We proudly present the epic conclusion to Blizzard Entertainment’s animated lore miniseries Lords of War! Watch the tale of draenei champion Vindicator Maraad, and then catch the entire series to learn about some of the other major players in the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords of Draenor.
Vindicator Maraad battled the demonic orcs of the first Horde. He witnessed the slaughter of his people in Shattrath. It was the draenei’s darkest day, and Maraad’s greatest test… and the memory of his actions have haunted him ever since.
Once you’re caught up on Maraad’s tale, visit his character page to read more about this draenei warrior of the Light and his role in the events to come.
Before you can harbor any hope of defeating the Iron Horde, you must first understand what—and whom—you’re up against. Visit our Lords of War page to watch all five episodes and witness the stories of Draenor’s mightiest leaders.
In the upcoming pre-Warlords of Draenor content patch, we’re adding a new feature that allows players to undelete characters. But before you delete that character, there are a few limitations we want you to let you to know about first.
Characters under level 10 and Death Knights at level 55 are not eligible to be undeleted.
Characters between level 10 and level 29 will no longer recoverable after 90 days.
Characters between level 30 and 49 will no longer recoverable after 120 days.
All other characters level 50 and above are eligible to be undeleted at any time.
Please keep in mind you will only be able to use the undelete option once every 30 days.
Undeleting a character restores all of its enchantments, gems, and items fully intact. You’ll be able to get back into action right away, and your character won’t remember being deleted—we won’t tell, either.
Shhhh. . . .
Reclaiming Your Name: What About Flugur?
We’ll be holding deleted character names for a limited time, and the original creator can reclaim it for use on a new character during that time. If you create a new character with the same name as one of your deleted characters (let’s say Flugur), the new character must be renamed, transferred, or deleted to complete the restoration of the original Flugur.
Warlords of Draenor offers heroes an opportunity to continue their journey into a new savage land, but before you take your leave of Mists of Pandaria, we wanted to remind you that you may have some unfinished business to attend to – before it’s too late. It’s important to note that many of these changes are affected by the release of patch 6.0.2, which like all of our pre-expansion patches, will arrive a few weeks before Warlords of Draenor’s release.
Brawler’s Guild Season One Ending
Brawler’s Guild changes are coming with Patch 6.0.2 which means what’s currently available in game will be ending soon. Once the new patch goes live and Season One comes to an end, all of your progress will reset and the achievements you’ve earned will be moved into a new category in Feats of Strength called Legacy. Brawler’s Guild will also become unavailable until after Warlords of Draenor launches as the new changes will be for level 100 characters. Don’t worry, though, your membership in this exclusive club will carry over into the next expansion.
Now’s the time to get in there and show your mettle by reaching Rank 10 and defeating the card bosses before it’s too late!
We’ll have more information about what you can expect from Season 2 of Brawler’s Guild in an upcoming post.
Season One of Challenge Modes Ending
If you’re looking to make one last push for your Challenge Mode rewards– now is the time. You’ll have until the release of patch 6.0.2 to make a play for these highly coveted awards which include: Achievements, Titles, Mounts and cosmetic class sets. For more information on the end of the season, you can read our previous post here.
Siege of Orgrimmar Heirlooms
Those who are looking to obtain Garrosh Heirloom weapons from Siege of Orgrimmar will also want to step up their quest to obtain these valuable items. If you want to get your hands on these heirlooms, you’ll want to act quickly. Once Warlords of Draenor releases, they’ll be removed from Garrosh’s loot table. For a complete list of available Heirlooms, see Wowhead’s handy list.
A Legendary Undertaking
As we previously announced, the Legendary Cloak will no longer be available to earn after the release of Warlords of Draenor. After patch 6.0.2 releases, players who aren’t already on the quest line will no longer be able to start it. To help you speed you on this journey, the Gaze of the Black Prince buff will run until the release of patch 6.0.2. Good luck on your quest, but remember that your voyage doesn’t end here. Soon, you’ll be setting your sights on the new Legendary item, Khadgar’s Band of the Archmage, in Warlords of Draenor.
In this series of blog posts, we’re giving you a much closer look at how Garrisons are shaping up and how you can expect to interact with them in Warlords of Draenor. This second installment maps out the buildings that make up a fully armed and operational Garrison and how they impact your professions.
