The Battle for Azeroth (BfA) is the next major expansion of the World of Warcraft. I got into the BfA Alpha/Beta and I'll be reporting what I hope to be useful information in this thread.
- The Battle for Azeroth is scheduled to go live on 8/13/18 at 3PM Pacific Time.
- There will be an 8.0 pre-patch on Tuesday 7/17. Hopefully this will cover the transition from Legion to BfA.
Gear item levels have been squished. On the Beta you can create new 110 characters which start out with a full set of item level 185 gear.
Character copy is now up on the Beta and my hunter got squished from 957 down to 236. Legendaries went from 1000 to 265, and my Artifact Weapon went from 978 to 231. Interestingly, Golganneth's Vitality (the Path of the Titans trinket) went from 1000 to 280 so this would be your best piece of gear and likely the last piece replaced. Mastery and Haste gems went from +200 to +9 and the same thing happened to enchants. Overall my Agility went from 48k to 1200, Stamina 99k to 1459, Health from 5934k to 29k and armor from 3473 to 553. Percentages for Critical Strike, Haste, Versatility, etc. are slightly lower.
Artifact traits on your artifact weapons are removed starting with the 8.0 pre-patch. Any special effects that legendaries currently have will be disabled once you reach level 116.
There are two new
continents in Azeroth: Kul Tiras is the starting zone for the Alliance and Zandalar is the starting zone for the Horde. (Hopefully the pre-patch will explain how the new continents have been hidden all these years).
Following a couple of quest chains, Alliance members end up in the Harbormaster's Office near Tradewinds Market in Tiragarde Sound. There is a planning map on the wall which allows you to pick one of three Alliance starting areas:
Tiragarde Sound,
Drustvar or
Stormsong Valley. Picking one of the three areas will give you a starting quest in that area. Once you have completed questing/exploring in an area, you will need to return to the Tradewinds Market to choose another area. The areas scale to your character level so the order in which you choose them doesn't matter.
Horde characters start out in Dazar'alor in Zuldazar. Similar to the Alliance, there is a planning map on the table where you will be able to pick one of the three Horde starting areas:
Nazmir,
Vol'dun and
Zuldazar.
You will be able to level your character(s) from 110 to 120. It requires 717,000 XP to get from 110 to 111 and 831,450 to get from 111 to 112. After that it increases slightly by 6,900 XP for each new level (subject to change).
You will gain XP by exploring, completing quests and killing things. There are a
lot of quests. You will need to complete at least two of the three areas (and close to 500 quests) to get to level 120. You can also gain XP from dungeons but only four dungeons can be used for leveling, the rest open up at level 120.
At level 110 you can join the Alliance War Campaign. This will direct you to the Horde's territory on Zandalar and you can complete quests there to establish a foothold for the Alliance. Subsequent War Campaigns cover the remaining two Horde zones and they open up at level 114 and 118. The completion of each campaign will award a follower so the war campaigns need to be done at some point. Note that these initial war campaigns are not PvP battles since horde players don't seem to be present.
At level 116, you become eligible for Island Expeditions. The first of the Island Expeditions is just a training run. After that you may queue up for a PvP version where you attempt to collect 6000 Azerite before the Horde does.
As you level in your three zones, some 10 percent of the quests will award gear. You likely will be able to reach around item level 285 by the time you reach level 120 (and you will have replaced
all of your Legion gear). Occasionally BoEs will drop from kills. Unless you want to jump into dungeons and raids, I would recommend that you continue to complete quests in your three zones once you reach 120 as the best gear awards can be earned at 120 (a few of them around item level 300).
Opening treasure chests will drop "Campaign Resources", a currency which is used to send your followers on missions. The mission table for the Alliance is on the ship Wind's Redemption in Tiragarde Sound.
Once you reach 120 and if you're friendly with the various factions, world quests open up and you will be eligible for all the dungeons (provided your item level is high enough). You also get a flight master's whistle.
World quests are very similar to Legion's in that you can complete three or four Emissary quests to gain rep with a given faction and to receive a reward.
When BfA goes live, you will be given a quest to meet up with Magni Bronzebeard in Silithus who will give you a neck piece, the Heart of Azeroth. The Heart of Azeroth starts out at level 280 and is upgraded with Artifact Power which you can obtain from certain quests and by killing rares (which may also drop gear). At various levels, your Heart of Azeroth will unlock new traits on other pieces of gear (helm, shoulder and chest). You will be able to choose the traits you want in a manner similar to the Netherlight Crucible.
Azerite Armor is a special type of armor (usually a quest award) that has a blue border around it. So you may want to replace your Legion gear with the Azerite armor even if the item level is lower.