8.3 Visions of N'zoth

Well, in case it wasn't apparent: N'zoth's the big bad and we're fighting him in the final BFA patch.

The patch will focus on a sort of otherworld where N'zoth's vision for the world is real, and which he attempts to infect Azeroth with. The result will be a lot of familiar locations rendered horrific and corrupted.

Let's talk major features:

New Raid: Ny'alotha, the Sleeping City

Ny'alotha is the Black Empire in its classic form, and will be the seat of N'zoth, where we fight him/it. This place looks pretty much exactly as I hoped and thought it would - all ziggurats and obelisks and horrible mutated monsters. I haven't been keeping up with raiding this expansion (I still haven't set foot in the Eternal Palace and barely saw any of Battle of Dazar'alor) but I'm going to try to get back into it for this. Hey, will we see Ilgynoth here? He did say that was where he was going.

New Feature: N'zoth Assaults

N'zoth is going to be attacking two major Titan facilities: Uldum and the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. These will work like the assaults in Legion and 8.1, though I'm sure the formula will be tweaked. One good note is that when the Vale isn't under assault, it's been returned to its beautiful, pre-4.4 state, sans Sha corruption.

New Feature: Horrific Visions

This might be the thing I'm most excited for: in what seems like a riff on the Deaths of Chromie scenario from Legion, this will be repeatable content that scales from one to five players (with no role requirements) in which we journey into N'zoth's horror-realm versions of Stormwind and Orgrimmar and try to defeat the monstrous creatures within. This will apparently tie into both a legendary cloak quest we do with Wrathion (that's three Legendary chains for him!) and some new Heart of Azeroth essences.

New Allied Races: Vulpera and Mechagnomes

People have been speculating on these two for ages, and now we have it confirmed that we'll be getting these two as allied races for the Horde and Alliance, respectively. Given that the Vulpera use, I think, the same basic skeleton as the goblins, they might count as the "goblin equivalent" allied race, meaning we only have Worgen, Undead, and Pandaren to get variants. You'll need to have exalted with the Voldun'ai and Mechagon respectively to unlock these.

Heritage Armor for Goblins and Worgen:

Goblins are going to be getting some very explosion/junker themed armor. Worgen are going to get some (kind of tacky with so much gold) armor that obviously has a top hat.

Auction House Rework

The AH is getting a nice rework that basically eliminates those annoying one-stacks of materials. Now, you can just choose how much of a given thing you want to buy at a price-per-unit and it'll take the correct amount at that price. Meaning if you're selling a stack, the buyer can purchase a portion of it for the proper amount, or if you're buying a large amount, you can just purchase it all at once, even from multiple sellers. Seems really good.

I've got to say that I'm pretty excited for this patch. I do recognize some peoples' concerns that Ny'alotha could have been a whole expansion, like Argus, but I'm really glad to be getting a real Old God nightmare phase to this expansion - something I actually wish had been more prominent from the beginning.

I do think that this probably puts the notion of a Black Empire expansion as 9.0 as less likely. I keep hearing rumors that Blizzard folks have privately been very hyped for this year's Blizzcon, and I'm extremely curious to see what the next expansion will be. But at the very least, I am actually quite excited about 8.3, and it's good to finally see what it'll be about.