The warlords of dreanor friends and family alpha has finally started! Thusfar only frostfire ridge (horde starting zone) is available to alpha testers.
Warlords of Draenor alpha invites have gone out to a small number of individuals for our first phase of external testing, historically dubbed “Friends & Family” for its limited scope of availability to Blizzard employees’ friends and family, as well as some streamers, press outlets, and fansites. Alpha testers are free to share screenshots and videos, stream content, publicly discuss their experiences in the alpha, and offer their feedback in the Alpha Feedback forum.
This initial wave is extremely limited, and we’ll be sending additional invites as testing progresses. In the meantime, we recommend visiting your favorite fansites for information and updates, Twitch to watch streams, and the front page here at WorldofWarcraft.com for continuing content updates. You can also check out the full alpha patch notes right here!
Please be aware that no keys are available for the Warlords of Draenor alpha, so be on guard for potential scams using invites as a lure. You can always check to see if you’ve been invited by logging into your Battle.net account at http://www.battle.net and viewing your available game licenses. You’ll never need to click on a link in an email to redeem a testing invite for Warlords of Draenor. Visit our security site for information on how to identify and avoid scams intended to steal your account information.
If you’re interested in participating in future testing phases, you can opt in here to World of Warcraft and other Blizzard game-testing opportunities. Additional invite opportunities will be announced as they become available, and we recommend checking back regularly for updates.
[edit] Worth noting that the keys given out at PAX East are for a future phase of Beta testing and are not yet active. We’ll announce which phase they’re active and redeemable for when that phase arrives.
In this Coffee with the Devs, we’d like to give an update on secondary and minor stats in Warlords of Draenor. A lot has changed since we first revealed our plans at BlizzCon, so this blog will not only cover the latest developments related to what we’ve already discussed, but also go into detail on some new changes we’ve got in the pipeline.
As we announced at BlizzCon, we’re retiring Hit, Expertise, Dodge, and Parry. Hit and Expertise weren’t really providing very interesting gameplay, and Dodge and Parry are being replaced with Bonus Armor. Check out the Patch Notes for further discussion on why we removed these stats.
The other secondary stats—Crit, Mastery, Haste, and Spirit—work well and will be sticking around. One important note is that Spirit will only appear on items for specific slots (fingers, neck, back, and trinkets) and will give a much stronger benefit than it does today. Healers will prefer items with Spirit for those slots, but otherwise will use similar gear to everyone else.
New Stat: Multistrike
A new stat in Warlords of Draenor, Multistrike grants your spells, abilities, and auto-attacks additional chances to activate. If you’ve been following along since BlizzCon, you may remember that in our early plans, your Multistrike chance would split between two rolls and effectively have a 200% cap. We’ve since changed that to make it more clear and intuitive: the full chance is given to both rolls, with a 100% cap.
Now Multistrike grants your spells, abilities, and auto-attacks the chance to activate up to two extra times at 30% of normal effectiveness. For example, if you have 55% Multistrike and cast a Fireball that does 1000–1100 damage, you’ll have two separate 55% chances to automatically follow with another smaller Fireball that does 300–330 damage. That means every time you cast Fireball, you have a chance to see one big-damage Fireball, and then two smaller-damage Fireballs leave your hands in quick succession.
New Stat: Bonus Armor
Throughout the game’s history, some items have had bonus armor on them, which made them more attractive to tanks. After we removed Dodge and Parry, we wanted to replace these stats with a new tank-specific stat, and Bonus Armor fit the bill nicely. As with Spirit, it’ll only show up on rings, necklaces, cloaks, and trinkets. It’s clearly valuable to all tanks, and will be tuned to be much stronger than other secondary stats. Tanks will want to use items with Bonus Armor for those slots.
Retiring Stat: Amplify
We tried out Amplify on trinkets in Siege of Orgrimmar, and at BlizzCon we announced that it’d be a stat in Warlords of Draenor. The intent of Amplify was to multiply the effects of your other secondary stats. However, as we continued development, we found that Amplify had some design problems. In particular, we determined that it would quickly become the absolute best stat for everyone. On top of that, even if we were to apply heavy diminishing returns, the stat still wouldn’t have an interesting effect on your gameplay. For those reasons, it’s no longer going to be a stat in Warlords of Draenor.
Retiring Stat: ReadinessReadiness was another stat that we tried out on Siege of Orgrimmar trinkets. This one looked solid at first. Cooldown reduction is a great concept, the idea was well received, and although there were some balance issues, they seemed solvable. However, as we continued development, we hit a snag. Readiness works great in small quantities on the scale of a trinket or two, like in Siege of Orgrimmar. However, when we expand that to a point where you could potentially have Readiness on all of your character’s gear, problems arise.
