While the majority of World of Warcraft’s community is currently on their way to level 60 in WoW: Classic, some players were eagerly waiting for the next chapter in the popular MMORPG game and its latest expansion Battle for Azeroth. That chapter is kicking off this week as 8.2.5 update goes live.
According to the news in the official World of Warcraft webpage, the new content update provides new character models for the Worgen and Goblins, introduces Party Sync, and brings the epic conclusion to the War Campaign. So here’s everything you need to know…
New character models
Worgens and Goblins were introduced as playable races in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm back in 2010. However, throughout 9 years their models became quite outdated as the older races of the game got their respective facial overhauls. 8.2.5 introduces some long-anticipated improvements for Worgen and Goblin models which redesigns their animations and faces. Nice!
Party Sync
One of the biggest new features coming to the World of Warcraft this week is the new Party Sync feature which makes it easier for friends to party up and quest together. From now on, players will be able to sync their quests with a single press of a button.
When players activate Party Sync, everyone in the party becomes aligned to the same quest state and phase. By mousing over a quest in your tracker, you can see who’s on a given quest, what their progress is, and who’s ready to turn it in. The new “replay quest” feature will allow players who have already completed certain quests to replay it with friends who haven’t, for rewards that are appropriate to their current actual level.
Party Sync will also include a temporarily adjusted level scaling which will make the old content challenging even for higher-level World of Warcraft characters.
War Campaign
The main driving force for players to return to WoW: Battle for Azeroth is the story of the expansion. Throughout the expansion, players were participating in an epic quest chain designed for each faction called War Campaign which had its fair share of epic and controversial moments involving lore characters such as Sylvanas, Saurfang, Anduin and many more. 8.2.5 brings the final chapter of that story, setting the stage for the reveal of 8.3 or even a new expansion reveal at this year’s BlizzCon.
Blizzard also made some additional efforts and ditched the level and reputation restrictions of previous War Campaign chapter in order to get everyone on the same page before the conclusion. Some internet detectives already found out that the 8.2.5 addition to the chain will bring two cinematics with a total runtime of 10 minutes which might mean that some possible story twists might be inevitable. However, what and how it will happen is still a mystery since testers weren’t allowed to peek behind the curtain prior to the release of the patch. Jeremy Feasel’s tweet is also intriguing
Other updates
As always, the new patch brings tons of balance changes, new quests, and cosmetics to collect, so there will be plenty to do in the days to come. Alliance players will be able to pursue the new Honeyback Harvester mount, raiders will get a chance to experience the new Timewalking raid, Firelands, along with a special 15-year anniversary-themed adventure Memories of Azeroth which will feature three iconic WoW bosses – Illidan, the Lich King, and Deathwing. You can learn more about every new feature and addition in 8.2.5 in the official patch notes section.
So if you’re looking for a change of pace from WoW: Classic leveling, the live game has you covered. We can only hope that the content won’t be as time-gated as the one we’ve seen in Battle for Azeroth’s cycle.
