WoW; 7th expansion Battle for Azeroth

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Zorachus

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That time of year again, Blizzard just announced the seventh expansion for World of Warcraft;

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/7117-BlizzCon-2017-World-of-Warcraft-What-s-Next

Battle for Lordaeron
  • Horde burns down Teldrassil
  • Alliance attacks Lordaeron
  • All out war sets up for Horde controlled Kalimdor and Alliance controlled Eastern Kingdom
  • No external threat, so war against each other becomes focus

Kul Tiras: Alliance Continent
  • Ancient human kingdom
  • Powerful nautical empire
  • Rules by four houses
  • 3 main regions

Tiragarde Sound
  • Capital of Kul Tiras
  • Led by Katherine Proudmoore, Jaina's mother
  • Monster hunters
  • Trouble with pirates
  • Playable demo for area on show floor

Stormsong Valley
  • Ruled by House Stormstrong
  • Provide ships to Kul Tiras
  • Dark forces invading
  • and quillboars!

Zandalar: Horde Continent
  • Ancient Troll Empire
  • Powerful naval force
  • Continent in turmoil

Zuldazar
  • Capital of the Zandalari
  • Ruled by King Rastakhan
  • Investigate an uprising
  • Stop blood troll invaders

Nazmir
  • Festering swampland
  • Enlist powerful Loa
  • Uncover titan secrets
  • Playable on show floor

Vol'dun
  • Foreboding desert
  • Criminals exiled here
  • Befriend the vulpera

Main Heroes
  • Thrall
  • Sylvanas Windrunner
  • Anduin Wrynn
  • Jaina Proudmoore
  • Explore story of Vol'jin

Zone Flow
  • 6 zones spanning 2 continents
  • Level up in your faction's zones
  • The rest of the world opens up at 120
  • Epic "War Campaign" arc woven throughout
  • World Quests and Emissaries at 120

Allied Races
  • The lines of battle have been drawn
  • Bring a new ally into your faction...
  • Void elves, Lightforged Draenei, Dark Iron Dwarves for Alliance
  • Nightborne, Highmountain Tauren, Zandalari Trolls for Horde
  • Quest chains unlock new races
  • New racials for the allied races
  • Begin at level 20
  • Level to 110 as an allied race to unlock Heritage Armor to show off your achievement
  • 6 Allies races at launch, more planned
  • Heritage Armor works for all armor types

Leveling Improvements
  • Expanding zone scaling to all zones
  • Zones have level ranges with caps
  • Flexible expansion order
  • Burning Crusade is 60 - 80
  • Northrend scales from 60 - 80
  • Applies to dungeons as well
  • Beginning in 7.3.5!
 
Did they give a rough release date ? I'm guessing Aug / Sept next year ?
 
BfA has a official release date of August 14th, and the 8.0 patch due in July.
 
Battle for Azeroth Releases August 14th

https://www.mmo-champion.com/content/


Highlights
  • Battle for Azeroth will release on August 14, 2018!
  • Dark Iron Dwarves and Mag'har Orcs will be the first two new Allied Races. Play through the War Campaign at release and unlock them.
  • Kul'Tiran and Zandalari Trolls will come later in the expansion.
  • Another round of realm connections is coming!
  • The pre-expansion patch will include content in Darkshore that tells the backstory of the Burning of Teldrassil. It will include both story quests and replayable skirmishes with elites.
  • There will be 2.5D animated pieces that tells the story of the Burning of Teldrassil.

Misc
  • Warlords had the Garrison campaign, Legion had the Order Hall campaign, and Battle for Azeroth has a War Campaign.
  • Attendees were shown the Zandalar landfall cinematic. Nathanos and a Zandalari troll are on a ship and mention that they believe that they have lost the Alliance that were chasing them after they rescued Princess Talanji. Talanji is in the cabin, praying to Rezan for aid. She is worried that her father will not agree with her seeking out the aid of the Horde. He sees her boldness, power, enemies that fear both, and that her enemies that seek her demise are here. Alliance ships appear behind the Horde vessel and attack, with it sustaining some damage. Talanji summons a large dinosaur spirit and pushes her ship away quickly into fog. After exiting on the other side, you can see an entire fleet of Zandalari ships waiting. They fire and destroy the Alliance fleet.
  • We are very close to a beta, which the team is trying to save for when the game is feature complete and polish is remaining.
  • Patch 7.1 may have been released a little too soon, but other than that Legion content pacing worked out well.
  • Trial of Valor was an idea that came up just before Legion launched.
  • There are 6 factions for the continents, 3 for each continent. There are 2 neutral factions: Tortollan and Voice of Azeroth.

World PvP
  • The team isn't 100% sure why players are hesitant to engage in PvP combat. Is it the fact that there is a person on the other end, so they feel pressure and stress, or is it the behavior of the character on the other end.
  • Leveling with War Mode (World PvP) enabled will grant more experience and rewards, with the intent being to offset the time lost to dealing with PvP and making leveling just as fast and rewarding with PvP on.
  • You will fill up a bar with Conquest Points, earning a weapon or another piece of gear each time you fill it. Every week you earn another piece, and after you completed your set you will build a more powerful set.
  • If you are a Gladiator level player, there is still a random loot system that rewards gear competitive with raid gear.
  • Honor Talents are now tied to player level and will be unlocked as you level to 120.
  • When you have War Mode on, you will be put on a shard with only other players that have it on.
  • Group finder will only list groups with players that have the same War Mode toggle state as you.
  • You can manually group with people that have War Mode off, but you won't be able to see them out in the world.

Warfronts
  • The expansion will release with a 20 player Warfront in Arathi Highlands.
  • Warfronts may change the outside world when your faction controls it, granting access to quests or world bosses.
  • Your faction will turn in resources, unlock the warfront, play through the content and win the battle, then hold it for around 5-7 days while the other faction turns in resources to fight to control it.
  • Resources turned in include Azerite, gold, tradeskill materials, and more.
  • You will almost always win a warfront battle, so there is no risk of one faction holding it for a long time. Warfronts are held by one faction across an entire region.
  • More Warfronts will open as the expansion progresses.

Island Expeditions
  • You’ll queue for Normal, Heroic, Mythic, or PvP difficulties either alone or with a group by using an Expedition table in Zuldazar Harbor (Horde) or Boralus Harbor (Alliance).
  • Island Expeditions are three-player encounters, and while you can play as any mix of roles, you’ll want to make sure you’re coordinating with the rest of your group to overcome the opposing faction and acquire 6,000 Azerite before they do.
  • Island Expeditions use your party member's visibility to show Azerite on the map until the entire island's map is revealed.
  • There are six different islands with dozens of enemies and structures. There are 6 enemy groups per faction.
 
I was watching a video on how the GFX improved over the years it's a pretty big jump since 2004.
 
Comixbooks said:
I was watching a video on how the GFX improved over the years it's a pretty big jump since 2004.
Click to expand...

From the original launch base WoW game until now ? Yeah it's a giant jump, especially if your running at 4k resolution and Ultra settings 8xAA, etc... the game actually looks pretty good in the new outdoor zones. But Raids still look ok, not super crazy good, but the outside environment has improved tremendously.

Raids and Dungeons look mediocre and average even at the highest Uktra settings, the indoor environments haven't improved much, which is the outdated game engine.

But outdoor zones, look way better today. Look at the MoP zones, those are beautifully made, the clouds and draw distance so much nicer today.

But overall the game looks pretty dated, character armor looks cool, but not what I expect a 2018 fantasy RPG to look like. I'd like to see way more detail in the character armor, with flowing capes, and dangling pieces and trinkets and stuff glistening off the character, and deeper more varied armor colors, and a more 3d layered look to the armor, etc...
 
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Yeah the game looks pretty good still, though some parts are terribly optimised like suramar where your fps will tank, think they hold back in raids a bit to keep fps at playable levels.

On the other hand, some of the changes from cataclysm where they overhauled the world a bunch look badly out of place, luckily there is rarely a need to go there.
 
Preordered and put in for PTO on 8/14. :)

I was hardcore into it during TBC and Wrath and a bit of Cataclysm and raided in a top 20 US guild. I never expect it to get back to that level but it's still fun to grab every expansion for $50 plus a one-month sub and put 30-40 hours into it to see the new stuff.
 
Which Plate melee class is most Newb friendly?

If you play Frost Death Knight, or Arms Warrior, or Ret Paladin, in your opinion which of those melee dps specs are most newb friendly ? I don't want to start a discussion of which is better, or comparing who's more bad ass. Lets keep this civil and professional please.

