World of Warcraft - What's Next (Blizzcon 2023)

Blizzcon 2023 was nothing if not spectacular when it comes to the Warcraft part of Blizzard. The future of warcraft is set with not only what's next for World of Warcraft but also what's in store for classic. This recap of Blizzcon 2023 will focus on Warcraft's next chapter and not Classic as we all know where we are headed with Cataclysm classic and therefore not really something to talk about. Season of Discovery however, will be in a different post later on.

The Worldsoul Saga

The Worldsoul Saga is the name for the at least next 3 expansions for World of Warcraft.

• The War Within, Delve into the Heart of Azeroth. Engage with the Earthen and Nerubians. 2024 release
• Midnight, Return to Quel'thalas, Make a stand with the forces of the light to banish the shadow of the Void from Azeroth.
• The Last Titan, Witness the return of Titans to Azeroth at Ulduar in Northrend.

At Blizzcon 2023 we got a sneakpeak at what is to come but of course most information is about The War Within which is what we are going to uncover next.

The War Within

During the World of Warcraft®: Deep Dive panel at BlizzCon 2023, Game Director Ion Hazzikostas took us deeper into the features coming in the next chapter of World of Warcraft: The War Within™.

he philosophy to continue to utilize evergreen content to make World of Warcraft better with every new feature addition. With The War Within expansion, the intention is to continue to build on the foundations of Dragonflight and carrying those philosophies forward with replayability, depth, and player agency while considering all the varying playstyles found in the game.

Introducing New Zones

Journey to a new level cap of 80 as we explore the vast empires beneath the surface of Azeroth and discover ancient civilizations, both friendly and adversarial, in four new zones: the surface-level Isle of Dorn, the industrial Ringing Deeps, the unexpectedly bright and lush Hallowfall, and Azj-kahet, a pinnacle of nerubian society.

AZJ-KAHET

In the deepest area of the descent is Azj-Kahet.

• The City of Threads: The nerubian City of Threads has been built on the ruins of itself may times over and as areas decay and crumble new districts are built on top of the ruins. This has resulted in a city that climbs ever higher. The nerubians favored by the queen, or those who have some amount of wealth live in the highest locations and have the best views.
  • The Burrows: Home of the scavengers and forgotten.
  • Umbral Bazaar: Operates as a trading hub of fine silks, alchemical discoveries, and other exotic and hard to find goods.
  • The Skeins are the home of the lore-keepers and scholars who maintain the history of their people and research the myths and legends of Azeroth.
  • There are many other districts in the City of Threads as well but in order to explore them, you’ll need to utilize pheromones and possess considerable bravery.

HALLOWFALL

A vast hollow area in the earth, it is bordered by an endless underground sea. A giant crystal provides bright light to the Arathi who  have established docks, towers for light beacons, villages, farms and a priory. Their holy fire fueled airships allow them to reach high plateaus as well as battle the constant nerubian threats. The light from the crystal cycles randomly, taking the area from light to darkness and bringing with it new and dangerous creatures. From their capital of Mereldar, the Arathi work to keep hope alive and spread the Light while continuing their battle against the nerubians at their borders.

ISLE OF DORN

This zone is at the surface of Khaz Algar and is home to the Earthen surface dwellers as well as a variety of other species. It is an untouched paradise of fertile soil, flowering plant life, and generous waterways. You can find the Earthen making Cinderbrew Mead here from a volatile substance manufactured from molten honey produced by enormous fiery bees. The hearts of the trees in the grove glow with lava-like fluid. You’ll also find a large walled city in which the Oathsworn live and serve the Edicts of the Titans.

RINGING DEEPS

Beneath the surface of the Isle of Dorn is the Ringing Deeps. This is where the Earthen engage in their work, in accordance with the Edicts. Large, complicated machines, lava-heated foundries and forges, and waterworks can be found in the industrial areas of this cavernous space. Maintaining the Titan mechanisms and keeping everything running is a passion for the Machine Speakers. There is natural beauty here as well which thrives in areas in which the natural light shines down from above and water flows to support the greenery, flowers, and creatures that you wouldn’t normally find in a cavern. With the decrease in the Machinery Speaker population, there has been an increase in kobold incursions.

