More Lich King Details, Apologies For Burning Crusade?

1up is hosting content from the most recent edition of Games For Windows magazine. The front page of that august publication features the grimacing face of Arthas, poster boy for the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion to World of Warcraft. The article inside has a bunch of new details on the game update, as well as a lengthy discussion with Blizzard's Chris Metzen on the first WoW expansion, Burning Crusade. Some of Metzen's comments along those lines are a bit surprising: "'It had a lot of high-concept ideas, high-concept environments,' he says, calling to mind the psychedelic mushrooms of Zangarmarsh, the tragic majesty of Tempest Keep, 'but other than some really nice moments, there was nothing really personal about it.'"

Comments

august?

[gEvil (beta)]

The front page of that august publication features the grimacing face of Arthas...

File this under "old news." We're already in October, Zonk. Sheesh... : p

Re:august?

[QMalcolm]

sarcasm /srkæzm/
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
2. a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark: a review full of sarcasms.

Re:august?

[WillAffleckUW]

august /aw gus t /ln augustus - fr auot
-month
1. referring to the month when people should stop wearing white in summer
2. referring to the month when people should stop quoting thing
3. a time when the Lich King will take your soul for pubbing silly asides that have nothing to do with WoW

Re:august?

[Anonymous Coward]

That dude not only got a Month named after him, but his own frickin' adjective? Who was "megalomaniacal" named after?

Re:august?

[Goaway]

And what does that have to do with the comment at hand?

Re:august?

[Brian Gordon]

The summary said "august" not "August".

Re:august?

[ultranova]

the Lich King will take your soul for pubbing silly asides that have nothing to do with WoW

So put your soul into a phylactery and the phylactery into a bank vault of a Swiss bank. As a nice side effect you'll lose weight, your voice will get lower and sexier, and your looks will improve, increasing your sex appeal - at least if you're a typical Slashdotter.

There's not that much different between your parent's basement and a crypt, you know.

Re:august?

[Goaway]

Yes, and that would be a "pun", not "sarcasm".

Re:august?

[WillAffleckUW]

Parent's basement?

I think I've had my dad stay in my attic, but my son has his own bedroom, and there is no basement in my townhouse.

High concept

[Protonk]

Too bad, I liked Zangarmarsh. Much more fun to lvl there than Terrokar Forest or HFP. Even blade's edge and Nagrand seemed to be a little uninspired. The first zone i liked after Zangarmarsh was Netherstorm.

Re:High concept

[Kris_J]

I agree. I really enjoyed Zangarmarsh and happily played my (herbalist) druid through it without getting frustrated and feeling a great need to switch to an alt for some fun. The quest density was amazing; Just fill your log to the brim and kill anything and it counts. And those Sporegaar dudes are so cute.

Re:High concept

[fractoid]

Zangarmarsh was OK, Hellfire had some nifty tricks early on (bombing run anyone?) but in the end was just Badlands 2.0, Nagrand was OK but for gods sake, enough with the "kill 30 raptors" and "bring me 25 raptor wangs" quests! Blade's Edge was just far too painful to get around without a flying mount, I guess the quests there are meant to be done for gold for your epic flying mount. At least they showed a small amount more variety.

Re:High concept

[tsm_sf]

I thought Nagrand was beautiful. Nice to have a well-lighted open environment in a video game instead of the usual son-of-Id toestubbers. The sky reminds me of a Wyeth, and the floating 'islands' are a nice touch.

Re:High concept

[UnknownSoldier]

A blue swamp is still a swamp!

Re:High concept

[shalla]

I hated Zangarmarsh and found it rather boring and somewhat depressing. If you weren't an herbalist or druid, there was nothing to do there but kill naga and bog lords. Zzzzzzzz. Thanks for the useless rep.

I thought Hellfire had a much more interesting mix of quests, as did Netherstorm, and the quests in Blade's Edge and Shadowmoon required more cooperation and less boring grinding.

Not an apology

[Tridus]

What a silly title. Its not an apology. Metzen's said that they wound up not liking how Illidan was just off in the Black Temple, and he doesn't really matter throughout most of the content.

They want a more personal experience in Lich King, in the sense that Arthas will be more in your face. Think Pathaelon the Calculator, who you keep running into as you level in BC. They want Arthas to be more visible and more interesting, rather then off in the background most of the time.

I view it as a good thing. They learned a lot from BC, and that should make for a better expansion this time.

Re:Not an apology

[KevMar]

It dont matter much to me. I just auto accept every quest then look up the cords in thottbot or wowhead. run to those cords, do quest, run back. Never even read the story. Just collect the loots/xp/gold and on to the next yellow question mark.

I'm sure some people will eat it up. I'm just not one of them.

Re:Not an apology

[Knara]

I do similar, except I read the story bits. The WoW content people write pretty good quest stories, so I like to read them and get an impression of what's going on in-character.

Re:Not an apology

[Funkcikle]

Think Pathaelon the Calculator, who you keep running into as you level in BC.

That's an excellent point - every time I was doing a quest in which Pathaelon popped up and turned up to be the antagonist behind the scenes, I'd think "Not YOU again! You bloody troublemaker! Some day I am going to hunt you down in the Mechanar and farm you silly".

Some kind of incidental music that goes "Dun dun DUUUUUN!" every time Arthas pops up twiddling his moustache would be good too. "Where is the rent? I must have the rent! Dollars, dimes and nickels, I need them all right nooooow!"

Re:Not an apology

[Sycraft-fu]

That's why they make it work both ways. They have all the story stuff in there, because some people get really in to it. They enjoy the lore of the world. However, they don't force you to sit through it if you are one of those for whom the fun is in the doing, not the reason behind it. Good overall design that way.

Re:Not an apology

[StikyPad]

Hmm.. so it comes down to large numbers of people either running around mindlessly, or running around pretending there's a higher purpose behind it. Sounds like something else I've heard of... ah, right.. life! Funny "escapes", RPGs.

Re:Not an apology

[Kidbro]

I just auto accept every quest then look up the cords in thottbot or wowhead. run to those cords, do quest, run back.

Fascinating. With a few rare exceptions, I find that it's usually faster to just read the damn quest descriptions (which generally tell you exactly where to go) than to head off to thottbot for coordinates.
Yes, really.

Re:Not an apology

[SilentOneNCW]

It dont matter much to me. I just auto accept every quest then look up the cords in thottbot or wowhead. run to those cords, do quest, run back. Never even read the story. Just collect the loots/xp/gold and on to the next yellow question mark.

Then why do you even play the game?

Re:Not an apology

[Das Modell]

Uh... why wouldn't he be playing? WoW isn't an adventure game. You spend almost all of your time fighting and collecting loot.

Re:Not an apology

[Knara]

Really? I can't say that's the case for me at all.

Re:Not an apology

[Kingrames]

From the very first line of the actual article:
"We're still playing far too much of The Burning Crusade -- but, for some reason, Blizzard vice president of creative development Chris Metzen seems to be apologizing for it."

hence the word apology. If you'd read the first sentence, you'd probably have read just as much as the submitter, since that's the only place where there's an apology, but you'd have at least read some of it.

Re:Not an apology

[ultranova]

Hmm.. so it comes down to large numbers of people either running around mindlessly, or running around pretending there's a higher purpose behind it. Sounds like something else I've heard of... ah, right.. life! Funny "escapes", RPGs.

If people ran around more, summertime would be more aesthetically pleasing. But instead they drive around in cars, polluting the environment and collecting fat. Not that I should speak, sitting down writing this message instead of being at the gym, but still...

Do your civic duty and run around for real to get firm buttocks so your fellows can ogle them come summer and short skirts - or shorts, if that is your preference - instead of running around in WoW accomplishing nothing.

Re:Not an apology

[Monchanger]

You don't have to make it about killing higher and higher levels of swine. Previous posters mentioned interest in being immersed in Warcraft lore. I haven't looked at them, but the RolePlaying realms seem to offer yet another facet of play. I've found the game engine to provide lots of potential for social interaction in the form of guilds.

Compare sitting at home watching television to going out to the movies with friends. Depending on your viewpoint one is cool and the other makes you a loser. Blizzard did a great job providing in a single game for many different types of players to find their own way to have fun.

You seem to have discovered the most shallow way of playing the game. Congratulations!

Re:Not an apology

[Das Modell]

You don't have to make it about killing higher and higher levels of swine. Previous posters mentioned interest in being immersed in Warcraft lore. I haven't looked at them, but the RolePlaying realms seem to offer yet another facet of play. I've found the game engine to provide lots of potential for social interaction in the form of guilds.

Roleplaying realms are completely separate from normal realms. If you play on a normal realm you can forget about roleplaying. Even if you do play on a roleplaying realm, you still have to kill "higher and higher levels of swine," collect loot and grind professions. That's what WoW is about. Nobody really plays it for any other reason.

You seem to have discovered the most shallow way of playing the game. Congratulations!

WoW is a shallow game. If I want to roleplay I'll play Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Jade Empire or Mass Effect (when it's released). Or even Oblivion. When you've played WoW for a while you get tired of listening to every NPC explain in detail why it's imperative for you to collect five cow fetuses, two copper bolts and one mana crystal. WoW just isn't a story or roleplaying oriented game.

Re:Not an apology

[geekoid]

You run around breaking into peoples home, kill them, then take their body parts and loots?
oh, right, Homeland security.

Re:Not an apology

[bigstrat2003]

You can very easily gloss over that line if you're a person who skims, rather than reads carefully. I didn't see it, and I read the article in its entirety.

Re:Not an apology

[vimh42]

I think the greater problem Burning Crusade had (and so did the original product) is that the story never seamed to hold together. Warcraft has a bunch of great lore but in the game it's all very disjointed and doesn't flow together real well. And a bunch of that lore was difficult to experience because of of the raid dungeons. Sure Illidan wasn't in my face, but it's not like I was going to get a chance to get in his. Let alone Kael Thas or Lady Vashj. I want to play through the story but Blizzard keeps making it a bit of a chore to do so.

The Expansion they wish they made first

[EggMan2000]

It's funny how Blizz seems to lament BC as if they made too many mistakes. I do appreciate that experience with the first big expansion gave them a lot of lessons learned to apply to this latest expansion.

My main bone of contention though is that the 1-70 grind is not getting much attention. Do they feel that all of that is throw-away? I understand adding new content to the end game to keep fanatics engaged. My guild is just finishing TK and getting ready for Black Temple so the timing is perfect to keep them all interested in future content. But what about adding new players, and expanding offerings for players that are new?

