warlords-of-draenor
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Warlords of Draenor: Crithto clarifies gear changes
Blizzard Community Manager Crithto posted yesterday about the gear changes coming in Warlords of Draenor, in an epic-length forum post that, inevitably, raised an awful lot of questions. And, being the generally cool guy that he is, Crithto has come back with a ton of answers. I'm going to be dealing with them in groups, but if you really just want to read his original post where they're all bundled together, that's fine too. So first up, Crithto commented more on the overall philosophy behind the stat changes in WoD. Crithto Getting gear is fun. We like getting gear and we like the feeling that on any given boss, there should always be something that you would want. What we're doing with items in Warlords is just an evolution of the Thunderforged version to make it a little more interesting. You'll probably see more bonus pieces than you did Thunderforged in the past, but getting an item that has all 3 bonuses will be very, very (very!) rare. Remember, you'll be just fine with the baseline pieces of gear, and most of your character will be made up of this gear. But each and every time you kill a boss, there's that chance of getting something slightly better. source
Blizzard's button bloat battle: What could you lose?
Blizzard Community Manager Lore posted today about their approach to removing the bloat from your buttons, and from your action bars too for that matter. Lore We do feel that, at least for some classes, there are a few too many buttons to keep on your action bars. It's an issue we'd ultimately like to solve, but something we have to be very, very careful with. It's easy to look at your bar, go "LOOKIT ALL DEM BUTTONS", and decide that some of them need to go. In fact, we agree. It's much more difficult -- even dangerous -- to decide exactly which abilities to get rid of. Generally speaking, if you have an ability keybound, it's probably at least fairly important to your class. Getting rid of abilities you don't have bound doesn't really fix anything, so that means that, in most cases, we're talking about cutting the important ones. That's not to say it can't (or won't) be done, but it does mean it's a fairly large task. Depending on the ability, there could be a lot of rebalancing or restructuring needed to make sure the class is still functional and fun to play. Again, it's something we'd like to do, it's just a very involved process. source And as ever, this got me thinking. This is a really, really hard task for Blizzard to accomplish, especially without upsetting people. So, I thought I'd ask myself a question, and maybe you can join in by doing the same and letting me know what you thought.
Lichborne: Warlords of Draenor Q&A for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Last week, we covered the basic class changes of Warlords of Draenor. This week, we're taking a few common questions about those changes and combining them with new information. We'll be discussing the new secondary stats and how they affect tanks, examine the possible return of dual wield tanking, and consider death knight lore in the new expansion. Without further ado, let's get started. Q: Could dual wield tanking come back with Warlords of Draenor? After all, your weapons hit more now that hit and expertise are gone. No. Ghostcrawler clarified recently that the miss chance for dual wield weapons isn't going away. You will still miss with "white" hits, it's just that your special hits will never miss (at least, not because of your gear). This will be exacerbated by the fact that blood death knight special attacks will not hit with the off-hand. The reason dual wielding works for frost is that Threat of Thassarian exists. It does not exist for blood death knights, therefore blood death knight dual wielding is still inferior and likely will stay inferior in Warlords of Draenor. The only real advantage dual wield tanking has is that you might get more Bloodworms, but that is not enough to offset the losses.
The time for variant skins is now
With the upcoming character model redesign for Warlords of Draenor, and with no announcement for any new races or classes, a question I've heard asked a lot is is that enough? And while I think it is enough, considering how massive a task it is and how much it will change the game for people, I do think the focus on character models means that now is absolutely the time to introduce another level of character customization. I don't expect (based on what we've seen) to see many new options like a height slider. So I think the old idea to give us variant skins based on sub-groups like the broken draenei, Mag'har orcs, Dark Iron dwarves, Grimtotem tauren and so on should finally become an option. In some cases this would be easier than in others. Giving draenei a playable broken appearance (seen above) would require a lot of work - as you can see, the model is outdated and is even on the wrong skeleton for a draenei. (It's built on top of the current tauren skeleton.) But allowing a player to choose a Dragonmaw, Blackrock or Mag'har orc is as simple as giving them more options in skin tone.
