Awakening of Azeroth
So, my wife’s boyfriend is working for Blizzard. Here’s 10.0.
It is not WoW 2.0. Yet it is the expansion with the most novelties.
Story
New zone: Dragon’s isles
Patchs
10.1 & 10.x will be different. Old content will be restored. Some zone will be revamped. We stay on Azeroth at least for the 10.1 & 10.2.
The main quest
Azeroth will be awakened. She will be dazed at first. Our first goal is to find a “vessel” for her.
No playable races are capable of it so we will have to contact the dragons & the creations of the Titans (Hello Raden’s Spirit). In the end, Azeroth will look like a giant dragon that will be seen on the skybox. Her quest will be a bit like Irion one on Cataclysm. There will be no fracture of the world since it will be her soul that will transfer on the “vessel”. We will learn more about Titans & cosmology.
Resources are being scarce since Azeroth is alive. We will have to farm old material because there will be relevant once more for crafting.
A dark threat will be teased but it will be subtle: Some characters are different, some zone will have strange voices, etc. It will be something really different of all we have seen, read or heard. There will be reward for players who find all the secrets (a mount or a glyph, they don’t know yet)
We’re going to revisit ancient areas (legion, argus, burning crusade, etc) to learn more about our world & the void worlds. The void worlds will not be the present directly on this expansion (It will be for the next one) but they will be really teased all along. The main goal of the story board of this expansion is to create (looking at you the Jailer) the greatest foe we have ever fought.
There will be « Invasions » between zone. Some will be PVE, other PVP much like Warfront but better. There will be PVP zone but they want it to be fun like Tarren Mill. There will be more OpenWorld activities since we will have to travel & search for Easter eggs. World quest on revamp zone.
The voidlord will be largely teased during the expansion.
And side quests:
There is a story for each race along with customizations, they want to push farther the legacy armour concept:
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Humans : Since Lordaeron is free from Sylvanas Windrunner & her followers, you act with some Forsaken (Calia, Daerek & Lilia) to cure the place & reform the original AllianceWork with your fellow to bring back the Human race at his peak.
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Night elf: Help your people find a new place as scouts & diplomats are sent to each part of Azeroth searching for a place that will fit the night elfs. Discover ancient locations of the night elf lore.
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Gnome : Gnomeragan is take back. The grand engineer is going back. A new alliance is made with the goblin wanting to possess the ressources of Azeroth for Science’s sake. Yet their ideal might not be so genial. Try to renew with your people, make new technology, make the world better!
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Dwarf : Find a way to reunite all the clans on one place, colonize back the black rock mount and make a junction with Ironforge.
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Draenei: As your people are reunited with Argus, a schism has begun between those wanting to stay on Azeroth & those who want to take back and purified your birthplace. Choose your side & renew with your origins.
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Worgen : The now friendly horde is not welcomed by some of your people. Worgens are being rebellious & some urging the night elfs to make a separatist alliance elsewhere when others are tracking Forsakens.
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Orc : You are in charge to make a military nation with other races (horde & alliance) (to counter the legion & the scourge). Find new way to fight, find a new honour on your path.
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Forsaken : A throne empty lead some Forsakens to go on free will. The Forsakens are searching for a new way to create undead and want to find ancients graveyard on Arathi, Alterac & Stromgarde. It will be a treacherous story.
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Troll : The Zandalari empire try to absorbed every other clan. Not every troll wants to be part of an empire. Choose between old & new as your entire species & his ideology is put at risk. You will play the opposite with a Zandalari troll. Elect a new leader for the Darkspear clan.
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Tauren : With Highmountain, you decide to heal Nature & the many catastrophes that has occur within years. Restore balance, preserve life. It will be more about forging new attachments than doing war stuff.
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Blood elf: Push your frontiers as Lordaeron is being taken back. Your path on the Shadowland may have find a cure on Ghostlands. Help your people resettle back as other nations leer on your realm. Some of the story has been already upload on the ptr & will be test on 9.2.5. An’u belore delen’na
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Goblin : A deal is seal with the gnomes of gnomeragan. A new politics has emerged with one goal: Make every goblin richer. War has ended so you have to find new business ideas to make your cartel stronger as other ones are coming to contest your supremacy.
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Pandaren : Act as a diplomat, witness great events & be a confidant of personalities as your diplomatic nature try to find a way to maintain the peace between all races.
