Editing World of Warcraft (section)

=== Warlords of Draenor (Otherwise Known as "World of Warcraft 2")===
After a clusterfuck of a lead-in, Blizzard rolled out the 2014 Warlords of Draenor. 
The expansion is mostly noteable in it's massive increase in visual quality for the game, and the fact Horde and Alliance have separate storylines for the bulk of the questing. Side-stories are also tied directly into most player quests, so players aren't left wondering why they put off their orders of destabilizing the Lich King to participate in jousting or forgetting they've been ordered to the frontlines against the other faction in favor of growing turnips a mountain range over. 

The lead-in event brought players to the Blasted Lands where the Dark Portal had been closed off from Outland and was rippling with new magic. The portal had been reconnected to parts unknown, and out of it charged Orcs with brown skin (meaning 100% free from any past Demonic taint in them or their parents, a rarity among all known Orc populations barring a small number in Outland) bearing weapons forged from unknown metal and utilizing advanced warmachines. They struck fast and hard, taking over outposts as well as making a beeline for Blackrock Mountain. 
The Horde and Alliance, now formally at truce, quickly determine these mysterious Orcs are being lead by Garrosh. Khadgar, the expert on all things pre-Warcraft 3, determines the portal now leads to an alternate timeline Draenor. The Horde and Alliance pick a team of heroes (mostly representing players) lead by the big name characters Thrall, Maraad, Khadgar, Vereesa, Baine, and others including YOUR character who is in charge of the entire expedition. Specialists are also brought, who become the subordinates of the player. After fighting your way to the other side of the portal, you find the Iron Horde has near limitless reinforcements. You quickly shut down the Dark Portal by freeing the evil warlocks (same old faces from Cho'gall, Gul'dan, and pre-Death Knight Gorefiend) who were being used as living batteries to power it. 

After taking massive casualties, the bulk of the player stand-in NPC's are left to make a final stand so everyone with a useful skill or action figure can escape into the jungles. After making your way through you encounter each of the Warlords of Draenor and fuck up their plans. Alliance players along the way meet Yrel, described by Blizzard as "Draenei Joan of Arc" whom you eventually use as your second in command after several shared experiences as well as a Draenei Exarch (governor paladin) who brings you into meet and become an ally of the undestroyed Draenei race, while Horde players save Drek'thar's past self and he brings you in as savior to the Frostwolf clan as it faces extinction. 

After blowing up the Dark Portal structure and ensuring the Iron Horde cannot invade Azeroth without going through you, Horde and Alliance go their separate ways via commandeered battleships (as this Draenor has oceans rather than outer space between it's continents). The Alliance sail to Shadowmoon Valley, a deep foresty place bathed in both holy and void magic due to the presence of many Naaru as well as one fallen Naaru in a stationary place in the sky over the area who causes it to always appear to be nigh. Shadowmoon is where the bulk of the Draenei race are settled and as a result much of the early questing involves proving the Alliance is not only trustworthy, but the only ones who can defeat the Iron Horde. After accomplishing this they supply your growing army, and you establish a garrison (which grows with the player until it's a fortress with a castle). Before long you encounter Ner'zhul, who split his clan along a faction that swears loyalty to the Alliance (yes, delicious chocolate Orcs in the Alliance) and his own clan which looks to void magic through the fallen Naaru to destroy not only the Horde and Alliance, but the Iron Horde as well to ensure his people's safety forever. He tries to accomplish this by sacrificing the souls of the bulk of the Shadowmoon Orc ancestors, and his own to take control of the Naaru before the Velen of the past sacrifices himself to cleanse the fallen Naaru after deputizing Yrel as a Vindicator (minor paladin). The player, their army, and that newly reborn Naaru travel to Karabor (the past version of the Black Temple, before being taken over by Orc Warlocks and becoming Dark) where the bulk of the Iron Horde's navy destroys itself trying to take it.