Zone Flow

The use of light-filled cenotes in The Ringing Deeps, and a enormous crystal light source in Hallowfall help you experience distinctly different environments that don’t feel as though they are deep underground. The journey from the surface Isle of Dorn to the depths of Azj-Kahet is designed for a seamless descent toward the core of Azeroth. The zones have been layered and stacked upon one another and built for dynamic flight, allowing for exhilarating dives and soars within the cavernous spaces.

Dungeons

Similar to the launch of previous expansions, there will be 4 level-up dungeons and 4 maximum-level dungeons that can be found in each of the four new zones.

Level-Up Dungeons

• The Rookery
• The Stonevault
• Priory of the Sacred Flame
• City of Threads

Maximum Level

• Cinderbrew Meadery
• Darkflame Cleft
• The Dawnbreaker
• Old City

Nerub’ar Palace Raid Dungeon

The Nerub’ar Palace raid dungeon will be available with the start of  The War Within Season 1, offering eight boss encounters. Located in Azj-Kahet, it will result in the culmination of the story we see play out involving the machinations of the nerubian empire and Queen Ansurek’s collaboration with Xal’atath.

Introducing Delves

Delves are quick adventures for one to five players as a solo experience, with friends, or even as a dungeon group. These adventures are integrated into the outdoor realm as a new endgame pillar alongside dungeons, raids, and PvP. Designed to provide variety, flexibility, and replayability,  there are 12 Delves available at launch that take place throughout Khaz Algar in a variety of environments.

Shaped by lessons learned from Torghast, Islands, and Scenarios, Delves intends to allow more player choice and variety.

Season One will include the NPC companion, Brann Bronzebeard.  These companions will level up as they journey with you and can be customized to be a compliment to your character, whether you need them to do more damage or heal a bit for you.

Entering one of these adventures won’t involve any loading screens to transition into a Delve portal. As you solve the mysteries and puzzles within and defeat the boss at the end, you’ll make your way to a room overflowing with treasure offering currency, gold, chances at cosmetics, and more. If you have the right key, you may even be able to open any large Resplendent Chests that will show up from time to time. These keys can be earned in other Delves, outdoor gameplay, or in a weekly quest. These items will be balanced against dungeon and raid loot.

Delves will be integrated into the various zones with a variety of environments, settings, and inhabitants.

Delves have several difficulty tiers, resulting in a variety of potential rewards.

The Great Vault

The Great Vault will add the new “World” category, removing PvP. For the first time, players who take part in outdoor world activities will be able to earn rewards from the Great Vault. Whether it’s from completing outdoor objectives or by doing Delves, players will be able to unlock rewards based on the level of difficulty completed. Rewards can potentially reach the level of Heroic raiding or close to Mythic 15 dungeon range.

Players who take part in PvP will no longer need to access the Guild Vault for rewards—which were often more random than players wanted. Instead, players will receive additional Conquest to be able to purchase the items they want most.

There will be a variety of cosmetics available in Delves such as fun new helms like a fungarian hat, kobold helm with candles, or even the terrifying new undersea creature, kobyss, helm.

Players who take part in Delves will also be able to unlock a new customizable flying mount.

Warbands

In summary, Warbands mean account-wide everything. As the years have progressed, World of Warcraft players have changed the way they play, leveling up multiple alternative characters has become the norm instead of focusing only on one character.  This is the result of the leveling experience becoming faster over time and playing alternate characters a regular expectation. Players who want to play additional characters currently run into additional challenges, however.

Warbands is an attempt to change the system and create a more alt-friendly experience and reset the foundation of World of Warcraft allowing for the accomplishments of individual players to be reflected across all of their characters on their Battle.net account. This new system will focus on adding convenience and flexibility but will not provide additional power to alts.

• Warband Bank: Share Items between all of your characters on a single Battle.net account in one convenient bank.
• Warbound Items: These are bonus personal loot items that drop at a slightly lower level that can be shared with alternate characters.  

