Dungeons and Dragons: World of Warcraft – Everything You Need to Know

Dungeons and Dragons: World of Warcraft was announced way back in July, as the first Universes Beyond release for the storied tabletop RPG. And just like the MMO it's based on, D&D: World of Warcraft is absolutely massive.

But while this was the first Universes Beyond release for D&D, it’s nothing new for Wizards of the Coast, with the initiative driving a huge number of Magic: The Gathering sets over the last few years. But just like the scope of the Lord of the Rings set for MTG, Dungeons and Dragons: World of Warcraft is an absolutely massive expansion, and almost feels like an entire game unto itself.

Rather than just taking the easy way out and releasing a one-off story module, Wizards of the Coast packed its World of Warcraft expansion with enough lore, dungeons, and professions that it could feasibly take you years to try everything. But, unlike WoW on your desktop, you can choose exactly how your Azeroth story will play out.

A Whole World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft has been around for 22 years on its own, and the franchise as a whole has been around since 1994. Needless to say, there is a ton of lore and history baked into the world of Azeroth. And, a huge portion of it is built into D&D: World of Warcraft.

The entire world of Azeroth is described in the book, up to The War Within. And, just like the game, each zone has a rough level range that Wizards had in mind when designing them. As Game Designer Joey Haeck says, “WoW has a starting zone for Orcs in Durotar, so it makes sense for that to be a level 1-4 zone in D&D.” Likewise, endgame zones like Northrend (at least zones that used to be endgame zones) will be designed with high-level characters in mind.

Though, this is D&D, so it’s entirely possible to just shrug off these suggestions and build your own campaign the way you want to. Haeck says, “as usual, with D&D, the power is in your hands.”

However, the expansion is focused entirely on the planet of Azeroth itself. So you won’t find the likes of Argus, the Shadowlands or Draenor here, though you can rely on your own knowledge of those worlds. Luckily, Shadowlands and Warlords of Draenor are two of the most maligned WoW expansions in history, so I’m sure a lot of people won’t miss them too much. It does mean, though, that you might have to get creative to do a campaign in The Burning Crusade’s Outland – which is just a blown-up Draenor.

But it’s not just the geography of Azeroth. Wizards of the Coast also worked in all the major conflicts that have driven the story of WoW over the years. Principal Game Designer James Wyatt listed just a few examples, like the Alliance vs. Horde campaign, the invasion of the Burning Crusade and the Scourge. The Dungeon Master’s guide will suggest you pick three of these conflicts to shape your campaign, which will then help populate the world with appropriate monsters, adventure hooks and locations.

In order to make out-of-order campaigns make sense, Wizards worked in a brilliant reference to the game to explain it: Chromie Time. As Wyatt describes, Chromie will tell you, "Look, I made a timeline just for you!”

I asked Wyatt a little more about the Chromie Time setup and he told me, “The campaign I’m playing in right now (which Joey Haeck is DMing) began with us in Silvermoon City having just helped repel Xal’atath’s invasion, but then Chromie sent us back in time to the Classic era, where we might or might not change the course of history!”

How Dungeons and Raids Work

One of the biggest parts of World of Warcraft is its dungeons and raids. And, of course, D&D: World of Warcraft is going to work those in, too. But, between D&D and World of Warcraft, dungeons are completely different types of gameplay. In the video game, you typically go in, barrel through all of the trash, nuke the boss down, loot and repeat. That doesn’t really fit Dungeons and Dragons’ gameplay.

Instead, the dungeons in D&D: WoW are environments where you’re expected to take things much more slowly. Rather than blowing everything up, these dungeons will have non-linear exploration, and you might need to talk your way out of situations, rather than relying on your DPS rotation. You might use stealth to just sneak past all the pirates in the Deadmines, rather than killing all of them.

Haeck describes some of the different ways players could tackle the Scarlet Monastery: “A sneaky party would have legends told about them, about how the Scarlet Crusade’s leadership vanished without a trace one day.”

In Dire Maul, the book gives a brief history of the dungeon, about how the ancient Night Elf ruin was overrun by Satyrs and Ogres after the Well of Eternity exploded and Fel magic corrupted the mages who lived there. The book also has a couple of example adventure hooks, where you can either go in and kill Tendris Warpwood, like you do in the actual WoW dungeon, or you can take a quest from an Ogre to install a new king.

Unlike the video game, though, there’s not much fundamentally different between dungeons and raids. After all, Wizards of the Coast isn’t going to expect you to round up 20 or 40 people for a campaign. What are raids in WoW are instead dungeons geared for high-level players, with epic boss fights. The example Wizards gave is Onyxia’s Lair – a classic dungeon from Vanilla WoW, which basically only consists of one long hallway that leads to Onyxia herself.

Each of the dungeons in D&D: WoW seem like they have infinite possibilities, and luckily the book will have a lot of them. Wizards of the Coast didn’t reveal every dungeon in the game quite yet, but the ones it did reveal look incredible.

The dungeons so far:

• Deadmines
• Blackfathom Deeps
• Dire Maul
• Scarlet Monastery
• Azjol-Nerub
• Shadowfang Keep
• Onyxia’s Lair

Putting the Dragons in Dungeons & Dragons

Of course, the other side of D&D is the dragons, and those magical flying lizards play a huge role in both the tabletop game and World of Warcraft. But, while there are definitely similarities between the two, dragons in WoW are different to how they’re portrayed in D&D. For instance, Game Designer and Writer Carl Sibley described how he tackled the design of the Blue Dragons in D&D WoW.

