Formerly Hardcore #16: Class Order Halls

Hello and welcome to the 16th edition of Formerly Hardcore, ZAMs column on Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. For this week’s column, we’re going to look at another announced feature of the Legion expansion, Class Orders. Rather than having our own individual spot of land like Sunsong Ranch in Mists of Pandaria or our Garrisons in Warlords of Draenor, this time we’ll have bases shared by all members of our same class. The question is: other than having people running around that aren’t NPC followers, what makes these different than Garrisons?

Formerly Hardcore #15: Adventure Mode

Hello and welcome to the 15th edition of Formerly Hardcore, ZAMs column on Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. For this week’s column, we’re going to talk about something that was talked about during the Dragon Con panel earlier this month. Quite a few extra details got mentioned that are worth note: the removal of Multistrike, Demon Hunters starting at 98, professions moving away from the cooldown-gated Warlords of Draenor model, etc. The part we’ll be focusing on however is something the developers teased during the panel: Adventure Mode. Sadly no additional details were given about what the developers meant by Adventure Mode – it was simply mentioned as something to talk about at BlizzCon. That leaves us with a couple months to ponder about what Adventure Mode means for us.

Formerly Hardcore #14: Demon Hunters

Hello and welcome to the 14th edition of Formerly Hardcore, ZAMs column on Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. Last time we talked about one of the major features coming with the recently announced Legion expansion, Artifact weapons. This time we’ll be talking about the next, arguably bigger, bullet point from that announcement list: the addition of the Demon Hunter class. For all of those players who have been clamoring since Burning Legion to play their own Illidan Stormrage, you’ll now have the opportunity to don a pair of warglaives, pick out your horns/tattoos/blindfolds, and then wreak havoc and vengeance upon your enemies in demon form.

Formerly Hardcore #13: Legion's Artifacts

Hello and welcome to the 13th edition of Formerly Hardcore, ZAMs column on Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. Last time we threw out a few predictions for what the new expansion would bring. We were right about the Burning Legion focus, but that one was a freebie given the end of Warlords of Draenor’s story. I was more surprised that my wishlist comments for a melee Hunter spec and a demon form tank ended up being true, though not quite in the way I’d envisioned. There’s plenty of features we didn’t call though, so we’ve got lots to talk about. For this week’s column, rather than doing a synopsis of Legion’s feature list (Wowhead’s already done that work for me), let’s start focusing on specific major features. In particular, this week we’ll be talking about Artifact weapons.

Formerly Hardcore #12: What's After Draenor?

Hello and welcome to the 12th edition of Formerly Hardcore, ZAMs column on Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. For this week’s column, we’re going to do some speculating. On Thursday, August 6th at gamescom, Blizzard will unveil the newest expansion for WoW. If you’re like me and there’s 15+ hours of flight between you and gamescom, they’ll be livestreaming it on their dedicated gamescom page. Now the question is: where will this new expansion take us and what changes will it bring to the game? Quick spoiler alert for those who haven’t fought Archimonde at the end of Hellfire Citadel and seen the cinematic afterwards – we’ll be talking about that right after the jump.

Formerly Hardcore #11: Timewalking

Hello and welcome to the 11th edition of Formerly Hardcore, ZAMs column on Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. For this week’s column, I’m going to be taking another look at one of patch 6.2’s features, Timewalker Dungeons. I finally had the chance to try my hand at a few of them with this past weekend’s Wrath of the Lich King Timewalker bonus event, so I got to have that blast of nostalgia while getting a little gear for one of my tank alts. I’ll also be taking a look at how the other game I’ve been playing lately, Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward, has a similar system and talk about the benefits and drawbacks of both.

Formerly Hardcore #10: Ships, Jungles and Crystals

Hello and welcome to the 10th edition of Formerly Hardcore, ZAM’s column on Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. For this week’s column, I’ll be talking about my experience with patch 6.2 so far… which has been extremely limited due to working on Final Fantasy XIV for the Heavensward review. When the forums say that it’s about 20 to 30 hours to do all of the main story quests in FFXIV before you can even start on the new Heavensward content, they’re not kidding; they also aren’t joking about the fact that there’s 70 minutes of cutscenes at the end of the 2.55 questing. For those who are interested in how all that’s going, I’ll have a review down the road as well as impressions of the new jobs once I’ve had the chance to take all of those for a spin, but for the rest of you let’s get back to Azeroth and talk about the Shipyard and Tanaan Jungle.

Formerly Hardcore #9: Patch 6.2 is Here!

Hello and welcome to the 9th edition of Formerly Hardcore, ZAM’s column on Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. For this week’s column we’ll be talking about patch 6.2, which is coming to live servers… today! Last Wednesday, Blizzard released the patch cinematic and gave a release date of Tuesday, June 23rd. Coincidentally that was about two hours after I’d already agreed to write the review for the Final Fantasy XIV expansion, Heavensward, which also comes out on the 23rd. It’s amazing how Blizzard just coincidentally keeps releases patches when other games are coming out, despite claiming not to… in all seriousness though, if I were them, I’d do the same thing.

For those of you who aren’t going to be bouncing back and forth between games, you’ll have your hands full with everything in this patch. If your guild has long since finished with Blackrock Foundry or your 5-man group is ready to have a new challenge, your wait is over. Well, unless you forgot to turn on the Background Downloader or to kick off the Battle.net launcher before you went to work.

Formerly Hardcore #8: Hellfire Citadel Preview

Hello and welcome to the 8th edition of Formerly Hardcore, ZAMs column for Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. For this column, we’re going to take a look at last week’s preview of Hellfire Citadel from the official WoW site. Patch 6.2 will be taking us back to Tanaan Jungle where we’ll be not only invading the stronghold of the Iron Horde, but we’ll be doing so against their newly fel-empowered legions of soldiers.

Formerly Hardcore #7: Itemization and Flight

Hello and welcome to the 7th edition of Formerly Hardcore, ZAMs column on Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. For this column, we’re going to take a look at a couple of articles that came out last week. The first is a new Dev Watercooler on the main site, focusing on itemization in 6.2. The second is an interview Polygon ran on Friday with lead designer Ion “Watcher” Hazzikostas about Tanaan Jungle, future Warlords of Draenor content and some major news about flying in 6.2 and beyond.