WoW; 5th expansion Warlords of Draenor

Breath_of_the_Dying said:
From what I heard, those that take the 90 boost will be in a separate starting areas than those that normally made it to 90. In this area, you have to prove your worth before you can continue the leveling process.

I think thats a fine compromise. Boosting any character to 90 will give you an overwhelming amount of abilities to learn at the same time, there should be a place to just hone in those skill before further introducing you to more skills.
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They made come comments previously around Blizzcon that indicated they may be reducing the number of total abilities people have to juggle.

Part of me thinks this a bad idea to keep dumbing things down, but the other part realizes that juggling ~13 important ability/trinket cooldowns on my DK tank in a competitive guild was a pain in the ass :eek:

Yoshiyuki Blade said:
Heh. If Blizzard goes where the money is, why don't they release retro servers then? Since according to this guy, people will reactivate in the "millions."
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Grass is always greener. If Blizzard launched "classic" servers, people would clear the raids then be totally bored. The classic stuff is fun when it is a niche thing to do, but not everyone wants to go back to 40 man raiding and wiping for a month straight to clear a boss. Personally I loved that shit, however the playerbase has moved on.
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
Heh. If Blizzard goes where the money is, why don't they release retro servers then? Since according to this guy, people will reactivate in the "millions."
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Well, like he said, releasing retro servers would admit defeat, and Blizzard will never admit they are doing something wrong.
 
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One of the biggest online games ever and still raking in the money after being out for how many years? How are they wrong? Why do they need to admit defeat? A lot of people might not like the changes but obviously there are plenty of more people out there who still enjoy the game.

I mean it's obvious my warlock not being a raid boss anymore is a great injustice to the game but I have flying mounts now so it's an acceptable trade off, in my opinion of course. :)
 
Seelenlos said:
One of the biggest online games ever and still raking in the money after being out for how many years? How are they wrong? Why do they need to admit defeat? A lot of people might not like the changes but obviously there are plenty of more people out there who still enjoy the game.

I mean it's obvious my warlock not being a raid boss anymore is a great injustice to the game but I have flying mounts now so it's an acceptable trade off, in my opinion of course. :)
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Well they've lost a massive amount of subs and they are still bleeding them monthly. Its a serious concern for them if they want it to remain popular. People will eat shit but only for so long.

In my opinion Flying Mounts as a whole ruined world PVP. Having everyone nailed to the ground made the entire experience a bit more fluid. I understand the thought process but ultimately it ruined some of the "open" world aspects of the game.

Blizzard is desperately trying to find that "spark" all over again and hopefully this fifth expansion will help find it. But I doubt it , I think WoW has really run its course. Its had 10 glorious years and lots of fond memories but that old world MMO model doesn't work anymore. Check out the most recent MMO corpses or soon to be corpses for proof.

If I ever feel like playing an MMO though , WoW is the MMO I will play.
 
Seelenlos said:
One of the biggest online games ever and still raking in the money after being out for how many years? How are they wrong? Why do they need to admit defeat? A lot of people might not like the changes but obviously there are plenty of more people out there who still enjoy the game.

I mean it's obvious my warlock not being a raid boss anymore is a great injustice to the game but I have flying mounts now so it's an acceptable trade off, in my opinion of course. :)
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I guarentee you if they made BC servers they would get most if not all of their lost subscribers back. But if they did that, it would be an admission to their shortcomings of the new content they created (MoP) aka Kung Fu Panda: Pokemon Edition.

I really think they should do it. There would be money to be made and as we all know, Blizzard is all about making as much money as possible , however possible. Weather it be alienating a fanbase or making a goofy spinoff title.
 
What was WoW's highest point ? I think middle of Wrath era around 2009, with 12 million subs or so. Now in 2013, the Fall quarter, I think it's down to 7.6 million subs. And I am sure this Spring, with WoD still not out yet, that number will be far lower.

