WoW in 2014

Happy New Year!

With our favorite MMO about to enter its tenth year, we have a lot to look forward to, and a lot to look back at.

The biggest news we learned in the past couple months is the nature of WoW's fifth expansion, Warlords of Draenor. The expansion was announced in the beginning of November, and we're all hoping that it can arrive sooner than the pre-established pattern of expansion releases. We have not had a Beta start up yet, but the signs point toward at least some new information and signs of progress to be unveiled fairly soon.

With Mists of Pandaria essentially complete - the final boss is out and has been downed on heroic by the elite guilds, the next non-holiday event we're going to see in-game is the pre-expansion event.

After pre-expansion events that grew bigger and bigger with each expansion (I don't know why people seem to forget the Elemental Invasion before Cataclysm, with the four bosses that popped up, along with the efforts you took to infiltrate the doomsday cult that turned out to be Twilight's Hammer,) Mists was a little disappointing in that we only got a preview of the Scenario system and witnessed Theramore's Fall.

It appears that WoD will have a true opening event that may even involve an early sojourn into this strange, alternate Draenor (don't hold me to that.)

We don't know what the release date will be for the expansion, but I'm hoping the Beta will start soon. One reason to be a little optimistic is that, because there will not be a new class or any new low-level zones (which, if you count the DK-starting experience and its slice of Eastern Plaguelands as a zone, is a first for WoW,) they may have less balancing and development to work on.

While it has essentially no bearing on gameplay, one of the exciting new features of WoD is that the original eight vanilla races and the two BC ones will be getting updated character models. So far, I've liked everything I've seen of these. We can probably expect the first of these models to be rolled out with the pre-expansion patch. We are not guaranteed to get all of them at once, but it looks pretty likely that the Orcs, Dwarves, and Gnomes will be among the first to come out. As of yet, we still have not seen Humans, Trolls, Night Elves, Blood Elves, or Draenei at all, but I think that the theoretical upcoming burst of info will likely include at least a quick preview of some of these.

I think the real challenge for Blizzard this year is going to be to get Warlords of Draenor out in the first half. While I don't remember when Vanilla was released, I do remember that BC came out in January of '07, Wrath in November of '08, Cataclysm in December of '10, and Mists came out in September of '12. The expansions have, thus, essentially come out ever two years, usually releasing in the last few months of the year (BC took a little longer.) While Blizzard has said they want to release things more quickly (and despite the fact that 5.4 had already gone live months before WoD was even announced) they're beginning to run out of time. If they want to get WoD out before September, they're going to have to get the Beta started within the next month or two (assuming the Beta lasts six months, which - and correct me if I'm wrong - is how long it usually lasts.)

Until then, we'll be farming SoO.