World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor review

It has been 10 years since the release of the first World of Warcraft and it has never left a chance to keep our jaw dropped. Given the size and devotion of its playerbase, it isn’t surprising to see another spurt of growth, adding bulk in the form of a stack of new content.

Warlords of Draenor(WoD) is the fifth installment in the series and has archives for inspiration, adding arguably the game’s biggest and most ambitious feature to date. We again get to visit the Burning Crusade world where we entered 8 years ago and face a number of new challenges with streamlined spellbooks and a fresh lick of paint.

Synopsis:

The environment of the WoD is creepy filled with ugly looking creatures and has everything which a game like this requires. It had the exact amount of detailing to freak you out. The expansion is set after the events of Mists of Pandaria and takes place in an alternate universe on the world of Draenor, the original homeworld of the Orcs as it appeared in Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, prior to its destruction in the ending of that game and the creation of Outland as featured in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. Legendary characters of Warcraft?'?s past, such as Grom Hellscream, Ner'zhul, Gul'dan, and Blackhand, will appear.

If you played Mists of Pandaria, you would also remember that Garrosh Hellscream was overthrown as Warchief of the Horde by a combined Alliance-Horde force and taken into custody by the Pandaren so that he can stand trial for the atrocities he committed in Pandaria. But before he is trialed, he escapes into an alternating timeline and lands into the world of Draenor prior to the rise of the Horde.

Once there, he has to prevent the Orcish clans from drinking the blood of the demon lord Mannoroth, which will lead to their corruption by the Burning Legion and play a major role in the events of the first three games.

Gameplay:

Warlords of Draenor is… More WoW! And by WoW, I mean both WOW and World of Warcraft. The expansion allows players to level up to 100 from the previous cap of 90. It also includes new dungeons and raids, and introduced a new difficulty of raids called Mythic, which became the hardest version of the raid system.

The introductory experience throws you into a pretty slick, action-packed, scripted sequence that gives you a chance to get used to the way your character plays. Vets will blast through with ease, particularly if they have raid gear from Pandaria, but there are a couple of buffs to help newcomers too.

One teleports you back onto the correct path should you wander too far (exploration is fun, but is encouraged and rewarded once you’re into the game proper), and the other gives you a free resurrection once every three minutes should you get into a nasty scrape.

You can have eleven characters on a server. Managing eleven Garrisons, all maxed out, sounds kind of intense. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that people will do it, and time will tell how much of an advantage it may offer.

Finishing quest chains will occasionally earn you the respect and loyalty of the quest NPC. This is much more awesome than that dry description suggests. Completing an entire zone gets you a slick cutscene and generally also a blueprint that provides a big upgrade to your Garrison. Given that one character can’t have every building at once, and given that each offers powerful advantages, this means that there will be a natural inclination to fill gaps with an alt or five.

I tried levelling again on a squishy, be-robed mage, with whom I am significantly less skilled. My goodness. Suddenly, every fight was a fight to the death, and sadly not always theirs. For maximum fun-i-tude, bring along a friend. WoW is best played with a buddy. Bring along a friend, start the game and I personally promise you that you will forget your connection with the outside world and you will play the game for hours.

As far as the character and environment detailing goes, The game has never looked better, with enemy models and animations that are good enough for me to occasionally just stop and watch them for a while. All the player models have had a huge graphical update too, but because you generally just see the back of your armour-plated head all those detailed and expressive new faces tend not to get a lot of airtime.

Final Verdict:

The game is not yet completed and there are more levels yet to come. So it’s too soon to comment on the various other features of the game. But of whatever I have played, I”ve got just one word for it “AWESOME”. I have enjoyed my time of play.

The mood in my guild has been buoyant, and while a ten-year-old MMO is not the most accessible prospect for a brand new player, significant efforts have been made to make it somewhere that everyone can join and enjoy. So, I would suggest you to try this game. Trust me, you will fall in love this game. Thumbs up for this one!