NEWS Tag: Wow Golds

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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Chuck Norris references. Anal jokes. Killing two dozen raptors to harvest ten raptor heads. The Barrens. Shit, after two hours of the World of Warcraft Classic demo, I’m still in the Barrens. It’s an inescapable nightmare, which is to say it’s perfect.

We wanted it hard, and Blizzard is giving it to us hard. The development team has been working furiously since even before last year’s official announcement of the retro version of the MMORPG, cramming old code into a newer framework in order to undo all the streamlining and simplification they’ve done since 2005. So far, so good.

The WoW Classic demo, available for visitors to Blizzcon 2018 and those who purchased the virtual pass for the event, takes players back to 13 years ago when Molten Core and Onyxia were the raids to beat. But demo players aren’t going on those grand adventures.

No, the demo starts players off at level 15, with Horde and Alliance players sent to the limbo of their side’s choosing. For the Alliance, that’s the golden fields of Westfall, filled with coyotes, vultures, bears, bandits, and gnolls. The mighty fortress of Sentinel Hill? Not so mighty anymore.

From the starting area, players can accept quests incredibly slowly. Remember, back then the quest text used to crawl down the page before the accept button would light up. You can go into the game’s options and change it, but what about authenticity? It’s only 15 seconds out of your life every time a quest giver is clicked on.

Once quests are accepted, it’s off to ... um. Huh. See, back then there wasn’t really a quest tracker. Players didn’t get dots or arrows on their map, showing them where their objectives were. And considering the landscape of Westfall changed significantly when the Cataclysm expansion dropped, most everybody on my beta server was just wandering about hopelessly.

It was horrible, but also beautiful. Wandering the countryside, searching for bandits, not knowing what I was going to run into—that’s the World of Warcraft that drew me in so many years ago. And when I, only my second Alliance rogue of the demo, finally found the bandits I was supposed to kill, I felt like I had really accomplished something.

But I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on the Alliance side. I mostly meandered about the Horde’s rolling golden plains, the Barrens. I created a mage, picked a suitable name, and set off to see if things were as bad as I remembered.

Horde players spawn at the Crossroads, and it was good to see the now-deserted area brimming with life. People were dueling, there was a dance party going on at the mailbox, and folks in area chat were going out of their way to make the seemingly never-ending level 10 through 20 hell feel like old times. Comments included:

“Anyone want to check out my LiveJournal?”

“Friend me on Myspace!”

“This zone is so big, it took Chuck Norris two spin kicks to cross it.”

“Let’s watch Tik Tok!”

Of course, there was the requisite complaining about Blizzard. While a majority of folks in chat seemed to be loving the demo, they weren’t so keen on one of Blizzard’s other big Blizzcon announcements.

Many players expressed disappointment that the demo didn’t dial back their ages 13 years to when they were 15. Having been 31 when WoWlaunched, I hate those players, but I love them just the same. We were all taking a trip back in time together.

To the days when an orc named Mankirk would task Horde players with finding his wife, lost during a brutal battle with quillboars.

After which new players would spend an hour running about the ridiculously expansive zone, looking for any sign of “Mankrik’s Wife,” with no real indication of where to find her.

To a time where our spells and abilities were tired, and some folks would swear that some lower-tiered spells were more efficient than their upper tier counterparts. When we could buy skills from all three of our specializations at once, and spend hours pouring over the branching talent trees to find just the right combination of enhancements.

And of course, to a time when animals and monsters would only sporadically have the items quest givers wanted us to gather. Things one would expect them to all have, like zhevra hooves. Zehvras are basically horses, so one might think killing one would get an adventurer up to four hooves, but no. Not in WoW Classic.

In WoW Classic we run through the plains, battling against other players for the few striped horses roaming about. There’s no kill sharing, as there is in modern World of Warcraft. The first person to hit the creature gets to credit. Warriors charge, mages use their instants. It’s a struggle sometimes, but a glorious one.

And best of all, it truly is an inescapable hell. The demo is limited to Westfall and the Barrens. Should a player attempt to cross into another zone, they are instantly teleported back to either Sentinel Hill or the Crossroads. I’ve had nightmares like that.

World of Warcraft Classic will launch officially next summer. Between this demo and the passion, the developers displayed during yesterday’s “Restoring History: Creating WoW Classic” panel at Blizzcon, I’m confident that fans like myself eager to revisit the bad old days are going to be quite pleased.

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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