Blizzard announced the future of World of Warcraft and WoW Classic at BlizzCon 2023, including the next expansions and upcoming updates. The special thing: some of the new features sound like they would actually fit better in Diablo. In the interview, MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus confirmed this assumption.
What features are those?
- World of Warcraft will get the new feature of Warbands with the next expansion “The War Within”.
- Warbands connect all your characters and allow them to share reputation and bank slots, so you no longer have to exchange certain items painstakingly through the mail. Collecting transmog will also become easier.
- In WoW Classic, alongside the upcoming Cataclysm addon, is the “Season of Discovery” – essentially Classic+, even if it’s not called that.
This is how the games become more similar: Warbands group your characters and their bank slots together. This means: you share almost everything, like in the “stash” in most Diablo games and Diablo-likes so far. Each character has access to the same bank.
In an interview with Morgan Day, I asked the Associate Game Director if this shared usage also applies to gold and materials. The answer: Yes, both the material bank and gold will be shared. Even currencies are supposed to be exchanged more easily.
Instead of painstakingly searching for an NPC and having to mail items, you can exchange most currencies directly through the currency window, of course at an exchange rate. By the way: soulbound items remain soulbound. What you can exchange is henceforth called “warbound” (and yes, the pun is intended).
In WoW Classic, Blizzard now wants to experiment with what happens when players are given special abilities for a certain time. For example, warlocks will be able to tank, and mages will heal. It’s not exactly like that in Diablo, but there are also special abilities that can enable purely seasonal builds.
That was my impression after the opening ceremony:
For many, Mythic+ was already considered the first step
WoW and Diablo have been getting closer for years, at least according to the players. When the mythical keys, or “Mythic+”, were introduced back then, quick comparisons with the Greater Rifts from Diablo 3 arose.
The features are very similar: you run through a dungeon with affixes that become increasingly difficult depending on the level. Loot is only available at the end. The difference was only that Diablo had more random aspects, while WoW eventually had optimal routes.
With Diablo 4, the ARPG has even come a bit closer to the system of World of Warcraft. There are now real dungeons, which are still randomly created, but at least follow a certain pattern. The affixes are now also tied to keys.
The announcements for Diablo and World of Warcraft were well received at BlizzCon 2023, especially in the hall where the crowd was quite loud. The highlight, at least if I take the persistent ringing in my ears as a benchmark, is the upcoming expansion saga of World of Warcraft:
World of Warcraft announces 3 new expansions, reveals the next mega plot
