My initial experience after hitting 110.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Below is an edited transcript of my latest video.
TL;DR? Video link is the top sig as usual.
TL;DW? Endgame is shaping to be a pretty neat package. I'm eager to see it grow from Alpha-Beta-Live.

My demo warlock hit 110 the other day, and I’m going to share some information and some initial analyses about the flow of non-raid content. Remember that this is alpha, and I have a feeling it’s going to change as fast as the next build.

What I did while leveling:
Starting with my quest achievement window. As you can see, Highmountain is done.
Azsuna is done.
I did a decent chunk in Val’sharah
And while it doesn’t seem visible, I did a teeny bit in stormheim before I hit 110.

I learned this much in engineering, which is to say I did like 5 quests and haven’t done much since.

I did a lot more mining, and notice that skills at leystone are maxed out due to the quests I did, but felslate quests either aren’t in yet, or there’s a different way to fire them off. At any rate, goddamn I need more felslate.

I’ve hardly made any progress in my order hall campaign. I’m bottlenecked by a quest to go into a dungeon to kill the first boss, as well as a quest that requires me to complete 5 missions from the order hall table. My guess now is that the order hall campaign is a “take your sweet time” sort of experience. I pointed out that unlocking the third relic slot will take a month at minimum.

Max level order hall:
And speaking of order hall table, there're two missions I want to point out. One gives us a thing called nightmare essence, which I can’t say exactly what it does yet. Costs 1000 resources. Kind of a lot, but it’s not really. I’ll show you why later.

The other mission gives you a breadcrumb reward that starts a dungeon quest. A few things to point out. One is that it’s not a rare quest. It won’t expire. The other is the resource cost, which is zero.
But then there’s the mission time, which I’ll sort of rant about but hopefully it’ll help you guys form your own opinion. It’s kind of long. Where should it fit in the whole flow of things? The mission time you see should be I think 12 hours, but I have an order hall talent that shortens mission completion time.

In a realisitc scenario, I’ll log in each day and drop by my order hall to refresh missions and probably pick up a buff from my champion, which lasts for six hours. While there, I’ll see this mission and start it, then I’ll pop open my map and start hitting some world quests or do dungeon runs or count money.
But it’s just weird that the mission time is what it is. I’m basically going to do that dungeon quest the next day. It’s okay, but it’s not okay. The wait time isn’t very cool. What’s cool is that it’s a breadcrumb, which I presume doesn’t expire. I can do this whenever I want, or maybe even stockpile these till I’m ready to do them with my group.

I think that initially it may feel offputting, which is how I sort of feel now. But in the long game, it’ll be nice to just have some extra quests to sit on in case I don’t have the time to do them, but enough time to acquire them. Cause you know. Tables. Zero gameplay, fast engagement.

World Quests:
And now the newest feature, world quests. I’ve done some so the map might look slightly less populated, but take a look at each zone. There’s about 30-40 quests available to me that cover all sorts of gameplay types. When I first saw them, I was like, overwhelmed. You can do as many of them as you want and they repopulate organically. Just go there and start getting to work.

Also notice the emissary quest tooltip here. It’s similar to diablo. Kind of not. Complete 4 quests related to the faction and you get a reward, and it doesn’t matter what zone it’s on, but they’re typically close together.

I’ll go over the quest types. But something super important to note:
Because there’s only so much that I’ve done regarding quests, dungeons and professions, there could be quests and rewards that aren’t visible to me. This is from the perspective of a player who just hit max level.

There are basic kill quests, and they come in two forms: Kill specific things, or fill up a bar. Personally I like the variety of having both. Killing specific things has a bit more narrative and meaning to it, but filling up the bar is mechanically more efficient if other players are farming the same world quests as I am.

There’s a special sub set of these kill quests that reward pvp gear. When you enter these quest areas, you’re flagged and notified that you’re in free for all pvp. Have a good time.

There’s another sub set still that are flagged as elite, or group quests. They definitely are group quests. At our current gear level there’s little hope of soloing these things. Bring friends. Bring a lot of friends.

I also noticed a quest to hop into a specific dungeon and complete it, which is neat too.