As we mentioned in part 1 of this series, we want the process of staking your claim on Draenor to fundamentally shape your gameplay experience. Your Garrison mainly comprises buildings and the Followers who inhabit them. As your Garrison grows, so will your options and opportunities to use these assets to your advantage on Draenor. The Followers that populate your Garrison will grow in number and power, and what they can do for you depends which buildings you choose to construct in your base.
Start Small, Think Big
Even in its fledgling state, your Garrison will contribute to your professional development almost immediately. You’ll have many choices for what to build, and your choices directly impact what your Followers can do and the rewards you’ll get from them.
The space you have available for buildings is determined by your Garrison Tier. At Garrison Tier 1, you’ll have one small and one large plot for buildings of those sizes. Quests will take you through placing a building that matches one of your primary professions in your first small plot and a Barracks in your first large plot.
At Garrison Tier 2, you’ll gain one additional small plot, one medium plot, and room for three of four preset buildings: the Fishing Shack, Herb Garden, Pet Menagerie, and Lunarfall Excavation (Alliance) or Frostwolf Mine (Horde). Everyone can eventually unlock and use all four presets, and each provides a great deal of synergy with its associated activities. For example, the Fishing Shack not only allows you to fish in Garrison waters and take on daily fishing quests—it also makes it possible for you to attract Nat Pagle as a Follower and gives him a place to work with you on Draenor.
Everyone can eventually unlock and use all four presets,…
Quests to gain access to each of the four preset buildings become available as you level up your character. You can obtain the mine at character level 92, the Fishing Shack at level 94, the Herb Garden at level 96, and the Pet Menagerie at level 98.
At Garrison Tier 3, you’ll gain room for one more building of each size (one small, one medium, one large, and the final preset)—but to start, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with your first building and then consider what you’re going to do with the other precious spaces that become available.
Small plots can hold the Engineering Works, Alchemy Lab, Enchanter’s Study, Gem Boutique, Salvage Yard, Scribe’s Quarters, Storehouse, Tailoring Emporium, Forge, or Tannery.
Buildings level up, too, so you’ll want to raise both your Garrison and each building inside your walls to reach their highest potential. You do this by obtaining blueprints for the building and level you want from the blueprint vendor:
Level 1 blueprints all become available to you when your Garrison reaches Tier 2.
Level 2 blueprints become available at different times depending on their size:
Small buildings: Reach level 96 or complete the Talador zone.
Medium buildings: Reach level 98 or complete the Spires of Arak zone.
Large buildings: Reach level 100 or complete the Nagrand zone.
Level 3 blueprints become available as you complete certain achievements across Draenor.
Level 3 blueprints are account-wide. Once you unlock one on a character, it’s available to all characters on your account.
Do Medium Well
Some of the most impactful decisions you’ll make when planning your Garrison will come when it’s time to choose medium-sized buildings. Medium buildings, unlike the smaller professional workspaces, make use of more real estate to give your Followers room to work on bigger projects with you and interact with each other.
Medium buildings include the Horde’s Frostwall Tavern and the Alliance’s Lunarfall Inn, the Barn, the Lumber Mill, the Gladiator’s Sanctum, and the Trading Post.
If you go with the Inn or Tavern, each day you’ll find a visitor who offers you a dungeon quest with generous rewards. At level 100, you’ll get two such quests per day. As it grows, you’ll have the opportunity to recruit random followers with traits and abilities that you particularly want—and at its grandest, it unlocks Treasure Hunt missions with hefty payouts.
The level 1 Barn grants the ability to capture clefthoof, elekk, wolves, and talbuk for leather and fur that can be used in Leatherworking and Tailoring. To make a capture, you’ll drop a trap and coax low-health creatures over it. At level 2, you’ll learn how to capture boars and riverbeasts for rare meats that are used to cook the most powerful recipes, and at level 3, the Barn will allow you to capture elite beasts and extract their Savage Blood, an ingredient for epic crafted armor and weapons.
…the Barn will allow you to capture elite beasts and extract their Savage Blood, an ingredient for epic crafted armor and weapons.
