8.1 Predictions

Tomorrow (technically today) we're getting a developer stream with news about what is coming for WoW.

Given that we're about a month into Battle for Azeroth, with the mythic race closing in on downing G'huun, there's an open question about just what we have to expect for the rest of the expansion.

So far the only confirmed information they've told us is that Azshara will be the Gul'dan of this expansion - the boss of its first major raid (though again, without tier sets, the line between major and minor raids is blurred.)

What do we expect and want from 8.1?

Longform Quest Content:

The Dusk Lily rebellion within Suramar was a masterpiece of max-level quest content. Even with max-level zones like the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, we had never seen a zone dedicated so much to storytelling for players who were already geared through mythic dungeons and raids. This was an opportunity for players who were already feeling badass from all their purple treasures to then engage in a story that was more thorough and developed even than quests in leveling zones.

It seemed a great model moving forward, but stuff like the War Campaign has felt like a step backward to things like the great-for-its-time Landfall campaign in 5.1.

So getting some real story in there would feel quite good.

New Zone:

While I do feel we ought to have at least one raid in Kul Tiras, I also feel that we really ought to be able to see Nazjatar if we're going to be fighting Azshara. Unless she escapes to headline a separate raid later on, I really want to fight the Queen on her home turf to make it official.

With this zone would presumably come a new faction, new world quests, and hopefully new story content (maybe that longform stuff I just talked about.)

Kul Tirans and Zandalari Playable:

This is something they really shouldn't wait on too much. I suspect they'll be attainable in the patch, but we have yet to figure out what the requirements would be. I actually think that doing the Zandalar Forever and Pride of Kul Tiras chains ought to be sufficient to make them members in good standing of their respective factions, with perhaps exalted status with Zandalari Empire and Proudmoore Admiralty as their associated factions. I think a separate rep grind would be overly burdensome, though I do think there's a possibility that they'll require all three of the zone-affiliated factions, even if I think that's a bit extreme.

Second Warfront:

Though their rollout was controversial and maybe not too well-timed (giving the Horde a head start on filling out their gear may not have actually had a big effect on the Mythic race, but it doesn't feel great) and there are legitimate questions about their place in the game's overall structure, but I do think they're a fun system that will hopefully show some variety as we get new places to fight over.

I'd love to see new assets as well, rather than re-using garrison ones. If we get a Barrens warfront, maybe a Tauren-vs-Dwarf look?

Some Rework of Azerite Armor:

Azerite Armor is, I think, one of those features that's a bit of a noble failure. It's not like Garrisons, which were sort of the opposite of what players wanted out of them, but it also doesn't excite in the same way that, say, Artifact weapons did. As a replacement for Artifacts, Legendaries, and Tier Sets, they're seriously lacking.

I don't really know how to fix them, but I imagine Blizzard will try, as they're clearly one of the expansion's key features and what that isn't working out in a way that players into, it's a big problem for the expansion.

A Clash Between Zandalar and Kul Tiras:

Apart from a comment in one Horde quest where a Zandalari Troll refers to a Mogu villain as a "worse slaver than the Kul Tirans," despite no evidence within Kul Tiras I've seen that Kul Tirans engage in slavery, there's not much of a conflict between these two naval powers seen in-game. Now that each is part of the two major factions, it seems like we're going to have to have some kind of massive naval battle.

The Horde has engaged in a campaign to instill fear in Kul Tiras and punish them for associating with the Alliance (an act that I think has just pushed them farther into the Alliance's arms) while the Alliance has been engaging in sabotage and targeting high-level Horde leaders in order to subvert their capabilities. I haven't finished the Horde war campaign, but the Alliance one ends with the planting of explosives on major ships in the preparation for an assault on Dazar'alor. The Horde one, as I've read about, appears to involve securing the means to destroy Boralus. It seems to me that these attacks must happen, though I also feel that neither should actually succeed, given how we just got these hubs.

A Hint at What's To Come:

Like Xavius, G'huun does not appear to have a cinematic for his death. Though end-boss cinematics started with Wrath, Legion was the first to have one after every tier-boss. If Azshara is truly the Gul'dan of this expansion, though, we should get a big glossy cinematic to play after her defeat, and that is going to give us a much better idea of where the expansion is going.

There are of course two obvious directions for BFA to go - one that really does focus on the faction war as advertised, and the other that this writer is more excited for, which is a big showdown with master manipulator and ancient primordial evil N'zoth. If N'zoth always managed to turn his defeats into victories, what might the death (or at least defeat) of Azshara do to benefit him?

The Fate of Dazar

The Zandalari Empire was the first true Troll civilization on Azeroth, making it, most likely, the first humanoid civilization on the planet. It was founded by a troll named Dazar, and we see his name pop up a lot in Zandalari. Zuldazar follows the conventions of other imperial capitals like Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman, and the actual urban center of Zuldazar is Dazar'alor, similar to Jintha'alor in the Hinterlands, another stepped settlement. Finally, Atal'dazar is a hidden city of gold in which Dazar's tomb, known as King's Rest, sits. Atal as a prefix appears to denote some sort of high status, like the Atal'ai priests who infamously summoned the evil Loa Hakkar to Zul'Gurub.

In a lot of ways, Zandalar, which was once not an island but a mountain, prior to the flooding that followed the Sundering, is sort of a parallel with Mount Hyjal. Whereas Hyjal is a place where the Night Elves' Ancients gathered, Zandalar is a central meeting point for many Troll Loa.

And given that the Night Elves are descended from Trolls and the Ancients and most Loa are under the umbrella term of "Wild Gods," the two might actually be functionally identical.

Dazar apparently was a great reformer amongst the Trolls. Prior to his intervention, it seems as if the Trolls were largely dominated by the kind of depravity that exists now amongst the Blood Trolls of Nazmir. This culture of barbarism is all a result of the corruption of G'huun, an Old God or Old God-like entity that the Titans had trapped within Uldir for study.

In Battle for Azeroth, the Prophet Zul is revealed to be a servant of G'huun, coordinating the assault by the Blood Trolls, the releasing of Mythrax, and a plot to overthrow King Rastakhan.

After stabbing the King nearly to death and then falling to him in a battle that nevertheless ends in the successful destruction of the Grand Seal - the last piece of Titan equipment that was keeping Uldir running, and around which the urban center of Dazar'alor had been built, Zul seems to be plenty active for a dead guy.

See, a lot of the Troll plots we've had in prior expansions have all been paying off in Zandalar. Not only were Shadra and Rezan sacrificed for power in the same manner that the Drakkari had done to their Loa, but Zul also retained the rituals that his lieutenants had used to raise Lei Shen, the Thunder King, from the dead back in Mists of Pandaria.

Using this ritual, Zul raised Dazar, the First King of Zandalar, as his minion.

We fight him as the final boss in King's Rest.

But here's what's interesting: Dazar is not dead at the end of it. We fight him enough to break him out of his mind-control, at which point he ceases his attacks and becomes friendly. He thanks us for freeing him from Zul's influence and of course offers us a nice box of loot for out troubles.

But that means that the profoundly ancient King Dazar is now... well, not alive exactly, but he's around.

What does that mean for Zandalar? I imagine they're not going to just hand him the crown back, and Rastakhan won't just go back to being a prince. But this is a guy who existed long before the Sundering and probably before the Night Elves even existed.

What might we learn from Dazar? And what might he think about the world he has been awakened into?

Furthermore, what relationship might he have with Bwonsamdi? He's undead, but also, does Rastakhan's deal with the Loa of Death go in both directions? He's bound his line to Bwonsamdi, which seems to force Talanji into the deal. But what of Dazar? Is Rastakhan his direct descendant?

Basically, I want to know if we just leave Dazar to go back to dead-sleep after we leave or if he'll play a part in the future (or perhaps another expansion that, I don't know, maybe has a bit of a "death and undeath" theme?)

