World of Warcraft director Tom Chilton steps down to lead a new Blizzard project

It’s the end of the Chilton era for World of Warcraft.
 

After a decade of overseeing one of the biggest games ever made, World of Warcraft director Tom Chilton is leaving. The designer announced in a blog today that he is stepping down from the lead role on Blizzard’s massively multiplayer online role-playing game now that Legion, the latest (and greatest) expansion has launched. But Chilton isn’t done at Blizzard. He revealed that he is sticking with the company and is now working on something new. The director worked on Warcraft since 2004, and he was key to turning it into one of the most popular and lucrative hits in the history of the $99.6 billion gaming industry.

“It’s with a mix of excitement, sadness, and gratitude that I’m saying farewell to the WOW team and moving on to a new adventure within Blizzard,” Chilton wrote in a message on the Blizzard forums. “My personal journey working on WOW as Game Director is at an end, but my journey with Blizzard isn’t. I’ll still be here, but will be focusing on another project within the company.”

World of Warcraft was long Blizzard’s crown jewel, but it is entering the twilight of its life. It peaked in 2010 with 12 million subscribers, and it has since dwindled to less than half of that — although the publisher no longer releases the figures for how many people pay for a monthly membership. WOW still generates millions of dollars in revenue every month, but fans have still wondered whether Blizzard would replace it with something new. The studio was working on a new MMO called Titan, but it eventually canceled that project and repurposed many of the assets and ideas for the popular Overwatch shooter that launched in April.

The genius behind 'World of Warcraft' just raised $25 million

The guy behind on one of the most successful games ever made just got $25 million to start a new studio: Bonfire Games.
         
       

That man is Rob Pardo, and he's leading a team of game development veterans (like himself) at a new studio. Their focus? "The company will make online multiplayer games, though he has not yet decided whether it will create them for mobile devices, PCs or both," writes Nick Winfield in The New York Times.

The financing comes from one likely and one unlikely suspect: venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (likely), and "League of Legends" studio Riot Games (unlikely!).

You may know "League of Legends" as one of the other most successful games ever made; it's the most widely played eSports game in the world, and commands a monthly playership of nearly 70 million (according to the Riot). Riot is owned by Chinese conglomerate Tencent.

Pardo took to Medium to discuss the new venture. "Often, developers must compromise and decide — do I work on a blockbuster game where I have less personal impact or the gutsy indie studio that struggles to get noticed?," he wrote. "Our vision is to create a studio that doesn’t require them to choose."

Pardo is working with a handful of folks who are coming with him from Blizzard Entertainment — the Activision-owned studio responsible for "World of Warcraft," "Hearthstone," "Overwatch," and many other blockbusters; he's also hiring.

World Of Warcraft Expansions Revisited

With World of Warcraft’s Legion expansion launching next week, we finish off our tour of the MMO’s previous expansions by saying farewell to the amazing strongholds we spent the past year and change building up.

Returning to the ten level jump of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King following a couple of five level jaunts through Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor was exactly the epic chunk of new hotness players like me needed to draw us back in.

On paper it didn’t sound very exciting. We were going through the Dark Portal to Draenor, just like we did in The Burning Crusade, but this was old-timey, alternate universe Draenor, back when more exciting things happened there than standing up to your waist in Zangamarsh.

Treading old ground? Yawn. Building fortresses and gathering followers? Whatever. You go ahead and release the most exciting expansion pack in the game’s then ten-year history. See if we care.

Warlords of Draenor launches with the best marriage of story and gameplay Blizzard’s yet managed. The player walks side-by-side with Azeroth’s greatest heroes, charging into battle against the most dangerous assemblage of orcs in the history of history.

LEGION RELEASE DATE NOT SPECIFIED WHILE A NEW WAY TO ENTER WOW HIDDEN ZONE HAS BEEN DISCOVERED

In World of Warcraft, you will notice that around the northern shores of the Eastern Kingdoms, there is a zone that we can see on Azeroth’s map.

