Battle for Azeroth Incursions are what Legion Assaults should have been

This Tuesday, there was a Horde Incursion in Drustvar. Off I went to battle and ultimately drive the Horde from airspace above Arom’s Strand. There was a glitch with the Horde airship and I got disconnected fighting the last boss I needed to complete the quest chain. When I logged back in I was falling to my death in an unreachable place, necessitating a rez from the spirit healer. As I turned in the quest and received a piece of gear which wasn’t an upgrade, I realized I didn’t care. I am thoroughly enjoying Incursions way more than Legion Assaults.

The concept for both is the same. The “villain” — in Legion it was demons and in Battle for Azeroth, it’s the other faction — attacks. You must repel them. I’m using the term “villain” in Battle for Azeroth loosely here. While I view the NPCs as needing to be eradicated just as demons were in Legion, I’ve not embraced the whole “other faction as evil” vibe. You’re nice people and are following misplaced orders — you could say that about me. We’re at odds, but the concept as presented is still the same. Kill a leader and get higher level rewards. Nothing personal.

Incursions — as with the Assaults — are great ways to level and gear up alts. When Incursions first started, I had some low level pieces and I was able to replace several with Incursion rewards.

But there is one thing which — for me — makes Incursions so much more fun to do. They are limited in size within a zone.

Remember how — in Legion — the whole zone was attacked when an Assault happened? There was a plethora of quests to do in order to obtain your four before moving on to the boss. Once you did all the Assaults, killed all the bosses, and obtained all the gear you wanted, Assaults became a hindrance to getting around. They still are. I have fishing and archaeology left to do. The Val’ajar have not given me their mount so I’m still doing World Quests for them, too. I very much dislike the auto accept feature when there is an Assault when all I want to do is fly through on my way to somewhere else.

With Incursions, if you don’t want to do them, you don’t have to. You can go do other World Quests or do general questing outside of the Incursion area. I don’t have an automatic quest acceptance which both covers my screen and can’t be turned down. There are only five quests available at a time — three regular and two mini bosses. The three regular ones are quick and easy to do. The mini bosses go down quickly with the group which is probably camping the spawn as you run up.

More importantly, these quests are fun. I particularly like the quests where I have to strap on a back pack, get vaulted into the air, and have to land on something. We won’t talk about how many times I went the wrong way after landing on a roof top.

I feel this is what Legion Assaults should have been. I understand the story of Legion needed the feeling of a whole zone being under attack. Yet, after we downed Argus couldn’t Assaults have been scaled back? They are still an adequate way of leveling and gearing an alt but they are such a pain to work around when I need to get from — for instance — Highmountain to Azsuna and there’s an assault in Val’sharah. We beat the Legion. They shouldn’t be able to take over a whole zone any more.

The only thing I don’t like about Battle for Azeroth Incursions — and this was also an issue in Legion — is that without going to an outside source or checking my map, I have no way of knowing if there is an Incursion active in Kul Tiras or in Zandalar. If the Incursion is in Boralus — as one was a couple weeks ago when I logged in — there was a pop-up on my screen. However, I only discovered there was an Incursion active in Drustvar when I opened the map to see which Emissaries were up and plot my path for World Quests. I would like to see a town crier or something similar to the Hero’s Call board in either Boralus or Dazar’alor where we could go and see if something was up directly. There may be a tracking add-on, but it feels like this information should be something we would be given readily — we’re the heroes needed at the front lines, after all.

Other than this small issue, I am thoroughly enjoying doing these — way more than the Legion Assaults. I am one Incursion short of the achievement and I can see these are something I will continue to do long after they aren’t necessary for gear or story content.