This week we get a peek at what may be Hearthstones next adventure and take a look at World of Warcraft Patch 6.1.

The Next Adventure

The folks over at Hearthead have datamined a new Hearthstone patch that’s sitting on Blizzard servers which may shed light on what could be announced at PAX East in just a few days. The data includes three new card backs and an achievement. The three card backs are named Molten Core, Ragnaros and Golden Celebration. The new achievement is called “brm presale.” Those familiar with World of Warcraft will tell you that the names of these card backs and the achievement name “brm” have something to do with Black Rock Mountain and/or its Molten Core raid zone of which Ragnaros is the final boss.

The last adventure, Curse of Naxxramas, was of course based off the Naxxramas raid zone which could be the case here with Molten Core. It’s likely that whatever this new content is is another adventure and not a full size expansion since Goblins vs. Gnomes is still relatively new.

The Ragnaros card back is linked to being a season reward most likely for March. In the past these card backs are earned by reaching rank 20 or higher before the end of a season. The Golden Celebration card back is probably an award for some sort of one year celebration as Hearthstone will turn 1 this month.

We’ll certainly know more in the coming days as announcements are expected at PAX.

Patch 6.1

The first major patch for Warlords of Draenor is now live and while it doesn’t introduce a lot of new content like a new raid or dungeon it does offer quite a bit of quality of life changes along with a bunch of class tuning. Blizzard released this Patch 6.1 survival guide. Check it out for a quick look at what’s inside this patch.

A large chunk of the new content introduced comes in the way of new Garrison missions and quests, and the continuation of the legendary questline.

Spoiler warning!

Completing this new leg of the legendary quest will award the first legendary follower, Garona Halforcen. She comes with a unique Master Assassin ability that greatly increases the success chance against all targets.

Once your Garrison reaches tier 3, one of five visitors will swing by every day offering a quest for you to complete. These can range from defeating raid or dungeon bosses to new quests out in the world. Completing these quests offers a variety of rewards and achievements. Once these quests are complete you’ll unlock new missions for your followers. Players are encouraged to visit other players Garrisons as they could have a different visitor than you on any given day.

Speaking of followers, a new Garrison vendor is now available who sells items that will allow you to reroll traits and/or the abilities of your followers. These items are sold for Garrison Resources. Followers can now have their item level increased to 675.

Another notable additions to this patch is the new Heirloom system. This essentially adds onto the existing collection system with a way to store and access all heirloom items across your entire account. No longer do you need to mail items to and from your alts. Along with this new way to manage Heirlooms players are now able to buy Heirloom gear with gold that cost Justice and Valor points prior to Warlords of Draenor. These vendors also sell items that allow you to upgrade Heirlooms to work at higher levels.

A small, long overdue feature that is being added is a new Death Recap window in the UI. Now when you die you’ll have access to a breakdown of what lead to your untimely demise.

Darkmoon Faire is getting a bunch of new rewards and a new racing game. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to try it out as Darkmoon Faire hasn’t been in town since the patch launched. I’ve always enjoyed Darkmoon and love to see it constantly getting updates.

Lastly, if you’ve been purchasing gear with Apexis Crystals there’s good news! You’re now able to upgrade your Apexis gear up to item level 670.

As I said this patch doesn’t offer a tremendous amount of new content but rather lot’s of quality of life improvements - from professions to submitting multiple work orders in your Garrison at once. There seems to be a lot of negativity around the fact that a large quest hub that was thought to be coming with this patch is completely absent. In the past most major patches shipped with a hefty amount of content in the way of new quests or raids but obviously not in this case. There is a chance that this could be a good thing, though. We know Blizzard has stated several times that they have been amping up their team so that they can create and ship content much faster than before. This could mean we’ll be seeing more patches this expansion cycle than we have in the past with some patches being less meaty than others. If this is the case then I welcome the change with open arms. I would love to see separate patches tackle quality of life issues and adjustments from player feedback on a separate cycle so that they may hit realms faster than the major content releases. Time, as often the case, will tell.

What do you think about Patch 6.1? Let us know in the comments below!