Lots of WoW posts around here lately, but it's the MMO I'm playing and there's a lot to say on the subject.
Legion is just about over, and the pre-patch for Battle for Azeroth arrives July 17th. In addition to the features coming ini patch 8.0, and a few extra tweaks I'll talk about in a second, I feel like Legion as a whole is ending better than it began.
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That's a good thing! In hindsight, I simply wish the beginning were just a little bit better.
Artifact Power is Easier to Come By
In the beginning of the expansion, artifact power was so scarce it felt like I had to put in more time than my full-time job just to progress at a reasonable rate. Despite wanting to play multiple classes and enjoy the alt experience, it simply wasn't possible.
Fast-forward later in the expansion and getting AP was much, much easier. Modern AP gains are obviously broken as the scales are all jacked up, but infinitely closer to how it should feel comparatively.
I like playing alts, and gaining AP shouldn't be a chore. It should feel natural and as fluid as leveling your character.
Specific Legendaries Can Be Purchased
I've always been bothered by the way Blizzard handled Legendary loot in Legion. This 'random' (which wasn't so random) system of getting legendaries messed with me a lot. They even botched the whole bad luck bonus.
To this day, many of my characters still do not have class-defining legendaries. The fact that there are class-defining legendaries at all blows my mind. Certain legendaries so so good that you basically have to use them.
To make up for sucky luck, people like me could spend waking essence to purchase a random legendary. That also completely sucked. As a fan of the token system from WotLK, I would like to specifically choose what I get for my time investment. I don't mind collecting the currency to make the purchase since I gain it by playing my way, but let me choose my legendary.
In patch 8.0, players will be able to do just that.
With the Battle for Azeroth pre-patch, you’ll notice that the vendor who sold tokens that granted a random Legion Legendary item will now allow you to purchase specific Legion Legendaries relevant to your specialization. These are sold for the same cost that the token was sold for previously.
Battle for Azeroth is just around the corner, so we wanted to take this opportunity to allow players who are trying to complete their Legendary collections a more straightforward way to do so, as well as give or new or returning players a way to pick up some strong items to prepare for leveling.
These items can be purchased from Arcanomancer Vridiel in Dalaran for 1000 Wakening Essence. To help with this, many sources of Artifact Power will now grant Wakening Essences instead. Enjoy!
Sadly, this come just as players will no longer be able to complete the Mage Tower challenge. People like me didn't have the legendaries which would have made that challenge so, so, so much easier. Oh well!
More Sources of Waking Essence
Going along with buying specific legendaries, there will also be more ways to get waking essence. Currently it's only available from specific things such as your first random heroic dungeon for the day. This means casual players woudl have a much harder time achieving the 1000 essence needed.
I'm hoping all of the artifact power items now give waking essence. I imagine if each one were 30 or so that would be a really nice incentive to actually do world quests for the month remaining before BFA arrives.
One thing that needs to be fixed in WoW is the outright absence of guides as to what you should do if you returned from a long hiatus. Yes it does pop up with a screen that kind of tells you what is new, but that in no way tells you what you should be doing to become relevant again.
It was only from scouring websites that I found out if you do the new Silithus quest line, it caps your artifact at maximum automatically, as part of the artifact retirement system. This renders all artifact power increase tokens useless, and I didn’t even notice they were vendorable until I had destroyed about 20 of them.
It also wasn’t clear that if you finish all of the argus questline, it unlocks netherlight crucible upgrades for your artifact weapon (essentially a mini 3 tier talent tree for each relic in your artifact weapon).
I’m kinda glad I stopped playing early on in legion, because I get the impression they went full on grind mode, more so than they have ever done before. Want flying in legion zones? Want the new allied races? Want max level artifact (pre silithus quests)? You are in for one hell of a grind, and not only that, a lot of it is time gated due to the world quest system.
Those AP tokens will start to give waking essence which can be used for buying legendaries after the pre-patch. I don’t know if they’ll be retroactive or not, but they’re at least some money now.
I completely agree about being lost when you return. I wrote about that when I wrote about returning to play the game 2-3 months ago. It’s a bit of a rat nest of lines crossing for quests.
I’ve been selling them on the notion they won’t be retroactive, but might save them on my alt. I just got done with the nightborne quest line and started a nightborne warrior. Wanted to do highmountain tauren, but my rep is 5000/21000 which I really can’t be bothered grinding out at ~300-450 rep a day
I was reading that the rep grind will be easier in pre-patch.
One thing I noticed that WOW with its catch up mechanisms is a more enjoyable game for me than the normal WOW. I was trying to get some wakening essences to buy a random legendary and I looked at everything I could do to accomplish it. It seemed all reasonable and then I saw what it used to be like (Antorus bosses gave 7-9 wakening essences instead of 30ish now etc.) I like catch up WOW a lot better…
Totally. “catch-up” mechanic to me is the “fun” mechanic.
Catch up wow is always a shot of dopamine for us casuals that cap out much earlier due to limited time and other factors. They should have made legendaries easier to obtain considering the game was balanced around those. AP was terrible at the start even if you had tons of time you could only really do one spec, which limited the amount of different experiences you had. In the long run if you had the time you could level every toon to 110 and complete the orderhalls but no one could have done that all at without the massive changes they did to all parts of the game throughout legion. It’s a catch 22 blizzard wants you to play the game forever they want you to log in every day, if they make the game to hard people will stop playing, if it’s to easy people will get done with it to fast and leave. They will always error on the side of making it harder.