Jumping headlong into Legion meant saying farewell to my budding Garrison, returning to Stormwind, and beginning an assault on the Broken Shore, a giant landmass in the ocean presumably no one noticed until now, which is serving as a base of operations for a demonic invasion of our world. So, you know, a Tuesday. After a suitably epic scenario that played out with a 4-group team of Alliance paired with a like-sized Horde, we were left with a very dead king and a righteously pissed off Jaina Proudmoore. With Anduin's butt back on the throne in Stormwind, I'm sent to Dalaran in Deadwind Pass to "bear witness" to it being teleported to the Broken Isles.
Apparently I missed a lot, because I was damn sure I had left Dalaran floating somewhere in Northrend. In fact, a quick teleport to Dalaran confirmed this. I wound up having to return to Stormwind, and then leave for Dalaran through a different portal so I can go to the "right" Dalaran, which was allegedly floating somewhere above Kara. Not feeling particularly compelled to jump off the edge to check, I took their word for it and met old familiar faces as the Kirin Tor ported the Island, which was being bombarded by Star Destroyers to someplace presumably more dangerous. I'm not going to even bother to wonder about it. Because seriously, I would think that Star Destroyers three zones from Stormwind would be a tad more important than securing an island somewhere in gods-cares-where.
Hell, they would have had to go over Duskwood just to get there!
As an aside, my teleportal spells still specify I can travel to "Dalaran - Northrend" and there's no conceivable way I can justify that as being an alternate universe. I'm half-tempted to fly to Kara and see if there really is a floating Dalaran there just so I can say there's now an f'in archipelago of floating cities, all named Dalaran. I've been given a standard-issue Dalaran Hearthstone, but I'll still gripe about the continuity a little.
Otherwise I'm pleased to see Dalaran returning as a central hub. Aside from the nostalgia factor, it's only as large as it genuinely needs to be without feeling cramped and nicely laid out. After running through a few "oh hai, Strev!" missions, I'm left in my "class hall", which replaces my garrison. It's a bit jarring moving from a walled fortification to what is, essentially, what looks to be a disused room at Hogwart's. I suppose I should be glad I hadn't gotten comfy at the old place. After admiring the mess, I'm told I can begin pursuing an Artifact Weapon. There's one for each main spec, so picking the one for arcane didn't exactly take hours of careful option weighing.
To my surprise, the questline for the weapon took me to Northrend, where I found myself barely holding my own against the critters. The clutch point came when I was given a solo dungeon inside Nexus which had me face off against enemies out of my league. This was a roadblock because I couldn't start Legion without the artifact. That's when I realized my failures were due to (a) not actually remembering all of the skills at my disposal and (b) clawing at the content with green crap from the mid 90s.
A visual representation of what green crap from the mid 90s might have looked like.
Well, the first thing I could handle by actually going through the spellbook and seeing what was missing from my hotbar. Ah yes, Frost Nova to root things and that spell to shield me from damage. Frankly I'm a little shocked I got as far as I did as quickly as I did without them. Now for the gear problem. I tucked my tail and went back to Draenor with a renewed sense of purpose to gear up properly before retur-- just kidding. I dropped 2k at the auction house and boosted my gear like 100 levels and went back.
It turns out I need not have bothered. Inside the instance, any damage done stays dealt as long as you don't leave the dungeon. No respawns. Die with a critter left at 1%? It stays at 1% until you sneeze on it. Ugh. At any rate, in short order I smoked the quest and bore my prize, Aluneth, an intelligent staff that occasionally comments on things and feeds on channeled energy from arcane sources automatically when I wander close to them. This last effect took me a bit by surprise as it happened and I noticed that "feeding my staff" gave me a little damage buff that lasts a good half hour. Monsters randomly drop "artifact chow" that lets you level the artifact up, giving it additional perks and bennies as it goes. I noted with some wry amusement that the artifact's skill tree is now more complex than my own.
So with stick in hand, I returned to Dalaran and my class hall to find it renovated and populated with a few other people. Oh! Apparently this isn't a private instance. With the "Map o' Legion" unlocked, I was able to pick a zone and begin questing there (more on that later) and when I popped back in at level 101, I was given another short quest in Dalaran and now the class hall is practically bursting at the seams with mages.
I note they've retained the Garrison's "pick a follower and send it on an off-camera mission" side activity, so that'll be a thing to do. The concept of spending resources to send followers out to do things which level them up and get more resources for you was done better in Skyforge, of all games. Skyforge let you handle all of that micro-management directly from the web. It plays like an app/browser game anyway, might as well go in whole hogger.
[Edit: several hours after posting this, I discovered that Blizzard 'one-upped' things by having a mobile app for Legion that lets you do all of the Class Hall stuff offline. Damn your attention to detail, Blizzard!]
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