Meanwhile, over in the Gladiator’s Sanctum, you’ll earn a bonus to your out-of-combat regen in outdoor zones on Draenor, gain the ability to fall safely and breathe underwater outdoors on Draenor, learn a unique damage reduction ability, and at building level 2, gain access to the intense Highmaul Coliseum gladiator tournament that unlocks a special Nemesis PvP quest series.
The Nemesis quest line challenges PvP players to focus on hunting down enemy players of specific races to earn renown and over a dozen character titles such as Draenei Destroyer, Troll Hunter, Orcslayer, and Gnomebane. Truly vigilant players who complete every Nemesis quest will be rewarded with the title Warlord of Draenor.
Large and In Charge
Your Garrison is never intended to be sealed off from the many harsh hazards of Draenor. You and your Followers have work to do out there if you’re going to deal with the Iron Horde . . . and you’re going to deal with the Iron Horde! Maximizing your effectiveness—and your chances of success—requires a couple of large buildings.
Large plots can hold the Alliance’s Mage Tower or its Horde equivalent, the Spirit Lodge; the Barracks; the Dwarven Bunker (Alliance) or War Mill (Horde); the Stables; or the Gnomish Gearworks (Alliance) or Goblin Workshop (Horde).
The Mage Tower is remarkably powerful. From the moment you build one (or its Horde variant, the Spirit Lodge), you’ll start collecting Ogre Waystones from ogres on Draenor. The building then becomes one end of a system of two-way portals via Ogre Waygates you’ll find in every zone on Draenor. You’ll use the Waystones to activate one gate at a time at building level 1, two at level 2, and three at level 3.
With the Stables, you can capture and train special mounts on Draenor. These unique mounts spawn all across the world, and after you find and lasso them, you’ll send them to your Garrison for training. The subsequent training quests will allow you to add the mounts to your collection, learn the ability to remain mounted while interacting with objects in outdoor Draenor zones (at Stables level 2), and ultimately reward you with an increased mounted speed across Draenor at level 3. Achievements associated with this remarkable building unlock even more mounts, as well as the title Stable Master.
With the Stables, you can capture and train special mounts on Draenor.
When you go large, perhaps the Gnomish Gearworks or Goblin Workshop will catch your fancy. It’s a veritable toy store, granting access over the first two levels to unique items such as the Robo-Rooster, Personal Delivery System, Sentry Turret Dispenser, and Micro-Jetpack. Then at building level 3, the real fun begins, as you gain the ability to deploy a siege vehicle to take out for a spin. And by “out,” we mean right out of the Garrison and anywhere on Draenor—yes, that includes Ashran.
No one ever said it’s going to be easy to choose your buildings!
While you’ll certainly have the option to tear down a building and replace it with a different one, knowing your options ahead of time will help you better plan your Garrison to reflect your character’s style and needs.
Plotting Ahead
If you missed it, check out part 1 of our Garrisons preview here. In part 3, we’ll take a closer look at Followers, missions, and how you’ll use them to bring home rewards. Today, you can read more at:
If you’re beta testing Warlords of Draenor with us and have any Garrison-related questions or experiences to share, head over to our Beta General Discussion forum and post it there. You can also leave a comment below.
To help you get prepared for the upcoming Warlords of Draenor Patch 6.0.2 release, we’ve uploaded the patch data to the background downloader. By downloading the patch in advance, you’ll be ready to get in-game and start playing as soon as the expansion goes live!
If you have issues during this process, you can find help to resolve them on the support site here.
You can adjust your download settings within the Battle.net desktop app by clicking on the Battle.net symbol and selecting “Settings” from the menu. Under Game Install/Update you’ll be able to adjust your download options for each of your games and enable or disable the background download, adjust the rate for your download, or pause it if you have a restriction on daily downloads.
Countless adventurers continue to brave the most trying versions of Mists of Pandaria dungeons, but the clock is ticking. This “season” of Challenge Modes will be coming to an end with the upcoming release of a patch prior to the expansion’s release.
Challenge Modes are designed to offer as close to a “normalized” difficulty as possible, and they’re tuned to be tough to master. With Warlords of Draenor’s class changes, itemization changes (e.g. the removal of Hit and Expertise), and—of course—increased level cap on the horizon, the difficulty of Mists of Pandaria’s dungeons will no longer be tuned the same as they were. In the spirit of fair play, when the aforementioned patch is released a little while before the new expansion launches, the current slate of Challenge Mode dungeons will no longer be available, and the achievements they award will be converted to Feats of Strength. The reward items will still be available for purchase by those who qualified prior to the end of the season, but it will not be possible for new players to earn those rewards going forward.