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Admiral Justin]

Patch 2.3 *the one coming to a PTR near you in about 24 hours* has:

Level 20-60 Quest EXP has been increased, while EXP to Level has been decreased

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[WillAffleckUW]

My main bone of contention though is that the 1-70 grind is not getting much attention. Do they feel that all of that is throw-away?

All I know is I've got lots of level 4 to 29 characters and somehow the grind makes me not push hard to make them higher level.

It would help if they more clearly marked group quests.

For example, if I have to go into a physically constrained mine, in oh say, the Barrens, to get an elite level 25 surrounded by 10 level 20-24 warriors bound to aggro me, that's a Group Quest - not an Individual Quest (unless I was a Rogue).

Just a hint. It's no fun dying 20 times and getting nowhere.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Knara]

So essentially, they're making changes so that the "middle" level grind is shorter.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Homr Zodyssey]

Typical. I just hit 61 last night and now they're doing that....

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Knara]

I do believe that at least the Cosmos addon will mark quests with a "g" as known group quests.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Knara]

My main is smack in the middle, so I'm a happy Drae for that.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[everphilski]

OK, so they have made the mid-leveling shorter, but they haven't made it any more meaningful.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Knara]

What would you consider an addition that would make it more meaningful?

Not that I'm disagreeing with you (I might be, dunno), but I'm curious as to what would make 20-60 meaningful in your eyes.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[brkello]

Players that are new don't need new content. There is plenty of content at the lower levels for them to go through. It is only boring if you are leveling many characters to 70. I don't see the complaint for a new player though...they have all that content that we had (plus more beginner zones).

Really, you want to keep the people playing so you need to please the end game people. They are the ones that have played the longest and invested the most. The early game content (while dated) is still quite good.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[EggMan2000]

Well then that confirms it, breeze thought the middle leveling grind and get to 70/80. That could make it more fun, you would spend a lot less time in specific zones, and get to experience fresh content as you progress. There's a lot to see and do at the lower levels, and I suppose there is a point that if you are new, it's *all* new to you anyway. It's those of us that re-roll that get more frustrated grinding up.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Knara]

Was just talking about this with someone else. The original WoW noob zones could really use some fine tuning, as there's some situations where you run out of quests for your level and have to old-fashioned grind to get back up to speed. Plus the chaining of quests isn't all that well developed.

The Blood Elf and Draenei 1-20 quest chains, though, are extremely well developed not only with regards to keeping you stocked with appropriately leveled quests (and making those quests seem interesting and immersive), but also with regards to adequate equipment as quest rewards, to alleviate the need to buy equipment from vendors or make it yourself.

They definitely learned how to optimize the whole beginning-of-game experience between the initial release and TBC.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Knara]

DAoC, in its later revisions, introduced the ability for people who had max-level characters to start another character at an advanced level, in order to avoid the low-mid-level grinding (which was pretty bad in that game at times). This was done partially for the reason you mention, and partially to increase the diversity of character types for PvP (which was much better in DAoC than WoW, if you ask me). Since some character classes are also, obviously, harder/more tedious to level, and since DAoC has something on the order of 40 character classes, this seemed to work out fairly well and make a good measure of sense.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[RalphSleigh]

They should leave the previous XP level at it is, but rebalance much of the pre TBC endgame content to fit in before the players hit 58. Places like Winterspring and The Plaguelands are dead now, they should balance it so these areas have more use before players hit 58 and head to the Outlands. I suspect the same will happen for the current TBC endgame areas when this new expansion is released.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[BlackCobra43]

Why make the low-level grind any shorter? It already takes good players less than a day to get to level 20...and just over an hour to get to level 10.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[fotbr]

While I'd love that ability in WoW, the argument is "then people won't know how to play their new characters effectively, and raiding / instances will suck".

I say, what does it matter, when people buy characters or buy leveling services, have a high-level alt, and STILL don't know how to play.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[fotbr]

Different quests. So that those of us re-rolling new characters can do something different, rather than the same thing we've done before.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[EggMan2000]

I agree that those zones are dead. I have a lvl 70 TBC Shaman and am only keyed for BWL. The only time I ever stepped into BRD was to run a guildie "twink" through. So much of that lvl 50-60 content has been thrown away.

I think they should actually re-tune those zones and quest lines to be post 60 content so that it's used. Put some rare spawns in there, give us a reason to go to WPL, Winterspring, and EPL. (I know that Nax is turning into the first lvl 80 instance)

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[everphilski]

I'm not for sure myself, I do have a few ideas, but I believe there is a distinction to be made between the initial post and the reply. The initial post stated, "Do they feel that all of that [1-70] is throw-away?, to which the reply came that leveling would be quicker, essentially saying yes, leveling is a throw-away.

I haven't played WoW since 3 months after the release, I can't speak to the game as it is today (I hit 60 and got bored. Sold my accout and came back to EQ). Actually right now I'm playing a lowbie in Everquest with my wife. That is meaningful to me (1) because it is with my wife and (2) because I'm revisiting old content I haven't seen in 5+ years. I do think leveling in EQ means more because you can lose it along the way (death = xp loss).

I have thought of some ways to make it more meaningful, and most do revolve around experiance, using and losing it. Basically make it a commodity, something to buy and sell (both between yourself and the character sheet, and yourself and the open market) instead of a percentage ticker to keep you out of level 70 content :)

1) xp funnel into abilities, not just raw levels. Instead of randomly skilling up when you use abilities, you have to funnel a portion of your XP torwards. The more you funnel, the better you get (the less goes to actual leveling, player level). and the more damage you can do at lower levels. You can then strike a balance between speed of leveling and how much damage you put out. You could then make the system totally de-classed and have different pools to dump XP into, by picking the right ratios then existing classes will naturally arise.
2) xp loss on death. You break it you buy it.
3) stuff based on expending experiance. In Everquest, the necromancer class could resurrect one soul by slaying another. They would have to kill one player (over level 46) and store their soul in an 'essence emerald' (EE) and then they could spend it in a resurrection spell to rez another player of any level. (there were other spells/quests that required EE's too) Anyways long story short, experience should be able to be funneled into other resources. Some examples I can think would work: (1) resurrection (EQ did it) (2) major instant hit potions (EQ did it, and didn't D&D have certain spells that required experiance to scribe or cast? been waaay too long) (3) item enhancement (get a bonus to the stats on your gear)
4) alternate advancement experiance. In Everquest you can funnel your experiance into an alternate pool and spend it on abilities, similar to talents, except there are like 2,000 points now to be spent on hundreds of abilities. Some have prereqs but they are all permenant. Kinda similar to dumping experiance into skills, except these generally either (1) (mostly) provided passive bonuses like enhanced run speed or DPS or (2) gave you a special ability.

I mention Everquest a lot, I know, but I think they did some good things wrt to experience and how they handle it. I think you can take it further in a MMO and make it a real commodity second to gold/plat itself

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[EggMan2000]

The Dranei 1-20 quest line is amazing. The whole town meeting and applauding you is a really nice touch. It keeps the quests from feeling so static.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Knara]

While I'd love that ability in WoW, the argument is "then people won't know how to play their new characters effectively, and raiding / instances will suck".

I say, what does it matter, when people buy characters or buy leveling services, have a high-level alt, and STILL don't know how to play. Not only that, but if they don't know how to play their new characters effectively, then I guess they'll just have to learn, won't they? I don't really see the problem with that.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Knara]

There's some value to your ideas, but I think you're overlooking the fact that WoW has a huge allowance for the casual player. So making the system increasingly complex will hurt their revenue stream.

I'm not convinced that having more and more options is better, anyway. Inevitably the "choices" get narrowed down to a set of fairly-well-known templates that are optimal for a given task, and the other specs get left along the road.

Also, I don't really think that experience loss makes leveling more meaningful. It makes it more stressful and gives a penalty for death, but meaningful? I'm unconvinced. Exp would have to be much easier to amass for that not to be frustrating really fast (especially for a gimped class, for example).

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Knara]

I agree. Even by going all the given quests, getting to 10 is easy, and 20 is harder only if you get bored easily or have to pee. Nothing particularly interesting gameplay-wise happens between 20-60, sadly. Sure you "get stuff" and improve abilities, but most of the time it's quest-quest-grindgrind-run-from-bored-70's-that-need-to-get-their-stupid-asses-in-a-raiding-guild-instead-of-ganking-in-stv-quest-quest

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean meaningful or fun? The real problem is that 20-60 is boring, and once you've done it a couple times so is 61-70. There is no 'massive multiplayer' in that part of the game at all, if you do the multiplayer quests or dungeons at all then you most likely have a high level friend rush you through.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Rjak]

The problem with THAT is you're supposed to learn the basics of your class on *YOUR* time, not on the 10/20/25/40 other-people-in-your-raid's time. As it sits, this is kept to a minimum (not a zero, just a minimum, which means the majority of players are at least somewhat competent). It's hard enough now to put together a guild of competent players...if you make it even easier to breeze through the lower levels, you reduce that pool and make guild-forming even more slow and painful than it already is. I think what they've done is a decent compromise.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[everphilski]

I'm not convinced that having more and more options is better, anyway.

It wouldn't have to be overly complex. You start out as a man, woman or orc. You have four bubbles on your stat sheet which have to total to 100%: one is experiance, one is healing, one is spell damage, the other melee damage, the fifth is personal enhancement. You can change at any time, from kill to kill, etc. Pick what you want to do.

Of course WoW would never go it. You'd quickly disenchant your least-common-denominator player, of which most of their players are it seems.

It makes it more stressful and gives a penalty for death, but meaningful? I'm unconvinced.

After a long, hard dungeon crawl, yea, I think it does. Especially if you have been in the place where you come out a night with negative XP. You tend to learn your class **very** quickly. I can remember a number of instances from back in 2002 when I was in a bind but was able to pull out and survive, sometimes miraculously. I'm not sure I can remember that many newbie instances from my paladin in WoW, and that was a number of years later.

My personal opinion is, MMO's shouldn't design for the masses. WoW is just that - a MMO for the lowest common denominator. MMO's **should** strive for something unique. Design for 50k, 100k or 500k players. You don't have to break WoW to compete. Come up with something unique. It's sad but (most of the new MMO's) feel like we are back playing FPS's in the late 90's: it's essentially all the same game, just a slightly different skin.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Greyfox]

Yeah, you can try to level 30-46 without going into Stranglethorn Vale but it's damn near impossible. The other areas of the game (Desolace, Arathi highlands, etc) have nowhere near the same quest density that STV does. And 46-58 are a rut of their own with quests forcing you to travel halfway across the world to complete them and if you don't want to play that game you're pretty much stuck grinding. Once you get out to the outland at 58 you're back in nice, focussed quests again. Although it does seem to be possible to run out of them before you hit 70. Anyway, some new pre-60 zones around the world would be nice to take up a lot of that slack.

