NEWS Tag: World Of Warcraft

Now that people have vented their frustrations at Blizzard about Diablo Immortal, we’re curious how they would react to a World of Warcraft mobile game. According to the lengthy Kotaku article making the rounds this week, a small mention was made about the company working on a version fo WoW that would play like Pokemon GO.

Whether people would actually be interested in playing it or not is another story, as we saw how well a Diablo game on mobile was received. Of course, there's no timetable on anything involving the game yet, so if it does come to pass, you probably won’t see anything about it until BlizzCon 2019. But we’re curious, would you play this kind of a WoW title?

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The World of Warcraft team has announced that the Classic demo play time has been extended and players can check it out through Monday, November 12th.

The World of Warcraft team has announced that the Classic demo play time has been extended and players can check it out through Monday, November 12th. In addition, the playtime limits have been removed (earlier this week). You will have either had to have been a BlizzCon attendee or to have purchased a Virtual Ticket in order to participate.

From our earlier coverage:

Have you been playing? Leave us your thoughts and impressions in the comments.

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Full disclosure: Battle for Azeroth code provided by Blizzard.

Man, I’ve done a lot in the past week in World of Warcraft. But before I dive in a quick friendly reminder. I occasionally stream my adventures. So follow me on Twitter (@ShankTheTank) for updates when I go live on my Twitch, Mixer, YouTube, and Periscope. For a playlist of my adventures so far, check out this playlist.

Alright with that out of the way, I can honestly say that the more I play this game, the more I begin to appreciate why World of Warcraft has been a mainstay for 14 years. Every time I play it now, I’m just furiously kicking myself for not playing this earlier. I can only imagine how epic it must be to have been a Day 1 player and journeyed with the game for these last 14 years. To see the story unfold and mechanics evolve must be fascinating.

I’ve done quite a lot in the past week. Starting off my adventures, I initially went north to Stormsong Valley. But not fully understanding the questing mechanics, I definitely got a bit confused as I couldn’t figure out what the “main storyline” was.

Turns out, each one of those zones has its own storyline, something I quickly figured when, in my confusion, I abandoned Stormsong Valley and moved south into Tiragarde Sound. This is where World of Warcraft really hit its stride for me and things began to slowly lock into place.

Tiragarde Sound blew me away. I love the area, I love the pirate theme, and I just love the characters, particularly Flynn. In my time there, I learned more about the mechanics and structure of the game which definitely helped me appreciate the story all the more.

On Saturday, I adventured to Drustvar with Bradford. Here again, I fell in love with the darker tone of the place, seemingly in an eternal Autumn. I’m originally from Boston so seeing the orange trees really made me nostalgic for the beautiful foliage in New England.

I also found out about add-ons, something I didn’t think you could do in an MMORPG, but there we are. My friends told me to use TellMeWhen for my skill rotation as well as Bagnon for a better inventory consolidation. These are two fantastic quality of life add-ons that make my life as a newb much easier, allowing me to learn the mechanics better and concentrate on what I care about most in this game: the story.

Additionally, I was encouraged to try out different specializations with my Hunter. I spent some time a couple days ago re-speccing into the Survival specialization, and I really do dig the melee abilities, especially the Harpoon skill. That’s just legit.

And now, I’m back in Stormsong Valley, having completed the main storyline for Tiragarde Sound. I plan on finishing Stormsong Valley before moving over to Drustvar again. The more I play World of Warcraft, the more I fall in love with it. It’s truly remarkable and I really appreciate the lengths Blizzard has gone to in order to make the game more appealing to complete novices.

Some may see this as “dumbing down,” but I mean. Come on, guys. It’s a video game. If the notion of making a game more appealing to new players somehow angers you, I propose that there are greater things to lose sleep over. From everything that I see in World of Warcraft, there is plenty of depth in the game to appeal to everyone. Personally, I’m having an absolute blast.

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As Battle for Azeroth inches closer, we look back at all the ups and downs of Legion.

Blizzard released patch 8.0 for World of Warcraft 25 days ago, effectively signaling the beginning of the next expansion, Battle for Azeroth. It's an exciting update full of changes both big and small, but 8.0 also heralds the end of Legion, the best expansion since 2008's Wrath of the Lich King. Now that it's over, I can't help but feel sad. It's been a great two years of World of Warcraft's now 13-year-old life. Not many games this old get better with age, but Legion is bound to be an expansion people fondly remember for years to come.

