Darkshore Warfront Preview - Patch 8.1
The newest addition to the Warfront lineup in 8.1 is the Battle for Darkshore between the Night Elves and Forsaken. This Warfront plays out much like The Battle for Stromgarde but with a few minor additions or changes.

What is Different?
  • The intro to the Warfront is notably longer. You kill your way to the center of the map and take on two different commanders as well as many troop camps before you actually begin the collect and capture part of the Warfront.
  • Wood can now be collected from fallen enemies such as Ancients and catapults/glaive throwers.
  • The names and models of the familiar buildings/vehicles now have Night Elf and Forsaken flair.
  • Instead of a gate to break down before taking out the final commander, you must destroy 4 cannons on ships offshore. Your vehicles will do this as normal, but there are also two spear launchers on the shore that you can pilot to help out.

New Map
The Map is very similar to what you see in the Arathi Warfront.



Stage 1: Purge Camps and Defeat Commanders
You will spend a good portion of the beginning of the Warfront killing trash and defeating two commanders on your way to you main base. Both factions start on the coast and work through Auberdine before establishing a base at Bashal'aran.




Building your Base
Once you defeat the commander in Bashal'aran you begin to establish your base as normal, creating the Barracks, Altar of Storms, and Armory. Eventually you will work on upgrading to a Stronghold, and creating catapults/glaive throwers from the Plague Works/Glaive Works.



Mine and Lumber Mill
The mine and Lumber mill are still capturable, with the mine being just to the south and the lumber mill being to the northwest.



Acquiring Wood and Iron
Wood and Iron are looted much like they are in the Arathi Warfront, with the notable addition of being able to loot wood from fallen enemies such as Ancients and war glaives/catapults.

  • Iron - Iron is the most important resource in a Warfront. It is used to build/upgrade buildings, get additional support, upgrade and recruit troops and vehicles, and also in getting buffs from your base's altar.
    • Iron is accumulated passively once your team takes control of the nearby mine. Passive iron is collected at the main hall.
    • Iron can also be collected by mine caches at the mine.
  • Wood - Wood is not as useful as Iron, but is needed for certain aspects as well. It is used to upgrade troops, buildings, and for buffs from the altars.
    • Wood does not generate passively. You must collect it by chopping down trees or from mobs.
    • Peons will cut down trees or you can cut them down yourself.



Constructing Buildings
You construct buildings in the same manner as you do in the Arathi Warfront, by collecting Iron and Wood and spending it at the construction stations. While the buildings might have different names, the benefits that they provide remain unchanged.



Building Benefits
Buildings still provide the means of advancing a Warfront.

  • Stronghold - This building is acquired automatically at the start of the fight once you take out the opposing commander and claim the initial base.
    • Required to construct any other building.
    • Can be upgraded twice.
    • Upgrade 1 provides more peons, faster troop production, and commander troops.
    • Upgrade 2 provides more peons, faster troop production, increased damage from certain vehicles and allows commander troops to use special abilities.
  • Barracks - Barracks is the powerhouse of troop production. Once constructed, you are able to recruit troops that will defend the keep and attack enemies as they travel along paths. There are many different troops from basic grunts to healers, some of which requires areas on the map to be captured first. You can specifically recruit 2 bodyguard units at a time to follow you into combat.
  • Armory - The Armory is utilized to upgrade the armor and weapons of your troops.
  • Plague/Glaive Works - This building allows you to build vehicles, which are necessary to take the enemy base. There is a limit of three active vehicles at once.
  • Shrine - Grants temporary buffs at the cost of Iron.



Capturing Bases
North of your main base are several bases that need to be captured to progress the Warfront. The three center line bases are required to allow your catapults/glaive throwers to advance towards the final capture point.



Base Benefits
Certain bases, such as Gloomtide Strand, will allow for more unique benefits to be acquired. Taking these bases will allow you to recruit a powerful abomination/ancient to fight for you or provide mounted combat for a brief time by spending resources.



Ending the Warfront
Much like the Arathi Basin Warfront, the way to win is to construct your base and then take the bases up to the final capture point, Lor'danel, which is capturable only by allowing your vehicles to bombard the two towers while you kill the commander. This plays out exactly like Arathi but with Night Elf and Forsaken aesthetics. Once Lor'danel is yours, instead of a gate to break down you must destroy 4 cannons on ships offshore. Your vehicles will do this as normal, but there are also two spear launchers on the shore that you can pilot to help out. You then take a small flight to a base offshore and kill the final commander.




