The War Within

The next World of Warcraft (WoW) expansion has been announced.  It will be the first of three expansions that will set about fixing the lore that jumped all over the place in the most recent expansions.  A personal opinion, but one that is shared by many.

It’s early days yet since the announcement was only made recently, but we are already getting an idea of what may be in our WoW future.  Below are some things coming into the game, their explanations directly from the sources through links.  There is a lot to get through, so let’s get started.

Account-Wide Warbands – Renown – Bank – Alts

Something the players have begged for is coming, and the possibilities are exciting.  Of course, we don’t have a lot of details, but we have some information.

Account-Wide Warbands   (Link to Wowhead article)

With the upcoming The War Within expansion, players will be able to add their alts to a warband, allowing them to share renown, reputation, bank, achievements, and more among all their alts.

Blizzard

EXPAND THE POTENTIAL OF YOUR ALTS – With Warbands, players can enjoy account-wide progression with all characters in their Battle.net® account, regardless of faction, that includes shared War Within™ renown, a warband bank, achievements, and more! Additionally, a new change to transmog collection will let players learn the appearance of any gear type, even if they cannot equip it!

Zones of The War Within

Four(4) New Zones in The War Within (Link to Wowhead article)

Blizzard

Journey to a new level cap of 80 as you 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.

New Earthen Allied Race

The Earthen Allied Race is available to both Alliance and Horde characters.  And once the Warband goes into effect in the new expansion gaining the reputation across all of our characters should make this a much quicker possibility.  More to come as details are released – but yes, we continue getting more Allied Races to play in WoW.

Delves

Delves are an interesting new concept starting in The War Within.  Basically, they are mini-instances that can be played by 1 player solo or up to 4 players with an NPC. This article from Wowhead explains the concept better than I ever could, but it is an intriguing idea for those of us who just don’t dive into dungeons all that often. (Hey now, every player can have their own preferences on how they game.)

Delves (Link to Wowhead article)

Cross-Realm Guilds are Coming in The War Within

We got Cross-Faction guilds… and now we go a step further with new Cross-Realm guilds.  As an officer in a Cross-Faction guild, this news excites me greatly.  Of course, we’ll learn more details as this develops, but for now, here’s the Wowhead Link to the article.

Worldsoul Saga

With the announcement of The War Within expansion, we are given hints of what this and future expansions will have in store for us all.  This is the beginning of the Worldsoul Saga, a combination of three expansions that will fulfill a prophecy that I had no hopes of ever seeing within my lifetime, certainly not with the direction the more recent expansions took us.  But now, the possibilities are endless.  And Profit Velen’s vision deserves a second look.  The Wowhead link below is vital to understanding just how massive and how right this direction is concerning the lore that has been missing from the game I love.

The Worldsoul Saga (Link to Wowhead article)

This is a very interesting article about The War Within and the next two parts of the Worldsoul Saga (Midnight and The Last Titian) at the link below.  If you want to understand some of the backroom thinking or where WoW Retail is moving toward in the upcoming expansions – then this is an article that might answer some of your questions.  I know it helped me see the overall picture of what is being attempted (and, of course, it’s all still in the planning out stages to a large degree).

Article from “But Why Tho” .net

: Interview

Disclaimer:  This is a fan page.  Its purpose is to talk about my enjoyment of a game I have played since the very beginning of World of Warcraft.  Blizzard Entertainment owns World of Warcraft. I have placed links on this page to Blizzard, Wowhead, and other sites in order to gather information for my own enjoyment of this game.  However, ownership of that information belongs to their respective companies.  Again, this is a fan page intended for entertainment purposes only.