If you still need to earn your Undaunted title, Ancestral Phoenix, or class-specific Transmogrification sets, now’s the time to get out there and prove your worth. In Warlords of Draenor, an entirely new set of Challenge Modes will be available . . . and with them an array of new rewards for you to earn. Until then, stay sharp!
* Reward Clarifications
With the upcoming end of the Challenge Mode Season, we wanted to provide some additional clarification on how we plan to handle rewards.
Achievements: All Achievements associated with Mists of Pandaria Challenge Modes will become Feats of Strength.
Rewards
Bronze: The “Undaunted” title for achieving a full set of Bronze medals will become account-wide.
Silver: The Pandaren Phoenix mounts awarded for a full set of Silver medals will become account-wide. If any character on an account has earned a full set of Silver medals, all four variants of the Pandaren Phoenix (Crimson, Ashen, Violet, and Emerald) will become available to all characters account-wide.
Gold: The cosmetic class sets will remain character-specific. Any character that has earned all nine Gold medals will still be able to repurchase the appropriate set, should they misplace theirs, from Challenger Soong or Challenger Wuli in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Any characters that have earned one or more “Challenger’s Path” teleport spells by earning Gold medals in Mists Challenge Modes will retain those spells.
Realm Best Titles: There are extremely limited titles that are held by the players who hold the best clear time for a given dungeon on a given server. Since those Challenge dungeons will no longer be available in Warlords of Draenor, their respective titles are also being permanently removed. There will be new Challenge dungeons in the upcoming Warlords season, and new titles for which to contend, however.
Before you can harbor any hope of defeating the Iron Horde, you must first understand what—and whom—you’re up against. Our five-part series Lords of War introduces you to some of the major players in the campaign on Draenor, continuing today with the tale of Kilrogg Deadeye, powerful chieftan of the Bleeding Hollow clan.
The Bleeding Hollow clan once stood on the verge of extinction. To escape death, Kilrogg Deadeye first had to embrace it.
Once you’ve watched his story, visit our newly posted Kilrogg character page to read more about his legacy and his role in the events to come.
Visit www.worldofwarcraft.com next week for the final episode of Lords of War, and arm yourself with the knowledge you need to survive the battle ahead.
Blizzard has just released all the ingame cinematics for WoD! Keep in mind that they are heavy with spoilers so think before you click! For that reason as well we will not post them directly here but here’s the link.
Warning: Here be spoilers!* Go no further! Turn back now before it’s too late! You have been warned!
The distant echoes of the Iron Horde’s war machine have already begun to reach the ears of Azeroth’s heroes. Soon, the journey into Draenor will begin in earnest—a journey filled with drama, tension, and momentous events that will shape the fate of this world.
To tell this tale, we’ve created more high-quality in-game cinematic footage for Warlords of Draenor than ever before—and as your story unfolds, these cinematics will illustrate some of the key moments of your adventure.
While we generally like to keep story beats like these a surprise, we know some players enjoy seeking out spoilers, and there are always plenty of people who find these files in the beta or on the PTR and share them. To help mitigate the potential for unsuspecting players to accidentally come across these and spoil their own adventure ahead of time, we’ve decided to go ahead and upload them ourselves—and provide plenty of caution and safeguards against watching them accidentally.
Of course, it goes without saying that we recommend you wait and watch these videos in-game as they were meant to be encountered—but if you choose to watch them here below, we hope you enjoy them, and only ask that you allow others to experience the story as they choose. Thank you for your continued excitement and passion for World of Warcraft, and we’ll see you in Draenor!
*What follows are the in-game cinematics that will play at various points during the Warlords of Draenor campaign. We encourage you to play the game and experience them in-context as you progress through Draenor—but if you decide to watch them now, don’t say you haven’t been warned!
Welcome back to WoD: TBC 2.0! Last time I covered my experiences as I leveled through Draenor. Today we’ll be taking a look at max level content, mechanic/philosophy changes and the general world.
