Legion Thoughts, follow-up
[Blaugust Day 8]
As pointed out by MaximGtB in the comments yesterday, there is a follow-up interview from Blizzard that answers some more questions, including the weapon one:
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You obtain your Artifact early on in the Legion experience. This is the weapon you will use throughout the expansion. You will not get weapon drops in Legion. Something that wasn’t mentioned during the reveal is that each Artifact has a number of Relic slots, which will determine its raw item stats (DPS, ilvl, etc.) and modifiers to the traits you’ve chosen, so the Artifact’s stats will still improve as you defeat bosses.
This almost raises more questions than answers, honestly. Will these relics be like class armor tokens, e.g. a raid boss dropping the equivalent of a +Spirit relic that the healers roll on? Will the loot system be further taken over by Personal Loot instead?
Of course, there is also an elephant in the room: what about alts? Hell, what about off-specs?
If the Artifact system is the heart of the next expansion – and there is every reason to believe that it is intended to be – shit starts getting a bit ridiculous. If you are a DPS and a tank, are you going to be walking around with two Artifacts? Clearly yes, right? It wouldn’t make much sense for the Artifacts to share progression, so… do you need to split your Artifact Power? Relics? If we get Artifact Power from questing, does that mean someone can get screwed by funneling the Power into the spec they don’t end up being by the end of the level cap? What about healers who level as DPS?
I’m actually starting to wonder if the Artifacts won’t as big a deal as I’m thinking they’re supposed to be. By which I mean, the whole Artifact progression system is standing in for the leveling bonuses we got from hitting even-numbered levels in Warlords. Considering that classes are being redesigned again (melee hunters!), I’m not sure we would even notice the ability shuffle on top of the goodies the Artifact provides.
Anyway, while they’re mucking around with abilities, here’s to hoping that Ion and crew finally realize that making rotations boring on purpose is a really dumb idea.
Posted on August 8, 2015, in WoW and tagged Alt, Artifact, Blaugust, Interview, Legion. Bookmark the permalink. 7 Comments.
In An Age 
Got to thinking about this, and I bet what we find is a Titan artifact, not a weapon per se, and the story behind it is that you find this item in a time of dire need, it recognizes you and your inherent power and transforms itself into a weapon from the world’s past appropriate for you to channel you abilities in saving the world, similar to the Battered Hilt quest from late Wrath and the final form of Quel’Delar. This way spec switches for classes with different weapon types ,DKs and Hunters for example, aren’t problematic.
I can’t imagine that the Artifact Points will be gathered by spec, I bet it’s by player, and each spec will have access to the same amount of points, so that as a pally switches from tank to heals to dps, the same number of points are spendable on each weapon form/spec. Otherwise each spec is essentially an alt in and of itself, facing long and painful grinds to switch roles, especially late game. Hell, the way mythic raiders behave, the complaints would make the MoP rep gating look like nothing. Weapon respecs are probably where the sink would come in in this model.
But I wouldn’t be surprised to be wrong, and beta is still a long ways off.
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Well, never mind. mmo-c has summaries up of interviews, and if they are acurate, and stay that way,
Like I said, not even in Beta yet, but ugh, spec-as-alt. Gonna be some complaints.
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Christ, that’s terrible. And it’s not even as though you can craft high-level weapons for your alts/other specs either.
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The team doesn’t want it to be too painful if you want to change specs, so there might be some kind of catch up mechanic for getting the Artifact weapon for another spec.
You’re supposed to get your artifact at the beginning of the expansion, so how would it be a “catch up” mechanic to get another? Catch up in the sense of “don’t have to level another character”?
The whole relics thing means that raiders will still get all the best stuff and everyone else will have to make do with whatever leavings Blizzard deigns to throw us.
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The concern would be, say, a Holy paladin main getting the Holy Artifact, but leveling up as Retribution, thus getting Ashbringer. Presumably quest rewards and such will include relics to slot into Artifacts and/or Artifact Power. So… what? Can the paladin funnel those upgrades into the Holy Artifact? If so, how painful is it going to be in the final leveling zones as a Ret paladin with a “level 1” Ashbringer?
We already have gear that switches between healer and DPS, but is almost reads as though the Artifacts will be hard-coded resource holes.
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It’s funny, WoW biggest competitor and the game taking its crown makes it easier than just about any MMO to play different roles, and that works beautifully for the game both for the players (easy to change, easy to mix it up) and the game (more content/grind that is easy to jump into and play all on your one character), so how does New Blizzard respond? Create an expansion that makes it even harder and more of a pain to play anything but the one niche you have put yourself into.
Can’t really make this stuff up at this point…
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The worst part of it, IMO, is how it’s not even consistent with itself. Between heirlooms and easy leveling and long stretches of time between expansions, how many people have a stable filled with alts? Dual spec has been in the game since patch 3.1, which is more than half of the game’s lifespan. And now this?
Technically, there isn’t enough information other there yet to make a full conclusion for how dumb the devs are. Maybe there will be Account-wide unlocks that will speed up the process for alts or something. But this is the sort of thing 99.99% of WoW players will be impacted by, and the fact that the system isn’t totally squared away by now is concerning.
Or would be, if I were still playing the game.
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