Sunday, September 15, 2013

Legendary Post-Mortem

While few have probably completed the very last part of the Legendary chain, which requires the defeat of Garrosh Hellscream, at this point you'll be seeing a whole lot of shining Celestial symbols behind peoples' backs, signaling that they have, indeed, completed the massive chain.

I only focused on the chain with two characters, Jarsus the Prot Paladin and Oterro the Frost Death Knight. While I had a considerably harder time getting the four Celestials on Oterro (I guess by day two they were old news?) I did eventually get both of the strength cloaks - one for tanking, one for dps.

So what do we think of this chain?

On one hand, I am very happy that the chain has been made accessible to all. If you're willing to put in the effort, you can get it. LFR has changed the face of raiding in WoW, and I'm happy that everyone gets to experience this.

The fact that this chain spans the entirety of the expansion's content is sort of a mixed blessing. I do really like that what makes this a legendary quest chain is that it truly takes you through everything. I would call it epic, but that would seem to be a downgrade. The only problem, however, is that if you're late to the game, or switch mains in the middle of the expansion, you'll probably never catch up. Even though LFR means you can go into older raids and still stand a chance of getting, say, that Crystallized Sha stuff from the Sha of Fear, some of the trials - particularly those involving the World Bosses, are going to be really, really hard later on. Getting a group for Nalak in 5.3 took me days. Imagine what it'll be like now?

We have been forced to reimagine what a legendary could be. Previously, it has always been a weapon, but now we have special gems for specific weapons, new meta-gems, and cloaks. The gems were ok (the meta-gems were far more interesting) but it's really only the cloaks that have the game-changing power that you associate with a legendary. Could they have done weapons instead? Well, that might have brought about two different problems.

One is that you'd have to itemize a ton of different weapons. In this day and age, for example, nearly every tank spec uses different kinds of weapons (still uncomfortable with haste for Prot Paladins.) The other problem is that weapons really are game-changers. Dragonwrath, for example, would boost dps by such a huge amount that raids started structuring their groups around maximizing the number of those staffs they could put in. Granted, a legendary for all classes might allow you to simply choose those who were diligent, but Blizzard probably doesn't want quite so much of a variation in power.

Some complained about the quest-chain, specifically the parts that did not involve raiding. Now, I'm not a PvPer, and I can sympathize with people who didn't want to have to do any battlegrounds to get through the 5.1 segment. However, I see this sort of chain as a way to push you to experience all the new content in the expansion. A little PvP may be embarrassing, but it's not the end of the world. You have a roughly 50% chance to win each time, so just keep trying and you'll get it eventually (for some reason Alliance had an easier time winning Silvershard Mines when I did it.)

The only real complaint I had was that in the Lightning Forge scenario, they made it doable by healers and dps, but you really couldn't do that as a tank. There was always a tank NPC that would taunt off you, so you couldn't generate the damage to get through the encounter. Thankfully, in the Celestial challenges there was an option for tanks (which I actually found far easier than the melee dps one,) but I would hope Blizzard will make sure that all three roles are given a manner in which to complete their tasks.

So, what do I think about this as a model for new legendary chains?

Honestly, while I thought it was very well done, I think I'd like to see these chains shrunk down to a single raid tier again. The catch-up required for a new player at this point is practically insurmountable (ask me again after 5.4 has been out for a long time.) It might also be fun to have some orange weapons again (though I do recognize the pitfalls.)

However, I am totally happy to see quest-chains that span entire expansions. I'd love to see something like this that perhaps involves a little less raid-grinding, and is more just a way to keep us engaged in the ongoing story of the expansion. Wrathion forced us to keep a close eye on the events of each patch (well, maybe not so much in 5.3) and I think that's a great way to make sure people are exploring the new content.

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