Warlords of Draenor: 10 New Features That Improved World of Warcraft
Warlords of Draenor is World of Warcraft’s 6th expansion and featured tons of improvements to the game. Obviously there was a bunch of content added that allowed you to explore the world of Draenor and fight the Iron Horde, but more than that the expansion addressed some new features for the game as a whole. If you are thinking about re-subscribing to WoW, take these 10 points into consideration. Here are the 10 best new features in Warlords of Draenor:
10. Better Quest Hub and Map Updates
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The new and improved hub should save you from a lot of confusion.
If you are just coming back to the game, you will most likely not recognize the in game map hub when you pull it up. Redesigning the map and quest hub was one of the bigger quality of life improvements that Blizzard implemented for this expansion. Your quest hub is no longer littered with every active quest you currently have, but rather it only shows the ones pertinent to the zone you are in. Additionally, the main lore quests that help you progress important story lines will be highlighted and easier to distinguish.
This is an incredibly simple change but it makes such a difference. If you are questing throughout multiple zones or have dailies or class quests active, you don’t want to see them every time you pull up your quest hub. Blizzard also improved the accuracy of quest trackers and markers on the map which should make life easier for players overall.
9. Level 100 Abilities
The level cap was raised from 90 to 100 which is the biggest boost since Wrath of the Lich King. Adding an additional 10 levels allowed Blizzard to do some really fun things with all of the classes. Not only do you get some of the most awesome class talents at level 100, but you also get extra class perks (think of them as passive abilities) every two levels between 90 and 100.
Some of the more notable abilities include the mage’s Meteor and the Rogue’s Death From Above. If you’ve never played these classes before, these abilities alone might make you want to try them. Death From Above has one of the absolute coolest animations in the game. You twirl around the enemy, then bounce high in the air, and finally come spinning down dealing massive damage.
The class perks are also awesome. The improved Divine Storm ability for the retribution paladin is a great example! The perk makes the ability proc way more often and makes gameplay much more reactional than it was before. All classes have received some pretty sweet new skills and talents, and they should definitely make you excited if you just came back to WoW. The video above is an in depth discussion of all new level 100 talents by Bellular Gaming.
8. Two Main Stats on Items
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One of the absolute best changes in the game!
This is almost a quality of life improvement, but it feels too grand to simply be called that. This feature is incredibly simple. Almost all gear items from Draenor comes with two main stats. If you are a Ret Pally, the gear will roll with Strength and Intellect. If you are a Resto Shaman the mail pieces would roll with both intellect and agility, this way you don’t have to farm for two item sets if you want to dual spec. You could switch to playing a healer very easily even though you main tank or dps.
Of course secondary stats won’t change so if you need to go from crit strike to haste, then you’re out of luck. It is also worth mentioning that expertise and hit chance have been removed from the game. No more boring math and boring stats, just good old fun damage and toughness amplifiers are left.
7. Heirloom updates
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Leveling still takes a long time though, even with heirlooms.
With 100 levels to go, starting fresh can seem like a very daunting task. Heirlooms are gear pieces that give experience boosts by a flat percentage rate and help you level significantly faster. Previously you could only buy these with justice or honor points. Well justice points are removed from the game and almost all heirlooms can be purchased with gold now. This is such a relief and allows a lot more players to get access to the heirloom pieces.
In order for the heirlooms to scale past level 60 though, you need to buy an upgrade for it. So leveling all the way to 100 can be quite expensive. However, if you have the cash you can simply pay Blizzard $60 and you’ll get a level 90 character instantly. Boosting your toon for $60 dollars would save you probably at least a couple of weeks’ worth of dedicated playing.
One final mention regarding heirlooms is the fact that they are now stored in the game’s UI. You don’t need to keep them in your inventory, and multiple toons can have the same piece equipped at the same time. It is a huge improvement to the previous system. No more mailing heirlooms around!
6. Toy Box
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Now you can play with whatever wherever you go.