King's Rest could have easily ended with us just killing Dazar. Maybe he even thanks us in his dying breaths. But it doesn't. It specifically leaves him kneeling, winded from the fight but not dead.

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist

Well, I'm trying to be better about actually reading through the adventure books I get - I've developed an obsessive need to collect 5e books, but there are a couple, like Storm King's Thunder, that I haven't gotten around to actually reading.

I have no idea when I'd be able to run something in anything other than my grand homebrew setting campaign (or my friend's own homebrew setting) so these are largely for inspiration.

Dragon Heist, the first part of a two-part Waterdeep adventure, is only designed to get players to level 5. But the emphasis is a lot more on living in a city, encouraging players to find nonviolent solutions to problems and kind of detailing what life is like in the Forgotten Realms' classic metropolis.

I definitely think that when you play D&D, I'd guess most players start off with the feeling of wanting to just smash monsters, but once you get into the swing of the roleplaying, just imagining a bustling world that your character inhabits starts to feel pretty appealing.

There's a great deal of variability in this book, with a number of factions you can join that give quick side-quests, and a large part of it involves the party receiving the deed to a tavern that they can use as their base of operations, with plots involving business rivals and a poltergeist who can actually become a friend if you run the business well.

I've just gotten to a chapter that seems to really start things off in earnest, but I really have to say that I love the idea of a campaign set in a giant city. It should pair quite nicely with the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, potentially transferring the setting and replacing, say, the Zhentarim with House Dimir, the Order of the Gauntlet with the Boros Legion, and other similar equivalents.

The second part, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, is the first 5e adventure book that will take players all the way to level 20. This is one massive dungeon, with several layers that have different themes and ecologies.

So, N'zoth is the Final Boss, Right?

I hit revered with Champions of Azeroth today on my main, with only those turtle-folk left before I get Pathfinder part 1, and the quest to get the last (unless it's second to last?) empowerment is fairly interest:

Spoilers to follow.

How Far Back Have the Infinites Gone?

We killed Murozond in the 5-player dungeon End Time way back in the last patch of Cataclysm. That's four expansions ago, and while there have been some out-of-game references to the Infinite Dragonflight, they've largely dried up as a visible threat. Even in the alternate-universe/time-travel expansion, we barely heard a peep from them - the only reference to them was that Kairozdormu seemed to be on the way to becoming such a dragon had Garrosh not killed him.

Indeed, I've got on record saying that I think Warlords' biggest mistake was shying away from the complicated time-travel aspects of the expansion - we didn't see a single person encounter their 35-year-younger doppelganger, for example. Velen died, but it wasn't our Velen, who then got to play an important role in Legion.

Warcraft usually has big threats function as a pretty top-down organization. The Qiraji ceased to be much of anything once we killed C'thun. The Legion seems like it's unlikely to ever be nearly as big of a threat as it was prior to Sargeras' capture.

So it would stand to reason that people might feel that Murozond's death meant the Infinites were no longer a problem.

But you never know with a time traveler.

See, time travel narratives mean that we don't all necessarily have the same sequence of events, and causality can be messed up. We first learned of the Infinites in Burning Crusade, and fought them for three expansions, which in story terms comes out to maybe three years. But Nozdormu is still Nozdormu at the point in time where we are. Sure, given that we've seen at least one alternate timeline (not to mention the End Time, which was a cancelled future where Deathwing had enacted the Hour of Twilight, is certainly "alternate,") it could be that Murozond is not actually "our" Nozdormu. Still, Nozdormu at least seems to think that that's his fate, and is in the very difficult position of having to plan for his own descent into madness and chaos - plans that his future, corrupted self, will have full awareness of.

We have his corruption to look forward to, though we don't know how long from now that will be.

But there's another problem to worry about as well:

How far back to they go?

Again, they're time travelers, which means that even if the Infinite Dragonflight hasn't even been created yet, our past is presumably already infested with them. We've seen them pop up in several points already (the early Caverns of Time dungeons,) but who knows? Maybe there were Infinite Dragons visiting the Black Empire. Maybe they fought against the early Troll empires. They could have set plots in motion eons ago and then caught up with them far later without having to wait.

