With Warlords of Draenor just around the bend, I'm ready to sit down with some hot pockets, ignore my phone calls, skip a few days of work and sleep, and grind baby grind. (I'm only doing a few of those). But I think this image does a great job of showing how hyped I am.
LET'S GET READY TO GO TO DRAENOR! ALL ABOARD THE HYPE TRAIN (choo choo)
I'm going to tell you things I'm looking forward to in the expansion after the jump.
(are you hyped yet?)
1.The stat squish. Probably my favorite change. For the uninitiated, prior to this expansion, the developers had a habit of increasing the numbers for each expansion in a dramatic expansion. It makes sense, the new gear shouldn't be only a little better than gear you've had for several months. However, it had gotten out of control. Look at it like this. In the first expansion you have a sword that does 10 damage. So in the next expansion, you want a more powerful sword, so you give a sword that does 100 damage, and it shows that you've gotten more stronger. SO then that expansion ends, and you need a new sword that's more powerful. Well, here's one that does 1000 damage. You can see how this can escalate, especially in a game that has been around for nearly 10 years. It was at one point I had a weapon with 35,000 damage per second (dps) and gave my character 5,000 Strength. THe stats themselves had become pretty much meaningless, it was just a number thing. And the damage I was doing on the screen was in the hundreds of thousands, and it was absurd. With the stat squish, they did a hard reset, and nerfed everything across the board. While before I had a character with 850 thousand health doing 400 thousand dps, now I have a 84 thousand health character who does 10 thousand dps, and the numbers are much more manageable. I really enjoy it. If you want to see a cool graph they made, check this out.
Yeah, so now instead of having crazy numbers, there's numbers that actually mean something, and it's a wonderful change.
2.The new Raid Lockouts. I've talked about these before in my SoO post (go read it here), and in that post I included this picture:
3. Raiding with my guildmates again. As I mentioned in my SoO post as well, I've missed playing with my guild. They're some of my greatest friends, and it'll be great to hear their voices and fight beside them again. We've been doing some recruiting, so we'll have some new friends to raid with as well. A new chapter with new friends!
4. The Garrison. The Farm was a new addition to the Mists of Pandaria. It allowed for the player to harvest materials for the player to make all of sorts of crafting things, such as armor and potions. In Warlords, they have increased the capabilities of the garrison to be like a hub for the player to manage all sorts of things. They can upgrade and have followers to help run the garrison, and you can still harvest those valuable materials for gold or for your profession. I think it's a great way to keep the player engaged on a daily basis, no matter what their dedication level is, and look forward to seeing how they develop it as the expansion continues,
5. The new continent of Draenor. I loved the landscape of the Mists of Pandaria. The landscape was beautiful, and all the art reflected the Aspect that was associated with it. Even the raids were colorful, and the bad guys, the Sha, were black and inky, and threatening to destroy the life and color of the land. It was an awesome concept, but the Siege of Orgrimmar was a break from the color to remind us of the dark tones of war. The colors of fire and steel dominated that raid, much like I hope they do in Draenor. But there's also the luscious landscape of Nagrand
6. Getting back into Player vs Player (PvP). After being heavily involved in Lich King, I took a two expansion break from dueling other players to focus on healing and tanking. But this expansion, I know I'm going full ret pally, with a side of holy, so I'm looking to get back to smashing noob's faces in the arena. I disliked one of the new BGs in the expansion, but a later patch introduced the ability to keep from playing on two battlegrounds you don't like, so they have my interest, and as such, I will start looking for arena teams to compete in
7. There is a dungeon on a train!
(nsfw language in the video)
I've never ever been excited to do a dungeon before. For the uninitiated, dungeons are sort of like raid warm-ups. They are separate instances that take 5 people to do versus 10 or 20. And they are easier, and give less powerful gear than the raids, but are fun and easy to do. As such, much of the excitement is usually saved for raids and dungeons offer some moments of "oh that's neat", but not much more. However, this dungeon is amazing. It's on a moving train, and unlike many other things like this, you can fall of the train and you will die if you fall off. AND THAT'S AWESOME! A really cool instance that I hope has tons of ret pally gear in it so I can keep running it.
8. The new character models. I really like the job the character model team did with making everything realistic. They look less anime and more real. It really shows on the NPCs as well, they look lively and like they have stories to tell. Not only they look different, they've improved the skeleton so that movement looks more natural as well. An all-around great new look.
9. The level 90 boost. I like how the expansion came with a free boost. This means I can take a character, and skip all of the leveling and instantly make them level 90, and start questing in Draenor. It's nice because any character that is level 60 or above also gets their professions boosted as well. This is great because I have a level 60 mage, and in addition to wanting to boost her, it will also boost the last two professions I need on my server, so my characters will be able to make anything they need (once I level them all up for Draenor haha)
10. New mounts and pets!
You can ride this!
You can carry this little guy around with you!
Yes there are are tons of new pet and mounts to collect, and that's always exciting. But this expansion, the pets and mount seem greater and and more primal than previous expansion. Dragons are cool, but riding a giant ogre seems like just about the greatest thing ever. And then fire corgis. Nothing needs to be said there.
Warlords of Draenor releases finally on Thursday. I'll have a review on my first impression later that week, but you can buy an intro pack for $20 and get started with the beginning
of the game.
Till next time,
-David
Once, I played WoW and I killed a lot of boars and chickens. I'm not contributing much to this conversation.
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