The Legion has (finally) arrived¹, and it’s great. Logging in and feeling overwhelmed with options - Invasions? Broken Isles? Demon Hunter? - is a nice change from the late Warlords routine.

I hopped straight in to an invasion. Well not quite straight, as first I mistook the new Dark Moon Faire icon for an invasion icon. Embarrassing arriving in Mulgore to find…nothing except a purple tent. Luckily there was an actual invasion not too far away in Azshara. It’s fantastically epic joining a fight with 80+ other players to take down giant demons as they wreak havoc, and Blizzard have done a great job making that somehow work with little lag and excellent phasing.

It seems that whenever you arrive in the ~3 hour window, the invasion is just starting for you (and everyone else). After turning back the tide there, I - and 1000 others - hopped a zeppelin to travel to the next event in Westfall, Alliance territory.

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Unfortunately 7.x seems to have introduced a bug with v-e-r-y slow or even disconnect zone transitions, which meant by the time the zone loaded I was somehow back in Orgrimmar, having taken a round trip. Instead I joined a raid searching for the elusive Pocket Fel Spreader in Org. Kind of painful, spamming the Doomsayers for the Demon spawn, hopefully they increase the rate as the invasion continues - guild leader Navi got lucky though, yay!

Next I tried the Broken Shores scenario, and once I’d fought the loading screen boss found that again Blizzard had outdone themselves. Terrific storytelling via gameplay and cutscenes, and a real sense of the scale of the invasion. The moment you realise you’re face to face with an actual Alliance raid with other players on the opposite shore is excellent². And the denouement for both Horde and Alliance is shocking. Gee I hope we get to finish Gul’dan off this expansion.

All this and still a Demon Hunter to create. Plus the promise of a return to Karazan next week. Legion is shaping up very nicely indeed.

The world PVP areas coming in Legion sound pretty entertaining - Blizz are tagging it as Wacky Races compared to the Formula 1 of Arena. A dark last-toon-standing gladitorial pit, jousting on the back of mountain goats, and best of all: “You get to turn into a Murloc, you go onto the Murloc faction, you can blow up players as a Murloc.”

You’re going to turn into a freaking Murloc. How do you balance Murlocs? That doesn’t even make sense. You don’t. You make it overpowered. Go and have fun.

Murloc PVP! Time to find out why Murloc’s have been so good at wrecking low level characters for so long¹.

The always thoughtful Rohan at Blessing of Kings has a great proposal: equalising gear in levelling dungeons the same way it is (as of 7.03) in PVP:

The problem is that leveling dungeons need to be balanced such that a group of new players in quest gear can complete them. But if one or more heirloom characters are present, that balance goes out the window. I think stat templates for leveling dungeons would be a great idea. Everyone would be reduced down to an even playing field. Dungeons would be a proper group experience once more. I rather doubt anyone will sheep anything, but maybe it could happen.

Despite the fun of tanking in heirlooms, this is a very worthy idea. I especially like the idea of cc returning!

I remember using Distract to sneak past mobs in dungeons once upon a time, and trying not to hit the sheep with AoE. Another idea for the mooted ‘Pristine’ servers, perhaps, though given they’ve done it in PVP why not implement it into PvE too - the tech is there with the Timewalking gear scaling. This would just be scaling as you level, rather than scaling down from max.

The next installment of Warcraft is finally - and that’s a well deserved finally - here. Patch 7.0 lands tonight, after which we get masses of bag space, transmog heaven with the Wardrobe, and time to settle into new rotations and abilities before demons start invading Azeroth and we head into Legion.

Hunters have had some major changes, mainly to do with the split into three very distinctive playstyles: melee, no pet, or traditional BM. Bendak has a great overview on Blizzard Watch, and a further detailed breakdown on his own site. I think I’ll stick with BM, I enjoy the pets and fantasy of a companion class, but Marksman also sounds interesting. Can’t quite find interest in melee, despite flashbacks to BC era level 1-10 Hunters when a pet wasn’t provided.

It sounds like every class will now start with a default specialty - for example Paladin’s will all be Ret at level 1. Which means spending some time updating my Paladin Tanking for Beginners guide (and get cracking on the Druid and Warrior equivalents). Also going away is the chance to score the fabled Moose Mount for Heroic Archimode. I debated paying for a carry to get it, and almost committed for 30k, but in the end figured that while the moose would be awesome, I wouldn’t have earned it and would probably be reluctant to use it as a result. Hopefully the Legion mount is as good, and hopefully I’m there to get it legitimately.

Big week. After waiting so long I’m vaguely amused, and a little disappointed, to be afk for the next week, pretty much from just when the servers will be coming back up - timing is everything!

Director Duncan Jones noted on twitter that a replica of Garona’s knife will be available later in the year from NZ effects shop Weta. Investigating further, turns out Weta have an entire shop full of Warcraft paraphernalia, ranging from weapons to rings and even a Orc Tooth Pendant. I like the Horde pin - coincidentally also the cheapest thing there!