Opening Ceremony - Main Stage

Heroes of the Storm announced! Blizzards moba a thingy.



Will have its own panel.

Hearthstone going into open beta next month!
Versions of golden hero cards. Earned in ranked play mode. You unlock each class.
More at Hearthstone panel.
Tablet version preferred in company. iPhone version ANF Android version also announced!
To be out second half next year.

Warcraft movie. Duncan Jones(director) at Blizzcon. They have some big talent working on the movie.
WoW's 9th birthday.
Retrospective of iconic events.
Metzen is out... next expansion time!
What keeps it fresh? Thinking about the early days.
Talking about the original trilogy...
Realize that there are many newer WoW players that have not experienced those games.
Talking about Dark Portal opening.
Initial orcs almost took over... except for the original races of Azeroth.
Talking about the foundation of the Alliance. Captain America faction.
Alliance are the remaining superpower as of right now.
What if those dark days could come again?
Metzen believes it will be the Alliance's finest hour.
Horde has been beaten recently. Living with the disappointment of Thrall's choices.
With Vol'jin as warchief, chance for a new start.
"Honor to be served, asses to be kicked."

Warlords of Draenor!



Past and present collide.
Looks super gorgeous.
Personally I am excite!
Draenor is the new world, new character models, 100 level cap, immediate boost to 90?
Will have its own panel.

Warlords of Draenor Panel - Main Stage

"One of the most kickass expansion sets in a long time." - Metzen

How did this happen?

"After the events of Siege of Orgrimmar, Garrosh was taken away in chains."

He escapes before he can be put to trial. And he has made a new ally... one that can bend time. He wants to go back. World didn't work out how he wanted it... and he hates the Horde now. He has gone back in time... to redeem the Orcish ideal in his own eyes. Tales of the first orcs that founded the Horde. His goal is to stop the moment where the orcs drink the blood of Mannoroth. And he desires to build an Iron Horde... while taking some current technology back. Its mission the same, without blood corruption. Aligned to current time... the portal is meant to conquer current Azeroth.

The world is an unbroken Outland, Old Draenor. Oceans, actual landscapes and back in time. Garrosh is not the boss of the expansion this time. He's not "the guy" as it were. The "guy" is probably the time traveling guy. My own speculation.

How this expansion escalates is definitely going to spill over into the next one. They will get to it all.

Tom Chilton is talking now.

"Brand new world, not the Outlands you know."

Homeworld of the Orcs, Draenei homeland.

Goal - Defeat the Iron Horde. Some clans STILL may not join, regardless of blood being consumed or not.

Map is similar to Outland, but completely different. Nagrand is the only one remotely familiar, but even it is different.

Old City that turned to BT is the Alliance's city.

Frostfire Ridge - Horde's Home is the Bladespire Citadel... WITH THE FROSTWOLVES. (Personal AHHHH BEST CLAN.)

Spires of Arak - Arrakoa(bird people) homeland.

There was an Ogre empire. The other races in Draenor were more roaming and not as cemented.

Feralon(?) is the old Netherlands. Will not be there on launch.

Durotan will be in Frostfire Ridge. He is the father of Thrall. Thrall gets to meet his parents for the first time. (Yay Draka!) Thrall's concern is to make sure the Frostwolves do not join the Iron Horde. Shadowmoon has Ner'zhul. "The shaman to the shaman." Shattered Hand has Kargath Bladefist. Orcs from a ton of clans that were enslaved by Ogres. Kargath unites the orc slaves and makes this clan. Blackrock Clan led by Blackhand. They're already in the Iron Horde pretty much. Warsong Clan - Grommash Hellscream. Dude is gonna play a major part in the story. Garrosh has to face him again. Mongrel type clan, many wolves, etc. Bleeding Hollow clan - Kilrogg Deadeye - Tanan Jungle. They're a darker tribal kind of clan. When there is a new chief, they take out their own eye in order to see the future of how they should lead.

New race in the land "Saberon"(?). Think... Rei from BOF3.

Expansion introductory experience:
Starts with a suicide mission to go into the red Dark Portal and at least grab a foothold.
Frostfire Ridge is where the Horde goes - active volcanoes under basically tundra. Important to make sure the Frostwolves won't join the Iron Horde.

Ogres have Bladefist Fortress, Horde has to help take it over. Unique rock structures throughout the whole zone. Was originally a purple desert. "Why are the Frostwolves in a purple desert?" So it was changed.