Max level content
This is the one part of WoD that worries me. Now of course it’s still in beta, so not everything is in yet. However I am very concerned as to how much and how long max level content will last. Let’s look at what we know for WoD:
Heroic Dungeons (Don’t forget you’ll need to acquire silver in the Proving Gronds to queue for it)
Challenge modes, doing the daily will give you a chance at a LFR quality piece of loot
Raids with a difficulty for everyone. LFR, Normal (flex), Heroic (normal) and Mythic (heroic). If you are in a dedicated raiding guild you’ll be doing these om specific nights in the week.
Reputations, still not fully in the game but it does not seem like there will be that many, nor is it known yet how you will level the reps and what their full rewards will be.
These are the natural sources of content you will go through to gear your character. They are expected, what other sources of fun are there?
The open world of Draenor. 7 time-lost proto drake style mounts are being added so you can farm those. Hopefully they won’t be the only cool max level things you can find in Draenor.
Daily Quests, or rather just 1 quest. Every day you’ll be able to earn 800 Apexis Crystals via a daily that starts in your garrison. You’ll have to go to a max level area and kill stuff (or interact with items) until the progress bar reaches 100.
Your Garrison and it’s related quests. You will want to level up your buildings, get their rewards and get profession materials from your herb garden and mine. The medium and large buildings have some pretty cool rewards. The stables, for example, lets you train at least 6 new mounts to add to your collection!
Weekly story quests, the quest content is the big winner of the expansion and blizzard knows it. We’ll have weekly story quests to keep us busy at max level as well, the question is if these will be different from the extra garrison quests or if they are the same thing. For example you’ll have to help a dwarf in your garrison out as an alliance player, once you’re done with the series you’ll be able to use a mole machine in your garrison to get to Gorgrond quickly.
Professions, you will want to level these to max in the new expansion like you do every expansion. The question is how will it provide lasting end game content? Will professions be improved? You’ll need more materials and materials from other professions to craft your items. You will also be able to upgrade your crafted items with your profession. Other than that, time will tell if it plays out for the better.
When you look at the list there is actually a lot to do. The question is will it last for longer than a month or two? If blizzard finds a way to make it last Warlords of Draenor will be one of, if not the best expansion in WoW history.
Feature/Mechanic Changes
When you have a 10 year old game you’re going to see some things turn ugly. Which means they need to be cleaned up, and that certainly happens in WoD.
Bagspace
Bag space is such a major issue for those that have played a long time or are just collectors. MoP added to the problem with all the toy items that became available through quests, rares and the timeless isle. The toy box should have been a feature of MoP but thankfully is one in WoD. I did not keep all MoP toys because of said bag space issues and I was still able to put about 40 toys into the toy box. But it did not stop at 40 new bag spaces!
Two surprises were added in WoD. First of all a reagents tab was added to your bank. Allowing you to store lots of reagents and materials in your bank. Add to that that a lot of mats will stack up to 200 instead of 20 and you’ll be able to craft new items while the reagents are still in your bank!
The second surprise was an additional void storage tab, allowing you to put away a lot more transmog items. This was done though because some things were pushed back. So let’s move on to the wishlist which has those pushed back items among them.
First off the heirlooms collection tab has been delayed. This was something that was supposed to be in WoD and would be quite useful for altoholics among us. I really hope this is one of their priorities as I do feel it should have been in WoD, considering the 6 month delay it had.
The transmog system that was teased will also not be in at launch. Now this was something that was only an added bonus and I’m not surprised that it is delayed. But with my many armor sets I hope to see this feature ASAP.
And finally, along with it the tabards need cleaning up. Tom Chilton has said in his past Gamescom interviews that these would likely be solved along with the new transmog system.
Button Bloat Reduction
Every class and spec are going to have some spells removed to reduce the button bloat on your action bar. This was needed. It really was… The bottom line is you’ll have to get used to it and you won’t agree with every change. I don’t think they should have removed scare beast for hunters, but it’s still gone and I’ll mourn the loss. I can’t speak for all classes but when it comes to hunters they’ve streamlined the specs. They did however fail at making each spec feel different enough. Although with all the pushbacks, delays and possible cuts from WoD it’s not really surprising.