Changes to Darkshore
Darkshore has got a few changes with the addition of this Warfront. All of the changes from the prepatch are here, but a few additional locations have been added.





World Quests
Unlike Arathi Highlands, when your faction controls Darkshore you have access to a large amount of world quests as well as the typical rares and world boss.




Warfront Service Medal Vendor
8.1 also adds a new currency called 7th Legion Service Medal / Honorbound Service Medal. These are acquired from Warfronts as well as Incursion World quests and can be spent at a vendor near your Warfront table in your capital city.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Darkshore Warfront Preview - Patch 8.1 started by chaud View original post
Comments 93 Comments
  1. grexly75's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sixy View Post
    I enjoy them, the only thing that bored me over some time was how easy it was. With the new difficulty I think I will like this one a lot more, provided they get it correctly.
    Quote Originally Posted by Sencha View Post
    This. People who like WQ or dailies are the same who play repetitive games like candy crush or other phone games without being bored.
    Pretty much every game ever created has some form of repetition, all FPS games are the same shoot, kill, blow things up and repeat.. Games like Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch are repetitive..

    All racing games are repetitive, all RPG's are repetitive, in other words every game ever.. And some are more repetitive than others and yet people still play them..
  1. Darkguyver2020's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gratlim View Post
    The sooner WoD 2.0...i mean BfA stops the better. This is turning more and more into a mobile grindfest.
    Hopefully the next one will be better. If everything fails, 1.12 will still save us and them from this summer.
    Piss off, fanboy! Vanilla isn't going to save anything. Only a handful of nostalgia blinded jobless neckbeards care about an archaic, imbalanced, bug ridden shitfest of a game from 14 years ago. I'd sooner chew my own arms off than play Classic.
  1. Sencha's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gratlim View Post
    The sooner WoD 2.0...i mean BfA stops the better. This is turning more and more into a mobile grindfest.
    Couldn't agree more.
  1. Dystemper's Avatar
    Yeah this looks terible. Take bad content, and make it last even fucking longer. Jesus H Christ please fire Ion and these fucking idiot Devs soon
  1. whywhatwhowhenhow's Avatar
    You can take your world quests and shove em right up your arse! Lazy bastards!
  1. Jinzuru's Avatar
    Another snorefront, wow, so creative.
  1. Darkguyver2020's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by bearlolzx View Post
    this is beyond useless and ppl will just afk this like they do current warfront arathi
    If you AFK current Warfront, you get automatically kicked. Try again.
  1. Jueles's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Novellen View Post
    You mean: "females". I wonder why does Blizzard try to appeal to woman players? They are not the ones who pay the sub or buy the expansions. Most of the time their male partner has to buy those. Well women buy up everything from the store, true that but I bet that money comes from the men's pockets too.

    :/
    I am truly offended by this statement.
  1. Dystemper's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkguyver2020 View Post
    If you AFK current Warfront, you get automatically kicked. Try again.
    People are AFK in the current Warfronts all the time and dont get kicked . What are you talking about
  1. Vargulf the Happy Husky's Avatar
    gosh what a vocal minority you all are.

    looks good to me, but I have tons of alts that I DON'T MIND PLAYING FROM TIME TO TIME...
  1. tyrlaan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by dranlord View Post
    the amount of QQing here is just plane lame.

    i get some of you dont like WF, but others do.

    And alot of the claim ppl said here like going AFK or not losing that just bullshit lies. Go do Warfront late on the cycle wiht alts, and ppl lose that. And go AFK and you get kick.

    Same goes about ppl complain about WQ, when WoW have dailies since BC i still rememeber doing the stupid grind for Ogre rep or the Dragon rep. Same fucking 5 quest over and over and over.

    I know is the new hipster thing to hate blizzard now, but stop saying the past was better when it wasnt.

    And ppl complain that they didnt have a badge system to work at the star of BFA they give you one now and you guys bitch too. Im just amaze about the comunity some days.
    Pretty much on point here.

    Though be careful, speaking reason on these forums gets you branded a "Blizzard shill"

    Quote Originally Posted by Jamie081 View Post
    Are they going to realise the amount of resources being put into warfronts isn't worth it when they turn out to be maybe 30-60 mins worth
    of content, once every couple of weeks?
    I dunno, when Arathi is up, the queue time is always under 1 minute for me. I feel like maybe people are playing the hell out of it. So maybe the real question is when will WoW players realize that people like different things?

