Blizzard Finally Dates Warlords of Draenor Expansion
Activision Blizzard announced on Thursday that the fifth expansion to World of Warcraft, Warlords of Draenor, will be released on November 13, 2014.
Gamers who pre-purchase the expansion now, whether it's the digital Standard Edition for $49.99 or the $69.99 Digital Deluxe Edition, will be able to instantly advance one character to level 90. However, the fine print states that gamers moving up from the Starter Edition won't be able to level up their character to 90 until the trial restrictions are removed, which could take 72 hours.
"Players will encounter an epic cast of legendary characters and a huge amount of content to explore in Warlords of Draenor," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "The countdown to the arrival of one of the greatest threats in Warcraft history has begun. We can't wait to send everyone through the Dark Portal this November."
Serving as the fifth expansion pack, Warlords of Draenor follows Mists of Panderia, which was launched back in September 2012. Other expansions include Cataclysm (December 2010), Wrath of the Litch King (November 2008), and The Burning Crusade (January 2007).
The new expansion requires that customers have Mists of Pandaria already installed.
Statista reports that World of Warcraft had 6.8 million subscribers in Q2 2014, a slight drop from the 7.6 million subscribers in Q1 2014. The company saw its biggest peak in subscriptions during Q3 2010 and Q4 2010 with 12 million. Around 10.3 million subscribers were reported in Q3 2011, which stayed rather level until Q3 2012. Subscriptions are expected to rise later this year when the new expansion is finally released.
In addition to the two digital-only versions, Blizzard will also offer an $89.99 Collector's Edition that will be sold in retail stores. This version includes everything in the Digital Deluxe Edition plus a Warlords of Draenor mouse pad, a behind-the-scenes Blu-ray/DVD set, a CD soundtrack and a full-color art book. Supplies will be limited, the company's press release warned.
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Have you seen everquest? Its still questing, and on its 18th or so expansion, so Wow has a few years yet.
I quit shortly after Cataclysm. As a vanilla WoW player the Azeroth revamp was a bit much for me. Everything I remember about it was changed forever.
I quit shortly after Cataclysm. As a vanilla WoW player the Azeroth revamp was a bit much for me. Everything I remember about it was changed forever.
I found that to be the refreshing thing of that expansion. The new plot lines were quite interesting. I've been playing since open beta, and I was kind of tired of the old things still lingering about. It was annoying to have to deal with aspects of the game that had been rendered irrelevant by expansions.
What I didn't like about MoP was half a dozen new rep grinds and making my favored classes useless. I had to go all the way back to my hunter to find one that was actually useful again. Pally tanks, fire mages, and holy priests were nerfed into last place of all roles. I wound up leveling up a warrior tank just to get back into tanking. Let's face it, a hunter and a warrior tank just weren't as fun to play. I took some time off.
It will be nice to get back into it in November. The new lore ought to be great to discover. Blizzard has always been good at lore.
Completely par for the course for MMOs.
Blizzard has gotten the message about rep grinds. I don't know if they're actually going to do anything about it, but they got the message.
STO seemingly has gotten the message about it, too, as they have reduced the time and effort it takes to deal with their rep grinds. They still have them, but it takes about five weeks to hit the top instead of the previous 6 months.
Blizzard may take a similar path, reducing the time and the amount of grinding it takes to complete a rep grind. They did pretty well at that in Cataclysm, but then the MoP rep grinds were hella complex and long. It broke me of the game for a while. At least there weren't too many necessary things in those rep grinds, like head enchants that couldn't be found elsewhere. It was possible to move forward without dealing with the rep grinds, after the second major patch.
Now if they'd just make the raids so that one single person's slip up doesn't doom the whole raid. This "perfection in everything" attitude in their raids is annoying. There needs to be a little give in it. Nobody is perfect.
People whined and cried that the raids were too easy in Cataclysm. My guild took down 10M DW on it's first attempt with only 1 player dead. To me, that's too easy. 9/10 of us had no idea what we were doing going into the fight and simply followed the tank. They really had to do something. Of course, going from one extreme to another is a massive over-correction. I got my first character to 90, ran through 25M Raid finder a few times and stopped playing.