Hearthstone and HotS

The pre-patch is loaded and it can't come soon enough. It is hard to believe that it has been nearly 9 months since we first killed heroic archimonde. We've been finding things to do to pass the time but I think we'd all rather have moved on at this point.

It's also been 2 months since my last post, roughly around which time I burnt out on doing battlegrounds. I rejoined the alt raids just for some variety, so I now have the legendary ring on 2 alts. Otherwise I've been playing other games, including Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, both of which I was drawn into because of WoW rewards - the Hearthsteed mount and the Graves pet - but will probably keep playing to some extent. A success for cross promotion - at least for free to play games. More on those later.

I've now got 9 characters at max level, another handful 80+, and a preorder boost to spare. But that is barely even noteworthy nowadays. In fact, observing other people that have stuck it out, it seems a full complement of alts is closer to the norm now. Even my GM who has an alt allergy has now got a max level alt and another on the way.

After recently getting the Grey Riding Camel from Uldum, I turned my attention to the seahorse mount from Vash'jir. There I found, among others, a resident multiboxer was camping every spawn point, and subsequently listing the mount on the AH for near gold cap. So I resigned that hunt pretty much immediately - I'm unlikely to "out-camp" them, and I'm not going to drop that much gold on a mount that I can't even use due to its zone limitation. But I looked the multiboxer up and found he has (at least) 50 level 100 characters!

Obviously not everyone is at this level, and hopefully Legion will bring an injection of new and returning players, but it does seem the bar has been raised amongst the players who have remained through this content lull. This is demonstrated through major gold inflation, which in turn is necessitating massive new gold sinks (ahem spider mount) and a raising of the gold cap. As an example, I'd seen TCG mounts under 100k a year ago that are now averaging well above 600k listing price. Hopefully the expansion reset and the removal of the garrison gold factories will see a shift back towards the norm.

Onto Hearthstone, it really presents well; it looks good and feels fun, but it doesn't take long to feel like you've hit a massive grind wall. The expectation for a new player appears to be that you either spend money to catch up, or spend a couple of months losing a lot before you can build the decks that will help you progress. Rewards come slowly when you aren't winning much, and cards received are randomly spread when you may want to focus on one class. Enchanting is glacially slow when you aren't receiving duplicates so that isn't much of an option either. Anddd dailies are often targeted at a particular class, which doesn't help if you haven't levelled them and unlocked the basics.

You can easily google a basic deck but they will generally only beat other basic decks. My experience seems to be, whether I play a standard deck or a C'thun deck (the free legendary card from the latest set, The Old Gods) I can keep up until the opponent plays a strong rare or legendary - and they usually do. For example, I had a chance to go up to rank 18 today on a win streak, and I appeared to be winning soundly against a paladin, until he played deathwing, and I lost from 30hp in 3 turns. I've been instantly spending all my earned gold on card packs in the hope of attaining one to complement my primary class decks, but so far I have had nothing at all. But I'm not going to buy into it, because I am generally averse to dropping money on free to play games, as I'm not a fan of the model, especially when they are not cosmetic purchases.

When they play a weak C'thun against a Gurubashi Berserker

It's not so much pay to win, as it is pay to start winning more often, much sooner. I understand that is how trading card games work - as do things like sports cards and pogs (I never got into them either) - the more you buy, you more complete your set is and the more extras you have to trade (or disenchant) to complete it. It feels different when it is attached to a free to play game, with digital representations of cards that will only depreciate in value as they are retired or when you stop playing. Physical collections at least have some chance of retaining or growing in value. Then again, digital cards can't get damaged...

It comes down to what value I would get out of the purchase. And the big problem is, I don't know. The only guarantee that you are going to get things of value to you are to keep spending. There are rare guarantees, bad luck rolls, and the enchanting system so you can't go indefinitely without a good quality card, but the whole system is just prompting you to buy more. It is easier to make one small purchase than one big one (the bait), but it is also easy to make many small purchases summing more than one big one. There is obviously a ceiling where it would no longer be beneficial to continue purchasing, as each additional pack has less value the more cards you collect. You could also 'get by' at a certain price point by making up the difference through earned in-game currency. But what are these price points? Is it approximately the same as any other retail game? Or is it $6-700? You find out by committing.

What would buying $30 worth of cards get me? Would it save me 2 weeks worth of effort and time grinding losses to reach my natural level of competitiveness? Would I enjoy the game more as a result, or simply bore of it quicker, rendering that money spent inert? Is it purely about winning - am I buying wins? If I look at it that way, it is not something I value and therefore loses worth.

