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Great news everyone! We now have the power to undelete a character in the upcoming Pre-patch for World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor (better known as Patch 6.0.2). There will be limitations, so before you get too excited, look what the recent blog post by Blizzard has to say:
>Characters under level 10 and Death Knights at level 55 are not eligible to be undeleted.
>Characters between level 10 and level 29 will no longer recoverable after 90 days.
>Characters between level 30 and 49 will no longer recoverable after 120 days.
>All other characters level 50 and above are eligible to be undeleted at any time.
>Please keep in mind you will only be able to use the undelete option once every 30 days.
Undeleting a character restores all of its enchantments, gems, and items fully intact.
Blizzard also included their policy on what happens with a deleted characters name:
We’ll be holding deleted character names for a limited time, and the original creator can reclaim it for use on a new character during that time. If you create a new character with the same name as one of your deleted characters (let’s say Flugur), the new character must be renamed, transferred, or deleted to complete the restoration of the original Flugur.
To help you get prepared for the upcoming Warlords of Draenor Patch 6.0.2 release, we’ve uploaded the patch data to the background downloader. By downloading the patch in advance, you’ll be ready to get in-game and start playing as soon as the expansion goes live!
If you have issues during this process, you can find help to resolve them on the support site here.
You can adjust your download settings within the Battle.net desktop app by clicking on the Battle.net symbol and selecting “Settings” from the menu. Under Game Install/Update you’ll be able to adjust your download options for each of your games and enable or disable the background download, adjust the rate for your download, or pause it if you have a restriction on daily downloads.
Blizzard may not expect World of Warcraft to grow again in the future, but that doesn’t mean it’s giving up on the game. In fact, Tom Chilton, lead game designer at Blizzard, says the studio has actually expanded the game’s development team over the past couple of years.
It’s inevitable that a game as long-lived as World of Warcraft will lose players, and new players aren’t as likely to stick with it over the long term as those from ten years ago, according to Chilton. That, and the sheer volume of new content that’s been added to the game over the past decade, has led Blizzard to change its approach to creating new expansions.
“The game can only get so complicated before it starts to collapse under its own weight, and becomes very cumbersome to do anything new with,” he told MCV. “So we are always trying to simplify the game, while at the same time add new things so that the total complexity does not get completely out of control. And you could already argue that the complexity of WoW is already huge. That can be overwhelming to new people coming in.”
The World of Warcraft development team has actually expanded from 150 employees to 220, he explained, which will be good for the game in the long run. But it’s also one of the reasons the Warlords of Draenor expansion took so long to come to fruition.
“By growing by 50 per cent, you don’t get people in off the street who can make content exactly in the way that we would want. There’s an acclimatization process,” Chilton said. “That has resulted in slowing us down. But in the long-term we are now positioned to release expansions more frequently.”
The truth is that even though World of Warcraft’s numbers have tumbled precipitously over the past few years, 6.8 million subscribers is the kind of user base most MMOs would kill to have. Sustained, long-term growth may not be on the table anymore, but it’s clear that the game is going to be around for a long time yet.
Over the last few years, Free to Play has not only become a staple of the MMO market, but big companies have moved their MMO from subscription, to Free to Play to entice new players in.
Blizzard, seem to think the opposite.
As announced on our forums on August 15, a change is coming to World of Warcraft subscription pricing for players who use pounds sterling.
We regularly look at our pricing around the world and from time to time we make changes in light of local and regional market conditions. As such, we want to give everyone a heads-up that we will shortly be adjusting the pound sterling subscription price of World of Warcraft.
The new price for recurring subscriptions will be £9.99 for one month, £28.17 for three months (£9.39 per month), and £52.14 for six months (£8.69 per month). The suggested retail price of the 60-day prepaid time card will be £20.99.
As a thank you for current World of Warcraft subscribers, we guarantee that players with recurring (auto-renewing) subscriptions at the time of the price change will retain their current price for two years, as long as they remain in the same recurring subscription without interruption. This applies to anyone who is already in, or signs up for, a recurring subscription prior to the price change, which is scheduled to take place at the Warlords of Draenor release. We will reach out to relevant players approximately two months prior to the price change with a reminder.
So what do you think? With other high profile MMO’s going Free to Play over the last couple of years (yes Star Wars, we’re looking at you, you loser…), do you think Blizzard are going the wrong way, or cashing in on the market they know they have?
So, the World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor live event just finished and we have the release date for Warlords of Draenor now…
13th November 2014!
The release date was dropped at the end of the reveal of the new game cinematic leading into Warlords of Draenor.
The trailer shows Grommash Hellscream stepping up to drink the deamons blood from Gul’Dan, however, unlike the events of The Burning Crusade, this time Garrosh (Grommash’s son) has forewarned Grommash of the treachery and Grommash throws away the deamon blood. Mannanoth then appears for destroy them all for their failure, but Garrosh has bought future weapons and helps Grommash kill mannanoth, forever changing the future of Draenor and Azeroth!
you can watch the full new cinematic below:
The other new thing Chris Metzen from Blizzard showed off during the event, was the new 5 part Lore animated shorts, Lords of War! Chapter 1, Kargath Bladefist and the birth of the Shattered Hand clan.
The mostly stylised motion comic design is very appealing and really conveys the story of this early boss in Burning Crusade (One I very much enjoyed taking down and getting his fist as a weapon 😀 )
These lore animated shorts will be released on a weekly basis, so stay turned for more of those
You can watch the first episode of Lords of War below:
See you all in Draenor!
(Thanks to Gamespot for the videos and the live stream!)