PVE content:
Raid:
Beginning of Time.
The dragon’s endless flight broke time.
Ancient events are resurfacing. We got the help of the dragon aspects. We go through the original story of Azeroth. There will be a giant troll bosses but the end boss will be Galakrond. The final fight will be a vertical fight. Something special with new mechanics. They are talking about Galakrond not dying at 0% for mythic phase. Something that will bamboozle the race to world first. (Dragon lore & Titan’s stuff: “I was the beginning; I will be your end”) The mythic phase will be unique: When he reaches 0%, he goes berserk and it will be a run for your life & not a DPS check. Azeroth will then take his power & use it as a “vessel”.
In general, they want every class to be present on a raid especially on Mythic raiding. They think it’s normal than the roster is changing depending of each boss you fight but they want to give each class tools for them to be at least useful on every boss.
Dungeon
Some ancient dungeons will be relevant once more but there will be no revamp or change on them. 6 new dungeons. Much like season 4 mastery. They are talking of 9 dungeons: 6 new & 3 ancients. One for each previous expansion.
Special content:
Dragon’s valley
On dragon’s isles, there will be a special zone, a timeless zone.
This zone will have great foes. We will encounter ancient NPC, friendly or foe. They will all have a dark grey aura because they’re some sort of memories created by the infinite flight. Very much like the bronze flight quest line in Dragonblight.
There will be ancient raid bosses coming back. You will have to go with a group to advance through this zone. It will be an open zone. It will be a Torghast like zone BUT the zone will be on open world & it is not an instanced. So, to advance you have to be many. The further you advance, the more you need people, the greater the reward will be. There will be cool stuff since it will be a maze & sometime you will have to divide your groups to activate lever, etc.
Each minute, dead enemies will come back. You will free bronze dragon & they will reward you with tool that:
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Will skip some bosses or zone
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Will help you defeat faster some bosses (like some objects on Elden ring: skipping phases)
This will be a maze & each week, the maze will change & the rewards too.
This will not be time gated or “run” gated except with mobs respawning.
It will be like Nifflheim on God of war.
If one member of the group uses a reward, all your group will have the bonuses.
To reach the end of the valley, you will need 40 players for the last fight. You will learn more about story if you defeat the final bosses.
There will be rewards for PVP on the zone. If you kill a player of the opposite faction, you will gain some of his loot on the valley; So, to advance faster, you can either do the PVE run or wait for players & kills them.
Special event: During some time of the week, special event will take place on the valley. It can be a race, a brawl or a double rewards bonus. If you have done the valley before, you can still do it for the reward. There will more than one event per week, a system like the one in Tanaan’s jungle. There will be special event on holidays.
You will obtain, gear, class artifacts (runes, smithing stones, ring, etc) and cosmetics. Special events will have extra loot.
New FUNCTIONNALITIES:
Trade HUB:
Each server can create a hub (a town) that will evolve through the expansion & they can name it what they want. No player housing but guild housings. Cross factions. PVP servers will have skirmishes on different new zone to take control (Wintersgrasp like). It will be much more like “New World”, but it will be a unique town per server.
Class hall return:
Class hall will return. A new room will be added for you to coordinate your class advancement & help you on your class quest. Each class will gain a spell to teleport there.
GLYPHES:
Return of glyphs (somehow). They will be cosmetics effects. Glyphs will change the appearance or spells of your classes. This will not improve your damage or survivability.
Each glyph will be challenging & hard to find. They will not be rewarded for quests or bosses. They will be very rare but will be noticeable when someone use it. Some examples:
Warlock
Glyph of the necromancer: replace all your demons by undead.
Warrior:
Transform all your attack animations to be bloodier.
Rogue:
Infuse yourself with shadow, your appearance will be changed, your animations will be shadowy.
Shaman:
Dark shaman, the elements will scream when you will use certain spells.
Mage
Change the colour of your spell to be infused by the black flame. All your spells are now black & white.
Priest
Dragon priest, radically change your spells to infuse them with dragon power. (Replace voidform)
Cosmetics
There will be new model of cloak (like the Anduin one on the legion cinematic (the one with Varian’s ghost)).
War fury will have their two hand & one hand bonuses restriction lift up. Now they can mog a one hand on a two hand. You can select where you want to sheath your weapon (on the belt or on the back & change side).
