Being Saleh: Legion!!!

So at the end of Warlords of Draenor, the alternate reality Gul'dan escaped to the main timeline and begin the third (fourth??) invasion of the burning legion demons, and to be honest he started off pretty nicely, summoning every demon WOW player have vanquished during this 15 years, destroying both the Horde and Alliance head squads and seemed to have endless supply of energy and portals to finally summon the big ol' Sargeras himself,

So as I started questing my first demon hunter on the new Broken isles zone something bugged me, why didn't he, you know, just did it? There's literally nothing in his way now as The Alliance and Horde are both retreating

The answer is this:

BREAK YOURSELVES UPON MY.... oh nevermind

That's my troll warlock holding his artifact weapon: Scepter of Sargeras, in this new expansion every class and spec got their one and only weapon, which can be obtained via a story quest, it will level up as you do and as the expansion progress. All 36 spec has their own story, for example: demon hunters sent to retrieve their mighty warblades/warglaives from traitorous ones, while warlock (destruction specifically) was sent to coax Gul'dan and stole the scepter which apparently is the key to summoning more demons, so yeah the reason why Gul'dan didn't do what he's supposed to do is because I stole his boomstick, ruin the summoning rituals and use the scepter to summon multiple chaotic unstable portals which destroy some of his army, I was hoping there's a scene where Sargeras scold him for his failure, it'll be priceless.

Welcome to Legion, the newest expansion of World of Warcraft, and guess what: I'm not lagging behind :D

As I mention on my previous post that I will return to WOW only for friends, they're just recently started playing so i joined them, but this expansion was so refreshing and liberating that my mostly solo experience was so good, in this xpac I decided to retire my Warrior (since I don't like the look of their artifact weapons) and have a hard time choosing between my warlock, create my long time dream shaman, or starting a demon hunter. In the end I did them all mostly because the pre-expansion event -- the demon invasion was a good way to level up, I ended up leveling my shaman to 100 solely with demon invasion, that's 90 level straight in a week, so at the beginning of the expansion I have three level 100.

Stories!!

 
The new legion questing zones are Aszuna, Highmountain, Val'sarah, and Stormheim, they scaled with your level (100-110) so you can choose which zone you want to pursue first, the last zone: Suramar was solely for level 110, the story begins with the pre expansion broken shore scenario where Alliance and Horde fleet tried to prevent Gul'dan from summoning his army, they failed, like really failed, and in that mess people died, important people (not Thrall though: spoiler) even with this Game Of Thrones-que events I was still shocked about how ugly their death is, it's like watching Sean Bean died, twice, or three times and then watch a Fel Reaver teabagging his corpse. After choosing your artifact weapon and obtain it you'll gain access to your order hall based on your class, this is where everyone with the same class as you hang out, Shaman got the maelstorm from Cataclysm as their home base. In this not-garrison place you can research your weapon, powered it up, unlock new traits, and send champions to do some mission which will yield artifact powers, xp, and quest items.

Although saving Go'el feels a bit of a chore now (spoiler: he's retired)

So back to the zones, don't worry about class halls, they can be managed through the new android/ios application so you can run around helping people, logout and manage them in your bed before sleep (like I did), the premise of the Legion story is simple: Find pillars of Azeroth (artifact forged by Titans) to thwart Gul'dan once and for all, but then as you quest throghout the zones you'll realize that it wasn't so simple to the point when you gather some of them you'll realize what you have lost and the legion was still going strong and maybe just maybe this is the expansion where the hero will screwed up because all the bad guys seems like doing their job so goddamn well (even after you stole Sargeras' boomstick). To make matter worse you'll realize that every step you take is only opened up more questions.

Suramar is a home of the nightborne, a faction of night elves recently allied themselves with the Burning Legion, in order to help some of the exiled resistances (called the Nightfallen) you have to infiltrate it, walking in disguises, avoiding demons patrol, killing some of their leaders discreetly and so on, it's assassin's creed style gameplay (combined with the instinct to quickly find a getaway route before the guards overwhelm you) the nightfallen themselves are mana addicted so each day you'll have to gave their mana fix (gathered around Suramar), it's heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time, and as Suramar is connected with all the previous zones there are denizens around it that will need your help too, from a tauren shaman tried to calm the raging elements around Suramar to the lone druid fighting a hundred years war against army of arachnids, their story are also well written to the point I want to do more for them even when the questline is ended.

World, Class, and Profession Quests!!

 
World Quests is the new daily, after got friendly with all the faction on Broken Isles it will open up and will be shown on your map, it's a dynamic event tied to factions, you got into the area you'll get the quest, finish it and you'll get repuatation for one or several factions, they also yield you equipments, order hall resources for missions, and/or artifact powers. Every day you'll get an emissary quest, finish five specific faction world quests and you got additional reward and reputations

Professions are getting better, every material is harvestable on any level, plus you'll get profession quests from your trainer, some item you found during gathering process will nab you another quests. On crafting process you'll get legion recipes from your trainer's quests, the things you can create also upgradable, cutting the materials needed to make it, this way you will never go back to low level area just to gather materials to level up your professions so you can create something or depending on your garrison to level it up but the quests sometimes take you to old zones for a bit of nostalgia (if you're a veteran player)

Umm.. no, he's not in this expansion, get back to your own obsolete content!!!

Endgame and Verdict (for now)

 
There's only one raid right now: The Emerald Nightmare, unfortunately no LFR wings has opened yet, but in two days I have finished all the heroics on my shammy, they're not that hard anyway, I haven't tried mythic dungeons yet since my friends are currently swept away by normal/heroic/mythic raid (and by wives) :P, but I love how encounter was designed, Maw of Souls is my favorite since it's taken place in a ghost ship with some familiar Lich King characters, dungeons also can be tied to world quests and have some rare monsters among the mobs which will yield you additional loots, relics, and artifact powers. I just recently finished my shaman order hall campaign quests (which made me travel to old cataclysm zones, another welcomed nostalgia).

For short it was a blast, a real blast, I never found myself so invested and never look at the XP bar since the age I stopped my xp gained to experience the whole burning crusade quests, and I definitely never found plot twists so good since the day Putress bombed both the Horde and Alliance in WOLTK, Warlords of Draenor was so bad in everything (except garrison) some of them are have to be tied in nicely in Legion, but yeah I guess we can just leave alternate reality Draenor to rot.

Although I love this toy

Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansions (Warlords of Draenor)

Yes I know, the latest World of Warcraft expansion announced called Legion, but it just proved this article's title here :D

"The Shadow Council Thank You"
In the Warcraft Universe the Shadow Council are the agents of the main antagonist: The Burning Legion, they exist solely to serve their demonic master, so it is the most unusual words came from them, in the World Of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, Garrosh Hellscream got the timeline messed up, resulting an uncorrupted orc horde to pour through the Dark Portal into Azeroth, they called themselves the Iron Horde and invading Azeroth because... umm... well... yeah... things, so as you crush their first wave, enter the dark portal, fight a throng of them alongside Khadgar, Go'El and a forgettable Draenei Vindicator (Maraad), things got exciting, as you encounter the shadow council and planned your retreat things got more interesting

The Story:
But apparently, things stopped being interesting.
After your first introductory questline, I (as an alliance) found myself in Shadowmoon Valley, Khadgar's opened a brief portal and thus begin my garrison's construction, then I met alternate reality Velen which much more battle hardened than his original self, the draenei has mounted a significant defense but still overruned by the orcs. Shadowmoon Valley's story is great and the closing is awesome, but after that I was bummed, the other zone story is not as strong as the previous, yes you met Rexxar, learned the divided origins of Draenor, used by the arrakoa up until you arrived at the max area level: Nagrand the story seems disjointed and disconnected, along the way you thought where's Grommash? Where's Garrosh? Where're the big guys? where is everything I've encountered in the prologue??!!!

Not to mention the most insulting storyline assigned to Orgrim Doomhammer, I'm not gonna spoil it for you go read or play it, After the scene at Nagrand (if that can be called a scene) I'm ready for the 'final assault' then the story catapulted me to Tanaan Jungle, then I construct a base (as I did in every other zone), then it's dailies time. Okay but I still don't know how Tanaan becomes oozie and suddenly there's someone else in charge. Strangely enough some QUEST yellow exclamation mark begins to pop up every now and then both in my garrison and the Tanaan base.

The whole storyline of Warlords of Draenor (save the Shadowmoon Valley storyline) is chock full of holes with things disconnected from other things, how's Gul'dan there? What is he doing? Where's Grom in all of this scene? How the hell did this happened? Remember the yellow exclamation mark that begins to appear? That's scenarios, the bridge that somewhat connected all this, for example: How is an arrakoa ended up under Gul'dan's command? I think I knew that guy, well after I played several days a quest suddenly appeared, it explain why the guy I used to know ended up a big bad elite boss, the rest? Oh they told it on the Legendary Questline story... They've even NAMED THE ACHIEVEMENTS AS CHAPTER!!!

I was baffled, the whole storyline is a mess, the whole heads and tails are nonsensical, and I still missing things, until I watched the introductory cutscene on youtube, patch 4.1 (Fury of The Hellfire) which explains A LOT, why didn't I got this thing on game? I knew it happened on previous patch, but come on they didn't even put it in the game, In mist of pandaria's last patch when my monk opened the Valley of Eternal Blossom I got an opening, pop up quest, and there's a scenario regarding Garrosh corrupting the Vale so it's not really confusing. On WOD, I was forced to open wowpedia to untangle those overlapped stories

So there it is, Warlords of Draenor stories, a disjointed heap of mess just because you played 8 months late.

The Gameplay:
On the other hand, I liked garrison, I know the whole WOW community divided by it, some love here, hate there, the usual stuff. It's basically a Warcraft RTS base, where you can build reource-generating buildings like lumbermill and Herb Gardens, you can upgrade these things too, like Herb gardens tier 3 provided like 20 plants a day and you can randomize or select what they will plant the next day, it's really convenient for a hoarder like me, albeit a bit lonely.   

