Dungeons & Dragons is starting to preview its World of Warcraft book

Several influencers have revealed some details about the upcoming World of Warcraft crossover book, which is due to be released later this year. Most of the previews appear to center on how dungeons will be used in the book, with the GameMasters YouTube channel confirming that dungeons will be split up into different tiers of play. GameMasters revealed 7 dungeons that will appear in the book, with the Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep set up for Levels 1-4 players, Blackfathom Deep and Scarlet Monastery for Levels 5-10 players, Scarlet Monastery (again) and Dire Maul set up for Levels 11-16 players, and Azjol Nerub and Anoxia’s Lair for Levels 17-20 players.

Crit Hit the Giant provided some additional flavor about dungeon setup, with his preview of Dire Maul containing a large map of the dungeon, plot hooks for the dungeon, and a list of NPCs and monsters that populate the dungeon. From the looks of the preview pages in this video, it seems that each dungeon will be broken out into some detail, although it will be left to the DM to decide how to use each dungeon within their own game.

As I’m not a World of Warcraft player, it’s hard to tell how closely these dungeons skew towards the video game, but it looks like the average D&D DM will be able to use these dungeons in their own games without much issue. I find it interesting that Wizards of the Coast is turning towards D&D influencers, several of whom expressed in their own videos having a general lack of knowledge of the World of Warcraft setting as well. One would think that they’d be leaning on World of Warcraft influencers or Blizzard instead, but it was interesting that BlizzCon (an annual event focusing on Blizzard video games) came and went with no mention of the World of Warcraft/D&D crossover.

 

[JDR]

Yep. WoW would make a fantastic single-player game. It's the MMO aspects that let it down. Mostly because, as always, people suck.

There are always good guilds out there you can join. Also, retail WoW right now is the most solo friendly it's ever been. It's pretty much how I play it these days

 

[SkidAce]

Yep. WoW would make a fantastic single-player game. It's the MMO aspects that let it down. Mostly because, as always, people suck.

Ah, I see you been to the crossroads.

 

[Questianor]

Except that the hero classes will be changing core class features beyond level 3. Even if you moved subclasses to level 1 or level 2, that wouldn't do what these hero classes are doing at all.

Say you move the Paladin subclass to level 1 (something which makes more sense than level 3 imo). That won't be touching or modifying any base class abilities in any way. So a 'Death Knight' subclass would just be burdened with all the divine good themed lay on hands, divine smite, and similar stuff for the majority of its class features all the way up to level 20. Leading to a very lackluster feeling 'Death Knight'.

I hate all subclasses starting at level 3, but it's a completely separate thing to a subclass which outright replaces the main features of the core class, and the two are not mutually exclusive.

5.5e finally catching on the idea of Pathfinder 1e-style archetypes by the roundabout path of trying to make WoW classes fit into their system would be a pretty funny thing to have happen, but I doubt we'll see this concept explored further outside of this collaboration.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

I mostly played WoW solo and social casual back in the day. As a result I got maybe 40% of the overall story/plot. Raiding and group stuff was just too stressful.....the people I would group with when I did were a bit scary in their dedication, arguing that anything less than 30 hours a week in the game made one a filthy casual. I was very put off of video games as a social release as a result. My wife (who is younger and a milennial and therefore more used to online social dynamics) did not have this problem though and got her money's worth out of WoW for sure.

I remember back when I was in a raiding guild there was a study of 'casual' vs 'hardcore' gamers. The survey they had used 10 hours per week as the cutoff between hardcore and casual. The response from pretty much everyone in the guild was 'you mean per day, right?'.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

5.5e finally catching on the idea of Pathfinder 1e-style archetypes by the roundabout path of trying to make WoW classes fit into their system would be a pretty funny thing to have happen, but I doubt we'll see this concept explored further outside of this collaboration.

Yeah, this seems to be very specifically about those three WoW classes, not even all of them, despite the fact that making a ranger into a WoW hunter probably should entail some level one changes as well.

Still, once the tech has been designed and is out there in the world, it's not impossible that the designers will be inspired by it when they face future design challenges and may incorporate elements of it.

 

[occam]

That page (and text) as best I can tell is all we have to go by. I honestly think WotC does not know what to do with orcs at this point.
Edit: to give you an example, look at the new starter set. That would have been a great time to update orcs in the caves of chaos and maybe even flesh them out a bit, but instead they are simply absent. The tepid references in the new FR books are similarly devoid of details that I can find. If you are a fan of orcs the 5.5 edition is not very helpful.

We do have other imagery of orcs in 5.5 other than the group in the PHB's Species section, and in none of them are they wearing gauchos (well, maybe the druid arguably):

As far as further descriptions of them and their history or culture, it seems to me that in Heroes of Faerûn (for example), orcs get no less of that than halflings, tieflings, gnomes, dragonborn, etc. You could want more of any of those things, but I don't think orcs are getting singled out for exclusion.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Game Masters released some Bestiary Previews

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Apparently these monsters are altered for the dungeons as well. We are also getting more Mythic Monsters for bosses with multiple phases. Apparently even with Mythic monsters as low as CR 4.

Bit surprised we don't seem to have a Dreadlord stat block.

 

[Mecheon]

CR20 kind of underselling how rough Anduin was back in Sepulcher. Mind is probably normal him and not Sepulcher Anduin, but I'd think reg Anduin show be lower than that.

This has had consequences for the community aspect of the game, but if you aren't worried about that, it's pretty nice.

Its always worth noting that LFR exists because not enough people were raiding at the time and it was a situation of 'get more people in raids or we're cutting raid development'. The community made its own bed with this one.

(Mind, aside from Firelands, the other Cata raids weren't good so I can hardly blame people for not running them. I still have only done Twilight like, twice)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Its always worth noting that LFR exists because not enough people were raiding at the time and it was a situation of 'get more people in raids or we're cutting raid development'. The community made its own bed with this one.

The community hasn't really lost out. The hardcore grinders still get their mythic and other higher tiers of raiding and the folks who can't be bothered with the politics and interpersonal drama involved in keeping a raiding group alive (I managed from vanilla through mid-Shadowlands) can still get to do a version of the raids.

Apparently Classic raid participation has dropped off precipitously now that WoW Forever is in beta. It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, Classic and eventually Forever do when faced with the same issues -- and with other fixes that retail came up with that had unintended consequences down the line.