All of this is really hard to quantify and basically gambling in my eyes - I don't know what I'm buying, and I can't determine the relative worth, so I choose not to participate.

Apart from that, I recognise the positives in free to play, in that it lets people try before they buy, and people who otherwise wouldn't play it, may. I also recognise that the developers need to make money. I just think the game might feel less predatory if there was something like a cap on the amount of card packs you could buy (eg set at a full retail price). The Hero DLC - now that's the type of DLC I can support, purely cosmetic. I personally think it is terrible value for money ($13 au), they should be priced a lot lower relative to the effort required to make those assets versus the base game, but as it is cosmetic I don't care at all, I simply won't buy them. It does no harm to me that they exist or if other people purchase them. Moar!

After talking to some people and reading advice it appears the way forward is to pick one relatively cheap (in dust cost) but competitive deck from google that doesn't use legendaries, craft those cards and stick with it. This usually involves disenchanting cards from classes you aren't playing to pay for it - but I like collecting them, dust is a 4:1 proposition, and I have relatively few cards as it is, so I'm not sure I'll take that option.

I have also considered buying the solo adventures. Those have a fixed price, but much like most DLC, I don't think they are good value for money, and cards from these adventures will likely get retired from standard mode at some point. We'll see.

Moving on to Heroes of the Storm. I have only briefly played other MOBAs (LoL and DotA) and they aren't really my thing. I think I enjoy HotS more just because of familiarity with the universe and many of the characters. Trying to get into LoL is completely overwhelming, HotS... not so much. I appreciate that there is a bit more variety in maps, and most of the characters I have tried have been enjoyable. One thing I have noted is that the result of the match is usually evident by the time you are half way through it, at least in random unranked matches. The lanes seem to matter far less than what I recall from other games, everyone seems to largely ignore creep and focus on hero kills as that allows you to better control the map objective (eg doubloons, seeds, tributes) to win that way. Here's the difference from Hearthstone, the payment model is great, with the rotating free character pool, and the in game currency earning rate seems balanced. All up it is "good", it's just not very exciting, and the premise is kinda dorky, kinda like those discussions kids have about whose favourite superhero is stronger. Looks like something for the odd casual game with friends, but I'm not eager to play competitively or level all the heroes by myself.

Finally, back to WoW. Finished 100 arena wins on my hunter for the season reward, then did a handful on my shaman, as LSD, immediately surpassing the best arena rating I'd ever achieved on my hunter, which was satisfying. I also got the Pureblood Fire Hawk off of Ragnaros, and reached 250 mounts.

There's still things to finish off in WoD:

• Heirloom trinkets from mythic dungeons - 3 down, 2 to go. These are high priority as they are being removed, might have to pull out the alts over the next 2 weeks.
• 1 more garrison boss to kill - groups for these are uber-rare as it is. I'm using an addon to alert whenever they come up but only had 1 bite in over a month.
• 2 elusive pets and 1 mount from Tanaan.
• Another 150-200 pet battles in Draenor for the monument.
• Collect the music rolls for the garrison jukebox.

We're also hoping to attempt mythic blackhand and herald of the titans before the patch - but we may not be able to get the groups for that in time. It would be nice if mythic Hellfire Citadel becomes easier to go back and clear that if we have the people, even with the removal of the Cutting Edge feat of strength. The mount drop will still be 100% until Legion lands, so it would be good to have a 1/20 chance of getting it, before it becomes a 1% drop item.

Neglected content

It was encouraging to see Blizzard in their Legion Dev Update admitting to their neglect of old world levelling. They have previously brushed off any questions relating to improving it by saying 'we have new stories to tell', focusing on end-game and expansion content. But when what gets delivered there is not up to the standards set in the past, or takes an exorbitant amount of time to deliver, the excuse doesn't hold water and the whole game looks lacklustre.

I haven't had any desire to play vanilla servers, so the whole episode regarding Nostalrius and pristine servers didn't really pique my interest. But it looks like that has helped put the spotlight on what is now a terrible levelling experience, so I'm glad people are fighting for it, and hopefully some good can come from it on the live servers.

Whether you like levelling now or not, it was where so many of us first fell in love with the game. When introducing a new player to the game now, you have to make so many excuses for it, with the promise of it getting better once you reach the current expansion. Blizzard appeared to focus on the boosted experience, but WoD did not deliver enough to justify it. The same player base won't keep playing the game forever, it has to get new blood to persist, and it is hard to see a new generation of players coming through and falling in love with what exists post boost, or the mess that exists before it.

Watcher summed it up well when he said that the pacing is off, that you spend more time running around than anything else. The XP nerfs and bonuses are both a blessing and a curse; if you want to get to end game asap, levelling is an obstacle and the reduced XP makes it quick, but it is also a large part of what makes levelling so bad. Most people that want to level quickly will spam queue dungeons, where (particularly before Cataclysm) they are so easy they can just be rushed through, requiring no coordination or communication - it's just a power grind. If you don't take this path, you'll find a disjointed mess of zones that are outlevelled after a handful of quests, story arcs that never get finished as you are moved on quickly, time travelling back and forth as you traverse expansions, the rewards are mediocre to non-existent, and the whole experience is lonely and unchallenging. On one character I levelled from 85 to 90 in the first half of The Jade Forest, after which I discovered I was still wearing vanilla gear in a number of slots, including white ilvl ~30 boots.

There is so much once-great content in the old world that could continue to be enjoyed by players, with a little love. This extends to old dungeons and raids. I have long held the opinion that allowing old instances to become completely trivial is not a positive thing. I am not flatly against the idea of dungeons and raids becoming soloable, but bosses should not fall over before they can even complete their pull emote. All the effort that went into making a cool boss fight, the mechanics, animations and effects, voice acting, everything goes to waste. You cannot experience them again, just like you cannot experience the levelling zones like you did in the past.  It is no wonder people want vanilla servers.

Timewalking dungeons have provided a glimpse of what could be possible, to experience at least some semblance of the original encounters, and the zone scaling in Legion also shows promise. If these could be expanded game-wide in some fashion, it would go a long way to improving the dormant parts of the game. I am looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

I personally wonder whether there could be a tradeoff for using XP boosts. For example, heirloom pieces could either have strong stats, OR have XP bonuses. Perhaps if the amount of XP required was returned to old levels, you could make a deal with a goblin to sacrifice all of your non-XP quest rewards for an XP multiplier. Not really a punishment for the first 60-70 levels, but again, rewards could be tweaked. In the days of 10 million gold cap, a handful of silver for low level quest completion could probably be bumped up a bit.

I also think that if you want to power level through dungeons that's fine, dungeons could even have increased XP over questing... if they were challenging. That would go hand in hand with a foundation concept of MMOs, grouping up with others to defeat difficult objectives for better rewards. Perhaps as a start, heirlooms should not scale beyond an instance's base level. For example, if you can queue for RFD at 40, heirlooms should function as if you were level 40 in that instance, regardless of your actual level.

Alpha avoidance

It's hard to keep a good balance when it comes to being informed about the alpha. I don't want to be completely out of the loop, as that can result in uninformed decisions you later regret, but I also don't want to spoil the game for the playing once it arrives. It's hard because that's all people are talking about - perfectly understandable, but I've already read or seen a couple of things I wish I hadn't. If I need to choose between one of two extremes on Legion alpha/beta, I'm starting to lean towards crawling under a rock for a while. I've got other things to focus on without getting caught up in all the speculation and worry that accompanies an alpha, and that will allow me to enjoy exploring the game live, even if that makes me a slow leveller.

I'm glad to say that I've now got all of the Draenor rare spawn mounts - completed over 4 weeks with Poundfist obviously taking the longest. I also got the Ashes of A'lar from Tempest Keep (43 kills in WoD, unsure beforehand as I wasn't tracking. Estimate 120 total). The guild has been doing Highmaul and BRF achievement and mythic runs, whilst raiding Mythic HFC 2 hours a week, getting the first 3 down. I've been doing a lot of Ashran again, finishing the 2000 bloody coins achievement, and I started doing nemesis a second time (this time on my main) to help out others and have been sucked into completing it again.

But what I've been doing more than anything is levelling pets. This has seen me go from 238th to 72nd on wowprogress pet score, although it doesn't update reliably so I've started using warcraftpets.com instead. I've still a lot to go, but after seeing how effective it is to level during pet bonus week, I'm doing the bare minimum until that comes around again (17th Feb) so I don't burn out. I'll post a follow up explaining my circuit.

It's also a good time to be levelling alts. Not that I really need more alts or that I'm enjoying the levelling process, both topics I should write about. But I took a self-RAF during the sale so I'm taking advantage of it. There's always reasons cropping up to have alts on the opposite faction/another server/another account.