Also, I don't get the impression a lot of people are running the old 60 uber-epic quests anymore. Not much point when you're just going to be replacing those Tier 1 and 2 epics with greens as soon as you get to the outland. If that's true, they could just make those dungeons challenging for 70 (or 80) level characters in groups of 5-10 and add some incentives to go back in there. There's no point in letting those dungeons go to waste.

It'd also be nice if they could add incentives to play classes that are needed. It's generally priests and tank guys but I bet they could come up with a dynamic way to encourage class creation of any class that's out of balance at any given time. Possibly give them better starting gear or a boost to the professions they choose or something along those lines. If the current state of affairs is going to continue for healers and tanks, lowering the respec cost caps for those professions would definitely be a nice gesture (If a priest is going to HAVE to respec for solo questing it should either cost a lot less or he should get some free ones every week.)

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[ZombieWomble]

The middle grind is where all the shameful content is - the early zones received massive amounts of polish (particularly the expansion ones) and the 60+ zones are already tuned to a pretty exacting degree (and filled with a much better overall structure). In the middle you have a lot of zones which just aren't as well put together as the early and late zones, so Blizz has apparently decided to hurry everyone through that so they can focus on the "good" content.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Anonymous Coward]

But what is there about 20-60 that causes players to learn their class? Doing bear ass collection quests and playing package delivery guy don't teach you about aggro, or mana management, or raid preparation. Skills learned while leveling have almost nothing to do with learning your place in a group or raid.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[BandoMcHando]

It is probably worth mentioning that Dustwallow Marsh is due to get a rebuild in a coming patch before WotLK, with a new goblin town and a lot of the questing redone, with the stated intention of improving the 35-45 area. (Well, that's what I remember off the top of my head anyway).

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Pzychotix]

*ahem*

Money.

Enough said.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Knara]

Correct. The players that want to learn their characters will, but the PvE content previous to end-game raiding doesn't exactly concentrate on preparing people to do group work (not to mention some of the pet classes can do a *lot* of the group quests while solo).

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Kris_J]

One of the things I've noticed about the "middle levels" is that if you're not careful about moving around zones you can end up with all orange and red quests. My first character basically had to grind green mobs for a couple of levels around the high 40s because I missed a couple of entire zones and the quests there were grey by the time I found them. By simply upping the XP you get and reducing the XP per level Blizzard are saving themselves from ever having to add any more quests from 20-60. They don't need to worry about below 20 because every time they add a new starting area for a new race (or whatever) they give players even more ways to get to 20. In fact, there's already more than enough low-level quests for you to pretty much only do green quests from about 6 to 20 if you know where to go. (That reminds me, I should take my little rogue to the Draenei starting area.)

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Kris_J]

The 20-60 news hit my guild's forums a few days back. I've been working on a hunter I'd got up to 40-something and a Shaman at 20-something, but I've parked both and been working on my 60-something since the news.

I'm going to have a lot of fun burning my alts through the levels once the change comes out.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the lower level group quests and instances won't do a lot to prepare you for raiding. Doing instances and fighting elites with a group will teach you tank and spank aggro and basic resource management. Raiding include a lot of preparation work, raid encounters themselves require encounter-specific skills and organization for each new raid encounter.

So unless your raid guild grows solely by poaching members from other raiding guilds (which is fairly common) you are gonna have to deal with the fact that most players are gonna learn to raid on your time.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[k8to]

Yeah, you can try to level 30-46 without going into Stranglethorn Vale but it's damn near impossible. The other areas of the game (Desolace, Arathi highlands, etc) have nowhere near the same quest density that STV does. Everyone says this but it's just not true. I really dislike stranglethorn, and so I don't do it. Arathi and Desolace have plenty of content to get you to 35, at which point Dustwallow Marsh, Badlands, and Aterac Mountains all open up, giving you plenty of content to get to 40, whereupon Tanaris, Feralas, and the Hinterlands are available to you.

There's no need to spend any time at all in Stranglethorn if you aren't interested in it. Stranglethorn does have the highest quest density, so if your goal is to get to 70 as fast as possible, I guess it's the place for you. I don't really understand why so many people have this goal, but the time to achieve that is being cut by around 20-30% in the near future, so rejoice.

With the rest, I agree. The later-azeroth stuff has too much round-the-world silliness. Late 50s is ignored by most (although in my second character to do this I'm deliberately choosing to run scholomance, etc, because they're GREAT!).

As for class balance it's quite fiddly, it takes some time for classes to level so there are very different populations of classes at different levels. Healers for example are on the upswing (wow census data). I also haven't really encountered much of a lack of tanks, although I've certainly encountered players who insist certain class/specs can't tank who can! Eg. booting arms warriors from ramparts groups then finding they can't get a "proper" tank.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Kopiok]

The problem is, it's fun to about level 30, maybe less, then it poops out and becomes a chore. It's just not fun anymore.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Chris Burke]

Also, I don't get the impression a lot of people are running the old 60 uber-epic quests anymore. Not much point when you're just going to be replacing those Tier 1 and 2 epics with greens as soon as you get to the outland. If that's true, they could just make those dungeons challenging for 70 (or 80) level characters in groups of 5-10 and add some incentives to go back in there. There's no point in letting those dungeons go to waste.

When the concept was announced, this is what I thought "heroic mode" dungeons were going to be: the old dungeons, re-balanced for the new level cap. I mean that's what it said, that heroics were dungeons re-balanced around level 70 players and with similarly upgraded loot. Sounded great to me. Instead, what we got was the -new- dungeons, including the ones that are already level 70 dungeons, made harder and with a pre-requisite rep grind. Yay?

If the current state of affairs is going to continue for healers and tanks, lowering the respec cost caps for those professions would definitely be a nice gesture (If a priest is going to HAVE to respec for solo questing it should either cost a lot less or he should get some free ones every week.)

Respec costs are a gold sink, nothing more. There's no real reason for them to exist as far as gameplay goes. It's just another way for Blizzard to suck money from the economy. Money sinks are needed, but I think respec costs are an ill-conceived way to do it.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[fractoid]

Not only that, but there are deliberate cockblocks to levelling every 10 levels or so between about 35 and 60. I generally find 36-39, 46-49 to be horrible because there are no real quest hubs, you either grind or you spend 90% of your time running around trying to find quests. They did this because during development, they wanted to eke out the 'last little bit' before level cap (which started at 40, then went to 50, then 55, then 60, afaik).

If they're doing something to speed up the levelling doldrums that start mid-40s, then that's excellent. It doesn't take 20+ days /played to learn to play your class, they should just take out all the 'filler' quests. There's enough content to keep anyone occupied now without grinds.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[everphilski]

I know. It's too late for Blizzard, they are a lost cause.

But I don't think its impossible for a new studio to think small. See, profit = net - costs of operating. So if you can minimize your operating cost, you can profit with a much smaller number of users, or more users at a lower subscription rate. So instead of shooting straight for millions of users, shoot for a more moderate level, reduce costs accordingly and you can survive with a smaller player base.

People (here, notably) keep preaching gameplay trumps graphics. It wouldn't be impossible to make a game with great gameplay that appeals to the masses, but I really think you can carve out a dedicated fanbase with a more specific, more intense, perhaps more difficult gameplay. Might have to sacrifice some things like x million users or glitzy graphics to stay in budget for a MMO of 10,000 or 100,000 users ... but I think it might be worth doing.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Opportunist]

In other words, we'll get to see even more people at lv 70 who don't have the foggiest clue how to play. Just effing great.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Opportunist]

Mid levels needn't be a grindfest.

Up to lv 20, you learn how to play the class. You get a new skill every now and then, then you get to play around with it and find an application. Up to lv 20, you also get to see all the "quest flavors" (i.e. bring A to B, kill X of Y (and its variant, kill X for Y and bring me Z of Y), find A and bring him back here...). In other words, you have seen everything when you're 20.

And that could be changed, for example. After lv 20, it is actually a grindfest up to endgame. There's no meaningful content in between. There are no new skills (aside of a few that you rarely if ever really need until endgame). So how about a mid level nemesis? Some lv 40 boss whose minions you slaughter throughout 2-3 areas with a story that builds up to slaying him? Where you have to gather a few keys, goodies and whatnot to unlock his chamber? Yes, it's essentially still grinding, but you have a "face" to it, some rather tangible "end" to the means. What bugs me most is that from 20 to 60 you have mostly unconnected instances and quests that are by no means connected to each other in any way. You just do them, lacking anything better to do and the need to get gear.

Sure, that lv 40 boss is a farmfest at 45, but by then you should rather be out to hunt down the next bosses minions. The Defias were a good idea, something similar for lv 40ish would be an idea. While at low levels, slaughtering the minions "outside" and the boss in an instance is a good idea and nice buildup, for lv 40 I'd envision a few instances where you gather the keys (i.e. the instance bosses drop the keys for the main instance). Much like it is in endgame.

The "medium" levels should be a prep for endgame. And I don't only mean in terms of getting to know your class. They should teach you how the endgame works. And endgame works that way. So what's wrong with using those levels to "teach" the players what kind of gameplay to expect in endgame?

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Opportunist]

Handing someone a lv 20 char will not change whether he knows how to play by the time he's 70. There's plenty of time 'til then. If he can't learn in 50 levels, he can't learn in 70 either.

I'd rather fear rushing people through the levels 20-60, that's where you learn to play in a group. Until 20, you're mostly on your own anyway, and play style is vastly different solo vs. team.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Opportunist]

While I agree with a few pre-10 zones, where you really have to find & do every single quest if you do not want to resort to grinding, after that I usually have the problem of deciding which quests I really, really have to do before I level past them. I've abandoned a lot of quests which turned grey on me before I knew.

And with some I was quite glad they did. There are some quests where you have to wonder how to do them with a few classes. When a mage or priest faces a twisted tunnel, he knows he's not invited.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[ultranova]

xp funnel into abilities, not just raw levels. Instead of randomly skilling up when you use abilities, you have to funnel a portion of your XP torwards. The more you funnel, the better you get (the less goes to actual leveling, player level). and the more damage you can do at lower levels. You can then strike a balance between speed of leveling and how much damage you put out. You could then make the system totally de-classed and have different pools to dump XP into, by picking the right ratios then existing classes will naturally arise.

The problem with this is that such a system can and will lead to unplayable characters, which lead to dissatisfied customers, which lead to revenue loss.

