Korean gaming site Inven (It's in Korean, obviously.) got their hands on World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion Warlords of Draenor and posted a few gaming videos to their YouTube channel a couple days ago. There's been no Blizzard response about these videos and it's unclear if they're to be taken down or if they're allowed to post them, but I'll do my best to cover them just in case.
The video above shows off some character creation, new models already featured in the character creation menu including the recently released female Orcs. The video is mainly comprised of about 5 minutes of questing in the new starting zone on Draenor: Shadowmoon Jungle. It's like Shadowmoon Valley if it looked like Terokkar Forest. The person playing is playing as a Gnome Rogue and has absolutely no idea what they're doing from the looks of things. Current Warcraft players will notice that the damage being done and received is positively tiny in the videos because in the 6.0 Blizzard is implementing a "stat squish" that brings the exponentially increasing stat and damage/healing numbers down to a level that is about equivalent to early Wrath of the Lich King damage at level 90.
Next up we've got someone playing an Orc Warlock showing off that gorgeous new model and following Thrall into what seems to be Forstfire Gorge, a new zone in Draenor that wasn't featured in the landmass that ended up being Outland. It's snowy and full of Orcs, as you'd expect. This video doesn't feature much combat until the end luckily as the Warlock didn't even put a fifth of his abilities on his bars, but now I'm just being jealous. The majority of the video is spent wandering around a big Orcish village named Wor'gol. Pretty uneventful but cool to get a peek nonetheless.
Finally we've got a video that opens up with a guy logging into his Orc Warrior and exploring the Timeless Isle of all places. For those of you who haven't played WoW in a while, the Timeless Isle is a level 90 zone added in patch 5.4 that was essentially made to try out some non daily quest alternatives to keeping people coming back. Skip to 3:51 if you've seen it already. At about 4 minutes in he switches to a female Dwarf Warrior in Shadowmoon Jungle and wanders around showing off some spots off the beaten path. There's no commentary on any of these so it's hard to tell exactly what the players are trying to do half the time. There's a bit of combat and a few good looks at the hilariously underfinished map with MS Paint scrawlings all over it and Draenor showing up as a giant blue cube on the Universe map.
So that's our first non-Blizzard sanctioned look at Warlords of Draenor. When asked about the beta Ian Hazzikostas at Blizzard replied with "SoonTM" so that means we'll probably be able to get some coverage either next week, or sometime before the apocalypse.
A gentleman over at http://www.mamytwink.com (I swear it's not a gay porn site.) also got to play a few hours himself and rather than post gameplay videos, gave a bullet point list of things that he thought would be interesting for players.
Leveling and Other Numbers
• I played a gnome warrior in the Shadowmoon Valley, the Alliance starting zone. After about 5 hours of /played and 80 quests I reached the end of the zone and Level 92.
• At level 91, I had 63k health as a Tank.
• Monsters had around 100k health.
• I was dealing around 1k to 5k damage on normal hits. Up to 10k critical damage for some abilities (Shield Slam).
• It takes 597k XP to go from level 90 to level 91 and 640k xp to go from level 91 to 92.
• Quests rewards were between 10k and 15k xp. Up to 20k for the difficult ones.
• A new quest type is available: the "Bonus Objectives". When you walk around a zone, new objectives might appear randomly in your quest list. Completing the objectives will reward you with extra experience, leaving the area will drop the quest.
Shadowmoon Valley
• Shadowmoon Valley is composed of lush green plains lit by the moonlight. It has a very peaceful feeling. The glades and forests are amazing and very colorful. You will find Naarus, Draeneis cities, and Iron Horde strongholds in the zone.
• The Alliance starting zone seems pretty much finished. Lots of details, impressive vegetation, and a lot of different monsters.
• I found a lot of monsters from The Burning Crusade that have been updated: Talbuks, Nether rays, Turtles, Larvas, Boars, Sporebats, Wolves, Bees. The new Talbuks and Sporebats models are EPIC.
• Ner'zhul is the principal antagonist of the zone.
• The zone ends with a scenario that I couldn't test because it wasn't available. It was called "Grommar's Purge" (Note: roughly translated)
• I found the zone really well made. The vast plains and colorful glades immerse you entirely in the game. The scenery is new and doesn't give you a feeling of deja vu (except for some monsters, but it's not really shocking).
There's no release date on Warlords of Draenor yet, but based on the fact that they just started a new Arena Season on the live servers it'll probably be at least 4 months from now. I'd put my money on a July/August release.
