WoW Factor: A WoW Legion wishlist

Legion is humming along nicely as we near the two-month mark. It’s still got that decent balance of having enough to do that you’re unlikely to get bored without so much to do that it’s easy to become overwhelmed. Some people have even gotten a Legendary item or two, although based on my own experience, I can confidently say that there’s not exactly a rush to pick up that “equip two Legendaries” upgrade at the bottom of the upgrade path for your order hall.

Boy, that randomness thing is working out really well, let me tell you.

Mild snark aside, there are things I’d like to see in the future, and while the current state of World of Warcraft is better than it’s been in quite some time, there’s room to improve. So as we continue along in the salad days of this expansion, here’s the stuff I’d really like to see in the future, however likely or unlikely it might be moving forward.

New world quest options

If you’ve been religiously doing world quests and emissary quests, you’re probably approaching Exalted with the six Broken Isles factions pretty quickly. I’m personally not there yet, but I can easily see the end of it. And at that point, faction reputation ceases to mean anything from these quests; the artifact power will be nice, sure, but reputation is totally pointless.

What I would love to see is the world quest system start letting you use old legacy factions for Championing, similar to the old tabards for dungeon runs. It’d work out pretty well, too; instead of getting reputation with a faction you already have at Exalted, you can champion an older faction that might be more difficult or tedious to get. But then, I’d love to see more world quests spreading out everywhere. The Legion invasions made it clear that the game can support this in older zones; why not give us these events to encourage both lower and higher-level characters to take part?

There’s such a breadth of different areas brought into relevance for this expansion that it seems like the perfect opportunity not to revamp the old world but to add stuff to do back out there, new places to see and new challenges to deal with. We’re going back to Deadwind Pass and Karazhan, and I’d love to see more stuff done with that zone entirely; I’d hardly grouse about a zone being revitalized with some scaling event quests — although I’m fine with not using the Legion invasion bosses and their instant fiery death bits.

More cosmetic glyphs

I’m not going to mince words here: Inscription is not the profession that I signed on for. What interested me about Inscription was the possibility of altering abilities in both appearance and operation; it was not being able to make another tier of raid consumable and a weekly scroll that may or may not do something fun. So that was a buzzkill. But as long as we’re stuck in this situation where the glyphs are all cosmetic, I want more.

I want a spectral fox instead of just a spectral wolf for Shaman, and let’s get some spectral cats and stags and such. Let’s go crazy. Let’s let Rogues cloak themselves in the shadowy effects of Shadowform if they want. Let’s give Paladins some actual cosmetic options that feel cool again, for that matter. Let’s have more weird Druid forms available for shapeshifting; heck, let’s make more Druid specs have the option of NOT shapeshifting along the lines of Balance’s glyphed form.

Don’t get me wrong, the Glyph system was becoming hideously overloaded and unfun, and I totally understand why it was gutted and removed. But the result is that I want to be choking on new cosmetic glyphs, because that is what I still have and also half of what interested me in the first place. (And make some of them a bit easier to get, while we’re at it, but now I’m splitting hairs.)

More Withered training

If you haven’t yet taken part in the Withered army training scenario in Suramar, you’re missing out; it’s pretty darn cool, and it’s an excellent example of what can be done with scenarios. It’s at once a touch of RTS and a touch of dungeoneering, and while its rewards can run low a bit quickly (where is my fox mount? People know I’m all about foxes), it’s still a really fun experience.

My question, then, is why we don’t have more of these?

It’s a question that’s pretty easily answered, on one level: If nothing else, having one means it’s easier to balance and, you know, see if the concept even works before putting it everywhere. But gosh, I’d love to see some things like this out in the world. How great would it be to send your Order Hall champions on missions like this and then join them out in the field? Heck, wasn’t that one of the big selling points that was supposed to make Order Halls different from Garrisons?

I recognize that rewards will need to be deciphered and so forth, but the template is there, and there’s lots that can be done with it. I’d love to see more be done with the same basic conceits. And hey, if they include more fox mounts along the way, so much the better.

Evolving outdoors

World quests have effectively tackled many of the issues that led to the creation of daily quests, but there’s one thing that hasn’t yet been addressed: world progress. And I think that’s worth considering because if the story is going to continue onward from launch, world progress is going to matter quite a bit.

In the past, we’ve had daily quest hubs that slowly evolve over time. Warlords of Draenor had a slightly different way of tackling things, but we still got that sense of slow evolution in a couple of places, and the expansion was so truncated that there were very few places wherein the world was supposed to show a slow build. But the world quests we’re doing right now exist within a perpetual now, the state that we find the Broken Isles in at launch, with a minimal Legion presence that’s just starting to creep in from a few points.

Story has been a big deal in this expansion, from the individual zone quests to the overarching story and the matter of dealing with Light’s Heart. And so I’m hoping to see the world change along with it, to see new things happening in the world and the Isles as new events start rocking the heretofore established order of things.

It’s not that world quests as they stand aren’t good, it’s that despite assurances to the contrary, they’re every bit as repeated and predictable as any other form of repeated content. Having some new ones would keep things feeling a bit more fresh as the expansion goes along.

Will we actually get any of this, or will we just be getting more unqueueable content until the end of time? We don’t know yet. Leave your speculation and wishes down in the comments, or mail stuff along to eliot@massivelyop.com, like always. Next time, I want to pick apart a bit of the lore behind Legion and how it’s hinting at something bigger than we’ve seen before.