BlizzCon 2015 Hype and Predictions

Current Hype Level: 10/10

I’m pretty excited for BlizzCon (even though I’m not going in person), especially with the little movie teaser from yesterday. The footage looked amazing if you ask me. We’ve seen so little of it and already I can pick out many little details they got right. The guns look like Warcraft guns. The orcs look like Warcraft orcs. Stormwind looks incredible. They even have freakin’ Harvest Golems (look in the field above). Are you kidding me?

I’m hoping in the final movie we see some genuine Hunter action as these guys with the big pistols don’t really look like Hunters. The orc with his wolf buddy sure does, though.

Here’s the teaser again for good measure.

Can’t wait for the full trailer this Friday. I hope to get out to BlizzCon one of these years, but as someone who rarely travels and also lives outside the USA, it’s kind of a big (and expensive) deal. The one benefit to not going in person is I get to enjoy BlizzCon without pants.

If you’re not going in person, I recommend checking out the Wowhead party live stream that’s happening on Thursday night for a little bit of pre-BlizzCon fun. If you ARE going in person, be sure to show up to the annual Hunter class meetup at the Hilton! During the convention, my co-writers over at Blizzard Watch will be covering all things at the event (not just WoW stuff, but the other games too).

My BlizzCon 2015 predictions

Wall of text incoming.

• Some sort of tie-in between the Warcraft movie and WoW/Hearthstone. I can see a mount, pet, or some small in-game event to celebrate its release week.
• I also expect some kind of promo from Blizzard to capitalize on all the new folks who are being introduced to the Warcraft universe via the movie. They’re going to want to get them into the game. Perhaps via expanding how much of the game you can play for free? Not saying it’s going F2P, just saying they might restructure something.
• Legion release date IF it’s coming out in time for the movie. If we don’t get a date, I’m going to guess it’s coming out sometime after the movie (which is June 10, 2016).
• Alpha starts in December, beta late January or early February
• A meaty pre-expansion event, perhaps longer than usual to help tide us over for the long wait. I expect a dungeon or at least a partial dungeon for the event.
• Server transfers, race changes, etc. purchasable with WoW tokens. It’s expensive to move an army of alts, but at least with gold you’re not paying out-of-pocket.
• Hunter: Some previously removed abilities make a comeback. Eyes of the Beast for Beast Mastery only being one of them!
• Hunter: Some abilities will get renamed (even if they keep the same functionality) to better fit the flavor of each spec. Arcane Shot doesn’t feel very Beast Mastery to me.
• Hunter: At least one of the specs will have a new resource or secondary resource on top of Focus.
• Hunter: Beast Mastery’s level 110 passive will allow them to have two pets out at the same time (yeah, I know I’m dreaming with this one).
• Hunter: Quivers.

• 1-2 new battlegrounds announced. Rather than retire old ones that some people might love, allow people to blacklist an additional 1-2 BGs on their queue.
• Timewalking is expanded to encompass raids.
• Rumored “Adventure Mode” is announced and turns out to be the biggest feature of the expansion.
• You know how everyone is always complaining about RNG? Here’s one for you: I think Blizzard is going to add even more random elements to loot acquisition. I’m not talking about just adding more Warforged type bonuses. Basically what I’m trying to say is the entire gear acquisition system will get some significant changes.
• Dungeons are made more lucrative and become a bigger focus. They will replace LFR as the stepping stone for raiding… LFR is removed. The recently nerfed Normal modes in HFC are a prelude to this. Normal raiding will require coordination but it will be doable by PUGs, just like Naxx10 or ICC10 back in the day. To help facilitate this, you can start in specific wings like flex mode in Siege of Orgrimmar.
• And with that, we actually start getting new dungeons with content patches again.
• Solo scenarios where you adventure with some of your class champions from your class hall. An optional daily activity you can do to eventually earn class cosmetics.
• Daily questing in general makes a comeback. In true Blizzard fashion, they will take it too far. People will complain, and the following expansion will have zero daily quests and the cycle repeats.
• Reforging returns!! Hey, why not?
• Remember the increased RNG I talked about above? More of it when it comes to sockets, warforged, etc. but there will be a way to add random bonuses to loot already acquired.
• Professions get overhauled and become a genuine path someone can take for character progression (not just financially).
• Transmog system is finally confirmed. Suddenly I have hundreds of empty bag slots.
• All gear going forward can be dyed. This does not apply to any pre-Legion gear. Essentially every piece of armor will have an element to it that can be dyed (like an accent, or the base color).
• Valor and Justice return (though maybe just Valor).
• I’m dead wrong about at least half of this stuff.

Mostly I’m excited because soon there will be some new Hunter stuff to talk about, and we can get the posts flowing a little more here.

One last thing I’m going to leave you with is this killer PvP video I saw yesterday. The first half of it is Hunter action, but the real cool part is how well it’s edited together. Enjoy.

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