Know Your Lore: Pandaria's mark on Warcraft lore
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. A little over two years ago, Mists of Pandaria was officially announced as the next expansion at BlizzCon to the puzzlement of many players. The idea of an expansion built around the pandaren race was a polarizing one -- some people loved the idea, and some were less than enthused. Although the pandaren were included in game lore as early as Warcraft III, there were those that scoffed at the idea of an expansion built around a race of giant talking bears, saying that they had no place in Warcraft at all. A year later, Mists was officially launched, and a little over a year after that, the events of Mists of Pandaria are wrapping up in a suitably dramatic conclusion. And to the delight of many, myself included, this expansion has been anything but lighthearted and silly. Mists of Pandaria wasn't just a random expansion about giant talking bears, it was a revolution in the way that story and gameplay intertwine. While it may have had its faltering moments -- the inclusion of enough daily quests to make players dizzy among them -- the story took a life of its own, and the tale it told has definitely left its mark on future lore to come. Let's be clear, here: For a continent left cloaked in Mists for thousands of years, Pandaria has managed to work its way into the face of Warcraft lore in a manner that won't be forgotten, and has given us enough material to spur the story of the game for quite some time.
Community Blog Topic: What's your biggest disappointment with Warlords of Draenor?
So much information is continuing to flow in about Warlords of Draenor. Since BlizzCon, we've seen the new Forsaken female models. We've also learned that spirit will be a secondary stat and won't show up on armor. The fact that flight in WoD won't be available until 6.1 and will probably require a quest chain to acquire it is a controversial topic. Not everyone is happy with everything. My biggest disappointment is the lack of female participation in the story on the Horde side of things. There's been a lot of discussion on this topic already, and I don't mean to start it up again, but it is my answer to this week's Community Blog Topic: "What's your biggest disappointment with Warlords of Draenor?" My other disappointment is a minor one. I wish that garrisons were account-bound instead of restricted to each character. It's minor because I love everything else about this feature. What about you? Are you at all disappointed about any of the announced features of WoD? What are you looking least forward to? Or are you going to wait until the details are more flushed out before making up your mind? Blog about your answer and link to it in the comments below. Or if you don't have a World of Warcraft related blog, respond to the topic in the comments. We'll spotlight some of the responses next week.
Warlords of Draenor: Why more diversity will be better for the expansion
One of the things we've only seen so far with Warlords of Draenor are the heads of the largest and most important orcish clans, clans like the Frostwolves, the Warsong, the Blackrock, the Bleeding Hollow and Shadowmoon Clan which were led by the most famous orc historical figures. It makes sense that we've seen them, of course - they're the big names, after all. Grom Hellscream, Durotan, Blackhand, Ner'zhul, Kargath Bladefist, Kilrogg Deadeye and Gul'dan are extremely famous, and it makes sense that they be featured. But they're not the only orc clans, nor the only clan leaders, and if we just focus on them we're missing out on the potential of the lesser known clans. Clans like the Thunderlord, the Bladewind, the Rageroar and others, which were wiped out or otherwise not as important but which can rise to prominence in this new Iron Horde. Why should they concern us? Well, several reasons. They give us a chance to see a less monolithic side to the Iron Horde. Orc society was based entirely around the clan - it's about time we get to see this. Show us some clans. Give us a chance to observe how one goes about welding a nation out of them without the use of demonic magic and coercion. There's been a lot of discussion about the lack of representation of female characters in Warlords of Draenor. Since we can't just gender flip established lore figures, these lesser known clans provide a perfect opportunity to establish new characters and have them rise to prominence through their actions in the story. The Rageroar, for instance, are barely known - their only real appearance was in Cataclysm. We have no idea who their leader was back on Draenor - therefore, there's no good reason for it not to be a woman. Some of these clans defied the Old Horde of Ner'zhul and then Gul'dan. They could well defy this new Iron Horde as well, and it's simply better and more believable if we get to see some orcs preferring to keep to their older clan based way of life and rejecting new siege technology and all that the Iron Horde brings as being simply not orcish enough. Let's talk about it in more detail. How do we make use of the clans?