Using a damage-dealing (DPS) class as an example, most of the stat’s value comes in letting you use your temporary burst-damage cooldowns (Arcane Power, Vendetta, Recklessness, Dark Soul, etc.) more often. Most of those cooldowns increase damage by 20%–30% while active, which is substantial for a temporary burst ability, but doesn’t compare well against secondary stats. If you stack a lot of Crit and can reach 30% Crit from gear, that’s more or less a 30% passive increase to damage. If secondary stats are equal, you should be able to stack Readiness instead, and get a damage increase that’s similar (or at least close). But how do we give you a 30% damage increase from letting you use a +20% damage cooldown more often? And once you get to 100% uptime, then what?
We experimented with many potential design changes but never found a version of Readiness that really felt good, so we’re going to shelve it for now, at least as a common secondary stat. You may still see it pop up occasionally in small quantities, such as on a trinket.
New Stat: Versatility
The removal of Readiness left some space in our itemization plans and room for another stat to take its place. It’s important to offer players plenty of different secondary stats so that you have a wide variety of interesting and compelling gear to choose from. To that end, we’ve been working on a new secondary stat called Versatility. Versatility is pretty simple: 1% Versatility grants a 1% increase to your damage, healing, and absorbs, and reduces the damage you take by 0.5%. It’s a straightforward, obvious upgrade to your primary role’s performance, but also gives significant boosts to secondary role performance and survivability. The healing increase it provides does work on self-heals, such as Recuperate, for example. We won’t be tuning it to be anyone’s highest throughput secondary stat, but it’ll be close, and it’ll give you a nice boost to how versatile your character is in the process. It’ll be especially attractive to hybrids who want to feel more “hybridy.”
Minor Stats
Most gear that drops in Warlords of Draenor has a chance to have a random bonus in addition to its normal stats. We call these “minor stats,” and they provide a small but useful bonus to your character.
New Minor Stat: Movement Speed
The first of our minor stats is Movement Speed, which, as you can probably guess, increases the speed that you move by a small amount. Previously, movement speed increases came from enchants and various class abilities, but otherwise never directly came from gear. The Movement Speed minor stat will stack with all other sources of movement speed, but we’ll be keeping the maximum benefit you can get from it fairly low—we want it to feel like a fun bonus when you get it, but not a large increase to character power. New Minor Stat: Avoidance
Another minor stat, Avoidance, has previously only ever been used for a few prominent class pets. It reduces the damage you take from area-of-effect (AoE) attacks, though compared to the pet version, the Avoidance minor stat will come in much smaller quantities. The goal is to soften the blow of AoE attacks a bit, but not allow you to just stand in the fire. New Minor Stat: Indestructible (previously Sturdiness)
We called this one Sturdiness when we announced it at BlizzCon, and its original effect reduced durability damage that you take by a small amount across your whole character. Since then, we’ve renamed it Indestructible, and changed it to cause that specific item to not take any durability damage. We think the change will make the stat more intuitive while providing a similar overall benefit.
New Minor Stat: Leech (previously Lifesteal)
Lifesteal is another minor stat that has been renamed and slightly redesigned since BlizzCon. Our original plan was for it to convert a percentage of your damage done to self-healing. We’ve extended it to work for healers as well, causing an extra percentage of all of the healing you do to heal you as well. With that change, the name was no longer fitting, so we’re renaming it Leech.
Proposed Minor Stat: Cleave
We announced Cleave as a minor stat at BlizzCon, but have since run into some problems with it. Most importantly, it was of situational value to DPS classes,always valuable to healers, and had very little value to tanks. As a result, we were concerned it would cause items that would otherwise be equally appropriate for a healer and a DPS class to be viewed as “healer gear,” which isn’t our intent. We’ve shelved it for now, though we have some ideas about how it might show up occasionally in specific cases. The Complete List
In summary, here’s a complete list of our planned secondary and minor stats in Warlords of Draenor:
Secondary Stats
Haste: (Unchanged) Increases attack speed, spell casting speed, and some resource generation
Critical Strike: (Unchanged) Increases your chance to critically strike, dealing double damage
Mastery: (Unchanged) Increases the effectiveness of your specialization-specific Mastery
Multistrike: (New) Grants two chances for your damage and healing effects to fire an additional time, each at 30% effectiveness
Versatility: (New) Increases damage and healing, and reduces damage taken
Spirit: (Unchanged, healer-only) Increases mana regeneration rate
Bonus Armor: (New, tank-only) Increases your armor
Minor Stats
Movement Speed: (New) Increases your movement speed
Indestructible: (New) Causes the item to not take durability damage
Leech: (New) Causes you to be healed for a portion of all damage and healing done
Avoidance: (New) Reduces your damage taken from area-of-effect attacks.
