Total Time Played: Approx 38.8 days (37 days 18 hours at max level + approx 24hrs to level from 100-110)

Completed all Current Content: Yes; Current endgame raid completed at Heroic difficulty

These days it’s hard to talk about the MMORPG genre without mentioning World of Warcraft (WoW). The MMO monster has been at the top of the food chain for nearly 13 years and with the release of its current expansion, there are no signs of that changing anytime soon. Legion has brought with it a large complement of significant changes to the game’s that have breathed new life into what was quickly becoming a stale, been-there-done-that experience.

Background

In World of Warcraft, players may play as one of twelve races split between 2 opposing factions fighting for control over the game’s world Azeroth. Along with being able to choose their faction, players also must decide among one of the games 11 classes. Each of these classes offers three unique specializations that chance the style of play even further from class to class.

Once a player has chosen their desired class, they begin their journey through the past expansions of the game, leveling their character through experience gained by completing quests given by NPCs in the various zones and dungeons of Azeroth. Questing is generally completed as a solo experience, though the option to quest with up to 4 other players does exist. Dungeons are completed with 5 players, usually a Tank class, a Healer class, and 3 Damage dealers. As the player reaches the level cap of each expansion, massive 10-40 player dungeons known as “Raids” open up. Raids consist of incredibly difficult bosses with devastating attacks and abilities and require significantly more teamwork and communication to defeat. However, along with greater risk comes greater reward, as raids drop the best available loot for their respective player levels. This is the basic flow of progression every expansion including Legion, but adds some significant additions to the formula which have greatly increased its potential player demographic and ability to keep the game fun for much longer.

Unlike previous expansions, Legion offers players a very dynamic way to level their characters up from level 100 to 110, the new level cap introduced for the expansion. The player begins the expansion by accepting a quest from Archmage Khadgar (Alliance faction) or Sylvannas Windrunner (Horde faction), the leaders of the respective faction’s assault forces defending against the demonic forces of the Burning Legion. This quest begins an instanced scenario, similar to when entering a dungeon or raid, in which the player must fight their way onto the Broken Shore which has been overrun by the Legion. After an exciting CG cut scene in which the main antagonist, Gul’dan, kills the kings of each faction the forces retreat to the magical floating city of Dalaran. This city has been ported by mages above the Broken Isles, the new continent on which the expansion’s content is based, to act as the main hub city for the Legion expansion.

Who Does Legion Appeal To?

Age and Gender

Being a fantasy MMORPG, World of Warcraft caters to a wide audience of players but its core player base consists of players from the ages of 16-30, with the largest portion (37%) ranging between 20 and 25 as of 2013 (statista.com). These statistics may be slightly skewed for legion as the most recent data available was conducted in 2013, but should still give a relatively accurate measurement of the current breakdown. As for a gender breakdown, in an International Business Times article from July 2015, approximately 35% of the total WoW player base is made up of female players, and 65% male players (Mueller).

Subjective Appeal

From a subjective standpoint, Legion would appeal to fans of fantasy RPG franchises like Final Fantasy, Dragon Age, Zelda, and Phantasy Star. Other potential players are those who enjoyed the lore of the old Warcraft real-time strategy games and wish to experience that lore in a much broader, in-depth environment.

Decision Making

Artifact Weapons

Throughout the Legion expansion, players are presented with many decisions that affect their style of play as they progress through the game. The first of these decisions comes immediately after the solo scenario ends. Players pick up a quest from their respective class order halls to choose 1 of 3 artifact weapons, each of which corresponds to one of the player’s three specializations. These artifact weapons introduce the core player progression mechanic for the entire expansion. Each weapon can be inspected to reveal a unique set of talent ranks (pictured below) of which the player may choose one of several different pathways to follow. These ranks are activated through empowering the weapon with artifact power items which are acquired through loot drops from quests, and enemies. Additionally, each rank increases the character’s stamina which adds to their health pool, and as a bonus for players who have chosen a healing spec, increases their damage done. While still not overly powerful, the damage increase gained greatly assists healers in completing quests. For each rank gained, the artifact power needed for the next increases exponentially.

