Darkshore Warfront Preview - Patch 8.1

[chaud]

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.

[Drejjmit]

How many Service Medals do i get for one Warfront?

[shadevex]

How many Service Medals do i get for one Warfront?

To make people angry 5

[The7]

Sick and tired of Warfronts already, not excited for this one bit.

[Averrix]

Wonderful, do a warfront to open up even more world quests. I'm so sick to death of world quests.

[Magicon]

meh /10char

[Th3Scourge]

I wonder how many resources go into the warfront system that could otherwise be diverted to fixing the broken parts of the game? Does anyone actually enjoy doing these? The first one was a novelty that wore out after 10 minutes

[Usagi Senshi]

Eh, I like unlocking content like this and having world quests to do afterwards. More world PVP potential as well.

Do you guys expect to just have the same old TBC/Wrath/Cata/MoP (don't really count MoP because its dailies were more fun and miles ahead of anything before them) daily style content until the game finally runs dry in another 10+ years?

[Arvandor]

this warfront is an attempt from blizzard to say sorry for the burning of teldrassil.

but can a night elf main player accept this excuse?

[tangers58]

So reskin of Arathi with a longer intro

[bearlolzx]

this is beyond useless and ppl will just afk this like they do current warfront arathi

[Cavox]

Do you guys expect to just have the same old TBC/Wrath/Cata/MoP (don't really count MoP because its dailies were more fun and miles ahead of anything before them) daily style content until the game finally runs dry in another 10+ years?

Explain to me how WQs are better than daily quests. WoW has been creatively bankrupt or "dry" for some time now.

[Sixy]

I wonder how many resources go into the warfront system that could otherwise be diverted to fixing the broken parts of the game? Does anyone actually enjoy doing these? The first one was a novelty that wore out after 10 minutes

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.

[Usagi Senshi]

Explain to me how WQs are better than daily quests. WoW has been creatively bankrupt or "dry" for some time now.

I like them much better than the pre-MoP dailies. That's all the reasoning I need and the explanation that you deserve.

Something tells me you just liked gathering them all up in one place, getting them done at once and be done with it. Am I right?

Also, m+, war fronts, artifact weapon building and all associated skin collecting content, and new questing content like Suramar were new things for WoW. FFXIV does that latter bit (max level story quest content) much better but eh, still new style stuff for WoW at the time.

[Roar-Powah]

Iron and Wood simulator rofl

[Odrareg]

Warfronts will be good if they are hard and played by guilds / raiding groups. Normal / Heroic / Mythic / Mythic+ or whatever difficulty. Give people a reason to complete them, give great titles and good gear, let it become relevant content that famous players complete on stream and then they'll be appealing.

[Tydan]

So let me get this straight, the worst content ever in wow is now going to take even longer to complete?

[tangers58]

So let me get this straight, the worst content ever in wow is now going to take even longer to complete?

Island Expeditions?

[Sixy]

Explain to me how WQs are better than daily quests. WoW has been creatively bankrupt or "dry" for some time now.

I will start by saying that I do not find world quests to be perfect - but dailies were worse imo.

I legit hated dailies, wq are so much better to me. With dailies it felt felt mandatory to do every single one each day, unlike world quests where I can pick and choose the ones I do based on the reward etc. In addition having to run to the hubs and manually accept each quest was a pain in the ass. With world quests I can look at my map see whichever ones I wanna do, go directly to them - complete and move on without having to go back for a turn in. In addition there is a lot more overall variety of world quests than there ever was with any one daily hub so I am not doing the exact same wq every day like I would with a daily(Turtles exluded - they really need more options for the turtle wq's). The biggest issue with world quests now compared to legion - has nothing to do with the world quests themselves and everything to do with people don't like the rewards as much. For example many people do not like the azerite system so they don't care about the ap wq as much, the gold on the wq's is very low so it doesn't feel as rewarding as legion, the missions have much worse rewards then legion missions so the war resources don't feel great to gain, and finally there is no paragon system yet so the rep from wq and the rep tokens feel useless.
The issue currently is with the rewards not the system.

P.S. The one thing I did like about a couple of the daily hubs was when you were progressing a story through it - BUT that actually had nothing to do with the system(daily quests) that was delivering the story. It could easily be done with world quests or any other system.

[Appelgren]

this warfront is an attempt from blizzard to say sorry for the burning of teldrassil.

but can a night elf main player accept this excuse?

The rp/lore-forums are that way--->

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Island Expeditions?

Expeditions are a treat compared to warfronts.
Not even comparable really...