Reputations grade: Incomplete
Factions were a huge part of the Mists of Pandaria expansion in World of Warcraft. How well you raised your reputation with a variety of different NPC groups determined whether you got the best trade skill patterns, the best gear, or even rare mounts or other items.
In Warlords of Draenor, factions still hold some gear, some mounts and pets, and some followers. At the top level, a garrison building (the Trading Post) offers the ability to open two additional factions.
Above: A toy reward from the Laughing Skull Orcs faction makes all characters in the area laugh.
But the gear is not as good as that available elsewhere unless you invest an enormous amount of Apexis crystals, a kind of farmable currency, into upgrading it. Followers and mounts are also costly in terms of both crystals and gold. And raising your reputation with the new factions can require long, tedious, mob-killing grinds.
I suspect reputations will become more important as the game moves along and players have fewer shiny objects to distract them. For now, they feel marginalized and modestly unfinished.
Pet battles grade: B
Above: The garrison Menagerie offers a daily battle against legendary-quality pets like Mr. Terrible and his friends. (Yes, he is a carrot.)
The pet battling system (think Pokemon for Warcraft players) was one of the highlights of the Mists of Pandaria expansion, giving players the opportunity to capture and collect pets and battle trainers, legendary-level wild pets, and each other. A weekly, very difficult tournament awarded points toward highly unusual pets and other prizes.
In this expansion, the system is much the same, minus the tournament. You’ll find new trainers to battle and an assortment of new pets to collect, including some that are awarded as the result of completing a quest, getting an achievement, or killing “rare”-quality enemies in the world (which typically respawn not long after you defeat them).
The Menagerie building in the Garrison offers a daily pet battle, and at the top building level, defeating those enemies can award players new pets from the loot bags they receive.
Other than that, no truly new content or twists are available in Draenor, and Blizzard introduced no equivalent to last expansion’s Celestial Tournament, making Draenor slightly less interesting from an end-game pet battling perspective.
PvP grade: C+
Above: The Horde gateway to the Ashran PvP zone. I’d show you an actual picture, but it’s full — as always — at the moment.
Warlords introduced a huge number of changes into WoW’s PvP game, due mostly to the simplification of the spells and abilities players had at their fingertips. Some of those abilities were barely used by players in PvE, but were still on the toolbar for PvP players.
Players say the end result feels surprisingly like it did in the previous season, in terms of balance between classes. But those abilities that remain can feel capricious.
Hybrid-character off-healing is very strong; traps from hunters that last longer than they’re on cooldown can be frustrating. Max-level arena matches that last longer than five minutes continue to give players a stacking debuff that reduces how much they can heal or absorb, so burst damage classes still have an advantage.
The zone-wide max-level PvP battleground area of Ashran offers a sometimes-rewarding, sometimes-frustrating experience. It can be breathtakingly unbalanced, as Horde or Alliance players run roughshod over each other due to differences in group size, commitment, and composition by class. And queues can sometimes be frustratingly long.
But the mechanics of Ashran’s fights, which include super-powerful bosses on both sides, items that give your individual class a specific buff, and even a racetrack set up like a movable capture the flag, are often entertaining and well-made.
PvP gear is easier to get than ever before, with fewer item restrictions and pieces that scale up in power when you’re in a PvP area. It’s made the grindy part of gearing up much less difficult, which is a boon to more-casual players but frustrating to those who saw top-level PvP gear as status symbols.
Above: A third-level Horde garrison Gladiator’s Sanctum belonging to the character Didlah on the Doomhammer server, complete with an Altar of Bones. He says the Highmaul Coliseum is a fun fight — once.
A top-level Gladiator’s Sanctum building in the garrison grants access to the Highmaul Coliseum gladiator tournament, a max-level free-for-all PvP area with rewards for those who win.
Players complain that some classes of healers who are difficult to kill win these matches by boring their opponents to death. The Coliseum has been buggy, class balance is an issue, and people queuing at the same time can form groups to tromp the competition.
Overall grade: B
Warlords of Draenor offers a solid set of features for most players who reach the end game, and Blizzard has announced new content on its way for those who are starting to look around for something else to do.
While some areas still feel lackluster — especially tradeskills and world bosses — raid dungeons, the core of the PvE end game, feel engaging and appropriately challenging for hardcore players. More-casual gamers may find them less interesting. Players say they like the variety of level-100 content, overall, and most still seem to be logging in frequently.
If PvP content is the most important to you, drop this grade to a B- or C+. This hasn’t been the most enjoyable PvP season thus far, and while changes on the horizon look promising, they’re not in yet.