And it's easy to see why. After what basically amounted to a mid-life crisis with Cataclysm and Warlords of Draenor, World of Warcraft has settled into confident maturity—a bold vision that pays homage to the past while not being chained to it. Legion made World of Warcraft more accessible than ever before while also nailing a cadence of updates and dynamic content that made sure I always had a reason to log in. After years of worrying if World of Warcraft's best years is behind it, Legion is a strong argument otherwise.

To the Broken Isles

Legion, Warcraft's sixth expansion, launched almost two years ago on August 30, 2016. When I first reviewed it back then, I said it bore "a terrible weight" by having to make up for the flop that was Warlords of Draenor. While Warlords of Draenor started off promising, its core features isolated players into singleplayer instances of the world and meaningful updates were too few and far between. Soon after, Blizzard revealed that World of Warcraft had shed over 3 million subscribers since Warlords' launch. There just wasn't much reason to play. While World of Warcraft was still easily the most popular MMO with over 6 million subscribers, it wasn't very promising news for the future of the game. And Legion would have to be the expansion that turned these ill omens around.

When Blizzard first announced Legion at Gamescom 2015, fans were concerned that it might be a rushed expansion to shore up the ongoing discontent with Warlords of Draenor. But when Blizzard did an in-depth reveal a few months later at Blizzcon, it was already clear that Legion wasn't repeating Warcraft's past mistakes. Instead, Blizzard wanted to give players everything they been asking for since The Burning Crusade launched in 2006.

Gone were the singleplayer Garrisons, for example, that confined players to their own little base whenever they weren't out questing. Instead, Legion would introduce class-specific Order Halls where everyone of that same class would hang out to pick up new story quests, assign duties to NPC followers, and power up new artifact weapons. And Demon Hunters finally became a playable class—one of the best that Blizzard has ever designed. Not only are they great in combat (I particularly love how indomitable the tanky Vengeance specialization feels), but their ability to fly and overall mobility made World of Warcraft feel kinetic in a way it never had before. I managed a Demon Hunter throughout the entirety of Legion and loved it.

When I first played Legion, I found one of World of Warcraft's most exquisitely detailed and designed zones to date. The Broken Isles was a Greatest Hits of World of Warcraft lore, with each zone pulling inspiration from a beloved corner of Azeroth. Val'Sharah was a rich woodland slowly succumbing to a festering rot, while Asuna was a melancholy elven ruin. Each of the five zones was so distinct it felt a bit silly going from one to the next but they also exemplified how good Blizzard is at world building. One subtle yet major improvement was with level-scaling, which has now been applied to all of the old ones too. In Legion, each of the four leveling zones could be tackled in whatever order you wanted and monsters would always scale to your level to keep things challenging.

Legion also improved and iterated on Warlords of Draenor's already great quest design. Treasures, elite monsters, and easter eggs were scattered everywhere, encouraging me to take countless detours to my next objective. And the quests themselves varied greatly and told interesting stories that helped deepen my understanding of the world and its inhabitants. I particularly loved Suramar, the endgame zone restricted for characters at level 110. This elven city was a huge step forward in how Blizzard designed urban areas. Each district was buzzing with activity and interesting things to see and do. The overarching story of the exiled Nightborne starting a revolution in Suramar that was told over the course of two updates was fun despite, at times, feeling like a grind.

While I'd still like to see Battle for Azeroth improve on this, Legion felt more social thanks to public Order Halls and new World Quests. Once players reached the level cap of 110, World Quests would dynamically spawn all over the Broken Isles that offered all kinds of loot. It encouraged players to get out there and exist in the world instead of hiding in Dalaran waiting to get into pre-matched dungeons and raids. It meant the world itself was constantly full of players to team up with and (if the mood struck me) gank.

Pace yourselves

If there are two major features that ensure Legion will be fondly remembered, it is undoubtedly Mythic+ dungeons and the pace of updates. The first was a much-needed reimagining of how dungeons fit into the growing list of activities a player has once they reach the level cap. In previous expansions, dungeons were often treated like a stepping stone to the ultimate endgame: raiding. But the problem was that, once you ran them enough times to get the gear you needed, there were few reasons to go back.

Legion fixed this in a big way. Taking a nod from Diablo 3's Rifts, Mythic+ was a new, flexible difficulty mode that rewarded gear that was as good as anything you could find in raids. Each week, players would get a Mythic Keystone that unlocked a specific Mythic+ version of a dungeon with enemies that had increased health and damage over their regular Mythic versions. If you beat the dungeon, you got more powerful loot and your keystone leveled up to a more difficult tier of Mythic+ and set you off toward another dungeon.