Alliance will go to Shadowmoon Valley. Nighttime all the time there(sounds awesome). Karabor, holy Draenei Temple- the Alliance need to save Karabor to turn it into the Alliance capital in old Draenor.

Shadowmoon Orc clan is also there, and Ner'zhul wants to join Iron Horde. Needs to be prevented.
Land is like... Ashenvale and the Draenei Azeroth areas had a baby.

Gorgrond. Giant steam vents all over. Very desert-like, a storm that is always occurring. Loads of ground breakage with steam vents for the Blackrock Foundry(a raid in the expac).

Talador - Home of the Draenei people. First time to see Draenei areas at the height of their existence. Auchindoun is completely there, their holy temple. It is where they go when they die. It is a dungeon in the expansion. Very much like Draenei zones on Azeroth.

New Player models.
Needed to keep the soul of the original characters.
Textures, polygons, effects, updated. And facial detail! Fully-rigged. Also updated animations.
They look absolutely excellent, first comparison is a male dwarf... orc and... uh... gnome. Basically they are now on par with the Pandaren in terms of quality.

Feature Summary:
Garrisons. You can build your own base on Draenor. World of Warcraft version of housing. Full-on RTS-style more base. You get followers to send them on missions, and you can customize your base. Basically your own mini town plots, Mage Towers, etc. You can pick whichever zone on Draenor to build a Garrison. Offline Progression- if you send 10 followers out, a week later they might have some stuff for you. Quests can take a couple of real-world hours. Instanced to you and visible to you in the world.

Rewards from Garrisons:
Epic gear
Your own piece of land
Unique building benefits
Limited access to professions you may not have

Garrisons can be expanded in 3 tiers. Each expansion means more plots and more bonuses. You will also be able to move your Garrison between zones if you feel like it. You interact with your followers and buildings to send them on missions and whatnot. You can also give them names. There are also monuments and trophies. Monuments are tied to achievements, maybe like an Explorer achievement globe. Trophies can be mounted in town halls, etc in Garrisons. Things like Chimera heads and monster heads.

Unique bonuses to buildings, and upgrades. These also upgrade the ability of your followers. Infirmary can recover followers much more quickly. It starts as a tent, and the bonus gets bigger as it grows.
When the third upgrade is hit, the buildings get basically a talent tree. These vary. Infirmary may res you out in the world once per day, for example. You get to pick where you want the buildings.

The Inn is shown, rank 2. It is where you can get new followers. A new unique follower each day. There is a cooking NPC in the building as well. Specializations allow you to pick which type of follower you need- tank healer or DPS. The upgrades absolutely are reminiscent of the RTS games.

There is a WIP UI. It looks pretty neat. Dance studio was listed as one of the town plot options. o_O
Separate art for Alliance and Horde Garrisons.

You can bribe followers, earn them via Faction, etc. They increase ilvl after being maxed out. They also have abilities and traits. "You can name your guys Johnny McCool."

Fun one in the UI "Oprah Windflurry".

Kind of a mini-game to assign the proper followers to missions.

Boost to 90:

"WoW is a game that is better with friends." - Ghostcrawler

It has been a problem to get friends who have taken breaks or maybe not played in. It is a huge barrier.

As soon as Warlords of Draenor is out, you get to boost a character to level 90. As soon as you add this key. Bags, quest log, and whatnot will be cleaned, and you can jump in and just start having fun.

Inventory update:
Collections as a concept-
Heirlooms are now in the UI account-wide
Toys, Tabards, etc.
"It's really account-wide." - Ghostcrawler

Toys and Mounts have the same as well. There is a "summon favorite mount" button now.

Sortable bags!

Bag example has gold icons on vendor trash to get rid of. Quest items are no longer in the bags at all!

And you can craft DIRECTLY from your bank. (This doesn't seem exciting but holy crap yes!)

Stack sizes increased to 100 on many types of items (more than likely ores, herbs, etc.)

Adventure Guide:
Suggestions on what to do. Path to gear upgrades.

What's appropriate to your level, customized to your character individually. Even personalized to professions, recommending a mount to craft.

Level 100 talents. Early, but feedback is appreciated at the event. Talent tooltips are now sorted by spec to make it less overcrowded.

Dungeons and Raids:

7 new dungeons at launch. 4 are available as you level, 3 available at max levels.
Classic heroic: UBRS(Upper Blackrock Spire)

Felt like a great time to revisit UBRS considering content.