What's going on with Karazhan?
It's no secret that I love Karazhan. Making its debut in Burning Crusade, Karazhan was and still is, to me, the perfect raid. The sheer scope of the instance and the variety of bosses within it were more than enough to keep my raid guild at the time happily occupied. But for myself, it wasn't just the raid, it was the story behind it. I spent most of vanilla plaintively wondering when we'd see Medivh's tower open for visitors ... and I wasn't disappointed in the slightest with what we eventually saw inside. On the 5.4.2 PTR, Karazhan is in the middle of what seems to be not a revamp, but a restoration. Mobs aren't changing, neither are bosses. But the cobwebs, the overturned chairs, the randomly placed skeletons of the dead are all being quietly swept away. One has to wonder ... what's up with that? What's going on with the tower of Karazhan, and why the sudden makeover now? Rather than indulge in yet another speculative edition of Know Your Lore, let's just take a quick look at the possibilities.
What are you looking forward to in Warlords of Draenor?
There's always a lot to be excited about at BlizzCon, where announcements and new game information tumble freely from developers' lips. But now that things have calmed down and we've all had some time to think about it, we'd like to know what you're most looking forward to in World of Warcraft's next expansion, Warlords of Draenor. With ten new levels, the new/old continent of Draenor, and player-built garrisons, there are a lot of cool features on offer here -- but just which one is your favorite? (And which, like the long-discussed dance studio, will be lost to time?) Let us know what feature most piques your interest -- and if it's not anything in our poll, let us know in the comments! %Poll-85803%
WoW special event this weekend on Twitch.tv
This Saturday, popular e-sports host Soe Gschwind-Penski will be hosting a live World of Warcraft special along with Paragon guild members Raakel 'Xenophics' Hämäläinen and Pekka 'Arx' Aaltonen. The show starts November 23 at 9 p.m. CET (3 p.m. EST / 12 p.m. PST across the pond) on Twitch.tv and ESL.tv. Soe, Xenophics, and Arx will be taking a trip down memory lane, talking about their favorite moments from WoW's past and how the game has evolved over the years up until patch 5.4. They'll also be discussing what the future has in store with Warlords of Draenor and its new features. There promises to be in-game events to participate in, but the details of what realm this will happen on won't be revealed until during the event. Since this is a EU based event, you can assume it will be on EU realms only. You can also participate through Twitch.tv for a chance to win prizes. Further details are available here.
Azeroth and beyond: Nine years of World of Warcraft
In 1999, Blizzard Entertainment was well on its way to becoming something of a titan in the PC gaming space. Riding high on hits like Diablo, Warcraft II, and the barely-a-year-old StarCraft, Blizzard had established itself as a purveyor of quirky, well-made, and entertaining games mostly of the RTS variety. However, something else was brewing behind closed doors at Blizzard's Irvine campus. While sequels to Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo were all in development (and hotly anticipated), the company had also quietly started work on a brand-new massively-multiplayer online game set in one of the studio's existing game universes. That game, of course, was World of Warcraft. And nine years ago tomorrow, it completely changed the face of MMO gaming.
Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard to make appearance at DreamHack Winter 2013
Blizzard Entertainment will be making an appearance at DreamHack Winter 2013 in Jönköping, Sweden -- and it's just been announced that Warlords of Draenor will as well. DreamHack is the world's largest digital festival and holds the official world record as the world's largest LAN party, promising an exciting time for Europeans attending the event and also an opportunity to play and see Warlords of Draenor, the new WoW expansion, firsthand. Along with Warlords, those attending will also be able to play both Hearthstone and Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. In addition, Blizzard will have several Hearthstone-themed contests for those attending, including a sound-a-like contest, a card-crafting contest, and a contest that will have players finding clues and building decks out of seven secret cards in order to challenge the Hearthstone crew. If that weren't enough, the European Community team will be on-hand to say hello, chat, mingle, and maybe even settle down to play some Diablo III. If you missed out on BlizzCon, this is the perfect opportunity to get a glimpse and some hands-on-time with the next expansion. DreamHack Winter 2013 takes place November 28 - December 1, 2013. For more information on the festival, as well as tickets and scheduling, be sure to check out DreamHack's official site.
