So, I’m sitting here thinking about Artifact Weapons, and what they meant to the classes. Now, this isn’t a, “Bring them back,” type of thread, but more of a curiousness.
How will Blizzard deal with any new classes they add to the game later? Will they have artifact weapons? If not, will they be a hero class that will be given weapon skins to accommodate? If they’re not hero classes that skip a lot of the content, they’ll have to add something for them during Legion content so they can progress. They’d have to add a class hall, as well.
What do you think?
Good questions, but not ones that anybody is likely to have an answer for.
There’s a lot of possibility for big changes coming soon: level squish, world revamps, faction system removal or alteration. As of now, there’s really no way that Legion would work with a new class. It wouldn’t be worth it to go back and add artifacts or class halls, but a whole expansion’s worth of content don’t really work without them.
My guess is legion content would suffer much the same fate as every expansion that has come before it. I.e. New content introduced in the future will do very little if anything at all to ackowledge its existance and therefore such developments as new classes will not receive legion artifact weapons at all. They will likely get their own unique thing (hopefully) that somewhat fills this hole but that is open to subjective interpretation as to whether that is sufficient. Basically consider legion artifact weapons and skins (including the mage tower) to fall under the category of WoD Challenger mode skins or MoP legendary’s etc.
Also remember such items as the paladin/priest mace from Ulduar or Shadowmourne from ICC are essentially the same as legion artifacts but without any of the fleshed out story and expansion to revolve around them.
All in all, there is very little passed evidence to suggest Blizz will change its paradigm of wiping the slate clean with every expansion with little to no connection between. Oh sure there’s a story arc but its flimsy at best. WoW’s story is a book written by far too many authors.
But, they’re really not, though. Nearly all of Legion content was tied to artifact weapons and class halls. Without that, new classes won’t be able to do anything for that part of the game. In the past, every class, even hero classes, had access to every expansion. Without AW and CH, that’s a huge part of the game discarded.
That’s why I said they’re basically stripped down versions of legion artifact weapons. In all other aspects, there’s really no reason to see Thunderfury or the warglaives of Azzinoth or Shadowmourne etc. as being any different. Each of those artifacts are on equal footing as any of the legion artifacts in terms of power and significance in the WoW world (with the exception of Ashbringer which will IMO always be the most significant weapon in the game along with Frostmourne).
The advantage of those older legendarys however is that they aren’t bogged down by all of the content that surrounds the legion artifacts. So tweaking them to work with newer classes isn’t anywhere near as difficult. E.g. Warglaives of Azzinoth and Demon Hunters or Thunderfury and basically any class that can wield a 1h sword.
The issue you raise is more a gameplay one. How would a new class be handled in legion content? A lot of the quest chains would break. But again, I see no reason why Blizz wouldn’t do what its done before and simply ignore the issue entirely. At best we could hope that they would patch in some seperate quest chain that would skip 95% of legion content and just ensure that you could still experience the abridged notes of the story experience and call it a day. New classes would still be able to do al the minutia leveling quests at least.
Just my 2 cents.
My guess is any new class will start at 120 or what ever the lvl cap for BFA is after a lvl squish, thus bypassing legion content.
In the same sense demon hunters started at 99, bypassing the need for low lvl glaive drops and sub 100 class design.
It would be cool if they made an order hall and artifacts for new classes, otherwise they are locking those classes from legion content.
Though if I were to be completely honest, I don’t think any new classes are going to be added in the near future. I think demon hunters were the last.