World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor Expansion Announced

Announced at Blizzcon today, Worlds of Draenor, is the latest expansion that will be the fifth in the World of Warcraft series. It looks to me that Blizzard is intent on holding on to the MMORPG genre to forward the Warcraft IP.

I’ve played World of Warcraft up till Cataclysm and while it was enjoyable, the later expansions lacked the spark the first one had that had me playing close to 18 hours a day. It was not a pretty sight back then.

Here’s a quick summary of get you up to speed (Credit to Reddit user, Stuckpixe1):

TL;DR version: More of everything. Less grinding in some areas. New areas to grind.

Story

• Garrosh will be put on trial and escape before a verdict. He is going back in time, altering the current timeline slightly.
• Garrosh’s goal is to stop the Orcs from drinking the blood of Mannoroth and building the Iron Horde using technology from the present.
• The end of this expansion is going to spill over into the next one. Many more expansions are lined up now.

Draenor

• Homeworld of the Orcs, heart of the Draenei, lots of giants, seven new zones.
• The Iron Horde is here to take an army into Azeroth and your job is to stop them.
• Grommash has united the Orc clans.
• The Alliance will defend Karabor (Black Temple) and make it their main city this expansion.
• The Horde will defend the Bladespire Citadel and make it their main city this expansion.
• Catacylsm changed up the zones, but WoD zones are rebuilt from scratch, not just modifying Outland.
• Azeroth has had many different empires over time, but Draenor is a more savage world with just the Ogre empire in decline.
• Netherstorm will be used in a future patch, not at launch.
• The Frostwolf Clan, Shadowmoon Clan, Blackrock Clan, Warsong Clan, Bleeding Hollow, and Shattered Hand Clan will make an appearance.
• Kargath led the Shattered Hand Clan out of slavery and chopped off his own arm to do so.
• Grommash will play a major role in the story to come. Will his anger get the best of him?
• Kilrogg Deadeye leads the dark shamanistic Bleeding Hollow Clan, which is located in the jungle that becomes Hellfire.
• They gouge out their own eye to obtain a vision of their death, which helps guide their clan.

Creatures

• Lots of opportunities to create new creatures.
• Dragonfly mount.

Zones

• There will be an expansion introduction similar to the Death Knight starting experience.
• Launch event will set up a suicide mission, Dark Portal will turn red.
• After into, Horde go to Frostfire Ride, a Tundra with volcanoes. You meet up with the Frostwolf Clan and help them defeat the Thunderlord Clan.
• After intro, Alliance go to Shadowmoon Valley, where it is always night time. You save Karabor (Black Temple) and turn it into your main city.
• Home of the Shadowmoon Orc Clan.
• Gorgrond has lots of steam vents that are being capped to power the Iron Horde war machine.
• Blackrock Foundry is one of the raids in WoD.
• Talador has a much larger Shattrath city and Auchindoun before it was destroyed. Auchindoun is a dungeon in WoD.

New Player Models

• New models have lots of facial detail, teeth, tongues, smiles, and animations.
• Dwarf, Orc, and Gnome models are ready to preview.

Garrisons

• Build your own base on Draenor, WoW version of Housing.
• Your friends can come and see it, trade resources.
• Collect followers and send them on missions. Name them!
• Customize your base. Pick the zone and buildings
• Offline progression (days to weeks)
• Integrated into the world, no loading screens.
• Allows you to get epic gear, your own land, limited access to professions you don’t have.
• You can build a mine in your base and go and mine, or send followers to go mine for you.
• Your garrison can be expanded over three tiers. Each expansion gives you more plots of land.
• You can move your garrison later.
• Collect trophies and build monuments. Access them by completing achievements. Mount a rare spawn’s head in your Town Hall.
• Buildings have unique bonuses, such as reducing the recovery time for your followers after a mission or a free resurrection in the world once a day.
• These can be upgraded and customized with specializations after three tiers of upgrades. This is like talents for your building.
• The Inn lets you find new followers every day.
• It comes with a kitchen that has a cooking NPC. The specializations let you pick Tank, DPS, or Healer followers.
• There are three tiers of art for every building, inside and outside change with each upgrade.
• Alliance and Horde get unique art for buildings.
• Many ways to collect followers, bribe or recruit them.
• Followers level up by doing missions. Even after the level cap, followers can increase their item level.
• Followers have quality or rarity and can be customized and named.
• Send them on Raids, Dungeons, and Quests. Matching up followers and their traits with missions is almost a minigame.
• There are also specialized missions, which are unlocked by owning certain buildings. These have bonuses that are unique.

Boost to Level 90

• Warlords of Draenor will boost one of your characters to Level 90 for free.
• The boost will clean up your bags, quest log, and action bar to reduce the mess.

Inventory Updates

• Pets and Mounts are collected now, but WoD will be adding Heirlooms, Toys, and maybe Tabards. All of these are Account Wide!
• You can flag items as Favorites and summon a Favorite mount.
• Bags are now auto sortable in the default UI.
• Bags highlight items that were added since you last opened them.
• Bags highlight the quality of items.
• Bags show an icon on Vendor Trash.
• No more quest items in your bags!
• Larger stack sizes.
• Craft directly from your bank.

Adventure Guide

• Guide to help players know what they can and should be working on, what kind of raids you are ready for.
• It shows you things you can do and is customized to your character.

Level 100 Talents

• Tooltips will be split out by spec.
• New tier of talents for everyone.

Dungeons and Raids

• Seven new dungeons at launch, four for leveling, three for max level.
• UBRS will come back as a Heroic Dungeon and Leveling dungeon.
• All dungeons will have Normal, Heroic, and Challenge Mode.
• Two raids at launch, Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry. Together they have 16 bosses.
• New world bosses.
• Flex worked out well, but the 10 and 25 structure has some issues.
• Flex scaling will be used for Normal and Heroic difficulty.
• Raid Finder will scale if you lose people and are waiting for the group to fill.
• Mythic is a new difficulty harder than heroic with a 20 player fixed size.

PvP

• Ashran will be a new World PvP zone with faction bases and other hotspots. It also is a PvP sandbox that continues all of the time. Wintergrasp had a start and end time, but Ashran will always be active. It is somewhat like the original AV.
• Ashran will use cross realm zones to create a faction balanced PvP zone.
• Ashran will let you build and commandeer siege vehicles.
• The UI will have a new objective tracker and capture status. Flags will fill with color as it is being captured.
• Battleground scores will be added to give players an idea how how they are doing in the battleground. It fills out by doing damage, healing, capturing objectives, and contributing to the battleground.
• The Honor system will stay in place, but the end of battlegrounds or arenas will give you a random chance to win bonus items, honor, BoE gear, and more.
• You will get a weekly quest to upgrade an item, something like completing a number of battlegrounds or arenas.
• Trial of the Gladiator is the new Arena Ladder. It will concentrate queue times at certain times during the week, which will help higher rated people have others to play against and help to identify exploiters.
• Trial of the Gladiator also uses tournament rules. You can buy gear from a vendor and play, no need to grind up a set. PvE gear won’t work in here! You will earn prestige rewards only from Trial of the Gladiator.