Today at the Gamescom event in Germany, Blizzard Entertainment took to the stage and announced the sixth expansion to their MMO juggernaut World of Warcraft – Legion.
This expansion brings back the look and feel and even the characters of the very first Burning Crusade expansion, with the return of Illidan Stormrage and the Burning Legion as the legendary Tomb of Sargeras, the Mad Titan, is reopened.
Other features and additions in this new expansion are:
- Level cap raised to 110
- New Hero Class – The Demon Hunter
- Artifact weapons – Classic lore weapons for each class specialization
- New Continent – The Broken Isles
- A revamped PvP system with specific talents, progression and rewards
- Improved transmogrification – Collected gear will no longer take up bag space
- An evolution of the Garrison system in class-specific Order Halls
- The return of Dalaran as a neutral hub city
Ever since Cataclysm’s Fall of Deathwing patch I’ve had a bit of a love-hate relationship with WoW. That is to say I want to love it but I sometimes kind of hate it. As the last three expansions separated the Horde and Alliance in their own cities and more systems were introduced to simply click a button and go AFK while you waited to be teleported to an instance the feeling of exploration and community was lost. Nothing highlighted this more for me than Warlords of Draenor’s Garrison system, which effectively saw your character roped off all alone in what basically amounted to a mobile phone town-builder time sink.
With the unveiling of Legion it sounds like we’ll see a resurgence of that old whole-server community feeling with a neutral city, a class hall that actually has other players in it and more focus on getting out in the world. The new Demon Hunter hero class also sounds like a lot of fun. Limited to either a Damage or Tanking spec they’ll be a high-mobility class wielding the dark powers of Illidan.
Check out Blizzard’s Legion site for all the details and video, including a teaser of the cinematic and an in-game look at the new features. As a longtime WoW player it’s always hard not to get swept up in the new expansion hype (I was even excited about Mists of Pandaria…) but after a few years of ultimately disappointing content this time around it really does look promising, so my plucky little Goblin Warlock and I will be looking forward to sticking it to the Burning Legion once more.