From purely technical side, the more free the system is, the harder it is to balance. There are bound to be some killer skill combos, and with millions of people playing the game, they will be found. At that point you face a decision: will you balance the game difficulty against these combos, making it essentially unplayable without very careful character planning, or will you balance it against Joe Average, making these combos essentially cheat codes ?

xp loss on death. You break it you buy it.

This will make the above problem even worse.

Then again, if we'd take the "XP as commodity" thought to its logical end result and allowed the players to re-assign the XP at anytime... that might work. Something like the skill system in FF9, where you had to assign jewels (which you got from leveling) to make your skills and abilities active.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[ildon]

Good luck getting anyone to do any instances or elite quests whatsoever in a game where you can solo easily if dying gives you an xp penalty.

Honestly, no xp loss for death is one of the very reasons that wow is so much more popular than eq. People don't like having their time wasted. Especially if it's not their fault. People like being able to take risks without it destroying hours of xp gain.

This game has always, and will always begin at level cap. It's the way it's designed. Slowing people up by making the leveling process longer and more annoying with xp penalties does not serve that purpose.

As someone who quit 3 months after the game came out, immediately after hitting the level cap, you really aren't qualified to make any determinations as to what would be best for the game. Obviously you thought leveling was the entire game, and missed out on the real game. Granted, back then level 60 wasn't as good as it became later, or any where near as good as level cap at 70, but then again you wouldn't know that, now would you?

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[ildon]

Run out before 70? I hit 70 with 3/4 of Shadowmoon, half of Blade's Edge, and all of Netherstorm's quests undone. In fact, I financed my epic flying mount simply by completing all the quests I had left. If anything I felt the leveling curve was too generous. I was completing a lot of quests after they had turned green, without doing any kind of grinding and only what I consider a "normal" amount of instance runs (1-3 times each, usually closer to 1).

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[ildon]

Respec costs existed originally to give meaning to the talent choices you made. It used to take a lot of effort to get the 100g to respec twice weekly. Now you can get it in 30 minutes doing daily quests once a week. It was obviously a conscious decision for them not to increase the max respec value with the expansion.

So yeah, now it is more of a gold sink, although the cost of changing still makes people think about their talent choices more thoroughly, I think. It's just not as restrictive.

Ideally, players would rarely respec. I don't know if the 33% heal -> damage conversion will help with this or not. I have a strong feeling that a lot of people are going to have level 80 deathknight grinding alts come Wrath.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Kymri]

People (here, notably) keep preaching gameplay trumps graphics. It wouldn't be impossible to make a game with great gameplay that appeals to the masses, but I really think you can carve out a dedicated fanbase with a more specific, more intense, perhaps more difficult gameplay. Might have to sacrifice some things like x million users or glitzy graphics to stay in budget for a MMO of 10,000 or 100,000 users ... but I think it might be worth doing. I think the key is that gameplay trumps graphics in the long run. If you see screenshots of two games and neither screenshot can properly convey the actual gameplay (which is very often the case of still screenshots - nevertheless, still screenshots are still one of the major ways games are promoted, especially on store shelves), but one looks like it escaped from System Shock 2 and the other looking like Doom 3, you might be well inclined to at least TRY the prettier game while you might not try the other.

Of course, in the long run, this would be the mistake if the games in question really *were* System Shock 2 and Doom 3.

Graphics aren't needed to keep people playing as much as they are to get people started. Gameplay that appeals to them (for whatever reason, in whatever way) is what keeps them around. You'll have a much easier time roping in ten or a hundred thousand users to at least TRY the game (and possibly play it long-term) with good graphics. This is sad but inevitable. And if you get good graphics AND good gameplay, then you're golden (for a while at least).

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[fotbr]

Hell, you can get to the mid 60s (at least) without grouping with anyone if you don't care about running instances.

At least for horde, if you have a high level toon to get gold and gear, you can get an alt from 1-20 in a couple of weekends, and still have time for real life. If you don't care about real life, you can do it in a single weekend -- its boring as hell, but at least it moves quickly.

If it were up to me, you'd always be able to create alternate characters at the same level as your highest character on a realm is. Those that WANT to learn to play that character in a group, will. Those that don't, won't. It makes no difference whether they start at 1 or 69 -- if they don't want to learn, they won't.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[everphilski]

Good luck getting anyone to do any instances or elite quests whatsoever in a game where you can solo easily if dying gives you an xp penalty.

Everquest. Been doing it since 1999. Was king of the hill at the time and paved the way for bigger and better. It is still holding strong, releasing its 14th expansion in November.

Honestly, no xp loss for death is one of the very reasons that wow is so much more popular than eq.

I'm not sure. I keep hearing my friends bitch about how much you have to pay to repair epic gear. Now consider the time it takes to farm multiple gold (hunter friend of mine says 2 gold to fully repair his gun) to time lost when you take an experiance hit. Now consider the fact that clerics and necromancers can resurrect in Everquest and restore 93% of your experiance. How much is 7% of a death? About 1 kill in a group, if even. So yes, 1 death = 1 kill to restore the experiance lost.

As someone who quit 3 months after the game came out, immediately after hitting the level cap, you really aren't qualified to make any determinations as to what would be best for the game. Obviously you thought leveling was the entire game, and missed out on the real game. Granted, back then level 60 wasn't as good as it became later, or any where near as good as level cap at 70, but then again you wouldn't know that, now would you?

There was nothing to do at 60, yeah. But the real reason I quit was game mechanics. I played both betas as two different classes, horde and alliance. I played a third class on release. I had no less than 10 friends jump ship (from EQ and AO) with me to play WoW, we grouped together and kept tabs on each other to see how each class played.The game mechanics were not diverse enough for me. I still do keep tabs so I might have a better perspective than you think :) three of those friends still play to this day, and we hang out on a regular basis. And my wife continued to play as recently as last year.

This game has always, and will always begin at level cap.

That's a paradigm I'd like to see challenged. If I had half a million dollars...

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[tbannist]

There are far too many people who levelled their characters on their own who don't know how to play. True story: There was a level 60 druid in my guild who didn't know that druids had an aquatic or bear form. He never did the quests for them (and no, I have it on good authority from the people who leveled with him that the character wasn't bought or power-levelled).

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[everphilski]

The problem with this is that such a system can and will lead to unplayable characters, which lead to dissatisfied customers, which lead to revenue loss

No problem. You can rebalance for a 5% charge. Transfer (say) 10 levels of experaince from pool a to b, for a half a level hit.

From purely technical side, the more free the system is, the harder it is to balance. There are bound to be some killer skill combos, and with millions of people playing the game, they will be found. At that point you face a decision: will you balance the game difficulty against these combos, making it essentially unplayable without very careful character planning, or will you balance it against Joe Average, making these combos essentially cheat codes ?

Good point. Something that of course came to mind, because no MMO is balanced. Every MMO has its power classes.
One way I invision dealing with it is a sliding scale. Imagine a three axis coordianate system. One axis is melee power, which would be a function of both armor class (plate, chain, leather, silk) and combat prowess. The second axis is healing ability, the third axis spell damage. Now this does not accommodate for the benefits gained by a buffing class, for example, but it is a start. On those three axes we can plot a surface as a function of f(melee, healing, spell). Towards the extremities of each axis the power of the other two axis is severly reduced. Towards the middle of the graph you can have moderate levels of all three. Kinda hard to visualize without a picture, but this forms a sliding scale by which you can modify skills. Pick the x coordinate with respect to melee ability, then you can slide along the surface with your spell damage and heal ability. It's a concave curve so as you get better at one you get progressively worse at the other. Pick your poison. In this way, all your spells can be 'good', and pure casters will be awesome, but hybrids will take a penalty in the form of a damage/heal reduction coefficient pulled off this graph (for instance). (Confusing I'm sure, but look at it this way along the scale: top end you have a warrrior, all melee, no spell damage or heals. Then towards the middle you have a druid, OK heals and spell damage, and towards the low end you have a warlock/necromancer, all out DPS. You can kind of see where a paladin might fit in between the druid and the warrior. I don't claim this scale is ideal, just a 2 minute sketch. But a scale could be made and implemented)

This will make the above problem even worse.

See: Everquest, Diablo II (hardcore is quite popular, played it for years, you die you lose your character, with items)

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[aikouka]

From my experiences, people that head to Outlands at level 58 (the minimum level for entering via the Dark Portal, Blizzard has suggested that they might remove the min level though) tend to need all of the zones to quest in to reach level 70. This ignores people that run instances often or grind on mobs. Personally, I never enter Outlands until level 60, because even then, I never run out of quests on Azeroth to do.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Endo13]

If it were up to me, you'd always be able to create alternate characters at the same level as your highest character on a realm is. Those that WANT to learn to play that character in a group, will. Those that don't, won't. It makes no difference whether they start at 1 or 69 -- if they don't want to learn, they won't. All too true. I don't know how many high and max-level players I've grouped with who hadn't a clue how to play in a party, despite having leveled their character from level 1.

Hastening the grind from 20 to 60 is definitely a good move that's likely to keep players interested in the game.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[aikouka]

They're adding quests to Dustwallow Marsh. A goblin quest-center will be added if I remember correctly.

It's actually not that hard to level from 20->60, it just takes time and is much easier if you know every zone's quests and everything about the quests which help comprise a "real level requirement" as we all know that just because the quest says level 45 beside it, it doesn't mean you can do it at level 43 or sometimes even level 45! Probably one of the best examples of this is the Bloodsail Buccaneers quest. The highest level opponent is level 48, so someone looking at the quest seeing that it's yellow at 43 might attempt this and see a red-con mob staring them in the face (Cap'n Stillwater is a mean fella). A good example of the opposite is the level 50 Portlebelly Portos (God knows I didn't spell that one right) quest in the Hinterlands (but from Booty Bay). There may be level 50-ish turtles, but they're all neutral (except the 47 elite Gammerita, who can be avoided).

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Tofystedeth]

Pupellyverbos. Ya, its a weird word.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[WhiteWolf666]

Exactly!

Here's my thinking. Each X0 level should be treated as if it were a "cap" level. You should have a toggle on/off, and even prevent yourself from leveling at that level (i.e. you can lock yourself in at min exp at 30,40,50,60).

Then, we need heroic versions of the old instances, and raid encounters, as well. Reconfigure the battle grounds so that the X0 level are the "twink" caps, and then you'd have a totally different game.

Someone could decide they just want to live in the level 30 band, and just use level 30 gear, but go for the epic level 30 gear dropped by the heroic version of RFK, or the 25-man raid boss found in STV.

You could further this idea by eliminating the level checks made for melee and spell casting; level 70 players would have more stats, more hp, and better gear than level 30, but would not be made invincible by virtue of level alone (level 30 mages can't touch level 70 players).