But...keep in mind 7 million + subs is Fucking AMAZING numbers for a game that's 10 years old already :eek: This isn't a new game, it came out, way back in 2004, a decade ago. And still has several million active paying subscribers ten years later, that's unbelievable.

Shit, most new MMO's say they would love 1 million subs, and can be successful at that 1 million mark. WoW is seven times that number, and this game is still crazy successful cash cow for Blizzard a decade later.
 
I really don't understand the obsession with vanilla WoW. I was there - and it sucked. Massive faction imbalance between horde and alliance progression because of shaman being inferior in every way to paladins outside cleansing totems and the windfury totem - not that you were able to even use it because Horde did not have Blessing of Salvation (permanent reduced threat generation). Many of our failed progression attempts were due to the fact our DPS could literally not do any more damage because of hitting the threat cap, meanwhile our alliance counterparts were having little problem with the same encounters.

The general class mechanics were unrefined, some class specs were utterly broken / useless (survival hunters, shadow priests outside of being a mana battery). Paladins were known as the "only need one hand to level" class due to how little interaction they required. Actually raiding on a paladin sucked because blessings only lasted 5 minutes, meaning you'd have to renew buffs in the middle of a fight. Tanking was hardly as interesting as it is today in terms of resource and cooldown management - most of the really powerful cooldowns were either 30 minutes or an hour like shield wall, meaning your next 4-5 attempts would not have that cooldown if you used it.

Reagents on skills were an unnecessary annoyance (and throwback to Everquest). Rep grinds that took literally months (original light's dawn and the druid faction in silithus). I literally spent all of molten core and the first half of BWL being an "out of combat rezer" that would hang out on the edge of the fight and resurrect people that died (this was before the entire zone went in combat on a boss fight). I could go on with the annoyances and mechanics they fixed over the years.

I do miss the rare class sets from vanilla and their corresponding questlines. Working your way up from random blues -> blue class set -> raid epics is something I miss in terms of progression. Now it's just hit max level, run heroics / LFR and get welfare epics that require significantly less effort than the dungeon sets did. Also agree that flying mounts really hurt world PVP - except that most world PVP at this point involves some massively overgeared /overleveled guy ganking lowbies.
 
Krenum said:
Well, like he said, releasing retro servers would admit defeat, and Blizzard will never admit they are doing something wrong.
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It shouldn't matter when they're supposed to be the money grubbin' shell of a game company lead by the one and only Bobby Kotick. Who could resist the idea of millions coming back with their wallets if such a move was made?

I'm not inclined to think that they think that way. Hell, look at the removal of the AH in D3, that's also a way of "swallowing their pride and admitting they got it wrong" (gotta love that wording BTW :D). Then again, this video is a little dated so the guy probably had a different idea of Blizz at the time.

I liked the spontaneous PvP from back in the day too, but I don't long for those days to return exactly as they were. The game should move forward, not backward. People liked some aspects of the past, so why not focus on that and only that, moving forward? The guy made some great points about how spontaneous PvP happened as a natural consequence of shared, unprotected quest hubs, which I completely agree with. But then he went on about retro servers, which I totally disagree.
 
Krenum said:
I guarentee you if they made BC servers they would get most if not all of their lost subscribers back.
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Youre waxing nostalgic. You forgot all the bad things about BC. Blizzard wouldn't get hardly any subscribers back because it would be a novelty at best. No new content, old inconveniences that you have long forgotten about, and old game mechanics like rep grinds REQUIRED for certain aspects of the game wouldn't be able to hold a player base that is used to the new engine and the things included with it.

Lets take a look at what you forgot about.. Once you hit 70, then what?
  • Scryer or Aldor grind.
  • Run dungeons with the associated rep to earn a key for a heroic.. thats right, you can't queue for a heroic at 70, you had to spend hours and hours and hours to get a key. ***YOU CANT EVEN QUEUE.. you have to spam trade for a group.*** MORE FUN.
  • Want to raid? Have fun attuning yourself for Kara. Do you remember how long that took?
  • Want to fly? Better save up your gold. 1000g for a basic slow flying mount was very hard to come by back then. 3500g was almost an insurmountable amount. Most average players didn't have fast flying because it was just too expensive. Don't forget that you had to buy your mounts and skill on each toon too.
  • Got a new weapon in a dungeon? Slap that baby on and start owning face. Wait.. why the fuck am I missing every swing? Thats right, you haven't used that kind of weapon since level 10 and you never bothered leveling it. Now you get to spend literally hours swinging it around to level your ability to use it. So much fun!
  • Playing a hunter? Make sure to pack up that ammo. Same goes for rogues and poisons.

I could go on and on and on, but just remember that there ARE vanilla and burning crusade servers out there. Some of them give you as close as an experience as you can get without it being a legit server.. and guess what? They are empty. People (myself included) get SUPER EXCITED at the idea of bringing back the glory days. I spent hours downloading and installing the burning crusade private server client (for the most popular burning crusade server.. with a whopping 3200 players!). For the first 30 minutes I went around Azeroth looking at all the good things that the game didn't have anymore and enjoying seeing the things I remembered. After that 30 minutes, I uninstalled the game I just spent hours downloading because the novely completely wore off. If you search around and ask people who have played on these servers, they will give you almost the same story as me because its so easy to remember the awesome times we had in BC, and just as easy to forget the things that have changed since then that made wow the amazing game it is today.
 
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All of the above.


People always remember the awesome stuff.....downing bosses in 40 mans, getting epics etc. They NEVER rember the hell it was to get to that point.
 
lloose said:
*Snip*
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I fully agree with this. Nostalgic notions simply rule this argument. People are done with WoW and BC. You can emulate servers and BC if you so wish and those that do hardly make up millions of lost subs.
 
lloose said:
I could go on and on and on, but just remember that there ARE vanilla and burninsade servers out there. Some of them give you as close as an experience as you can get without it being a legit server.. and guess what? They are empty.
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You played Emerald Dream? It's far from empty, there is a que to get in a lot of the time. I also played on the Feenix Warsong server and that is pretty full too. I personally enjoy the challenge and the grinds from vanilla wow and many others do too. I'm more of an old school gamer though and not a fan of the trend of instant gratification these days.
 
Drakenfeng said:
I really don't understand the obsession with vanilla WoW. I was there - and it sucked. Massive faction imbalance between horde and alliance progression because of shaman being inferior in every way to paladins outside cleansing totems and the windfury totem - not that you were able to even use it because Horde did not have Blessing of Salvation (permanent reduced threat generation). Many of our failed progression attempts were due to the fact our DPS could literally not do any more damage because of hitting the threat cap, meanwhile our alliance counterparts were having little problem with the same encounters.

The general class mechanics were unrefined, some class specs were utterly broken / useless (survival hunters, shadow priests outside of being a mana battery). Paladins were known as the "only need one hand to level" class due to how little interaction they required. Actually raiding on a paladin sucked because blessings only lasted 5 minutes, meaning you'd have to renew buffs in the middle of a fight. Tanking was hardly as interesting as it is today in terms of resource and cooldown management - most of the really powerful cooldowns were either 30 minutes or an hour like shield wall, meaning your next 4-5 attempts would not have that cooldown if you used it.

Reagents on skills were an unnecessary annoyance (and throwback to Everquest). Rep grinds that took literally months (original light's dawn and the druid faction in silithus). I literally spent all of molten core and the first half of BWL being an "out of combat rezer" that would hang out on the edge of the fight and resurrect people that died (this was before the entire zone went in combat on a boss fight). I could go on with the annoyances and mechanics they fixed over the years.

I do miss the rare class sets from vanilla and their corresponding questlines. Working your way up from random blues -> blue class set -> raid epics is something I miss in terms of progression. Now it's just hit max level, run heroics / LFR and get welfare epics that require significantly less effort than the dungeon sets did. Also agree that flying mounts really hurt world PVP - except that most world PVP at this point involves some massively overgeared /overleveled guy ganking lowbies.
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It's just the opposite now. Horde have an easier time progressing because of all their damage racials. While alliance have worgen with damage racials and thats about it. However, it wasn't anywhere near what the imbalance was in vanilla. Horde also was the better PvP faction in vanilla due to having shaman.

