For those who still care about this game (I'm seemingly mentally incapable of not caring, gnnnh...), I am guessing you followed the live presentation of the next expansion (conveniently lacking a release date, or even a start-of-beta announcement 
), unless you're asian/in asia and asleep right now, american and at work or school and unable to set time aside to watch it, or have to deal with minor annoyances and other pesky things such as...well, children, wife, family, or real life, or something like that!
Heh.
Anyway, the new expansion's gonna be called "Legion", and it signifies the return of the Burning Legion, and we're gonna be "shocked", says Blizzard, which from the fact enhancement shamen are going to be able to wield Doomhammer means Greenjesus, A.K.A. Thrall, A.K.A. "Go'el" dies during the introduction - or so I interpret these facts anyway - Blizzard never stated it outright, other than that we players will pick up these artifacts from where their former fallen wielders dropped them. This includes Ashbringer by the way, Tirion's paladin sword, and the shards of Frostmourne, the Lich King's cursed runeblade, which will be re-forged into two one-handed weapons.
Artifact weapons (which have existed as a thing in WoW since forever, except never actually implemented) is the new legendary ring from Warlords, which they made a ring rather than a cloak like in Pandaland, so that players did not have to run around for much of an expansion showing the same cloak all the time together with every other player also wearing the same cloak around them. ...Which makes perfect not-sense I guess, in a Blizzard roundabout way, because they often go completely round-circle in their reasoning and decision-making from one extreme to the other, and then right back to the start again.
So to partially offset player-sameyness, they're making a separate artifact weapon for each player class and spec - that's at least 36 or something like that - and have created at least four different visual flavor varieties of each weapon as well, creating a total of 144-ish, give or take a few. So this means...regular weapons won't drop anymore in Legion? *shrug* Cuz that's a crapload of 3D modeling and texturing time sunk into these artifacts, and from what was said on-stage, we will be wielding these weapons ALL the time throughout the expansion from start to finish. So no more swearing that bosses won't drop weapons ever for us, I guess; we'll already have a good one from the start, and it will grow more powerful and gain unlockable talents/perks as we play, level up and hit endgame.
Sidenote: so... That was time well spent filling up my entire void storage with transmog daggers for my rogue! Well, granted, there's "some" swords there too, maybe like twenty, thirty or something like that, and a couple bunches of maces, a load or three of fist weapons... Ha ha. I assume we will still be able to transmog our weapons though, because if not the internet will surely explode with bellyaching.
Fun "Blizzard-I-Trol-Yuo!!11!1!!1" moment: after showing three exactly identical cat druids as examples of how their artifacts look, it was revealed that cat and bear druids' forms will change depending on your weapon/flavor appearance, since your gear is invisible when in animal form. Then it was revealed that the original cat form image was in fact an updated, up-rezzed HD cat form. No doubt, Moonkin druids will still look exactly the same as they did in 2004 when the game first launched. Blizzard are the ultimate trollers of moonkin druids; even warlock demons have been uprezzed without the moonkin form getting as much as some lipstick applied to it...
Interesting fact they just dropped in there without further elaborating on in any way: survival hunters' artifact weapon is a spear. Not a bow, or a gun!
Ever since Cataclysm, hunters have lacked melee weapon slots on their character screens (in WoW, all polearms are melee weapons, and (throwing) spears aren't even an existing class of weapon), so this signifies a fairly huge class change - or it could, anyway! Nobody knows how large a change may be in store for survival hunters though, since they - like I said - didn't elaborate on it. But it's fun and interesting all the same, and will no doubt create quite a bit of speculation on the internet until more information is released. (If it doesn't I think Blizzard would be very disappointed...)
Oh, and there will be a Demon Hunter class, and they will have only two specs; damage and tank. And be elf-only from what it seems. Meaning night elf or blood elf. And they will be a hero class like death knights and start at a high level when creating the character, ready to begin questing the Legion storyline (so presumably, level 100 after finishing the introduction quest chain.)
No word on if we will gain a 12th character slot to enable people with a full stable of existing characters to try out a demon hunter too, but again, the bellyaching if nothing else will probably drive them to implement this. They did with monks for Pandaland after all.
They talked about a lot of other stuff too, but this is what I found most interesting I think. Not sure this expansion and what it tries to do is what is right for the game at this stage - trying to go back to things people feel nostalgic about - Legion doesn't push very many of my buttons I must say. I'm sure I will play it, some, but how much is uncertain at this stage. It depends on what else Blizzard reveals later on, right now I feel fairly "yawn-y" about this expansion and it isn't even out yet. Even less excitement than I felt over the overly orcy Warlords, I must say. Then again, I've been playing this game for 10+ years now on and off. It wears on you.
