I have seen the future, and there are blood elves.
As expansion info is now available on the WoW site, I'm not going to delve deeply into what is there, but rather share what comes from hands on time with the expansion, and a couple of panel discussions.
First, I'm about dead certain the alliance race is not the Pandaren. Chris Metzen wouldn't share what the race was, but indicated it is one we already know, but would not really be looking at for an ally, and that it was "really cool". Yes, pandaren can be really cool, but lots of people have been discussing them as a possibilty. I'm leading toward the Draenei, the "Lost Ones" from Swamp of Sorrows. After all, the Horde is getting a pretty race, why not suspect the Alliance might get an ugly one?
I was dubious about the Lore behind the Horde getting the Blood Elves. These folks fought violently against the orcs and the trolls for a long time. The logic is a bit two pronged here. First, Sylvanis, the Banshee Queen, is a former High Elf, and still feels a loyalty to them. Second, as with the Forsaken, there is an element of alliance of convenience. There are simply not enough Blood Elves for them not to seek allies, but they dare not go to the Alliance, because their Night Elf cousins will be able to detect the magics they continue to use and abuse.
The BE racials are mana tap and arcane torment. Mana tap steals 50 mana, and charges the air around the BE with arcance energy. It stacks up to three times. Arcane Torment is an AoE silence for 2-3 secons, which does damage if you have mana tap stacked. These will make the BE's formidable against casters.
Much of the expansion content takes place in Outland, which is through the Dark Portal. When the Alliance heroes (those statue folk outside SW) closed the portal from the Draenor side, they were not counting on the Blood Elves viewing the place as the promised land. The portal will be reopened, likely in a world event.
Those same heroes are currently alive and well and "Kicking ASS!" (Metzen's exact words) in Outland. Frustrated with their inability to destroy Azeroth (the only planet to ever defeat them), the Burning Legion have redoubled their efforts to destroy the rest of the universe. The Burning Crusade will take the battle from Azeroth, to the Legion, via the portals of Draenor/Outland. Flying mounts are a necessity in the zone, as what remains of Draenor is effectively large meteorites, held together within the twisting nether.
The new profession, Jewelcrafting, is the making of rings and necklaces, with the first ring being wearable by a level 5. It is +40 attack power. All I could see was the recipes at one trainer, so there may be drops that do something besides rings and necklaces. That trainer said a level 15 was required to learn the apprentice level of the skill, and did not offer a journeyman level. (This could easily be because they didn't want to deal with having the content available for the demo.)
Expect at least one patch yet this year, likely in mid-December. That's from a CM, but I'm not going to rat out who, just in case they weren't supposed to mention it. We will be seeing the instance at Kharazan, and the Caverns of Time soon, and the aim is to have the fee based character transfers available before the expansion as well.
The dungeon and raid developers are not working on making instances for groups larger than 40. In fact, they would like to get them all tuned better and get some lower level caps in place. (One of them told a story about being playing incognito on a realm and having people insist that UBRS couldn't be done with less than 15 - they think 10-11 is just fine, and only the top part is tuned for 15 (I'm guessing that's from maybe the balcony on, but definitely from the beast on).
By the way, things that are definitely not exploits - jumping off the balcony at UBRS, and mind controlling the mob with fire resistance (can't remember where this was, and haven't seen it myself). If a GM tries to say otherwise, send him to Jeff on the development team
.
While I had originally suspected a pre-Christmas launch for the expansion, I am less sure now. That was based on my experiences in the software industry, and time tables for registration of copyrights etc.. The way they registered the title, they either need it on the shelves by May 2006, or to reregister, justifying the delay. They weren't coy about much in the panel discussions, and I didn't really pick up any of the body language that says they are hiding a release coming sooner rather than later. They were a little looser at the lips than usual, at least according to Pernese and Sadaye, who have talked with them at conventions before. Time will tell.
If you have any questions, please ask, and I'll answer as well as I remember. I'll check in again tomorrow night.
By the way, the Devs lost in the BG's in the final match.
Edit: I forgot the dances! Silly me. The BE males do the twist, and the females do a combo of the NE female pole dance, and the twist. The "nifty" racial jump is a spin, rotates either 2 or 3x.
