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A few weeks back I caved and bought the Battle for Azeroth expansion for World of Warcraft. No, that’s not why I didn’t blog much in the last 2 weeks of September. Anyway, I played it heavily for the first few days I had it; I leveled my “main” (a Human Protection Paladin) to level 120 very quickly. Surprisingly quickly in fact. I just followed the quest chains, and by the end of my first session I was already at 116 or so. By the end of the weekend I was at 118, and with a couple of hours mid-week, I was at max level. In Legion, using similar play patterns, it took me a couple of weeks to reach 110.

In general, levelling and questing through the new zones has been wonderful. There’s always a new storyline to discover, and the atmosphere of the zones themselves has been amazing. I only fell to my death off the side of that mountain in Drustvar once twice three times.

I’m about halfway through the “free” game time I had for WoW, and I’m probably going to resub for at least another 6 months. A lot has been made on forums/Reddit/YouTube about “Beta for Azeroth” and the general quality of the systems in the expansion, but honestly? I’m having a blast.

Granted, I’m not your usual modern WoW player. I’m more interested in the solo experience and I’m only logging in a couple of times a week at most. The “time-gating” and Azerite armour issues many players are complaining about simply don’t apply to me. I hated World Quests when I first unlocked them in Legion, but for some reason I’m really enjoying them in BfA. I log in, check my map to see what WQs have the best rewards (gear or rep tokens are my targets right now), and knock out 4-8 in short order. If I have time, I then carry on any questlines I’m working on. If a Warfront is open, I’ll jump on the several quests available for that – the rewards and drops have been pretty good for me so far for a handful of “kill 20 of X” quests.

My goals in the game, in rough order right now, are: to get the Pathfinder achivements in Legion and BfA, unlock WoD flying, then start unlocking Allied Races. Whenever I need a break from that I’m experimenting with how far I can get soloing Dungeons and Raids. I went into Legion’s Emerald Nightmare (Normal) with ~ilvl 290 gear and soloed everything upto Ursoc with only a few deaths along the way. Those deaths were mostly on Elerethe, which I put down to unfamiliarity with the mechanics. I can get Ursoc to between 8%-15% remaining health fairly consistently, but I seem to be just short of getting over the finishing line before the debuffs get too much. I’ll try again after a few gear upgrades. I even tried Trial of Valor before that (I had a quest), but – while I was in little danger of dying – the length of time it would take to down the first bosses was impractical. My hands started to cramp up after 15 minutes or so, with me, Hymdall and Hyrja all still above 70%, so I bubble-hearthed out of there.

I’ll get them eventually. It’s just a matter of time.

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I’ve been granted some WoW in-game time as a resolution to an old support ticket, so I’m able to jump onto my higher-level characters again. I’m comparing the experience to the one I had with the new character I started earlier, and… hooo-boy the experience on my 110 Paladin was confusing. I stopped playing pretty early in Legion’s lifecycle, so when I logged in I was prompted to do the Legionfall scenario straight away, then after 1 quest or so, I was immediately whisked off to start Argus. While I’m on my way to Argus, I’m prompted to start the Siege of Lordaeron, leaving me wondering what content is actually worth playing through. Playing the Siege would net me a shiny new weapon, but no way to follow up on that storyline until I drop £40-£53 on Battle for Azeroth.

On top of the questing confusion, all my talents were reset and my abilities changed. These were expected, but it adds to the sense of unfamiliarity. I’m not a fan of the GCD change and how it affects Paladin rotation, but that might just be a symptom of generally feeling lost. Right now I feel like I’m just mashing random buttons whenever I get in combat, in the hope something fires off.  On a character I’ve played on-and-off for 11ish years, feeling lost is very uncomfortable and frustrating!

