So the new WoW expansion is as expected, WoD: Warlords of Draenor or more accurately: Way Over Due. I really was not expecting to be this excited about the WoW expansion. Truth be told, I wasn’t even planning on returning to the game or buying it at all because let’s be honest; While the last two expansion packs have many good qualities (improved graphics, improved questing mechanics and flow, wider variety/more level cap activities), as a whole they have at least in my opinion, felt mediocre and too far removed from core lore of the Warcraft franchise, if the lore even matters anymore. WoW for me peaked in WotLK, which has been my favorite expansion by a huge margin.
As things may be, Blizzard announced exactly what they needed to announce in order to entice me back to WoW. So come WoD time, both Dave and I will be back in business! This will be the first expansion pack in which there will be no new races or classes; So that in theory should mean that the time and energy normally spent developing the new starter areas will be distributed elsewhere. I guess we will see. Things that I am really jazzed about
- Garrisons
I honestly did not think that player housing would ever happen. - Insta-90
I think that a lot of people romanticize the journey from level 1 to 90 and lose sight of the fact that for most of the player base, that so called journey was spread out over 9 years. Those 90 levels are a pretty daunting barrier when all that many new players want to do is play with their friends. I’m really interested in seeing how gear will be handled and if crafting/gathering professions will be factored in. You know what’s even more tedious than level a character from 1 to 90? Being level 90 and having to travel back to starting zones for the sake of having to pick weeds. - New character models
WAY overdue by at least 5 years but still very much welcome nonetheless. The fact that the environments have improved so much just further served to accentuate how out of date the character models were. Overall, I think the pictures and animations that have been shown so far look great and do a good job at capturing the feel of the original models. - 10 levels
I’ve never been much into leveling but the past two 5-level expansion packs have felt… I don’t know, not half-assed but, truncated? - Bloat removal
So far, there seems to be a lot of fat trimming with the announcement of Item Squish and the removal of reforging as well as the more useless gear stats. Also consolidating gear by having your items use your spec’s primary stat? Probably one of my favorite announcements thus far.
Regarding other BlizzCon announcements: HoTS may be the MOBA that I end up playing purely because of the fact that I am familiar with Blizzard’s franchise. Also, if blizzard is even mildly serious about eSports and the WoW arena they need to separate PvP and PvE abilities at a major level. Ultimately, I feel that both gameplay types would benefit from a change of that nature as balancing around both PvP and PvE simultaneously has never worked out all that well.