Thursday, August 14, 2014

Warlords' Final Boss Revealed Plus More Details

I'm not going to put this in a spoiler-alert cut, because frankly, if I did, it would suggest a more surprising answer to the question: who is the boss of Warlords of Draenor?

The answer is the simplest one. Who is on the box art? Who is the main figure of the cinematic? Who's in the center of the reveal-poster? (And in case you were wondering, yes, I'm padding this paragraph so that if people want to freak out about spoilers, this way they'll have had to read through the whole paragraph, which makes it their fault.) Grommash Hellscream is the expansion's final boss, and let me just say here: well duh.

I always felt this held a strong possibility, and seemed to be the way that things were going, but I was sort of hoping for a twist. Unfortunately, I think that Warlords of Draenor's plot has been as straightforward as possible, to the point of being predictable. Now, I understand that a straightforward plot can be fine - look at Star Wars (the movie, as opposed to the series of movies, which got a little more complicated, and then stupid when they did the prequels.) But nuance was what made me interested in World of Warcraft in the first place, and unfortunately, the whole narrative of the Iron Horde removes a lot of the nuance from the Orcs as a people (one could make the argument that by revealing it wasn't just demon blood that turned the Orcs evil, you are adding nuance, but so far there doesn't seem to be a lot of reflection on that in the quests - though granted I've stuck mostly to the Alliance side in the Beta.)

Now, this is all somewhat pessimistic prognosticating, and the "Iron Citadel" final raid that I imagine basically looking like the Underhold in Orgrimmar or another Blackrock Foundry may not be anything like what I assume it will be. It might not even be Draenor B's Hellfire Citadel equivalent. And Gul'dan might wind up tempting Grommash with the blood of... well, some other demon, because Mannoroth is a little overdrawn at the blood bank right now.

So what's in the middle, then?

Well, Blizzard was very careful to use language that made no promises. In fact, I think technically they didn't even promise Tanaan (though that's a guarantee - the zone is clearly there and partially in-game, only inaccessible after the Dark Portal starting experience.

So while none of these are guarantees, here are some of the possibilities:

Tanaan Jungle and Farahlon will probably be added in as new zones.

New dungeons could come in new patches, though whether these will be truly new dungeons, or if they'll implement the "Timewalker" system (which will boost old dungeons to max level... perhaps the rationale behind the revamps to Blackfathom Deeps and Razorfen Downs?) My hope is both! But we'll see.

On flying, they say they'll be taking player feedback into account. If we want it by 6.1, it'll be there. If people are happy without it, it'll stay out. This will, I'm certain, be a divisive issue, but my recommendation would be to build, say, Farahlon and Tanaan around flight, the way Icecrown and Storm Peaks were. As the current leveling zones stand, I'm fine with flight being restricted until level 100, as they are clearly built with ground mounts in mind.

There will be a legendary chain similar to the cloak that you begin at level 99, and will grant a ring. The ring will have a visual effect (like that Black Diamond Ring from ZG, though presumably fancier.) They have said that the existence of the ring will not rule out tier-specific legendary weapons of the old style.

They're hoping to get a transmog system where you save the appearance of your gear to a collection and never have to worry about deleting it. This will not be in 6.0, but it's something they're working on. Very happy about this.

As usual, they're planning to go for an accelerated patch cycle, but they've acknowledged that it depends on how long the next expansion takes. They say that every raid tier will get a minimum of four months, which I think is wise. (No more tragedy of Trial of the Crusader obsoleting Ulduar.) There was some comment about maybe not doing multiple raid content patches, which I don't understand, and will have to look into a little more (there will definitely be at least one more raid patch, but I wonder if they mean there might only be two raid tiers, but with another expansion coming out the following year? Would that be good or bad for the game? This is PURE SPECULATION so don't freak out about it.)

They're not finalized on the patch cycle, because they want to take into account player feedback. Sounds good (just don't overcorrect!)

There are no plans for a new battleground, but they do want to make the new version of the Nagrand arena into an arena for Arena.

Garrisons will probably be getting some tweaks and upgrades as the patches roll out. Not exactly shocking, but good news.

There aren't any class quests planned, though that is not all that surprising. Green fire was a very specific thing that Warlocks had been asking for for a long time, and the fact that it was more than just a glyph or something is really amazing (honestly, I think the green fire quest chain is just pure fan service in the best way.)

Oh, and last but certainly not least - they assure people that there will be ample time to get to level 100 before the anniversary celebrations of Molten Core and Tarren Mill v Southshore go away. I hope that means like, two months (though I assume the Core Hound mount will be account-wide.)

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