Unfinished: World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor (Beta) 09/19/2014

WORLD OF RORIECRAFT

Short video, but nice.

One of the few videos on GB that I don't want to watch because it may have spoilers AND THAT'S CRAZY.

Same here dude, though it runs beautifully on their machine

Do you get to keep all these mounts? Or is it just for the beta? Because if you get to keep them all i will go buy this game right now.

Nov 12 will be the last time I see light for a while.

@brandino: I highly doubt they will give you all the mounts.

So what is this game?

It's sort of like Destiny, right?

hi

I'm not racist or something but all Ancients everywhere should probably be destroyed.

This video was really informative. World of Warcraft may never be for me but the sheer amount and diversity of content is crazy.

I play WoW again without paying any subscription and without resorting to weird private servers. I played it from vanilla to BC and I haven't seen the new starting zones. I have a lot of fun playing through all of them. I might resubscribe, but I probably won't. Not paying anything and still being able to get my fill is enough for me atm.

What I don't get is that you're doing all this seemingly very important stuff, like closing The Dark Portal and whatever else, but it's so simple and mindless that it comes across as pointless and not important at all.

Loved the ending of the video.

Wait, how do you do this? I thought the non-subscribing version had a level 20 cap so you wouldn't really survive outside the first 10 hours or so?

Welcome to the MMO design document son.

But that Dota huh, and how about those idiot Dynasty warriors players...

I don't want to be an asshole but Rorie doesn't know much for someone who apparenly spent vast ammounts of time with this game. He is constantly giving wrong information about very basic things, it was more obvious in the "30 day trial" videos but it's still happening in this one.

You're safe. No major story spoilers.

@ilikeost: Well, he does mention that he is not a lore guy so he doesn't pay any attention to quest text other than the objectives part. But yeah, you would think he would at least figure out that you were freeing the warlock under the portal, not trying to kill him.

Oh, well in that case thanks for pointing out the inconsistencies and giving us the facts then, instead of just complaining about something you never specify.

Truly helpful and not in any way negative,

@brandino: You won't get those mounts just for buying the game, those are only in there for funsies in Warlords beta. Beta is definitely for player testing of most expansion content, they usually let you outfit characters at max level with raiding gear to test dungeons and raids.

@onkel: Some people get way into the lore of WoW; there are tens of books and really an incredible amount in-game. It's there if you're interested, but they don't force it down your throat aside from cinematics and in-engine cutscenes. Most people play up to max level and don't know what's going on. Personally I like it, but I've played all the games since the original Warcraft. They do retcon a lot though.

@barberforce: It looks like they're running it at 1080 with a larger UI scale, which is still smooth on a decent PC 3-5 years old with most effects at max. Blizzard doesn't want to prevent anyone from being able to play their game.

There is also one city each for Alliance and Horde in the Warlords expansion, not one central 'capital' city, and they're separate from the Karabor Draenei and Frostwolf Orc cities, who are their natural allies, respectively.

Hilarious ending.

I was wondering if I'd want to come back to WoW after watching this, and the answer is... no. The game looks amazing, they added a ton of stuff. It seems fun. But, something's jsut not grabbing me anymore.

i felt a spark. but i can not do the time commitment, no way.

those lol like outlines.. suck

Here are some clarifications as someone who plays and follows WoW stuff (Typing this up as I watch the video):

- All character models have been updated except Worgen, Goblins, Pandaren, and Blood Elves. Blood Elves ARE slated to be updated, but Blizzard announced a few weeks ago that they would not be ready to go for launch. Worgen, Goblins, and Pandaren are all from much more recent expansions and thus don't really need to be improved.

- No existing mounts were altered/updated. There are just lots of new mounts too.

- Other players CAN enter your Garrison and poke around with you. You just need to be grouped.

- I'm not much of a lore guy either, but here's my understanding: Garrosh is an Orc and a racist asshole. We beat him up at the end of Mists and now he decided he's gonna go back in time to when the Orcs were "pure," unite them, and bring them back to the real Azeroth to conquer it. We'd rather that didn't happen so we're gonna follow him in there and beat him up some more.

That's the really obvious stuff I noticed in the video. Feel free to reply if anything else seems unclear though, I can probably answer.

Ha, I love the Looper reference.

@jeverage: As to your point 4: I don't think we're following Garrosh into the past. From our perspective he escaped from prison and couple of months later the Iron Horde started coming out of the portal. So we'll just be going into parallel universe Draenor in the present.

@toowalrus: Looper was making the reference, most likely to Oskar Klein from 1926.

@denikker: My understanding was that he escaped from prison and then went to the past to stop the Orcs from drinking the demon blood (Which is what we see him do in the cinematic, right?). Doing so creates an alternate timeline where the orcs are united and pure, and they then try to come back through the Dark Portal to Azeroth.

Could easily be 1000% wrong, but that's how I've understood it

It's not my job to provide you with that information, one could say that it is Rories job though.