This would make the low-end of the game much more meaningful.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[WuphonsReach]

I'd put 40 as another significant milestone. At least a few classes get their first ranks in some class-defining spells at level 40 (i.e. Priest's Greater Heal, Warriors and Paladins can now wear plate, etc.).

I agree that there should be more "epic" mid-level quests in the 30-50 range. Take something like the "Legend of Stalvann", which is a great little quest... now expand it a bit, add in the need to go to various instances.

However, they need to keep it easy. Make the quest items drop off of multiple mobs in the area unless there's a strong storyline reason to have it drop off of a particular boss mob.

(Been playing WoW for about 4-6 weeks now. The grind seems to start in the mid-late 30s when quest XP doesn't push you forward as fast. So I'm looking forward to either (a) adding more quests or (b) what is coming in 2.3 patch.)

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[WuphonsReach]

It'd also be nice if they could add incentives to play classes that are needed. It's generally priests and tank guys but I bet they could come up with a dynamic way to encourage class creation of any class that's out of balance at any given time.

It's more of an issue with the player population and personal dynamics.

Playing a priest (and being good at it) requires focus, determination, and being able to put up with all of the "why didn't you heal me?", "heal pet!" and "heal plz". If a DPS goes AFK in the middle of a fight, did you notice? If the tank / healer goes AFK in the middle of a fight, I'll bet you notice right away. And if the group wipes, quite a few players will place the blame on either the healer ("l2heal!") or the tank ("l2tank!").

It's generally a thankless job, until you get a really bad pull and by making a lot of split-second decisions you manage to keep everyone alive with a scrap of health each and a sliver of mana left. At which point, it's a hell of a lot of fun and excitement. After that, you get a lot more respect then you did earlier. (As a priest... I relish a bad situation. That's when I get to use my full bag of tricks.)

There are also evenings where I log on with my priest and have absolutely no interest in doing a group and being responsible for everyone's welfare.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[geekoid]

"Although it does seem to be possible to run out of them before you hit 70."

What? That's insane. I was level 70 after only doing quests in two areas, and I am a casual player and dislike repetitive raiding.

"some new pre-60 zones around the world would be nice t"
Yes! about the size and time as Van Cleef, or broken out like Scarlet.

"running the old 60 uber-epic quests anymore. "
absolutely true. However I understand why they don't want to retool them to 70.

I would like to see Gnomeragan 'cleaned up'. Put the Gnomes back and replace it with a new dungeon. Perhaps into the underground trogs lair.

Blizzard changes they way classes worked mid stream, and it showed.
Initially they were going for the 'Rock Paper Siccors' Method. But people whined, complained and didn't bother to learn how to play against different classes, so now blizzard is trying to make every class balance against every other class. IMHO that is very boring.
Also, blizzard pays too much attention to the general complainers on their forums.

Money is pretty easy to come buy, I don't see a need to change the respec costs. Since they do not want you to change your character with every situation, I don't see how this will change.

This brings up the stupid requirement to play a specific class a specific way for a specific instance. This is simply not true. Yeah, it might allow you to finish a little quicker(minutes) but that's it.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[geekoid]

That a hell of a lot better then elitist assholes who don't realize that every god damn single instance can be done without the players being 'optimized'.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Dread_ed]

I thought that new starting zones would be the best addition that they could make. Running the same zones over and over again for your new characters is kinda boring. Sure, theres some efficiency increase when you know how it works, but I actually enjoyed exploring the world with a lower level character too.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[kionel]

My wife and I are pretty much poster children for casual WoW players. Started our mains back in December of '06, and have just hit 45 this past week. Now, bear in mind that this was after six months off because, hey, we're not about to be inside from March through September.

For us, reducing the patch sounds like nothing but good news. We actually play to level, to see the game world, and to have fun. Yes, we group with others occasionally, but for the most part it's just the two of us and a couple of other real-life friends.

I bring this up because there are actually players out there who really are casual fans, but who are dedicated as well. It felt like it needed to be said.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Opportunist]

Hey, everyone makes mistakes, and I don't weep (too much) at a wipe (being a warrior this is usually a surefire way to end up with less money than you had), but when you see a mage pull with about the most powerful spell in the book, you know someone doesn't quite know what's expected from him.

I don't mind the casual mistake. I mind the "look at me what I can do" idiots.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[bigstrat2003]

I don't have that problem at all, at those ranges. Both my 70s (Alliance) went Elwynn-Westfall-Redridge-Duskwood-STV-Tanaris-Un'Goro-WPL/EPL, and then to Outland. I finished one zone up before going to the next, and never had any real problems having to grind until the 50s (occasionally, I'd have to finish up a level, but that was it, nothing real extreme). Now, the 50s, those were hell. I hate WPL and EPL with a passion. The quests are hard, the zones are dreary, there's nothing in general I like about them. If I never see those damn zones again, I'll be very grateful.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[bigstrat2003]

2) xp loss on death. You break it you buy it. I don't agree with your assertion that WoW's levelling isn't meaningful, but I REALLY disagree with the quoted statement. XP loss upon death is the single most frustrating mechanic I've ever had to deal with in an MMO, and I'm insanely thankful that Blizzard abolished it. In my opinion, no game should ever use this awful mechanic again. Players should be punished to an extent for making mistakes and being careless, but should NEVER, EVER go backwards in progress.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[fractoid]

Hmm.. that's funny, because now you mention it, I only had those gaps on my horde characters. I have two pre-BC lvl 60 Alliance, and I didn't notice such a problem on either of them. Maybe it's just that there are less Horde quests around those levels, or that I did something else different just by coincidence? My first Alliance character was in a fairly hardcore raiding guild, and so we powerleveled a lot of the way in groups, and my second was an alt who was only played with rested XP and ground a fair bit, that could have something to do with it.

Funny you should mention hating EPL, I actually quite liked it there. Sure, it's kind of creepy and dreary, but very atmospheric, and there are some brilliant quest lines that really bring out the back-story. I'm thinking the Caer Darrow quests, Battle of Darrowshire (Little Pamela), and the Fordring quest chains. And to top it all off, you're finally getting out of 50-55 levels of making war on puppy dogs, raptors, the Syndicate, raptors, the Venture Co, more raptors, diseased bears etc. and getting back to the core of the Warcraft 3 conflict - the Scourge.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[everphilski]

XP loss upon death is the single most frustrating mechanic I've ever had to deal with in an MMO, and I'm insanely thankful that Blizzard abolished it.

Blizzard has used it before in Diablo. In fact in hardcore mode, you lose all your XP (and gear :) ). Read my reply here. I think death by XP might be even easier, time-wise, than the gold you have to pay to repair gear in WoW.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[vimh42]

One of the things they mentioned a while back was the possibility of making the old stuff Heroic. How about a heroic Strat or Scholo? Let you replay them at level 70 or 80 with level appropriate loot.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[RogerWilco]

There are plenty quests, my character is almost level 64 ad has done only a few quests in Outland (not friendly with thrallmar yet). I still have about 20 quests left , mostly in EPL and Silithus. I have killed as few monsters as possible, leveling almost exclusively on quests, often stealthing past mobs if I could.

If you do all quests in Azeroth, you will be level 64 before you need to go to Outland.

Re:The Expansion they wish they made first

[Knara]

There's certainly plenty of quests once you get into the teens and beyond, but the intro areas (particularly around goldshire and what not) leave a weird gap ~lvl 7 and 8 until 10 depending on the character you play. After that it's pretty good except for when you get to STV and have to avoid the bored 70's ganking the 30-40 set.

To be honest...

[UbuntuniX]

I don't like TBC in general. I'll admit there are some parts I do like, but really I'd prefer if they'd never released it.

Re:To be honest...

[geekoid]

What? then don't go there. G'ah.

Assimilating all MMO concepts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Race vs Race (Realm vs Realm) combat in wide open areas with the objective of capturing elements was done in games like Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online and even Shadowbane (to name a few). In fact, virtually every concept presented in the article has been done before. The easiest comparison would be DaoC which...

• provides "Relics" which you can capture, which then provide bonuses to all members of the realm (and owning guild).
• has keeps and towers can be sieged, walls shattered and ultimately claimed for a given realm and guild.
• allows players with max level accounts (50) to create alts at 20 (30 on some servers)

I'm glad to see WoW pulling from the better elements of some of the older MMO's. This should lead to some very fun gameplay as DaoC was -very- addicting.

Re:Assimilating all MMO concepts...

[SynapseLapse]

" In fact, virtually every concept presented in the article has been done before. " I don't know if you've noticed this yet, but virtually all of the content in WoW has been done before in MMOs, rpgs, and even muds. What makes Blizzard such a great gaming company is the fact that they took established concepts and create games based off of them with tons of polish and care for the material. Just look back at Blackthorne. It was essentially Prince of Persia/Out Of this World/Flashback with a shotgun, but it was a great game nonetheless.

Re:Assimilating all MMO concepts...

[winphreak]

I thought I was one of the few who remembered Blackthorne.

As for a relevant reply, WoW needs a bit of help in terms of the leveling process. While running dungeons and raids is great, some players like playing by themselves, whether it be questing, grinding, farming, or something else. I recently uninstalled wow because, even if I stayed on task, I couldn't stand the quest/grind to the next level. Whenever I ran dungeons, groups collapsed completely. Guild was running Kara by the time I hit 65. And, though I may have ben 'slow', I played at least two hours a night.

One thing I've always said is that 'With WoW, there is always something to do." Unfortunately, it all boils down to grinding, levelling, questing, and farming. All repetitive, and yet the end-game is the same. Even with a great, fun guild, I couldn't stay interested. It felt like Diablo II after a while.

Allegedly

[Sycraft-fu]

They are going to rework the 20-60 leveling a bit to streamline it.

Personally, I think that's all they need. There's plenty to do for lower level characters, the only problem is that for someone who's new to the game the higher levels, and thus the ability to play with their friends, can seem very far away. So allegedly they are going to quicken the pace of the lower levels some, so that 80 isn't so far away.

You mean like that (Group) marker?

[BlackCobra43]

The one clearly added in your quest log? With the little "Suggested players : X" in the description log?

Granted, they haven't gotten around to doing every single Elite-Mob-Bearing quest yet but it's there.

Re:You mean like that (Group) marker?

[WillAffleckUW]

Yeah, frequently not (selected) for quests involving high-aggro situations (like Murlocs) and highly-constricted environments like caves where just attacking one brings ten down on you.

Seriously, most of us waste a lot of time before we clue in it's a Group quest they didn't mark as "Group".

Re:You mean like that (Group) marker?

