I say revisiting but honestly this is more like my first proper playthrough.
I came back midway through the Legion. So by the time I got this toon to 110 (I first mained a warrior but fell madly in love with Priest the first time I MC’ed a player off a cliff) Argus was already out.
So I’d only played parts of it when I barely understood how to play the game and I never revisited it. I never got Pathfinder for it, because that’s a ridiculously thorough achievement for old content and they should always just allow flying in previous expansion zones.
And so far it’s actually better than I remembered. There’s a real tragedy to the Shaldorei withering. They essentially turn into zombies and while that would be tragic for anyone seeing it happen to such brilliant researchers is particularly saddening.
Also starting a revolution is such a fun fantasy storyline. It’s always nice to see tyrants toppled and you really can’t top the Burning Legion for subjugation.
My only trouble is I’m still don’t get why anyone sides with the Legion. With Gul’Dan it made sense because was a pariah who wanted vengeance on his society. They’d genuinely treated him like trash, didn’t make him right but I got why being the right hand of the devil would be an upgrade for him.
With these guys I’m really confused why they’d want to trade this cushy life in Midnight Venice to go stand around a pointy green lava lamp for eternity, looking cross about nothing in particular.
If there’s anything from SL we keep I hope it’s Sire D. Serving him could have it’s perks. If you’re going to hell anyway why not double down and really get sinning if it’ll get you a decent apartment down there?
They didn’t trade comfort for demons, they signed on with the Legion to keep their comfort. Gul’dan broke a hole in their shield and demonstrated to them that he could and would destroy their city to get the Nightwell if they refused. Elisande did her Doctor Strange “reading the timelines” thing and determined that accepting Gul’dan’s offer was their best chance at not being wiped out.
I also recently replayed the whole storyline, and aside from a few annoying filler bits (they were stretching for time in a few places, you can tell) I found it to be an extremely well-told story.
Suramar and it’s questlines were a huge highlight for me in Legion, especially once I resubbed after my hiatus over WoD. I thought they did a great job with the story, which really echoed tones of the Night Elf lore with the Legion so it felt like playing through a crucial part of Azeroth’s history which I loved.
Add to that, Suramar is quite possibly the most beautiful city and really captured the essence of the Shal’dorei in their snooty, magic fiending splendor. It was really a great glimpse into the lives of the Highborne before the sundering.
I think my particular love for it was with the variety in which they showed Nightborne citizens. Some were absolute NERDS, some snobby aristocrats vying for power and status, Vintners, Spies and your average civilian class. I really hope if that they DO renew Forsaken and Kaldorei cities/lands etc, they bring in this variety of facets because I feel like those races (and all, really) could use more representation in their societies other than moon worshipping warrior women or crazy half-addled alchemists. (Not that I don’t LOVE those tropes, I’d just like to see more of a variety.)
I consider Suramar to be some of the best storytelling they’ve done in years, before or since. Both the main storyline in the city proper and the smaller sidestories out in the larger zone, all of it came together to show a surprisingly deep look at who the shal’dorei are today, and who they were in the past. I truly loved playing through Suramar.
I agree; Suramar really did have some of the best storytelling and I too hope we face off against Denathrius again in the future.
P.S. You only get the good apartment if you repent of your sins.
To add to this good summary, Thalyssra and several others tried to resist Elisande’s decision, preferring to die instead of serving the Legion, but were betrayed by Thalyssra’s former friend Melandrus because he considered submission better than death (the guy that backstabbed her and pushed her into a canal).
Also, given the green glow of Elisande’s visions (I wish this was from the in-game cinematic rather than a comic), I suspect that the Legion was tampering with Elisande’s visions so every vision showed defeat (after the boss fight, her echo says she didn’t see our PCs in her time-scrying).
Unfortunately I think I’m going to have to double back and see it through on a separate toon.
I mean it’s better than the game just suddenly zapping you to the current timeline whether you like it or not when you hit level 48. But now it just suddenly scales everything down to level 45. Making the difficulty pretty trivial.
Now this wouldn’t be that big of a deal in other regions. It’s not that hard to plan around that. But Suramar and Argus can only be started at level 45.
So if you want these storylines to come with any sort challenge, I guess you need to turn up there at level 45 sharp and stick to just the critical path questlines. All I did was win a few BGs and play some dungeons as I thought it locked you out at 50 not 48.
Throughout the leveling experience I kept instinctually going to settings to try to raise the difficulty. Because a lot of it really is mind numbingly effortless.
Though I probably should’ve just stuck with it so I could’ve skipped the Maw intro quest. I figured as I hadn’t seen it in a year maybe I should give it a replay.
And no its exactly as God damn boring as I remember. At least it got me to bed on time because I was dozing off at my computer by the time we rescued Jania.
But as I’m fond of pointing out the most thrilling single player boss fight in game is at the end of the Sludge Field questline.
And I actually never knew how awesome it was until I leveled a character through it naturally. It’s a 3 phase fight with first Stillwater, his apprentice and all his rogue troops. Then Stillwater by himself. Then Stillwater in his final form as one of those big Frankenstein monster dudes.
It’s a really challenging fight that probably will take you a few tries on most classes. I’m still hoping to find something else like that lol
For Elisande, she sides with the Legion because she pulled a Doctor Strange and saw no possible future where the Legion is defeated. Star Augar believes that the Legion is the best bet to prevent the Void from getting a proper foothold into our reality. As for the others, it is basically “just following orders” or putting their own lives in a false belief that they would be spared. When in truth the Legion were planning on killing the Nightborne anyway. Given Tichondrius’s dialogue.
Were you using Chromie time or just doing legion content without it?
Cause Chromie time stops at level 50 while the content you are doing scales up to level 50. Meaning you can turn off xp at level 49 and never leave Chromie Time unless you manually turn it off.
Doing legion content outside of Chromie time only scales up to level 45.
Outside of Chromie time the scaling works like this.
Non-instanced Starting zones = 1-30. With Core race DK’s (minus Pandaren) and DH’s starting at level 8 in their instanced starting areas. So they range from 8-10. Exiles reach, Gilneas, Kazan / Lost Isles and Wandering Isle are only 1-10. As these are instanced starting zones.
Vanilla (excluding starting zones) = 5-30
TBC [Outland] and Wrath = 10-30
Cata = 30-35 (damn you flying. This includes Vashj’ir. Even though you don’t need flying to complete that zone)
MoP = 10-35
WoD = 10-40
Legion = 10-45
BFA = 10-50
Still not as alive. Too much vendors just standing there.
You can tell they put more time and polish into Suramar. To be fair we also spent more time actually doing things in there as opposed to a hub where people just AFK or troll tradechat.