But the real challenge came from the affixes that would slowly be layered on as your Mythic Keystone reached higher levels. Enemies might ignore tanks and go for healers, empower their allies when they die or spawn explosive orbs that need to be destroyed. More sinister affixes would punish healers for going overboard or send shockwaves out from players that damage and interrupt their allies.Mythic+ made dungeons an endgame activity instead of a stepping stone, and it was challenging as hell. It pushed teams to their limits and rewarded with amazing gear but dispensed with the sometimes unnecessary and unaccessible requirements of hardcore raiding. More importantly, it made dungeons fun to run each week rather than another grind. It's no surprise Mythic+ will stay a central pillar in Battle for Azeroth's dungeons.

But the best thing about Legion that everyone can appreciate is how aggressively Blizzard released major updates. To put it in perspective, Warlords of Draenor only had two major updates while Legion had a whopping five.

Update 7.1 came only two months after Legion's launch and introduced Return to Karazhan, a fan-favorite raid converted into a mega-dungeon that could take hours to fully complete the first few times. Two and a half months later Patch 7.1.5 rolled out a new raid, The Night hold, while also bringing a new Timewalking Dungeon event (where players can jump into dungeons from older expansions for rewards) and the hectic Brawler's Guild boss-rush mode. Another two months saw the release of 7.2, which added a mini-zone, new dungeon and raid, and dynamic demon invasions across the Broken Isles. And five months after that, Legion got its biggest update when Blizzard added three mini-zones on the never before seen planet of Argus, a new raid and dungeon, two new factions, and smaller features like Invasion Points.

There was always something to do in Legion and Blizzard really outdid itself in 7.3 when players became intergalactic travelers and explored Argus, the headquarters of The Burning Legion. It was a dramatic climax to an expansion full of dramatic climaxes. It was only earlier this year that things started to slow down a bit as Blizzard shifted focus to developing Battle for Azeroth. The only massively annoying part of Legion was the way 7.2 time-gated much of its story to drip feed players for 11 weeks until the new raid opened up. But, in hindsight, it's hard to stay bitter considering how great Legion's other post-launch updates were. It finally felt like, after the drought of Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard hit a stride that kept everyone happy.

As a matter of Artifact

Not everything about Legion was sunshine and demon-slaying. While Blizzard nailed how players got new loot, Legion dropped the ball on what that new loot was. Near the beginning the expansion, each class specialization was given a unique Artifact Weapon—a powerful instrument of warlike Thrall's fabled Doomhammer. The message was clear: Players were going to wield the most powerful weapons in the known world against The Burning Legion.

At first, Artifact Weapons were great. Unlike normal gear, they had inherent traits that were unlocked and leveled up by way of Artifact Power. At first, the choice of what traits to level up made a significant effect, but later on, Artifact Weapons felt like a linear grind for marginal improvement. They just weren't exciting anymore. Even worse, Artifact Weapons made leveling alternate characters a real pain early in Legion. Players had to wait real time on annoying 'research levels' in order to get their new Artifact Weapons up to par with their other characters', a process that became so awful Blizzard just removed it entirely in a later update. In hindsight, Artifact Weapons were fun to wield but just weren't all that interesting to level up.

But even Artifact Weapons pale in comparison to Legion's most egregious problem: Legendary gear. In previous expansions, Legendary items were awarded for herculean feats like completing epic questlines or beating the hardest raids multiple times. It was a sign of your status as a top-tier player, and Legion threw all of that away for a system that favored RNG above all else.

Just weren't all that interesting to level up.

But even Artifact Weapons pale in comparison to Legion's most egregious problem: Legendary gear. In previous expansions, Legendary items were awarded for herculean feats like completing epic questlines or beating the hardest raids multiple times. It was a sign of your status as a top-tier player, and Legion threw all of that away for a system that favored RNG above all else.

Like Diablo 3, Legendaries in Legion could be obtained from anywhere and anything. You could sneeze on a sickly antelope and a Legendary item could pop out. It wasn't rewarding at all. What's worse, these Legendaries had a dramatic effect on your performance in combat. But because all of it was RNG, it was completely random who had the best Legendaries and who had none at all—and that made players furious. Throughout the length of the expansion, Blizzard tried to update Legendaries and make them less terrible but the damage was done.