Shadowpriests weren't mana batteries until TBC. Then every raid group needed at least two. Until you got to funwell and the damage cap they had, (I could do maybe 1850-1900 dps) just meant maybe one shadowpriest went to the Brutallus fight. You know the one where your guild stacked warriors/rogues/warlocks because you needed to average 2200 dps or something like that.

I don't like the instant gratification either. That all started back in TBC as well. I remember we were had cleared BT shortly before SWP came out and then from Isle of Queldannas you could get gear on par or better then T5 gear. Content that was much harder then dailies.
 
WoD release in July;

There will be another PVP season in MoP, so that means at least 20 - 25 weeks until WoD release, after that new PvP seasons starts.

Let's say the new PvP season starts late January / early February, add on 20 some weeks, which is 5+ months. That would put WoD release in July, and I have heard that an early Summer release has been rumored for a long time. I would bet on July being very realistic. Plus that gives them a 5 - 6 month Beta test, if the beta starts soon, and averaging all expansion betas, they range from 4 to 6 months.
 
I really concur with what has been said - there was a LOT of annoying crap in previous eras of WoW. I love the change to account-based achievements and rewards for instance - I hated say...having to grind Argent Tournament on every bloody character to get certain rewards/pets etc. Since so much of the game was grinding faction/daily etc.. it was pretty much a punishment for anyone who liked having an alt. I'm so glad they've made some changes, and they seem to be on the right path.

I also hope that next gen MMOs like WildStar learn from early WoW's mistakes and move forward, implementing stuff like account-wide achievement progress from the start.
 
To me the secret to WoW's success, is that there was always something to do. If nobody from your guild was on, you could still work on skills, gather materials, work on reputations, or even just RP for a while.

I have played a lot of MMO's, and all of them (except WoW) was missing one of the above. Some were prettier, some had great new features, some had a huge lore to draw from. The only one to hold my attention for YEARS, was WoW.

Why don't i play WoW anymore? Because they made it too easy. They invalidated all of the work that went into earning some special achievement.

I am in the Wildstar beta, and we'll see if they have learned the key to a great MMO with staying power. Unfortunately, while i have the game installed, i cannot play ATM because i am on the road. But once i get home, i am going to be spending some serious time determining if it is indeed the "next big thing."
 
spugnor said:
I am in the Wildstar beta, and we'll see if they have learned the key to a great MMO with staying power. Unfortunately, while i have the game installed, i cannot play ATM because i am on the road. But once i get home, i am going to be spending some serious time determining if it is indeed the "next big thing."
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please LOWER the expectations..i too was in beta...deleted off the hard drive and won't be buying it...you WILL get sick of the telegraph system...its almost like its placeholder art for more detailed graphics to come..LOL..its like constantly being aware of your shadow...and the cartoon graphics wear on you too...after playing detailed human characters that display fantastic gear in other mmo's, the non human characters in wow/wildstar just doesnt grab me anymore....ymmv


and I've concluded that going back to wow after not having played for years, is like having sex with an ex-girlfriend you haven't seen in years...its fun for a few hours and then it hits you why you split up in the first place !!!! LOL..and you say your cordial goodbyes...curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought him back

enjoy beta wildstar..let us know what you think
 
I would bet on this. The earliest we see WoD release is this June, the latest is August. I expect Beta to start in Feb / March, and last maybe 4 to 5 months.

Blizz said there will be one more PvP season, and those on average last 18 - 22 weeks, and WoD should release weeks or a month after that season has ended. So that would mean approx 5 to 6 months from from the start of the new PvP which is supposed to start very soon.

So pencil in July / August release for Warlords of Draenor.
 