Figure 1: Holy Priest Artifact talent tree

Upon reaching level 102, the player is able to pick up and complete the questlines for the remaining two artifact weapons. It is at this point the player will make an important decision, which class specialization they wish to take as their main focus. The reason for this is that due to the overwhelming amount of artifact power needed to gain talent ranks, it is very difficult and unrealistically time-consuming to progress more than one weapon in tandem. That said, there will be points along the way in which the ends will not justify the means, where the artifact power needed to gain one rank for their main weapon would gain 4 or 5 ranks for a secondary specialization. This acts as a sort of catch-up mechanic for players who may need to change their main specialization at the request of their guild’s raid team.

Another mechanic centered around the artifact weapons is Artifact Knowledge. These are items the player purchases from a vendor in their class order hall which increase the amount of artifact power items will give by a multiplier. This mechanic helps to keep gaining ranks at a steady pace, rather than each new rank requiring significantly more time to acquire.

Questing/Leveling

As mentioned earlier, Legion offers some new takes on the game’s traditional mechanics, starting with the leveling experience. Traditionally when an expansion is released the players must progress through the new continent in a linear fashion. The quests in different zones correspond to specific player level ranges, and questing is the most time effective way to reach max level. Legion throws this linear model out by making all quests and enemies on the Broken Isles scale in difficulty based on the player’s level. This allows the player to choose which of the first four zones to begin their questing, and the player can change the zone they’re questing in at any time. Additionally, it is possible to reach max level without having to quest through every zone, meaning players have the opportunity to choose a different storyline experience when leveling up their next character (most players play more than one character throughout an expansion).

Different Experiences For Different Player Types

One of Legion’s most appealing features is its ability to cater to all four player types defined by Bartle’s Taxonomy of Player Types. These player types, categorized as Killers, Achievers, Explorers, and Socializers are often not mutually exclusive, but rather are used in a combination to describe a player. For example, competitive raiders which make up a large portion of the game’s player base can be considered both Achievers and Socializers. They relish the difficult challenges presented by higher difficulty levels of raids and dungeons, but in order to be able to complete this content, must be an active member of their guild community. Many Achievers also fall under the Explorer category as they will do everything they can to discover items and skills that may give them an edge when facing raid boss encounters. Things like leveling crafting professions for excellent crafted gear, or the highest quality foods to buff them in the raid require significant time spent exploring the Broken Isles, and in fact, each profession provides an extremely robust and unique questline for acquiring the best skills. Many Achiever/Explorers will also commonly consult their achievement tracker to complete specific events in the world for player titles, mounts, or merely their own satisfaction and bragging rights. The Loremaster achievement (Complete all quests on a continent)is one of the most common achievements for Explorer types, where the Ahead of the Curve achievement (defeat the current final raid tier boss on Heroic difficulty) is a highly sought after achievement for raider Achiever types and brings with it a sense of respect in the game. Explorer/Achiever players are commonly found playing on PVE (Player vs Environment) style realms.

Figure 2: Achievements Window

For those who do not wish to participate in raids, such as strict Killers and Socializers, the game provides additional realm choices for the player to play on. Killers are more often attracted to PVP (player vs player) realms as these realms allow opposing faction players to engage in combat anywhere in the world rather than in instanced battlegrounds and arenas. Instances are secondary game worlds confined to a specific area for only the players within the group. Instances are used for raids, dungeons, battlegrounds, arenas, and solo scenarios.  These PVP realms are the realms where trolling of weaker players by repeatedly attacking and killing them when they return to their corpse to respawn is very common. There are also realms designated specifically for Role-Playing which cater heavily to the Socializer types. Role-Playing realms come in both PVE and PVP varieties. These are players who like to immerse themselves completely within the game world. When playing the game, they leave their real world identity behind and instead identify as if they truly are the avatar they are playing, as if the game was indeed a different reality.