), unless you're asian/in asia and asleep right now, american and at work or school and unable to set time aside to watch it, or have to deal with minor annoyances and other pesky things such as...well, children, wife, family, or real life, or something like that!Heh.
Anyway, the new expansion's gonna be called "Legion", and it signifies the return of the Burning Legion, and we're gonna be "shocked", says Blizzard, which from the fact enhancement shamen are going to be able to wield Doomhammer means Greenjesus, A.K.A. Thrall, A.K.A. "Go'el" dies during the introduction - or so I interpret these facts anyway - Blizzard never stated it outright, other than that we players will pick up these artifacts from where their former fallen wielders dropped them. This includes Ashbringer by the way, Tirion's paladin sword, and the shards of Frostmourne, the Lich King's cursed runeblade, which will be re-forged into two one-handed weapons.
Artifact weapons (which have existed as a thing in WoW since forever, except never actually implemented) is the new legendary ring from Warlords, which they made a ring rather than a cloak like in Pandaland, so that players did not have to run around for much of an expansion showing the same cloak all the time together with every other player also wearing the same cloak around them. ...Which makes perfect not-sense I guess, in a Blizzard roundabout way, because they often go completely round-circle in their reasoning and decision-making from one extreme to the other, and then right back to the start again.
So to partially offset player-sameyness, they're making a separate artifact weapon for each player class and spec - that's at least 36 or something like that - and have created at least four different visual flavor varieties of each weapon as well, creating a total of 144-ish, give or take a few. So this means...regular weapons won't drop anymore in Legion? *shrug* Cuz that's a crapload of 3D modeling and texturing time sunk into these artifacts, and from what was said on-stage, we will be wielding these weapons ALL the time throughout the expansion from start to finish. So no more swearing that bosses won't drop weapons ever for us, I guess; we'll already have a good one from the start, and it will grow more powerful and gain unlockable talents/perks as we play, level up and hit endgame.
Sidenote: so... That was time well spent filling up my entire void storage with transmog daggers for my rogue! Well, granted, there's "some" swords there too, maybe like twenty, thirty or something like that, and a couple bunches of maces, a load or three of fist weapons... Ha ha. I assume we will still be able to transmog our weapons though, because if not the internet will surely explode with bellyaching.
Fun "Blizzard-I-Trol-Yuo!!11!1!!1" moment: after showing three exactly identical cat druids as examples of how their artifacts look, it was revealed that cat and bear druids' forms will change depending on your weapon/flavor appearance, since your gear is invisible when in animal form. Then it was revealed that the original cat form image was in fact an updated, up-rezzed HD cat form. No doubt, Moonkin druids will still look exactly the same as they did in 2004 when the game first launched. Blizzard are the ultimate trollers of moonkin druids; even warlock demons have been uprezzed without the moonkin form getting as much as some lipstick applied to it...
Interesting fact they just dropped in there without further elaborating on in any way: survival hunters' artifact weapon is a spear. Not a bow, or a gun!
Ever since Cataclysm, hunters have lacked melee weapon slots on their character screens (in WoW, all polearms are melee weapons, and (throwing) spears aren't even an existing class of weapon), so this signifies a fairly huge class change - or it could, anyway! Nobody knows how large a change may be in store for survival hunters though, since they - like I said - didn't elaborate on it. But it's fun and interesting all the same, and will no doubt create quite a bit of speculation on the internet until more information is released. (If it doesn't I think Blizzard would be very disappointed...
)Oh, and there will be a Demon Hunter class, and they will have only two specs; damage and tank. And be elf-only from what it seems. Meaning night elf or blood elf. And they will be a hero class like death knights and start at a high level when creating the character, ready to begin questing the Legion storyline (so presumably, level 100 after finishing the introduction quest chain.)
No word on if we will gain a 12th character slot to enable people with a full stable of existing characters to try out a demon hunter too, but again, the bellyaching if nothing else will probably drive them to implement this. They did with monks for Pandaland after all.
They talked about a lot of other stuff too, but this is what I found most interesting I think. Not sure this expansion and what it tries to do is what is right for the game at this stage - trying to go back to things people feel nostalgic about - Legion doesn't push very many of my buttons I must say. I'm sure I will play it, some, but how much is uncertain at this stage. It depends on what else Blizzard reveals later on, right now I feel fairly "yawn-y" about this expansion and it isn't even out yet. Even less excitement than I felt over the overly orcy Warlords, I must say. Then again, I've been playing this game for 10+ years now on and off. It wears on you.
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