However, compared to all the other zones, it appears to be unmarked and it can only be accessed through some rather tricky ways. The purpose of this tiny area is unknown but speculations suggest that over the years, it was supposed to be the lush forest region of the Quel’thalas.

This was a Vanilla Zone that later got introduced in the game as the starting zone for the Blood Elves during The Burning Crusade Expansion. The plans regarding this zone since the Quel’thalas, was later scrapped and it remained as an unfinished chunk of land that was unreachable by the players.

However, as you might expect, this didn’t put a stop to the ambitions of explorers who wanted to reach this area and HeelvsBabyface’s clearly proves that. Anyone can go there with a series of tricky moves even without utilizing any form of private servers or trying anything unconventional.

You can reach this area through the Eastern Plaguelands’ Stratholme dungeon but check out the method for yourself or the fun could end up being spoilt! The video is a perfect tease for everybody. Reach this zone and you will notice a complete area full of missing textures, invisible walls and placeholders.

Right now, the leaves are turning and the weather is finally cooling down and a result, you can expect the citizens of Azeroth to celebrate the autumn season as well. There are various events that celebrate the fall and all of them are back. There are further recurring favorites all designed for the month of October.

WoW players can keep enjoying in various Brewfest activities that occurs throughout the first week of October and is followed by Hallow’s end which occurs later this month. At the moment, Brewfest will continue all throughout the first week of October.

Players have the chance to visit places like Orgimmar or Ironforge in order to complete quests, participate in various events and also keep racing rams during the event.

You can purchase things like Toy kegs, banners, and backpacks from the event’s Brewfest prize tokens. You can also purchase Battle Pets using these tokens. They include the Pint-Sized Pink Pachyderm, the Wolpertinger, and the Stout Alemental.

Meanwhile, the Swift Brewfest Ram and the Great Brewfest Kodo mounts can only be purchased during the Brewfest, according to their references on the official site.

Fast forward a bit and on Hallow’s End, players will be able to celebrate the Halloween Holiday on 18th October. Players have the chance to horde the event’s currency which is Tricky Treats while carrying on with their trick and treat around Azeroth.

Through these treats, people can purchase a number of Hallow’s End battle pets which include the Feline Familiar or pug disguises, Halloween wands and much more. Keep in mind that this event is also the only way through which you can acquire The Horseman’s Reins and from the Headless Horseman in Scarlet Monastery, you can unlock a ghastly mount as loot.

In other news, players have been waiting a long time for World of Warcraft: Legion and Blizzard Entertainment has been releasing new details but in a very slow pace. According to Realty Today, the upcoming title has teased fans for a long time and furthermore, it is said that Legion has been under-development for about 3 years now.

The game director, Tom Chilton said that they go through multiple expansions at a time and there was a certain point when they were trying to decide the order in which they should come first. They finally decided that Warlords should be coming first, followed by Legion next.

According to Tom Chilton, “we have known what we are going to do on core level since two and half three years ago or so now. It was around 2012 we were talking about that.”

There is no specified release date for World of Warcraft Legion but there are continuous patches and updates which keep coming before the title finally gets launched. Fans have the chance to keep themselves posted on the further additions to the game.

With the Bonus events about to start soon, WoW players are excited about the upcoming Hallow’s end. There are many things to be seen and done and a lot of players are apparently getting quite restless.

With the newly introduced things, players will have a lot of goodies to look into and purchase them if they like. On 5th October, the Darkmoon Faire will return with, carnival games, weekly crafting questsand a chance to buy pets, heirloom items, mounts, toys, and additional items.

What are your thoughts on the upcoming events? Let us know in the comments section below and stay tuned for more updates!

World of Warcraft: Legions Classes and Professions to Get Some Make-Over

Game developer Blizzard Entertainment has committed to make the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) “World of Warcraft” an even bigger and better video game with its upcoming expansion pack called “World of Warcraft: Legions.”