Learning Curve

Legion’s learning curve depends greatly upon the player’s intentions for the game. In the case of the casual player who only wishes to complete questing and lore content, it’s as simple as learning the movement and interaction controls, and the basic abilities of each spell their spellbook provides. However, in the case of the competitive or “hardcore” player, the learning curve becomes considerably steeper. This is because in order for a player to be competent enough to engage in more challenging content, they must fully understand their class and specializations in order to effectively output the highest possible damage, healing, or damage reduction (Tank roles). For each class specialization, there is a specific “rotation” of the available spells to accomplish this. Additionally, more difficult content such as high difficulty raiding and dungeons require players to fully understand enemy mechanics and how to deal with them as well as how to work alongside others to accomplish these goals. Many of these players must use 3rd party internet resources such as Youtube and Icy-Veins.com, as well as 3rd party UI add-ons to be sure they are outfitting their character optimally and understanding strategies for defeating encounters.

Interest Curve

Something that the devs at Blizzard have done very well to combat with the Legion expansion is the chance of players getting bored with the game before the release of the next expansion. In the past, specifically for the previous expansion to Legion, Warlords of Draenor, the content patches were released in very quick succession, causing a 14-month gap between the release of the final WoD raid Hellfire Citadel, and the launch of Legion. This long gap caused the company to lose millions of subscribers, some of which did not return for Legion.

However, for Legion this has not been the case (so far). Since it’s launch on August 30th 2016, the game has seen 4 major content patches, each bringing with it a slew of new content to explore and conquer. At the time of writing, there are currently 3 major raids (with a 4th patched in and set to open up in the coming weeks), 12 dungeons, new class order hall questlines, and hundreds of new world quests. There are also 15 world bosses with more being added with every patch, and new artifact weapon talents and appearances to collect. The most recent patch also brought with it the questline to grant players the ability to ride flying mounts throughout the Broken Isles, a feature nearly all players become extremely excited about each expansion as it grants them the ability to reach areas of the world they previously couldn’t. While this seems like a repeat of the fast burnout of WoD, Blizzard has assured the community that it is not the case. At this time, Blizzard has confirmed at least 2 more major content patches, the next of which will likely be coming sometime in August or September and will be taking players to a completely new planet with new zones to explore and hundreds of new quests.

Feedback Loops

As an MMORPG which is consistently releasing new content, but generally does not change its core mechanics very significantly from expansion to expansion, the game itself is a giant feedback loop following the same general model every time: Level up, Gear up, rinse and repeat. Raid content is a feedback loop inside this giant feedback loop. Clear the first raid of the expansion, get the best gear it has, wait for the next raid, replace current gear with better gear, rinse and repeat. The thing that keeps raiders playing through this endless loop is the excitement of battling new bosses with new mechanics to learn and the satisfaction of being the most powerful players in the realm.

Fun Factors: How Legion Addresses Lazzaro’s Four Keys

Legion does an excellent job of fulfilling all four of Lazzaro’s Keys of Fun. It’s “Easy Fun” comes from simply exploring the open game world and all it has to offer. From its stunningly beautiful zones, to its memorable array of NPC characters, to its inclusion of the World Quest system unlocked at level 110, there is always something available for any given player to easily enjoy.

Moving on to a type of fun geared toward a smaller player niche, Legion’s “Hard Fun” can be enjoyed by those who choose to participate in the game’s most difficult dungeon and raid content. These instances contain many difficult boss encounters which require players to form large parties and utilize tight communication and understanding of the mechanics of the encounter to successfully defeat the bosses, and in turn, get the most satisfying loot drops. Raids and dungeons also cover the “People Fun” aspect of the game, as it is impossible to complete this type of content alone. Raid content must have a minimum of 10 players, ranging up to a maximum of 30 or 40 depending on the content being raided, and dungeons require 5 people.

Figure 3: Screen capture of a raid boss encounter

Another way Legion promotes “People Fun” is through its world quest system. World quests are unlocked when a player reaches level 110 and consist of quests scattered throughout the game world which reward items such as gear, artifact power, game currency, or order hall resources. Since these quests are available to all max level players, it is common (and in some cases necessary) for several players to group up to complete a chain of these quests together much faster than would be possible solo.

Legion’s “Serious Fun” is presented throughout the entire game experience. As players complete quests, dungeons, and raids they gain better gear and abilities making their character increasingly more powerful. There are also certain points throughout the game where major story events happen which unlock new areas to explore or make significant changes to the game world. An example of one such event is when the character reaches max level the final zone in the Broken Isles, Suramar, is opened up.

