First thoughts on Artifacts

TL;DR I don't like what I'm seeing and it makes me kind of unhappy.

Let's unpack.

When I first heard about Artifacts, I thought it sounded awesome.  This is because the first few artifacts that were announced (cmon, Ashbringer?  awshum) were pretty cool.  Also, there was a vacuum of information.  We didn't know all that much.

Now?

Now we have artifacts announced for all of the classes.  And nine tenths of them are, frankly, underwhelming.

Let's backtrack a bit to the concept of legendaries.  Legendaries were awesome back in the day.  You could tell some thought went into them.  The sword of a wind god, the hammer of a fire lord, and the staff of the greatest archmage ever to live?  Hell yes!  Note, however, that there were only three for the entire expansion.

Moving on -- Illidan's warglaives?  A bow that shoots witches?  Fuck yeah.  But oops, only two sets of legendaries for all of BC.  In Wrath we had a healer hammer and a hella nice axe.  Only two, again.  And in Cataclysm we had a bitchin' caster staff that turned you into a fucking dragon, and a pair of knives made from the teeth of Deathwing himself.

I'm sure you're seeing a pattern here.

The Mists legendary, on the other hand, felt ... boring.  Woohoo, a magical cape.  And look!  There's one for everybody!  Meh.  Ditto the rings.  One for everyone.  By being inclusive, Blizzard made legendaries boring.

And now, not only does everyone get a legendary artifact, everyone gets a different artifact.  Everyone's a special snowflake!  Never mind that this means you need to come up with thirty-six different weapons, thirty-four of which are completely new, never been heard of before.  All this new lore, all this new "excitement" ... for things we've never heard of before and will be discarding once Legion ends.  Frankly, I'm completely underwhelmed.  Particularly because we don't actually have to work for these weapons -- they're just given to us.  In fact, they're the only weapons we get all expansion!

Bullshit.

Now let's talk about the mechanics.  Looking at the calculator on WoWhead, what I see is something that looks suspiciously like the old talent system.  You know, the one they got rid of because it presented players with a bunch of false choices?  Well strap in, because it's back.  Only now, instead of earning points every time you level, you'll be, I dunno, picking them up from quests or whatever.

It is currently unknown whether it'll be possible to earn enough "points" or runes or what have you to totally fill the tree.  If no, then there will be some hard choices to make -- at least, until Elitist Jerks calculates the top DPS spread for each weapon, at which point there will no longer be choices.  If yes, then the only "choices" are which pseudo-talents you want to put your points in first.

Doesn't sound too amazing, if you want my honest opinion.  Sounds tedious, in fact.

And then there's the question of "off specs."  Blizzard is apparently giving us "tri-spec," or quad-spec if you're a druid.  They're also making it easier than ever to swap out our talents.  They've been pushing us towards swapping specs and talents for every fight for a couple of expansions now, pretty much ever since dual-spec came out.

If you continue that line of thinking, that means you could potentially be carrying three legendary artifacts around with you.  And ye gods, the difficulty of leveling each one of them up.  You're giving us mixed signals here, Blizzard -- you want us to have choices, flexibility, but it really feels like you're locking us into one spec.  Certainly thematically, even if you have decent "catch-up" mechanisms.

That's the big difference between character power and object power.  It has always been true that when you respec, you get to reassign all of the points that you've earned into new talents.  If your specs can share gear, it's even easier to multispec.  Artifacts, though ... I don't know if there's going to be a respeccing.  I expect there will be, but it sure sounds like the points are locked to the single artifact.  Want to switch specs?  Too bad!  Better do some more grinding!

And then there's the investment of the class fantasy.  Blizzard has been making a big to-do about class fantasy this expansion.  Wanting to make sure each class and spec have a distinct feel to them.  What I see, though, is the removal of choice.  Hope you like your artifact models!  If you don't, you're stuck with what's come before, since there aren't going to be new weapons for transmog in Legion.

I don't know.  For all that we've gotten so many options, so many new knobs and wheels for character customization the last few expansions, it really feels like Blizzard is tightening its grip.  Forcing us to play the game how they want us to play it, forcing us to buy into their fantasy, rather than letting us find our own way.  First they took hybrid specs away from us, then they took a whole pile of our spells and abilities.  Now they're forcing us to use the weapon they want us to use, a weapon which reinforces the fantasy they've picked for the class.

And the very idea that they're plugging is somewhat nonsensical.  Forcing us all to use a single weapon is all fine and whatever.  Paired weapons also make some sense.  But then there are the sword-and-board classes.  Granted, there are only two of them, but still -- the artifact for both paladins and warriors is the shield, that just happens to come paired with a sword.  And what about fire mages and shadow priests?  All they get is a main hand -- does it come with a matching off-hand?  If so, I haven't seen any indication.

And don't even get me started on Enhancement's "elemental Doomhammer."  That is just the stupidest idea.

I also have to wonder how mandatory raiding is going to be.  I mean, granted, there's always been mandatory raiding for the legendaries.  That's fine, that doesn't bother me -- legendaries are meant to be special, the result of a lot of hard work and dedication.  But in other expansions, there were other options, dungeon gear, token gear, badge gear, world drops, so on.  What about with artifacts?  Will raiding be mandatory, lest we be stuck with a shitty, non-upgraded version of our special snowflake stick?  Will we be able to fill the tree with dungeons and solo content?

I've been making my home in Azeroth for more than a decade right now.  None of this grousing is going to keep me from buying and playing the expansion.  I guess I'm just pissed off at how heavy-handed and addle-headed it all is.  It's like they thought, "Hey, we can give paladins Ashbringer!" and then decided they had to come up with something equally awesome for all the other classes.

I posted quite a while ago about an awesome idea for a tank legendary.  That idea still has mileage.  You don't need a legendary for all the classes every expansion.  It's okay for one role to get the spotlight for a patch cycle.  We went through four expansions like that and it was fine.

I don't want this system and I resent that it's being forced on me if I want to continue to play a game I've loved for ten years.  Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I think that artifacts are a thoroughly bad idea.  I hope that the gimmick for 8.0 is a bit more in line with letting the players choose how they play the game, rather than forcing us all along one narrow bridge.