    Quote Originally Posted by Darkguyver2020 View Post
    Piss off, fanboy! Vanilla isn't going to save anything. Only a handful of nostalgia blinded jobless neckbeards care about an archaic, imbalanced, bug ridden shitfest of a game from 14 years ago. I'd sooner chew my own arms off than play Classic.
    Pro Tip: Your sentiments here are as ridiculous as the ones you are trying to put down.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vargulf the Happy Husky View Post
    gosh what a vocal minority you all are.

    looks good to me, but I have tons of alts that I DON'T MIND PLAYING FROM TIME TO TIME...
    Yup, it's like a bunch of old crones. But don't call them a vocal minority or they will slam you with "heaps" of anecdotes to "prove" they're not the minority.
  1. athrun7189's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dystemper View Post
    People are AFK in the current Warfronts all the time and dont get kicked . What are you talking about
    Why dont you try it yourself and see what happen?
  1. Playintrafic's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkguyver2020 View Post
    If you AFK current Warfront, you get automatically kicked. Try again.
    Really cuz I do it often
  1. xRATJARx's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Novellen View Post
    You mean: "females". I wonder why does Blizzard try to appeal to woman players? They are not the ones who pay the sub or buy the expansions. Most of the time their male partner has to buy those. Well women buy up everything from the store, true that but I bet that money comes from the men's pockets too.

    BC and WOTLK were my dream MMO content. I miss those days. Dayum... I was young and full of energy. :/
    Literally never paid for my gf's expansion or sub lol, and i've bought far more on the store than she ever will, but nice try
  1. Darkguyver2020's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by tyrlaan View Post
    Pro Tip: Your sentiments here are as ridiculous as the ones you are trying to put down.
    I don't care. I'm sick of coming here and seeing the constant "Vanilla is better than Retail" and "Classic will save WoW" bullshit that these rose tinted goggle wearing mongoloids spew out. These Vanillatards drive me fucking nuts!
  1. capitano666's Avatar
    It feels just plain wrong if night elves have a lumber mill...
  1. Doctor Funkenstein's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cavox View Post
    Explain to me how WQs are better than daily quests. WoW has been creatively bankrupt or "dry" for some time now.
    The only improvement is a lack of a hub that you have to go to first, then spread out around the world to do the actual quests. That's it.

    (Note that I hate both of them, too. But you did ask how they were "better," and that's the only way they are.)

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by capitano666 View Post
    It feels just plain wrong if night elves have a lumber mill...
    Why? You think their bows and siege weapons just grow that way, die, and then fall to the ground fully constructed as part of their natural life cycle?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Vargulf the Happy Husky View Post
    gosh what a vocal minority you all are.
    Gotta love the mentality that goes into people who spew that. "Well, someone has a different opinion than me, and even if tens upon tens upon tens of folds of people voice that opinion rather than mine, it MUST just be because they're a vocal minority. Because, you know, my opinion is by default the standard one shared by the entire universe. You know, with me being the center of the universe and all (my mommy always told me so, so it must be true). I just don't get it."

    We know you don't, kid. We know you don't.
  1. splatomat's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by tyrlaan View Post
    Pretty much on point here.

    Though be careful, speaking reason on these forums gets you branded a "Blizzard shill"

    Yup, it's like a bunch of old crones. But don't call them a vocal minority or they will slam you with "heaps" of anecdotes to "prove" they're not the minority.
    If you like it, that's nice. Go ahead and guzzle down all the Blizzard-Brand Least-Effort-Possible Swill that you can. Glug, glug, glug, it sure goes down smooth, yeah?





    The rest of us will keep fighting tooth and nail for a better game.
  1. Dystemper's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by athrun7189 View Post
    Why dont you try it yourself and see what happen?
    I have. Nothing happened at all. My sub is up at the end of the month so I figured what the hell
  1. tyrlaan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by splatomat View Post
    If you like it, that's nice. Go ahead and guzzle down all the Blizzard-Brand Least-Effort-Possible Swill that you can. Glug, glug, glug, it sure goes down smooth, yeah?

    The rest of us will keep fighting tooth and nail for a better game.
    Lol do you feel better painting yourself as a hero?

    I do like it when people prove my point for me though.

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