Legion class preview

The shaman class preview blog went up yesterday. The changes are few and largely quality of life related, and based on a lot of the comments, people seemed to be hoping for something more. I normally think shaman reaction is justified, and while there were some truths remarked, I felt the reaction was a bit overblown, almost self fulfilling. Not to worry, here are some thoughts.

Maelstrom power

Maelstrom power is replacing both mana and lightning shield charges. This delineates our rotation more into generators and spenders - with the spenders revealed so far as earth shock (single target, as per current), earthquake (aoe) and healing surge. As I suggested the other day, I think this is partly aimed at limiting offhealing.

We'll be able to cast healing surge with 0 maelstrom, to enable out of combat regen, but it would have to be less effective than it is currently, otherwise there is no point in making it consume maelstrom. This won't really matter in PvE, our healing is already incidental, but the concerns remain for PvP. Healing will now actively decrease damage output (ie consuming maelstrom) in addition to passively reducing it by consuming cast time otherwise spent dpsing. Fine in isolation, terrible when compared to the passive healing you see from other classes.

Shock cooldowns

Shocks limited by maelstrom has allowed the removal of the shared cooldown, finally. Earth shock requires at least 10 maelstrom and consumes all maelstrom (assuming a maximum of 100) so cannot be spammed, but flame shock doesn't require maelstrom, but uses some if available to extend its duration. So it can be spammed, and supposedly will function as our movement dps. No mention of frost shock. I sincerely hope fulmination and its lightning bolt effect remain, because the shocks are dull by themselves. The description suggests the damage is just being loaded into Earth shock :(

Totems

• Searing totem (and magma totem?) are being removed
• Totems have more health, are no longer type limited, and can be placed without needing a talented cooldown.
• Elementals are not bound to totems.

These are all positive changes that people have been wanting for a long time. However, it is still dependent on us having useful totems to use. The only totems that regularly get used in PvE right now are being removed, and in their place we are getting Maelstrom totem, a 15 second ability on a 30 second cooldown. It generates maelstrom as well as doing damage, so it's not quite as bland as searing, but it's double the maintenance. And current estimations suggest maelstrom will not be hard to come by, so we can't yet tell what place it will have.

We need more, better totems for these changes to be meaningful. The best part of these changes is probably the freeing up of talent spots, hopefully we get some great replacements.

Rotation

Not much changing here before talents, lava burst still has its flame shock dependency, and earthquake (maelstrom spender) effectively depends on chain lightning - no word on whether enhanced earthquake is remaining. If it isn't, then earthquake should become instant cast baseline, which will have the side effect of making it far more useful in PvP.

Expectation is that unleash flame will be removed, as it probably should have in the WoD purge.

Identity

Blizzard believe elemental has a strong identity: "Through the body of the shaman flows bolts of lightning, as if from storm, and bursts of fire, as if from molten earth". Lightning and lava, that's what we're about. The theme is there, and it is hard to argue that our abilities don't reflect that. A lot of the complaints I've read seem to conflate spec identity with implementation - not liking the spells we have, or the rotation that results in, is a different issue. We also get elemental overload back as multistrike is removed, which should help reaffirm our identity - but I hope molten earth remains in some form, possibly as a talent. It does look cool and complements earthquake well.

If there is an area we are lacking, that is in the frost school - only reflected in frost shock and partially in elemental blast, both barely used as elemental. If frost should be part of our identity, we need abilities to better reflect that. If not, frost shock should be replaced with something thematically relevant. Water is reserved for restorative powers, but no reason frost couldn't reflect water used offensively. The problem here is frost mages - we barely differentiate from fire mages with 'lava' based abilities, but frost mages seem to have everything icy wrapped up. There's a dozen things they could do to incorporate frost and spice up our rotation, but I don't see it happening due to frost mages, and I think that's a real pity.

Perhaps the removal of frostfire bolt presents an opportunity... imagine a water totem cooldown that changes spells like lightning bolt and/or lava burst into frosty variants, that have synergy with the spells they replace. In fact, it'd be fun to explore the idea of one totem for each school, effectively giving us short lived 'stances' with higher attunements to each element. If I get time one day...

Enhancement in my eyes has had the bigger problem with identity, which Blizzard have attempted to clarify; they are not 'enhancing' others in battle (as they did prior to WotLK), but fighting with weapons/attacks enhanced with the power of the elements. I don't know enough about enhance, but if this new multi-spec feature eventuates, I'd love to try it again.

