– dary!

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for several years now. In that time, there are very few things I haven’t done in the game. I have never quested through Bloodmyst Isle. I have never created a Gnome character. I have never participated in a pet battle. And I had never acquired a legendary item.

Until yesterday.

It took me nearly a year, but I have at last completed Wrathion’s legendary quest chain and claimed Xing-Ho, Breath of Yu’lon.

I ground my way through Mogu’shan Vaults, Heart of Fear, and Terrace of Endless Spring to collect my sigils. I valor-capped for six weeks to prove my valor. I slaughtered thousands of Mantid, Mogu, and Alliance soldiers to prove my loyalty to the Black Prince. I defeated the Alliance on the battlegrounds of Pandaria. I forged a weapon from the essence of thunder, I uncovered the secrets of the Mogu, I defeated Wrathion in single combat, and I defeated all four August Celestials upon the Timeless Isle.

At long last, the journey has ended. I am legend.

As with all things in this expansion, my feelings on the legendary chain are mixed.

The negative:

The truth is that the legendary chain was a recipe for burnout. Some parts of it weren’t too bad — like the solo challenges and collecting sigils — but other sections were soul-crushingly grindy. Getting up to six thousand valor points was brutal, and the whole “grind Throne of Thunder for twenty items with a low drop rate, then grind it again for twelve items with an even lower drop rate” thing was just too much. Don’t even get me started on finding a group that wants to fight all four Celestials, or the Alliance griefers that kept despawning the bosses so we couldn’t get anything done…

I would have simply given up on completing the chain, but I was invested in the story. And after a while, I had come too far to be willing to turn back.

The fact remains, though, that the legendary chain was a major contributor to my burnout this expansion.

I also have mixed feelings on the fact that absolutely everyone is being given a legendary this expansion. Normally, I’m all for accessibility, but if there’s one thing in WoW that deserves to be exclusive, it’s legendaries.

I am very glad they gave everyone a chance to experience the story, but the legendary items themselves are not something players like me deserve.

I stand by my original stance on legendaries: Decouple them from lore, make them purely a game mechanic, and make them OMGWTFBBQ hard to get. MoP’s solution is better than the Cataclysm model of making the vast majority of players miss out on major storylines, but it also devalues the concept of legendaries.

The positive:

The main thing I enjoyed about the legendary chain, naturally, was the story. Wrathion has turned out to be an incredibly fascinating and layered character, and he’s only getting more interesting as time goes on. From moment to moment, he can go from being hilariously funny, to horrifyingly ruthless, to utterly heroic.

His voice acting is brilliant, and if I was to come up with a listing of favourite quotes from Mists of Pandaria, it would probably end up being 90% Wrathion. Some of his banter with Anduin is particularly priceless:

“Why are you lecturing me? Aren’t you only two years old?”

“I’m two in Dragon years!”

Brilliant.

And as grindy as it was, the legendary quests did feel like quite an epic journey. I’ve literally been to the four corners of Pandaria and back again, gathering power for my cloak. Getting to the end and having Lorewalker Cho tell my epic tale was very gratifying, and the solo challenges were very fun, if not as hard as I was led to believe.

I must admit it feels like quite an achievement, even though I know it isn’t. Pretty much everyone is going to have one of these cloaks by expansion’s end, if they don’t already. But still, I can’t help but feel like I’m a bit of a badass.

I’m tempted to AFK in front of the door to the Shrine and show off my cloak like a true obnoxious raider.

We’re less than two months away from BlizzCon and the announcement of the next expansion for World of Warcraft. Everyone has their speculations — some think it’ll be a Legion expansion, some believe in the Dark Below, and some think it’ll somehow be both. Myself, I think the Dark Below is legit.

But the purpose of this post isn’t so much about what I think will happen as what I want to happen. As before, it’s time for my wishlist for the next expansion.

The ocean and Azshara:

Even before the whole Dark Below thing, I was hoping for an ocean-themed expansion. The Great Sea is the last major area of Azeroth that we haven’t explored, and they’ve been foreshadowing something terrible in the oceans for over a decade of real-world time now. Murlocs are not supposed to appear inland — something’s driven them out of the depths.

Furthermore, while I’m not the biggest Naga fan in the world, I do think Azshara would make an absolutely epic villain. Barring Sargeras, she’s pretty much the only iconic Warcraft villain we haven’t tangled with yet. This is the woman who first brought the Legion to Azeroth, who caused the Sundering, and who leads the Naga in their current evil-doing.

Azshara was one of the most powerful sorcerers in history before the Old Gods empowered her, and now she’s abducted Neptulon and conquered the plane of water. Her power must be nearing godlike levels.

An ocean expansion also opens the door to finally facing N’Zoth, the Drowned God. This mysterious Old God is behind many of the recent troubles of Azeroth, including Deathwing and the Emerald Nightmare. While I don’t think we’ll ever see an Emerald Dream expansion, an ocean-themed expansion featuring N’Zoth could include the Dream as a raid and/or zone.

