Surprising Burning Crusade Details for WoW

Heartless Gamer writes "There is quite a few surprises waiting in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. The raiding scene in World of Warcraft is going to dramatically change once Burning Crusade is released. Here's the long and short of it: all of the new high-end raid content will be capped at 25 heads. Indeed, all the raid content that was mentioned in today's demo, with the exception of Kharazan (which is designed for 10 players) is being designed around a force of 25. Blizzard has completely done away with 40-man raiding; Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, and Naxxrammas will still exist, of course. There just isn't going to be any new 40-man content. How's that for earth-shattering?"

Comments

Re:Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always possible, but it's definitely not the focus for the Burning Crusade expansion. As we add new content to the game, it's influenced heavily by everything that we've learned from past design implementation. From a design standpoint, there is much more we can accomplish in creating smaller raid environments. From a player's standpoint, it represents a greater potential for less time devoted to downtime and also allows for easier and faster coordination.

We're still very focused on creating epic raid encounters that provide epic challange, and from what I've seen we're dead on course. So, to answer your question, there are no plans at this time to create raid environments that exceed a player-cap of 25, however, we will always evolve this game in the direction that we feel is most beneficial and on a long enough time line, it's difficult to state what's in-store.

Eyonix: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=w ow-general&t=9480853&s=blizzard&tmp=1#blizzard

And Naxxrammas is...?

[Psionicist]

For all you three reading this wondering what this is all about: An instance in WoW is a dungeon cut off from the rest of the WoW-world, sort of like a mums basement for the ubergeek. You and your friends enter an instance, and you can be completely alone in there, killing NPC-monsters (and get nice equipment) and not having to deal with those outside the instance.

The most difficult instances require up to 40 players to complete. Molten Core is a Dungeons & Dragons-like dungeon full of fire-monsters. Blackwing Lair (more difficult than Molten Core) is a place full of dragons. Naxxrammas is full of undead, spiders etc, and is probably the hardest instance atm. Chances are that previous friend of yours you haven't seen for the past 16 months run around in Naxxrammas, killing bosses such "The Four Horsement".

Of course, requireing 40 mans to complete, these instances are usually reserved for the "hardcore". Since WoW's success is because it was casual friendly, it doesn't surprise me Blizzard concentrate on 25 man stuff, that is probably easier for the casual to join in at.

Re:WTF??

[brennz]

Raiding, rep farming, and honor grinding = sums up all of WoW endgame.

Re:wow = horrible game

[genner]

Wow, how long has it been since I heard the word tank mage and UO used in the same sentence.
UO was a such beatiful game before EA got their grubby mits on it.
Thanks for reminding me how far MMORPG's have fallen.
Oh well back to Guild Wars. At least they don't charge monthly.

Re:MMORPG

[jesdynf]

Try Planetside. Not an RPG, but any game that can have three factions fight it out, 133 people a side, can't be ALL bad.