World of Warcraft: v8.2 Rise of Azshara, big review, trailer and stream dedicated to the update included

On April 11th Jeremy Feasel, the World of Warcraft’s senior game designer, represented in details the upcoming 8.2 Rise of Azshara content. The RoA update will go live on the WoW PTR next week, but hasn’t been presented before that stream, so fans were excited since it’s the first real appear of 8.2 for now. The majority of them is hoping for new awesome features and content to the game. Here’s all the information Feasel has told.

So, what is coming in World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth v8.2 – Rise of Azshara?

Story

Once Rise of Azshara goes live, it will provide players a bit of a break from the recent “red vs blue” events, like those where both sides are uniting against a common enemy. Of course they’re not going to become besties till the end of times, but each side will realize they need something from the other team. Mostly, this will be a long-desired pause.

The plot starts when some of Sylvanas’s mightiest Horde allies are going to sea in some of the Horde’s ships. The Alliance finds out about this event and starts to chase them in force. Then Azshara does something no one’s expecting: splits the sea and both of the team find themselves on the sea floor with ships all broken.

Well, actually, according to Feasel, most of them are dead or dying due to that fall, so those who have survived are floating in the watery ruins of Zin-ashari, once the crown jewel of Night Elven culture before the Sundering and now home to the former ruler, Queen Azshara, and her Highborne followers, also known as the Naga.

What’s interesting, Blizzard wants to try something new in this update and won’t be time gating the content and plot in Rise of Azshara. Providing the whole story at once, not just releasing it partly every week or two, to allow players to fully explore Nazjatar and Mechagon island right away.

Combat Ally System

The combined force of Horde and Alliance needs to find a way to beat Azshara and her Naga allies with the fight finishing in an attack on the Eternal Palace. To find this way, considering that majority of the troops are dead or injured; they will need to convince the local inhabitants to help. So this is where reinforcement will join. Combat Allies help each side build up forces in Nazjatar. Different from how it is in Warlords of Draenor, these new BfA companions will level up playing content and gain new abilities during this, and, more than that, unlock cosmetic abilities. There are 30 levels for the each team to gain.

World / Daily missions

World / Daily missions are strongly themed around Azshara, Naga, and the general Nazjatar area. Naga characters will appear at random across the location; they won’t come alone, but will bring the additional force. There will be new missions, unlocking variety of world quests as Feasel said that the team wanted to “shake up” the way that world quests declare themselves to “keep things fresh”.

While working work within Nazjatar, players will build up their faction’s center and bring in the forces required to take the defeat Azshara. They also will go down deep into the defenses and armory of the Naga to seek for tactical dominance.

Eternal Palace of Azshara

The raid worthy for this content level is the raid with 8 bosses, Azshara’s Eternal Palace. There’s even an underwater one! Feasel mentioned that it gives a sense of diving into the deepest frightening forms of the location reaching its culmination in a ultimate battle with the Queen that “could have ramifications for the entire planet of Azeroth”.

Usually, Blizzard has held off opening each raid tier for several weeks to let players to receive higher level gear that goes with a new patch, but this time, they will release the raid week later. Can’t wait to see how it will influence on the world first race, if it will at all.

Also, Feasel said that when Azshara’s Eternal Palace is finished, we will be aware of who the final boss of this update is. Can it be the Old God N’Zoth?

Mechagon Island

There’s a small town named Rustbolt populated with junker gnomes that are fighting King Mechagon who is locked away in his palace grounds building a device which brings end of the world. At his disposal are heavily mechanized gnomes and their purpose is to turn everyone into bots. Players should help to reconstruct that city and a part of the island. Everything on the island is to construct defenses and weapons against King Mechagon by building and tinkering and using collected resources.

The local defense called Pascal, this is a robot and players should find all his parts to reconstruct Pascal, so he can perform its purpose. As he’s getting stronger, he will offer new ways of defensing “and more”.

Every day players will pay a visit to find a new daily quest and a number of tasks to complete. This is how you build reputation and gain epic rewards in this game. Speaking of bonuses, there are also a Timeless Isle-like rare spawn system and the drop tables contain “awesome things”.

Operation Mechagon is an 8 boss dungeon resembling in scope to Return to Karazhan that finally culminates in a fight with King Mechagon. You also can use that location to get to the palace area going through the trash compactor, but of course that won’t be an easy way. The city is armed against the player. There’s a reward too: new loot and drops and all the crazy mechagnome activities you can imagine. Players can get some knick-knacks there that can be modernized.

Mount Equipment Slots

All mounts will get the profit of a new system featuring mount equipment slots. Players will put an item on their character that will let every mount in a player’s stock to function newly including no-daze, water walking or lower fall damage.

The change happened because too many players had been using the Water Strider mount to move throughout BfA and before. It allowed them to be able to travel across water, but, as Feasel said, “not everyone wants to ride a bug all the time”. Hence the new system. It’s strange, but developers have decided to strip the Water Strider, or “walking on water”, of its ability to walk on water. No sense here.

Let’s have a look on other new features coming in 8.2:

• New Islands – Crestfall, Snowblossom Village
• New PvP arena called the Robodrome Arena
• New missions/mechanics
• Revamped Brewfest
• War Mode new content
• New Heart of Azeroth mechanics 
• Tauren and Gnome Heritage Armor quests
• Ashran makes a return as an Epic Battleground
• Heroic Battle for Stromgarde
• Season 3 PvP
• Flying unlocked throughout BfA content including Mechagon and Nazjatar
• New mounts and pets including the Giant Wheel and Snapdragon and the mechanical gnomebot pet with interchangeable heads

Check out the stream below: