During today’s Blizzcon 2017 keynote, Blizzard announced Battle for Azeroth, the seventh expansion pack for World of Warcraft, rekindling the war between the Alliance and Horde.
Now that the Horde and Alliance are finished teaming up against the demon invasion, it’s time to get back to the conflict at the heart of World of Warcraft. The expansion introduces two new continents where the factions will seek out new allies – Kul Tiras for the Alliance and Zandalar for the Horde.
Players will gather aid from allied races, fight for domination of battlefronts, and plunder uncharted islands for treasure as they level from 110 to the new cap of 120.
Here’s the opening cinematic for Battle for Azeroth.
And here’s the bullet-list of features from the official press release.
- Explore Two Fabled Kingdoms: As a champion of the Horde, travel to the Zandalar empire to persuade the trolls to lend their naval might. As a defender of the Alliance, venture to the seafaring kingdom of Kul Tiras, home of Jaina Proudmoore, and rally its inhabitants to fight for your cause.
- Recruit Allied Races: Take a new form for your adventures as several new playable Allied Races, each with unique racial abilities. Earn the favour of the Highmountain tauren, Void elves, Dark Iron dwarves, and others to create a new character of that race and add their strength to your faction.
- Plunder the Islands of the Great Sea: Scour Azeroth’s myriad uncharted Islands and conquer an ever-changing array of enemies, environments, and objectives. Battle in groups of three as you race against cunning rival intruders – or enemy players – to collect each island’s resources and fuel the war effort.
- Charge Into the Warfronts: Fight on the battlefields of a large-scale, 20-player cooperative Warfront to claim a key strategic location. Capture resources to build your faction’s forces, lead the charge as your troops lay siege to objectives, and fight the enemy commander to claim victory in this new PvE mode inspired by classic Warcraft RTS battles.
- Infuse Your Armour with Titanic Might: Seek out Azerite, an invaluable new resource that has emerged in the Legion’s wake. Imbue the Heart of Azeroth — a legendary neck piece entrusted to each hero by Magni Bronzebeard – with Azerite to customise your armour with new powers and traits.
- Battle to Level 120: Trace the corruption of the Blood God to the Underrot, unearth the secrets of a lost titan vault, escape from the Drust Realm of the Dead, and more as you quest through 10 new levels – then continue to grow in power through new World Quests, raids, dungeons, and more.
- Instantly Boost to Level 110: Enter the raging conflict between the Horde and the Alliance prepared to survive on the front lines of a vicious new war.
- Connect Through Communities: Join up with WoW® players who share common interests in persistent cross-realm Communities. Share strategies with members of your class, fraternize with auction house magnates, talk shop with fellow tailors, and expand your social circles.
And here’s the official website.
Comments
19 responses to “World Of Warcraft’s Next Expansion Is Battle For Azeroth”
Ugh, I’m already not liking the sound of that.
Ah well, WoW had a good run. Time to play something else.
Cool trailer.
Much more hyped for classic… I’m sure this will end up being another easy, soulless expansion… But willing to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt.
That cinematic was beyond brilliant! I got actual goosebumps during Sylvanas’ big moment!
Really wish Blizzard would just bite the bullet and make an animated movie. Their cinematics are just so freaking awesome!
Yeah when I originally heard they were making a movie I was hoping for a full movie done by their cinematics team. Would have been amazing.
Absolutely it would be.
I really am surprised they haven’t done one yet. Blizzard’s animations are always top notch quality.
They are easily on par with studios like Pixar in animation quality.
It just looks like a whole bunch of reshuffled content and art assets, all given a “new story” trying to tackle the older Warcraft player who liked Warcraft 2. It’ll do the usual thing: Boost subscriber count for all of 3 months, then drop back to current levels as the hardcore fans who can’t kick the habit keep the game alive for another 2 years before it all repeats.
You must be fun at parties.
Calling it as I see it. Sorry if it seems a little negative after dropping over 10 years and a few thousand dollars into the game and noticing the same patterns time and time again.
I will give Blizzard credit though, they are at least taking some risks and fixing some long term issues with the game itself at a mechanics level. However story and area wise, it does look underwhelming.
I’ve long been a big fan of Warcraft lore so this xpac has me very excited! More Sylvanas is always a good thing 🙂
I’m actually contemplating faction changing back to Horde just for this xpac thanks to that epic cinematic!
Why’s that a surprise? A lot of people come back at expansions/big patches, play through the content, then unsub.
If they maintain the quality from Legion though it boost it for much more than just 3 months. I came back for Legion after a 5 year “break”….still playing, it’s still the game I play most each week.
Plenty of my guildies are in the same basket…there’s a lot who have stuck around that had previously quit.
This expansion looks amazing. Can’t wait for the beta testing to start. Keep up the good work blizzard 🙂
I like the sound of the Warfronts.
I wish this game would die so we could get some new MMOs
I wish it would die so we could get Warcraft 4
Yes, Because wow is totally stopping other companies from making MMO’s. Sorry that millions enjoy playing wow.
Being 100% honest, this the first WoW expansion where im hyped or excited about it. compared to all the previous expansion announcments, this one has had the lowest amount of systems changes/additions of all.
Hell even the main Deep Dive into the gameplay systems finished early and had zero Q&A. to put this into perspective, every expansions deep dive has at least 1hr and 15mins to 1hr 30mins long. this one lasted 39min 35sec.
the Islands are just scenarios with some randomisation added to it and some recieving some actual AI. We weren’t even told how war fronts would actually work ie are they instanced based like a dungeon or part of the actual map, do we queue for it through LFR, is it tuned just for mythic raiders seeing as its a 20 person raid? We were also only told about arathi highlands, what about kalimdor? we know that horde will burn down teladrassil and so that horde control kalimdor while the alliance controls the Eastern Kingdoms. We also dont even know if those zones will be updated to refect the story either
Can’t wait for the new Pathfinder Achievement, God fucking dammit.