All Articles: World of Warcraft

The fifth World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords of Draenor, was announced during this weekend’s BlizzCon event. Warlords of Draenor doesn’t even have a release date yet, but Blizzard’s President, Mike Morhaime, has revealed the company has already begun development on the MMO’s sixth expansion.

Speaking to Polygon, Morhaime said: “We […] have to start looking further down the road and planning further out,” he said. “We’ve already started working on the expansion after [Warlords of Draenor]. We’ve never done that in the past. We’ve been doing one expansion at a time, sort of a very linear content creation model, and we’ve looked at ways that we can parallelize that. So that while we’re working on this expansion we’re looking at the new one.”

According to Morhaime, Blizzard is undertaking this sped up development schedule to ensure WoW remains “relevant” to the game’s subscriber base, which currently stands at 7.6 million people.

BlizzCon 2013 started today, and Blizzard has kicked off the massive event with a massive announcement. The MMORPG juggernaut’s fifth expansion, World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, will take players to the world of Draenor to battle alongside legendary Warcraft heroes. The expansion is set to take players back in time to face the likes of Grommash Hellscream, Blackhand, and Ner’zhul when they were at their most fearsome. More than just the setting, World of Warcraft‘s fifth expansion will, of course, come with all of the trappings of an expansion including new dungeons, raids, a new level cap, and much more. Perhaps the most interesting addition is that of the Garrison, which will be a personal base of operations for players to explore and expand throughout the expansion.

The level cap has come quite a way from the level 60 cap of vanilla WoW. And reaching the new level 100 from level 1 can be quite a daunting task, so Blizzard has added the option to instantly boost one character to level 90. The expansion will also add questing improvements designed to encourage exploration. This is presumably done to make the quests less linear. Another element to the expansion will be fully revamped player character models and animations for many of the older races, so that the vanilla races such as humans and orcs will be on par visually with the newer races from previous expansions.

BlizzCon attendees are currently able to play the expansion on the show floor, though there’s no official word on when the expansion will be released. But BlizzCon will continue through tomorrow, so there will surely be plenty of new announcements regarding Blizzard’s future projects.

After months of testing, Blizzard has finally announced a release date for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. The MMORPG’s next expansion will be available to purchase in stores and through WorldofWarcraft.com on September 25. In addition to a standard edition priced at $39.99, two special editions of Mists of Pandaria will also be available.

If you plan to download Mists of Pandaria, you’ll have the option of buying the Digital Deluxe Edition for $59.99, which will include the following in-game goodies:

• World of Warcraft In-Game Mount: Take to the skies of Azeroth astride the mystical Imperial Quilen flying mount.
• World of Warcraft In-Game Pet: Journey across Pandaria with the Lucky Quilen Cub at your side.
• StarCraft II Battle.net Portraits: Bring the Horde and Alliance rivalry to the far reaches of the Koprulu sector with exclusive Infested Orc and Night Elf Templar Battle.net portraits.
• Diablo III Banner Sigil and Accent: Display your status as a hero of Pandaria with the iconic markings of World of Warcraft’s newest playable race, the pandaren.

But if you’re looking to score a physical disc and a box full of swag, you’ll want to look for the Collector’s Edition. The Collector’s Edition, which will retail for $79.99, will include all the in-game items from the Digital Deluxe Edition as well as a few extras that’ll make you say wow:

• Behind-the-Scenes DVD and Blu-Ray: Learn about the creation of Pandaria with this two-disc set featuring over an hour of commentary, insider interviews, and developer roundtables.
• Collector’s Edition Soundtrack CD: Experience 20 orchestral pieces from Mists of Pandaria.
• The Art of Mists of Pandaria Book: Explore this 208-page hardcover tome featuring never-before-seen pieces from the expansion, from early concepts to final 3D renderings.
• Chen Stormstout Mouse Pad: Equip your desk with this special-edition mouse pad featuring the legendary pandaren brewmaster.

During Activision’s latest quarterly financial report, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime revealed that World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is on track for a 2012 release. The expansion was previously given a “when it’s done” release window by the company.

After talking a bit about the expansion’s beta test and the steady subscriber numbers of WoW, Morhaime casually mentioned that Mists of Pandaria will be out by the end of the year:

At the end of Q1, global subscribership for World of Warcraft remained at 10.2 million. Maintaining our subscriber levels puts us in a great position as we drive toward the launch of Mists of Pandaria later this year. We opened the beta in late March and have rapidly expanded testing through a good portion of our community, including the 1.2 million players who signed up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass.

Two Blizzard games in one year? That’s madness! But in case you were wondering, Morhaime didn’t have anything to say about StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm other than that the development team is still working on it.