Patch 5.4.2: This is just the beginning for Blizzard's Raid Finder
We posted earlier about Blizzard's first steps towards building their own answer to oQueue, leveling various criticisms at what they had done so far for patch 5.4.2. Basically, you can head back and read the previous post, but the changes so far have all been to the existing Raid Finder tool. The one that nobody knows exists. And the one that nobody can find. Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street was quick to add, though, that this is only the beginning for Blizzard's group finder. @Bashiok @oliviadgrace Takes our crappy old raid browser and enables some cross realm functionality. Still doing a new Group Finder for 6.0. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) November 21, 2013 So we can allow ourselves to hope for better with 6.0. What would you like to see? Personally, I think oQueue, for all its bugs and quirks, does a pretty great job of finding cross-realm groups for people. I'd like to see something that mirrors oQueue, but with fewer issues like spam, memory use, and more. Of course, with Blizzard designing this themselves, it's very likely to be the case that it doesn't suffer any of these ills. I'd love to see it have all the ilvl restrictions, completion restrictions and other group restrictions applicable, and to have the option to appear offline, or hide. One big thing, too, is visibility. It needs to either be integrated into the LFG panel, or have its own micro-menu entry. The single thing that such a system needs, as I mentioned in the earlier article, is people. It needs to be right in players' faces, more convenient than the competition. I believe Blizzard can do it, but to replace such a popular addon that's done so much good to the game, they'll have to do it well.
WoW Source talks Warlords of Draenor, new female Forsaken models
In the latest episode of WoW Source, Morgan Webb sits down with Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas, Senior Art Director Chris Robinson, and Game Director Tom Chilton to talk BlizzCon 2013 and the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor. Along with an overview of the various features of Warlords, there's an exclusive look at the new female Forsaken models. Although these are just stills of the character model in progress, they're gorgeous -- and I can't wait to see them in action and live. Check out the full video for insights and news about BlizzCon 2013, the development of Warlords of Draenor, and more. Those amazing new character models pop up at about thirteen minutes into the video, along with more footage of the other new character models already revealed at BlizzCon 2013.
Conan plays WoW, talks to the devs at BlizzCon
Conan O'Brien stopped by BlizzCon to do some arena match commentating, which you may have seen earlier, but what you didn't see was that he also interviewed Game Director Tom Chilton and sat down to play a little Warlords of Draenor with Production Director J Allen Brack. He also interviews one of the arena teams. There's the usual jabs at gaming stereotypes, but I got some laughs from him trying to trash talk another player and complaining about dying from a fall into snow. The earlier video showing the full 25 minutes of arena commentating was a little bit much to slog through, but once edited down for TV it's a lot funnier.
Scattered Shots: Lone wolves
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, your host Adam Koebel, aka Bendak will be discussing the fourth hunter specialization masquerading as a talent. If you missed Scattered Shots last week, you can go check it out for a summary of what we learned about hunters at BlizzCon 2013. Today, I want to focus on the most controversial of the new talents: Lone Wolf. By taking this talent (only as survival or marksmanship) you gain 30% increased damage when your pet is not active. I've read a lot of posts, tweets, and comments over the past week and it seems that hunters are split right down the middle with this talent, along with a few in the middle who like having it as an option for pet unfriendly encounters. My initial reaction to Lone Wolf was very enthusiastic, but then I started to wonder how it was going to work with a class built around pets. It's going to have a cascading effect on many existing hunter talents and abilities, namely anything that works in conjunction with your pet. It's possible Blizzard will add secondary effects to these talents so they work without a pet, but if they spend the time adapting older abilities then why not just go all in with the idea? If someone is leveling up a hunter, shouldn't they be able to make a play style choice as drastic as this early on instead of at level 100? Then again, hunters are a pet class ... so why do we need this talent, anyway?
Breakfast Topic: To fly or not to fly?