Blizzcon '15

Not a lot to take out of Blizzcon on shaman. The artifact weapons were revealed, but functionality aside, everyone gets one, so at this point it is just a type, a name and a paragraph of lore. The one tidbit we got was that both elemental and enhancement are losing mana as a resource, to be replaced by maelstrom charges. This has the potential to be a cosmetic change, or a complete overhaul, so there's little point speculating just yet, apart from to say that I suspect it will limit dps shaman offhealing capability further than past attempts have done.

Only need to wait another two days for the shaman class blog so there should be some good information then, if today's hunter blog was an indication. They did however admit on one of the panels that the classes getting the bulk of the attention are hunter, rogue, priest and warlock, so reigning in my expectations.

Elsewhere, there's a lot to look forward to, but I'm a wait and see kinda guy, particularly after WoD. The cinematic for Legion was typical Blizzard quality, but of course does not represent the final product. There was some hype and some ridicule for the movie, but all those people will probably see it anyway. When you slow down the trailer, there's a lot of detail in there, and this is the stuff that got me interested more than anything. This video by HeelvsBabyface shows a lot of the cool details but beware there are some big potential spoilers in there.

I'm not big on transmogging, but I am a hoarder, and big on bag space issues, so the new system will be great. I'll also be drawn into it if they add in achievements for completing your wardrobe. But, I put this change in the same box as the model updates for WoD, both quality of life, 'modernisations' that were probably necessary in a 10 year old game, and, like the models, I can definitely foresee parts of this not being ready for launch and being sold as patch content.

Of course, the launch date being as late as September, but likely mid year next year, is not good news, and neither is Legion having only two raids. There is already a big concern with retaining players - once the Blizzcon hype dies down, this won't help. If this were in that mythical faster expansion cycle then it might be okay, but then the price probably wouldn't be. At $70 AU for the standard or $95 AU for digital deluxe, it's still good value for money with the amount of play you and I get out of it, but WoD definitely delivered less for more. At that price, on a subscription model, Legion can't afford to do the same.

Goodbye multistrike?

After the Legion announcement, with the talk about how specs would be differentiated, I had been wondering about multistrike. Elemental's mastery was essentially multistrike until it was made into a stat and given to everyone, and as a result elemental lost a unique characteristic. So I was thinking about people's reaction if that was to be reversed, and today we learn that in Legion multistrike is actually being removed. This surprised me; most people, if asked what stat should be removed, would name versatility. I like multi, but that is primarily because it's our best stat. I have a few reasons to dislike it as well:

1. As it was elemental's mastery, we needed a new one and got molten earth, which is conceptually cool, but weak in practice, with mastery our worst stat as a result.
2. It has a reduced effectiveness in PvP, so specs that are attuned to that stat suffer comparatively.
3. It's a percentage chance for an attack to do more damage - so it is very similar to crit, but on a separate damage event.
4. It contributes to 'spam' - lots of little combat numbers as opposed to fewer, bigger numbers, more spell effects/sounds.
5. It's not great for resto, for when I switch specs.

So I won't be too sad to see it go, as long as elemental gets back a unique multistrike element akin to our old Elemental Overload mastery. Moving away from it completely could be quite harmful to the spec's already weak popularity.

Blizzard also needs to find some way to keep secondary stats interesting. Removal of multistrike with no other additions would leave 4 stats for DPS classes - haste, mastery, crit and versatility. If each piece of gear has 2 secondary stats on it, that would reduce the number of possible combinations to 6. This would be good for getting the optimal stats from random stat rolls, but would this simplify gearing too far?

Tanks and healers each have another stat, in bonus armor and spirit, that can be found on rings, necklaces, cloaks, and trinkets. I think spirit works well as it gives some options in gearing that players can utilise depending on the fight, but bonus armor is the best stat for all tanks, so it doesn't provide any options. And DPS have nothing equivalent - perhaps this is in an area for improvement.

Leech, avoidance and speed (tertiary stats?) are completely inconsequential. They currently function as a bonus, but their effect is minimal, and attaining them is unreliable. These stats could become permanent secondary stats rather than random chances at a bonus, but their effect would probably need to become a bit more pronounced to make them valuable, as it is hard to find any worth in them at their current levels.

Demon Hunters

When death knights were introduced, a lot of people planned on rolling one straight away when WotLK landed, and potentially main change if they liked what they saw. From what I remember at the time, the enhancement shaman community in particular took a hit because the DK could fill a similar role and style, with their recent design (shaman having not received a class review), plate armor and hero class status making them superior. We can expect that there will be a similar influx to demon hunters, but I wonder if rogues and demonology warlocks will be impacted more than other classes due to role or identity?

