Beta Keys for Warlords of Draenor

So great excitement this week when Blizzard declared that we were now moving into Beta for Warlords of Draenor!

If you didn’t get yours in your email – don’t despair – there is hope yet!

Beta Keys for Warlords of Draenor are being given away by Wowhead over at Wowhead.com.

I don’t know why I always assume that WoW players always know what’s happening in terms of the game development, but as it turns out they don’t always.

I was leading a guild flex last night – and mentioned to the group that Wowhead were giving away Beta Keys for Warlords of Draenor over the next few weeks, and more than one person asked me how they could enter, and then others even said that they didn’t even have Wowhead accounts.

So I thought I’d give my readers a quick run down on how to enter in case you didn’t already know.

Each week Wowhead are giving away keys to players who have verified their characters on Wowhead, and completed certain achievements. Now don’t despair, you don’t need to be the worlds greatest player with eleventy billion achievment points. This week, you only need to have completed the Siege of Orgrimmar on ANY level, LFR included!

How to enter the Wowhead giveaway

Go to Wowhead.com and create an account (if you haven’t already)
Add your character to your profile by going to this page
Verify your character (click the verify character button – once it’s pulled your details from Armory)
In order to verify that YOU are the owner of that character – Wowhead will ask you to unequip certain item slots. For me it was head, main-hand, and feet.
Log out of World of Warcraft (so that it prompts Armory to update) and click update – this may take a few minutes since lots of people are doing this right now. (Don’t forget to log back in and re-equip your gear – particularly if you are raiding later!)
Once your character profile is verified an ‘enter contest’ button appears – if you have completed Siege of Orgrimmar on any difficulty on this character (this is the achievement required until July 3rd) – just click it and boom – you’ve entered the contest to receive Beta Keys for Warlords of Draenor.
Note: you can enter the contest weekly – providing you have done the achievements required.

Breaking News: Faction Capitals No Longer at Karabor and Bladespire

In other news, Mumper announced that Blizzard were rethinking the Alliance and Horde faction capitals, and said that they would no longer be based in Karabor (Shadowmoon Valley for the Alliance) and Bladespire (Frostfire Ridge for the Horde), but rather on the outskirts of Ashran (the World PVP Zone) at faction specific bases.

@Vigilate_MW Nope, the faction hubs for Alliance and Horde will be on the outskirts of Ashran.

— Mumper (@mumper) June 27, 2014

The resulting outcry on the web, has been huge. This thread about Karabor and Bladespire no longer being our faction hubs for Warlords of Draenor on MMO-Champion will give you some idea of the community’s reaction.

Lore from Blizzard went on to explain their reasoning on the US WoW Forums.

I do think that a lot of people are getting too upset, too quickly about this, and I would recommend that people try to be a bit more patient with Blizzard, and try to see the bigger picture for what it may mean.

At first, I admit I was a little disappointed. They announced that the Alliance’s garrisons would be based in Shadowmoon Valley, meaning that it would be a quick trip from the capital to the garrison.

This made me really happy – as if our garrisons were based in Elwynn Forest, with Stormwind right there.

However, we don’t know yet exactly what will be available at our garrisons, and if alpha is anything to go by – it seems as though we have a portal to the capital and a flight point right there. So that is one concern allayed.

My other concern is that since our low pop server was connected to 4 other realms (the last of which was a horde heavy realm) personally, this now means that as an Alliance player – we are outnumbered by 22 to 1. Now Blizzard have implicitly stated that these faction hubs will not be PVP’able, I can’t help feeling, with no flying capability (until 6.1 or in fact ever) that it’s going to make life on my server, rather painful.

All I can suggest is that people put down their pitchforks and flaming torches, and adopt an approach of ‘wait and see’.

People are so quick to throw their hands up and declare that Blizzard are somehow cheating us (like toddlers who get upset because we won’t let them touch electrical sockets) – without waiting to see why, and of course those same players would never in a million years ever admit that this decision was for the best, a year from now when they can actually see why.

Screenshot courtesy of Wowhead.com

Wowhead have done a great post, with some stunning visuals on the as yet incomplete faction bases on the outskirts of Ashran, go and take a look – it’s not as bad as you think.

Also, regardless of the resulting subscriber outcry, Blizzard do have a great knack for getting EVERYBODY talking about WARLORDS of DRAENOR…nice move Blizzard, I see what you did there