An equally annoying system was Titan-Forging, which would sometimes take dropped equipment and randomly make it stronger for no reason at all. Like Legendaries, it was complete RNG that gave players exorbitantly powerful gear without requiring anything extra of them. It was meant to be a nice little bonus but those without Titan-Forged gear felt left out. It was these random elements of Legion that really made loot feel like a crapshoot. Players have embraced that monsters might not always drop the gear they want, but it was supremely frustrating to have someone else get a significantly stronger piece of gear for no real reason other than luck. But compared to where Legion succeeded, these frustrations are a small (but very noticeable) stain.

When I first reviewed Legion and gave it a 90 out of 100, I was terrified that, like Warlords of Draenor, it would make a great first impression but drop the ball months down the road. Instead, Legion improved significantly with each new update by adding a staggering amount of quests to do and areas to explore. At the same time, smart innovations like Mythic+ pushed this 14-year-old MMO ahead of its competitors by refreshing a stale formula and making it an exciting and worthwhile investment.

Though it stumbled at times, Legion was everything I wanted from World of Warcraft: An immense world to explore, tough-as-nails group content, and a constant stream of new things to do each week. Now that it's over, I can safely say that Legion is the best two years I've had playing World of Warcraft since it first launched in 2004. The battle for Azeroth is only a month away from launch, but Blizzard has their work cut out for them if they hope to top Legion.

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Recently, I started back playing World of Warcraft (WoW) after skipping almost two expansions (plus some years) in content. In 2018, is WoW more than worth it again for brand new or returning players? Let's take a glance.

WoW is usually a game that is certainly near and dear to my heart. I have played it don and doff for almost 13 years, starting out in the first game (generally known as vanilla or classic), all the way up up to now, the seventh expansion, dubbed "Legion."

An expansion can be an odd method to describe World of Warcraft's huge fully-priced content drops, that contain hundreds, possibly 1000s of hours in juicy gameplay, dwarfing the definition of "expansion" to be sure it in other games (thinking about you Destiny 2). Of course, World of Warcraft is funded by way of a subscription-based model, with around ten million players paying $15 a month for the right to get into the gargantuan open worlds define the land of Azeroth plus the game's other planets (yes, planets).

World of Warcraft has lots of imitators (and WoW itself borrowed heavily using their company MMOs that preceded it), but few have were able to achieve Blizzard's amount of execution. WoW is undoubtedly an action RPG that is certainly responsive, exciting, and quite honestly, somehow gorgeous despite rocking a motor room fire that's greater decade old. WoW will be from strength to strength, and even though the previous two expansions, Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor gave the impression to contribute within a steep leave in players, Legion has gotten many millions of players flocking back, but why?

I'm likely to run through a few of my findings both leveling new characters, and enjoying WoW's new end game content after weeks of non-stop play, and explain why I'm yet again fully addicted after many years away from Blizzard's flagship title.

The levelling experience

I have experience wanting to persuade many friends and family to get involved with WoW, so I know lots of the common complaints. Sadly, Blizzard hasn't done a great improve the experience for newcomers, although the situation is getting better.

World of Warcraft is definitely an old game, plus the bulk of Blizzard's resources go towards monetizing and incentivizing its veteran playerbase, presents itself the level cap. For new players, World of Warcraft is usually a bit of any mess, with outdated content intersecting and overlapping with new content, and also a leveling system tuned to speed you in the end game, instead of fun.

Indeed, one of the primary complaints I've gotten attempting to get younger siblings or older peers into WoW is the fact it's just too damn possible for newcomers. Most monsters (mobs) might be killed in one or two hits, making low level play an overall total snoozefest. At the very least, you'd anticipate to get the opportunity to use several of your other abilities, if for no reason at all other than to understand them, but sadly this is simply not the case.

Blizzard is introducing a different level scaling system through an upcoming patch, that may ensure that mobs are usually on an equal footing along level-wise. I are actually testing it on Blizzard's Public Test Realm (PTR), and finding that still, you will one to two shot mobs by spamming one key, whack-a-mole style. It makes general low-level gameplay incredibly dull and disengaging, also it even extends to the game's dungeons, which, despite being scaled up in difficulty for 5-player teams, remains way too easy to be truly fun with the average gamer. What's the point of those levels and receiving gear upgrades if you think super powerful from level 1?

WoW compensates for its patronizingly easy low-level combat in alternative methods, however. Levels 1 to 60 were completely revamped recently, earning many new voiced quests, new storylines, and much more fun and unique game mechanics to generate questing more interesting.

The level scaling patch being released early 2018 will likely ensure you don't "out-level" a zone before completing its story, this means you might find yourself more engaged with all the characters and plot associated with a given area, get the job done low-level 1-hit-1-kill combat doesn't entice you.