I am asking in general, if your a somewhat a fresh spec'd character, lets say like i930 or so ( which is extremely easy to get to right away ) and have like 63 AK on your artifact weapon, so all traits filled, and at at least one slot filled in for Nether.

Like that's a couple of my characters, both my Warrior and Paladin have been Protection Tanks for years, I never tried a dps class on them, until this weekend, I went for the Arms and Ret artifact quests and grabbed some AP from several WQs and immediately that put me up to 60+ AK.

So my question is, which of these three, Frost DK, Arms War, and Ret Pal, is easiest to learn and pick up and get good rotation going with respectable dps ?

Going into BfA soon, which of these three dps classes will be the most fun and good to play?
 
Strangely enough, after having my warrior as my main for 12 years I never played arms so can't realy comment on that, warriors do get better with high gear lvl's so you got at least that, I played mostly fury this expac.

Of the 2 choices left I prefer frost DK, they kill regular mobs pretty fast have good survivability, most specs these days have an easy enough rotation to do decent damage, I use maxdps mod to help me out a bit.

As to how they will play in BfA I don't know yet, blizz is still hard at work at classes so nothing final there, things tend to change a lot between expacs.
 
Arms is great for pvp and pretty easy to play, but it's not as hot right now in PvE as Fury.
Frost is amazing right now after being shit-tier all expansion but I wouldn't call the DK newb-friendly.
Pallies are the definition of newb friendly by design and Ret is pretty good right now. So that would probably be your pick.


Zorachus said:
World PvP
  • The team isn't 100% sure why players are hesitant to engage in PvP combat. Is it the fact that there is a person on the other end, so they feel pressure and stress, or is it the behavior of the character on the other end.
Click to expand...

This part is pretty amusing. It has nothing to do with "the other end", it's all about the reward for time on the player's end.

I'm looking forward to the world pvp flag (honor talents active + faster xp/loot for pve), war fronts and expeditions. Trying to figure out what class to play for BfA with that in mind. My Legion main was a priest but there's no way I want to do world pvp content with a damn priest. Stealthers are an obvious choice, pick your battles and all that. I'm betting druids will be really popular.
 
My Death Knight was always a Blood Tank, but at Antorus launch, I tried out Frost, and came to really like it. Super fast attack speed, simple and easy rotation, and not hard to dish out good damage. Been playing my Frost Knight for 4+ months or so, and love this class, he's a bad ass at i955. But I also wanted to test out Warrior and Paladin dps specs too.

Arms Warrior seems pretty straightforward too, not too hard to learn to get a nice rotation or whatever they call it today, and dish out good dps. I love the mobility with this class, Charge + Leap make it seem so much faster to get around. I like Arms, it's fun and simple.

Ret Paladin; this one seems harder for me to get comfortable with, a simple rotation like Frost, it is not. Plus my character is stuck in mainly Tank spec'd gear still, and I have zero dps Legendary's equipped, but just got the Legendary ring "Soul of the Highlord" but can't equip until I find any decent Legs to replace my Tank leggo pants, otherwise if I quip Highlord, I'll be pantsless. This Ret Paladin seems slow on spell casting, some cd waiting on spells to be ready, and can't get into the grove yet with this class.

Please look at my gear and offer suggestions;

Warrior;
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/zuljin/dingowar

Paladin; ( but he's still in old Tank gear, I need to pick up dps gear )
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/zuljin/darthdingo
 
The alpha went beta now and more players will be added accordingly so if you were not in yet you might soon be.
 
Ritorix said:
This part is pretty amusing. It has nothing to do with "the other end", it's all about the reward for time on the player's end.
Click to expand...
I've seen people argue like crazy about features involving Pvp for precisely the reason of it being another player, on some games' forums. It does have to do with the other end for some weirdos.
 
Very sad they are removing artifact weapons from BFA and going back to the old weapon drops...

Weapon has always been the worst part of my gear back in WotLK and Cata because of how important it is, the fact that there is no replacement for it, and multiple classes are after the same weapons.

When I quit WoW back in my Cata days, my DK tank was still using blue heroic weapon.

Fast forward to my Vengeance DH, my weapons are currently the highest of my gear by a good 20 levels. Granted, I am still average of 860 or so, but given that my weapon before was NEVER better than my average, this is pretty significant.

I am REALLY bummed that they are reverting to the old drop system...
 
