6.2 Patch Notes

Holy crap, here it is: Tanaan Jungle. And this strongly, strongly implies that Warlords of Draenor is wrapping up.

First: a link to the patch notes via MMO-Champion.

Details are extremely sketchy at this point - I'd expect that we're not going to see this go live for a few months - probably with the traditional summer second tier release.

Hellfire Citadel:

I called it! Hellfire Citadel will be the Tanaan Jungle raid, and likely the final raid of Warlord of Draenor. The raid will have a lucky 13 bosses. Confirmed on the list of bosses are Kilrogg Deadeye, Gorefiend, a reanimated Mannoroth and... Archimonde! Surprisingly no Gul'dan is mentioned, which makes my speculation-senses tingle. (Does that mean a third raid tier or Gul'dan as a recurring villain or perhaps we kill him outside of the raid... or maybe he's there anyway.)

Tanaan Jungle:

The zone is described as "open world questing," which I assume will be some blend of Timeless Isle and perhaps daily quests or a Garrison Campaign-type story series. We'll be trying to prevent the Legion from invading Azeroth.

Mythic Dungeons:

A new dungeon difficulty is being created explicitly to serve as an alternative form of progression to raiding. Mythic dungeons will be on a weekly lockout (but given that there are eight, you should still have stuff to do.) Sadly no word on actual new dungeons, but I think they might be working on the ones for the next expansion. Mythic Dungeons will reward 680 gear with the final boss having a chance to drop 700 level gear (presumably with the same Warforged/Sockets/Tertiaries as normal.)

Legendary Ring Completion:

The Legendary chain will reach its conclusion, which strongly implies that we're looking at the last raid tier (in fairness, we were able to complete the cloaks before Siege of Orgrimmar, but that was still in 5.4.)

Shipyard:

We'll be building shipyards at our garrison to assault Tanaan Jungle. Again, details are thin, but we'll be building ships and sending them on Naval Missions, which I assume will function similarly to follower missions but presumably give more up-to-date rewards.

This is all very cool, but I wouldn't get too excited - my summary here is about as detailed as the patch notes themselves are (though without the numbers-tuning class stuff,) which likely means that it'll be a good long while before any of this hits live.

Still, news of new stuff on the horizon is pretty good. Warlords is an expansion that I think started off very, very strong, but petered out quickly when it became clear that there wasn't much to do outside of raiding and hanging around our garrisons. The zone design and quests were great (well, I wasn't crazy about Gorgrond) but at this point it's been Foundry Foundry Foundry (I actually liked the aesthetic of Highmaul a lot more. Foundry felt a bit like Siege of Orgrimmar's Underhold 2.0, though Blackhand's 3-story fight was pretty inspired.)

The concern I have, though, is that this looks very much like a final patch. Especially given the Legendary chain coming to an end, I really don't think we're going to see more out of Warlords after 6.2. And that means that Blizzard had better be chugging along on expansion six. Admittedly, I think Blackrock Foundry hasn't totally worn out its welcome yet (though I might feel that more strongly if the place had had a more varied aesthetic - Throne of Thunder was a fantastic and recent example of how to do this) but I think WoW really needs more stuff to do outside. The Apexis Dailies aren't really rewarding, or maybe engaging enough.

I'll be eager to hear more details about the new features. Mythic dungeons aren't quite as exciting as Timewalker dungeons or just plain new ones, but they're at least a way to keep 5-player content relevant. The shipyard has the potential to be really cool - but only if we actually get to take the ships around on the sea. If it's just a new follower system where we have to level up new ships, that's not that great (and also is almost exactly what Assassin's Creed did.)