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BlizzCon 2013: Huge changes coming to itemization
In the gameplay and systems panel, Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street just revealed some massive changes to gear itemization in Warlords of Draenor. The fabled item squish is finally coming, stats are being removed, new stats are being added, and reforging is gone. There's a lot to cover so let's get right down to it. Enchanting, reforging, and gems They feel like there is too much modification needed to be done every time you get a new piece of gear: enchants, gemming, and reforging your caps. There will be fewer items which can accept enchants, but the items which can still be enchanted will have more powerful enchants and more choice. Fewer gem sockets, but gems will be much more powerful. No more socket bonuses or metagems. Sockets are a bonus which can appear on gear and do not count towards item budget. Reforging is gone!
BlizzCon 2013: Instant level 90 with Warlords of Draenor
Few details have been released on the system so far, but the Warlords of Draenor previews during the first day of BlizzCon revealed a level 90 boost system. When you purchase Warlords of Draenor, you'll receive a single-use level 90 boost to skyrocket a character directly to Mists of Pandaria's max level, allowing you to wade directly into the new content. The boost being single-use causes an interesting dilemma, however. If players want to boost an additional 90, there's nothing stopping them from purchasing a new World of Warcraft box, Warlords of Draenor license, and a character transfer to move additional, instant level 90s to their primary account. According to World of Warcraft's Production Director J. Allen Brack, Blizzard is quite aware of that loophole and is considering cutting out the mess in the middle and simply selling additional boosts to level 90. The ability to purchase level 90 characters will be welcomed by some and hated by others, so the Blizzard team is holding a wait and see position for themselves until the expansion nears release. Nothing has been confirmed for certain.
New Christie Golden novel on the way
Amidst all the BlizzCon excitement yesterday, author Christie Golden decided to drop an interesting bit of information on Twitter -- she's working on a new novel. Not just any novel, but a WoW novel that ties in with the new expansion, Warlords of Draenor. Obviously no title or plot information has been released, but since Golden has written several novels with expansion lead-in titles, it stands to reason this novel will hopefully form some kind of bridge between Mists and Warlords. With titles like Lord of the Clans, Rise of the Horde, The Shattering, and Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects under her belt, Golden is also incredibly familiar with the history of the orcish race. While we don't know how much this novel will feature any of the key players in Warlords, it's safe to say that this is going to be a pretty amazing read. Hopefully we'll see more information regarding this mysterious new title soon.
The Daily Grind: Are you excited for Warlords of Draenor?
As I sat and watched the news pour in about World of Warcraft's fifth expansion, I was of two minds. On the one hand, when you start diving into the past, it's often a sign that the present is less interesting. On the other hand, this is a time that has been alluded to but never explored, and this trailer is not forgetting draenei. On the third hand, there's some interesting stuff here even without a time skip. On the fourth hand, where did all of these extra hands come from? The point is that I'm not sure if I'm excited about Warlords of Draenor yet. Maybe you're a bit more clear-headed than I am, ladies and gentlemen of the audience. Are you excited for this new expansion? Were you sitting in your chair looking forward to another chapter for World of Warcraft? Or are you ready to declare it a failure from just the title alone? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
BlizzCon 2013: Warlords of Draenor pre-launch event
In the World of Warcraft: What's Next panel, Cory Stockton, Lead Content Designer, announced that Warlords of Draenor will have a substantial pre-launch event to introduce players to the story of Warlords of Draenor. Pre-launch events sort of fell by the wayside with Cataclysm and Mists. The last time we had a really involved one was with Wrath of the Lich King's scourge invasion and zombie plague. This event will be a very "guided" experience similar to the death knight class introduction. This will be more than a simple quest. It will begin in the Blasted Lands when something strange happens with the Dark Portal, causing it to turn red. Players are sent on on a suicide mission through the Dark Portal (yes, before the expansion even launches) to help prepare for the real journey into Draenor when the expansion launches. Those of you who played before BC will remember when the demons started pouring through the portal in the days leading up to launch. It sounds like it will be like that, except we actually get to venture into the portal ahead of time. I've always missed the pre-launch events and was extremely excited to hear this news. The question is will there be any "gameplay disrupting" events like the zombie plague, or will it be isolated to the events surrounding the portal itself?
Warlords of Draenor: New world PvP zone
New to Warlords of Draenor will be a world PvP zone called Ashran. It will be a PvP sandbox zone with an ongoing battle. Its staging area will be near the Dark Portal. Included in Ashran will be faction bases (that can be reduced to rubble) and other hotspots. You'll be able to create siege vehicles of various sizes that may be started at one point and finished when you return to the zone. Ashran is being described as being close to the old school Alterac Valley. There will be a variety of objectives that may take a lot of time to achieve. Also, cross-realm technology will be applied so that servers or server clusters with faction-imbalances will have fair battles. This is a departure from their current PvP options in that there is no end. Fans of the old AV and of world PvP will hopefully find that Ashran satisfies those desires.
