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
_logo.jpg){kind=logo}