We're getting used to this now, flying being restricted on new continents. It happened in Northrend, it happened in Pandaria, and now it's going to happen on Draenor. But what's your take on Blizzard's repeated removal of our in-game wings? Personally, I support the absence of flying for the first character. I've mentioned it before, but that first yak ride to the top of Neverest blew my mind. The beauty of it, the sense of adventure as my yak skipped happily up the narrow paths to the summit, I loved it. If I'd hopped on a dragon and flown there, I'd have missed that magic. So, to that end, I support the devs in the idea that they should not give us our wings the very second we happen upon a new continent. However, once the sense of wonder has faded, it gets old pretty quickly. Even in Mists, I would probably have preferred to be able to fly earlier on my alts, to have something like the now-defunct Tome of Cold Weather Flight available. Getting flying still feels like an achievement when you hit 90, but I wonder whether it really adds anything to the leveling experience the ninth time around. And I'm not looking forward to waiting for 6.1, personally. %Poll-85757%
Warlords of Draenor's gear system and spirit as a secondary stat
There has been some discussion recently, on Twitter, between Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street and several players about some elements of the new gearing system, and how it applies to healers. First up, I feel like, before we get into the specifics, I should quickly wrap up how the new system will work. You won't understand the rest of the article without this knowledge, so let's rattle through it. The new gearing system works as follows: A piece drops. It is plate, mail, cloth or leather. It has crit and haste as secondary stats. Its primary stat will change according to your spec, so if you're a caster it will be intellect, melee DPS could be strength or agility and so on. As you change spec, the primary stat changes with you. The secondary stats (in this example, crit and haste) will not change. There may also be tertiary stats on gear, such as +run speed, or -durability damage.
Know Your Lore TFH: Sailing to Oshu'gun
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Tinfoil Hats on. Let's speculate. Let's make some things up. To be honest, I'm not one hundred percent sure that what I'm about to write is a TFH entry. It's more just speculative about the nature of the Iron Horde and the Draenor it seeks to rule, and the consequences of its rise. Since I can't actually know any of that yet, it's certainly speculative, but I have no grand theory in mind to explicate, just a bunch of speculations to lay out. What we know so far is actually only a tantalizing veneer over all we don't know. From the time of the initial incursion that creates this new Draenor to the time that we become aware of it, a certain amount of time has to pass - it takes time to outfit an entirely new kind of army, much less create a new Dark Portal and usurp the connection to our Azeroth's Dark Portal and invade it, which we've been told will be happening. This leads to a whole host of questions - what happens during that period of time? How does Garrosh convince the orcs of Draenor that they should listen to him, a completely unknown quantity? He won't be from any tribe they know of - while he's a member of the Warsong by blood, none of them will recognize him. How does it happen? I'm fascinated by the idea of this moment. Does he just flat out tell them who he is and where he comes from? While Garrosh is a very cunning tactician capable of deceit, he's also fairly straightforward, so I can imagine him infiltrating the tribal society of orcs on Draenor or simply strolling up to a Kosh'harg and declaring who he is. Either approach has risks, of course - while violence is forbidden at a Kosh'harg, he could easily be laughed right out of the place, and infiltrating an orc tribe would be very difficult for an outsider.
Breakfast Topic: Does Warlords of Draenor need another class or race?
Speculation was rife in the days leading up to BlizzCon, with people wondering what the new expansion would bring in terms of classes and races. There were various rumors of various levels of hilarity, such as Mo'arg for the Horde and Ethereals for the Alliance, or Ogres, Demon Hunters or Corgis... you name it, it was speculated. Then Blizzard pulled a fast one on all of us: Warlords of Draenor will have neither a new race nor a new class. And I'm OK with it. Personally, I think the last thing we need from both a PvP and a PvE perspective is another class. We're having enough trouble with the eleven that we do have at our disposal, and adding in a twelfth would not help matters. They'd also have to increase server capacity again, and who knows whether they even have the tools to do so. As far as new races go, in my personal opinion, the sheer amount of speculation indicates how people didn't really have a firm idea on what they wanted. And really, what would you have wished for from the existing races? Naga? Ogres? Ethereals? Personally, none of those excited me. But I'm just one person, what do you think? %Poll-85765%
