World of Warcraft: Legion - Dragoncon News

To everyone's surprise, there was a World of Warcraft panel at Dragoncon. Additional information was revealed about the new expansion, Legion. There are a number of highlights, ranging from Demon Hunters to the transmogrification system, listed below:

- 

• Demon Hunters currently planned to start at 98.
• Demon Hunters can use 1H Swords, in addition to Glaives.
• Demon Hunter Metamorphosis is a short transformation with inner demon visuals, not continuous form.
• Multistrike is gone, other secondary/tertiary stats are changed.
• Profession updates - very little or no cooldown gated profession materials for crafting.
• Stage Upgrades work differently - destroy old item, get Obliterium material to create better item.
• Transmog system in Legion is similar to Diablo and possibly account-wide.
• No extra Void Storage tab planned--transmog system should help with bag space.
• Classes in Legion emphasize fantasy of specs and some are even getting renamed.
• Survival Hunters, who are melee in Legion, get Harpoon ability to draw mobs towards them.
• Adventure Mode may be coming to Legion - no details, but something that may be discussed at BlizzCon.
• A previous tweet stated no major glyphs, but was clarified to say there were simply no new major glyphs.

Interesting to see that Demon Hunters will be starting at level 98. Perhaps after doing the starting area, the Demon Hunter will be level 100, after progressing through two levels. Or, it may mean that it's similar to Death Knights in which you level rapidly and gain abilities at an odd rate during the process, to help ease players into the class. Demon Hunters may have to visit Draenor to reach 100, but even if they do, they will be doing very little Warlords of Draenor content.

It's quite likely that Demonology Warlocks will be losing their Metamorphosis, as it will be iconic to Demon Hunters. Demon Hunter Metamorphosis will be a short transformation, instead of a continuous transformation like current Warlock's. Blizzard stated that they would like to refocus the Warlock Demonology specialization more on actual Demons, rather than imbuing themselves with demonic power; more of a pet spec is in mind. Infact, a load of classes will be getting a revamp and some specializations will be having their names changed. I'll cover this in a later blog post when more information has been revealed.

I'm really glad that Multistrike is gone, because although it's a fun idea it ultimately has a negative impact on the game. Percent based chances add too much RNG to the game, and in this case far to high of a reward for doing nothing. In PvP, multistrike is ok for the majority of abilities except when it activates on hard hitting spells like Chaos Bolt. For example, Chaos Bolt crits for 173k, then multistrikes for an additional 51k. Where's the skill in that?

Legion has the largest profession team to date, so far they have revealed that their will be little to no cooldown gating on professions. This means that you are only limited by how much effort you are willing to put into the profession.

Transmog will also be changed, to a system similar to Diablo 3. In Diablo 3, you only need to have had the item once to then use it as transmog. This new system will save a lot of storage space, and will also eliminate the need for additional Void Storage slots. Legion might also see Adventure Mode, again from Diablo 3.

No new glyphs have been announced, save for that there will be no new major glyphs in Legion. Hopefully minor glyphs will be used to focus on class cosmetic effects. For example, I'd love a glyph for Death Knights so that when they use Soul Reaper and gain the haste buff, the swirling soul effect lasts for a couple of minutes, instead of a few seconds.

World of Warcraft: Legion News - Class Orders

As well as Artifacts for each class specialization, there will also be the addition of the Class Orders. In Legion, you won't be fighting the invasion of the Burning Legion alongside the Alliance or the Horde, you will be fighting them with the power of your class.

With the armies of both the Alliance and the Horde shattered after the Iron Horde and the events of Pandaria, the armies of Azeroth are in no shape for yet another war. As a result, we will band together with our fellow class members to tackle the threat of the Burning Legion in ways unique to our class and to the advantage of our strengths.

Regardless of faction, Class Order Halls will be places to be shared with fellow Class Members; no more personal Garrisons. For an idea of how this might look like, look to Acherus as the closest thing to a Class Order Hall.

It is in your Class Order Halls that you will be able to customize your Artifact weapon and get quests. Order Halls will not have banks or auction houses. The order hall for Paladins was shown at the Gamescom reveal, and Warlocks will have their Order Hall on a Legion portal world. As for the other classes,  we can only speculate that Acherus will the order hall for Death Knights and suitable areas for other classes.

You are able to collect members of your class to fight the Burning Legion, as well as Elite lore figures such as Darion Mograine. The Elite characters are far stronger than simple followers, and you are also able to send these characters to patrol zones. Champions are intended to enhance your game-play experience, rather than going out and doing things for you. Examples include assigning a champion to a zone, and whilst you are playing in that zone you will either gain combat bonuses or rewards.

It should be noted that Champions are different from followers, so they do less of an impact, and they enhance things instead. You can send them on missions, but they are meant for much more. Blizzard would like to avoid giving out too many followers, because they gave less reason to go out into the world and accomplish things. The size of your elite squadron, will be about nine, think Knights of the Round Table.

Although the fantasy for Warlords of Draenor was that you raised an army and felt like a leader, the fantasy for Legion is that you work alongside elite heroes against the threat of the Legion. As such, amassing huge numbers is not a solution.