So with garrison you can assign followers to do things for you, whether to search for resources, reclaiming rare items, equipment tokens, legendary materials, or even another follower (rare), as my real life workload piles up -- so I could only play WOW on night and early days -- garrison was great, it made me feel like that it fits my time, it doesn't feel like all those timed self-replenishing MMO games (yes I'm looking at you Archeage) because all their generated resource can be obtained through other meaning if I have more time, While in the meantime I can set up garrison missions on mornings and check back on the afternoon, assigning them again, and do some raiding/dungeons at night, so yeah, it's fun, albeit as you amass resource more than you can spend it it'll grow tedious.

Blizz implement WOW token some months ago so you can use ingame gold to pay for 30 days of game time, the value hovers between 25-27 thousand gold nowadays and it gave me an idea, so at the end of my first week of returning I tried to gain enough gold for my game time token, so I did what all lazy people did, selling all those obsolete equipment and some common materials, combined with what I make from my dailies I raked enough at 10 days left on my sub, although I gained three thousands from selling an epic BOE item, but yeah... if I play the auction house and do some crafting as I did at Cataclysm I'll probably have enough gold for some months, Blizz has some really cool mounts on Pandaria so I ended up spending all on them =)).

No new class and new races in WOD but I have one level boost to 90 feature, it will be upgraded to 100 when Legion hits so I'll probably saved it since I have a hard time deciding what class I want to boost, I'm respecced my warrior from Fury to Arms though, just to experience a different playstyle (and because everyone is Fury right now, just like every rogue is Combat).

Ashran!!! Oh Ashran!!! Oh yeah, welcome to WvsWvsW a la World of Warcraft, well actually Ashran is more like Arathi Basin part 2 combined with a little Guild Wars 2 borderland where 25 people frome each faction tried to control more outpost and completing events, but unfortunately I will say that it sucks, yes they provide a nice boost to my honor points, but there's just not enough room and events, in WWW on ONE borderland I can build a little team, caprunning every towers and outposts clockwise, perhaps slay a handful of stragglers, In Ashran I'm just following the zergtrain and go out of the base whenever an event occured, it feel so cramped that I actually screamed because of the repetition, good idea copying WWW, abysmal implementation, and don't play horde after 09.00 PM, they'll always lose.

There are three raids in this expansion, unfortunately I never really liked their armor and weapon design, fortunately I have a dwarven bunker on my garrison which sold awesome Blackrock armor for transmog only, after I complete my horriby designed LFR set I'll transmog everything.

Extras and Final Words:  
Blizz should never make those weekly scenario, whole story shouldn't be divided by randomly appeared quests, yes they're kind of fillers, but still I shouldn't be presented by them randomly, FFXIV has story progress divided by patch but still you have to complete one before you can move on, stories unlock dungeons and trials while the other features unlocked by sidequests, while in WOW: followers, toys, and areas unlocked by random quests which appeared once every week, I kinda confused why Yrel as my dailies NPC suddenly an exarch now? Did I miss something? I finally got that story quest in the third week, yes it's slightly proved that Blizzard don't want player to rush the expansions but still those randoms made me grit my teeth, and since Legendary Ring Quest IS the 'main' quest now I think I can accept that the grind will be a long one but why? Why split them up?

The shiphand mission, a garrison type mission where you assign ship to collect things for you is.... weird, ships are customizable although you need to collect blueprints from rare chests and enemies on the final area: Tanaan Jungle, since you can only select max two ships for each mission, the percentage of successive mission are realtively low, making you gambling on each other components to raise the success percentage, but in the end since components and ships are relatively cheap, they're all expendable since ship's sometimes destroyed when mission failed, you can just buy a new one on your dockyard. I still wondered why such mechanic exist in this game? It was not fun, not profitable (except the legendary missions), overall... it shouldn't even be there.

There's no gating content on WOD except one: Heroic Dungeon, where you must complete a time trial on silver achievement on your role (healer/tank/DPS) in order to enter them, The catch is... you don't have to do heroic dungeons at all!! Since Blizzard implement timewalking dungeon and LFR you can skip them at all, there's only two reason to do heroic dungeons: Some Garrison Resources and Heirloom upgrades for your alts, so yeah, it's really weird

Everything in Warlords of Draenor is weird, a jumbling mess of things, everything feels like an experiment and incomplete ones. I can't say that I hate it, I know how development job works, I don't love it either, gone is the feeling of becoming a true warrior of light guided by spiritual benefactor on Mist of Pandaria, replaced by hollow things as I read all the main quest text (yes I still doing that), my progress as character is... no, there's nothing progressive about my character, yes I got the title as lord commander of a garrison and gain purple-dressed orc warlocks and arrakoa metal construct as my followers but still I don't think I really progressed, maybe because all of my journey and encounters from Shadowmoon Valley onward was forgettable.

Is this an expansion? I don't think so, I think it was just an interlude, a big experimental patch containing features solely purposed for player's convenience but ended up being tedious and created ridiculuous storyline (and ending) at the end.

I'm not satisfied, that is all, hopefully Legion will be better, I was thinking I should return with friends