Now that the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Battle for Azeroth, has settled into its stride a little more, we’ve seen content roll-outs from raids to new game modes that hark back to yesteryear. A prime example of this is the new WoW Warfronts mode that mimics Warcraft III and pits players of the Alliance and the Horde against each other in a more strategic sense than the usual PvP gorefest. Our WoW Warfronts guide will help you wrap your head around what the mode is, how it works, and what you can get from it.
WoW Warfronts BfA Guide: What are Warfronts?
As the name suggests, you’re going to be on the frontlines of the Horde versus Alliance war effort, though not in the way that you’re already familiar with. The comparison to Warcraft III comes from the fact that you’re going to be doing a lot of base-building, soldier-training, and resource-gathering to keep the enemy faction at bay; it’s not all about going to town on them with Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker.
Players will work alternately with others on a wider scale to collect resources special to the Warfronts mode. Once they’ve done this, the next phase of the mode activates which will allow players to queue into an assault mode with 20 friendlies where you’re able to actually wage the war that you’ve been preparing for against enemies. Let’s make it clear — this won’t be PvP content. Not just anyone can take this on for size, though. You will have to be ilvl 320 and also at max level (naturally) to queue for these Herculean feats of warmongering.
WoW Warfronts BfA Guide: How WoW Warfronts Work
Warfronts will operate on a set cycle of conquering and defending. One faction will “own” a particular region, and players of the other faction will try to undermine that ownership and control by amassing items and special War Resources in order to prepare to overthrow the controlling party.
Once the underdog faction has set up its attack strategy and has the means to rush the faction that’s in control of a particular region, they queue into that particular Warfront to take part in the bloodthirsty side of this affair. This queue will pop you into a new type of Warfront instance where you fight bosses of the opposing faction along with grunts.
Once the attack has been carried out, the assaulting faction violently wrests control of the Warfront from its previous controlling faction. When this happens, special mobs will spawn and to the victor goes the spoils (read: achievements and rewards) of efficiently seizing control of enemy territory. This giving and taking of control in a region operates in a controlled, cyclical manner; just because the Horde loses control of an area doesn’t mean that they can’t win it back the week after. In fact, it’s gamed so that the assaulting faction always prevails. The war is a neck and neck affair after all, and it’d be a little anti-fun if servers that had a factional imbalance were held captive to a particular world order just because of the nature of Warfront participation.
From what we know so far, players have a five-day period to amass War Resources before the challenging faction gets a week to queue for the Warfront. Rewards and rare spawns won’t follow regular weekly reset timers; Warfront is its own dangerous beast. There will also be a special World Boss in the form of an Azerite War Machine that the victorious faction gets the honor of challenging for a limited time. Once the enemy faction storms the gates, all bets are off.
WoW Warfronts BfA Guide: Rewards
In terms of rewards being offered for this game mode, we’ve got the usual gamut of max level incentives which appear in the form of rare mounts and achievements. This isn’t anything new, but if anybody loves collectibles, it’s WoW players. The rare mobs that spawn after a Warfront victory will be able to drop specific mounts. Luckily, we won’t have to shell out a pretty penny for them unlike our efforts to obtain the coveted Brutosaur. The two mounts that stand out as most symbolic of factional domination are the Broken Highland Mustang and the Swift Albino Raptor, which can be tamed by the Horde and the Alliance respectively.
There’s also a bunch of fancy gear in the vein of each faction’s main aesthetic to be picked up. Be prepared for plenty of rust-red gauntlets on the Horde side and silky blues and golds on the Alliance side. You can get this special Warfront armor by winning Warfronts, and you can get the same armor more than once a week. Other ways to pick up the special armor include fighting rare spawns, killing the World Boss that spawns, and through RNG when you find yourself faced with a Warfronts Equipment Cache after winning your first Warfront for the week.
It wouldn’t be WoW without everyone’s second favorite thing after mounts: achievements. You’ll be able to snag yourself a nice handful of achievements for recruiting different Warfront troops, capturing all the available locations, simply completing a Warfront, and fighting enemy bosses. Not bad for a week’s worth of work, aye?
There’s currently only one Warfront available in the Arathi Highlands for everyone to duke it out over. However, the upcoming patch 8.1 is going to reportedly add another which will focus on the aftermath of Teldrassil lighting up quicker than shrimp on the barbie. Now that you’ve got some war smarts under your belt, get out there and crush it, soldier. Victory at Stormgarde awaits us all!