For dress user, you can add a belt effect that will tighten the dress to the size.
Swords for Shaman.
Politics changes
Races are now only cosmetics. Some customization will come but fewer than BFA or Shadowlands. No new races.
Greater achievement, greater reward. Return of the old green, blue, purple and legendary items.
Legendary items will really be legendary (like ancient legendary). This will take time & luck to have one. They want to reward the hardcore players.
It will be more difficult to be full purple.
No more time gated but now there will be community gated. Secrets will have to be discovered. Towns & minor characters put on the spotlight. Less global story, more lesser story. You can share resources more easily & upgrade the town by putting materials in common. Example: bank office: 5millions gold; it can be upgrade to look better, etc.
Server fusion. PVP servers will be merged so it will be balanced (they want at least 40%/60% ratio for PVP servers)
Reputations is now account wide. Quest rewards too. If you finish a quest, you earn the transmog for all the rewards (If you finish the quest as a mage, you earn the mog for a warrior too).
No more Azeroth grinding or artifact grinding.
You will level up to level 65.
I don’t know what zone will be up for new players.
Each class will gain a spell that teleport you to your class hall.
All players restrictions are removed. You can play with different player whether they are on Alliance or Horde or on different servers. Continental restrictions are still a thing but they are planning to remove them as well.
Reset will occur at the same time for different regions. America 00:00 pm & 6am in Europe.
Trade restrictions on the PTR will be lift, they just want to do it properly and see how crossfactions is going.
Classes:
- Warrior : can have multiples weapons slots (as for the barbarian on diablo). Each type of weapon can have a bonus & a malus. A good warrior can choose his playstyles & switch it depending the situations (4 weapons in total, 2 pair of 2 & they can dual wield & two hand the weapons with a stance).
- Example of weapons bonuses: Halberd: You gain 3yd range on your ability but you lose damage (5%) if you go full melee (0yd of your target)
- They will have to work with other players to gain smithing stones. Each stone will better a weapon. Smithing stone can be found but only some can be used at the same time. Blizzard will make it a consumable (to use each x hours) or a permanent effect but removable on the smith.
- Rogue : Can switch between melee weapons & ranged weapons (use both at the same time) use consumables to do things, great burst windows but outside of it, more of a control class.
- Got a special tree skill called tricks that provide consumables like poisons, traps, or hidden blade.
- You will have to go on each city to master your rogue skills (Dalaren, Shattrah, etc). Each quest will not be doable alone.
- Shaman : Bard type of class. In a fight, switch between melee or ranged to help & buff each member. Totem of whirlwind, totem of bloodlust that frenzied melee classes; Totem of cunning: buff rogue & hunt. Totem of duplicate: duplicate each spell that pass through the totem; Healer class. His role is mainly to improve others via buff & to heal. A CD class.
- Developers think the shaman damage is okay. However, they want to boost his utility & defensive abilities (Add some of them, rework the other ones).
- Shaman will be really great in raid since they can multiply bursts of people depending on when they use their utility spells.
- No tank spec but there can take taunt a boss to save a tank on raid or dungeon. (Cheese)
- Mage : Use sorcery & travel the world to acquire new spells. Use as a weapon: staff, wand or book: Each of them can have multipliers or special effect:
- Example: Book of invocation: each time you use 5 spells, invoke a minion that helps you & your teams via a buff.
- You can master some type of magic.
- Warlock : Can equip special rings:
- Each ring has a soul with a story & they can be upgraded. There are good souls, bad souls & interesting souls.
- Can be melee (Hello battle mage, hello demonic form) or ranged depending on the soul choose. Can rot or infuse weapons. You will still be the pet classes.
- Hunter : Not many changes, pet system will be reworked.
- Druid : Not many changes, new forms.
- Demon hunter : Same as it is.
- Priest : Will got some tuning but no real change. They got amazing glyphs.
- Paladin : They want to make it a support class & tune them down so the warrior stays on top.
- Monk : Will have a healing spec rework. Some tuning for Windwalker.
- Death knight : Can infuse his weapons with rune. Each weapon as a number of runes that can be preselected via the forge.
- There are runes across the world with different stats & ability: similar to runes in God of war (2018).
Of course, each class will have special quests but some of them are still on work. They want to bring something new but less RNG.
