In the final installment of this Dev Watercooler series, Lead Game Designer Ion “Watcher” Hazzikostas walks you through the team’s raid design philosophy for Warlords of Draenor.

We’ve been hard at work on World of Warcraft®: Warlords of Draenor™, and today we’ve entered the alpha phase of our expansion testing. As part of this, we’ll begin using public servers to host the data, which means you may begin seeing some datamined information show up in the usual places.

This fall, the fearless heroes of Azeroth will clash against the mythic might of the Iron Horde when Warlords of Draenor launches worldwide. Prepare for the coming invasion now by boosting now* a character to level 90 with your pre-purchase of the expansion digitally.

Morgan Webb sits down with Game Director Tom Chilton, Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas, and Senior Art Director Chris Robinson to talk about the Warlords of Draenor reveal at BlizzCon 2013

Sharpen your axes! In World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, a slew of savage new challenges, rewards, and user-interface improvements wait for PvP combatants—along with a brand new world PvP zone.

Each expansion brings improvements to the dungeon and raid experiences, and Warlords of Draenor is certainly no different. Let's briefly go over some of the dungeon and raid content that we’re planning to release the day the expansion is available, and then go into some of the systems changes that will define how they're played.

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor will bring with it a plethora of new user interface (UI) improvements, from improved quest tracking to a better inventory system to new ways of storing heirlooms and toys.

A new journey lies before the heroes of Azeroth—one fraught with new challenges and new enemies, marked by great deeds both noble and destructive. In Warlords of Draenor, players will travel to Draenor—homeworld of the orcs and bastion of the draenei—before it was shattered into what is now known as Outland.

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor will take players on a journey to the savage world of Draenor to stand against a new formidable threat to Azeroth: the Iron Horde. Just step through the Dark Portal, and the battle will begin. . . .

World of Warcraft®: Warlords of Draenor™, the fifth expansion to Blizzard Entertainment’s acclaimed massively multiplayer online role-playing game, sends players to the world of Draenor at a pivotal moment in history to fight against and alongside legends from Warcraft’s brutal past.