World of Warcraft: The War Within

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This officially launches in about an hour -- higher-tier preorder folks have been playing since Thursday.

Anyone jumping back in?

 

[trappedslider]

higher-tier preorder folks have been playing since Thursday.

I've been having fun playing, nlg i like how both Xal'atath and alleria windrunner look

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'll be playing a bit for sure, I've got it and it's playable in an hour or so. Currently North America-Proudmoore-Alliance. Intending to main Death Knight (Blood, primarily) currently, as I did for a lot of expansions (Demon Hunter more recently, but they fixed the issues I had with DK whilst simultaneously making DHes a lot more boring!).

 

[overgeeked]

I’m running free-to-play because of the new warbands feature. The other weekend was free so I jumped through my higher-level alt army dumping gold and mats into the shared bank. Grabbed a few easy achievements I can’t do on lower-level toons. Only playing a few hours every other week or so.

I’m curious when they’ll add classes to the not-dragonborn. Would be interesting to do a paladin.

 

[Stalker0]

I legit came into this thread thinking there was another warcraft movie on the horizon!!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I’m curious when they’ll add classes to the not-dragonborn. Would be interesting to do a paladin.

My guess would be a 11.X.5 release, because it'd be a good way to get a significant number of people back to play a bit more after a 11.X.0 major content/raid release (which always brings people back anyway).

As to which 11.X.5 release, I think that depends entirely on what else they have cooking and how far along it is. If the Harronir (don't look 'em up if you don't want minor spoilers) really are added as a second Allied Race then Dracthyr classes would probably be earlier in the expansion i.e. 11.1.5 or maybe even 11.0.5 (though I doubt that unless they were intended to launch with the expansion).

Re: the Harronir they're clearly set up to be a fully-fledged Race/Allied Race, given that they:

A) Have "full" customizable models, with full armour attachment.
B) Have "full" animations - not just the ones they'd need as NPCs.
C) Have more character customization (i.e. hair, face, eyebrows, etc.) options than several existing Races, and almost all Allied Races. Also obviously vastly more than Blizzard has for any NPC-only races.
D) Have unique dances.

This is also particularly notable because (minor spoiler), they're not even that big of a deal in the initially-available (or even datamined) content of TWW.

My guess is they'll be made available in 11.2.5, after 11.2.0 is a content patch involving them significantly.

One thing worth noting is that Blizzard explicitly said for The War Within and the two following expansions that they want players to feel that "anything is possible" during an expansion, rather than that they're following some sort of formula or template, so we might seem some pretty surprising/big additions.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As someone who's played a dwarf hunter since day one of vanilla (earlier than that, in fact), it's striking how good Khaz Algar is and how dated Khaz Modan, Shadowforge City and even the Twilight Highlands look in comparison.

I know an old world revamp is extremely unlikely, other than Blizzard finally dropping the high-rez models for the old world on us at some point (probably for this year's 20th anniversary, since they've been building the models for years now and not implemented them), but I would really like the old world to get this kind of TLC, even in a piecemeal fashion.

 

[trappedslider]

It was fun while it lasted lol

More Details on Blizzard Increasing Leveling Difficulty

Blizzard has provided more details on the increased leveling difficulty, noting that the overall impact on leveling time should be minimal.

www.wowhead.com

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It was fun while it lasted lol

More Details on Blizzard Increasing Leveling Difficulty

Blizzard has provided more details on the increased leveling difficulty, noting that the overall impact on leveling time should be minimal.

www.wowhead.com

Yeah this is a strange and rather unusually stupid decision from Blizzard, primarily for two reasons:

1) The influx of OP level 70 characters will be over in like literally 1-2 weeks, then people will be on to undergeared alts and new characters, and making 70-75 harder (assuming that's all they've done, as they seem to indicate) will just really punish a lot of very undergeared characters and make stuff that's currently pleasant to go through into a horrible chore. That's going to act as a drag on people arriving later in the expansion, and will cause more people to flame out before actually hitting 80.

As a result I expect this will be quietly reversed at some point, probably by or on 11.0.5, but it's still just stupid. They should have just made enemies scale with gear as well as level slightly from 70-75 - we know they can do this from past examples.

2) By doing after literally everyone who had the paid ($40) Early Access, they're making it look like they're kind of crooks turning what was really a meaningless non-advantage into an actual P2W advantage. That too will be forgotten in a few months, but then it will be remembered again very strongly next expansion, and people will be very angry when Blizzard tries to sell them Early Access again, and much, much more critical towards Blizzard.

They're essentially storing up trouble. They should have just not done it and let nature take its course.

 

[GMMichael]

I'd be interested, but I just picked up Mordhau, which is pretty awesome because it lets you start at maximum level (1).