.

You will not like the leveling portion of this game if you absolutely hate repetitive questing. The storyline of the expansion is quite good, but the majority of the quests still fall into the style of “collect X of this,” “kill X of that,” and “go talk to this person here.”

World of Warcraft: Legion is off to an amazing start. The main story is engaging, and the class stories are very cool. I really like the artifact weapons, and I can’t wait to see what they do with class quests moving forward. Of course, no matter how good the level up quests are, the success or failure of an expansion is mostly determined by its endgame content. Still, this expansion is showing promise, and if Blizzard can maintain the sense of impending doom and personal influence on events to come, than this could be the expansion Blizzard needs after a somewhat disappointing end to the last expansion.