New World of Warcraft expansion revealed!

Ladies and gentlemen, a new year has come and gone and with it goes a Blizzcon, at which the fifth expansion for World of Warcraft has been revealed and announced. Warlords of Draenor tells the story about the soon to be imprisoned Garrosh Hellscream escaping from his confinement and travelling back in time (somehow) to the past of Draenor. His mission? To stop the Orcish clans from drinking the blood of Mannoroth and build up a new Iron Horde by supplying them with weapons and technology from the present day.

Now, to explain how Blizzard have shown this. Draenor is a brand new zone to accompany the new Level cap of 100. So Draenor is 10 levels of goodness across seven brand new zones, in which the player visits the homeworld of the Orcs. I very likely will be reinstalling this game to enjoy this new world... of Warcraft. Lame ass joke but had to say it.

To begin with, I’d like to explain that I quit from WoW back before Christmas ’12, but even this has me interested to at least check it out to see if there’s something redeeming about it. Possibly because of the lore, possibly because of the idea that so many things in the timeline could change easily depending on aspects that happen. So many possibilities! What if we kill Gul’dan and Illidan never obtains his skull to fight Mannoroth? What if Durotan is killed in battle and Thrall is never born? It leaves so many ideas open.

The notable Orc leaders that will be shown in-game for the first time or in a new way are: Durotan, Blackhand the Destroyer, Kargath Bladefist, Gul’dan, Ner’zhul, Kilrogg Deadeye, Orgrim Doomhammer and of course Grommash Hellscream. There could also be the possibilities of Broxigar Saurfang to make an appearance too. It is unknown yet on if any of them will be bosses ingame, but we shall see in time.

Along with the new content and the new zone, the players are allowed boost one of their characters to Level 90 for free with adequate gear to go with it. Not to mention that every single race (except the Pandaren and maybe the Worgen and Goblin) are getting full updates to bring the character models and animations to a better state. At launch the only known ones to be in effect will be Dwarf, Orc and Gnome and possibly the Forsaken. Personally I’m super happy for this as the male Human and Night Elf models are ugly as hell with ham-wrists, and hopefully the metrosexualness of the male Blood Elves gets toned down a little (and in time are given beards. Why you no give beards Blizz?)

For the first time ever Warcraft will introduce the player housing system. Not just a house, an entire garrison! You can have your very own Keep somewhere on Draenor all to yourself. This is a big thing for roleplayers like myself that hated party crashers that would walk in on RP, take off all their clothes and offer sexual services for five dolla. Can’t even go to Goldshire anymore without that being prominent. Finally we get away from morons like them, and can have our own slice of land we can call our own, and even invite up to 39 people into your Garrison. In it you can have profession trainers, a mine and all sorts of other things to make it much more worthwhile of an investment. Personally, this is definitely much better of an investment than any daily quests ever were. You even hire followers and have them do missions and your mining for you!

At launch Warlords of Draenor will come with seven dungeons, four of which you go through while levelling up and the last three while at max level. Every dungeon will come with a normal, heroic and challenger difficulty. There will also be two raids; Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry with 16 bosses in total. The raid difficulties are being altered in such a way that Flexible will become Normal, Normal will become Heroic and Heroic will become the brand new Mythic difficulty. This is my ideas of how it will be, I’m not 100% sure. Mythic however is restricted to 20 people in the raid format. New world bosses will emerge across Draenor, and Upper Blackrock Spire will be updated much like Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep were.

Ashran is the new World PVP zone. Not a big fan of PvP myself but this certainly has promise for those who will play it. Based, siege-engines and the sort along with capturing the flag. So, all the previous PvP world areas, just a new area.

Possibly a controversial thing they plan to introduce, but something they should have had since the previous expansion. Number and item squishing, so now numbers are more manageable. During Pandaria any character at any time could have around 400,000 health and could do 200,000 damage in a single hit. Now, their health will be closer to 30,000 and dealing around 2,000 damage. We’ll see more on this as the expansion draws closer.

For now though, thats about all the information I know of to share with you all. Personally this expansion has me interested as I’ve said before, and when I likely play it I’ll likely do a review or just talk a bit on it. We’ll see. For now, thanks for reading. Eoin out!

Eoin "Spudd" O’ Mahony