The legendary cloak in World of Warcraft does not have a glorious end. After working on it for over half a year, it ultimately falters.
That not everything went smoothly with Battle for Azeroth is now old news. Of course, one can critique the war fronts, island expeditions, the azerite system, or the corruption. One might even have good reasons for that. But today I want to talk about something else that really bothers me: The legendary cloak.
It is actually really cool. However, the effort one had to put in was not proportional to the duration of its actual usefulness.
Ultimate power for just a few weeks
What bothers me the most is the short duration of the cloak’s effects. Over the course of nearly six months, players could upgrade the cloak week by week. Every week it achieved new strengths, becoming more powerful and useful. Initially, this happened through weekly quests, later through additional upgrades that only increased the corruption resistance, even if this process was simplified a bit.
The whole process took over 30 weeks. More than half a year. One rarely invests that much time into individual items, at least when excluding artifact weapons. So many hours and days I invested in Disturbing Visions.
Overall, I think of this as a cool thing. A long-term objective that requires a lot of work and can only be achieved piece by piece. A big goal to work towards slowly. You also needed it, to stand against N’Zoth.
This is completely devalued when the final state of the cloak lasts only a few weeks.
For just over a week, players have been able to have the cloak at maximum level. But this achievement really doesn’t offer much duration, as the system is already dying.
Cloak becomes virtually useless with the pre-patch
I can completely understand that players in an MMORPG should never really achieve the “ultimate” state of anything for long. Because as soon as there are no improvements, a large part of the incentive in an MMO is lost.
However, spending half a year crafting a cloak that now – at best – is valid for 4 weeks is a bit cheeky. The effort is not proportional to the benefit.
I would have liked to savor the feeling of “completeness” a little more.
Maybe I should take it easier. After all, the increasing strength of the cloak helped me a bit more each week. And the cloak remains quite strong without its corruption resistance until the launch of Shadowlands. Nevertheless, it feels bad not to be able to enjoy the peak of this power and its true purpose a little longer.
Sure, I am looking forward to the imminent release of Shadowlands. But having a few more weeks to play at the highest possible level of the cloak would have been nice.
At least compared to other legendary items, the cloak really turned out to be a disappointment. I would have liked to enjoy it more before its purpose fades away. Thus, the cloak remains a reason why Battle for Azeroth was chosen as the worst addon…
Or what do you think? Did you even finish crafting the cloak? Or did you stop halfway through?
