Darkshore will see its own new conflict between the Forsaken and the Night Elves. Like the Arathi Highlands Warfront, this will be a cyclical event with the Alliance and Horde alternating in their possession of the area.
I hopped on the PTR to check them out (naturally taking my Demon Hunter, which is my primary Night Elf character, as the testing phase is currently on the Alliance side to attack.)
Mechanically, the warfront works in a similar way, involving the capture of important locations and the defeat of local boss-enemies that need to be beaten in order to secure the territory.
I will mention this big disclaimer - the graphics were going totally insane while I was playing, giving me something akin to Google's Deep Dream combined with a Kafka-esque level of "censorship" (much of the text I saw was blanked out - obviously not intentional.)
Anyway, one other thing that's interesting is that claiming your initial base actually happens about a quarter or third of your way into the Warfront. Instead, we arrived via ship at the ruins of Auberdine and fought our way to Bashal-aran, where we made our camp. The mine was actually to the south and occupied by Murlocs and Naga while the lumber mill was north, putting it more along the way toward the Horde's base.
In true Night Elf style, collecting lumber worked differently - once the lumber mill is captured, you'll start to get wood piling up in your side's coffers just like iron. I really wonder if this will work differently for the Horde side, given that the Undead units in Warcraft III certainly cut down wood.
Anyway, while lumber and iron are still your main resources, it seems that lumber will be more important, and used to summon troops. Likewise, getting a storm essence and turning it in at your altar will now transform you into a different form - Night Elves seem to get Keepers of the Grove, Dryads, or Faerie Dragons, who seem to be built for tanking, dps, or healing respectively.
Ultimately, the Alliance pushes north toward Lor'danel and then eventually assaults an offshore platform where the enemy boss is located - you can commandeer Forsaken bats you've knocked down or hop on Hippogryphs to destroy the boats protecting the platform.
While our "boss" character was Maiev, the boss for the Forsaken side was a character I will consider under spoiler protections now. The Horde units we fought seemed to be primarily Forsaken and Goblin, so I could imagine Nathanos and perhaps some Goblin character as other bosses.
Given the insanity of the graphics on the PTR (I wonder if it just hadn't finished downloading?) I didn't get a great chance to check out the environments. To my mind, it felt a little more of a narrow channel to fight toward the enemy base, in contrast with the very clear (and MOBA-like) three rows that the Arathi Warfront has.
We also don't have the new gear in the PTR - it's currently awarding the same stuff we got from Arathi - so I wasn't able to browse the new looks (I think I'll likely be more into the Horde looks this time around, largely because I like the Forsaken aesthetic a lot. Good thing unlocking one appearance gives you the one for the other faction!)
I do think they should consider making higher difficulty versions of these as well as perhaps making battlegrounds based on them - given the ability for regions to go back and forth, it wouldn't be too hard to imagine just starting with each base and the middle regions uncontrolled. But I also think I need to run the Darkshore war front again once or twice (and with sane graphics) to get a better sense of just how different they're willing to let these get.
No comments:
Post a Comment