The announcement suddenly made more sense of some 6.2 spec changes. Demonology locks were hit by the nerf bat pretty hard, and the reasoning given was that they didn't like the way it played, and to promote the use of the other 2 specs. They were in a pretty strong place in BRF, but players couldn't make sense of the severity of the nerf, and speculated that it was a scaling or tier/class trinket issue in Hellfire Citadel. But in hindsight it seems that it was because demon hunters would be taking some of the identity of the spec, and having demo really strong/popular at the time of the announcement would have taken more shine off it than otherwise.

That might seem a bit of a stretch in isolation, but survival hunters were also nerfed heavily, and it would seem now that was because they had plans in place to rebuild it as a melee spec, and it's just easier if it isn't FOTM. Not that I agree with the approach, but it makes more sense looking at it that way.

I had expected any new class addition to the game would be a mail wearer, because there are 3 classes for each type of armor except for mail, which is only shaman and hunter. Blizzard this weekend explained that they considered mail for demon hunters but it didn't fit the class identity, and that having 4 classes wear leather won't be an issue because of personal loot. Interesting, as we still use ML/EPGP... would like to see stats on that.

On the other hand, demon hunters will be put on the conqueror token, making 4 classes on each. Not that it impacts our current raid group, having 0 mages and rogues, and over half the raid on protector tokens.

The class concept and lore is pretty cool I admit. What they play like, we only have a glimpse so far, but the standout features are listed as 'unrivaled' mobility, metamorphosis, and spectral sight. For mobility, they have the ability to double jump, glide, and 'vault in and out of combat' - probably Metamorphosis and Demonic Leap straight out of demonology. However I can't help but think of Shadowstep as well. I don't see double jumping as gamebreaking - anything other than clearing small obstacles would get patched out pretty quickly, especially in PvP. Gliding sounds like a steerable moonkin flap (which I love - but probably just because it is cute). Spectral sight is likely to be an activated ability that is only useful in arenas.

I also saw a note today that demon hunters would get glaives as a new weapon type, coming as a pair that fills both weapons slots. Now that will work fine for artifact weapons given weapon drops won't be available, but I can't imagine the idea of a weapon type for only one class existing beyond that. Enhancement shaman getting Doomhammer as their artifact are reportedly dual wielding a spectral duplicate of it, perhaps that will operate similarly to glaives when equipped.

All up, I am slightly intrigued and will inevitably use my 12th character slot for a demon hunter, but I'm a shaman through and through. I will roll one long past the initial rush is over.

Legion reveal

I was considering staying up for the expansion announcement all week, the schedule had it at 2am AEST which was a bit of a stretch for me on a work night, but doable. This was until a guildie pointed out that they usually draw out events like this and it could be hours until the reveal occurred. But, I was still wide awake come 1am so I committed to finding out, and fortunately the wait wasn't that long.

There was skepticism leading up to the announcement, what could Blizzard possibly do to right the ship, what could they announce that would get people excited at this point. The answer seems to lie in the quantity. They aren't just tackling one of the popular expansion ideas, but seemingly many of them.

In our small late night guild gathering, the reaction was one that quickly moved from blasé to acceptance to amazement, as Blizzard pulled a Demtel and kept reeling off features that seemed to cover so many of the theories and long standing appeals for future expansion content.

"But wait, there's more"

It is an ambitious list, some questions arise naturally about whether they can pull it off that only time will tell. Will the quality stand up, will adequate attention be given to all the locations and lore, or will we see features cut and storylines resolved in short questlines?

And then there's the when. WoW expansion betas have lasted between 3 and 6 months in the past, so with the Legion beta starting "later this year", it is unlikely to make a Christmas release. The only expansion to date to be released in the first half of the year was the Burning Crusade, and that was a date slipped for quality control. The Blizzard of today seems unlikely to do this, so it'll be interesting to see what their target dates are.

For now the main question I have regards the location and size of the Broken Isles. Based on past representations, it was a chain of small islands, some of many, that surrounded the maelstrom. Other times it has been considered part of the South Seas, where Pandaria now largely occupies. In the announcement, it is described as a new continent 'at the heart of Azeroth' - wherever that is. From what we saw of the maelstrom in Cataclysm, it may just be a case of it being over-represented on the old maps, and with a little 'adjustment' the new continent fits in easily. Or has the Broken Isles' location been retconned to sit somewhere else completely, such as on the opposite side of the world from the maelstrom?