Yet another Warlords of Draenor post?

So yesterday kicked off Blizzcon and the new expansion was announced as Warlords of Draenor. Perhaps you’ve read 15 other posts about this already? If not, here is the nutshell versions, but first, the reveal trailer. Mmmmmmm.

• No new race/class mentioned at this time.

This could mean that they’re still fine tuning things or deciding what to include, but perhaps we won’t actually see any new races or classes in WoD? I’m okay with this as I feel we have plenty of each already.

• One free boost to 90 with the purchase of the expansion.

Buying Warlords of Draenor will allow you to boost one character to level 90 to enjoy the new content immediately. This should make it easier for new players and returning players alike.

• Level cap increased to 100.

We haven’t seen a 10 level stretch since Wrath of the Lich King, but I found that the expansions offering longer level gaps made the journey to the top easier to swallow. 10 shorter levels seems a little easier to achieve than 5 agonizingly slow levels like we had in Mists of Pandaria.

• BoA will finally be BoA in a “collection” tab, just like mounts and pets.

FINALLY! If anything, I have a reason to stop farming a 2nd set of BoA on my Horde server.

• Updated character models.

Another FINALLY! So far Blizzard has only shown off male Orcs, male and female Dwarves and male and female Gnomes. All of them look fantastic and have full functioning facial features. That’s a shitload of F-words. If you go to the new Warlords or Draenor site, you can scroll to the bottom and check out a few of the new models in action.

• Hit, Expertise, Dodge & Parry are boring stats and are being removed completely. New stats like Avoidance (absorb a % of AoE damage), Speed (movement speed), Cleave (causing damage to deal a % of damage to other targets) and Sturdiness (no durability loss) are being added.

I think that one was long enough and explains itself.

• Players will be able to build and upgrade personal “garrisons”, using it as a hub to send out your townsfolk to farm resources, build yourself a mine to use like the Halfhill farm and even make some use out of professions you don’t have.

There is a lot more to the Garrison, but that’s a whole post in itself.

I’ll stop here as I feel these are the key selling points for me so far. Sure, revisiting Outlands as Draenor (before it was exploded in the lore) and getting to use Karabor (Black Temple before it became Black Temple) as the Alliance home base is a nerd-gasm in itself.

I’ve been patiently waiting for updated models and account-wide BoA heirlooms for years now, and as I’ve been in a caster DPS position for most of my raiding tenure, I’ve never had a good time gearing for hit.

It seems like this expansion has a great storyline to focus on and, according to Blizzard, will line up the next few expansions. When Mists of Pandaria was announced and they showed off Monks, the Pandaren and the largely Asian-influenced themes, I wasn’t all that interested. I did end up loving this expansion, but I am already immediately sold on Warlords of Draenor.

So, what’s your take? Are you excited? Anything you’re stoked or pissed off about?

To take a complete 180, here is a screen-shot of how my Warlock does the Thok encounter in Seige of Orgrimmar.