There are profession quests. For me, basically mine things, and you get more resources as a reward. I’m not sure if there are quests related to crafting professions, but I’ve hardly progressed much into my engineering quest, so if they are in there, that’d be the reason why I don’t see them yet.

On my map was a gathering quest for a profession I don’t have. Obviously I can’t do it. But there was mining quest that I did to get ore from a bunch of basilisks. Not only did I have to kill them, but then mine them. That’s interesting to point out. From the looks of things, the profession design really wants materials to only be gathered by well, gatherers. At the moment I’ve yet to see a way to generate resources from a non-gatherer. There’re other profession videos out there that go indepth, but I’d like to point out that to make these engineering items, I need cloth, ore, or one of the leather types. Pretty neat.

And finally, there’re pet battle quests, that reward pet battle things. That explains enough.

So what sorts of rewards are there?
One is the mysterious placeholder reward for completing the emissary quest. They stick around for a few days and multiple ones can pop up. They also have an indicator with how long they’ll hang out so you can schedule yourself accordingly.

There’s gold. It’s boring and according to some forums, everyone has millions of gold. But there’s got to be some filler quests for the emissary objectives, so there’s no getting away from it.

There’s rare level gear. Super awesome when you first hit 110, but because it’s gear, there’s a limited usefulness to it. Thankfully there aren’t a ton of these to take up room.

There’s this traveler’s backpack, which buffs a champion in a way that table missions will reward something tangible, then it’s destroyed. Of course, to get this you have to go out and quest, so I think this is a sensible tradeoff.

There’s order hall resources. There’re quite a few of these on the map which is good for the sake of farming the amount we need for order hall talents. Like gear though, order hall resources have a limit on their usefulness, depending on if there will be other systems that use this.

There’s artifact power, or AP.
AP is hard to come by. At 110, this is as far as I’ve gotten with my artifact. That’s it. I might speak to this more in a future video, but in a nutshell, maxing out your artifact feels like it will take a pretty long time for the average player. Note that you can apply ap to your artifacts freely, so you can farm with your fastest spec.

And as a quick note, daily dungeon rewards give AP. So you’ll definitely do those for a while.
However, there’s only so much AP that you need, even if it’s a lot. I’m hoping that some other sort of dungeon reward makes itself available on top of AP, otherwise the usefulness of the daily dungeon reward is limited to a player’s need for it.
Throw some obliterium in there, maybe. But I’m not super familiar with the obliterium forge so I can’t say any more to that.

Throwing it together

My take on the world quest system so far is that it’s god damn amazing. It gives us tons of stuff to do and the freedom to do what we want, as well as the visibility to forecast and plan out our day, unless the quests expire.

It takes us to lots of locations that we don’t go over in the leveling experience, which feels really refreshing. At the moment, unless you’re in a group, it can get dangerous since everything is at our level. And your best bet is to do this in a group for sure.

As a final note, Suramar isn’t available for testing yet, but according to the achievement, it’s a straight up max level quest zone. And another location for world quests.
I’m excited. I really like the delivery of the world quest system and how everything ties in together pretty well. There’s a ton of stuff to do and now that you’re at the end of this video, you probably forgot about the mission table. Until now. In the face of these systems, the table doesn’t feel as prominent, even though it looks like it’ll still offer things to do. This’s a great thing.

[Deleted]

well, certainly looks better then wod end game already
I saw Bellulars video and only the world quests offer more then wod content, and there are tons of little bosses on the isles around aszuna as i saw in Nobble video which will probably provide endgame content too
With suramar added thats a lot
I think blizz truely learned their lesson with wod

[Heeresman]

There’s a ton of stuff to do

See now, this is what i and many others aren't sure about.
As in, there may well be many many things to do, however, the critical thing is this:
will there be many many things to do 3 months into the xpac?
1 word: replayability.
Maybe 2 words, the second one being length.
Length of replayability.

No one would be unhappy with many many things to do in any xpac.
But, consuming those many many things to do quickly, say 3 months into an xpac and then bored stiffless is not good.

Now, many many things to do and 6 or 8 months into the xpac, now that would be good.
No?

Obviously the way to fix that is via content patches/continued support by Devs.

