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Warlords of Draenor: Jumping puzzles abound
Our friends at Wowhead have uncovered something I can honestly say I never thought I'd see in WoW: jumping puzzles. Well, I guess you could call those really annoying spots in Blackfathom Deeps and Wailing Caverns "jumping puzzles" but really, they're just jumps. So far three separate jumping puzzles have been spotted in Draenor. You'll find them at the Circle of Blood, the waterfall at Moonwillow Peak in Shadowmoon Valley, and the eastern end of Daggermaw Ravine. According to Wowhead, Circle of Blood is the easiest of the three, and Daggermaw Ravine the most difficult. All have rewards awaiting the intrepid jumping populace, be it a rare spawn with rare loot or a treasure chest of goodies. The presence of jumping puzzles in the game brings the question of player flying capabilities to the forefront once more. We already know we won't be able to fly in Draenor at release, but it's been speculated that flying will be added into the game after a certain point. However, player flying renders challenges such as jumping puzzles completely obsolete. Why would you bother when you can just drop in from above? Of course, that doesn't mean that Blizzard will never allow flying in Draenor--content isn't designed to be new indefinitely. However, it does make me feel like perhaps our grounding in Draenor is meant to be more permanent than initially expected. Or maybe I'm reading way too much into this. What do you think?
Warlords of Draenor: Flight path reassurance
Community Manager Bashiok has posted on the official forums in an attempt to calm players' fears about the enforced dependence on flight-paths that will come with Warlords of Draenor. Bashiok We're going to be making sure flight paths and other forms of travel are quick and efficient, with a goal of getting you to the places you want to go. Flight paths in the past have always been "the scenic route", lazily listing from side to side and around waterfalls to the intended oohs-and-aahs of the transportee. The flight paths in Draenor are not going to be loop-de-loop sightseeing tours, and we're going to be looking to our beta testers to let us know if any are less than tip-top. source The key to his point here is the directness. Especially in Mists, flight paths were gratuitously looping and indirect. The Horde shrine from the PvP vendor, for example, does a series of completely arbitrary tours around the shrine before actually landing. Hopefully this will not be the case in Warlords.
Warlords of Draenor: Gameplanet interviews Alex Afrasiabi
Gaming news website Gameplanet has posted an interview with Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi featuring a detailed discussion about the next expansion for World of Warcraft. Along with discussing the development of Garrosh Hellscream, Afrasiabi dropped some interesting new tidbits we hadn't heard before. Ner'zhul will be allied with the Iron Horde, but only for, as stated in the interview, a short time. In addition, garrisons are shaping up to be a massive, interactive experience -- and sound much more expansive and interesting than the farms introduced in Mists of Pandaria. And if that weren't enough, there's some new details on the introduction to the expansion itself. The Iron Horde is trying to push through the Dark Portal into Azeroth, and players are immediately thrown into a frenetic 45-minute gameplay experience in which they are immediately confronted by thousands of Iron Horde. Afrasiabi states that players will, in that moment, realize where the orcs that have been streaming through the Dark Portal in the weeks leading up to the expansion's release have been coming from. It looks like we'll have our return of pre-expansion events -- something that was sorely missed leading into Mists of Pandaria. But the most interesting part of the interview involves the discussion of flight on Draenor.
Bashiok on flying mount delay in World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor
There's already been a flurry of opinions expressed on the reveal that Blizzard does not plan to allow flying in Draenor until patch 6.1 -- a bit of a departure from previous expansions, where flying was allowed at max level (except for Cataclysm). Several threads in the WoW forums have already thoroughly explored player feelings on the topic, and Bashiok took it upon himself to jump into one to give a more detailed insight into Blizzard's logic in making this decisions. Specifically, this issue is one of control; the players' versus the game designers'. Bashiok points out that once a player can fly, they control every aspect of how they engage with the ground, which is where the majority of content, and in particular, combat, is located. While it's natural for players to want that kind of engagement to be done on their agency, Blizzard's designers also work hard to present content in a certain way, and once a player can fly, all their design and presentation becomes meaningless. It's not an easy balance to strike, and Blizzard is always weighing the different design choices against each other. The post is an interesting look into the thought processes that go into these kinds of decisions, and you can read it in full after the break.
