My Life as a Gamer: Legion Hype

BlizzCon 2015 began earlier today. As I write this, the E-Sports events are in their Group Stages (except for Starcraft II, which is doing an exhibition event), but I'm talking about what was announced for today regarding World of Warcraft: Legion.

But first, some movie hype. Here's the trailer:



Good God, they actually dared to make something that looks like quality. Deliver, dammit!

*ahem*

World of Warcraft: Legion is the make-or-break follow-up to Warlords of Draenor, and it is a make-or-break expansion because Warlords of Draenor was such a crushing failure. The Q3 results have the active subscriber count at 5.5 million, down from 10 million just after the launch thereof just one year ago. Server communities routinely complain of population collapses. The raiding community and the PVP community report collapses in participation at all levels. Many guilds have all but collapsed, forcing reorganizations for those that did not outright disband. Experiments, by and large, did not deliver desired results.

In short, the World of Warcraft team failed and failed big. If Legion is more of the same, then this game is done. The game sucked this time around, hard, regardless of a player's interests or approach to the game. Yes, even for the Dress Up Doll and Pretty Princess RP niches. So the pressure to fix known issues, some long-standing, is big.

As of this post, there's been one panel about Legion and what new mechanics and systems it brings. So far, two big changes announced show that--at the very least--Legion will try to fix this game's problems.

• Dungeons will use the Greater Rift mechanic from Diablo 3. At endgame this is a viable alternative to raiding.
  
• Two raids, with 17 bosses between them, available at launch (not delayed, making a de facto tier split).
  
• Endgame overworld content is Adventure Mode from Diablo 3. Dailies are not a thing anymore. World Bosses, Professions, Faction Rep, Overworld PVP, etc. are all incorporated into this system.
  
• Leveling is normalized to your character's level, so you can do the four leveling zones in any order; you still have to do--and complete--all of them. The world scales to your character, not vice-versa.
  
• Artifact Weapons eliminate a lot of gearing and specialization issues, allowing specialization overhauls- some very severe.
  

There's more tomorrow, and I'll make a follow-up post on the hype after that, but this should get you heading to the usual suspects (such as MMO-Champion) for more information.