Blizzard Entertainment unveiled the Warlords of Draenor cinematic on Thursday, August 14 at 9:15am PDT (12:15pm New York). Gamespot streamed the event.
In addition, Blizzard launched the “Lords of War” dramatic short animation.
Blizzplanet member @dperschonok attended the Ace Theater to witness this event courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment. Follow Blizzplanet on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for updates.
Transcript
Female Narrator: Ladies and gentlemen please welcome Chris Watters.
Chris Watters: Ladies and gentlemen of the Horde and the Alliance alike. Welcome to Warlords of Draenor Worldwide Cinematic Premiere
Chris Watters: I want to thank all of you here in the Ace Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles for coming out today and all of you for tuning in and watching online. My name is Chris Watters. I can usually be found talking about games, playing games, generally celebrating how awesome games are on gamespot.com. But today I’m here; we’re all here to celebrate one awesome game. World of Warcraft has touched millions of people all around the world and y’all were not the only people lining up for an event like this today; in China, in Korea and at Blizzards booth in Cologne, Germany at GamesCom, hundreds and thousands of you have all come out to see what blizzards has to offer. It’s gonna be a great show in addition to the Warlord of Draenor Intro Cinematic…
(Crowd Cheers)
Chris Watters: We’ve also got a brand new animated series that delves deep into the lore of World of Warcraft.
(Applause)
Chris Watters: We’re gonna talk with World of Warcraft developers about all the new features you can expect once Warlords of Draenor goes live and of course Blizzard Legends Mike Morhaime and Chris Metzen are here.
Chris Watters: It’s gonna be a great show so let’s kick it off in earnest. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Blizzard’s CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime.
Mike Morhaime: Hello everyone, I wanna thank you all for coming. I wanna thank everyone on the stream for tuning in; you guys are a great crowd. Uhm, as many of you know, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the original Warcraft: Orcs and Human strategy game. And the 10th anniversary of World of Warcraft.
Mike Morhaime: We’ve all made some awesome memories together, created close friendships and shared some great times playing these games over the years. And that is the big reason why we are really excited about Warlords of Draenor. This expansion takes World of Warcraft back to the roots of Warcraft. You’ll explore the Orc homeworld and establish your own base of operations as you fight for the future of Azeroth. Two of the designers on the game, Ion Hazzikostas and Brian Holinka, are here and they’ll talk more about what you can expect from the expansion. We also have Chris Metzen here to debut some really cool stuff for you. Chris will get into the legendary characters and events that formed the foundation of this fantasy world that we are all part of. That’s all coming up along with the date when the next chapter of World of Warcraft will go live.
Mike Morhaime: And without further ado I’d like to turn the show back over to our host Chris Watters.
Chris Watters: Alright, we’re gonna get set up for an interview just a second here but first I want to hear from you folks in the crowd how many of you are here standing strong, representing the Alliance?
(Applauses and boos)
Chris Watters: Well I guess that also answers my next question, how many of you here are running with the Horde?
(Applauses and boos)
Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you Alliance. Alright, please join me in welcoming to this stage World of Warcraft developer Ion Hazzikostas and Brian Holinka. Have a seat guys. How about this crowd guys?
Brian Holinka: Pretty packed up.
Ion Hazzikostas: This is incredible; this is like a little mini BlizzCon in the middle of Los Angeles on a Thursday morning. How about that?
Chris Watters: You see this woman over here? She’s got full face paint, fangs…
Brian Holinka: Awesome. Whole getup.
Brian Holinka: We saw this guy here at Tuesday at 1 pm, so…
Chris Watters: Tibs
Brian Holinka: Yeah Tibs… Yeah
Ion Hazzikostas: Applause
Chris Watters: Alright gents. Aww let’s get into it here but first give the folks aww a little bit of touch point for what you do at Blizzard, what your work on World of Warcraft consists of…
Brian Holinka: Sure my name is Brian Holinka and I’m a Senior Game Designer at World of Warcraft, aww specifically I spend most of my time aww working on PvP. I think some people here like PvP right?
Ion Hazzikostas: Yeah, my name is Ion Hazzikostas, I am one of the lead game designers on WoW, aww watcher on the forums and on twitter and yeah I do a bunch of different things; uhm work with the Dungeon and red teams, make the encounters the game and a little bit of systems and class stuff here and there but yeah super excited to be here.
Chris Watters: Right on fellows, well every time there’s an expansion for World of Warcraft it’s a chance for people of all levels to dive back in, to chase new loot, to chase new levels, aww but I don’t know if any of you… if this resonates with any of you out there but it can be a little daunting for some of those of us who are more modestly leveled, shall we say? But in Warlords of Draenor you guys have introduced a level 90 boost. It’s gonna sort of address that and help folks out. Can you talk to us a little bit about it?
Ion Hazzikostas: Yeah sure, we are definitely aware that a lot of folks are in that boat. Maybe not the people sitting right here, I know you guys are all hardcore level 90’s. But maybe you wanna switch, maybe you wanna switch characters, maybe you wanna switch mains coming into the expansion. So we wanna make sure that when you get Warlords of Draenor, when you log in to face this new adventure you can really jump right into Draenor. You don’t necessarily want to find yourself at level 73 at Grizzly Hills and you’ve got a lot of ground to cover before you get there, so no matter what, when you have Warlords of Draenor you’ll be able to boost one of your characters to level 90 whether it’s a brand new character or an existing and you’ll find yourself facing the dark portal with this new adventure laying ahead of you and as you go through and have your initial assault on the dark portal. We have a structured experience, kind of a little bit like the old Death Knight starting starting experience where we’ll pare down your bars, make sure you only have a few buttons initially so you’re not necessarily overwhelmed by a new spack or if you’re coming back to the game after many years, you know, changes that have happened while you were away, that as you go through the adventure, as you progress on your initial mission things will unfold, things will unlock, you’ll get new abilities, you’ll get new talents and next thing you know it you are ready to take on Draenor.
Chris Watters: Excellent, so easing folks in for when they wanna jump into the deep end?
Ion Hazzikostas: Pretty much
Chris Watters: And so when, when I’ve you know, I’ve rolled my new Draenei paladin, I’m rolling out there level 90 boosted, what is my character looking like? What kind of stuff am I bringing along?
Ion Hazzikostas: So yeah that’s one of the really exciting things about this expansion we’ve finally taken the time to go back and update all of our character models from vanilla, uhm as well as you know, the Draenei’s since they are such a prominent race that you are going to find in Draenor. We’ll be getting to the other ones in the very very near future. Uhm, but yeah so all new, all new high def looks, at the same time you also might notice that we’ve cleaned up people’s bars a little bit, we recognize that over, you know many many years we’ve kind of added and layered on abilities that were often a little bit redundant, maybe not strictly necessary and we really kind of wanted to streamline, get back to the basics, the core of what each class is; also give us some more room to add cool things in the future, because at some point once you have all your keybinds and all you action bar space full, there’s nowhere to go from there.
Chris Watters: So really gearing up for a fresh start and sort of a new chapter in the World of Warcraft?
Ion Hazzikostas: Exactly.
Chris Watters: Alright, well speaking of Warcraft, I’ve mentioned before that I work for Gamespot and about 20 years ago, a little less I was visiting Gamespot and downloading a free demo for Warcraft II and I think I played that so much, got so wrapped up in that RTS Awesomeness — I still have the “zug zug” and “In your name” like lodged back into the back of my Blizzard brain. So imagine my delight when you guys are kinda bringing that RTS gameplay back into Warlords or Draenor.
Ion Hazzikostas: Yeah you get a little bit of that from the Garrisons; definitely putting the Warcraft back in the World of Warcraft. Uhm you know your mission on Draenor is to take on, to take down the Iron Horde, and as mighty a hero, as mighty a champion as you may be having felled the Lich King, Deathwing, all these great enemies, even you can’t handle that on your own; you need an army at your back and that is your initial mission really, to establish a base, an outpost and raise the army that will help you take down the Iron Horde. And in so doing really you are claiming a plot of land, building it up, making a number of choices along the way. Whether you want a lumber mill or a stables, whether you want and armory or a mage tower and those choices are going to shape your adventure through Draenor and really give you a way to kind of customize, level up and have this feeling of hey! This is my base and I own a part of it.
Chris Watters: Cause we all want ways to feel more powerful, don’t we? Building up that Garrison? Does that sound good to you guys?
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: Alright, well I wanna talk to you a little bit now Brian because while building up my Garrison and marshalling my friends to go on and take on the AI nefarious demons that await us…
Brian Holinka: Laughs
Chris Watters: aww it may be very satisfying. Sometimes you just want to suit up and go head to head with another player.
Brian Holinka: Yeah
Chris Watters: In Ashran the new PvP realm, that’s what we are gonna be doing?
Brian Holinka: Absolutely. You know Warlords or Draenor is a very exciting time for anyone who likes PvP and World Warcraft. Bring a lot of new changes, a lot of new features. Things like skirmishes back into the fold. There’s really more to do as a PvP player on World of Warcraft than ever before. And a big part of that is Ashran, when we were thinking about features for Warlords of Draenor that were PvP oriented, we were like you know, we didn’t wanna do, we have arenas and we love arenas and they are really cool for going in there and pitting your abilities against someone else, when battlegrounds where players can feel part of the Alliance or the Horde and battle for, you know Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch; and that structured stuff is really fun but wanted to kind of bring a new type of PvP content. Something that feels like World PvP you know, in the World of Warcraft. So we wanted to set out and make a PvP playground a place that you know that if I didn’t want to do arenas, I don’t want to do battlegrounds, but I want to just kinda go out and beat some heads, there’s a place for me to do it. And that’s what Ashran is; it’s an island it’s off the east coast of Tanaan. It’s kind of isolated there but it’s an old ogre city and civilization. It’s kind of fallen into ruin. The Alliance and Horde have kind of retreated there following the raid on the dark portal. And are kind of regathering their strength there. So Horde base is on the north side and the Alliance base is on the south side. And what do you know? You put the Alliance and the Horde on an island and it doesn’t go so well like…
Chris Watters: I’m shocked
Brian Holinka: So there’s this massive tug-a-war going on between the Horde and the Alliance kind of pushing between the two bases. It’s one of the most epic, huge fights you’ve ever seen. Our beta people have just been flocking to it. Huge fights, really awesome stuff kinda harkens back to the days when Alterac Valley used to go on for four, five days, used to spawn those epic units. All that kind of stuff is kind of coming back and you know if you don’t necessarily want to jump into that ### (13:03) gameplay around the outside of the island we have these four different little areas. They’re kind of themed in different ways, they’ve got different creatures there that you can kill and slay. You can earn things from artifact fragments, which are kind of the Ashran’s currency. You can use that currency to go buy different things for your team, for yourself and it kind of provides the opportunity for that roaming five men PvP group to get a comeback into the fold. So it’s really cool, it’s something brand new that you’ve never experienced before, but you know any time we do something like that we don’t want to, you know out of our realms are like mostly Horde, mostly Alliance; so we are using some of our most recent technology to say “oh Tichondrius is mostly Horde,” OK, we’ll grab them and we’ll pit them against another server that’s mostly Alliance — so they will be coming together in Ashran. So for the most part the population will be well balanced and it will be a good experience for everybody.
Chris Watters: Sounds pretty good to me.
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: Now when you hear Brian talking about kind of stuff, you can sort of go off to beaten paths and earn different… purchase new things and unlock different abilities. You said there were playgrounds earlier. You guys are getting a little bit playful in the kinds of abilities you’re allowing players to flex in Ashran.
Brian Holinka: We’ve just unleashed our designers, two guys, Chris Kaleiki and Morgan Day, on just like being super created with everything that’s in there, because there’s one thing about world PvP is kind of finding other ways to have an advantage, you know whether you’re you sneaking know up on somebody or you’ve just found that item that is the awesome item. That’s really one of the classic parts about World PvP, and so what players can do is one of the cool things that they can find on some of these monsters out there are these special tones that are particular for your class and they give your class kind of a limited time buff that’s a little crazy like you don’t want these in arena believe me. You know the things like priests their levitate spells that makes them fly off the ground for a while and cast spells and heal and the Paladins can lay down judgement on their enemies and send them to the faction prison, aww where the aww… and on beta, on beta we have these guys RPG-ing they were called the Jailors of Ashran. And they just hung out in those jails and every time somebody would show up they would aww inflict punishment on them, lay down judgement. So aww, very cool, very cool stuff.
Chris Watters: And you know for all that punishment that you’re inflicting, for you know, all those very great sort of power moves you’re pulling. There’s glory in victory, there’s honor but is there some extra loot you can maybe gain from the process as well?
Brian Holinka: Well, you know. Ashran is an opportunity for us to rewrite the rules and so one of the things we are doing different is that — artifact fragments, that currency we were talking about before… You kill another player? You can loot half their Ashran fragments.
Audience: Cheers
Brian Holinka: So you’re basically looting players, yeah. So it brings a whole new dynamic to world PvP in Warlords of Draenor.
Chris Watters: Brian it sounds like you’ve got a whole lot of excited people for PvP realm.
Ion Hazzikostas: Ha ha
Brian Holinka: I guess people are happy about that, yeah. You guys wanna loot each other.
Chris Watters: PvP of course always been a part of the beating heart of World of Warcraft, as has lore and with Warlords of Draenor gives you guys a chance to explore sort of new realms and new parts of lore but one of the things that’s coming back around in a big way is that old dark portal. You guys, we’ve seen the dark portal for years now, sorry “THE DARK PORTAL”.
Brian Holinka: Ha ha.
Chris: We agree
Brian Holinka: You have to say it like that.
Chris Watters: You have to say it that way. That’s my bad folks. Aww, Ion can you tell about the role of the “dark portal” in Warlords of Draenor?
Ion Hazzikostas: Yeah it’s kind of a big deal. Aww I mean really going all the way back to you know, the Warcraft II expansion it was called Beyond the Dark Portal for a reason. The dark portal is the first thing you’re going to see when you log into Warlords of Draenor. It’s both the first threat that is posed to you and posed to Azeroth as a whole and your first objective. Uhm even though you know this is happening in Draenor distant world, there’s a very immediate existential threat which is that the Iron Horde lead by Grommash is going to march their forces and their weaponized armored gronn and their siege machinery right through the dark portal and just lay waste through the entirety of Azeroth, Stormwind, Orgrimmar, all of it and it’s up to us to stop it.
Chris Watters: Yikes
Ion Hazzikostas: Exactly. Not so good. So the very first thing that you do is going to be embarking through the dark portal on something of a suicide mission. Just sabotage it and shut it down. SPOILERS: you don’t actually die.
Chris Watters and Audience: Haha
But… and then from there you’re winning the initial battle but certainly far from winning the war. You’ve bought yourself some breathing room… a little bit of time by shutting down that imminent invasion. But you still need to raise that army to work on Draenor, to defeat the Iron Horde and stop that threat from actually being realized.
Chris Watters: And now this invasion, I mean that sounds a lot like one of these world events that you guys are fond of kicking off your expansions with. Am I right folks?
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: Can you tell us a little bit about aww sort of how you’re presaging Warlords of Draenor to sort of being released into the wild?
Ion Hazzikostas: A little bit of that. Yeah, we’ve done some fun stuff in the past, you know, zombie plague, things along those lines. It’s always nice to throw a little twist. Uhm, so yes, so what we’re gonna doing in the 6.0 patch before Draenor itself unlocks is having basically showing you this initial vanguard, this initial Iron Horde threat that this first incursion through the dark portal that’s basically laid waste to Blasted Lands. Netherguard Keep is now in ruins and the Alliance and Horde is now scrambling to understand this new threat, to understand what’s happened and kind of rally their forces into response. And you’re a part of that first group that’s sent to investigate to learn what happened there. At the same time, what’s also going on is that an initial part of this force has made its way to Upper Blackrock Spire to rendezvous with a certain Warlord Zaela, with whom you have some unfinished business. Aww, from Siege of Orgrimmar perhaps. And that’s gonna to be a max level dungeon in Warlords of Draenor. However, as part of the prelease event, ahm we’re gonna have a special level 90 preview version of that available for a limited time only, where you can go into level 90 new Upper Blackrock Spire and fight your way to the first half of the dungeon, get some relevant loot and prepare yourself for Draenor and get a taste of things to come.
Chris Watters: Sound good.
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: Ion I think you’ve probably sold them all here already. But like let’s talk a little bit about Draenor as a world. This isn’t the first new world that has been introduced to World of Warcraft but with each new expansion, with each new world you bring, you’ve gotta carve out a new niche for it, you’ve gotta distinguish it and give folks something new. Can you tell us a little bit about what sets Draenor apart from the other worlds they’ve explored?
Ion Hazzikostas: Yeah, I mean for us it was just a chance to go back and explore what this world would have been like, what ruined it and turned it into Outland not ocurred. It’s the birthplace of the Orcs, it’s the home of the Draenei, it’s a chance to explore these civilization and these societies at their height. And while there is some familiar kind of nostalgic callbacks to players who played the Burning Crusade, it’s ultimately a brand new world built from scratch, from the ground up. You know there is a zone called Shadowmoon Valley, but it’s not the Shadowmoon Valley you might remember from outland, where there is fel fire raining from the sky and Illidan standing atop of his Black Temple telling you how unprepared you are. This time around it’s you know, rolling green hills with eternal twilight skies, as shadowmoon cultists conduct dark rituals under stonehenge-like monuments. Like totally, totally different vibe, and that’s just a taste of what the world has to offer. We are really excited to have, you know realized this; our artist, our environment team doing an incredible job of putting this world together. We can’t wait to share it with you all.
Chris Watters: Can you guys wait to get into that?
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: Alright. Ion Hazzikostas, Brian Holinka, thank you gentlemen so much for hype-ing us up about Warlords of Draenor; getting into the nitty gritty of what it’s all about. Alright, let’s hear it for them folks.
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: Now, all that stuff Ion and Brian were just talking about, you’re gonna get a glimpse of it a little bit later in the show. You’re gonna get a look at garrisons, what they look like, how you can customize them, you’re gonna get a look at Shadowmoon Valley looking positively peaceful, as Ion was saying. And you can check out all the new environments of Warlords of Draenor. That’s coming up in a little bit; But first, remember I mentioned a new animated series, deep-delving into the lore of World of Warcraft?
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: It’s time to that in action, but I’m not the guy to introduce that to you. That guy is a Blizzard Senior Vice President of Story and Franchise Development. Please welcome to the stage, Chris Metzen.
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Metzen: What up?
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Metzen: Thanks guys. Good morning Los Angeles. How’s everybody doing?
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Metzen: Excellent, excellent. Guys thank you for being here with us this morning. Aww, I wanna get some too, Horde where you at?
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Metzen: Alliance let me hear ya! Proud defenders of Azeroth. Guys we’ve got some cool stuff in store for you this morning. Aww, you know it’s not every day we get to debut one of these cinematic intros. It’s, it’s actually… I think today is the first time we’ve ever done a community event to roll out one of our cinematic. These cinematic are near and dear to our hearts, especially the intros, obviously not only do they kind of set up the framework of the story, the characters, the conflicts, you know, the vector of the adventure to come, but we also, just personally we love these cinematic because they’re kind of the spirit of the imagination. They got the whole experience moving and I think, I hope that they show the tender love and care, the passion and craftsmanship that we try to put into our products. So, we’ll get to it in just a moment. I hope you guys love it like we do. But before we get to it, we brought aww, something aww, a little additional today to set it up. I want to ask you guys a question. How many of you, last year, saw “The Burdens of Shaohao?”
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Metzen: Excellent, so over the years, aww we would build the products; we kind of construct the story that flows to the expansion sets. Our story developers usually wanna run a little deeper, get into the characters’ back stories and kind of bridge the products together. We love telling the stories, and often we’ve done that over the years through novels, comics, manga, graphic novels; things like that. And we love that stuff, but with Shaohao we kind of took this new vector and we created uhm, kind of this, aww serial sequence of animation, kind of rough illustrative style, like an animated story book. And we loved it, we loved making it. It seemed like people like it a lot uhm, and the fact that it’s kind of just these little free pieces of animation to watch. It went out far and wide on you know, YouTube and wherever else. Aww, it cast a very wide net. We have a lot of people that have a lot of fun with their product. So based on Shaohao, we looked at Warlords of Draenor. We thought, well, what can we do? What kind of animation can we produce? Uhm, wow, and kind of be able to take people back to this era of Draenor and express and explain some of the back stories of certain of these warlords; kind of get in their heads. Kind of, you know, illustrate what makes them tick, what are they motivated by, why are they such rotten bastards that we need to bring to justice. So I’m very happy to show you guys this morning, actually, the first episode of Lords of War. This episode aww, features one of our warlords, aww, a dude by the name of Kargath Bladefist.
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Metzen: And it’s kind of funny. It strikes me that, aww, Kargath aww, and a number of his buddies aww were created — These characters, aww, oh my God, almost twenty years ago. I don’t know how that’s possible but what that means is, most World of Warcraft players have never met these guys, have never done quests with them or fought with them or you know, kind of, you know, taken them down as raid bosses. So this series right in its heart really wants to you know, take you inside these characters and show you why you should, why you want to face them and bring them to justice as we said before. So guys, without further ado, I’m very pleased to present chapter one of “Lords of War.”
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chapter One: Lords of War
Vindicator Maraad: King Varian. The hour grows late. You must sign the Declaration of War.
King Varian: I was just a child when my father rushed to confront the same evil. He didn’t understand these Warlords at all. That mistake cost him his life, and brought this kingdom to ruin.
Vindicator Maraad: You are not your father.
King Varian: I know. But how can I succeed where he failed?
(Vindicator Maraad slams his hammer on the table, scattering the human soldier and orc figurines in all directions.)
Vindicator Maraad: You can start by trusting my counsel. I have faced them before.
King Varian: On Draenor. You were there. All those years ago.
Vindicator Maraad: Yes. Believe me. They are not invincible.
King Varian: Then tell me of them, Maraad. Tell me everything.
Vindicator Maraad: Very well. Kargath had no clan. He was raised a slave. The ogres’ cruelty was intolerable. So he sought a way out. The Arena. One hundred orc lives was the price for freedom. Fight. Kill. Salute.
Kargath was unstoppable. And the day of his final fight had come. One last kill, and it was over. One hundred lives. Kargath had earned his reward. Like every champion before him… buried below the Arena. The promise of freedom nothing but a lie. But Kargath would be chained no longer.
(Kargath shattered his hand with a rock to set himself free of his chains, then threw the rock to other orc prisoners.)
Kargath: Take your vengeance.
Vindicator Maraad: Bound by vengeance. Their name would be spoken in fear. This was the birth of the Shattered Hand.
Chris Metzen: Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that. As you can see the age of the whimsical panda, sadly, is over.
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Metzen: The warcraft world of old is back, it is as savage as ever. We have four more episodes of Lords of War. Uhm, they’re going to be debuting over the next number of weeks. Aww, we’re not aww featuring every warlord in the series, uhm just very pivotal ones, uhm, that really affect the way, aww, the story is gonna play out in the game. Uhm, but we wanted to give you guys a sneak peak. Aww, it’s some of the visuals, uhm, of the rest of the series. You’ll kind of get a sense of aww, kind of where it goes and how epic, aww, it feels. So without further ado, take a look at the teaser for the rest of the series of Lords of War.
Audience: Cheers and applause
Showing teaser for remaining Lords of War series…
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: You guys looking forward to more Lords of War?
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: Learn more about this rogues gallery back here? Yes please. Alright, so I mentioned before, after the interviews, that you’re gonna get a look at Draenor in action; a look at all new areas; a look at the garrisons; a look at the PvP madness of Ashran. That happens now… enjoy.
Audience: Cheers and applause
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Metzen: Well guys, the time has come.
Audience: Yeah…
Chris Metzen: …to see the cinematic you’ve come here to see. Aww Super excited.
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Metzen: You know guys and in, in so many ways uhm, warcraft is so much more than a game. You know we’ve set out twenty years ago to build you know, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans; and it’s been this crazy. Aww I don’t know, sometimes it feels like a runaway train ever since. Twenty years of developing and idea and how amazing it seems to see some of these ideas come around again and feel new. But warcraft is so much more than just a game; it’s a community. Where, where’s Tibs out in here? Dude, this guy’s first in line repping last night. That’s crazy commitment. All of you, your commitment of being here and kind of celebrate this moment with us is really what it’s all about and I really can’t express to you how inspiring it is to be here for events like this. Things like Blizzcon and to be able to hear you, hear the passion. Uhm it really just stokes us up and fills our tanks and uhm, I can only tell you we’re working hard for you. We’re listening; we’re giving this thing everything we’ve got. So thanks again for being here and just being part of this community.
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Metzen: Thanks guys.
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Metzen: So, Warlords of Draenor. It’s a weird story right? Aww, I remember when we announced to BlizzCon aww, in that big room. You got people going “huh?” You got some people going “yeah”, right? Time travel, Star Trek, all that weird stuff; all the worries; all that “where are you guys taking us?” You’re in good hands. It strikes me though that the fundamental idea that really sets up the fiction of Warlords of Draenor, tracks itself all the way back, something like… thirty-odd years in the past of Draenor; a specific moment in history where the orcs came together and they struck a deal. A deal signed in corrupted blood. A deal that would shape the destinies of two worlds, and in a way history is coming around again, uhm, perhaps you’ll see it aint gonna go the way it went before. So while that sounds cryptic, you’re about to get your first glance at the beginning of Warlords of Draenor.
Gul’dan: Drink Grom Hellscream. Claim your destiny. You will all be conquerors.
Grom Hellscream: And what, Gul’dan, must we give in return?
Gul’dan: Everything.
(Grom throws the corrupted blood to the ground.)
Mannoroth: … You would reject this gift? And did you bring these mongrels here just to watch you die?
(The Iron Horde begins to siege Mannoroth with fireballs)
Garrosh Hellscream: Now!
(Mannoroth launches a fiery ball at a nearby catapult. Grom then tries to align the catapult toward Mannoroth and launches the rotating bomb. Grom jumps through the explosion, and stabs Mannoroth on his forehead with Gorehowl. As Mannoroth’s body contorts and begins to explode, Garrosh runs and pushes Grom away from the fel explosion’s path. Garrosh sets Gorehowl free from Mannoroth’s skull and throws it at Grom, who catches it. Garrosh approaches Gul’dan, who lays on the ground)
Gul’dan: This was not our destiny.
Grom Hellscream: Times change…
Grom Hellscream: We will never be slaves… but we will be conquerors…
(View changes to the construction of the Dark Portal)
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: Hahahahahahaha ha. How awesome was that?
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: yeah… whoohee…
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: I don’t know how Blizzard does it every time but they do it every time.
Audience: Cheers
Chris Watters: That was incredible. Alright ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here first. Warlords of Draenor, launching on November 13th, 2014
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: That’s just a few days after Blizzcon. Any of you all going to Blizzcon?
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: I had a feeling. But you don’t have to wait until Blizzcon to get more awesome Blizzard stuff. Right now in Germany at Gamescom, the biggest European gaming convention, Blizzard Entertainment is there running a lot of cool stuff out of their booth. They’ve got news, they’ve got interviews, they’ve got contests and more. So, head on over to blizzard.com/gamescom to get all that stuff about Warlords of Draenor, Heroes of the Storm, Heartstone and Diablio III… Whuw, it’s been quite a show wasn’t it folks?
Audience: Cheers and applause
Chris Watters: Thank you all for coming out again on behalf of my colleagues at Gamespot and the incredible team here at Blizzard. Thanks for coming and have a great day.
Audience: Cheers and applause
**Blizzplanet: Special thanks to Allishia for the transcript.
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