World of Warcraft: Legion News - Demon Hunters

With the announcement of Legion, Demon Hunters were announced as the new class for the game. It's been described as a melee class with very high mobility. As for the flavor text and lore, it is stated on Warcraft's website as the following:

"Demon hunters, disciples of Illidan Stormrage, uphold a dark legacy, one that frightens their allies and enemies like. The Illidari embrace fel and chaotic magics—energies that have long threatened the world of Azeroth—believing them necessary to challenge the Burning Legion. Wielding the powers of demons they’ve slain, they develop demonic features that incite revulsion and dread in fellow elves."

- Demon Hunter, World of Warcraft

Demon Hunters will only be available for Night Elves and Blood Elves, as the Demon Hunters that are set to appear in Legion will be part of the Illidari; Illidan's Demon Hunters. The few Night Elves that followed Illidan through the Dark Portal, and the Blood Elves that followed Kael'thas, a select number were trained to become Demon Hunters. The story of your personal Demon Hunter will start moments before adventurers battle Illidan Stormrage atop the Black Temple, and you are sent on a what is described as a suicide mission - eventually you end up on Azeroth, locked up in the Vault of Wardens. That's all we know about the Demon Hunters so far in regards to story.

As for specializations, Demon Hunters will only have two. Vengeance will be the tanking spec, and Havoc will be the DPS spec. They wanted to add a third, but they saw little value in it as the only choices were another tank spec or another DPS spec. Healing or ranged DPS specs did not fit the fantasy.

Both specs have access to metamorphosis, turning you into a Demon much like Illidan whilst using the Havoc specialization. As for Vengeance, you become far more bulkier and spikes protrude from your back.

Character customization also allows you to add horns to your characters base form, as well as an eye shroud, tatoos, and demonic scales. A few abilities have also been named, such as:

Spectral Sight: Allows you to see invisible/stealthed targets, even through objects.

Double Jump: Demon Hunters are able to jump twice.

Eye Blast: Shoots a beam, hits multiple targets in a line.

The starting level for Demon Hunters is currently being debated by the player base, most believe that Demon Hunters will start between 95 - 100. I think starting at level 95 is most likely, because starting at 100 would make the leveling experience too quick of an experience. Demon Hunters will use Demonic Fury as a resource, will be able to wear Cloth and Leather armour and give a 12th Character Creation slot. Their main weapons will be Glaives, though it is unclear as to whether or not these will have a unique weapon type, or if they will be swords. I believe that swords will be the most likely candidate. Some of the pictures shown of Demon Hunters with their Glaives actually contain the Artifact versions of them.

World of Warcraft: Legion News - Artifacts

With the announcement of Legion, a variety of new features were announced. One of them being Artifact weapons; weapons of great power that we are to use in our fight against the Burning Legion.

As the expansions have gone by, our characters have become more and more important in the storyline of each expansion. Come Warlords of Draenor, we were made Commanders of our armies and in Legion we are set to become Class Leaders. Important characters such as Thrall, Varian or Khadgar have their own, unique weapons that everyone recognizes, such as Thrall's Doomhammer. 

The idea behind the Artifact system is to give the players their very own weapon; no more depending on drops or quest rewards. We are getting our very own weapons, that represent us and are part of our character's image. In total, there will be 36 Artifacts; 1 for each specialization. Each artifact will have a quest in order to acquire that artifact, and each artifact also has 4 skins for you to choose from. You get the base artifact, with the base skin. Then, as you level up your artifact, you gain access to new skins and you can also earn another skin through PvP. In addition, you can further customize your artifact with colours.

Pic: Frost Death Knight Artifact Skins

I mentioned you can level up your artifact, and with it you can also invest points into the Weapon's "Talent Tree", further customizing your artifact to your liking. At the start of the expansion, you have will have most of the skills for your weapon, and as the expansion comes to an end, you will have all of the skills your weapon can provide.

Pic: Artifact "Talent" Tree

I'm not sure how some of these abilities will work in PvP, as a self-resurrection and similar abilities would be quite overpowered in PvP. However, I can imagine that these abilities will be disabled in competitive PvP in the least.

The way you get your Artifact, will be soon after you arrive on the new continent; The Broken Isles. Upon arriving, you will receive a quest to go and acquire your spec-specific artifact. Towards the end of your questing experience, you will receive additional quests to then acquire the other artifacts for your class and specializations.

World of Warcraft: Legion News - Honor System V3 & The Prestige System

With the announcement of World of Warcraft: Legion, Blizzard also unveiled the final version of the Honor System - Version 3. To start, it features the removal of PvP gear which you can read about in my blog here.

Aside from the removal of PvP gear, the Honor System V3 features something no one saw coming; a talent tree for PvP. The PvP talent tree works in the same way as the current one does for all classes, you pick a skill from one of three choices and then go down to the next lane to choose the next and so on and so forth. From what we were shown, the talent tree has some standard choices available for all classes as well as unique choices for specific classes such as Death Knights. Death Knights will be given the option to replace Scourge Strike with Necrotic Strike, a pruned ability from the days of Mists of Pandaria. Healers will be given the option to replace their dispel with a unique ability that dispels all magic effects on the targets every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. The values to some of these abilities will probably be tweaked, however we can only assume that other classes will receive something similar, an ability for PvP that replaces a pre-existing ability. 

