Rokk Talk

Is Eye Of Azshara The Next Expansion

Brace yourself. Blizzard has recently trademarked “Eye of Azshara”.

…

Yeah, I know. That could mean damn near anything. Is it a WoW property, Hearthstone, or something else entirely? Could this be something that will be announced at Blizzcon 2014? According to a Reddit poster who knows a guy, that is a definite maybe.

Eye of Azshara is the next expansion to World of Warcraft and is planned to launch Q1 2016. Blizzard is intentionally breaking their mold and announcing this expansion at this year’s Blizzcon for a few reasons. First, there’s about to be a big company-wide push to bring the Warcraft franchise into the next decade with Hearthstone, WoW, and a PVP Battleground themed console game that will also be briefly teased at Blizzcon. Second, the loss of subscriptions at the end of MoP was a big blow to morale as they went into the expansion planning regular content patches – they want to prove to the gaming community that WoW is going to be around for awhile, and won’t go stagnant at the end of the next expansion (the last patch of WoD is tentatively planned 4 to 6 months prior to the launch of EoA)

Eye of Azshara will be the ‘South Seas’ expansion players have hoped for. Nazjatar will rise from the ocean and Queen Azshara will begin an assault on Azeroth. New zones will include Nazjatar, Zandalar, the Rift of Aln, and Kul’Tiras. The Alliance will ally with a faction of uncorrupted highborne seeking to usurp their former leader, the Horde with a disgruntled Naga tribe. (These are not playable races, but NPC factions)

Azshara is working closely with Sargeras and this expansion will be the second ‘pseudo’ Burning Legion expansion – heavily legion influenced without the Legion as a central theme. They’re building the Legion up big time.

EoA will be introduced at Blizzcon during a video celebrating the next 10 years of Warcraft. Also in the video are clips of the Deathknight class for Hearthstone and an alpha gameplay clip of the console battlegrounds game. The video is narrated by Martin Sheen, in character as Nozdormu, and is a ‘glimpse into the future’. Cheeky.

The big focus of Blizzcon, as far as Warcraft goes, will be the content patches of WoD. One of the Tanaan Jungle raids will be previewed (Hellscream’s Ascent), but the big news is that Illidan is coming back. When the Legion begins to invade Dreanor in 6.1, Khadgar believes it’s time to fight fire with fire and, with the help of Chromie, sends the players back in time on Azeroth to free Illidan from his prison. Illidan comes in as a ‘wild card’, leading a faction of Demon Hunters against the Legion and Gul’dan. My friend says she doesn’t know for sure, but it sounds like Demon Hunters as a playable class is being set up.

Blizzcon just keeps getting more and more interesting.

Not to mention easy on the eyes.

Posted in Blog

Comments Off on Is Eye Of Azshara The Next Expansion

Tags: Blizzcon 2014, Eye of Azshara, Mia Rose, New Expansion, Reddit

One-Button Macro For Frost Death Knights

Nov 5

Posted by Donny Rokk

Frost-burned.

There is a definite divide when it comes to using macros in WoW. Some people see it as lazy gaming or even cheating, while others take a more enlightened view and see it as maximizing their potential. The truth, as they say, lay somewhere in the middle.

And we know what happens in the middle of the road – squish like grape.

Everyone has their reason for using macro shortcuts. There are visually impaired players who use macros. There are people who are just looking for an edge, usually PVP folk. And some, like a freshly boosted 90 who has no idea what they’re doing but thought it’d be cool to play “insert class here” at end game, just don’t want to outright suck donkey balls when grouped with other players. I respect that. I’d much rather have boosters use a bunch of brainless macros than hitting auto attack and LOL-ing the group to death.

In Warlords of Draenor, my Frost Death Knights (yes, as in multiple DKs) are going to be played quite casually. I was curious to see if there was a one-button macro that I could spam and make things die. Turns out there are, and they’re not too bad.

To pull off this button-mashing mastery, you’ll need something to extend your macro beyond the usual 255 characters. Macro Toolkit is perfect for this. So download it, enable your addon in-game, and open your toolkit. Create a new macro, and make sure you EXTEND it so your 255 character limit grows faster than the results of an Extenze commercial.

Enhancing your game in all sorts of ways.

Here’s the macro I found for a Dual-Wielding Frost DK. I picked it up at wowlazymacros and it seemed to work fine when I tested it. Simply copy and paste the following code:

#showtooltip Howling Blast
/castsequence reset=10/target Howling Blast, Plague Strike, Soul Reaper, Frost Strike, Howling Blast, Howling Blast, Frost Strike
/cast [combat] Plague Leech
/cast [combat] Blood Tap
/cast [combat] Pillar of Frost
/cast [combat] Empower Rune Weapon

Now for a Two-Handed Frost DK, I found a Youtube video that had a good macro.

If you missed it, here’s the macro:

#showtooltip One
/castsequence reset=5/target Plague Strike,Obliterate,Frost Strike,Howling Blast,Frost Strike,Soul Reaper
/cast [combat] Pillar of Frost
/cast [combat] Anti-Magic Shell
/cast [combat] Empower Rune Weapon
/cast [combat] Remorseless Winter
/castsequence reset=60 Dark Simulacrum
/castsequence reset=30 Death’s Advance
/use Horn of Winter
/startattack

Does this make for a mindless playstyle? We’re talking about World of Warcraft here. It’s not like we’re finding the cure for anything. If people can use these kinds of macros and it helps them to be a more productive player, more power to them. These macros will not have players topping the DPS charts. Only traditional button mashing can do that. But it should, at the very least, make them more efficient (as in they won’t be completely horrible). They’re macros for the casual player.