Stat squish
Stats are finally being squished in WoD, reducing player health and stats. (Relatively speaking you don’t lose any power compared to current/old content) A breath of fresh air, and at the same time they seem to be inflating numbers pretty quickly. Player health was doubled due to PvP reasons and as a PvE player it annoys me greatly. The player health will inflate back up to rediculous numbers quite quickly with 4 tiers of gear in raids and that means another squish will be needed within a few years. Blizzard needs to find another solution for PvP in my opinion so that we don’t have these rediculous numbers again so quickly. Just for reference: At level 90 my hunter had 90k health, at level 100 with 3 crafted items, a few garrison reward items and the rest quest items he has 180k.
Garrisons
Garrisons are a huge part of Warlords of Draenor, almost everything is connected to it. There’s even a building with PvP objectives (Gladiator’s Sanctum). For everything Garrisons you should check out our guides for both buildings and followers. There are so many elements to the Garrison that in this review I’ll take a look at the best and/or worst points. For the grand overview, if it hasn’t been released yet, we will soon have a brand new overview/guide for everything related to the Garrisons. They are quite the fun addition to WoW. From the leveling of your followers to later earning gear for them it’s fun to have your own personal army.
The 20 follower limit, to be frank, takes the fun out of collecting them a bit. It feels like a punishment for collecting ’em all. Once you collect follower #21 you will be unable to send them on anymore missions until you put one on inactive. Once a day you’ll be able to reactivate one for a gold cost. The feeling of collecting your own private army is great until you reach the cap.
The profession buildings are a nice bonus, however you can’t make all the profession items with it if it’s not one of your primary professions. You’ll be able to create the materials for that profession and the first stage of the crafted items for it. (The epic items you can craft with professions will have 3 stages of item level.) The rest, such as mounts and bags you will still have to do with your own character’s professions. An advantage of having both the profession and the building is being able to speed up your material production greatly.
The invasions are alright, if you’ve sent a lot of followers on missions they get harder. Followers that had to stay at home will help you defend the garrison which is quite fun because you’ll see the element of your own private army come back in the defense of your garrison.
Some buildings seem to be close to mandatory. As it stands right now the Salvage Yard is by far the best way to gear up your followers. Other thant hat there’s only the occaisional item reward from a mission to gear up a follower. Whether this is good or not is really up to Blizzard. Is it their design intent to need the Salvage Yard to be able to gear up your followers the quickest? If so then that’s something we’ll just have to live with. They’ve already stated that it is their intent you have to make hard choices as to which buildings you choose to build, so this could just be a part of that.
As far as endgame content out of the Garrisons go, it seems to be mainly the weekly(?) garrison story quests and the one daily quest for apexis crystals. Outside of that the main gameplay seems to be leveling up followers, gearing them and earning things like gear from them. An added mention should be the quests/achievements to get tier 3 Garrison buildings if you haven’t already gotten them.
Overall the Garrison is fun, you will want to keep logging in to send your followers on new missions. At the same time if you can’t log in throughout the day, that’ll be ok too. New missions come in slowly so as long as you log in atleast once or twice a day (with a good chunk of time between them) you’ll be able to keep up with leveling up your followers. The use of the profession buildings feels quite limited if it’s not for one of your character’s primary professions but from tweets that seems to be the intent of the developers.
With a lot of the resources being put in to the Garrisons for WoD the challenge for Blizzard will be to keep them interesting for endgame content for the long run, and I certainly hope they succeed in doing so.
Rare spawns and events
While you level up in Draenor you will come across many many rare mobs. On average there’s about 20 rare mobs per zone, if not more. (Be sure to check our location guides for them) They’re a good distraction from regular quests. And that’s pretty much that’s all there is to say. It’s worth exploring the zones and look for rares that might be hidden away and they just make leveling up more fun.
Conclusion for initial WoD Experience
It’s no secret that I favor The Burning Crusade when it comes to WoW expansions, and as you can tell by the title I feel like this is TBC 2.0. WoD feels like a breath of fresh air, where leveling has become a lot more fun and significant. The storyline is good when leveling and the world feels more dynamic just due to the addition of the rare mobs and events. The garrison initial experience is very enjoyable but it shares the concern I have for max level content: Will it last? If it does, we’re going to be in for a great expansion. If not, we’ll probably continue to see a decline in subscription due to the lack of content longevity.