Normal versions of the max level dungeons this time around to help gear players up more easily.

Bloodmaul Slag Mines - Frostfire Ridge

4-boss dungeon with a non-linear layout
Ogre-slavers in a volcano
Liberate Frostwolves/Draenei, stage a revolt and take down the taskmaster

Blackrock Foundry
Auchindoun
Arrakoa Spires
Shadowmoon Burial Grounds
Iron Barracks

Raids:

2 new raids:
Highmaul - Ogre raid in Nagrand. 6-boss raid.
Blackrock Foundry - War Machine of the Iron Horde. 10-boss raid to stop the Blackrocks.

Return of the World Bosses.

Raid Philosophy:

Flex raids have been a major success. Fixes the problem of mismatched raid numbers to content to not leave people out or not feel guilty not being able to make a raid or having to come late or leave.

Lots of issues with 10 vs 25 raiding. Trying to balance raid rewards and difficulty. Flex is going forward, and the scaling tech is going to be upgraded. Normal mode raids now work as flex with say 10, 24, 19... whatever is available and on hand.

Raid finder will still be fixed sizes. HOWEVER, it now scales to what you have so people dropping is not a problem anymore.

Heroic modes will still be like it is. However, 20-man raids are going to be the new standard for the highest mode of raiding. Talking about requiring more class diversity in raiding.

6.0

LFR
Normal Mode(replaces Flex)
Heroic 10-25
MYTHIC (20-man only)

PVP:
World PVP Zone
UI Improvements
Battleground Rewards Changes
Concept: Trial of the Gladiator

Ashran island near the Dark Portal. Both Horde and Alliance want it. Faction bases and hotspots.
PVP Sandbox that is persistent. Not like Wintergrasp with a timed Battleground. Objectives are PVP-oriented, much more like the original Alterac Valley. Back when AVs lasted for a day or more. This zone is bringing that feeling back of persistent war. This will use cross-realm technology because some realms definitely do not have good Horde to Alliance ratios. Paired up with other realms that have the opposite problem of your realm(High Horde low Alliance pop and vice versa paired up). If balance changes different realms can be paired up.

-Build and command siege vehicles, may take days to build certain ones via gathering materials
-You can get some of the Iron Horde commandeered vehicles

UI Improvements for PVP
-Objective tracker
-Capture status directly in-game on the default UI Visual sort of cooldown bar for capture
-Battleground Score: To give people a clearer idea of how they've done.(Another hilarious name, UMadBrew)
Score factors into everything being done in a Battleground. Deaths, kills, healing, damage, etc. Could play into rewards.

Rewards:
Random Battleground Rewards. PVP is "Too Deterministic". Grinding honor to get legs and armor, etc.
Bonus random rewards help this via randomly winning gear.... honor, BoE items(could make some money doing PvP), consumables, etc.
Weekly quest to upgrade an item. If you win a certain battleground or arena you can upgrade an item.

Trial of the Gladiator:
-Arena Ladder
-Certain periods of time during the week are focused to get more people into the arena
-Concentrating activity into a shorter period of time to help prevent exploiting
-Tournament rules -Anyone can hop in without grinding on a seasons by season basis. You just get to pick what you want to use, and hop right in.
-Determines Prestige rewards - Gladiator title and mount. You can earn Conquest and Honor as well to take to World PvP and Battlegrounds

Hearthstone - Hall D:

Hearthstone Fireside Chat

Focused 15-man team as opposed to other projects

Team has always loved CCGs, Blizzard as a whole.

Hearthstone Goals:
-Game for Everyone - To help get people who may not be into "those" sorts of games... to remove the huge barriers and explanations in other TCG/CCGs.
-Keep it Deep - So the game remains fresh.
-Make it Physical - To keep the feeling of opening a booster pack. Keeping it alive in a digital space where the animations smash into each other, the explosive opening of boosters, etc.
-Great Flavor - World of Warcraft has enough rich characters and lore, while retaining Hearthstone flavor. Also keeping the epic and a bit of the silly side. They wanted the sort of charm from Popcap games and imbuing this into Hearthstone.
-Play Fast - Mana Crystals being a base resource model to enable super quick play. Cutting out a less-interesting mana resource decision. The climax of games comes much more quickly.
-Win or Lose - Still Fun - If the game plays fast, you don't mind losing as much. Little victories make the game pop, like a minion advantage with your enemy, you destroy all of their minions, get yours out and you get a high.

