Going In Depth with D&D/WoW Crossover

 Ok, let's get the details straight here:

Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft is the upcoming product coming in November that acts as a setting book for D&D using the world of Azeroth.

Subclasses:

Initially I misunderstood and though they would be giving us all the classes from WoW as full and independent classes, but apparently there are instead several subclasses, some of which aid in re-skinning an existing class to function as the equivalent in D&D.

Oath of the Ebon Blade and Oath of the Holy are two subclasses for the Paladin, the former letting you play as a WoW Death Knight (curious to see if it's akin to the "Oathbreaker" one we saw in UA) and the other being presumably a more healing-oriented Paladin like WoW's Paladin healing spec.

The Demon Hunter is a new ranger subclass. In WoW, Demon Hunters are those who decided to fight hellfire with hellfire, and took on demonic magic into themselves to fight against those evil fiends. Hopefully this will take some cues from the Hollow Warden to be a bit stronger than your typical Ranger subclasses.

Clerics get the Shadow and Discipline domains, based on the specs for WoW's Priest class. Shadow is all about blasting your enemies' minds with nightmarish psychic damage and communing with the eldritch power of the Void, while Discipline is built around healing your allies by striking your enemies, and has a bit of a "fire and brimstone" flavor to it. (Actually, I think this kind of flavoring isn't there as much anymore. It's a bit more of a mix of light and dark, primarily healing with the light and harming with shadow).

Barbarians will get the Path of the Elements subclass, which presumably is meant to give us the equivalent of an Enhancement Shaman, who sling elemental magic around them as they fight up in melee.

Then, three existing subclasses (maybe I'm wrong about the Oathbreaker/Ebon Blade connection) are the Path of the Spiritual Guardian Barbarian (which has a less obvious connection - I'd actually say this could also be an Enhancement Shaman - Shamans are literally people who commune with unseen spirits,) the Swashbuckler Rogue (equivalent to WoW's Outlaw Rogue) and the Warrior of Mystic Brews Monk (WoW's Brewmaster Monk).

Again, I actually think just making new subclasses is the more reasonable direction for this - adding Evokers, Shamans, Death Knights, and Demon Hunters as fully fledged new classes would be a lot. 

For species, there are apparently new "WoW-mapping" rules for 5 existing species (presumably Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, and Orcs) and then new ones for Dracthyr, Draenei, Earthen, Forsaken, Haranir, Mechagnome, Pandaren, Tauren, Troll, Vulpera, and Worgen. (Surprisingly no Goblin here, which technically haven't yet gotten a 5.5 version.)

There are going to be a whopping 60 new spells, which seem to all be player spells/abilities from WoW. Examples include Rune Strike (ok, actually, that's not a thing anymore,) Demon Spikes, Moonfire (here I thought that was just Moonbeam?) Also, naturally a bunch of magic items and such.

There's also evidently a profession system, which seems built around downtime activities, so I'm not sure how this will differ all that much from normal D&D crafting, but let me play an engineer.

There are evidently a crapton of monsters - 50 new monsters and 30 new "dungeon bosses," which I assume will be legendary creatures in line with the Horrors Within Darklords. I don't know if we have specifics, but I'd love to see Hogger as a legendary level 1 monster.

Seven classic (well, not all "Classic") dungeons are also included, revised to work as D&D dungeons. These are:

Azjol-Nerub (underground realm of creepy spider people who were absorbed into the undead Scourge)

Blackfathom Deeps (ancient elf ruins submerged in underwater caves and taken over by the apocalyptic Twilight's Hammer cult)

Deadmines (the headquarters of the Defias Gang, who seek to overthrow the government of the human capital of Stormwind)

Dire Maul (ancient Night Elf ruins taken over by ogres, ghosts, and ancient demons)

Onyxia's Lair (home to the evil and manipulative dragon who, fun fact, kind of engineered the animosity that led to the Defias Gang's war on Stormwind)

Scarlet Monastery (bastion of a group of crazed zealots whose fight against the undead has descended into paranoia and madness)

Shadowfang Keep (well, depending on if we're talking the original SFK or the post-Cataclysm one, it's either the castle occupied by the crazed archmage Arugal, who unleashed the werewolf-like Worgen upon the world, or it's occupied by a group of undead traitors to the Kingdom of Gilneas, who would rather sell out to the nation's enemies than acknowledge a kingdom mostly transformed into Worgen).

    I will say, I can't be upset by this. WoW has, of course, been a big influence on the way that I run D&D (my goblins basically always have Brooklyn accents, though this has also worked quite well in Ravnica - which you could argue was kind of an early in-house Universes Beyond). There's plenty of good genre cross-over, so it'll be very easy to pillage this content and use it in non-Azeroth-set campaigns.

I'm also eager to get my hands on some stat blocks: I want to see Murlocs and Abominations, and I'll be really curious to see what stat block they make for the Lich King (I think it ought to be higher-CR than a standard Lich, though perhaps in the low 20s to account for having a bunch of minions).

I was also quite encouraged by a lot of the UA stuff - the Mystic Brews monk, assuming it's an evolution of the "Intoxicated..." something something, which was itself built on the Druken Master, looked a lot of fun (specifcally the ability to brew various beverages that gave you effects, like blowing a breath of fire each round).

Naturally, some of the species could, in theory, be broadened out to be setting-agnostic. Tauren are Minotaurs, and the Lupin from Ravenloft could very easily stand in for Worgen. Mechagnomes aren't... quite Autognomes (think cybernetic gnomes rather than artificial gnomes).

But basically, this is a setting that I'm actually more familiar with than any established D&D setting, so it's aimed right at me, even if it has the stink of corporate synergy on it.