[afidel]

I hate to sound like an elitist ass, but get some skills. While I might occasionally die doing murlocs I completed all relevant quests two levels before recommended with both my mage and my hunter. My tanks types didn't do murlocs as they did those levels elsewhere to stave off boredom, but I don't think you should have a problem with proper pulling techniques. I don't play WoW anymore due to boredom, so perhaps they made the murlocs super strong post BC launch?

Re:You mean like that (Group) marker?

[WillAffleckUW]

Look, now that I know they are group quests, they're no prob.

But they aren't labelled as such. It's fine for my hunter or rogue to do them.

And pulling inside caves doesn't work well for warriors.

Re:You mean like that (Group) marker?

[Opportunist]

Though sometimes you wonder. I had a group quest (suggested: 4), only to find out that 2 would've been plenty (if one is a Warrior and the other one a Priest).

What they SHOULD apologize for

[Anonymous Coward]

What they SHOULD apologize for is their habit of putting uber-powerful wandering elites in zones where individuals or small-groups are trying to accomplish individual and small-group quests.

The presence of a monster that can sneak up behind you and kill you in two hits does NOT add to the challenge of the game, but rather, the frustration.

Re:What they SHOULD apologize for

[C0rinthian]

I think it discourages bots, mostly.

Re:What they SHOULD apologize for

[_Sprocket_]

What they SHOULD apologize for is their habit of putting uber-powerful wandering elites in zones where individuals or small-groups are trying to accomplish individual and small-group quests.

The presence of a monster that can sneak up behind you and kill you in two hits does NOT add to the challenge of the game, but rather, the frustration. I completely disagree. I assume you're talking about the Fel Reavers (although Devilsaur comes to mind too). The nice thing with the Fel Reavers is that they make lots of noise (not to mention shaking the ground). They don't exactly "sneak". I've had plenty of "oh crap" moments when I had to dodge one but have never been caught. I've had guildmates get smacked while not paying attention (lots of banter ensued). And while all this is a bit inconvenient, I found that it really added to the overall sense of danger and atmosphere of the Outlands.

Of course - I play RPPVP servers anyway. I'm used to keeping my head on a swivel for danger (not that I'm always successful).

Re:What they SHOULD apologize for

[Xentor]

Haha, I LOVE the Fel Reavers. That was my favorite part about Hellfire Penninsula! Every time I was with a group, and I glanced behind to see one about to get us, I had a Firefly/Serenity moment...

"REAVER!!!"

*party runs away*

And the devilsaurs back in the crater... Gotta love those Jurassic Park moments, when you run for your life from a giant T-rex, only to soon find half of the prehistoric jungle on your tail as you run away screaming (Well, not ACTUALLY screaming)...

Re:What they SHOULD apologize for

[bigstrat2003]

While I don't mind Fel Reavers, I did find the devilsaurs highly annoying. If you had your camera turned the wrong way, you'd better hope that you don't get dazed while you're running, because you're done for. They were rather cheap. Fel Reavers, on the other hand, give you a lot of advance notice, if you're paying any attention.

Re:What they SHOULD apologize for

[rafa]

Not to mention Son of Arugal - that one caused me an immense amount of frustration in the first weeks of my new life as a WoW addict. I've since gone back and killed him while pointing and laughing just to work out the aggro in my system.

interestingly enough, I felt EXACTLY the same

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

although Terrokar wasn't that bad.

The expansion decline

[MLS100]

Every expansion will mean less new players because the investment required to 'catch up' to the rest of the game is growing at a rapid pace. Slowly the rate of old players losing interest will outpace the rate of new players. As the server populations drop, the effect will become even more drastic, since the less people that are playing, the less fun the game becomes for the leftover population (less people in guild, tougher to find people for pick up groups, tougher to find quality replacements for quitting guild members).

I give WoW another one or two expansions before work begins on a new MMO incarnation. Whether it be WoW II or otherwise.

Re:The expansion decline

[Shados]

The problem with every MMO out there is that while they always start looking at others trying not to repeat the same mistakes, and initially they often succeed, is that they all fall in the same trap eventually, that is, focusing on "End Game". Most people who get hooked to an MMO, get hooked on the way, not at the end with the so called hardcores running high level events. The -vocal- majority is all there, so if you look at forums, etc, it feels like its all what people want... and its how all MMOs eventually get ruinned.

As you said, the investment to "catch up" become huge, competition becomes fierce, the amount of cheaters go up (to try and catch up), and its just a downward spiral. While its easier to say than do, MMO devs (not just WoW) need to stop thinking that the end game, "long term" players are their main customers. At any given moment, they indeed are, but for the continual longevity of the game, its not these people that will fuel it, its the constant supply of "newbies", so to speak. People rediscovering the trip from level 1.

The games should make it interesting to continually start over, that way new players and old are closer together, mix better, etc. Originally FFXI had that decently, making players continually start back up, mixing up with the new, it was quite the experience. Then somewhere along the line they got caught by the vocal majority and down it went. Its not to say that adding content at the end isn't a good idea: people who are attached to some characters will continue paying longer, but it shouldn't be the main concern like it is in 99% of long lasting MMOs out there.

Re:The expansion decline

[CyberKender]

I understand that the v2.3 patch is going to change the leveling from 20-60, speeding it up somehow. While I understand the need for this from the point of view of people who've already made it past 60, it's rather sad that it will mean that all of the raid content below 60 will be even more abandoned than it is now. It would be nice if they came up with some way to make it worthwhile to still do BWL/MC/ZG/AQ/Naxx/etc.

Re:The expansion decline

[BandoMcHando]

Well, in some ways I second this, I'd love to see some new content lower down the levelling ladder, as the old instances and quests can get a little boring after having run through them a lot of times, and they never quite have the same magic redoing them on an alt as they did when you first when in and everything was new and mysterious, but you do need to consider that of the subscribing playerbase, quite a large proportion is at the endgame stage, ok, maybe not Black Temple/Mount Hyjal/etc, but a large proportion are level 70. (Census details)

I'd actually quite like to see some more stuff to do around the karazhan level, for those who aren't really interested in the 25-man stuff, or who can't commit to the time/organisation required. Zul'Aman could be quite good for this, but we shall have to see how it turns out.

Re:The expansion decline

[Shados]

I understand this, but I'm not talking of WoW specifically. I'm talking about MMO design in general. Most MMOs start in a way that is NOT based on end game (obviously), and its how they get popular. Then a bunch of extremely vocal "end gamers" then end up being the turning point of the game, and since they are vocal, and the rest are not, the game ends up shifted about them... I did not play WoW, but I spent several thousand of hours playing just about every other MMOs out there, and it always ends the same way, based on the end game content. Yes, a large portion of the user base is 70, and play on their max level characters: because thats how the game is built and designed. It does NOT have to be that way...

The game could be designed on starting over and over (like FFXI was originally, but fell in the same darn trap), or maybe not based on levels at all, or something. I'm no designer :) But everytime I game ends up "based" around end game, the same thing happen: the same peoples stick around, the same people move on to a new game, and sooner than later, the game goes to ruin. Then a new game comes around realising that mistake, until they too cave in under the pressure of the "hardcores" and make the game yet another Everquest wannabe.

Re:The expansion decline

[Kris_J]

From what my guild's high-level (purpled) tanks tell me, the first thing that would need to be done would be to reduce the durability hit simply from being the tank. I'm told that an epicced-out level 70 tank, even if they don't die, will get a repair bill higher than the amount they make from being on the run.

This fact alone seems to be more than enough to make the old-skool raid instances into ghost towns.

Re:The expansion decline

[umbrellasd]

They should start everyone at 60, but that would obsolete everything before the first expansion, so they'd have to rebalance those areas. That would be pretty fun, because it would be great to have an actual reason to run something like LBRS or UBRS or Naxxramas even after you are into the 60-80 zone.

A better solution is to just focus on the content and challenge (strategy, tactics, etc.) instead of: expansion = current level + 10. If it's always about level, new players don't want to play, and old players have a smaller and smaller part of the game that's entertaining for them. I think it's just very dumb and sad that the most widely played MMOG in the world has such a limiting design.

Re:The expansion decline

[j0nb0y]

world of warcraft has a ton of content suitable for casual play.

Tons of 5 man dungeons, once you get through them, you can then do them on heroic. No need for a larger group.

Battlegrounds. Hop into a battleground anytime, the battles are usually over in less than 30 minutes.

Arena. You do need a regular group for these, but the regular group can be as small as two people. Not difficult for casuals to access. The matching system will try to match you against similarly rated groups, so while you may get beat by the occasional hardcore group, you should mostly be matched against other casual groups who you have a chance against.

There's not much need to generate new content for lowbies. New players haven't played the already existing low level content (which in WoW is quite good), and old players for the most part don't mind playing through the content again if they want to level alts (not that they have to play through the exact same content. There are many options in WoW as to what zones you want to level in, and which zones to skip. It would be quite an undertaking to do every quest in the game.)

As far as the "keep adding onto the endgame" trap, WoW hasn't at all fallen into this trap. Why? With each expansion, they are not adding onto the previous endgame content. They are obsoleting the previous endgame content, and adding a completely new endgame. With a new level cap of 80, all that 1337 level 70 gear the hard core raiders worked so hard for will be obsolete. They will level their characters to 80 and start working on getting new 1337 level 80 gear. In Burning Crusade, few people enter the pre-BC endgame dungeons, and those that do just do them for fun. The same will be true of BC endgame dungeons once Wrath is out. The exception is that BC raid dungeons are very tough to get attuned for, so it will be hard to find enough people who are attuned to do them for fun. Most people won't want to bother when they can't get any current endgame relevant loot.

A common complaint I hear from WoW casuals is that the game is "over" for them when their character hits max level. While I say there is a ton of good casual content at the max level, these players obviously disagree. And for them, they now get ten new levels worth of content to play through. I expect 70 - 80 to take about the same amount of time as 60 - 70 did. There will be hardcore players there the first week. Casual players will be content to work through it over the course of a few months. Note that WoW has been out for almost three years. Most casual players, even those who started "late," have characters at or near the level cap.

WoW has a lot of issues. Lack of content for casual players is not one of them. The last expansion added new starting zones and new races. Casual players loved these. I don't expect Blizzard to forget casual players with this expansion either.

I let my subscription lapse in august. I'm constantly tempted to reactivate, but I'm in law school now, so that would be a bad idea. Besides, Hellgate: London is coming out, and that is going to rock =]

Re:The expansion decline

[rpillala]

Blizzard has had open postings for people to work on "next-generation" MMO development for some time now. Since they certainly can't think of World of Warcraft as "next-generation," I think you're right. Personally I'm hoping for a Diablo game.

