World of Warcraft's best expansion in a decade from freemexy's blog

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.To get more news about Buy WoW Classic Gold, you can visit lootwowgold news official website.

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.