This year marks the 10th anniversary of the most popular and wildly successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game in history -- World of Warcraft. It just so happens to be the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Warcraft franchise as well, a series that originally started as a series of strategy games. To celebrate, developer Blizzard is releasing a brand new expansion for the game that will return players to the events and characters at the very heart of the Warcraft fiction. Oh, and they made a kick-ass cinematic too.
Blizzard debuted the anxiously anticipated opening cinematic (which you can watch below) and a Nov. 11 release date for the Warlords of Draenor expansion during a live event. While they were at it, the company also spilled more juicy details on the new game features and adventures that await players in a few short months.
Warlords of Draenor will bring players back in time to forge a new history for the Warcraft universe. The new cinematic sets the stage, as the former Horde Warchief and now criminal Garrosh Hellscream travels in time to an age where orcs were still conquerers. His goal -- to prevent the orcs from ever becoming the slaves of the evil Burning Legion, unite the warlords of Draenor and conquer all of Azeroth for himself. It will be up to WoW's millions of players to stop that from happening as they launch an offensive into the heart of Draenor to bring down the warlords and their machines of war.
In addition to a whole new world for players to explore, new loot to acquire and the ability to level all the way to level 100, players for the first time will have their own customizable home bases, called Garrisons. Garrisons look to draw inspiration from early Warcraft strategy titles, as choosing what to build in your garrison and how to upgrade certain buildings will have an effect on your adventures through the realm of Draenor.
A new open-world player vs. player zone will also be making its way to the game. Blizzard promises massive battles between the game's two factions of the Horde and the Alliance, as each team struggles for supremacy in a never-ending tug of war battle.
Players who pre-order the new expansion can have a character new or old instantly boosted to level 90, fully ready explore the new game content instead of starting from scratch and being forced to play for hours upon hours before being able to travel to Draenor.
World of Warcraft subscription numbers have been dropping steadily over the past several years, but with each new expansion comes a big boost in players. The real question is whether or not those players will continue to pay $15 a month in the six months after the expansion's release. But by returning to many of the characters and events that hooked so many Warcraft players all those years ago, Blizzard's chances are looking good.