Re:The expansion decline

[Shados]

As far as the "keep adding onto the endgame" trap, WoW hasn't at all fallen into this trap. Why? With each expansion, they are not adding onto the previous endgame content. They are obsoleting the previous endgame content, and adding a completely new endgame. With a new level cap of 80, all that 1337 level 70 gear the hard core raiders worked so hard for will be obsolete. They will level their characters to 80 and start working on getting new 1337 level 80 gear

Which is exactly like 90% of other MMOs out there, and what I meant :)

Also, I didn't talk about just casuals. I talked about new players. Not exactly the same thing... The problem with adding stuff at the end (or as you describe it, semantics) is that the population becomes separated. That may be what a lot of people want, but it still ruins games. WoW has actually nothing new to it aside what they -originally- did right, and the fact that they were able to hype it up to a new market... they still do the same mistakes, in the same order.

Re:The expansion decline

[fractoid]

Tons of 5 man dungeons, once you get through them fifteen to twenty times, you can then do them on heroic. Fixed that for you. The rep grind to get into heroic dungeons is a pain in the ass if you didn't farm the lower level dungeons as you levelled up, and even then you're running for rep long after you've got all the loot you need. And this is set to get worse:

"When is a game more than a game?" says Metzen. "When it's making you feel creepy or elated or heroic -- it's not just a mechanical experience of clicking and looting and killing and raiding. We want to provide as much context and fiction and psychology as possible, at least the first time -- you'll probably roll this dungeon 80 times -- but the first time was a hoot!" <rantmode>Why the hell would they ever believe that running the same dungeon 80 times is fun? It's not. NOT FUN. NOT BLOODY FUN! Hell, I probably ran UBRS a total of 30-40 times between all my lvl 60 pre-expansion characters, and that was way too much and only because there was nothing else to do. The 15 runs of Steam Vaults that I needed to get my heroic Coilfang key were too much. What could possibly delude an experienced game designer, who is obviously passionate about his job, into thinking that players would enjoy spending over 200 hours in the same damn dungeon? </rantmode>

Re:The expansion decline

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, people just don't lose interest that fast. At least not in wow. People who've played for years will still feel thrilled by something new, even if its just a new town or something. Expansions keep players in, moreso than limiting player intake. I just don't see it dying that fast. Also, new expansions let Blizzard sell the base game in a package that costs a wee bit more than separate purchases. Capitalism at its best: ripping people off at every possible opportunity.

Re:The expansion decline

[fractoid]

Which is exactly like 90% of other MMOs out there, and what I meant :) I believe that the problem he was referring to is not that as the game gets older and expansions come out, newcomers have more levels to get through before hitting 'endgame'. It's more what we have between expansion packs. For instance, heroic dungeons are meant to help players gear up for 10-man raids, but the 'bubble' of raiding players has passed heroic dungeons and it's now impossible to get a run on my server. Same thing with Kara - high end guilds can only get new players by poaching them from up-and-coming guilds (thus destroying said guilds) because they don't run the old raids any more, and so fresh players can't gear up. Expansions are really the only points that new characters can get into the 'endgame' because they're effectively gear resets.

Re:The expansion decline

[bdjacobson]

They are, but it's rather cheaply at that. Instead of new raid content, they're going to "revamp" Naxxramus and make it one of the beginning level 80 instances, similar to Gruul. Feels cheap; they could probably assign one guy to the whole process of getting attuned (again) and changing the Boss HP levels and attack power so that we get to go through it. Then just increase the stats on the gear by the formulas they're running on to create the new Tier 7.

Perhaps I'm just extra sensitive to this stuff but I see them making lousy decision after lousy decision:

-Northrend Content: Reused instances. It would be one thing if they said "here's the old Naxx, redone and attune process removed, so if you and some guildies are bored on a non raid night you can jump in there and have a new challenge that most people haven't experienced". Instead they said "Ok we're 'redoing' Naxx, it's the Tier 7 dungeon now, that content you paid for in the original wow we're charging you for again, and we're not giving you any new content for Tier 7, Naxx is taking that place"
-More Northrend: You won't be able to fly until level 78, under the guise of "We don't want players to blow past all the new content our designers worked on". This is simply an excuse for bad design to create the illusion of substance-- if the content were interesting and the zones fun, they wouldn't have this problem. Instead that 5000g you spent on the Epic flying mount (if you got it) is now useless until level 78. Imagine if they said the same thing about all the Outlands gear you acquired, hey you can't use it we want people to start from ground zero again. Also, imagine any new subscribers leveling to 70 for the first time. What's the first thing you want to do when you hit 70? Buy your flying mount. But whats the first thing you lose in Northrend when you enter at 70? Your flying mount. Horrible design on their part.
-More 10-man instances like Karazhan: these are a horrible idea. They split the guild and bind people to groups such that the better players much choose: either help the "2nd group" get through the 10-man, and miss chances at gear upgrades because we're probably not going to get very far, or ignore the 2nd group/2nd rate players and just stick in their own group of 10 good players. You can't do both. So then at the end of it all you've got a group of 10 players geared and ready to move on past Karazhan, but the rest of the guild is still struggling on the third boss. So the group of 10 players gets restless waiting for the 2nd group to go through the whole process they did and they and jump ship to another guild. Unless they let players join multiple groups for the same instance, these 10-mans do nothing but split up guilds; guilds now are in a much worse state than pre-BC: hardly any have gotten through Kara, let alone Gruul.

Re:The expansion decline

[Opportunist]

EQ2 had a nice idea for that problem, called "mentoring", where you could artificially lower your level to the person you "mentor" for the time you are with him. In reality, while it does help people who have a high level friend, it's still not really a replacement for "normal" teammates, since, well, no matter how much bonus XP you hand to that lv 70, he won't care. He doesn't need XP, he needs items.

I can see two ways how you can get people to play with new low level players. First, make something like this "mentoring" a requirement, or make it some sort of quest (or something akin to those honor markers), where your drop at the endboss in the lowbie instance is some sort of token that can be turned into some good gear for you. That way you can encourage high level people who don't find a PUG or whose crew is currently unavailable to play with lowbies.

Another way could be to encourage people to create alts, and to get them to 70, too. Maybe by handing them some bonus buffs for their characters depending on their alts (and their level). A lv 70 warrior who has a lv 70 priest on the same account could get some innate HOT, with a Warlock you could have some debuff proc on your weapon, etc.

Re:The expansion decline

[Kjella]

quite a large proportion is at the endgame stage, ok, maybe not Black Temple/Mount Hyjal/etc, but a large proportion are level 70.

It's rather hard to read from the graph since you have many small bars compared to one huge, but if you filter for level 70-70 you see it's a little over 2mio out of 6.2mio players or 1/3rd that's at level 70. That means that 2/3rds is *not* at level 70, though I suppose it might be more important to make sure players don't "dead end" than just making general improvements.

Re:The expansion decline

[Opportunist]

That's an issue. Why do you think it's so terribly hard to find a tank willing to join a PUG? They got a good chance to come out with less than they went in with if it fails.

My guess is that the idea was that raids are a financial risk for all classes. Where priests need to buy good drinks and mana pots and rogues need to buy goodies for their poisons. But with mages being water fountains and teas pretty much losing all their meaning by lv 60, those "problems" don't exist for any other class.

Re:The expansion decline

[RogueyWon]

While I don't entirely agree with your analysis of the reasons, you've just described the life-cycle of pretty much every popular MMO ever made.

Phase 1: shiny new MMO comes out, marketinggoes into overdrive, solid number of initial sales, rampant teething troubles in many cases, complaints that players are paying to beta test the game.

Phase 2: population grows solidly, as much through word of mouth now as marketing. Server issues tend to stabilise and the worst of the bugs are fixed. This is probably the most exciting phase to play through, as the distractions surrounding the launch have failed, but the limits of the game aren't yet fully known. Lord of the Rings Online is probably sitting here at the moment.

Phase 3: population stabilises, with small fluctuations on a monthly basis. The developers tend to switch from primarily chasing bugs to primarily developing new content. This is primarily done via patches at this stage, although you might get a first expansion. Players start getting heavily into the end-game and you start to see a real gap growing between casual and hardcore players. The game's population will generally hit its peak during this phase. A good MMO will often make this phase last 2-3 years (cf. Everquest, Final Fantasy XI and now World of Warcraft as probably the most successful global examples). I'd say WoW is here at the moment, although it's perhaps starting to drift towards Phase 4.

Phase 4: player numbers begin a slow but inexorable decline, as boredom sets in among some of the hardcore and newer, shinier MMOs tempt away the newcomers. At this point, the developer seeks to protect their revenues by shifting the focus from free content in patches to paid-for expansions. This can also have the effect of tempting players who left back to the game. Nevertheless, the decline in player numbers continues. The game becomes increasingly centred on the hardcore players, with most of the expansions focussing exclusively on end-game. The experience for totally new players gets progressively less friendly. I'd say Final Fantasy XI is at this stage right now.

Phase 5: the game continues with a small, hardcore player-base, essentially as a legacy title. Expansions continue to appear, produced cheaply in the hope of racking up some easy sales. "Free" additions in terms of downloadable patches become less and less frequent. By and large, only the real hardcore are still playing. Everquest and Ultima Online fall very much into this category.

Phase 6: the game is no longer profitable, so the developers pull the plug. Somebody submits a nostalgic news-post to slashdot and a dozen people comment to say how nasty the developers are for not releasing the source code.

Most MMOs tend to follow this cycle pretty closely, with the exception of the real flops, which often tend to bypass the middle phases and go straight from phase 1 to 5 or 6. The simple fact is that however successful Blizzard have been with WoW and however well they manage it, sooner or later it is going to go into decline.

What do I think the future holds for Blizzard as an MMO developer? Given how well they've done with WoW, I don't think they'll want to get out of the business. I think they've got 2 ways to go. The first is that they wait another 18 months (or maybe 2 years) and then announce World of Starcraft. The other (and to me more interesting option), would be for them to announce Warcraft 4 (another RTS with a hefty single-player plot), advance the Warcraft Universe by 50 years or so, blow up some cities (or even continents), add some new ones and then announce World of Warcraft 2.

Re:The expansion decline

[resequenced]

Every expansion will mean less new players because the investment required to 'catch up' to the rest of the game is growing at a rapid pace. This is likely exactly why the next content patch for WoW, patch 2.3, includes an adjustment to the leveling scheme for levels 0 through 60. Experience to level is being lowered while experience awards for quests is being increased. This should offset the growing gap between character creation and end game.

Re:The expansion decline

[GalionTheElf]

I think he was reffering to cost aswell. When I started, about a year in to the game, you were all set for 40, now depending on where and when you buy it it'll set you back between 60 and 80. With the next expansion that'll probably be anywhere between 100-130 before you've even paid your first months subscription. So that's two or three other games you could have bought.