As expansion info is now available on the WoW site, I'm not going to delve deeply into what is there, but rather share what comes from hands on time with the expansion, and a couple of panel discussions.
First, I'm about dead certain the alliance race is not the Pandaren. Chris Metzen wouldn't share what the race was, but indicated it is one we already know, but would not really be looking at for an ally, and that it was "really cool". Yes, pandaren can be really cool, but lots of people have been discussing them as a possibilty. I'm leading toward the Draenei, the "Lost Ones" from Swamp of Sorrows. After all, the Horde is getting a pretty race, why not suspect the Alliance might get an ugly one?
I was dubious about the Lore behind the Horde getting the Blood Elves. These folks fought violently against the orcs and the trolls for a long time. The logic is a bit two pronged here. First, Sylvanis, the Banshee Queen, is a former High Elf, and still feels a loyalty to them. Second, as with the Forsaken, there is an element of alliance of convenience. There are simply not enough Blood Elves for them not to seek allies, but they dare not go to the Alliance, because their Night Elf cousins will be able to detect the magics they continue to use and abuse.
The BE racials are mana tap and arcane torment. Mana tap steals 50 mana, and charges the air around the BE with arcance energy. It stacks up to three times. Arcane Torment is an AoE silence for 2-3 secons, which does damage if you have mana tap stacked. These will make the BE's formidable against casters.
Much of the expansion content takes place in Outland, which is through the Dark Portal. When the Alliance heroes (those statue folk outside SW) closed the portal from the Draenor side, they were not counting on the Blood Elves viewing the place as the promised land. The portal will be reopened, likely in a world event.
Those same heroes are currently alive and well and "Kicking ASS!" (Metzen's exact words) in Outland. Frustrated with their inability to destroy Azeroth (the only planet to ever defeat them), the Burning Legion have redoubled their efforts to destroy the rest of the universe. The Burning Crusade will take the battle from Azeroth, to the Legion, via the portals of Draenor/Outland. Flying mounts are a necessity in the zone, as what remains of Draenor is effectively large meteorites, held together within the twisting nether.
The new profession, Jewelcrafting, is the making of rings and necklaces, with the first ring being wearable by a level 5. It is +40 attack power. All I could see was the recipes at one trainer, so there may be drops that do something besides rings and necklaces. That trainer said a level 15 was required to learn the apprentice level of the skill, and did not offer a journeyman level. (This could easily be because they didn't want to deal with having the content available for the demo.)
Expect at least one patch yet this year, likely in mid-December. That's from a CM, but I'm not going to rat out who, just in case they weren't supposed to mention it. We will be seeing the instance at Kharazan, and the Caverns of Time soon, and the aim is to have the fee based character transfers available before the expansion as well.
The dungeon and raid developers are not working on making instances for groups larger than 40. In fact, they would like to get them all tuned better and get some lower level caps in place. (One of them told a story about being playing incognito on a realm and having people insist that UBRS couldn't be done with less than 15 - they think 10-11 is just fine, and only the top part is tuned for 15 (I'm guessing that's from maybe the balcony on, but definitely from the beast on).
By the way, things that are definitely not exploits - jumping off the balcony at UBRS, and mind controlling the mob with fire resistance (can't remember where this was, and haven't seen it myself). If a GM tries to say otherwise, send him to Jeff on the development team
.While I had originally suspected a pre-Christmas launch for the expansion, I am less sure now. That was based on my experiences in the software industry, and time tables for registration of copyrights etc.. The way they registered the title, they either need it on the shelves by May 2006, or to reregister, justifying the delay. They weren't coy about much in the panel discussions, and I didn't really pick up any of the body language that says they are hiding a release coming sooner rather than later. They were a little looser at the lips than usual, at least according to Pernese and Sadaye, who have talked with them at conventions before. Time will tell.
If you have any questions, please ask, and I'll answer as well as I remember. I'll check in again tomorrow night.
By the way, the Devs lost in the BG's in the final match
.Edit: I forgot the dances! Silly me. The BE males do the twist, and the females do a combo of the NE female pole dance, and the twist. The "nifty" racial jump is a spin, rotates either 2 or 3x.
