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Category: Warcraft

Azeroth Choppers Episode 2 And Alpha Patch Notes

The second video in the Azeroth Choppers series was released today!

And in other news, the Warlords of Draenor Alpha patch notes have been updated! These changes include the return of active mana regeneration in a lesser form! Check out all the changes here. The changes compared to the last patch notes are now shown in the red.

WoW Source Episode 3, Dev Tweets and BlizzCon 2014

Blizzard released a new WoW Source episode today. WoW Source is their interview / showcase type show where they shed some light on Warlords of Draenor and answer a few community questions. This time they talk about PvP, Ashran and a little about class changes.

It looks like players won’t be able to choose the location of their garrison anymore! The main reason seems to be that garrisons are now much more integrated in the leveling flow. For the horde it will be located in Frostfire Ridge and for the alliance in Shadowmoon Valley. Both their starting zones respectively.

Watcher (Ion Hazzikostas), who was also in the WoW Source episode, announced there will be a lot of information about raiding and the philosophy behind it for WoD next week!

And finally BlizzCon 2014 has been announced!

Quote from: Blizzard
BlizzCon® 2014 Conquers Anaheim November 7 and 8

Steel thyself, O mortal realm of Anaheim! The eighth BlizzCon is coming to your Convention Center this Friday, November 7 and Saturday, November 8, 2014. Prepare for two relentless days of Blizzard gaming and fellowship, including in-depth discussion panels with Blizzard developers, hands-on opportunities with the latest Blizzard games, and intense eSports tournaments featuring top pro gamers from across the earthly plane.

Tickets for BlizzCon 2014 will go on sale in two batches, one on May 8 at 4 a.m. CET and the other on May 10 at 7 p.m. CET through the online event ticketing service Eventbrite, priced at $199 each (plus applicable taxes and fees). In addition, a limited number of tickets to an exclusive pre-BlizzCon Benefit Dinner will go on sale Wednesday, May 15 at 4 a.m. CET for $750 apiece (plus applicable taxes and fees; BlizzCon admission included), with proceeds benefitting Children’s Hospital of Orange County. Check out the BlizzCon Ticket webpage for more information—we’ve made some changes to how ticket sales work this year, and fortune favors the prepared!

If you can’t make it to the show in person, the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket is the next best thing, offering comprehensive live coverage of the event via a multichannel Internet stream. Further details on the Virtual Ticket, including pricing, availability, and programming information, will be announced at a later date.

See the full press release or check out the BlizzCon Ticket page for more information, and be sure visit www.blizzcon2014.eventbrite.com at the dates and times above for a chance to purchase a ticket to the show. See you in Anaheim!

Pax East WoD Interviews

warlords banner small

Pax East was this weekend and although there were no official announcements regarding World of Warcraft, some fansites did get to interview a few devs over Warlords of Draenor!

First off, wowhead! You can find the full interview here. But here’s a recap of the most important new information:

  • Garrisons will be integrated into EVERY aspect of Warlords of Draenor
  • You’ll be getting crafting resources from garrisons
  • While adventuring in Draenor you might come across an npc like a quest giver or one in a dungeon that you can impress. If you do so you might get them as a follower in your garrison
  • Your followers will also have gear that you can improve
  • The Iron Horde will attack you Garrison and you’ll have to defend from the invasion!
  • When your followers fail a mission or get defeated by the iron horde their morale and efficiency will decrease until they successfully complete a mission.
  • We’re getting another page of void storage

WoW Insider also had an interview. Although most has been said some new things still came up in the interview here. It is worth mentioning though that in the context of sending your followers in your garrison to kill bosses the following was said:

  • If your team triumphs, they will return to you with loot, which can be either for them or for you. You’ll even be able to watch an animated scene of your followers’ battle.
  • The battles will be scored like challenge modes, with bronze, silver, or gold grades depending on how your followers performed. When you send them out, you can choose the loot you want them to find. A better grade gives them a higher percentage to retrieve the item(s) you wanted.

On the subject of transmog:

  • The Diablo 3 transmog system will not be implemented in WoW. They have “long-term plans” to improve the system.

Afterwards Ion Hazzikostas said on twitter that although nothing will happen in 6.0, they are working on an elegant system.

 

Blizzard Introduces Azeroth Choppers

Update on how the ingame chopper will be chosen and how you’ll be able to get them:

Quote from: Blizzard
Earlier today, we announced the Azeroth Choppers head-to-head match-up between the Horde and Alliance, and we’re very excited to share the upcoming episodes and final bike creations with you. We saw a few questions following the announcement and wanted to take a moment to clarify things.

First, we want to make it clear that players globally will be able to vote for their favorite faction bike—either Alliance or Horde. Second, the bike that receives the most votes will then be made into a faction-specific-only mount and be available FREE to all players (usable when playing characters of the winning faction, of course). Your vote will be very important and could just be the one that lands your favorite faction a shiny new mount. If you haven’t watched the trailer yet, check it out here and stay tuned to Azerothchoppers.com for more details!

Quote from: Blizzard

Led by legendary chopper builder Paul Jr., Team Horde will face off against Team Alliance to determine which epic custom-built bike will come out on top in the ultimate showdown. When the dust settles and the final designs are revealed it will be YOUR vote that decides which of these mechanical marvels will be recreated as an in-game mount.

Meet the Blizzard Teams

Alliance
Chris Metzen
Terran Gregory
Monte Krol

Horde
Sam Didier
Jason Hutchins
Gary Platner

Don’t miss out on all of the action! Azeroth Choppers premieres 4.17.14 on http://www.AzerothChoppers.com

Female Draenei Character Model Preview

Blizzard came with quite a surprise tonight! After yesterday’s Tauren preview they have now released a female Draenei model preview, which is of course the real one and not the april fools one. Check out the preview below!

Quote from: Blizzard

Hello again! I’m Senior Art Director Chris Robinson, and today we wanted to give you a super quick look at our current progress with the new female Draenei.
After the April Fools’ joke we wanted to ensure you weren’t waiting too long to see where we’re at with her actual character model update. Keep in mind that she’s still in-progress, and doesn’t have any animation to pose her body or face.

Animation is a big factor for the female Draenei specifically, so it’s important to keep it in mind when comparing the two. The original female Draenei has some fairly extreme posing that happens when she’s animated. If you were to see the static model of the original without any posing you’d see that it looks very similar to the new one. With her pose applied her shoulders stretch backward, her pelvis rotates forward, and her chin lowers—causing her head to angle downwards. The curvature in her lower back, and why the head shape looks slightly different, are also due to the new model not having the same posing applied yet. She also looks a lot taller! Ultimately all of those things will be addressed when we animate the new model, they just don’t take place until she’s rigged and sent on to the animation team.

We hope you enjoyed this super quick look at where we’re at right now, and we’ll continuing sharing more in-progress art as we go forward. The next article in the Artcraft series we’re planning is a look at the creation of the Spires of Arak, a new zone coming in Warlords of Draenor. Thanks for stopping by!

Senior Character Artist Joe Keller did the majority of the work on this revamp, with direction from our Lead Character Artist Tyson Murphy (@tysmurph), and myself (@artofcgrobinson).