BlizzCon 2013: First look at Warlords of Draenor, Alliance-side
With the hotly-anticipated announcement of World of Warcraft's next expansion, Warlords of Draenor, comes the almost-as-equally hotly anticipated opportunity to get a glimpse of what's in store for us at the BlizzCon WoW demo station. I had a chance to run the first part of a new dungeon -- Bloodmaul Slag Mines -- with Matticus and a crew of other con-goers, but after that, I took the opportunity to play with some character creation and explore a little bit. Three of the playable races have new models available on the BlizzCon demo: orcs, dwarves, and gnomes. I picked a female dwarf mage, and spent a bit of time customizing her. While there don't seem to be any new hair style or color options (at least not yet), the new models blow me away. I really cannot overemphasize how impressive they are. I'm most struck by how true they feel. I have worried that with the character model upgrade, the toons that I've played for years and come to know and love would suddenly feel like different characters entirely. As it turned out, there was no need to fret. The models are exactly what I'd hoped they'd be: upgrades. They feel just like the characters we've grown to love, only with more polygons, more nuance, and more expression. Bravo, Blizzard, truly.
BlizzCon 2013: New character models in "Warlords of Draenor"
UPDATE: A lot of new pictures and animations were featured in the "Art of World of Warcraft" panel. I've updated the gallery with lots of screenshots of the new male orc, female gnome, male gnome, male dwarf, and quick glimpses of the female dwarf and male tauren! Blizzard also announced today that they are initially updating the character models of all the original races, and the dranei and blood elves. The worgen, goblin, and pandaren models will not be updated at the time. One of the most hotly-anticipated features in WoW has always been new character models for reasons that are probably obvious to all those of you not playing a pandaren. Not only have new models been confirmed for Warlords of Draenor, but samples of the new male orc, dwarf, and gnome models are now available on the new expansion pack's site. There's not a lot up yet, but you'll get a glimpse of their idle animations and screenshots of some emotes, and all of them look amazing. We've put together a gallery of pictures from the "World of Warcraft: What's Next" panel with Blizzard's own screenshots. According to Rob Pardo, the new models won't all be released at once, so it may be a while before we know what all of them will look like. However, they're also coming with a battery of new animations, and we caught a small sample of those for you too. I'm feeling a little full-circleish, seeing as I wrote the post confirming Blizzard's work on new character models at BlizzCon 2011. I hope my female tauren can keep her green eyes.
BlizzCon 2013: Inventory improvements in Warlords of Draenor
In the World of Warcraft: What's Next panel, Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street announced several new inventory updates on the way for Warlords of Draenor. Your bags are about to get a lot less cluttered. New account-wide collections similar to mounts and pets: heirlooms, toys, and possibly tabards. The toy box puts all of your fun vanity items in a spellbook type interface. They will no longer take up bag slots! You can set favorites in your toy box (as well as your mounts) to help sort them, and there will be a new button to "summon a random favorite" mount. Bags will be sortable without any external addons. Other new bag features include the highlighting of recently looted items, a gold piece icon on items which are safe to vendor, and colored borders around icons based on rarity (blue, purple, etc.) Quest items will no longer take up bag space. They will just be activated from the quest tracker. Crafting can be done using materials in your bank and the stack size of many materials is being increased to 100.
Major raid changes coming in Warlords of Draenor
During the World of Warcraft - What's Next? panel, Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas unveiled the way raiding will be unveiled going forward. As you can see above, the term flexible raid is no longer used to describe a difficulty setting, and the flexible raid scaling system has been more widely implemented. Here's how it will basically work: First up, the raid finder (LFR) will still aim for a fixed group size of 25 players. However, if you're in an LFR group and players drop before the next boss, that boss will scale to the size of the current group - as an example, if a raid of 25 players is fighting Paragons, then four players drop on the way to Garrosh, Mr. Hellscream (if you're nasty) will scale down to a 21 player size. What we now call the Flexible difficulty will become Normal in patch 6.0 - it will scale just as it does now. What we now call Normal difficulty (10 and 25 man) will scale flexibly and will be called Heroic difficulty. It will scale just as normal does. Finally, Ion pointed out that scaling the most challenging encounters in terms of design requires a fixed raid size, and so, they've chosen that size to be 20 players. This difficulty, analogous to what we now call Heroic will be called Mythic difficulty. I find it interesting that they chose to lock the most difficult raiding at a 20 player cap - I've always felt that we should have gone 10/20 at Burning Crusade's launch instead of 10/25, but I wonder why they didn't do a 10/20 split on Mythic for the dedicated 10 man guilds. I didn't expect that, but otherwise, I totally called it and I'm definitely excited. (I know for my guild, 20 man Mythic will be a lot easier to adjust to, but for dedicated 10's it won't be as easy a transition.) Also, please forgive me a moment of smuggery, but I called it.
