Warlords of Draenor

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor is the fifth expansion pack for the World of Warcraft video game, announced on November 8, 2013, and released on November 13, 2014. The main innovations include increasing the maximum level to 100, as well as the ability to build your own controlled fortresses - garrisons.

The plot of the add-on develops directly after the events that occurred in the add-on Mists of Pandaria, around the world of Draenor, the home planet of the orcs even before its destruction and the emergence of Outland. The add-on features such legendary characters from the world of Warcraft as Grommash Hellscream, Gul'dan, Ner'zhul and others.

During the course of Mists of Pandaria, Garrosh Hellscream was overthrown by the combined efforts of the Alliance and Horde and imprisoned in a Pandarian prison. Thus, he had to answer for all the atrocities caused to his people. However, before the trial, Garrosh manages to escape with the help of Kairozdormu, who freed him from captivity and transported him to the Draenor of the past from an alternative reality. Garrosh enters Draenor before the rise of the Old Horde and with his actions changes the course of history. 35 years before the Siege of Stormwind, Grommash Hellscream refuses to accept the blood of Mannoroth, and Garrosh launches an attack on the forces of the Burning Legion. The orcs unite into the Iron Horde, led by Grommash Hellscream, who does not know who Garrosh really is, and, using the skills of Garrosh, who told them about the modern technologies of Azeroth, they begin the conquest of Draenor and rebuild the Dark Portal to invade Azeroth.

Innovations

New locations of the orcs' home planet - Draenor (Nagrand, Talador, Spiers of Arak, Frostfire Ridge, Gorgrond, Tanaan Jungle, Shadowmoon Valley, Ashran).

Garrison is an opportunity to build your own fortress on Draenor, which can then be expanded and modified. The garrison was inspired by the farm in Mists of Pandaria. The garrison has its own garden, a mine, a lake, a system of followers, something like a personal small army, as well as an area for pet battles.

New character models (at the start, the races of the classic World of Warcraft and the race of The Burning Crusade add-on, the draenei, were updated, and later the blood elves update was released).

The maximum character level has been increased to 100.

Ability to instantly level up to 90.

New dungeons: Bloodmaul Slag Mines, Grimroads Depot, Auchindoun, Skypath, Shadowmoon Necropolis, Iron Docks, Everbloom. Reworked classic dungeons: Upper Blackrock Mountain, Blackfathom Deeps, Razorfen Labyrinths, Razorfen Mounds.

With ranked matches in the arena, but with the release of the Cataclysm expansion, they were removed from the game. Warlords of Draenor brings skirmishes back into the game with unranked 2v2 and 3v3 arena matches that can be played with a group of friends or by yourself. For winning such matches, players receive honor points and a random bonus - gold, additional honor points, or level 600 PvP equipment.

Viewer invitation system. A kind of “observation mode”. It will allow match organizers to invite two teams to participate in a spectacular PvP battle - maneuvers. After the match starts, all members of the organizer's group will be able to watch how the opposing teams deal with each other.

Development

Alpha testing for Warlords of Draenor began in April 2014. The add-on reached the beta stage in June 2014.

Updated character models with more polygons and more detailed textures were introduced into the game, with the goal of bringing the quality of the early playable races to the level of the pandaren from Mists of Pandaria, as well as the worgen and goblins from Cataclysm, while maintaining their spirit and recognition

Optimization issues also took a significant place - according to the developers, the new models will not lead to a serious drop in performance during massive battles. The format of in-game archives has been changed from the classic MPQ (until recently used in most Blizzard games) to the more advanced CASC (allowing for more efficient data storage and installation of automatic updates).

Sales

Warlords of Draenor sold 3.3 million copies in the first 24 hours, and the game's subscryptions increased from 7.4 million to over 10 million. Subsequently, the number of subscribers dropped rapidly to 7.1 million by March 2015[14], and in the second quarter of 2015 the number of subscribers fell by another 1.5 million to 5.6 million.

However, in the first days after the update was released, players encountered problems logging into the game, as well as problems logging into their garrisons. Later, company employees apologized for the inconvenience and gave all players who were online in the first days of the expansion several days of play