There are many other interesting settings an ocean expansion could introduce. More underwater zones like Vashj’ir, islands, or both. One popular fan theory is that Azshara might use the powers of Neptulon to raise the ruins of ancient Kalimdor as a new continent. I’d be all for that.

The Great Sea is also home to fascinating locales like the Tomb of Sargeras and Kul Tiras, both things I think are overdue to be included in WoW.

New neutral race: Vrykul

I’ve said before that I think World of Warcraft has too many races already. The truth is that a new race just doesn’t add much to the game — they ceases to be exciting within weeks of their release.

But there is one more race I want to see added: the Vrykul.

My reasons are pretty simple. I’m a massive fan of Norse mythology and Viking culture, and I adored the Vrykul back in Wrath. Honestly, who wouldn’t want to play as a giant Viking? Lame people, that’s who.

I also think the Vrykul would make a good neutral race, meaning we won’t need a second race. They’re the ancestors of humanity, and they share common origins with Gnomes and Dwarves, so they’ve got a very strong connection to the Alliance, but their savage and warlike culture is also a perfect fit for the Horde.

Plus, the Vrykul aren’t really evil. They just lost their way as a people when the Titans abandoned them. So unlike some other popular race ideas (Naga), it’s not terribly lore-breaking for them to turn over a new leaf and ally with the factions of Azeroth.

New ranged weapon class:

It’s a pet peeve of mine that WoW has so few options for fighting with ranged weapons. We have seven classes and sixteen specs able to fighting with melee weapons, and five classes and nine specs capable of fighting with magic, but only one class and three specs for fighting with ranged weapons.

To make matters worse, it’s a class with incredibly little variety between its specs. So if you want to play a ranged weapon fighter, you really only have one choice.

As someone who enjoys ranged weapon classes but doesn’t much care for the hunter class or its mechanics (especially pets), it’s a source of unending frustration for me.

There are a lot of forms a new ranged weapon class could take — tinker is a popular option — but my vote would go to dark ranger.

For those who didn’t play Warcraft III, a dark ranger is somewhere between a shadow priest, a death knight, and a warlock, but they also make heavy use of bows. Their focus was on using mind control and necromancy to turn an enemy’s own strength against them. Sylvanas is the iconic dark ranger.

Now, dark rangers are only undead High Elves in lore, so it couldn’t be exactly the traditional dark ranger. My suggestion would be to make it a more general combination of ranged weapons and dark-themed powers, something many other Warcraft races use. Trolls have their shadow hunters; Night Elves have their… everything.

If we’re taking inspiration from shadow hunters, that also opens the door for the class to have some voodoo inspiration, something underrepresented in current class choices, and support and healing skills.

This would provide another thing WoW is currently lacking: an “evil” healer. All current healing specs use nature or holy magic. So there’s a lot of potential for a shadow/blood magic healer.

Could offer some very unique skills. Imagine having the option to drain health from the DPS and give it to the tanks, or a battle resurrection that doesn’t count towards the cap for an encounter, but comes at the cost of sacrificing another player’s life.

Armor dyes:

‘Nuff said.

An alternate advancement/horizontal progression system:

I don’t like gear as a method of progression. For one thing, it’s not really progression. Your gear gets reset every expansion. We never actually get any more powerful. Thanks to wacky stat-scaling, my characters are actually much less powerful now than they were in Wrath of the Lich King.

For another, it’s very binary. You either get your drop, or you don’t. It’s possible to spend hours playing and log off without progressing at all.

One of the reasons I’m always leveling more alts is that I find leveling a much more rewarding form of progression. I’ll never replace that level I spent hours grinding for, and absolutely everything gives XP, so every play session is rewarding.

I’d like to see these advantages brought to endgame with some sort of alternate advancement system, perhaps akin to Diablo III’s paragon levels.

It would be difficult to implement without making it another mandatory grind, but I think it could be done. It could provide gold find, out of combat utility skills (double jumps, maybe), and other useful but not game-breaking perks.

No more mandatory subscription:

Yeah, I think we all know my thoughts on this by now.

I don’t like subscriptions. They’re restrictive, and they’re incompatible with the way manypeople play games these days. To paraphrase a comment I read on another blog a few weeks back, “15$ a month isn’t too much to spend on a hobby, but I have a gaming hobby, not a Warcraft hobby.”

(They were talking about WildStar, but the principle’s the same.)

While I have advocated for free to play and would welcome it, it’s not actually my first choice. I’d prefer a buy to play model more along the lines of Guild Wars 2 or The Secret World. Free to play is still better than a subscription model, but it tends to make it too easy for trolls and gold-sellers to make it into a game. A little barrier to entry is a good thing.

* * *

So basically I want to be leveling a Vrykul dark ranger through the Ruins of Zin-Azshari, while working on alternate advancement for my warlock and coming and going as I please due to the lack of subscription. What do you want to see announced for WoW when BlizzCon rolls around?