BlizzCon 2013: Hands on with Warlords of Draenor
"If you could describe the upcoming expansion [Warlords of Draenor] in one word, what would it be?" I asked an anonymous Blizzard developer. "Savage describes it." They weren't kidding. I'll tell you why in a moment.
BlizzCon 2013: Moving into Warlords of Draenor's garrisons
Arguably one of World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor's biggest selling points is its just-announced garrison system. A panel at BlizzCon and the official FAQ have details as to what this version of player housing will look like. Garrisons will be phased outposts that players will establish in any zone on Draenor and use as headquarters for their adventures there. A garrison is basically a small town that can be upgraded and customized, but it has a functional aspect as well. Players meet NPCs during questing that will go back to the garrison where they can be put to work doing missions whether you're logged in or not. The garrison is integrated into the game world and can be visited by one's friends. Different buildings in the garrison bestow different bonuses, such as an infirmary healing followers and inns allowing for greater recruiting. Buildings can be upgraded three times with a specialization choice at the end, and they can be decorated with monuments and trophies from achievement rewards (among other sources). Crafting, even in professions that you haven't trained, will be available, and Blizzard is promising that epic-quality gear can be made through this system.
Metzen reveals Garrosh "sets things in motion" in Warlords of Draenor
Following the Opening Ceremonies, Chris Metzen sat down with the hosts (Kat Hunter and Geoff Keighley) and revealed a few new tidbits about the upcoming expansion. Garrosh Hellscream is not the end boss of the new expansion. However, Garrosh 'sets things in motion' with the aid of an unknown accomplice with mysterious time-travel abilities. Once put on trial, Garrosh escapes before he can be judged, and returns to Draenor in the past to prevent the one great mistake that led to the creation of the Old Horde - the drinking of the Blood of Mannoroth. At present, they don't know who will be the orcish faction leader. While Thrall is the obvious choice, Metzen would prefer Saurfang or Eitrigg "but we may change it later". Thrall will be using his hammer more in this expansion. So there you have it, more details on how the Warlords of Draenor arise.
BlizzCon 2013: World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor revealed
World of Warcraft will continue its adventures in its fifth expansion pack called Warlords of Draenor. Blizzard announced the new expansion at BlizzCon today following heavy rumors when the title was discovered in a trademark database. The expansion will pit players against "a savage enemy without remorse." The opening ceremonies showed a trailer for the expansion, which boasted a slew of features for the new expansion. These include the world of Draenor, an increased level cap to 100, the ability to instantly advance a single character to level 90, a garrison to build and defend, and new character models. You can keep an eye on warlordsofdraenor.com and the official FAQ from BlizzCon for more information once it launches and watch the trailer after the break.
World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor Announced
Blizzard Entertainment has announced World of Warcraft's fifth expansion, Warlords of Draenor. The expansion will bring players to Draenor, the original homeworld of the Orcs. The expansion leads players to familiar and new locations seen in WoW's first expansion, The Burning Crusade. Highlights of Warlords of Draenor include: Build and upgrade your own garrison New character models New PvP zones Level cap raised to 100 Boost one character to level 90 and play immediately More on the expansion as the day continues. Expect lots of updates as we cover BlizzCon 2013.
Warlords of Draenor now trademarked in the US and Europe
Here's some more fuel for speculation engines everywhere: Blizzard Entertainment has now registered the trademark for Warlords of Draenor in both the United States and Europe. This news follows the rumors from last week indicating that Blizzard had locked up the very same title in Australia. We still don't know what Blizzard has up its sleeve, though the obvious leap is to a World of Warcraft expansion. With Blizzcon kicking off on November 7th, it's likely we'll have an answer SoonTM.
Warlords of Draenor trademark registered in US and Europe
A few days ago Blizzard registered the trademark for Warlords of Draenor in New Zealand and Australia. Tonight, the same trademark has appeared in the US and Europe. The current speculation is that this might be the next World of Warcraft expansion; however, there has been no official announcement from Blizzard yet. We'll all know the truth about WoW's next expansion this Friday at BlizzCon 2013. UPDATE: Post edited to reflect that Warlords of Draenor also just appeared on the US trademark database tonight.
Blizzard trademarks Warlords of Draenor
The trademark Warlords of Draenor has been registered by Blizzard in Australia and New Zealand, but has not yet appeared in the US. It's easy to speculate that this might be the next Warcraft expansion given the name, however there has been no official announcement or any hints from official sources. We'll all know the truth about WoW's next expansion next Friday at BlizzCon 2013. A screenshot of the trademark filing is after the break (since their trademark website does not allow for direct linking).
Rumor: Warlords of Draenor trademarked as possible World of Warcraft expansion
The cat may be out of the bag with the next World of Warcraft expansion, as a few eagle eyes spotted Blizzard applying a trademark for "Warlords of Draenor" today. The trademark covers both computer game software and entertainment service categories, and the website www.warlordsofdraenor.com was registered during this past month. Of course, this is just a trademark and does not constitute confirmation of any expansion, past, present, or future. We'll be sure to find out more when BlizzCon opens next week.