That's what i and i'm sure many others are wondering about at this early stage.

[Chickat]

Well it all comes down to rewards. Artifact power and Order hall resources are fine, but 2 months down they will be useless. They need some other kind of currency reward as well.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Unless the grind for artifacts and legendaries is extremely fast, it looks like something you'll do for at least the entire patch.
Don't forget, the first patch is usually the shortest. Probably 6 months of the raid max.
The issue is if this content will carry over on to 7.2.
Hopefully they will expand on it, but if they don't, it will end the same way MoP and WoD did.
There was plenty to do in each of those final patches, but not enough for a whole year!

Either way, launch is always great. The first 3-4 months of an expansion are always magical for me and my guild.
I've never been more excited. If anything, I feel there may be TOO many gear paths.
I love playing WoW, but if the gear incentive from the world quests and CMs are so potent prior to raids opening I fear I'll burn out quick.
Oh well, a good problem to have at least.

[TheLimonTree]

You sir, earned a new subscriber. Glad to see someone presenting info from the alpha in a calm, controlled manner rather than making knee jerk reactions and assumptions.

[Deleted]

This sounds nice, gotta admit. I like old school "daily" quests more than anything in WoD endgame. Just wondering how the hell i could do these on all of my alts. Maybe i just need to neglect them more. On my alts, i stopped doing legendary ring quest on raiding part anyway.

[Tipton]

Thanks for the write-up

It looks hopeful, but as people above say. I wonder what will be the incentive after few months will be.

Two things I liked about MoP, the first being is that they had great patch delivery - until we had to wait for the next xpac, people did complain that Blizzard didn't pace themselves. Blizzard did seem to take this as an excuse in WoD to not deliver any content. Unfortunately if players complain about something, Blizzard always seems to choose the solution which requires least effort on their part. "You asked for better pacing, here's less content!"

The other thing I liked was the Dailies, sure their was two much gated stuff at the start which players felt compelled to go for. But the Dailies were fine in themselves, especially in the later patches with progressing storyline. Again, Blizzard were like "You complained about dailies, we're going to totally remove them from the game!"

Now if Blizzard could add regular updates, and have progressing Rep Tiered Storylines - that would be grand

[shoc]

It feels really great for the entire world to be scaled up to max level. My gut instinct is the mobs in those old zones should be easy just because they are old zones, but when the realization that the entire Broken Isles is max level difficulty with max level content, it feels super overwhelming.

Like, going from "There's nothing to do, world feels empty" to "Holy fuck there's way too much stuff to do in just one day".

Even when the gear becomes irrelevant, World Quests are going to be a decent source of Gold income, especially if you do the rounds with a group.

Did they confirm that Legendary drops will come from World Quests? If so, I could see people doing them as much as possible for a long time.

[Elim Garak]

So world quests are glorified Apexis Dailies.

[shoc]

So world quests are glorified Apexis Dailies.

You mean the same kind of dailies we had in TBC, WOTLK, Cata and MoP? It's basically regular Daily Quests meets Adventure Mode from Diablo 3. The fact that these quests take place across the entire continent, not just in shitty little segregated zones makes them infinitely more tolerable, hell, even fun, compared to the Apexis Dailies.

Having fun in WoW? Who'd have thought.

[Elim Garak]

You mean the same kind of dailies we had in TBC, WOTLK, Cata and MoP?

Nope, Apexis dailies are different from usual dailies. I'm not talking about a quest in the quest log...

[shoc]

Nope, Apexis dailies are different from usual dailies. I'm not talking about a quest in the quest log...

I mean, functionally Apexis Dailies are not really any different than the dailies we've been grinding in the past.

Go to X, Kill Y number of Z, Collect A number of B, hand in.

Yeah it took the form of 'fill the bar' but it doesn't really change the way you play the game.

The biggest difference is that Apexis Dailies felt like one big chore, and they take like 15 minutes to finish and who has the patience for that anymore.

With the new World Quests, it's kind of like if you took the Apexis Dailies, made them dynamic without any need to pick up or hand in any quests, and chopped them up into 6 bite sized activities with rewards that don't entirely suck.

