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I went over to a friend's place today to watch the Blizzcon Virtual Ticket and one of the announcements was the new expansion for World of Warcraft. The new expansion is: Battle for Azeroth. I'm not totally sold on the idea of Horde versus Alliance as an expansion theme, though. Pandaria taught us that war is not the answer, yet it seems the developers didn't really learn from that experience. But, the scenery of the new zones does have me interested in exploring them. I'm hoping that flight will be enabled in a similar manner to how it has been done for Legion content.
Flight in World of Warcraft
Flight in WoW has gone through changes with the last two expansions. In the past, you got flight for each of your characters by scraping together enough gold to afford the flight training and the flying mounts for each character. Starting with Warlords of Draenor (WoD), flight has become an unlock system via achievements. Each zone has an achievement for the storyline quests in it. Completing these quests completes the achievement and unlocks one of the steps for the meta achievement (Think of logic gates where all the inputs must be true to trigger the output). Once all of the achievements are completed, then the meta achievement is also triggered. Flight in WoD worked in two steps, one meta achievement granted you increased mount speed in the specific content area. The second step required you to have completed the first meta achievement and a few other achievements along the way. This second one grants flight to the entire BattleNet account. Legion used the same system of unlocking flight, but the content was designed around it instead of having the flight unlock shoe-horned in late in the expansion like it was in WoD. In Legion, flight is unlocked more naturally as you progressed through quests.
Upcoming Changes to the Leveling Experience
Starting with Patch 7.3.5, Blizzard is working on fixing the leveling experience for the older content. Instead of having different level ranges of creatures scattered across a zone, the creatures will scale with you to a certain maximum level cap. Some zones will have a range of 10-60, others may be 40-60. This will make the creatures more relevant as you gain levels while questing across a zone. You'll still be able to come back at higher levels and one-shot creatures, but there will be less issues of creatures not giving experience points (XP) while questing.
Another change is how the previous expansions will be handled. Right now, the questing experience going through the expansions looks like this: Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor -> Outland (BC) -> Northrend (WotLK) -> Cataclysm -> Pandaria -> Warlords of Draenor (WoD) -> Legion. With Patch 7.3.5, the questing through expansions will be less linear. BC and WotLK content will both be changed to be for the level 60-80 range. Cataclysm and Pandaria will both be for the level 80-90 range. These changes will make questing more of a player's choice than being forced to do certain content because of level restrictions. The dungeons and quest gear for these expansions will also be adjusted to match the new level ranges.
I'm looking forward to these changes as it will refresh the leveling experience a bit for me in the future. As the questing stands right now, there is a lot of weird back and forth through time as you go through the expansions. Cataclysm changed the world of Azeroth and refreshed the quests to be more current for Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. Then, you go back in time a long ways when doing quests in Outland. Things get brought closer to the present in Northrend and back even closer to the present in the five Cataclysm zones. With the ability to pick and choose how I progress through expansions, I might skip Outland in the future while questing and go back later for Loremaster reasons.
PvP Changes:
While there wasn't a set milestone for when the new PvP changes will be rolled out, I still want to post a highlight on them. The biggest change is that there won't be a difference between PvE and PvP servers after the new changes roll out. One of the options available by right-clicking on your character's portrait is to disable PvP and it will available to all characters regardless of realm. The only differences between realms will be between normal and role-playing realms at that point. This will be a big change for those that currently have characters on a PvP realm and not wanting to play while on those realms. The realm type won't matter anymore for them. I suspect these PvP changes will go out either with Patch 7.3.5 or when the Battle for Azeroth expansion launches.
Flight in World of Warcraft
Flight in WoW has gone through changes with the last two expansions. In the past, you got flight for each of your characters by scraping together enough gold to afford the flight training and the flying mounts for each character. Starting with Warlords of Draenor (WoD), flight has become an unlock system via achievements. Each zone has an achievement for the storyline quests in it. Completing these quests completes the achievement and unlocks one of the steps for the meta achievement (Think of logic gates where all the inputs must be true to trigger the output). Once all of the achievements are completed, then the meta achievement is also triggered. Flight in WoD worked in two steps, one meta achievement granted you increased mount speed in the specific content area. The second step required you to have completed the first meta achievement and a few other achievements along the way. This second one grants flight to the entire BattleNet account. Legion used the same system of unlocking flight, but the content was designed around it instead of having the flight unlock shoe-horned in late in the expansion like it was in WoD. In Legion, flight is unlocked more naturally as you progressed through quests.
Upcoming Changes to the Leveling Experience
Starting with Patch 7.3.5, Blizzard is working on fixing the leveling experience for the older content. Instead of having different level ranges of creatures scattered across a zone, the creatures will scale with you to a certain maximum level cap. Some zones will have a range of 10-60, others may be 40-60. This will make the creatures more relevant as you gain levels while questing across a zone. You'll still be able to come back at higher levels and one-shot creatures, but there will be less issues of creatures not giving experience points (XP) while questing.
Another change is how the previous expansions will be handled. Right now, the questing experience going through the expansions looks like this: Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor -> Outland (BC) -> Northrend (WotLK) -> Cataclysm -> Pandaria -> Warlords of Draenor (WoD) -> Legion. With Patch 7.3.5, the questing through expansions will be less linear. BC and WotLK content will both be changed to be for the level 60-80 range. Cataclysm and Pandaria will both be for the level 80-90 range. These changes will make questing more of a player's choice than being forced to do certain content because of level restrictions. The dungeons and quest gear for these expansions will also be adjusted to match the new level ranges.
I'm looking forward to these changes as it will refresh the leveling experience a bit for me in the future. As the questing stands right now, there is a lot of weird back and forth through time as you go through the expansions. Cataclysm changed the world of Azeroth and refreshed the quests to be more current for Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. Then, you go back in time a long ways when doing quests in Outland. Things get brought closer to the present in Northrend and back even closer to the present in the five Cataclysm zones. With the ability to pick and choose how I progress through expansions, I might skip Outland in the future while questing and go back later for Loremaster reasons.
PvP Changes:
While there wasn't a set milestone for when the new PvP changes will be rolled out, I still want to post a highlight on them. The biggest change is that there won't be a difference between PvE and PvP servers after the new changes roll out. One of the options available by right-clicking on your character's portrait is to disable PvP and it will available to all characters regardless of realm. The only differences between realms will be between normal and role-playing realms at that point. This will be a big change for those that currently have characters on a PvP realm and not wanting to play while on those realms. The realm type won't matter anymore for them. I suspect these PvP changes will go out either with Patch 7.3.5 or when the Battle for Azeroth expansion launches.