Denpepe said:
The alpha went beta now and more players will be added accordingly so if you were not in yet you might soon be.
Click to expand...
Just got the invite Wednesday night for the beta. Just started playing today and so far im enjoying it, I normally roll alliance with ym brother but im doing the horde for the beta and I'm glad I am so far. There is still alot of missing things for cinematics and such that have been replaced with old random cut scenes until they are ready. But so far the only major glitches all involve cut scenes and nothing major beyond that.
 
Patch 8.0.1 Live This Week!
https://www.mmo-champion.com/content/7775-Patch-8-0-1-Live-This-Week!

I have to say the improvements to the characters I play are pretty good so far.

Paladin:
Ret = feels faster and smoother, and just a good update
Prot = Not much different, but a bit better I say, not a downgrade at all, but improved

Demon Hunter:
Veng = Slightly updated for the better, I like it more

Death Knight:
Blood = Ok, but slow, and boring, I much prefer the throwing of things on the Paladin better for starting the fight Tanking, with Avengers Shield, and Judgement. Where the Blood DK doesn't have anything like that, so you need to be more up close to start the fight.
 
I joined in the patch-day chaos for a bit. It was a typical pre-expansion patch day: servers crashing, UI mods gone haywire, talents reset, the usual. Still managed to pug Argus, which was easier and went faster than pre-patch despite lack of artifact traits.

One big thing though - all 110 characters have 1000 Essence sitting in their class hall mythic chests, whether or not they did a mythic dungeon. 1000 is the cost of any legendary you want, which you can level up with in BFA. So if you have a bunch of 110s you have some shopping to do.

I'll comment on the...

Priest
My Legion main and will probably be my BFA main too. I even race-changed to void elf for the uninterruptible casting racial. And cheaper transmogs.
First up, Fortitude is back as a raid buff, 10% stamina for everyone.
Shadow is less hectic and APM-dependent (it used to literally hurt to play at high stacks), the AE is better and STM no longer kills you.
Disc has always been my favorite and it got a few nice fixes. Plea is gone, PW:Shield replaces it by removing the cooldown, Rapture buffs PWS instead of removing its cooldown. There's a talent for a raid-wide absorb shield which replaces and seems more useful than Barrier. Mastery affects absorbs now. Atonement is still around too.
Haven't messed around with Holy yet, it seemed pretty much the same.
 
Yeah I've been debating it too, but I only get an hour of game time a night now, so I'm not sure it'd be worth it.
 
[L]imey said:
Yeah I've been debating it too, but I only get an hour of game time a night now, so I'm not sure it'd be worth it.
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in the same boat as you. i have a 82 warrior that i wanted to get to 110 before BfA hits, but i think it might not be doable solo.
 
mQzz said:
in the same boat as you. i have a 82 warrior that i wanted to get to 110 before BfA hits, but i think it might not be doable solo.
Click to expand...

Yoiu get a free boost to 110 for one toon when you buy the expac if that helps.
 
Denpepe said:
Yoiu get a free boost to 110 for one toon when you buy the expac if that helps.
Click to expand...

yeah i know, but i kinda wanted something to do until the 14th. and i only got one character at 110 right now.
 
mQzz said:
yeah i know, but i kinda wanted something to do until the 14th. and i only got one character at 110 right now.
Click to expand...

82 - 110 is very doable by August 14th. Typically you can do light questing around Pandaria and queue for Pandaria instances 82 - 90 and it goes by very quickly. I typically do the quests around Halfhill in Valley of the Four Winds (to unlock the farm), and maybe some up in Kun Lai until I hit 88 and then I hit Dread Wastes until 90. 90 to 100 is so fast and easy if you do this one trick.

Once you have your Garrison unlocked there are bonus areas in each of the zones. Each bonus area will give you 95,000 to 106,000 experience points. Literally, by the time you finish all of the bonus areas in a zone you'll be high enough level to go to the next zone. Shadowmoon > Gorgrond > Talador > Spires > Nagrand for Alliance. Change Shadowmoon to Frostfire for Horde. Within only a couple of hours you'll be 98 and can head off to Legion.

Once in Legion, just follow the story quests and you'll be 110 in a couple of days.
 
JSumrall said:
82 - 110 is very doable by August 14th. Typically you can do light questing around Pandaria and queue for Pandaria instances 82 - 90 and it goes by very quickly. I typically do the quests around Halfhill in Valley of the Four Winds (to unlock the farm), and maybe some up in Kun Lai until I hit 88 and then I hit Dread Wastes until 90. 90 to 100 is so fast and easy if you do this one trick.

