WoW Legion Gets Its First Content Drop with Patch 7.1

What we will focus on at BlizzCon is how the team is committed to making sure we bring you a steady stream of content going forward, and we can’t wait to share what’s next for Legion.

-J. Allen Brack, WoW Community Manager forum post

We’ll get back the the top part of the post that quote came from on another day.

The promise from Blizzard, explicit, implied, or otherwise, was that the WoW Legion expansion would not leave players hanging for a year without any new content.  You might have thought they would have learned this after Mists of Pandaria, but I guess the subscriber count didn’t drop low enough during that drought, so they let it happen again with Warlords of Draenor.

The problem was compounded by some of the choices made with Warlords of Draenor .  I know, everybody likes to beat up on garrisons, but the subscriber numbers indicate that they were not a big hit.  We’ll never get any sort of “real” player housing in WoW after garrisons.

But that was the last expansion and we are now eight weeks into WoW Legion and the first post-launch content drop, WoW 7.1 – Return to Karazhan. The date has arrived, the patch notes are final, and the content is upon us.

Recycling content is generally good

The headline item for the release is a five person mythic run set in the Burning Crusade era raid Karazhan.  While being a mythic level dungeon means I probably won’t see it until we get a couple more expansions down the road, I still think this is a good use of their time.

Then there is a new Trial of Valor raid opening up in normal and heroic modes, with mythic and LFR tourist modes opening up some time down the road.  Again, content for a core demographic in WoW.

For the rest of us, there is the continuation of the campaign in Suramar and more world quests.  Eventually I will actually START on Suramar and world quests, but I cannot hold my lagging behind against Blizz.  Both of those do sound like “things to do” for players out in the open world.

So, more content with the first patch out.  But I think Blizz has always managed to do that in the past.  They will manage a 7.1 and a 7.2 based on past experience.  But will we see a 7.3, 7.4, and even a 7.5 patch and beyond with content as the expansions ages?

Meanwhile, the patch notes are full of other little items, including changes to classes, changes to professions, to some of the skills new players get for levels 1-10, to a quick join feature that will let you see what people on your friends list have queued up for and allow you to join up with them in the queue.

My own personal favorite line item from the patch notes is:

• Nameplate options made less confusing.

I like that because nameplates were the first thing I noticed when I logged in on day one of the expansion.  I generally have them set off as much as possible, but the redid the configuration and, as part of that changed, turned everything on by default.  So I was standing in Stormwind in a sea of green nameplates.  I eventually got it back to my usual minimalist setting, and I suspect that I will have to do that again with this change… but it should be less confusing now, right?

And finally, I guess this is the Chris Metzen emote for the game.  Gone (from Blizzard) but not forgotten:

• Added new “For the Horde” and “For the Alliance” emotes.

I am a bit surprised this wasn’t a thing much sooner.