Physical prototype is when they decided to just keep info off of the actual cards on the board by default. Looked much better.

Instants almost happened known as "Combat Tricks". Without Combat Tricks the game's flow was much better.

The Tavern theme just really stuck and made it to the final version.

Some things that were cut - A chicken that does 1 damage anytime it is moused over, a card to flip the board, etc. Hilarious though.

The Arena:
Came from a mode in traditional card games people love called Draft. (You know this.) It takes a few hours normally to draft. Originally they were gonna actual do asynchronous drafting, but they felt it could be done better. Decided to make it class specific from a set of 3 cards 30 times. The experience of choosing itself in this limited environment is much more exciting and fun, even if it isn't draft.

How Cards Are Made:
-Card has to be easy to understand. Instantly knowing what a new card means. Both for obtaining new cards and for opponents playing cards you may not have seen before.

-Whirlwind is an example. People originally though it did not damage their own minions so it was adjusted. It originally dealt more damage dependent on weapon and health, but it was confusing.

-Cards have to have depth. Synergy with various other cards in deck despite simplicity. Playing Whirlwind with Acolyte of Pain in order to draw a card out of it. Combine this with Frothing Berserker that gains attack whenever a minion is attacked for a great combo.

-Cards have to be filled with "Warcrafty Goodness"
Example being Ysera with the older dragon world bosses and the dream cards. The animation on Ysera when this card is drawn in order to connect it with WoW.

-Cards have to Support the Class
Mage cards for example, knowing what is going on because of WoW. Example, Fireball card. Also interesting to Hearthstone, 4 mana for 6 damage is very good. Defias Ringleader card for Rogues- Combo mechanic. Though Defias is easily recognizable to WoW players. Rogues have burst play in both Hearthstone and WoW, that kind of synergy.

-Enabling Player Stories
"You won't believe what just happened in this game." Even happens in-office.
Millhouse Manastorm(Opponent spells cost 0 mana) story. Noxious played a coin on turn 1 and played Millhouse Manastorm. Opponent played Thoughtsteal to get cards from his deck. Then played a Mind Vision to copy a card from Noxious' hand. And he copied Mindgames, and could play it immediately. He got Ragnaros immediately.

-Cards have to be balanced
They can affect the game in unexpected ways. Acolyte of Pain was originally a 2/4, and it actually affected the game pretty heavily, made more expensive cards more worthless. Silence was nerfed a bit, Acolyte of Pain was also nerfed, just to show how it affects the whole game.

-How much will it cost me to be a top player?
44% of 3-Star Master players have spent no money at all in Hearthstone, which is good since they do not want pay to win.
Number of Hearthstone beta invites so far - Over 1 Million
Going First, Going Second (Paladin 54%(1st), 46%(2nd) at copper and silver level play
Paladin has highest first turn advantage pretty much in the game.

-Class Balance
Changes on a daily basis and they don't know which one is which yet.

Upcoming Patches:

Changing some cards!

Mind Control is changing 10 mana cost
Starving Buzzard is changing to a 2/1
Unleash the Hounds is changing, still deciding

Updating Ranked Play - You can go up and down ranks as you play. If you want a more hardcore experience.

Legend Rank - Highest, and you can't fall out of it.

Ranked play card backs - You get exclusive card backs every season.

golden heroes - You have to win 500 games with that class

New Keys in arena, cap from 9 to 12. Molten, Frostbourne, and Lightforge keys.

If you get disconnected for some reason, they want you to get back in.

Making new entrances for Legendary Minions! Pretty cool.

The Future:
Android and iPhone versions, still pretty early - Second half of 2014
Windows 8 Touch version

Expansions:
Three different types of players:

Hardcore - Additional content changing metagame, changing up decks, etc.

Casual - Maybe you have less time to play, cards in the expert set will provide new content for a while.

Thrifty Player - I don't wanna buy a huge amount of cards as things go forward

Adventures! A way to put new cards in

Focused single-player PvE experience playing against a boss or series of bosses where you can change your deck for these challenges. You earn cards associated with this adventure. And these will change the metagame but not cards with crazy new mechanics.

Showing off the Blizzcon swag Elite Tauren Chieftain card.

Gonna stop here cause this was what I was interested in.