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World of Warcraft: The War Within Alpha - New Creature Models
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Story
Draenor
Creatures
Zones
New Player Models
Garrisons
Boost to Level 90
Inventory Updates
Adventure Guide
Level 100 Talents
Dungeons and Raids
PvP
- After the end of the Siege of Orgrimmar, Garrosh was taken away in chains.
- Garrosh will be put on trial and escape before a verdict. He is upset and hates the Horde, Alliance, and Thrall. He goes back in time, which alters the current timeline slightly.
- Garrosh's goal is to stop the Orcs from drinking the blood of Mannoroth so they can live up to their full potential. He wants the Orcs to be proud conquerors, unencumbered by the other races of the Horde.
- After Garrosh stops them from drinking the blood, he builds the Iron Horde using technology from the present. His mission is then to build a Dark Portal, align it to our current timeline, and bring the Iron Horde through to enact his revenge on us.
- Garrosh is a tool to tell the story this time, not the main villain. The final boss of this expansion won't just be an Orc.
- The end of this expansion is going to spill over into the next one. Many more expansions are lined up now.
Draenor
- Draenor is the homeworld of the Orcs, Outland before it was shattered, and the heart of the Draenei.
- Draenor has lots of giants and seven new zones.
- The Iron Horde is here to take an army into Azeroth and your job is to stop them.
- Grommash has united most of the Orc clans.
- The Alliance will defend Karabor (Black Temple) and make it their main city.
- The Horde will defend the Bladespire Citadel in Frostfire Ridge and make it their main city.
- Catacylsm changed up the existing zones, but Warlords of Draenor zones are built from scratch, not just modifying the existing version of Outland.
- The Spires of Arak is the home of the Arakkoa, back when they had wings and weren't hunched over.
- Azeroth has had many different empires over time, but Draenor is a more savage world with just the Ogre empire in decline.
- The zone currently known as Netherstorm will be used in a future patch, not at launch.
- The Frostwolf Clan is led by Durotan, father of Thrall and is located in Frostfire Ridge.
- The Shadowmoon Clan is led by Ner'zhul, who eventually became the Lich King in our timeline. They are located in Shadowmoon Vallery.
- The Shattered Hand Clan is led by Kargath Bladefist, who was enslaved in the mines by the Ogres. He cuts off his own arm to escape the chains of slavery, and the Orcs around him do the same. They are located in the Spires of Arak.
- The Blackrock Clan is led by Blackhand, who was the Warchief of the Horde during the First War in our timeline. This clan is made up of smiths who help to build the Iron Horde war machine for the Warlords. They are located in Gorgron.
- The Warsong Clan is led by Grommash Hellscream, who plays a major role in the story to come. They are located in Nagrand.
- The Bleeding Hollow Clan is led by Kilrogg Deadeye. They are located in Tanaan Peninsula and are a very trial shamanistic clan. The Chief of the Clan gouges out his own eye to receive a vision of their own death, which helps them to lead their clan.
Creatures
- Draenor gave the team lots of opportunities to create new creatures.
- The Gron have been subjugated by the Iron Horde and are being used as part of their army.
- The Ogres aren't the same as the ones found in Dire Maul. They are bigger, stronger, and more vicious.
- The Saberon are found all across Draenor and are a tiger like humanoid race.
- There will be a dragonfly mount to go with the larger dragonflies found in Draenor.
- The Chimera has a full set of combat animations and will be used as a boss and creature found in the world.
Zones
- There will be an expansion introduction experience similar to the Death Knight starting experience.
- The launch event will take place before Warlords of Draenor is released, and will send you on a suicide mission through the Dark Portal to try and get a foothold in Draenor. The Dark Portal will turn red and players will have to do something to be able to get through it to Draenor.
- After the intro the Horde go to Frostfire Ridge, a Tundra with volcanoes. Players meet up with the Durotan and Frostwolf Clan and help them to defeat the Thunderlord Clan, which is in the process of joining the Iron Horde. The Ogres have the Bladespire Fortress here, which players retake to make into the Horde capital city.
- After the intro the Alliance go to Shadowmoon Valley, where it is always night time. Players save Karabor (Black Temple) from an attack by the Iron Horde and turn it into the Alliance capital city. It is the home of the Shadowmoon Orc Clan, who is trying to join the Iron Horde.
- Gorgrond has lots of steam vents that are being capped to power the Iron Horde war machine. Blackrock Foundry is one of the raids in Warlords of Draenor.
- Talador is located where Terokkar Forest is today and is the home of the Draenei civilization. It has a much larger version of Shattrath City that covers a large portion of the zone. A non damaged version Auchindoun is also located here and is a dungeon in Warlords of Draenor.
New Player Models
- The new models should look similar to your current character, just higher quality.
- The new models have lots of facial detail, teeth, tongues, smiles, and updated animations.
- Male Dwarf, male Orc, and male Gnome models are ready to preview.
Garrisons
- Garrisons allow you to build your own base on Draenor, the WoW version of Player Housing.
- You can invite your friends to come and see your garrison.
- You can collect followers, send them on missions, and even name them.
- You can customize your base by selection its location in the world, what buildings it has, and the positioning of those buildings.
- Garrisons have some offline progression that takes places over hours, days, or a week.
- Garrisons are integrated into the world, allowing for no loading screens, similar to the Tiller's farm phasing.
- Garrisons allow you to get epic gear, your own land, perks for your followers from your buildings, and limited access to professions you don't have.
- You can build a mine in your base and go and mine or send followers to go and mine for you.
- Your garrison can be expanded over three tiers. Each expansion gives you more plots of land for buildings.
