I was out of pocket most of yesterday so I wasn’t able to catch all of the livestream events as they happened. I’m caught up now, and boy did we get a lot of great information, of which the launch date was only one item.
The Launch Date
Warlords of Draenor will launch on November 13th, 2014. I don’t think this is any real surprise. I pretty much predicted this time frame here. The only thing that surprised me was the Thursday launch and not the following Tuesday.
I’ll actually be out of town opening weekend, so a Tuesday launch would have been better for me, but at least we know it’s finally coming.
Hunters and Beta
In that same post I also said that Hunters were in the numbers tuning phase, and this is indeed the case.
@gameshunter Biggest buff: Black Arrow damage increased by ~200%. (And yes, PvPers, we’re discussing dispel protection for it. Relax.)
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) August 13, 2014
All of the major abilities, synergy, rotation work is done. It’s just a matter of seeing how Beast Mastery, Marksmanship and Survival balance out, and if there will be a dominant PvE spec that we’ll all flock to in November. Right now Beast Mastery has the edge.
All of the class changes will go live in 6.0 which will be on the PTR soon.
Patch 6.0
If you’re not in the beta the PTR will be a great way to see many of the changes coming in Warlords of Draenor. You won’t get to go to Draenor and see the new zones or level. You will get to test the Hunter changes, minus the level 100 talents. This includes item squish, and new pets and buffs.
You’ll also get to test Siege of Orgrimmar with new abilities and the Mythic raid size.
Mythic SoO
No release date was announced for 6.0, but I’m guessing September 30th. This is important to know, because as I said the raid changes will go into affect and apply to Siege of Orgrimmar.
This mean that Mythic (formerly known as Heroic) will require 20 players.
I’m currently in a 10-man group that’s progressing through the content. We’re 10/14 and ready to work on Thok. That gives us around seven weeks to make additional progress.
Once 6.0 hits I imagine our group will stop and I’ll have to hit OpenRaid to progress further. That may not be the worst option though.
Cinematic and Lords of War
The Warlords cinematic was terrific. I think it’s my favorite thus far. It’s hard to say because they’re all good, and this is the newest, so it’s easy to say I like it best. If I had to rank them, I’d put them in this order.
- Warlords of Draenor
- Wrath of the Lich King
- Mists of Pandaria
- Cataclysm
- Original
- The Burning Crusade
That’s my rank order, but again, they’re all quite good.
The Lords of War was an unexpected surprise. I was kind of hoping that it would be terrible so I could write things like “Lords of War? More like Lords of Snore!”, or “Lords of Bore”. It was very entertaining and I can’t wait to see more of these.
My only issue is that in order to get the whole story of what is happening you have to play through the story of Mists of Pandaria, focusing on the Alliance, Horde and Garrosh.
You really should read War Crimes as it picks up on the events after Siege of Orgrimmar. You need to watch the cinematic, and read the Gul’dan comic to fill in some other gaps on the formation of the Iron Horde and ultimately lead up to the pre-expansion questline and the Tanaan Jungle intro.
I think Blizzard is telling a good story here, but I feel like it’s spread out, and can be confusing if you don’t get all the pieces.
Final Thoughts
Yesterday was an exciting day for World of Warcraft. We got quality information and there’s a lot to look forward to.
Yes three months is still a long time to wait for the expansion, but we’ll get 6.0 in a little over a month, and you can always experience it on the PTR which should be here soon.
There’s light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not an oncoming train. The wait is almost over.
I picked up the audiobook of Warcrimes the other day, and have been listening to it on my ride to work every morning (which gives me an hour to an hour and a half, depending on how lazy I feel, each day). It’s better than I expected, and is really getting me much more excited for the warlords lore. I plan to, at your recommendation, get the Rise of the Horde next.
Without getting into too much spoiler area, Rise of the Horde is a good read because it’s about what happens on Draenor during the same time period we’ll be dealing with in Warlords.
Rise is about what did happen, and Warlords let’s you see how things happen differently.
“All of the major abilities, synergy, rotation work is done.”
That’s a huge letdown. I’ve been hearing almost nothing but negativity about SV and MM gameplay. A Chimera-Aimed shot interaction would have been so simple and seemed so obvious. It’s unfortunate because WoD as a whole looks great but I’m definitely considering a reroll.