Once you have your Garrison unlocked there are bonus areas in each of the zones. Each bonus area will give you 95,000 to 106,000 experience points. Literally, by the time you finish all of the bonus areas in a zone you'll be high enough level to go to the next zone. Shadowmoon > Gorgrond > Talador > Spires > Nagrand for Alliance. Change Shadowmoon to Frostfire for Horde. Within only a couple of hours you'll be 98 and can head off to Legion.

Once in Legion, just follow the story quests and you'll be 110 in a couple of days.
Click to expand...


hmmmm, i never got WoD, do i still get a garrison ?
 
Yes. Blizzard made a change recently where if you sub you get all expansions up through Legion. The only one you'd have to buy is Battle For Azeroth.
 
JSumrall said:
Yes. Blizzard made a change recently where if you sub you get all expansions up through Legion. The only one you'd have to buy is Battle For Azeroth.
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And this is kind of appealing to me....
Though looking at the Sys Reqs for the game, I'm not so sure my HP ProBook (daily driver PC ATM) will handle the game. I'm thinking of doing the trial first to make sure.
 
mQzz said:
hmmmm, i never got WoD, do i still get a garrison ?
Click to expand...

Nah, the way Blizzard does expansions is that they usually leave the main 'new' mechanic or whatever it is in that xpac. So in WoD it was Garrisons, in Legion it was Artifact Weapons that are now defunct and for BfA it's Azerite Armor which will be defunct after BfA.
 
JSumrall said:
82 - 110 is very doable by August 14th. Typically you can do light questing around Pandaria and queue for Pandaria instances 82 - 90 and it goes by very quickly. I typically do the quests around Halfhill in Valley of the Four Winds (to unlock the farm), and maybe some up in Kun Lai until I hit 88 and then I hit Dread Wastes until 90. 90 to 100 is so fast and easy if you do this one trick.

Once you have your Garrison unlocked there are bonus areas in each of the zones. Each bonus area will give you 95,000 to 106,000 experience points. Literally, by the time you finish all of the bonus areas in a zone you'll be high enough level to go to the next zone. Shadowmoon > Gorgrond > Talador > Spires > Nagrand for Alliance. Change Shadowmoon to Frostfire for Horde. Within only a couple of hours you'll be 98 and can head off to Legion.

Once in Legion, just follow the story quests and you'll be 110 in a couple of days.
Click to expand...
There is also the heirloom gear. Maxed out, I believe you can get a 35% XP bonus.
 
MVIMG_20180729_222904.jpg


DO these shoudlers look good with this purple recolor Judgment set ?
 
I’ll probably check it out especially if I can get adaptive vsync working on it. Used to work with vsync off in WoW settings and set to adaptive in nVidia control panel but now doesn’t. Using Windows 10 latest updates and 1070 Ti and just can’t find what I need to make it work right.

I’ll play my warlock that’s sitting at 110 and has been my main character since BC.
 
NeghVar said:
There is also the heirloom gear. Maxed out, I believe you can get a 35% XP bonus.
Click to expand...

update on the levelling, im at 89 now. dont have money to upgrade all heirlooms past lvl90, so its gonna slow down.its like 30k gold or something for the 6 items. brutal.

hoping to ding tonight so i can get started on the garrison stuff.
 
im back! ive gone and dinged to 92 today got my garrison all set up and questing in draenor. when does the bonus exp stuff come in with the garrison like you guys mentioned a couple boys up? levelling itself seems to be pretty smooth so far in WoD but i was wondering if maybe i could speed it up even more?
 
Just reinstalled in prep for the expansion and I see we get a 110 character boost.

What's fun these days? Back when I raided 20-30 hours a week in TBC and Wrath and early Cata, my main was a Mage but I always preferred my Rogue and Warrior alts. After that I had to quit due to school but I've dabbled in every expansion since then and really hated leveling the Mage (stuck at 92 or something) and blew my last character boost (to 100) on the Rogue and that was no fun either. Warrior was fun and that is my only 110 right now.

Edit: This guy says Warlock so I better do Warlock and then wait for Blizzard to nerf it to hell.

 
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Warlocks are definitely FOTM, I shelved mine because I have to be a special flower. I'm currently deciding between a Priest and Monk. Monks are appearing way too popular for my tastes.
 
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