After a long weekend at Gamescom, Tom Chilton had revealed quite a few snippets of information that make our mouth water for this expansion. One of the most interesting in my eyes, would certainly be the info on Legendary items come WoD. For those who missed the info dump this weekend, I’ll briefly summarize:
Early Datamined Ring Model.
Immediately, there will be a quest chain everyone can work on from level 99 to obtain a Legendary Ring. This ring will have custom animation, and change with your spec so you don’t need to buy multiple. Afterwards, its likely there will be other Legendary items that are more elusive and specific. Ideas batted around was Gorehowl and Teron Gore’s Staff.
The strange part of all this is the whole 2-tier notion covered in my previous article. In fact, this makes that idea even more confusing, and leaves a LOT of questions as to whether or not any of the things said on these topics are going to happen. The way I see it, it appears as if the second legendary idea will only come into play if there is a third tier, which I am still sure there will be. Regardless, let’s discuss why this idea is a very good one and compare it to the previous situations.
So in Mists of Pandaria there turned out to officially be 2 legendary items – one was a meta gem, and the other was the cloak. The two were linear, in that you couldn’t have the gem without the cloak, but more importantly, they were available to every single player who put the time in. Taking LFR and non-raiders out of the equation, what this means is an entire guild SHOULD have the items while progressing. I’m of two separate mindsets on this topic, so lets go through them both.
Raid Leader – Pro Equality: As a raid coordinator, I couldn’t be happier with this idea. Personally, the decision over who to give the legendary items to has been an age long issue with our guild. We gave Shadowmorne to our DK (and great friend of mine) and then weeks later he broke his hand and couldn’t play for months. We gave the Legendary staff to our current GM, and two other long time raiders. The two raiders both quit, and the GM joined the army! We gave daggers to the only rouges we had, and 2 out of three of them were absolutely terrible. So you see, these things alone make the equality legendary MUCH more attractive. Even if we could only see 1-2 given out, but choose whomever we wanted. Ya know, like if the “item” wasn’t a specific one, and no matter who was chosen they could benefit greatly. That would be acceptable to me.
Progression Raider – Pro Unique: As some one who has raided for 6 years straight and all through Classic, this part of my mind absolutely HATES the equality legendary. It just is soooo silly to walk around and see a hundred people with it a day. It makes no sense to me why you would even call this a legendary, but it WAS a legendary questline so I can’t say the means weren’t exciting. Just at the end of the day, when you sit in shrine and see everyone around you with it, it cheapens everything a bit.
So having both of those opinions, what a pleasant surprise it was to me to learn that they are actually considering doing both options! Realistically, if the ring is strong for the first tier, and everyone in our raid can get it, then it doesn’t feel as bad picking and choosing who gets the other items. I am really excited about that prospect, and even more excited about some other speculation revolving around the Ring.
Legendary Blank Stare!
Also at Gamescom, it was revealed that you would be able to begin the quest at level 99. This tells me (for some reason) that this item is going to be a pre-raid option, or at the very least have great involvement in Highmaul. Its realistic to think that it will progress as we do, but after seeing what I have seen, it gives me great hope.
You see, there are three legendary items that have dropped so far from the end of Heroic five mans. These pieces mention Khadgar and obviously come from the renewed difficulty 5 man heroics. The first thing that comes to mind is that we will be able to obtain these pieces in those 3 weeks we have with no raiding, and maybe even have an epic step-one type piece going into Highmaul.
The other thing that is really exciting to me is the prospect of Khadgar being involved. Wrathion was an enigmatic character to say the least, but Khaddy G is a man’s man. This dude is a monster, and anything he gives us should be just as interesting. I’m looking forward to seeing the “lore” around the progression of this, as well as his actual involvement and how it transpires around him.
Frankly, I am excited. After going nuts over the November Thursday release date, I now couldn’t be more excited, knowing we have 3 weeks of no raiding to explore the world, get some pre-raid BIS going, and maybe even work on a legendary item! If only they can implement it to tie in Challenge Modes, I would be sooo happy.
Regardless, this is a pretty polarizing topic for people so I am looking forward to seeing what transpires. Do you guys feel strongly about any certain model for legendary acquisition? As you can tell, I feel both sides of the argument are quite valid, so I’m happy to hear your thoughts as well!