I guess I’m in an odd position in that I’m coming back after a new expansion is released, but I haven’t unlocked the new content yet. In general the experience seems to be that while new characters get guided to where they need to be, returning characters need to figure out for themselves what they’re meant to be playing through, with the implication that you will just drop anything “old” from your Quest Log immediately. But there’s nothing to tell you in-game what is out-dated. In my case, for this character, the path forward is pretty much “buy BFA and forget about anything Legion-related,” but if I’d been returning at some point around the pre-patch, with no clue as to what had been released since I stopped playing, I would have been completely disorientated.

Maybe I’ll just stick with a new character for now…

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Preamble: I’ve jumped back into WoW over the last couple of months. I’ve had an on-mostly-off relationship with the game over the last few years (since the end of Wrath of the Liche King, really), but the early promise of Legion brought me back.

I spent the time up until the launch 2 weeks ago getting acclimated to the game and all the changes I’d missed. I powered through Warlords of Draenor (WoD) in a few sessions, just through quest content (the massive amounts of rested XP helped a tonne!) then set about getting my professions up to max-level.

Professions in WoD very, very easy to level-up. I had both primary professions, and all secondary professions except Fishing maxed-out within a weekend1. If anything, I felt a bit underwhelmed by how easy it was. Between the Garrison and Auction House, it took very little time and money to gather everything needed to craft enough stacks of whatever recipe gave the most skill-ups2. Gathering professions didn’t take much effort either.

Professions in Legion are almost nothing like in WoD. In some ways it’s welcome; recipes have different levels of proficiency (1-3), which adds more interest to them. I haven’t found any recipes yet awarding multiple skill levels. There’s profession-related quest content – often to unlock a better proficiency – and even some of the new World Quests are profession-specific.

It’s just a shame that there’s one fundamental flaw: most of the progression is locked behind Dungeons. Take Alchemy as the prime example: after unlocking Legion Alchemy, you get 3 recipes with 1 or 2 more available from a vendor. These will give you a handful of skill levels at most. Beyond that, you have quests which require you to run dungeons to unlock more recipes. You have to run all of the dungeons in Legion, enter a busy free-for-all PVP area, and even complete a WoD Raid to unlock everything in Legion Alchemy. Other professions are similar.

I absolutely don’t mind having to work for progressing in professions, but this is disappointing. Gating them behind Reputations would have made much more sense to me, or some other mechanic which didn’t force players into LFG/LFR… The new World Quests are another decent candidate. In my experience most players in dungeons are just looking to speed-run bosses for gear upgrades and if you’re not OK with that they’ll make your life hell until you quit, or just /kick you outright.

It’s always been the case that the most lucrative recipes were acquired through dungeons… but these were optional/rare recipes, and mainly of interest to people looking to make serious gold on the Auction House, or needed to get it to help their competetive raid team. Levelling up your professions never needed these “high-end” recipes.

I stopped regularly running dungeons years ago because I had too many bad experiences with groups who were rude/intolerant of players “not as skilled” as they were/just plain assholes3. Since then, I’ve dipped in with ever more reluctance. I have zero desire or patience – let alone time – to deal with that again, and have zero faith it’s improved any. I’m sure I’m not the only player who feels like this, judging by posts on the Battle.Net forums and elsewhere.

For players like me, who have long turned away from the group aspects of WoW, professions are the end-game content4. Locking the means to meaningfully progress professions behind dungeons basically locks them away from us, unless we’re prepared to hold our noses and deal with aspects of the game we don’t necessarily enjoy.

It’s still early days for Legion, and even though I’ve hit 110 on my main, there’s still a tonne of other content I can play, for now. And other characters. I’m just hoping Blizzard do something to make the professions a bit more accessible in a future patch. They’ve achieved their intent to make them more interesting, I’m just not convinced they achieved the “fun” bit.

  1. Most of this was just travel time while levelling Archeology. ↩
  2. This was new to me – certain recipes giving more than 1 level at a time. ↩
  3. At first, LFG was a blessing compared to trying to organise a group through chat. Unfortunately it made it impossible to weed-out the bad-eggs before starting a dungeon. My feelings on WoW Dungeons are a topic for another time. ↩
  4. Alongside Reputations, exploring, lore, and Achievements. ↩