The Horde travel to Frostfire Ridge, the half-volcanic half-tundra home of the Frostwolf clan. Thrall meets his alternate parents, although he keeps his identity a secret (at one point Drek'thar compliments himself by saying that Thrall's teacher did his job well). 

Both factions then progress to Gorgrond, the past version of the Blade's Edge Mountains and Netherstorm. Gorgrond is essentially if Australia and Vietnam had a baby which was raised by Mount Doom, being a place of savage jungle complete with treemen worshiping GIANT treemen who grow from GIANT GIANT lizard-taur tree hybrids called Genesaurs who want to mulch all intelligent life and in possession of very potent mind control fungus, the a large chunk of the Ogre (and almost all of their derivatives, the Tarrasque-level Gronn and the chubby Xenomorph Gronnlings) race, and finally the Blackrock Clan of Orcs. After establishing an outpost (or two) and pushing back the wild, players mount an attack on the Blackrocks and damage their infrastructure enough that their ability to replenish the rest of the Iron Horde is greatly diminished. Horde players ally themselves with the old Laughing Skull clan, which has experienced a change of leadership as a result of the attacks from the Iron Horde after their refusal to join. Alliance players find the Dark Iron Dwarfs are not only allies of the Alliance, but active members of it as they do the bulk of the non-Draenei heavy-lifting in the zone.

Players then travel to Taledor, part of the past version of Terokkar Forest. Here, players fight to repel Iron Horde invaders that have besieged Shattrath (which players sadly cannot enter and use as a city) while an alternate Burning Legion summoned by Gul'dan lay siege to past Auchindoun (the massive burial complex and artificial purgatory for the Draenei) for the purpose of eating Draenei souls. Most Draenei towns and cities have been destroyed by one faction of villains or the other, and players find themselves with a fair number of friendly Draenei refugees (yep, Horde gets delicious blueberry monstergirls... Draenei now). At the culmination of the zone story, the Horde and Alliance big name character regroup and lead an attack on the Iron Horde spearpoint force, fighting their way through to Blackhand's own battleship. The past version of Orgrim Doomhammer realizes that Blackhand will only lead the (Iron) Horde to ruin and challenges him for leadership of the Horde (just like in the original timeline). This time however, he faced a Blackhand armed with magical Truesteel armor and was killed. He is immediately engaged by Yrel, Maraad, and Thrall's father Durotan while the players and the other big names take a battleship nearby. The player is teleported to the main battleship, where Blackhand defeats everyone present (and kills Maraad) before grabbing Yrel and giving a monologue. Before he can snap her neck she throws her weapon to Durotan, who attacks Blackhand from behind allowing the characters to be teleported to the second ship which blows up Blackhand's (Blackhand somehow survives despite falling into the ocean while being clad in ALL the metal). The Horde and Alliance reaffirm their truce. A subplot in the zone involves the player helping Arakkoa refugees, who in Burning Crusade were <strike>Tzeentchian</strike> Dark Crystal Skeksis you slaughtered wholesale because of a vaguely described plot involving them using shadow magic and dark powers which was a threat to Burning Crusade is Shattrath. The Arakkoa form you've seen since then is a devolved state due to a curse, and you see in Warlords that the uncorrupted Arakkoa use the curse as a means of weeding out undesirables in their society which gives them an excuse to commit genocide on them periodically.

Players are then sent to the Spires of Arak, making up the other half of old Terokkar Forest (and more). Players enter the zone by walking along a path with refugees they saved in Taledor, and upon reaching a ridge where a visible ornate city/nest sits on a mountain spire in the distance, a laser shoots from it burning away a large section of the forest in a literal localized [[Exterminatus|exterminatus]]. The refugees flee to the city, where you meet a scholarly Arakkoa named Reshad along with his Kaliri (owl-things the Arakkoa use as companions you used to slaughter literally in hundreds in Burning Crusade) named Percy. Shortly after meeting him, the city is attacked by uncorrupted Arakkoa, slaughtering every defenseless civilian they can find. Until the player steps out of Reshad's hut, and reverses the situation (as well as finding relics of Terokk, old quest items tied to an instance in Burning Crusade). The zone questing continues along these lines, helping the corrupted Arakkoa and fighting the uncorrupted Arakkoa who seek to wipe them out. Many of the terms vaguely given in the old expansion, as well as characters who served only as boss fights, are fully elaborated on and the Arakkoa mythology and history is told.

Originally the race had three deities; Sethe (the name given to the undefined birdy evils in BC), Rukhmar (new term, mentioned once), and Anzu (old BC secret boss that Druids had to kill to earn the ability to turn into a bird who also later dropped a mount version of himself). Rukhmar was a sun-loving giant Arakkoa, Anzu was the god of giant ravens that only roosted in the dark, and Sethe was a being of evil and misery caught between both where he was chilled by the dark and burned by the light. Sethe one day chose to kill Rukhmar, and enlisted Anzu's aid; Anzu had a crush on Rukhmar and instead informed her and together they fought to defeat Sethekk. To stop the spread of Sethekk's dying curse, Anzu ate his body leaving him only a giant skeleton surrounded by cursed pools of his blood. Rukhmar then created the Arakkoa race players have been fighting which harnessed the power of giant crystals called Apexis (another old term from Burning Crusade that meant nothing until now) to run their great technology including giant robots (because it's fucking Warcraft, of course it has giant robots somewhere). Eventually the Apexis civilization exploded but the arakkoa lived on. The newborn Arakkoa fought constantly with most other races. At one point, the greatest king of the Arakkoa named Terokk lead his people into a golden age but his subordinates grew jealous and threw him into the cursed pools of blood near Sethekk's body. There, he lost the sun-blessed powers he once possessed and crawled through the muck trying to think straight with his addled mind. The rest of his followers were thrown in, and the council flew back to their nest-cities to lead the remaining Arakkoa into a decadent lifestyle which abandoned the knowledge of the Apexis. Upon finding the broken body of his daughter within one of the pools, Terokk surrendered to the curse of Sethekk. Anzu, observing the fall and abandonment of the greatest of his sister's followers, took pity and blessed them with clarity and shadow magic to replace their lost faculties and holy magic (seems dark/light is a theme of the expansion) while those too damaged to ever be sane again where taken by his wife Ka'alu to live among the giant ravens who were their mortal devotees. Terokk lead his people to establish nests on the ground, far from the eyes of their uncorrupted kin before losing his mind many years later and becoming the aspect that the player would one day fight against the resurrection of in the original timeline.

But in this new altered timeline, the player saves the refugees and gathers them into an army. After summoning Anzu and Ka'alu, players recover the artifacts of Terokk and by both reliving his life and at the same time forcing him into reliving yours, his spirit is cleansed. Together he and the player deal a crippling blow to the assassin forces of the Kargath Bladefist (one of the Warlords). Terokk, having lost the bulk of his remaining power, appoints the player as leader of his people. You then lead the ravens and corrupt Arakkoa to conquer two cities of the uncorrupted Arakkoa and destroy the giant sun lasers they use to burn the cities of the corrupted Arakkoa, invading the final city and putting the thread of Rukhmar's people down for good. You also establish a town for your faction, and save a town full of Goblins from their own fuckups. Tying back to the major plot, the groups you saved (Arakkoa and Goblins) now aid your faction. Players also find that the Alliance town established by their own quest-giver Admiral Taylor has been destroyed by Necromancers in service to the Cult of the Damned (yes, they apparently still exist). He joins the players as a follower posthumously (in the end, you wind up with a total of three ghosts wandering your garrison saluting you).

In the final zone available at launch, Nagrand (which largely resembles the original albeit without floating rocks and bands of evil light in the sky) players establish a final outpost. Players find the original Alliance town of the zone, Telaar, destroyed by the past Warsong clan who are intent on destroying every race and clan not their own and taking Draenor and all other lands for themselves. After stopping a plot to use the Oshu'gun (giant crystal spaceship the Draenei first used to reach Draenor) to summon Demons via void magic (as if you didn't know that was coming), calming the elements of the zone, destroying the leadership and the bulk of the Burning Blade clan of samurai Orcs before finally breaking their spirit by taking out their greatest champions in single combat (barring their new female leader who swears she will be the one to kill you), saving the souls of the Orcish ancestor spirits of the Warsong, and finally participating in gladiatorial arenas (the first because the prize money will aid your garrison, the second because the Ogres once had an empire here which they are trying to rebuild and it teaches the dumber clans not to rejoin out of fear of having their shit slapped by you personally) you reach the zone finale. Your faction gathers a fuckhuge army and assaults the Warsong clan base, wiping out most of the resistance and taking Garrosh prisoner. Garrosh and Thrall challenge each other to finish the duel to the death they started immediately before Wrath. After a beating back and forth, Garrosh hulks out and claims that only a warrior can lead the Orcs to their rightful place as masters of all creation. Thrall responds "fuck you, mono-faction development settings are shit!" and causes a giant fist to rise out of the ground to hold him in place while he's electrocuted by a massive lightning strike from the sky. The action of using magic in this kind of duel (called mak'gora by the orcs) is [[Skub|contentious]] among the players, as depending on the sources, magic is either strictly prohibited for the duration and Thrall outright cheated, allowed in the shape of a weapon blessing by a shaman and Thrall still outright cheated, or entirely allowed and everything was fair and square. Notable is the fact that most of the sources claiming magic is allowed during Mak'gora have been written '''after''' Warlords launched, so make of that as you will. The Horde and Alliance big name characters once again meet and affirm "yep, we're still working together in a friendly way" before deciding their next moves. To prove Garrosh really is dead, his corpse is actually left in-game within the giant stone fist only feet away.

Then a new patch added the truly final zone. There's lots of burnt trees and tainted ground because the blood of Mannoroth (the demon introduced in Warcraft 3 whose blood corrupted the orcs) has been seeping into the ground since Grom killed him. Gul'dan, sick of the player characters messing up his plans, confronts Grom. He spills the beans about Garrosh being Grom's son and overthrows Grom before corrupting the Orcs with demon blood. He takes Hellfire Citadel and taints it with even more demonic magic. Players fight their way through several bosses. First are demonic versions of Goblin machinery including a giant goblin mecha powered by demonic energy and the father of the Gronn race (a giant hybrid of ogre, gorilla, cyclops and rock). Then players fight Teron Gorefiend, who gorged on so many souls he's now a soul-eating fat bastard with a mouth on his belly. Then there's a council of corrupted Orcs and Kilrogg Deadeye, where you finally give him the death he foresaw. Then you fight your way through corrupted Draenei, including the ghost of a Draenei engineer with his own [[Wraithlord]] ([[Awesome|which you can commander in the fight]]) and their leader, a fallen paladin who, going by her raid mechanics, really hates healers. You free Grom from being tortured by demons, fight a corrupted Void Lord then fight your way through Arrakoa to Gul'dan. He resurrects Mannoroth and you defeat him. Then you get to the portal where Gul'dan summons alternate timeline Archimonde and you fight him for a second time (this time without Wisp help). While dying, Archimonde blasts Gul'dan before dying and the Legion's plans for alternate timeline Draenor have been thwarted, for now. Khadgar thinks Gul'dan will be back and flies off while Yrel appears to forgive Grom despite his orcs killing a lot of Draenei including her sister.

The expansion changed quite a bit of the game's dynamic by focusing all professions on items that can only be made once per day, giving players access to NPC's who can craft the minor recipes of any other profession whether the player has it or not, and giving players renewable sources of raw crafting materials which made gear much more accessible to the community and ensured the players who have no life aren't as much above the players who do. The focus on a garrison with a fair number of different options as they are built added a choice and specialization dynamic to characters outside their fighting style. 
The most drastic gameplay changes were the addition of a "toybox" which converts old "for fun" effect items into spells rather than something to carry, a readjustment of stats in the game to reduce the numbers of some stats (which were approaching and surpassing millions) down into three digits without causing an effect on the actual PLAYING (so the simplification was to make gear easier to understand) which came with retooling abilities across the board. Each class was given more survival abilities while healers were nerfed to the point of having to choose when to heal rather than just spamming healing at all timies. Players were given new storage spaces for crafting materials of all kinds in their bank and items were made to stack in bunches of 200 rather than 20. Garrisons replaced any centralized city players would use, and gave the player a heightened sense of importance in the world. Rare spawns were retooled greatly, respawning quite often and being a somewhat expected part of the playing experience. 

Oh, and flying mounts cannot be used in Draenor to promote exploration to find hidden treasures and quests rather than flying from point A to point B. Player reaction was mixed greatly. 

Perhaps the most popular part of the new expansion, players received high resolution models, where player faces have a look and can emote rather than being a painted face on a flat model with flapping lips resembling a rhombus. Cut scenes make up a large part of the game's storytelling, with models which can actually make facial expressions like a Steam Film Maker model.

Ultimately Warlords of Draenor proved to be one of, if not the least popular WoW expansion to date. While the updated character models and sleeker cutscenes were definitely well received, they were overshadowed by a variety of issues that began to crop up as the expansion developed. The city of Karabor (an uncorrupted Black Temple) and the Bladespire citadel were initially planned as the Alliance and Horde hub cities of the expansion, though midway through the beta, these hub locations were hastily crammed onto the relatively controversial PvP island of Ashran, much to the chagrin of many players. The role of places players hanged out in was taken over by player-made garrisons, which only allowed other players in them after a party invite from the garrison's owner, unintentionally making it a good spot for roleplayers to hang out in (especially [[Slaanesh|a certain kind]] of them). Said garrisons also served as the main base of operations for the players, have had plentiful gathering nodes (almost entirely eliminating the need to go farm resources in the open world and tanking the market for metal ores specifically, the herb nodes in the garrison were few compared) and sending NPCs out into the world to do quests and bring you back loot from them, which ranged from garrison resources to [[Wat|literal raid loot]], turning the players into glorified questgivers for most of the expansion.
Additionally, WoD has the fewest amount of content patches between ''all'' WoW expansions to date, only ever reaching patch 6.2 before Blizzard announced Legion (Most other expansions reach some iteration of either X.3 or even X.4 before the next expansion launches). At this point, what little development wasn't already focused on the upcoming expansion shifted over into full gear, leaving players high and dry for several months without any new content to tide them over until then. Because of the rushed development cycle, many of the features and raids that were planned (A raid on Shattrath City and the highly anticipated Farahlon zone are two major features) were axed due to time constraints or "story flow conflicts". Finally, the narrative became slightly disjointed and nonsensical midway through the expansion; while Grom Hellscream was announced and initially set up to be the final boss of the expansion, the role and theme was shifted to a demon-centric focus while Grom was "redeemed" (despite being personally responsible for all of the Iron Horde's atrocities up till just recently and having done nothing to atone for that). Part of the reason is that Blizzard actually acknowledged that people were getting sick of everything Orc related (Didn't help that Garrosh was making everything extra orcy at the end of the prior expansion either), which is definitely saying something considering Blizzard's hard-on for everything orc. The other primary factor was simply that Blizzard likely acknowledged that between the dwindling subscriber count and mounting complaints regarding the expansion, it would simply be best to dismiss WoD as a lost cause and focus on churning out the next expansion to revitalize the diminishing interest in the game.