[Elim Garak]

That is glorified Apexis Dailies

[Deleted]

Really good feedback, I really like the world quest system too.

- - - Updated - - -

That is glorified Apexis Dailies

No, it's not. Apexis Dailies were really boring and didn't even feel rewarding or fun to do, meanwhile, the world quest system in Legion looks a lot better and more rewarding, also the quests aren't the same as the apexis quests.

[Zka]

See now, this is what i and many others aren't sure about.
As in, there may well be many many things to do, however, the critical thing is this:
will there be many many things to do 3 months into the xpac?
1 word: replayability.
Maybe 2 words, the second one being length.
Length of replayability.

+100
I also thougth that there were a lot to do in WoD after playing the beta. I also thought garrisons were fun.
It turned out that these lots of things to do last for about 1 month and garrisons become a chore shortly after that with negative replay value.

[Deleted]

No, it's not. Apexis Dailies were really boring and didn't even feel rewarding or fun to do

Now they will feel rewarding but not fun to do. Is an exstrinsic reward alone making grinds more fun?

meanwhile, the world quest system in Legion looks a lot better and more rewarding, also the quests aren't the same as the apexis quests.

It is:

a) Fill the bar quests (as like the grinds in 6.0)
b) dailies as like "Go to region xyz and collect 10 x or kill 10 y" (as like the dailies at the garrison)
c) dungeon breadcrumbs (just sends you to a dungeon, as like the ones you got at the Inn in WoD)
d) raiding breadcrumbs (just sends you to a raid, also available at the garrison in WoD)
e) Quests which enable PVP.. which are still quests.. you additionally could be ganked. Blizzards answer to Black Desert Online.

So the only addition are PvX quests, which will not help to reinitiate world PVP, as people who want to play PVE only will just skip them. Also, the crowd of people who like to play PVE and PVP is very niche.

At the end, it is Garrison Inn + Garrison Arena + daily Regions reloaded.

[SoulSoBreezy]

See now, this is what i and many others aren't sure about.
As in, there may well be many many things to do, however, the critical thing is this:
will there be many many things to do 3 months into the xpac?
1 word: replayability.
Maybe 2 words, the second one being length.
Length of replayability.

No one would be unhappy with many many things to do in any xpac.
But, consuming those many many things to do quickly, say 3 months into an xpac and then bored stiffless is not good.

Now, many many things to do and 6 or 8 months into the xpac, now that would be good.
No?

Obviously the way to fix that is via content patches/continued support by Devs.

That's what i and i'm sure many others are wondering about at this early stage.

Your concern does have merit. There's an upper limit to things like order hall resources, and definitely artifact power. At the same time there can't be an infinite limit, otherwise players would be burnt out in an attempt to set up alts and the like.
With world quests in mind, I identify the feature as a content platform that can be further supported with more quests and objectives in later patches. For example in a later tier, a new set of group quests that award epics for certain slots (catchup mechanism), or quests that require flight to access.

- - - Updated - - -

You sir, earned a new subscriber. Glad to see someone presenting info from the alpha in a calm, controlled manner rather than making knee jerk reactions and assumptions.

Daw, thanks =)

[Deleted]

Where you able to find any weapon sockets that dropped from world mobs? No one in my guild has seen any in a long time. We suspect they were moved to quest,dungeon,and raid rewards but if not we would be very interested in knowing.

Farming the right talent one is rather important enough so that if it can proc any ilv its value could come close to that of a legendary in a few select cases.

[SoulSoBreezy]

It feels really great for the entire world to be scaled up to max level. My gut instinct is the mobs in those old zones should be easy just because they are old zones, but when the realization that the entire Broken Isles is max level difficulty with max level content, it feels super overwhelming.

Like, going from "There's nothing to do, world feels empty" to "Holy fuck there's way too much stuff to do in just one day".

Even when the gear becomes irrelevant, World Quests are going to be a decent source of Gold income, especially if you do the rounds with a group.

Did they confirm that Legendary drops will come from World Quests? If so, I could see people doing them as much as possible for a long time.

It was stated that legs could come from anywhere, with a higher drop rate depending on raid difficulty.