The Legion has arrived! With it has come demon hunters and lore and content and, of course, demons! But of all the new stuff to do, I’d have to say, my absolute favorite are the Legion Invasions.
For those who haven’t done one yet, Legion invasions are pretty rad. Every four hours the Legion invades two of the leveling zones in Kalimdor or the Eastern Kingdoms. During those four hours players of almost any level can enter the zone and help fight off the Legions demons who have started to overrun the area.
The first phase, Stage 1, involves killing demons attacking the main town of the zone. Once that stage has been pushed to 100%, Stage 2 begins. A number of named demons, lower ranking officers, materialize and attack the town. Once again you defeat the demons and the trigger Stage 3.
Stage 3 is my absolute favorite part of the invasions. In Stage 3, the Legion decides to full out invade the entire zone. Huge demonic structures grow out of the ground, enormous Legion commanders walk the zone, packs of lose demons roam this way and that, felfire rains from the sky, it is chaos, it is mayhem, and it is awesome! In order to push back this invasion, players can destroy the structures by taking out their powering crystals, take down the mighty demon elites, or go around healing and inspiring the denizens of the zone. Lots of action and lots and lots of Legion!
Once Stage 3 is completed, you end up in the Final Stage. At this point, the Legion Boss in charge of this particular invasion appears in the main town. All the players come flying back and together start wailing on the demon lord. Depending on which demon comes down, the final stage can be a cake walk or it can be a graveyard run. Once the final demon is beaten, you’ve completed the invasion! Congrats!
The invasions work with a nifty type of phasing in which entering the zone pulls you into a specific version where the Legion has just started invading so you can work your way through. There are multiple versions of the zone, all on different stages of invasion. This means you can complete an invasion in twenty minutes but the Legion will still be invading that zone for three more hours so you can swap to an alt and beat the invasion all over again.
Man oh man, Blizzard has totally knocked it out of the park with this one. This is everything I could have ever wanted in a pre-expansion event and this isn’t the only part of it! I love that the town leaders get to shout dialogue across the zone and that you can recruit the NPCs in the zone to fight. I love that there are demons literally everywhere and the whole zone takes part. And most of all, I love that I can participate and actually help out as a healer!
The damage that the demons deal, particularly the big ones, is nothing to snooze at. Without the aid of a friendly neighborhood healer, it is very very easy to go splat when tanking the final demon boss. And even before that, I can help push the percentages higher in Stage 3 by rescuing NPCs instead of fighting. For the very first time I’m getting to play my healer as a healer outside of instances.
As fun as invasions are by yourself, they are even more fun in groups! I’ve been organizing what I call “Guild Invasion Groups!” where me and all of my guildies who are interested in running invasions all group up and go and kill some demons together. Like one big bonding experience! Once we complete the two invasions points on our mains, we then swap to our alts and do it again and again until either we get bored or run out of alts. I’ve run groups with as many as fifteen people in them and it’s been a total blast!
The invasions also award armor, weapons, a new currency, a pet, and a couple of Feats of Strength but honestly, I would do the invasions if there was no reward at all. That’s just how atmospheric and awesome I find this event! Blizzard has really knocked this out of the park.
And I can’t wait to see how it will ramp up!
Growing up in Azeroth 