As you can see, we have a lot of exciting changes and additions in the works designed to give you a variety of intuitive and interesting gearing options. We’ll be keeping a close eye on how these are playing out in our alpha and beta testing, and we’ll continue to refine and adjust as needed. As always, we look forward to hearing your constructive feedback!
It’s also Muradin week for heroes of the storm, which means there’s a new video out showcasing him!
A heroes’ journey is long and fraught with danger, but our goblin engineers have managed to cobble a little something special together for you to help make the path to power just a little bit easier.
Beginning Friday, May 30 at 9:00 a.m. realm-time, through Tuesday, June 10 at 9:00 a.m. realm-time, we’ll be applying the Heart of the Valorous buff which will increase the rate of Valor Point gains an additional 100%. Don’t wait to get in on the action!
The female gnome and male tauren character models have been updated on the official Warlords of Draenor website!
We’ve updated the viewer on our website with two of the revised character models you’ll see in Azeroth and beyond with Warlords of Draenor. Meet the new and improved Tauren Male and Gnome Female!Our character artists strived to recapture the charm of the classic models while taking advantage of the expressiveness of their fluid new animations to bring new life to these beloved characters. We hope you like the new looks as much as we enjoyed making them.
We’ll continue to unearth more of Draenor and the shiny visuals coming to World of Warcraft around the release of Warlords. Keep your magnifiers and spectacles ready!
The newest Azeroth Chopper is up and with it the voting has begun! Voting is open until Monday, and the winner will be put in the game as a free mount for everyone on that faction.
Prepare for battle! Armor has been polished and blades sharpened—the bikes are finally revealed for the first time and ready for your votes! Back at Blizzard HQ, team Horde and team Alliance eagerly await seeing their completed bikes fired up for the first time.
Head over to www.AzerothChoppers.com NOW to cast your vote for your favorite bike and let your faction’s war cry be heard with #AzerothChoppers.
At BlizzCon 2013, we shared a lot of our ideas for Warlords of Draenor’s Garrisons. We knew early on in development that this feature would strike a chord with long-time Warcraft players going back to the RTS days, as well as set the tone for the conflict with the Iron Horde. Since BlizzCon, we’ve been experimenting and iterating on Garrison concepts in our design laboratories, and we wanted to give you an updated preview of what’s to come.
In this 4-part series, we’ll be 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. For this first installment, we’re going to start off by painting a picture of Garrisons in relatively broad strokes, setting the stage to delve into the functional depth over the coming weeks in parts 2 through 4.
Establish Your Garrison While You Level
We want the process of staking your claim on Draenor to fundamentally shape your gameplay experience. Over the course of building your Garrison, we want you to face exciting decisions that will meaningfully impact how you interact with the world around you, fulfilling that fantasy of building and operating your own Warcraft base.
The story you weave in Draenor is one of personal heroism, but your actions have a wider impact—part of your mission is to raise an army capable of toppling the Iron Horde, and the Garrison is integral to that experience. In terms of gameplay, that means you’ll be creating and strengthening your Garrison as you journey to level 100. While questing through Draenor, you’ll encounter opportunities to choose between different types of buildings to add to your Garrison. Each choice will have an impact on your leveling experience, influencing the quests you’ll have available and the zone-specific benefits you’ll unlock upon completion of your chosen structure.
As an example, you can choose either the Lumber Mill or the Sparring Arena while questing in Gorgrond. Not only does this choice unlock the design blueprints that allow you to add the building to your Garrison, it also lets you construct a military outpost centered around that building in Gorgrond. This plays an integral role in how you experience the zone, as you’ll be sent on quests specific to the building you’ve chosen and will receive a permanent benefit whenever you’re in Gorgrond.
When you’ve completed constructing a building in a zone—and subsequently unlocked it for your Garrison—we want you to feel duly rewarded for helping to strengthen the forces in the area against the Iron Horde. To give you more of a feeling for the ideas we have for zone benefits, imagine summoning a brutish ogre bodyguard from your Sparring Arena when in Gorgrond, or calling down artillery strikes from your Armory while in Talador. Our goal is for each zone to offer equally compelling alternatives from which to choose, and to provide you with plenty of powerful creatures to vanquish with your newfound powers.
