World of Warcraft: Legion New Expansion Revealed

Blizzard has just announced the latest expansion to the World of Warcraft universe that’s 10 years old and counting during Gamescom: Legion.

Three developers took to the stage in matching demon-inspired shirt designs to announce this all new experience:

• Ian Hazzikostas, Lead Game Designer
• Tom Chilton, Game Director, Vice President
• Alex Afrasiabi, Creative Director

After a brief trailer on the story so far and a connecting one, the cinematic teaser for the new expansion is shown in its full glory.

The announcement trailer gives a brief overview of the features present in the new expansion:

• New continent - The Broken Isles
• Level characters to level 110
• New dungeons and raids
• New honor system
• Artifact weapons
• Class order halls
• New hero class demon hunter

Story and Setting

The centerpiece of the expansion will be the Broken Isles, a forgotten heart of Azeroth. It was a bustling continent ten thousand years ago, but has since become a graveyard of sorts. Players face the legion at the Tomb of Sargeras, an active gateway to the legions of demonic monsters invading the world.

Before the expansion proper, there will be a Broken Shore experience as the bridge, with the developers hinting that it will shock the players. How shocking, guess we will know it then.

Once the Broken Shore settles, players will get to use ancient artifacts like the Ashbringer and Doomhammer, form class orders like the Silverhand as they fight alongside their brethren.

The newly introduced class, the Demon Hunter, will allow players to see Azeroth through the eyes of Illidan, why he sent his best demon hunters into a suicide mission, experience their past and trace how Sargeras released the burning legion then.

Players will scour the Broken Isles for Pillars of Creation relics, so that they can close the massive gateway at the heart of Sargeras to stop the Burning Legion.

Players get to visit realms like:

• Val’Sharah - A forgotten druid refuge with Malfurion’s past
• Azsuna - The bones of night elf civilization with blue dragon flight showing up, where players discover the ghosts of the ancient night elves and get introduced to the Nightfallen
• Highmountain - The highest point of the Broken Isles, where only the strongest creatures live, as well as to seek answers from Malfurion
• Suramar - An old race of elves with the last relic players need, and it’s not going to be easy with elite guards; and many more.

Artifacts

There will be a total of 36 artifacts, one for each specialization as you follow the story and take up the artifact for your specialization.

You can level up your artifact power and use this to empower your weapon and the character. Each artifact has a trait tree, which gives players choices for the empowerment, and it comes with powerful end traits.

There will be visual customization for weapons that can be unlocked by levelling or specific activities, and each will have a few different looks to it. For the Fangs of the First Nightsaber, a druidic artifact, it grants the players a modification to their forms.

Class Orders, Order Hall & Champions

The classes get to band together to get things done, look up to the player who is the wielder of the artifacts and allow classes to feel something about their identity. Each order gets its own thematically appropriate order hall as their base of operations, like the Paladin’s order hall shown below. These order halls will come with their own quests specific to the class.

There will be a champion system in the order hall to replace the follower system, with some established names and customization available. Champions, a new aspect here, will enable you, not take over the player’s role and can do things like scouting or give bonuses when you get into an area.

Dungeons and Raids

There will be more varied challenges, to give players a reason to keep doing them rather than do for a month and forget about it.

There will be new dungeons like the Halls of Valor, a level-up dungeon in the clouds above Stormheim, with the design inspired by Valhalla;

Black Rook Hold, an ancient elven fortress carved out of mountain shale but now has a dark shadow over the area and players must work their way up from the basement to the top of the spire to cure the corruption;

Vault of the Wardens, a maximum security Demon Hunter prison where they keep the most terrifying monsters under lock and the beginning of the hunt for Illidan.

Other dungeons will be present, with a total of 9 announced: the others are Eye of Azshara, Darkheart Thicket, Neltharion’s Lair, Helheim (which takes place on a ship sailing in rough waters), Suramar City and a return to the Violet Hold.

For raids, there will be the Emerald Nightmare, with 7 bosses to defeat in a dark and twisted Emerald Dream and you’ll be pursuing Cenarius and facing Xavius.

The second raid is the Suramar Palace with 10 bosses, culminating in the face off against Gul’dan.

Demon Hunter

The Demon Hunter is introduced to loud applause, with the devil in the details starting from character creation. Horns, a distinctive feature of Demon Hunters, will have choices available to the player, along with the tattoos and eye wear to go along with it. The Demon Hunter has a mean-looking metamorphosis form as well.

The Demon Hunter's starting point will feature a design similar to its looks, dark-greenish with a sense of foreboding. The Demon Hunter also starts at at higher level so that players need not go through the older content and can jump straight into the new bits.

Specs wise, the Demon Hunter has two: The Havoc Spec for DPS, and the Vengeance Spec for Tanking.

The Demon Hunter has class specific skills and use Demonic Fury as their resource. They also have a n unique ability in Double Jump, allowing them to get over obstacles with ease. A preview of demon hunter combat is shown, with the emphasis firmly on fast and furious action, with lots of jumping around it seems.

PvP Honor System

The new PvP Honor System is entirely reworked to give a more discernable difference between PvP and PvE and will be introduced with Legion.

Honor Ranks allows you to gain perks and bonuses, and more importantly, PvP perks and abilities that can be unlocked in 3 tiers. You can get the most important ones in each tier first, then everything else at Level 50.

Once you reach level 50, a Prestige option activates, giving you access to earning cosmetic stuff like portrait badges, unique mounts and unique PvP artifact variants, but resets your Honor Ranks.

Closing

Last but not least, the Beta for World of Warcraft: Legion will be out later this year, and more information will be covered during the Q&A session at Gamescom on Sunday.