Here's a tin-foil hat, sort of cribbed from folks like Bellular Gaming and other WoW commentators.

There is apparently a separate Loa of death than Bwonsamdi - possibly his "boss," and also someone who has been put forth as a potential candidate for the Shadowlands entity that took Odyn's eye and taught him how to make the Val'kyr.

This loa is named Mueh'zalla, and is worshipped by the Sandfury/Farraki Trolls (the desert trolls of Tanaris who live in Zul'farrak - represented by the evil General Jak'razet in Vol'dun.) Among his many names, one is the "Son of Time."

Now, that could easily just be a classic connection between gods and symbols of death being associated with time as well.

But let's make the biggest logical reach: Doesn't Mueh'zalla kind of sound like Murozond?

Oh, it's a stretch for sure, which makes this post a clear tin-foil hat one. But if we want to take what is very likely just a coincidental similarity between the two names and read way too into it, what could it imply?

Well, first, we know Odyn didn't trust the dragons, which is why he wanted the Valarjar to serve their function instead, so why would he treat with an evil dragon (or are the infinites chaotic neutral?) Perhaps Murozond was merely disguised - something dragons certainly have a propensity for.

Also, the Infinites have generally been linked with the Old Gods and the Void, whereas this entity seems more of a death-domain being. On the other hand, we've definitely seen Void-related creatures engaging in Necromancy, so it's not unthinkable.

The reason I think this clicks so well is that Odyn's sacrifice of his eye is such an ancient thing, and one that had some nasty repercussions for the world. Helya was able to trap Odyn, which likely led to the corruption of Loken and the chaos in Ulduar that left the world's Titan facilities basically unmanned for tens of thousands of years. So much of Azeroth's history would probably have been very different had Odyn not turned Helya into a Val'kyr, and that seems like the perfect sweet spot for a time-traveling agent of chaos to screw things up.

We're at a point where we're inclined to think of Odyn's actions as so far in the past that it's hard to imagine things going differently. But to a time-traveler, the ancient past's immutability is a falsehood.

Was there a different timeline? One without a Sundering? One in which the Titanforged never fell to the Curse of Flesh?

And here's a tricky question: are we better or worse off?

Warfronts are the Ultimate Catch-Up Mechanic - Provided Your Faction is Attacking

My Rogue hit 120 yesterday and he's already at 325 item level, a perfectly respectable starting point for mythic dungeons and what I would assume is the minimum for LFR (opening tomorrow!)

And I have Warfronts to thank! Between the one-shot quest (presumably coming back each cycle) to get a 370 piece, you get a guaranteed 340 drop every time you complete it. This can include weapon drops, like the 345 warforged dagger I got on my latest run.

The Warfronts take time - using my Lightning Shield on my shaman (which persists through death) as a kind of timer, I found that his last warfront took about 35 minutes - though that's not so bad compared to, say, a mythic dungeon where you aren't guaranteed any drop.

Players are starting to get a feel for the strategy (I imagine a quicker learning curve for the Alliance thanks to those of us who play both sides,) and my most recent run worked like a well-oiled conquest machine.

Naturally, as purely random gear, you might wind up with duplicates (my Shaman on his most recent one got the same belt, though with a gem slot,) and that's obviously going to happen more frequently the more pieces of gear you get.

The timing of this release just before Mythic Uldir comes out does raise some eyebrows, giving Horde guilds a serious leg up on the Alliance in the race for world first, though I'll grant that the past few weeks of mythic dungeons probably allowed most hardcore raiders to get a baseline item level near 340 - the only real issue I see is the guaranteed 370 piece versus a chance at such a thing off Doom's Howl (the Horde azerite tank that Alliance players get to fight when they have control of the zone. The Alliance one that Horde players fight is called Lion's Roar, but they are, I believe, mechanically identical.)