Enlist Followers to Join Your Garrison
Your Garrison wouldn’t be much of a base without some citizens to populate it—we call these brave souls Followers. You’ll be able to recruit Followers through a wide variety of methods—you can think of it sort of like collecting mounts or battle pets. And, like battle pets, different Followers will have varying skill sets, including their own strengths and weaknesses. Some Followers are unique and might even have names already familiar to you, while others will make for fine grunts to operate the saws of your Lumber Mill, brew potions in your Alchemy Lab, or craft magical components in your Enchanter’s Study. You can maximize the productivity of your Garrison by assigning specific Followers to the posts where which they’re most proficient, such as Johnny Blacksmith, who will increase the output of materials from—you guessed it—your Blacksmith when assigned to work it. Similarly, Followers more suited to combat would be ideal to send on missions, from which you can acquire an assortment of useful bounty.
Missions will have variable difficulties, durations, and group size requirements, and some will play better to the strengths of particular Followers over others. A wise commander will create the ideal team for a mission and send them off to reap the maximum rewards. Complete enough missions and your Followers will level up, and once they’ve reached level 100, they can continue to improve their item levels, abilities, and traits. After you’ve sent a group on a mission, progress will continue whether you’re hanging out in your Garrison, battling through Blackrock Foundry, or even sleeping soundly logged out of the game.
The buildings you create, NPCs you meet, and Followers you recruit will ultimately determine who inhabits your Garrison, and you’ll see them going about their business each time you visit. You’re in charge of your own base and citizens, and you’ll even host leaders and other notable heroes from your faction to talk war strategy—among other things.
We’ve also improved NPC AI (artificial intelligence) to further reinforce that “bustling town” feeling as you expand your Garrison. While Azeroth’s NPCs have traditionally been manually scripted to move along set paths for predetermined amounts of time, stopping at certain locations and then heading in new directions only as commanded, this behavior wouldn’t have sufficed for Followers. A particular Follower might need to know on which plot within your Garrison you’ve built your Trading Post, for example, so he or she can make the trek to and from that specific location while doing your bidding. This improved AI also allows us to create more dynamic behavior, where NPCs can react to your commands or other situations happening around them. Want to have your subjects join you in a conga line around town? Thanks to improved AI and a new player emote, you can . . . and they will!
Fortify Your Fortress
Questing during the leveling process on Draenor will be the primary means by which you establish and grow your base, but the blueprints that allow you to construct different buildings can be obtained in a variety of ways. For example, you can find Followers who will teach you blueprints, obtain them via drops from creatures out in the world or in dungeons, or earn them via faction reputation. At level 100, you can also purchase blueprints from a vendor for the buildings from each zone you originally didn’t choose. So, if you decide to build a Mage Tower instead of an Armory in Talador, you’ll still be able to purchase the blueprints that allow you to build an Armory in your Garrison later on. From there you may decide you want an Armory instead of a Mage Tower in your Garrison—or maybe you’ll find room for both!
You’ll have access to 21 unique building types in all, each of which can be upgraded through 3 levels and then assigned specializations to maximize their effectiveness, and your Garrison can be expanded from its initial 4 building plots to a maximum of 10. If this sounds like too many big choices to make as you go along, don’t fret! You’ll be able to alter your building choices to suit your needs—and the needs of the war effort.
The Garrison also grants you other powerful benefits. It will play an integral role in your professions on Draenor, giving your character access to more than just the normal two primary professions (we’ll cover that in more depth in part 2 of this preview series). In addition, amassing a powerful army of Followers will maximize your chances of earning mission rewards like dungeon and entry-level raid loot for your character—but these will be tuned to feel more like bonuses rather than eclipsing your character’s direct accomplishments. We want there to be a ton of depth to the gameplay and customization of the Garrison, but we also don’t want to make players feel like they’re required to spend more time than they’d like laboring away on it after they’ve reached level 100. We recognize that there’s a fine line between introducing a system that provides cool bonuses and adding “chores” that feel necessary for cutting-edge endgame progression. To this end, players who prefer to level up mostly through dungeons or Battlegrounds will still be able to purchase the building blueprints that would otherwise be obtained through questing on Draenor.
The Last Line of Defense
Draenor is a savage and dangerous land. From the moment you set foot onto its soil, you will be hounded at every turn by the united clans of the Iron Horde. With few allies at your side, establishing a well-defended base will be one of the first orders of business. As the story unfolds, you’ll find that Garrisons are intimately integrated into every zone—whether you choose to follow the main quest path or just head off into the hills to explore, you will meet allies (and enemies) in every corner of the world. While your main fortress will always be in Shadowmoon Valley (Alliance) or Frostfire Ridge (Horde), you will establish Garrison outposts in Gorgrond, Talador, Nagrand, and Spires of Arak, all customized based on your building choices. Eventually, your forces will span the continent, and you will have an army capable of assaulting the fortified Iron Horde Foundry. Will your troops succeed? That’s entirely up to you, commander.
