You are not prepared for my first impressions of the Demon Hunter!
A new World of Warcraft expansion is like our Olympics, or the World Cup. Every few years it swings around and becomes all consuming, until we forget about it a few months after the fact. Some of us, at least.
Despite squeals of glee from some who claim the opposite, WoW is very much alive and still very healthy. If WoW is dying, who the hell is alive? Sure it’s passed its prime, but there’s still plenty of gas in the tank. So many lessons have been learned over the years, and there is still enough clout behind the development that Blizzard can make things happen.
My first steps into Legion made this abundantly clear; WoW has never looked better, the voice acting sets a new benchmark and there are so many little areas that have been tweaked and polished that you know hubris is not a problem this team suffers from.
There’s a reason Blizzard is one of the best in the business; the passion and the desire to put out the best product they can really shines through, and it’s as inspiring to see as it always is.
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I logged in, I giggled at some placeholder assets, and I made my Demon Hunter. I was impressed with the level of options I had compared to other races and classes. That’s an interesting thing about the DH, they’re almost a race/class hybrid. I imagine that’s at least partly down to cost/benefit, but it works lore-wise and they’ve gone all out to make it really shine.
And we get into the game, there may be a few very light spoilers ahead, but if you really cared you wouldn’t be reading this would you?
I popped into the game at level 98, blinking in the neon green light of the felfire. I’d obviously missed some story, but I know the drill by now. Illidan wants us to crack some demon skulls, so demon skulls are going to get cracked.
Fighting demons feels good, it makes me feel like I’m back in outland (in a nostalgic, rose tinted way), the DH pushes the limits of what this engine is capable of delivering but it delivers. It almost feels more like Guild Wars 2 than World of Warcraft. Different people will take that in different ways, I’m sure. Personally I’m a huge fan of the combat in GW2 and I’m happy to see the extra variety of playstyle it brings to WoW. Only the DPS version of the DH is available at this stage, and I’m excited to try my true calling of tanking with this class, it feels like it has the tools to be a very desirable meat-shield.