@jeverage: That's how I understand it as well; Warlords takes place in the alternate past. If it was just a parallel time, and as much time had passed since the original invasion, all of the heroes and villains from then should be old or dead.

I didn't even mean the lore, I can fully understand people not giving a shit about the lore. I ment basic stuff like what models were updated, basic mechanics of the game etc.

This looks outdated and bad. If I didn't know it was WoW I'd think it was some second rate Korean MMO. Except with worse graphics.

I love Brad, hes great but he has no place making assumptions on a game he clearly has no clue about. I know he played Classic WoW but that game doesn't exist anymore. This is a completely different game now.

Mechono Hogs definitely fit with-in the lore "goblin/gnome engineers", hell there were helicopters in Warcraft 3. I'm not saying its not dumb but it does fit the lore.

I believe he was just saying in jokingly.

Yeah he may have, but that doesn't discount the other examples of him talking about stuff he knows nothing about.

With that being said...its clear Rorie is kinda clueless as well...and I shouldn't come to Giant bomb expecting the facts concerning MMO's...lol

I don't know why it bothered me, I only play wow Casually and you want find me defending it.

(love Rorie too one of my favorite people on the site)

@jeverage: You might be right. I only played through Shadowmoon Valley in the beta so I never got to see if Garrosh is older, but Grom looks like he did in Warcraft 3.

Well though its true we don't know where he escaped too, it was clear in the book "War Crimes" that he escaped somewhere into time using the vision of time, and now this starts happening...I'm thinking "we" (meaning our characters) and the major NPC's can put two and two together.

LOL it's fun to see how the mounts from Wrath half a decade ago are blowing Brad's mind as the new crazy stuff, it's always kind of neat to see people who haven't played the game in years and years see it now.

@jeverage said:

One thing I'd add is that he's not just going back in time, he's going to an alternate dimension's past. So the back-stories of the orc chieftains on Draenor were already different from the same orc chieftains in our timeline, independent of Garrosh showing up and doing his thing. Seems needlessly complicated to me, but it's an important distinction to make. Grommash, for example, never had a son in the alternate timeline so there's no duplicate Garrosh stomping around.

They're light on the details because it's a QL Unfinished I think and rorie only played a bit of the beta, I'm sure we'll get more details and explanation of what the new expansion is when it's released.

Call me sappy old fool, but I really want to see when Thrall meets Durotan.

Your not wrong at all. I agree with you entirely. Thing is you can get all the information you need now else where and believe me I love it when they go in blind its great just bothered me this time. But that wasn't my point at all. Its really not worth bickering over.

I'm a grown ass man shouldn't have let Brad get under my skin especially over something as dumb as WOW...lol. I apologize :P

We are. The Draenor we are seeing in Warlords is Draenor 30yrs ago. The Draenor of the 'present' is Outland. Basically, now we have 2 Dark Portals. One goes to 2014 Draenor (aka Outland). The other, new one goes to 1984 Draenor (aka Draenor). The new Dark Portal just links a past snapshop of Draenor to present day Azeroth.

The sad thing is playing a new WoW expansion at this point feels slightly obligatory to me. I have put time into the game since the original beta so I feel slightly attached. I originally stopped playing 2 weeks post-Cataclysm launch then came back into it with Mysts and played from December of that year to April...haven't been back.

I really, really liked Wildstar but I think I realized that my love for that style of gameplay had widdled down to nothing. I was literally fall asleep at the keyboard playing. My wife will want this though, so maybe I'll just get her the special edition for our anniversary since we have all the other ones.

@fuzzyset: @jeverage: @denikker: Garrosh traveled to an alternative past Draenor, not to the one that became Outlands. It's similar in some ways, but differs in some others, such as Grom's mate never giving birth to a son before her death.

Not to sound like a "lore nerd" as they say, but it is the same Draenor that becomes Outland. EXCEPT Garrosh warns them about Mannoroth and prevents them from drinking his blood. That's basically what the CGI cinematic shows. The history of Outland/Draenor is exactly the same right until Garrosh arrives because they are the same place. Non-Garrosh Draenor still exists and still leads into Warcraft 1/2/3 WoW, but now Garrosh Draenor links up to present day Azeroth.

edit: Also, Khadgar was never dead. He got trapped in Draenor/Outland whenever the first Dark Portal to Azeroth was destroyed and "presumed dead". We visit him and see he's alive and kicking in Burning Crusade. Now, we get to see him 30yrs younger. There's a few other 'big' characters people are hoping to see in the xpac who also got trapped in Draenor/Outland (Turaylon / Alleria).

edit2: I think the biggest confusion with this storyline is that Garrosh travels 30yrs back in time to Draenor, but he doesn't wait 30yrs for his Draenor timeline to catch up to present day Azeroth. He's only been in Draenor a couple weeks/months until he unites the Iron Horde and links the new Draenor timeline to present day Azeroth.

Jeff wouldn't have approved of this feature (jk)

Thanks Rorie