World of Warcraft: Legion Review - Polygon - WORLD OF WARCRAFT LEGION NEWS

game information Box type N / A GAIN platform Activision Blizzard Editorial Blizzard Entertainment develop...

Blizzard has something to prove with World of Warcraft: Legion . In other words, Blizzard has to prove something.

Despite an extremely positive reception , the latest expansion of World of Warcraft , Warlords of Draenor , proved to be a disaster. There was an unprecedented drop in paid subscribers, and even those who stayed there seemed dissatisfied with the state of the game .

Enter Legion , an expansion designed to restore player trust 12 years after the launch of World of Warcraft and to take a smarter and more sustainable path for the future. It is no longer surprising that the launch experience was largely excellent. The real question, however, is whether Legion World of Warcraft is preparing for future success.

After being distracted from the Warlords of Draenor's alternate timeline, Legion takes players back to Azeroth, where the army of demons, which has long been the greatest evil behind the scenes, began their last invasion of the planet. To stop this invasion, players must travel to the Abrupt Islands, a long forgotten area that hides powerful artifacts that could change the course of the war.

However, the Legion does work before it even goes to the abrupt islands. Each of the game's 12 classes, including the demon hunter, receives a unique set of introductory missions, which are then split according to their chosen specialization. The Legion is concerned with class fantasy: the experiences of each class feel separate, as they have rarely been done in the past.

The first-class missions and some later rhythms of the legion plan provide a welcome change even after two expansions in distant countries: Use the World of Warcraft and send yourself everywhere in Azeroth to visit unused places and characters for years. Legion creates a sense of history and place that is much broader than the average extent of WoW ; It is expressed in more epic mission chains with larger missions than just telling the story of a single area.

Of course, the unique area of stories presented by the new areas of the Legion is also a highlight. The expansion features some of the largest and most beautiful regions the game has ever seen, such as the Elf Druid Refuge in Val de Val'Sharah and the Vikings-inspired Stormheim. For the first time in the history of World of Warcraft Legion implemented a Level-scaling system, which means that you can run each range in the order you want.

On the one hand, this new system means that Legion is not as good as the previous expansions to present a general story that progresses with the rise, as it is not known which zones you will play first. On the other hand, it is now guaranteed that each zone offers an appropriate level of challenge and reward, whether it is the first zone it enters or the one that cleans up to the new 110 limit. The level scale works This is also wonderful for longevity, as Blizzard ensures that content from the endgame can be streamed into one of the new zones without having to create special zones with maximum levels.

In fact, the biggest additions Legion and his best argument of hope for the future at the end of the game. The traditional end of the World of Warcraft is almost entirely focused on large-scale raids, with content extremely limited solo in the form of small centers where players can perform daily missions. Raids are still an important place to spend time once you've reached the level limit. However, the daily missions have been redesigned in a brilliant new system called World Mission.

Initially, global missions are similar to the old system of daily missions by helping to improve their status and reputation in the new country, and they are asked to log in regularly to complete these missions. So the difference is that there are many more global missions that come and go all the time. The five areas of the Legion , including the Suramar area with a tier limit, offer dozens of possible world missions, from the usual number of kills x number of enemies or pursuing a target of great value to more requests, unique things like riding a magical tiger through magical sources or solving a puzzle. There are even global missions dedicated to player-to-player combat and the various crafting and collecting professions.

In addition to a larger selection of tasks, global missions also offer better and faster rewards than the old everyday mission. Every day the game gives you a faction to complete four global missions. If you respond to this request, you will receive a faction cache full of rewards that (rarely) contains loot that can be as good as what you get from falling dungeons and high level groups. These faction challenges can last up to three days, which relieves the pressure of logging in every day or getting lost.

exotic and rare missions sent me to my computer

But if you're like me, you probably still want to sign up every day. Shortly after Legion launched , Blizzard launched a complementary Legion phone application that allows you to track current global missions and their rewards. There are rare and exotic missions where I ran on my computer, e.g. B. Missions that offer new pets, mounts, and equipment upgrades. In addition, average research offers an artifact power, a new resource that is in high demand for its launch.

The power of the artifacts is driven by another of the Legion's new intelligent systems: the weapon of the artifacts. These class-based missions, which begin with the expansion, end when your character takes control of a powerful weapon from the World of Warcraft tradition. Many of these weapons are tools of destruction that players have seen or heard in action for years. For example, upgrade shamans can handle Doomhammer, the magical hammer that the hero Warcraft Thrall has been carrying for years. The idea that every character in a particular specialization works with the same weapon seems silly, but the game quickly offers options to visually design the weapon of your choice and stand out from the crowd.

The biggest concern for players who end up with a weapon for the entire expansion is that Blizzard has to deliver another form of progress. For this reason, the developer introduced the power of artifacts, a system that allows you to upgrade your weapon, unlock new skills and increase your power far beyond the character level. Each artifact weapon can reach level 54 and the requirements for each level increase exponentially. At this point, two months after the expansion, I'm reaching level 20 with one of the three artifact weapons available for my class.

Between the mandatory nature of global missions and the constant quest for more power artifact Legion is already dodged one of the bullets that Warlords of Draenor killed. At this point in the life of the previous expansion, players had reached the level limit and had nothing left to do but look for equipment upgrades to make the raids a little sweeter. Sure, part of the player base has already been used up in world missions, but this time it doesn't seem to be Blizzard's fault. The developer has provided a lot to keep us busy and happy.

In addition, Blizzard has introduced a much more aggressive patch schedule for Legion . Earlier this week, less than two months after the expansion started, the developer released Patch 7.1. This huge drop in content includes a large dungeon with five men, even more world missions, and a new set of historical missions. The developer used this latest addition to unlock chapter by chapter in nine weeks. Players cannot just go through missions and face weeks without anything new happening.

After more than 80 hours, I barely scratched the surface of any changes Legion brings to World of Warcraft . The arts and crafts and collections have been renewed to include significant advances and research content. Player-to-player battles now have their own system of levels and benefits that have nothing to do with the rest of the game, with a prestige option straight from Call of Duty. New mythical levels of difficulty for five-person dungeons allow them to increase the challenge and reward the payment indefinitely, allowing players to focus on small-group content rather than venturing into anything if they prefer. There is practically no part of the game that has not been touched and changed for the better.

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World of Warcraft: Legion intelligently responds to players' concerns for a long time

However, testing a massive multiplayer game seems like a fool task, as it is impossible to predict the long-term effects of these changes, let alone publish them all in concert. Do everyone miss what the Legion has to offer six months later? Will Blizzard disappoint its fans again by not constantly adding new games until the seventh game expansion is released?

Everything is possible, so this review can only speak for the state of the Legion at the moment. This condition is excellent. Over the past 12 years of World of Warcraft life , I have never seen a responsive and specific addition to their approach to individual problems that have disturbed fans' lives. New systems like world missions and mythical dungeons offer the potential to keep the game fresh and attractive for much longer. And the classic content of missions and raids is still just as good. Blizzard could still drop the ball, but it would be a shame to see it drop.

World of Warcraft: Legion was checked against the final PC code that Polygon employees had bought. More information on Polygon's Ethics Policy can be found here .

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