More to Come!
Thank you for joining us on this quick tour of your Garrison, and we hope you’ll come back for the rest—we’ve only just scratched the surface of this exciting new feature. In Part 2, we’ll take a much closer look at the buildings, including all 21 unique building types and their perks and specializations, as well as how professions are integrated. Stay tuned!
Hi, I’m Chris Robinson, senior art director of World of Warcraft, and welcome to a special edition of Artcraft focused on an idea that’s still quite early in the inception phase: class accessories. For a long time now, we’ve felt that our character classes could use some more visual customization options, and we’ve heard you might be thinking the same thing. When I play WoW, I see Hunters pulling arrows from thin air, firing shot after shot with no visible clue as to where that ammo is coming from. I’ve heard Druids speak fondly of mystical objects called Idols, and listened to Shamans talk of Totems. And my Paladin seems to have developed a strange hitch in his gait due to the lack of a Libram at his side.
While some of those items once existed in-game as gear for the now-retired “Relic” slot, you’ve never been able to actually see those items on your character. We’ve been cooking up some concepts for how we might be able to bring that sort of class-specific visual customization back in the form of purely cosmetic class accessories—and while we’re not here to herald their imminent arrival, we thought it would be fun to give you a sneak peek at what we’re conceptualizing from an art perspective, and have our item-design guru Owen Landgren give you some insight into how they might work.
Before we show you the goods, keep in mind these are still way early in the design process, and getting them into the game will likely need to wait until after you’ve faced off against the Iron Horde. But this is something that’s been requested so frequently, we thought you might appreciate knowing we’re working to make it happen (eventually). So without further delay, here are a few concepts for you to take a look at!
As you can see, these concepts are all somewhat Alliance focused, at least for now. We’re thinking we’ll have Horde and Alliance color schemes for accessories whenever it makes sense. And while we’re planning on creating the “obvious” accessories for the classes that once had Relics, we have a lot of ideas for accessories we think would be awesome for all of the classes. Don’t let that stop you from sharing your own ideas with us, though!
Now that you’ve gotten a glimpse at what we’re working on in the art realm, here’s Owen to explain the designers’ early thinking on how these might be worked into the game:
“Back in ye olden days of Cataclysm and earlier, the Relic gear slot provided some classes with an additional item that would impart character stat bonuses. We always thought it would have been cool to show these Relics on your character, but aside from the generic quiver for Hunters wielding a bow, the artists just didn’t have time to do the concept justice. We were also faced with some unique design challenges, including questions about how much additional unique artwork would have been required for each new tier of raid and PvP gear. However, once the Relic slot was retired and the visuals could be divorced from gearing mechanics, the idea of bringing these back as a character customization feature became something we talked about more and more.
Our goal with these class accessories is to offer players a whole new path to customizing the look of their character. While you might decide to wear the same armor as your friend, choosing different accessories allows you to communicate something extra about your character. As a Rogue, are you the swashbuckling buccaneer with daggers on a bandolier and stashed up every sleeve? Or are you the poisoner, carrying bubbling, smoking vials filled with terrible concoctions? Perhaps you’re the shadowy figure that lurks in the dark, replete with darts and throwing stars to fell your enemies from a distance? As you obtain new looks, you’ll be able to mix and match thematically—if a particular Hunter gear set looks better with a longbow and quiver than a blunderbuss and ammo pouch, the option is yours. Mix in Transmogrification, and the visual combinations are nearly endless.
“We envision that class accessories will be rewarded from a variety of accomplishments in World of Warcraft. These could be as simple as attaining a new level, or as monumental as conquering a vicious raid boss. We want each player to have access to multiple accessories, but have some rarer accessories that take more effort to obtain.” —Owen Landgren, Game Designer
Hey there—Chris again. As we mentioned, these are still just some early ideas and concepts, and we hope you enjoyed getting a glimpse behind the scenes. We know a lot of you are excited about the idea of having new ways to customize the look of your characters, and we look forward to sharing more as we continue to make progress. Thanks for reading!
Most gear that drops in Warlords of Draenor has a chance to have a random bonus in addition to its normal stats. We call these “minor stats,” and they provide a small but useful bonus to your character.
