Initial Reactions to the New Expansion

So after watching some of the Warcraft news coming out of Blizzcon, my initial thoughts was that there wasn't a whole lot for me to write about.  And I said as much on Twitter, and then started to say more...at which point it became apparent that there was a bit of a blog post there.

So let me start by saying that I've always enjoyed PvP.  It's never been a huge thing for me, and I tend to generally avoid PvP servers, but I've got almost 100,000 HK's on Joar and I have had a character parked on a PvP server just for the fantastic world PvP on that server.

Sometime in the last few expansions, it feels like PvP sort of died, and was something I stopped doing.  But the idea of reinvigorating it isn't something I'm opposed to.  It's just different from what I have been doing.

So the idea of scrapping the whole artifact weapon system and scrapping class halls seems fine.  The process of grinding Artifact Power and Resources seemed to get a lot of complaints, so I don't necessarily mind them getting rid of that.  Although it seems like I'm going to be grinding Azerite instead?  I'll reserve judgment on the new Heart of Azeroth thing until I see more details on how it's going to work.

The other thing that has really peaked my interest in the new expansion is the concept of Warfronts.  Wintergrasp was always one of my favorite things in game during Wrath, so something that brings back some of the flavor of that is something that I'll definitely look forward to.

Some of the really interesting news from my perspective was around streamlining the leveling process.  Being able to choose between Outland and Northrend for 60-80 and then between Cata and MOP for 80-100 both feel like really interesting options for mixing things up for new leveling.  I'm not sure why Draenor seems to have gotten left off of those lists, because the one thing that I did think worked pretty well in Draenor was the leveling process.  I actually wouldn't mind if we had the option to choose between Draenor and Broken Isles for the 100-110 portion.

The allied races are also something that I'm particularly excited about, as I'll likely start working on all six of those once I unlock the quests.  So between streamlining the leveling experience and allied races, there's definitely enough there to keep me in the game and doing my leveling thing.  Oh, and if we might be getting more than 50 character slots?  Well, that would be fine with me too.