- You can choose the zone and location of your garrison from predefined locations, and move your garrison later if you decide you like another spot better.
- Your followers will exist in the world in your garrison. If you find a follower and name him, you will see him walking around your garrison.
- You can collect monuments by completing achievements.
- You can collect trophies by doing things such as killing a rare spawn and mounting its head in your Town Hall.
- Buildings have unique bonuses, such as reducing the recovery time for your followers after a mission, or a free resurrection in the world once a day, or a buff when you are out in the world, or bonuses to things inside your garrison. These buildings can be upgraded and customized with specializations (similar to talents) after three tiers of upgrades.
- The Inn gives you a chance find new followers every day. It comes with a kitchen that has a cooking NPC. The specializations give you an increased chance of finding your pick of Tank, DPS, or Healer followers.
- There are three tiers of art for every building. Both the interior and the exterior change with each upgrade.
- Alliance and Horde get unique art for their buildings.
- There will be many ways to collect followers. You can find followers out in the world and bribe them or earn faction with them to convince them to join you.
- Followers level up from 90 to 100 by doing missions which grant experience. Even after they reach the level cap, followers can increase their item level.
- Followers have abilities and traits that make them more adept for certain missions. Your job is to match them up with missions they will be better at so that they have an advantage.
- Followers have a rarity and can be named.
- You can send followers on Raids, Dungeons, and Quests. Matching up followers and their traits with missions is almost a minigame.
- There are also specialized missions, which are unlocked by owning certain buildings. These missions have bonuses that are unique.
Boost to Level 90
- Warlords of Draenor will allow you to boost one of your characters to Level 90 for free.
- The boost will clean up your bags, quest log, and action bar to make it easy to start playing at level 90 right away.
Inventory Updates
- Pets and Mounts are account wide collections now, but Warlords of Draenor will be adding Heirlooms, Toys, and maybe Tabards to the Account Wide Collections.
- You can flag items, mounts, and other things in your collection as Favorites for faster access. (Summon a random favorite mount)
- Each bag can be assigned a certain type of item to be stored there.
- Bags are now auto sortable in the default UI.
- Bags highlight items that were added since you last opened them with a white border glow.
- Bags highlight the quality of items with a colored border glow.
- Bags show an icon on Vendor Trash so you know that you can safely vendor it.
- No more quest items will be stored in your bags, they will appear on the quest UI instead.
- Items will also have larger stack sizes, with many being increased to 100.
- You will be able to craft directly from your bank.
Adventure Guide
- The Adventure Guide is used to help players understand what they can and should be working on. For example, it will tell you what kind of raids you are ready for or a little bit about the new content in a patch.
- If you do a lot of PvP, it would have told you about the new Deepwind Gorge battleground. If you are taking part in the Brawler's Guild, it would have told you about the new Rank 8. If you are an engineer, it would have told you about the new Sky Golem mount.
- Everything is customized to your character.
Level 100 Talents
- There will be a new tier of talents for everyone.
- Tooltips will be split out by spec when it makes sense to do so.
Dungeons and Raids
- There will be seven new dungeons at launch, four while leveling and three for max level.
- The Blackrock Clan makes it a good time for UBRS to come back as a Heroic Dungeon and a Leveling dungeon.
- All dungeons will have Normal, Heroic, and Challenge Mode difficulty.
- The Bloodmaul Slag Mines dungeon is located in Frostfire Ridge and has four bosses in a non-linear layout. Ogres are putting slaves to work in a volcano, so you liberate the slaves and stage a revolt to take down the slave master.
- The other dungeons include Auchindoun, Arakkoa Spires, Shadowmoon Burial Grounds, the Iron Barracks, and more.
- There will be two raids at launch, Highmaul in Nagarnd with 6 bosses, and then the Blackrock Foundry with 10 bosses.
- There will new world bosses.
- Flex worked out well, but the 10 and 25 structure has some issues with balance. To solve this, Flex scaling tech will be used for the new Normal (Flex) and Heroic (Normal) difficulty.
- Mythic (Heroic) is a new difficulty harder than the new Heroic difficulty (Normal) with a 20 player fixed size.
- Raid Finder will also scale from 10 to 25 if you lose people and are waiting for the group to fill.
PvP
- Ashran will be a new World PvP zone located near the Dark Portal that has faction bases and other PvP hotspots.
- Ashran is also is a PvP sandbox that continues all of the time. Ashran will always be active, unlike Wintergrasp which had a start and end time. It is somewhat like the original AV.
- Ashran will use cross realm zones to create a faction balanced PvP zone.
- Ashran will let you build and commandeer siege vehicles, take over various points to gain more supplies, or other objectives. Some siege vehicles may take days to build.
- The UI will have a new objective tracker and capture status for flags. Flags will fill with color as they are being captured.
- Battleground scores will be added to give players an idea how how they are doing in the battleground. Your score increases by doing damage, healing, capturing objectives, and contributing to the battleground.
- The Honor system will stay in place, but the end of battlegrounds or arenas will give you a random chance to win bonus PvP items, Honor, BoE gear, and more.
- You will get a weekly quest to upgrade an item, requiring you to complete a certain number of battlegrounds or arenas.
- Trial of the Gladiator is the new Arena Ladder system. It will concentrate queue times at certain times during the week, which will help higher rated people have others to play against and help to identify exploiters.
- Trial of the Gladiator also uses tournament rules. You can buy gear from a vendor and play, no need to grind up a set. PvE gear won't work in here!
- You will earn prestige rewards only from Trial of the Gladiator.
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