Remember all the fun little trinkets and gadgets you’ve picked up throughout World of Warcraft’s life span? And do you remember how they clutter up your inventory and bank space? Well not anymore they don’t. Blizzard incorporated a toy box in a collections tab on your UI that keeps all of your fun toys stored away nice and tight. If you want to pull out the banana peel or the burning incense, all you have to do is click on the button in your collections tab. This was a huge quality of life improvement and also allowed you to access any of your toys from anywhere in the game.
5. Smart Bags
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You won't really appreciate this feature untill you've tried it.
Did you ever wish that your inventory could sort itself, or that you could label bags for certain items? Well now you can. The backpack has a sort button on it now, and you can assign certain categories to all of your bags in order to meet all of your OCD needs.
This feature seems like it should’ve been implemented a long time ago, but at least it is here now. Another change that goes along with this is that almost all crafting reagents and materials can now stack up to 200 instead of 20, so now you can spend hours upon hours of farming and still not fill up your bags.
4. A Simplified Raiding Model
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End game content accessible for everyone? Thank you Blizzard.
Mist of Pandaria introduced the LFR (Looking For Raid) system which is basically a pug for a raid. The raids were much easier than the normal or heroic versions, and it allowed for more casual players to experience end game content.
Despite the hate on the forums by elitist jerks, this change received a widely popular reaction. People loved being able to raid without having to be a part of a raiding guild or having to schedule it a week in advance. Unfortunately a lot of LFR groups failed due to players who did not understand the mechanics of certain boss fights. Blizzard aimed to fix that in this latest expansion.
LFR now scales with the number of members in your party. So if you started out at 25 and 4 people dropped, you don’t have to wait for new people to join in order to continue. Also, almost all difficult boss mechanics have been removed from LFR, and the ranking system has been overhauled. Flex raiding is now normal, normal is now heroic, and heroic is now mythic. All levels of raiding scale with the number of people in the raid except for mythic difficulty which is locked in at 20.
3. Graphical Model Updates
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These new models are amazing!
Updating the graphics of the player models was a long time coming. I recently watched some gameplay videos from before the launch of the new models, and I couldn’t believe I had been playing with such an ugly toon. The new models look infinitely better than the old ones and will make you feel much better about dressing your toon up in fancy transmog pieces.
All Races received graphical updates except for the Worgen and Goblins who were launched in Cataclysm. Most of the animations stayed the same and the updates stayed true to the original models.
2. Garrisons
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The garrisons are an awesome addition to the game. Now you can go back to you RTS roots.
The coolest feature in Warlords of Draenor is hands down the Garrison. I remember seeing the trailers and thinking it looked pretty lame, but then I built my own and realize how awesome it was! You get followers that basically worship you for being the uber epic commander that you are. After all, you did kill Onyxia, Illidan, The Lich King, Deathwing, and gave Garrosh the beatdown, so they should worship you.
Building your Garrison includes selecting which buildings to incorporate in the design, sending followers on missions that award you with loot, experience, and gold, having peons gather resources for you, and crafting cool gear in your buildings. There are also several buildings that will give you certain perks like the stable. If you build a stable you can ride around Draenor without getting dismounted when attacked by a mob. This is very nice since flying no longer exists. Building a Garrison is like a throwback to Warcraft's RTS days.
1. WoW Tokens
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Tokens allow you to pay gold for game time.
There is only one thing that can beat the Garrisons, and that is the WoW Tokens. This was introduced in a recent patch so it was technically not associated directly with Warlords of Draenor. However, it is still one of the most impactful changes the game has ever seen.
For $20 you can purchase a WoW token in the in-game store that you can sell on the auction house. Players can buy the tokens on the auction house for actual game time. If you are rich in game or simply fantastic at making gold, you could pay for your subscription with in-game currency. This feature is fantastic because many have unsubscribed simply because they can’t afford the monthly fee, well now they can.
These are just a few of the changes that have impacted the game in positive ways. Let us know in the comments what your favorite part of Warlords of Draenor is.