Balance, Not Just For Druids Anymore

Class and Spec

One of Legion’s greatest accomplishments (especially when compared to past expansions) is its incredible play balancing of different character classes. Very often in the MMORPG genre, certain classes and even specializations can grossly outperform another. This has been the case in the past for WoW as well. The most prevalent and long-lasting examples are the Discipline priest being much more powerful than the Holy priest, making it extremely difficult for Holy priests to get invited to groups. The other example is the Death Knight, whose two damage specializations (and in some cases, it’s tank specialization) had them outperforming nearly every other damage class over several expansions. This is no longer the case however, because for Legion the developers at Blizzard Entertainment completely retooled every class in the game, ensuring comparable gaps between the highest and lowest damage and healing output for each class, as well as completely rebuilding several class’ spells and abilities so that every class and specialization brought something contributing to the dungeon or raid group.

Raids

Balancing the difficulty of boss encounters for each of the respective difficulty levels has also been done relatively well, with only a few Mythic difficulty encounters feeling underwhelming and no encounters feeling unbeatable. Afterall, Mythic raiders are looking for the difficult challenge the game has to offer. The Looking For Raid automatic raid group queue system provides the casual player with the chance to experience the raid bosses with reduced damage and mechanics at a cost of less powerful gear drops and Normal and Heroic difficulties each giving players an experience which leaves a feeling of satisfaction for completing them at their different respective levels.

Dungeons

Finally, the balancing of dungeon content difficulties is executed extremely well. For the Legion expansion, the developers have implemented a new system to give players a dynamic experience even after they have long passed the stages of normal dungeon gearing. In the past, dungeons were used early on for players to gear up in preparation of raid content, and came in Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties which dropped increasingly powerful gear respectively. Legion has taken this one step further by adding a fourth difficulty dubbed “Mythic+”. These are timed dungeons that have the base mechanics of their Mythic counterparts, but have a difficulty ranging from +2 to +15 (and higher in coming patches). The difficulty of the dungeon is determined by the level of a Keystone that players will acquire once a week from completing a Mythic dungeon. These keystones increase the health and damage output of enemies as the level of the keystone increases. At keystone levels +4, +7, and +10, a new mechanic is introduced to the dungeon to increase the difficulty further. These mechanics, known as “affixes” can be things like Necrotic, which puts a stacking damage over time effect on the tank each time an enemy hits them, Volcanic, which spawns random pillars of fire under players feet that do a significant amount of damage if the player does not move in time, and Tyrannical, which further increases boss health and damage done. There are approximately 15 affixes currently and more are added with each content patch. Groups who complete these dungeons within certain time constraints earn extra gear chests at the end of the run, and depending on the level of the keystone, the gear dropped will be more powerful. This new game mode has opened up a new way for players to make their characters extremely powerful, even if they cannot commit time to participating in raid content.

Impact of Randomness vs Skill in Legion

The impact of randomness on players skill in Legion is confined to only a few situations. The most common situation occurs when a player may be incredibly skilled, but due to poor loot drop RNG does not have the proper gear needed to be competitive in dungeon and raid content. Currently the most impactful of these situations is the fact that Legendary gear, items which possess incredibly high stat boosts as well as providing the player with new abilities which vastly improve their spells output, can drop from nearly any mob or chest. But due to RNG, some players have collected multiple legendary items where others have collected none. So even a player who is wearing the best possible gear (without legendaries) cannot hold a candle to a player who has lucked out and picked up their best in slot legendaries. The biggest problem with this is that these situations are skewing the aforementioned excellent class balance that has been implemented into the game.

Conclusion

Despite having a few minor shortcomings, World of Warcraft: Legion is an all-around excellent game that has enough content to satisfy the wants and needs of almost any gamer. The implementation of excellent new features, graphics, and lore along with the promise of several more major content patches means that this MMO powerhouse will likely continue to thrive well into the release of its next content patches, and more importantly, all the way until it’s successor expansion.

References

“Distribution of World of Warcraft Players in 2013, By Age Group”. N.d. Web. 09 apr 2017.

Mueller, Saira. “Female WoW Players Tell All: What is World of Warcraft Really Like For Them?” International Business Times. 08 July 2015. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.