I'm very curious to see how things change as we get different commanders. Currently, the Horde is led by Eitrigg while the Alliance has Danath Trollbane (makes sense - Stromgarde is Trollbane's seat, and this starts us off with a classic Orcs versus Humans feel.) I'm hoping that the different commanders bring significant changes to the units available, rather than being purely cosmetic.

They've talked about having other Warfronts over the course of the expansion. I think that as a kind of PvE battleground, the system has legs, and at least for now the rewards are appealing. I would want to see subsequent Warfronts have different mechanics - capturing important locations and ultimately pushing to the enemy fort is fine, but I'd want to see different things to spend resources on.

Once we're in the thick of the current content, I think the cycle thing won't be as much of an issue, though it'll be tough for those who can't play all that much to find that when they have some free time, their faction is playing the waiting game.

Given the fact that the warfront is an instance, I don't see why we might not eventually have one that is open to both sides - though I get that by putting it on this cycle, it makes it a bit more special.

One thing I'd be concerned about is if, a month or two from now, when enthusiasm for it dies down a bit, the cycle might slow to a crawl as people are less invested in the turn-ins. I hope they'll reduce the amount of materiel (not a typo - it's like material but for military purposes) required to unlock the warfront.

Warfronts!

Well, under Eitrigg's leadership, my Tauren Shaman fought against Danath Trollbane and defeated him, claiming Arathi Highlands for the Horde, surely for generations to come.

Yes, Wafronts! They're live, at least if you're Horde. While the Alliance has had the week to farm rares safely without being PvP flagged (though if you're not in war mode, you're mostly going to come across members of the opposite faction who don't want to kill you, so I was able to do so on the Shaman prior to my Warfront experience.)

For the intro quest (which I assume is a one-time thing, but I could be wrong,) I got a lovely 1-handed axe that warforged up from 370 to 375 - quite an upgrade over my old 310 mace. For completing the Warfront itself, I got a pair of 350 pants, and this, to me, suggests that doing repeated Warfronts in the same week could be very profitable, loot-wise, assuming that this loot is the norm.

The Warfront itself is a really cool idea that I think is implemented... ok.

Largely it feels a lot like the big "event" quests like the Battle for Lordaeron at the expansion's launch. The scenario starts with your fort in shambles, and you have to first secure it and then the nearby lumber mill and mine. For lower-geared characters, you can actually focus a great deal more on farming resources and buying upgrades for the fort while the better-geared engage the enemy. There's a sort of hybrid MOBA RTS feel to it, as you can summon troops to follow you around (two at a time per person.) Capturing various important locations along the way will give you access to new troops and NPCs to help you, and you'll gradually capture each of the key locations between you and the other fort. Once these are all under your control, you'll need to bombard the enemy fort with your siege engines (Demolishers for Horde, I'd assume Siege Tanks for Alliance) until you can make it into the fortress proper. Then it's something of a mad rush to take out the enemy commander, which wins you the battle, giving you an Island Expedition-like victory screen where you get your reward.

There isn't a ton of coordination required - there aren't a ton of enemies who seem to really require a tank as such. It seems that you eventually get to a point where you can't do much to upgrade your fort, so those contributing in the back might have to start pushing toward the front after a while.

I imagine you'll need to have most of the 20-player raid AFK in order to lose, given that your own troops provide a decent amount of resistance to the enemy faction's assaults. Still, the first time was fun, and the rewards are certainly enticing (though I always think a feature should survive on its intrinsic, rather than extrinsic fun.)

I had fun, but I also do wonder how fun it will be to do these over and over. I'll probably run it on my Shaman once again to see if you keep getting 350 gear - I kind of hope you don't, as grinding these over and over to fully kit out your character is probably not the best way to experience them.

Still, as something to do every other week, roughly, it feels pretty good. I am a little concerned that they're going to make the Alliance wait nearly three weeks for it (and as people have pointed out, giving only Horde raiders some guaranteed heroic-Uldir-level gear right before Mythic Uldir opens up is maybe not a great thing for the progression race.)