More problems arise whenever you hit level 60, however, since the particular level 60 to 80 content articles are not only pretty outdated, however it takes place in a very different timeline to the extent 1 to 60 content. Not only is this somewhat confusing for newcomers, it's probably quite confusing for veterans too, who is probably not familiar while using story.

The level scaling patch enables you greater treatments for where and what expansions you utilize to level. In a few weeks, it is possible to choose to skip The Burning Crusade expansion altogether, and level 60 to 80 using Wrath with the Lich King zones, as an example. It'll be entirely under your control which storylines you have, though the overarching plot of WoW can be increasingly challenging to follow after all this – if you are interested in it. This is tuned to assist veterans speed from the game leveling side characters (called "alts"). It would be cool if Blizzard could somehow make these older zones highly relevant to the game's modern story, nonetheless it would call for a significant amount of investment.

You can skip doing this older, messy, and outdated content however by collecting the latest expansion, Legion, which grants a token to acquire a character straight away to level 100. Suddenly creating a level 100 character, full of all of their abilities and nuances, generally is a bit overwhelming for first time players too, and I'm unsure whether it would help the experience vs. playing with the game's older content (which despite being old, has a lot of fun quests and environments to educate yourself regarding).
The Legion experience

The latest expansion, dubbed Legion, involves a massive demonic invasion of Azeroth, kickstarted by an evil orc warlock named Gul'dan (who originally died in Warcraft 2, but has now found its way to Azeroth again via time travel... don't ask). And honestly, I find so that it is the best expansion WoW has ever offered to the abundance of content and end-game activities.

I have already been playing through Legion as my undead warlock, leveling over the game's utterly gorgeous zones, detailed with updated water tech, crazy details, and all-new spell effects. Indeed, most classes have received new animations and spell effects, that makes gameplay more fulfilling by itself (although warlock animations and spells still weren't updated... grr). Additionally, Legion adds an all-new class, the Demon hunter, which begins at level 98.

Demon hunters can be extremely agile, being the one class in WoW which could double (and triple) jump, playing a lot more like something I'd expect of Devil May Cry as opposed to World of Warcraft. Demon hunters are exceedingly fun damage dealing or defensive tanking class, according to spec, and worth a glance if you're a returning player seeking something fresh.

Demon hunters have their own very own starting zone and plot, flying insects you to their backstory. In fact, each class in WoW featuring a story campaign to adhere to, because expansion requires the accrual of special "artifact" weapons, many inspired by Warcraft's vast lore.

My warlock class campaign required across Azeroth searching for special weapons, generating a hidden base from the Hell-like Twisting Nether, and turning the demon's powers against them, fighting back from the expansion's eponymous antagonistic force, The Burning Legion.

Typically, to find the most out of WoW, you needed a guild or clan of lots of members to get your house the game's more rewarding and sophisticated raid content. WoW presently has hundreds of hours of content for both grouped and solo play – I've been playing completely alone, yet still found myself struggle to put the game down.

Once you have explain to you the game's new zones and storylines (which often there are many), yet more content opens your responsibility. Since Legion's launch, Blizzard added a total additional campaign quest zone dubbed The Broken Shore, which sees the forces of Azeroth assault the Legion's foothold on earth.

After that, you practice the fight on the planet Argus itself, that this Legion continues to be using like a de facto capital. After weeks of playing, I still barely touched either these zones, opting instead to perform the storylines on the expansion's launch zones.

As of writing, Legion has over the dozen 5-man dungeons, as well as some raids to finish, accessible either with random players with the game's "Looking For Raid" system, or through harder, organized versions with "Normal," "Heroic," and "Mythic" difficulty levels for 10 to 25 players.

However, even for anyone who is playing with a reduced group of friends, that you can do the game's Diablo-like Mythic+ keystone dungeons, which grants usage of increasingly difficult versions in the game's 5-man dungeons so they could earn increasingly powerful loot. There are all kinds of new approaches to play, and I think that I have barely scratched the top.

Blizzard was adament to keep players engaged throughout this expansion, enlisting an expanded World Quest system for players hitting level 110. In expansions past, WoW were built with a handful of "repeatable" quests for players hitting the amount cap, specifically made for grinding reputation numbers together with the game's various factions. These were also soul-crushingly boring and repetitive, with out doubt served to make many players faraway from the game during that time. In Legion, Blizzard has really ramped the quality and various dynamic quests open to end-game players, going from the few dozen repeatable quests to hundreds. They all contain a bit of voice acting and context too, and give far more powerful rewards than the earlier reputation grind-like daily quests of yesteryear.