I've been in most of the WoW Betas for each expansion, and regardless of how long they drag out the beta for, they launch with a crap load of problems and balance. I would much rather see them do something like Guild Wars 2 did and just launch and then frantically fix problems on the fly. GW2 was hot fixing the game multiple times a day for the first few days, and fixed a remarkable number of problems in that time.

I really think Blizzard just drags out betas as long as humanly possible to keep dangling a carrot in front of the players.
 
Zorachus said:
So pencil in July / August release for Warlords of Draenor.
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MoP Beta was in Feb/March, released at the end of September that year. They won't release before the geeks are back in their dorms, no way a summer launch. Burning was January, Wrath was November, Cata was December, and MoP was September. I still think its going to be a Blizzcon release of WoD(October). They can afford to wait with Diablo 3 RoS out soon. ;)
 
SnowBeast said:
MoP Beta was in Feb/March, released at the end of September that year. They won't release before the geeks are back in their dorms, no way a summer launch. Burning was January, Wrath was November, Cata was December, and MoP was September. I still think its going to be a Blizzcon release of WoD(October). They can afford to wait with Diablo 3 RoS out soon. ;)
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Blizzcon is only every odd year, so most likely no Blizzcon this Fall.

And some of Blizzard's biggest game releases have been in the summer. Diablo l & ][, and StarCraft.
 
Warlords of Draenor: Raids will be non-linear
http://wow.joystiq.com/2014/02/12/warlords-of-draenor-raids-will-be-non-linear-wherever-possible/

Varied layouts, but aiming for nonlinear where possible. Highmaul layout resembles Firelands; Blackrock Foundry more like ICC.


This is great news, for me Firelands and ICC are my fav Raids in WoW. I still run them weekly for Transmog drops and Mounts. And I can't stand SoO I HATE that Raid. Only one boss option at a time, if you wipe on that boss, you can't walk around and try another boss, your stuck on that one and only boss. SoO doesn't feel open and free, feels too much like on rails and forced.
 
lloose said:
I wonder how LFR will work with non linear.
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Good question. I think you'd have to run the entire Raid then ? Not just 4 bosses at a time. But maybe won't be as large as linear Raids like SoO that has what 16 bosses total, or Dragonsoul with like 9 bosses. Maybe the WoD Raids will be a little smaller, with just like 6 or 7 bosses ?
 
Zorachus said:
Good question. I think you'd have to run the entire Raid then ? Not just 4 bosses at a time. But maybe won't be as large as linear Raids like SoO that has what 16 bosses total, or Dragonsoul with like 9 bosses. Maybe the WoD Raids will be a little smaller, with just like 6 or 7 bosses ?
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Well, maybe they'll just be broken up into each portion similar to MoP raids now on LFR (overall, a good decision in my mind), but all portions will be designed so you can choose the order in which you wish to fight the bosses. Choose any of these 4 in any order, that's Part 1. Part 2 has 6 bosses, choose the order you wish.

The only thing I wish is at least a little bit of linearity (maybe you have the choice of boss A, C, and D in any order you want, but you have to beat A to get to B, C to get to E, and D to get to F), just so that ever raid isn't just isn't a "we drop you in a room with X doors, behind each is a boss" layout. Ah well. I'm pretty sure they'll put a good bit of thought and design into it all.
 
I still run Firelands weekly, it's one of my fav Raid's in all of WoW.

The cool thing with Firelands is how wide open it is, you can chose to do several different bosses at first. You can't go straight to the end boss, that is somewhat linear on the final 3 bosses, but the first 4 bosses are completely open to you, and Firelands can be wandered around at free will.

Just don't see how you can break up a place like Firelands, and change it to be linear ? That would rune the whole fun of it. The whole theme is being wide open, and players choosing where to go.
 
lloose said:
I wonder how LFR will work with non linear.
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They're saying, "more like ICC," which sounds like it may be wing-based where you have your option of the starting bosses of a few wings. If so, they could break it down by wing in LFR.