• Transmogrification Collection: This system will expand to allow players on one character to add additional class specific items that they can’t equip to their transmog collection. This allows a player on a mage character to collect a warrior item and be able to add it to the transmog collection for use on your warrior character instead.
• Warband Reputations: Many Reputations in The War Within will become available for all characters to access through integration with Warbands. As an example: unlocking a recipe on one character won’t be reliant on gaining the trust of a faction again on an alternate character.
• Flight Paths: Once unlocked on one character, all characters in your Warband can access them.
• Delves: Leveling up a companion NPC will be accessible to characters in your Warband.
• Achievements: Instead of only specific achievements being account-wide, they are being updated so that they are all account-wide rewarding the individual player instead of the character for the accomplishment.
• Login Screen: When you log in to the game, you’ll be able to see a selection of your characters on the login screen waiting for you to choose who you will go on your next adventure with.

Hero Talents

With Hero talents, you’ll be receiving 10 new talent points for each of the 10 levels you’ll earn while playing through The War Within. These new talent points will focus on offering the ability to explore a deeper class fantasy, provide additional flexibility to suit your play style, and offer progression and agency while not adding excessive complexities.

With four available specializations, development began with the druids. As an example, a Balance druid might choose between Keeper of the Grove or Elune’s Chosen. You’ll be able to swap between the same way as you change talents any other time during gameplay.

Adding Hero talents to the mix provides three talent trees to choose from: Class, Hero, and Specialization. With ten points available to apply to Hero talents, you’ll be able to access all of the available nodes on a given Hero tree. The choices will lie in which of the talents you want to take first as you level up.

Within the Hero tree there are additional choice nodes you’ll be able to select depending on the type of content you are undertaking.

The Keeper of the Grove tree is available to both Balance and Restoration druids. This selection focuses on summons and offers additional choice nodes.

Elune’s Chosen tree is available to Balance and Guardian druids. This tree is all about Elune and calling down her power to smite foes and protect allies.

There are 39 Hero talent specializations available.

Other Features

Earthen Allied Race

Players will be able to play through The War Within campaign and the endgame questline to unlock access to  the Earthen Allied Race.  This new race is able to join either the Horde or the Alliance and will be available to play as the following classes: Death Knight, Hunter, Mage, Monk, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, and Warrior. Leveling this new Allied Race will also unlock the new Earthen Heritage Armor.

Dynamic Flight

Dragonriding is here to stay and will also be available for many flying mounts in all flyable areas even prior to the launch of The War Within. Players will also be able to toggle between dynamic flight or the flying style introduced originally in The Burning Crusade (TBC).

Dynamic Flight will be available from the start in Khaz Algar and players will be able to unlock the TBC style of flight at maximum level by exploring the zones of The War Within and completing the campaign.  Players will also be able to collect glyphs throughout Khaz Algar as they explore.  These glyphs will be shifting to an evergreen state in which players shouldn’t feel as if they need to go back to Dragonflight to gain any they missed before. Some abilities that players have collected from their adventures in the Dragon Isles may be restricted to the Dragon Isles, but base abilities like increased Vigor will become a part of how Dynamic Flight works and available to everyone as they level up.

For the PvP fans like me We get a new Battleground

This new 10v10 capture-point map is set in the Ringing Deeps. This battleground is similar to Silvershard Mines, but with some additional twists. Players will fight for control of minecarts along with a central node, teams will want to control.

Interface Updates

As a part of the continuing refinement of the Interface, the Spellbook is getting some additional cleanup. It will provide a larger and cleaner layout, take advantage of modern display resolutions, and allow more pages to fit on one screen. It will serve as a one-stop-shop for your spells and talents within the same tab along with specialization information.

Aspects of the quest interface are also evolving allowing more filtering along with hide or show objectives in your quest log. Icons are also getting cleaned up.

While not large changes, development continues to work to streamline the User Interface to improve the default capabilities.

I will delve deeper into what War Within has to offer as we get to alpha and beta access and get to see it all for ourselves.

World of Warcraf - War Within Q&A

I will end the recap of the War Within with the video of the Q&A