With 2013 quickly fading away it is time to look at what is coming next year in World of Warcraft. Since the Warlords of Draenor expansion was announced at BlizzCon 2013 we have slowly learned more and more about whats coming. Obviously, the main thing to be excited about is the expansion as a whole, but individually what components of the expansion should you be most excited about.

Let's find out what the Messiah thinks are the 5 things to most look forward too in 2014.

#5 - New / Old Lore

Much has been made of the rehashing of Draenor and the time travel into the past with the coming expansion.  Some or really against it and feel that Blizzard short-cut this expansion just to get something out.  Others really like the idea of visiting the past and learning more about some of the key leaders from Warcraft’s history. 

While I have conflicting opinions both ways on the question of this being a short cut or an interesting idea, there is no arguing that the lore and quests that we will get to see and play through will be interesting.  While we know some of the history, mainly the overarching story lines, we don’t really know that many personal details about each leader. 

No mater what you feel about the expansion, there will be a lot to learn that I am very excited about and interested in seeing.  Even though our interaction essentially alters the past and creates a sort of parallel universe (kind of like the new Star Trek movies), the key leaders still have their same personality.

#4 - New Character Models

Let’s face it, the old character models are, well, OLD.  If they came out in any pay to play game now, players would likely laugh it off the store shelves.  While World of Warcraft has always aimed at a stylized cartoon-type look and not for a realistic look, they are still old.

Dwarf Character Models

The new models are night and day better than the old, while still keeping the same soul that the old ones had.  I for one can not wait for the new character models and think that they will add a lot to the game.  They will completely freshen up the look. 

The only issue I can see is that players with low powered systems that could play WoW before easily on them, may now struggle.  With all those extra polygons and higher resolution textures to push, the system requirements just have to go up.  That being said, WoW already runs on lower powered systems than any other current MMO out there that I know of, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

#3 - Cross Realm Group Finder

Finally being able to find groups for pretty much whatever you want to do is a great thing.  I am hoping that this feature will return WoW to the original vanilla days when you could find a group to quest with, raid with, instance with, level with, or whatever you wanted.  I know that it may not do everything, but hey, it has to be better than what we have right now.

#2 - Garrisons

Garrisons are the long awaited player housing feature for World of Warcraft and while it has taken Blizzard way to damn long to add it as a feature into the game, it looks like they did it right.  Garrisons look to have so many cool features that they come in #2 on my list, which is pretty high praise, since #3 was a key PVE feature which is were I spend most of my time.

Warlords of Draenor Garrison Map
This is a test version of the UI for upgrading your Garrison buildings as displayed at BlizzCon.

Garrisons will allow all WoW players to create their own little home in Draenor.  They will allow us to collect followers that will help us advance further, and potentially make us feel like the heroic leaders that we are supposed to be in the game.  While the customization looks a little limited, it is still early on in our knowledge base, and even the little that is there, really is a lot more than many other games that offer in-game housing. 

The ability to create your own layout with different building choices for your garrison, collect the followers you want, have quests for them to work on even while you are not in the game, and more, make this an awesome looking feature for 2014.

Again though….  We should have been enjoying this since at least 2009.  Oh well.

#1 - New Instance and Raid Content

Probably no surprise here, since any long time reader knows my favourite thing in an MMO is instanced content.  Blizzard has done a bang up job lately on instanced content and especially raid content.  There have been a lot of new an interesting mechanics, new raid structures, and the ability to raid with the number of players you want to, but nothing compares to new content.

While we do not know a whole lot about the new instances and raids just yet, if they are anything like the raids from Mists of Pandaria, there should be a lot of happy players out there. 

While I would like to see more content coming initially than Blizzard is putting out, and more new content more often, what they do slowly dole out to players is top notch.  Please sir, may I have some more.

Comments

The Messiah has had his say on what he is most looking forward to in 2014 in World of Warcraft, what about you?  Make your opinion known in the comment section below.

 


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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