At BlizzCon, it was revealed what the developers plan to do with the artifact weapons from WoW once Legion is over.
In addition to all the announcements about the upcoming patches for World of Warcraft, the Q&A session also covered many details that will play out further in the future of Blizzard’s MMORPG. One fan wanted to know exactly what will happen to the artifact weapons and whether they can be taken into the next expansion.
The developers are not 100% sure yet what they want to do, but the current plan looks as follows:
All artifact weapon designs that were unlocked during the active time of World of Warcraft: Legion (until Patch 8.0, or the launch of the next expansion) can then be used by the player as a transmogification template.
Players who enter the “old” areas of Legion later can still earn their artifact weapon and unlock the skins, but they cannot transmog them onto other weapons. This way, the developers want to honor all players who actually spent time with the weapon during the active time of Legion.
However, how exactly the transition will look is still unknown. The developers are aware that there are likely no weapons more powerful than the artifact weapons, and it would feel wrong to now take a green quest reward in one’s hands. They do not want to reveal details because that is still far in the future, but “they already have plans” for it.
Please keep in mind that these are just the current rough plans and a lot can change before the next addon.
Cortyn thinks: Personally, I would think it would be cool if, during the transition to the next addon, a quest appears where you have to “sacrifice” your artifact weapon to stop some great evil before the fresh content of 8.0 follows. In any case, it will be difficult to sell to players that they can no longer play with the Ashbringer or the Doomhammer, but I am confident that the developers will come up with something.
