Thoughts on Warlords of Draenor

   Initially, I thought it was stupid. And in truth, I kind of still do. I really hate how they're taking a chunk of WoW lore - the best WoW lore - and are messing around with it. I get that it's an alternate history, but it's still messing around with things we know.

   But, looking past all this space/time travel nonsense, it could be a good expansion. I'm extremely excited about seeing Draenor as it used to be, that's perhaps the best part of it. But I really think that, regarding Durotan, Grom and so on, it's going to be a case of 'meet your heroes, get disappointed'. Which, in a way, is inevitable. We love Grom because of how he redeemed himself (and he was pretty badass) but he wasn't a hero until he killed Mannoroth. Durotan wasn't a hero until he rejected drinking the blood, and he died a martyr. If there is no blood of Mannoroth, which there won't be, odds are these guys are not going to be the characters we're expecting. But, that is to be expected. If they are all still heroes then I'll be disappointed.

   I like the Garrison idea, but I wonder, when they say that you can pick your zone, if that means that you can choose from any of Draenor's zones, or if they mean certain plots within your faction's zone only. I'm hoping it will be the former.

   I'm excited for the new character models - the Undead male looks good so far, so I'm excited to see the females, I just hope that the females have as much exposed bone as the males do, and they don't try to feminine them up too much. Dead is dead. Work is currently going on on the female Troll, and they have also said that they will be updating the Blood Elves and Draenei - I hope this is true, and not just a miscommunication. That will leave Goblins and Worgen as the oldest character models, but by comparison, they still look great, so that's hardly a problem.

   I'm loving the 'toys' tab as well, I wonder if they'll be accessible account-wide or not, but either way, I'd love to get it all out of my bags and bank (assuming you can destroy/consume them like mounts but still keep them in your toys tab). I like to keep a few toys in my bag for funsies, but they do eat up bag spaces. Also quest items will be nice to get rid of, but I don't feel it's as necessary as the toys tab, but at the same time it's not a game-breaking feature.

   I'm curious about this dragonfly mount that was mentioned briefly, but if it's going to be anything like the MoP release, it'll probably be a Digital Duluxe/Collector's Edition mount. Going by the art that was released, I believe it will be the dragonfly creature I showed on the blog the other day, as it has dragonfly wings, even if it does have a scorpid tail.

   And while it's not relevant to the expansion, I'm pleased to see that the Enchanted Fey Dragon will be a store mount. I am disappointed because it means it will be everywhere, but I'm not because I really want that mount regardless, and it's totally obtainable, so that's great.

   But back to the expansion: I'm completely torn. On one hand, I'm disappointed. I don't feel we have any business messing around with timeways, and regardless of whether the Aspects have lost their powers, I think it was a pretty brainless move to turn to us mortals for help with such  an effing delicate thing. Seriously. Maybe Nozdormu has already started going crazy and is using our involvement to get us to mess things up on purpose in the hopes that we can prevent all the shit that's happened in Azeroth's past.

   I also had hoped that this could be the last expansion - level 100, 10th anniversary and so on, with the perfect opportunity to just bring that mad Titan back. But this is a filler expansion if ever there was one, and I was convinced that MoP was a filler. It just feels like it's no longer moving forwards - it's not even standing still, it's just going backwards now. I hadn't noticed how much I had wanted WoW to end now, before the game is completely ruined, but it looks as though it's going to be destroyed before it ends. And it has to end, otherwise Sargeras will never actually be defeated, or be successful in his minor goal over Azeroth - although 'minor' isn't quite the case, since Azeroth has 'defeated' him in the past, it's also probably partly a pride thing now, with a personal beat with the world.

   On the other hand, however, like I said, I'd love to see what Draenor looked like before it was destroyed, and there are a few interesting features being added that I'm also excited about. I just hope that the garrisons don't require anything from raids. I realise that they've made raids accessible (too accessible, along with many, many other things), but I'm still unable to do them, and I can't be the only ones. Just because they're accessible doesn't mean people have the time or attention to dedicate, and neither does it mean that everyone will be good at them. Some people will be prone to mistakes and will bring teams of people down because of it.

   Still, I've said before that I thought Cata looked great, but I really didn't enjoy it, and that I thought MoP looked stupid but it turned out to be incredible. Only time will tell what I'll really think of this expansion, and what we'll all think. But, as always, we can prepare for lots of blog posts and forum threads from loads of haters complaining about how stupid it is, or what they don't like about it and why, or throwing around wild speculation and treating them as fact. I'll do my best to sit quietly and just wait. Although, I am concerned about the time frame. I find it highly unlikely that Blizzard is planning to release it next winter given that it's already Patch 5.4 and that they've confirmed there will be no 5.5 - they'll lose even more subs if there's no new content, and it's always bad late in the expansion because people get bored. So, logically, I think they're probably further along with making it than they're letting on, because if it was really that long, then they would have to make a 5.5 just to keep us interested. So if a 5.5 does end up coming out, then the expansion is a long way off. I think we could be waiting until the summer. Either way, we will be updated when they can give us a proper answer. Better they say nothing until they have a definitive answer than say "early spring - no, late spring - no, early summer - no, whoops, sorry, autumn it is!" It's better that than getting our hopes up.