by Magistrate - 6 years ago     show comments

World of Warcraft 8.2 “Rise of Azshara” brings a ton of new content, and roughly half of it centers in the new continent, Nazjatar. After many years of lore, characters, and events centered around this iconic city, we will delve into Queen Azshara’s seat of power, a character at the center of many of Azeroth’s ancient mysteries and calamities.

In this Post

• New Continent: Nazjatar
• New Story & Content
• New Raid: Azshara’s Eternal Palace

New Continent: Nazjatar

After huge losses of ships and soldiers during the Battle for Dazar’alor, Azshara turns her opportunistic gaze on Azeroth’s remaining forces at their weakest point. Naga will rise from all corners of Kul’tiras and Zandalar, waylaying hapless victims and dragging them into the depths, as well as attacking our fleets.

As the Alliance and Horde turn their eyes on this old, new threat, we set sail for Nazjatar. While many players would expect an underwater continent in the vein of Vashj’ir, Nazjatar (for reasons yet unknown) sits in an enormous chasm of water cut right into the sea’s surface. Surrounded by cascading waterfalls on all sides, players will explore ancient kelp forests, long-forgotten Elven architecture, new biolumniscent Naga structures, shipwreck ruins, and the very city of the Naga, itself.

Players will arrive in an area formidably trashed with ruined ships, probably a portend of what to expect of our adventure. Alliance and Horde appear to have separate hubs on either side of the lower part of the continent, with Azshara’s palace at the top.

There was a short video of some of the new continent, showing off coral and some waterfalls, but overall it didn’t show much. It was promised that this was a small taste of what’s to come, and it was missing NPCs, creatures, clutter, atmospheric effects, any trace of ancient ruins, and basically anything else players would expect. Keep in mind that this is the 8.2 major content patch, and we still have patch 8.1 to be released in a month, so there is much work to be done.

New Story & Content

The story seems to revolve around building new allies from the undersea victims of Azshara’s terror. The Horde will befriend a group of former Naga slaves, including Gilbin, Makrura, and Sea Giants, holed up in a cave under Naga assault. The Alliance will focus on securing the aid of a new race, one that sounds like “Ankara,” although we don’t have an official spelling yet.

Muffinus placed a strong amount of stress on the current state of the “Ankara,” specifically pointing out that there are very few of them left, that they “have no hope of repopulating,” and that they have thus fully devoted themselves to vengeance against the Naga. Personal opinion: this is him outright telling us this new race will not be an Allied Race at any point, and he’s trying to prevent players from getting too hyped up and going speculation crazy.

The new continent will feature many fantastic rewards, like Naga-themed weapons and armor sets, a crab and seahorse mount (the crab actually walks sideways!), new battle pets (like a baby Naga), and probably other goodies. The depths will feature many enemies, including some very Old God-themed ones in line with Azshara’s allegiances and new elite Naga units.

New Raid: Assault on Azshara’s Eternal Palace

The new, 8-boss raid will culminate in a fight against Queen Azshara, herself, sporting an awesome new model (that was datamined a long time ago). It features vibrant new Naga architecture, probably an underwater boss, and, according to Muffinus, a Naga hatchery, which will at “long last” reveal our burning questions about Naga reproduction.

We’ll look more at future patches 8.1, 8.1.5, 8.2, and 8.2.5 as we continue to dive into the Day 1 World of Warcraft: What’s Next panel. Click here for more from the panel (it’s a lot), and don’t miss everything Warcraft from BlizzCon 2018!