It is a possibility that these PvP talents could cause major imbalance issues should the effects be too powerful. The new progression system for PvP is no longer about collecting gear, but instead about progressing through ranks 1 - 50. During your ranking up process, you will be given the chance to choose a new talent in your PvP talent tree. Once you hit Rank 50, you are then given the option to Prestige, which will wipe your PvP talents clean and you will start again. In return, the player will receive cosmetic rewards. In the beginning, this will simply edit your player frame slightly to show your prestige ranking, but eventually you will be able to get mounts, a new skin for your class artifact and more. More details on the prestige system will no doubt surface as we get closer to the release date, which is sometime around when the Warcraft movie hits theatres.

They said that these abilities will only work in PvP, I hope that includes World PvP as well. It will be cool to see that as soon as you enter PvP combat, Scourge Strike turns into Necrotic Strike for the duration of the PvP battle, but perhaps it is a complete a hard-swap in which the Death Knight entirely looses the Scourge Strike ability.

Aside from abilities, you can also select passives such as Mind Quickening that will increase your Haste by 3%, or choose non-class related abilities such as the baseline Gladiator's Medallion. Gladiator's Medallion is a talent that works exactly like a PvP trinket that removes all forms of CC from the player - does this mean that the PvP trinkets will be removed as well as the controversial Human Racial?

I can only imagine that the Human Racial will be removed so that the playing field is leveled out, everyone will have one trinket no matter your choice of race. I am somewhat fearful that there might be the slightest chance that PvP talents will only work in Arena or Battlegrounds, in reference to how Tom Chilton worded it at the expansion reveal during Gamescom 2015. I have high hopes however.

World of Warcraft: Legion News - PvP Gear to be removed

So with the new expansion announced, World of Warcraft: Legion, comes new changes and features and I'd like to take the time today to discuss how Blizzard will be handling PvP gear. In short, PvP gear will be removed in Legion, and as such gear will be standardized. There will be no "PvP Gear" or "PvE Gear", there will just be gear. 

This is not to say you cannot get gear through PvP - of course you can and still will be able to get gear by doing PvP and I imagine that conquest points will also stay so that you can Epic pieces. However, item level will suffer diminishing returns - meaning that the stat difference between a fully decked out Mythic raider and a freshly dinged character will be about 7%. Once you start gaining gear through PvP or other means, this gap will quickly close.

The reason why Blizzard is removing PvP gear, is because they want skill to be the sole factor in who wins when it comes to PvP. Currently, the quality of your gear has far too large an effect against someone who is not very well geared. 

Gear acquired through PvP will not have much of an effect in PvP scenarios, but it will be useful in PvE though not as useful as gear acquired through pure PvE means such as Dungeons or Raids.

I think from a PvP perspective this will be great, it'll be great to see everyone be on a level playing field and after recently leveling an alt, I felt once again the true pain and boredom of what it is like to try PvP without any gear and be obliterated by a fully decked out PvP player with little to no chance of victory despite whatever skill I may have. With this new system, you can jump into the fray and make a difference from day one with your gear having little effect on your end performance; purely skill based.

I am slightly concerned as to how it will work in the outdoor world. Seeing as Item Level will have diminishing returns, does that mean whilst we are questing we will loose a large chunk of health and damage if an enemy player so much as farts on us? It will be interesting to see how they handle this - because if you loose Health and Damage upon entering PvP combat in the open world, this flawed mechanic could easily be abused and used a tool to cause grief to other players.

So, Crackdown 3 Looks Impressive

So Crackdown 3 was announced at E3 2014, and recently some game-play was released showcasing the impressive physics effects whilst in a multiplayer match. All of the buildings and materials are destructible, down to the smallest little blocks.

No doubt, this calls for some heavy computing power, including memory and maxing out the console's CPU. However, the console can only put out so much before it runs out of resources on its own, and with potentially so many players destroying buildings, where the does the compute power come from?

The game will use cloud computing in order to process the additional physics effects, once the console has been taxed to the max, the cloud servers will kick in and start to process physics. In the game-play video, the game maxed out at 14 cloud computers when a load of buildings started to collapse and destroy other buildings. The developer also showed the game in debug mode and what was revealed is quite impressive. When the game is being played in multiplayer, the game colour codes all of the buildings so that when the console needs additional compute power, the colour coded building is processed by the relevant server that the colour has been assigned to. This really helps to spread out the load across available servers and results in a very smooth game experience.

Additionally, the game tries to use realistic physics; buildings collapse in the way you would expect them to and fall in the direction you would expect them to. The amount of destruction you can do in Crackdown 3 will no doubt make for some really fun multiplayer matches and allows people to make their own "bases", such as a Sniper Nest by shooting a hole in the wall for you to shoot from. 

The game looks beautiful graphically, though the animation quality as well as the character models seems a little lacking in detail when compared to the map detail. However, the game-play shown was watermarked as "Pre-Alpha", so it was very early footage. You can watch the game-play below here: