'World of Warcraft' is getting a new expansion that's all about Horde vs. Alliance

After traveling to a different planet and defeating one of the biggest threats in the universe, where do you go from there? Back to basics.

The next World of Warcraft expansion Battle for Azeroth was revealed at BlizzCon today, sending the 13-year-old game back to its beginnings with a struggle for power and resources between the Horde and the Alliance on Azeroth.

The expansion, coming in 2018, includes six new zones in Kul Tiras and Zandalar (where the Alliance and Horde will respectively try to gain new allies in the war), a new level cap of 120, new allied races, islands to explore, and warfronts to do battle on.

I was able to talk to World of Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas before BlizzCon about Battle for Azeroth. We discussed where players will be heading in Azeroth, the new races coming to the game, and what players can expect in the game's seventh expansion.

Conflict on Azeroth

After the Horde and the Alliance worked together to stop the Burning Legion in its tracks, simmering tensions that had been pushed aside in the face of the biggest threat to Azeroth began to bubble up again. Skirmishes and conflicts continued to build between the two factions until they are thrown into all-out war once again.

"In a lot of ways the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance is something that is the beating heart of the Warcraft franchise," Hazzikostas said. "It goes all the way back to its very origins in the real-time strategy days in the '90s — Warcraft: Orcs and Humans."

The original Warcraft game that kicked off the series in 1994 pit the humans of Azeroth against the invading orcs from the planet Draenor. As the franchise continued, the opposing factions grew to include more and more races, who only set aside their hatreds of each other when a huge threat loomed overhead.

In Battle for Azeroth, the factions are locked in battle and need to find whatever help they can get to break the stalemate.

"That leads the Alliance to go seek out the potential allies in Kul Tiras, and the Horde to turn to Zandalar and the trolls there," Hazzikostas said. "Both of them have mighty navies and you as a champion of your faction are part of an initial vanguard that's making contact with them and trying to reach out and enlist their aid."

New discoveries

There are six new zones across two new continents to level up in: Kul Tiras and Zadalar. the Alliance will venture to seafaring kingdom of Kul Tiras — the home of Jaina Proudmore — and the Horde will head to the island home of the Zandalari tribe of trolls.

Along with these new zones, there will be ten dungeons opening up around Azeroth, one raid zone, a PvP battleground called the Seething Shore off the coast of Silithus, and a couple new arena maps.

Battle for Azeroth will also include explorations of islands and warfront activities, as well as bring in new allied sub races.

Island Expeditions take groups of three players out to the islands that dot the Great Sea in order to gather resources and make new discoveries. The objectives are constantly changing and you won't know what you'll be heading into each time you venture out.

Warfronts are large-scale battles on the homefront in key strategic locations like the city of Stromgarde in the Arathi Highlands. These PvE conflicts involve 20 players working together to build up forces, siege areas, and defeat enemy commanders.

As each side works to build their strengths in Battle for Azeroth, players can reach out to other sub races that have been seen in World of Warcraft before, including the Alliance's Lightforged draenei, Dark Iron dwarves, and Void elves, and the Horde's Highmountain tauren, Nightborne, and Zandalari trolls.

Once players play through the quests and story of each of these sub races -- which in a sense act as an epilogue to the main storyline -- they bring them under their faction and unlock those sub races as playable characters across their account. They're more of an award that you can unlock, and players have to be high-level to unlock them. Because of that, characters created in those sub races start at level 20.

Leveling changes

Along with new content, World of Warcraft is improving how some of its leveling systems work before the expansion even comes out.

In Legion, the game introduced level-scaling for its new content, meaning that you could go to any of the new zones and the enemies, quests, and rewards there would scale to your level, o you could go through it in any order you wish.

Level scaling is coming to the rest of Azeroth in a patch coming out before the expansion. All zones will have level scaling that has a minimum and maximum range so that you can continue storylines in those zones without losing out on experience because you're too high of a level.

Additionally, early expansions will have level scaling ranges that allow you to pick which areas you really want to play through. Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King content will scale between levels 60-80 so you can skip all of Burning Crusade if you want to. Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria will scale for levels 80-90.

For players interested in diving into everything new but haven't quite reached the appropriate level with a character, the expansion includes the ability to boost one character to level 110. Ding!