I suppose it's a waiting game to find out more information on that piece.
 
nrok45 said:
I enjoyed the first tier of cata with the whole elemental theme which I thought was pretty cool. Firelands and Dragon Soul just didn't mesh as well as I thought it would with the beginning of the xpac.

Something that I can't stand about WoW since Cata including MoP has been a lot of re-skinned models like mounts and npc's.

When I played Wrath and I first saw the proto-drake and frostbrood mounts I was blown away by how awesome they looked. Now eveything is just a lot of reskinned models with a different name.
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while I enjoyed the theme of firelands (well quite in 4.2), i didnt enjoy the gameplay cata had. I mained a lock at the time, and they just flat out ruined that class. I was woking a 2nd shift job, and was no longer able to raid the decent hours with the guild i was in. So i was using dungeons for my valor after work. The time it took to get one dungeon done and getting 1/3 the valor that people were getting in the same amount of time for doing older raids of the expansion.

Alot of people give flack to LFR but its awesome for what i like. I like being able to come in at 1am and finding a group to raid with and still getting a chance at decent gear to do harder stuff if i get the chance.
 
Neb said:
Mythic is not an extreme challenge mode above (current) heroics, they stated that it's equivalent in difficulty to current heroics. Unless I've read your post wrong, in which case please disregard :p

Current heroics = WoD Mythics

They locked it at 20 to tighten the tuning even more, so that there isn't an imbalance that sometimes happens between 10 and 25 man raids. Separate 10 and 25 man lockouts come with their own set of issues, I personally prefer the flexible setup and I'm looking forward to seeing how it works out in the new expansion.



That may be the case in MoP, but from what they've said during Blizzcon it seems they want dungeons to be a significant part of the story-line and leveling.
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As long as heroics dont take freaking forever to complete like they did in cata. Its a bit retarded to sit in que for 30 minutes as a dps, then spend another 30 minutes clearing the dungeon. and getting very little reward for the effort.
 
Zohar78 said:
As long as heroics dont take freaking forever to complete like they did in cata. Its a bit retarded to sit in que for 30 minutes as a dps, then spend another 30 minutes clearing the dungeon. and getting very little reward for the effort.
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60 whole minutes? Kids these days with their multi-realm dungeon queues and 30 minutes clearing :rolleyes: :p

Perhaps you've forgotten about the days of TBC heroics? Hell, some nights as a tank I was lucky to have it only take 60 minutes to get a group together for the daily heroic.
 
Not sure why they even made the MoP raids linear - I remember them making such a big deal about when they overhauled a majority of the older dungeons into wings due to high levels of positive feedback.

Being able to pick and choose boss order in ICC, Blackwing Descent and Firelands really helped morale. "Well we're stuck on this boss but at least we can go try this different one for a while", versus "Now we've gotta spend the next 2 weeks looking at X because we're no where close to getting it". Also helped break up the repetitiveness, just slightly.

On heroic length - anyone level an alt lately? I recently did Lower Blackrock Spire for the first time in like 5 years and I completely forgot how epic / long that dungeon was. Group wasn't bad and it still took over an hour to clear all the bosses. Ironically it felt way more 'heroic' than any of the 'heroics' I've done in years.
 
if i recall correctly, the first 4 bosses of icc was linear, then it opened up into wings and pick and choose. I especially remember the first couple tiems wiping on Saurfang and that was regarded as basically a dps check for the rest of the raid.

How non linear would work for lfr and such is while being opened, there comes certain unspoken "rules/paths" that become norm. Some big guild will figure out the quickest or easiest path, and thus the sheep will follow.
 
That'll do Blizzard, that'll do.

orcF02.jpg
 
The orc female no longer looks like a vegetable staring into vacant space.
 
In keeping with my tradition, my rogue will be changed to an Orc female with the expac. Unless the trolls are significantly changed.
 
lloose said:
They are changing all of the old models. Why would they give a free change?
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I remember reading that Blizz is going to keep the source look when updating. There was nothing stating any free changes.
 
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