“One of the cool things about WoW dragons is that they hold very distinct places in lore from the places in lore that D&D dragons hold," Sibley says. "So even though there’s a red dragon in WoW, a blue dragon, and a green dragon, they’re very different than the red, blue and green dragons in D&D for instance.”

With that different lore, comes different abilities, too. For instance, while blue dragons in WoW have a similar affinity to cold damage to White dragons in Dungeons & Dragons, the Blue Dragonflight on Azeroth are also masters of the Arcane. So, Sibley describes a blue dragon’s breath attack as both dealing cold damage, but also producing an aura that’ll interrupt spellcasters.

It’s not just dragons, though. D&D: WoW’s bestiary is vast, and it covers everything from Murlocs and Imps to the Lich King, all with the same level of detail and separated by challenge rating. Naturally, Murlocs are CR1 and Arthas is CR25, and should pose a significant challenge.

The bestiary will also cover some important lore characters. I already mentioned Arthas, who seems like one of the hardest enemies in the entire expansion, but Sylvanas, Alleria, Anduin and Thrall are all here, with full stats and histories. All of those characters have also been raid fights at one point or another, and their raid mechanics have been translated over to make sense in D&D.

For instance, when you’re fighting Jaina Proudmoore, you can get frozen in the raid by letting a debuff stack up enough times, which can end up in a wipe. But in the D&D version, Jaina just has the ability to freeze a player, and follow it up with an Ice Lance that can create a huge AoE if the target is frozen. Luckily, there are some creative ways you can get out of getting frozen, like taking fire damage.

Wizards of the Coast took the same approach with all of the creatures on Azeroth that it did with the dragons. Because D&D and World of Warcraft are both high-fantasy worlds, there is a lot of crossover in the types of creatures, but the things they do are different. So whether it’s demons or the scourge, a lot of care has been given to make them feel like they come from Azeroth, rather than from Faerûn.

Professions

Crafting isn’t new to Dungeons & Dragons, but D&D: WoW is greatly expanding it by adding professions, which are a huge part of the MMO. Crafting will work much in the same way, you’ll use your tool proficiencies to gather materials through gathering professions like Fishing or Herbalism, and then use something like Alchemy or Cooking to turn those items into potions or whatever else.

In World of Warcraft, crafting works by gathering up specific ingredients to fulfill a recipe, but the system in D&D: WoW is a lot more lenient. Instead, you just need to gather up a certain amount of ingredients, measured in GP, and then craft the item you’re trying to make.

The sample rules page Wizards shared does allow a DM to have more specific recipes, like requiring 50 Stranglekelp, but they’ll have to invent and keep track of those recipes manually in the game.

What’s new for Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft, though, is that each profession will have a defined list of items they can craft. Those items, then, are gated by your proficiency in those professions, just like they would be in the MMO. You also don’t need to be a spellcaster or have arcana proficiency to craft magical items, you can be, as Wyatt puts it, “just that good of a blacksmith.”

Here are all the professions that Wizards of the Coast includes in D&D: WoW:

Gathering professions

• Archaeology
• Fishing
• Herbalism
• Mining
• Skinning

Crafting professions

• Alchemy
• Blacksmithing
• Cooking
• Enchanting
• Engineering
• Inscription
• Jewelcrafting
• Leatherworking

Reputation, Without the Grind

Anyone who’s spent a lot of time playing World of Warcraft, especially at endgame, probably has some kind of memories of endlessly grinding to max out your reputation in order to get new gear, a flashy mount or, these days, getting housing items. D&D: WoW also has a reputation system in place, but it’s much more forgiving, and won’t require you to fly around and pick up eggs for dozens of hours – if you know, you know.

From the early pages Wizards has shared, gaining reputation will do everything from making members of that faction friendly towards you to letting you gain an audience with that faction at the highest level. There are some incredible perks to be had too. If you’re exalted with The Horde, for instance, you can call on Sylvanas Windrunner or Thrall to assist you on one adventure. Finally, I can bring Thrall to the Broken Isles.

But rather than grinding, players will earn reputation naturally by adventuring. I asked Wyatt for a little more detail on how you’ll gain reputation with various factions.

“The Renown system in the Dungeon Master’s Guide increases your Renown score at a slow but steady pace," Wyatt says. "Your Renown score with a faction increases when you do something that helps that faction’s goals, which primarily means doing tasks they assign to you. So you don’t need to kill hundreds of monsters or repeat daily quests to get your Renown score up to the point where you can start gaining rewards.”

With most factions, you’ll start at 3 Renown, and you’ll become Honored at 10, Revered at 25 and Exalted at 50. Those numbers are a lot smaller than they are in World of Warcraft, but all the numbers in D&D are, and the rate at which you ultimately earn renown with different factions will be up to your DM.

Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft are both massive games in their own right, and while I’ll have to wait to go hands-on with the new expansion, Wizards of the Coast really has worked the essence of the MMO into D&D. Again, Wizards probably could have just got away with releasing a simple adventure module that teleports players into one event of World of Warcraft and called it a day.

Instead, it really does seem like the entire world of Warcraft is here for players to explore, and in ways you can’t really do in the MMO. This is just one step removed from having a dedicated World of Warcraft TTRPG, and luckily we don’t have to wait much longer to get our hands on it. Dungeons and Dragons: World of Warcraft launches on November 17, right before WoW's 22nd anniversary.