The expansion pack is expected to get some enhancements and tweaks and accordingly, in order to do such, certain classes and professions included in the game’s expansion pack, will get some make-over, reports KpopStarz.

It was actually Jonathan LeCraft, senior game designer for “World of Warcraft” who shared the details of the enhancements and tweaks during the Dragoncon.

LeCraft disclosed that the second hero class Demon Hunters, which will be integral parts of “World of Warcraft: Legions” will start appearing at Level 98 while the Death Knights, which was previously reported that it will not have any update, will be seen at the beginning of Level 55.

The Blizzard Entertainment executive also said that the Demon Hunters will have a short transformation with inner demon visuals and will be the only class in the game to be able to wield glaives. It added that the class’ double jump ability will not be disabled anywhere either.

Blizzard Entertainment is in dire need of getting back the huge number of subscriptions that the video game has lost since the start of the year and it seems that it has found the right instrument to do just that with the expansion pack “World of Warcraft: Legions.”

Time is money in the game

The goblins are the ugly face of capitalism in the MMORPG “World of Warcraft” and these creatures are actually willing to take any gambit if it will make a profit with little regard for their own survival, notes the A.V. Club.

But if a player spends any time interacting with them at the banks and business, these goblins will run, but they will happily share their defining philosophy which is ‘Time is money, friend.’

The game developer is capitalizing on the mantra of the goblins by using the same tagline when it introduced in April the “World of Warcraft” Tokens and gave its estimated 5 million subscribers worldwide a way to buy with real money, which is a digital manifestation of one month’s worth of game time.

Such game time can actually be sold by gamers to other players through in-game auction houses. Having such feature in “World of Warcraft” effectively enables players to exchange real-world currency for the gold used to pay for goods and services within the game and set the price for gold through the in-game auctions.

The addition of the “World of Warcraft” Tokens has made the game’s economy even more complex and tied to that of the real world than ever before. Players have been treating WOW Tokens like the commodity they are. Social media pages of “WOW” actually help monitor the fluctuation in Token prices, which help inform players when is a good time to buy or sell them might be.

Arresting drop in subscriptions

Blizzard Entertainment has laid down the groundwork for its major effort to arrest the significant drop in the subscriptions that “World of Warcraft” experienced at the start of the year. It is obvious that the game developer has set its sight on recovering lost gamer subscription even as it strives to entice new ones in the process.

One of its immediate initiatives towards such end is to release updates or patches to the game, meant to bring new features and improve the game further. Blizzard released Patch 6.2.0 officially titled “Fury of Hellfire” on June 23 which contained Tanaan Jungle and the Shipyard and provided players with a host of new gameplay options.

Some fans thought that “Prepare for Flying” was to be the game’s Patch 6.2.1, but it turned out that those were just wishful thinking as it seems that Blizzard Entertainment has skipped the update.

On September 1, the game developer released Patch 6.2.2 officially titled “Draenor Pathfinder: Prepare for Flying,” giving gamers who already have the Draenor Pathfinder achievement to take the skies of Draenor.

The update is now available for testing on the Public Test Realms (PTR) where gamers who shall take part will be able to try out the patch on live realms. They can also provide feedbacks so that Blizzard Entertainment can take note of those to further improve the patch and make the game really entertaining.

However, the biggest initiative that Blizzard is planning for the game is the development of its expansion pack “World of Warcraft: Legions” which it announced during the Gamescom 2015 held on August 5 to 9 at Cologne, Germany.

Since its announcement last month “World of Warcraft: Legion” has become one of the most awaited strategy games that the generation is to come across.

The expansion brings a variety of new features to the “World of Warcraft” MMORPG for existing players to enjoy and to entice new players to join in the fun.

The “World of Warcraft: Legion,” which will be the sixth expansion to arrive since the release of the “World of Warcraft” game in 2004, will be bringing new challenges to combat for long-time players.