Legion Blizzcon Hopes

Blizzcon 2015 starts tomorrow. Normally, we'd have spent the last few weeks or months madly speculating on what we might see for the next expansion. But this time around, Blizzard announced Legion early.

The hope I have, and I think most do as well, is that we'll be seeing Legion come around before fall of next year (typically WoW expansions have released in the Fall of even-numbered years, the exception being BC, which was released in January of '07.) The earliness of the announcement and the lack of a third raid tier in Warlords of Draenor both seem to suggest an moved-up timetable for the release of Legion, but we've been burned before. Siege of Orgrimmar came out two months before Warlords was announced, and it still took us another twelve months before we saw the expansion land, despite the fact that Mists was done and Warlords wasn't adding anything crazy like a new class. Legion is adding a new class, and potentially involves profound reworks of existing specs, so there will be a lot of balance work to be done.

But at Gamescom, they did say that the Beta would be starting this year. So my first hope for Blizzcon? Announce the beginning of the Legion Beta. It might not be like next Tuesday, but starting in November would be great. The thing is, even though they said explicitly that the Beta would begin this year, that might not actually be the case. It took two months to implement flying after 6.2.0, despite their saying it would be "weeks not months." I could totally see them having the "Beta" open as more of a Friends and Family Alpha and just calling it a Beta.

But that's just my pessimism. It's possible that they'll just open it up soon. I know I'm eager to get my hands on a Demon Hunter.

Speaking of Demon Hunters - I expect we're going to get a real sense of how Demon Hunters play. At Gamescom, we got a sense of their basic flavor - lots of movement and skill-shot attacks - but we didn't really see how abilities would work together and how their resource system will work.

As much as I want to play a Worgen Demon Hunter, one of the things I hope for only in what I assume is vain is an expansion of playable Demon Hunter races. But the lore they've chosen (which is easy to change) and the fact that Demon Hunters have other forms based on their appearance (which is far harder to change) makes me doubt that this will happen.

I do expect that we'll find out about more, if not all of the Artifact Weapons. I'd be overjoyed to see Tyr's Hand as the Protection Paladin weapon (though if it goes to Holy I'll just be happy it exists in game.)

Likewise, I predict that we'll find out what most if not all of the class halls will be. I especially expect that they'll show off the Rogue one to make sure that it's properly luxurious after many complained about the idea of being in the sewers.

One thing I really don't know if they'll touch on is the future - namely whether they're going to tell us about the future patch content of the expansion. My biggest fear for Legion is that it's going to be another two-tier expansion, with us merely getting Emerald Nightmare, Surmar Palace, and the Tomb of Sargeras as raids. I fully expect ToS to be the final raid, but I think it would be a mistake for future expansions to laser-focus on a single threat for the entire run. Don't make us as bored with the Burning Legion as we've become with Orcs, Blizzard! Wrath gave us Old Gods, Titan Constructs, and Blue Dragons to fight, which helped keep us from getting oversaturated with Scourge.

I know they can't really tell us everything they have about the various specs, and we'll probably have to wait for the Beta to get the run-down on all of them, but I think they should at the very least dedicate a decent amount of time to Demonology and Survival, which are both specs that are going through almost complete redefinition (we assume for the former, as most signs point toward Demonology losing Metamorphosis, which is at the core of the spec's gameplay right now.)

A few notes on professions would also be appreciated, and it would be good if they could clarify the role that Class Champions will play - hopefully less like Follower Missions and more like assigning Champions to various zones to get buffs there.

I do wonder if the announcement of Legion maybe happened too early - leaving us dangling with some tantalizing broad details and saying next to nothing since then. But hopefully the Legion information train is finally pulling into the station, and we're going to be able to hop on tomorrow.