Re:The expansion decline

[dghcasp]

Every expansion will mean less new players because the investment required to 'catch up' to the rest of the game is growing at a rapid pace.

I disagree - "catching up" is really only for people who want to "race to 70" so they can raid. For everyone else, more expansions mean more content to explore and more playtime until you "hit the brick wall at 70."

In reality, it's only a small percent of people who raid. Most of us can't afford the time investment. Personally, I'd get v. bored doing the same instances over and over and over trying to get the +22 boots of no-real-life.

Additionally, Blizzard is making some of the "old-60-world" grinds easier by increasing reputation gain rates for the old-world factions.

Re:The expansion decline

[cluke]

The way I see MMO gameplay, it's all about testing your gear and skill's improvements over time. To do this, you need a basline to judge against. So, typical people DO run the same dungeon again and again, if only to judge how much 'better' they are getting by how much easier they can get through the same content. I play WoW, but am starting to get a little bored of it, for these very reasons - I'm not sure it's a decent use of my gaming time when typically I can get so much more out of a single player RPG in the same time.

Re:The expansion decline

[tbannist]

There's a couple of issues that might help illuminate why MMOs pretty much universally fall into this trap:

1) It's usually cheaper to keep a current player than to recruit a new one.

2) "Hardcore" players are evangelical players. They recruit new players.

3) When a player "completes" all existing content, there's a very high likelyhood they'll quit the game to play something else.

4) Large-group raiding makes most players less likely to quit paying for the game, it also reduces the average amount of time they play even though they continue paying the same amount as more active players.

5) Expansions are sold to players to generate an extra cash bump.

I think you're correct, though, in that the MMO designers tend to put too much focus on the end-game raiders. They forget that end game people still leave, and therefore you still need to put some effort in to attracting new players to replace them.

Re:The expansion decline

[tbannist]

The problems with Karazhan are many-fold:
1) It's got a raid timer.
2) It's got a 1-week raid timer.
3) There's only 1 ten man instance, and it's Kharazan.
4) It's actually difficult.

These are all problems which could probably be solved with a few minor changes. If you reduce the length of the raid timer, you increase the opportunities to run it. Zul'Gurub and AQ20 had 4 day raid timers, that made it much easier to have mixed groups. UBRS was 10 man and had no raid timer at all. The only similar content in BC is 5 man heroics. There's no larger group instances that don't have a raid timer. Raid timers suck because they are used as both a tool for progression and as a punishment. If you kill a boss in Khara you can only return to Khara with the people you killed the boss with or as the leader of a group of people who haven't come to it yet (and the bossses that you killed are then dead). It's good that you can do a night of Kara and then come back to finish it at another time without having to restart from the beginning, but the mechanism for doing makes coordination and cooperation a pain in the ass if you have more than 10 players interested in running it in your guild and you want to have more than 10 because the content aftersward is geared for 25 players.

Honestly I think if they had done something smart and put 3-4 10 mans like Khara in to start for the expansion it wouldn't be as big an issue. You'd have 3 different paths of progression to get to the first 25 man and it'd be much easier to make sure all 25 members of your eventual end-game raiding crew get opportunities to do the 10 mans without quitting your guild and going somewhere else until your finished with Kara.

If they reduced the raid timer, you'd be able to do about 2 Khara runs a week, giving more opportunities to gear up other players in the guild. If Khara was easier the you could split your A team to get the B team players through it.

I think if you fix any of the issues, the others become less important. I think Kara is, over all, a colossal implementation screw up on Blizzard's part. And they're being stupid about it too a Blizzard rep said (paraphrased) "More player time is spent in Kara than any other raiding instance, we don't think that would happen unless players really, really enjoyed it". Really? You can't think of any other reason why people might spend lots and lots of time on the introductory raiding instances than because they like it?

Re:The expansion decline

[andi75]

Did you even try doing some quests in Blade's Edge (a lot of them give CE rep). I was revered with Cenarion before I set foot into SV the first time (ok, I admit I had some 'leftover' unidentified plant parts from my main..., but still, more than 2-3 SV runs necessary sounds unrealistic, if you did the quest content).

Re:The expansion decline

[fractoid]

Admittedly, no, I didn't do many - as I think I said in another post, I skipped Blade's Edge because it was such a complete PITA to get around. :P I'll keep it in mind for any future characters, though, if it gives CE rep too. At any rate, rep grinds are annoying - I think the only good one I've come across is Tranquillien rep, as you do the quests you get good, relevant gear just as you need it. :)

Re:The expansion decline

[Agripa]

They repeat even the well documented lessons of the recent past:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)

Re:The expansion decline

[PhetusPolice]

But what is that consensus the result of? More content near end-game? Little and static features for lower levels? Following the model of previous MMO's? The players will play what is provided by the game. At first, it's to level up to 60. Then the designers think "Ok, what should they do now once they've got 60?" This very question unevenly divides the focus from the rest of the game content.

Personally, after a couple of years playing WoW, I never made a char past 51 or so. I did the same with EverQuest, too. I enjoyed just traversing around, playing every class to get their experience/feel, more of RPing than end-game raids. I quit both MMO's because I felt as if they were ignoring my kind of gameplay.

Btw, how is Vanguard doing? I've been interested in it, but was deterred from the low subscribers soon after post-launch.

Re:The expansion decline

[vimh42]

I have a better solution. Let people start out at level 60 or 70. When I start a new character, I don't want to grind my way through stuff I've done before over and over, I want the stuff that's a little more fresh. I like that the Death Knight gets this, but honestly, everybody else should to. Right now, if you have the original game and BC, you should be able to start a level 60 character. When the next expansion comes out, you should just start out at level 70 when creating new characters. Let people try out a new class without having to trudge through the old content. Sure you're going to have people new to the game just start of with a "high" level character, but so what, at least you don't bore expirianced players.

Re:The expansion decline

[RogerWilco]

I started playing WoW 8 months ago, and I now am level 63. I agree with the "catching up" feeling. I feel that in this sense TBC is worse as the original game, I have not experienced level 70 content yet, but it does sound like a rat race, wth most people stuck in Karazhan. I have been to Zul'gurub, Molten Core and Onyxia around level 57-62 and had much fun in green/blue gear.

I liked most of the levelling experience in the original WoW. I as fortunate to start on a new server a few days after it started. A general problem on older servers seems to be that all content below level 70 is almost deserted. An other problem seems to be gold selling services. Both are symptoms of the effect you describe. If I new a good solution, I would probably be making millions in game design.

Re:The expansion decline

[RogerWilco]

The problem with the TBC instances is that the design assumed people are already established level-60 raiders and will clear the content before the first 25-man dungeons easily.

I am not level 70, only 63, so I can only comment on what I see, but I have been to Zul'Gurub and Onyxia and Molten Core before level 60, and have had a lot of fun, learning how to raid in the process. There are no equivalent raids at level 70, a nice 25-man instance, that you would be able to beat with a group of level 68-69 players, if very skilled, or a group of reasonably skilled level 70s. All level 70 instances seem "heroic only mode".

The logistical difficulty of having a 10 man raid as bottleneck to 25-man content is not helping.

Itemization?

[dczyz]

The one I question I have is what will they do on itemization. BC broke the progression rate that they had been at for 1-60. (and I do not count the tier 5/6 stuff)

Morale questions?

[dczyz]

Okay, two questions. Lol

What moral questions does WOW have? That is one of the flaws in it. You only can progress - quests are complete or not - you do not have alternative choices.

The only thing even close to a moral question was the one to support the pirates or not in SV. And those that did never had any progression down that path after the initial quest chain.

Re:Morale questions?

[fractoid]

Well, the only morale question is "can I be bothered levelling yet another character?" :P

But there were a few morally dubious quests in the game, especially from some of the undead questgivers. Take the one where the undead woman is angry that her neighbours survived the plague unscathed and still have a running farm - you have to head off and kill them. Or the 'new plague' questline where you end up poisoning a bunch of captives (Geneva convention anyone?) And another in Hillsbrad where you have to hunt down and kill some defecting undead - read the research journal that Warden Belamoore drops, without this quest in the storyline there would be some real chance of reconciliation between Forsaken and Human factions. They never adequately finished that quest chain though, I wonder what the artifacts they stole were for... regardless, on my undead character I did all of the above quests, but my orc refused on moral grounds.

Re:Morale questions?

[SynapseLapse]

I think the parent was more looking for quest choices rather than morale issues per se. Think of some of the quest choices from Ultima, Deus Ex or Oblivion. This person wants me to go to kill this bad guy in the next town. But then I get over there and discover he's not actually a bad guy. Do I continue my quest anyway? Or go back and kill the original person?

Re:Morale questions?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

If you hadn't noticed, the undead aren't very nice. It's refreshing to see some more variety than three flavors of boy scout to choose from, even if I don't go for it.

Re:Morale questions?

[fractoid]

I always thought the Magram/Gelkis quest chains, or the ability to gain Bloodsail rep, were wonderful. I wish they'd do more areas like that, have two zones that you start off neutral with, and one faction become friendly and the other hostile by gaining/losing rep. That's what reputation SHOULD be used for, not as a second XP bar that lets you use some piece of gear when you 'ding'.

Imagine a neutral battle ground between Tuskarr and Nerub, where the faction you befriended determined what side you were on. That would be awesome! Or imagine grinding up your Undercity rep past 'unfriendly' to allow your human character to enter unmolested (by guards at least). So much scope, wasted! :(

No

[geekoid]

There is also the centaurs is desoclace; Which is a huge moral issue. Natural, moral issues only matter for RP.

There are several bloodsailer quests after you become friendly to the Bloodsail Buccaneers. Of course it is a pain in the ass to do that.

Maybe not

[geekoid]

They were smart in that you so not need every expansion to play.
So your 'get caught up' price is spread out over time.
Addde to that is that historically, in the MMO arena, it is cheaper to get caught up then it is to buy the expansions as they come out.

I give WoW 1 or two more expansion, but only because the look is getting boring and stale.

Itemisation, re-used models

[wilsonthecat]

One lesson they will have learnt the hard way is itemisation. All the items at the start of BC were completely off. Infact most patches have seen big changes to item stats, something I can't remember happening that often in the original WoW (not on the same scale). Particularly the first major patch (the BT one) where green items went down dramatically.

It's as if they employed new item designers who didn't understand the color system in the game, and just threw stats about all over the place. Personally that devalued the game for me and made Blizzard look quite amateurish. Particularly with the overwhelming number of items introduced into the game after the expansion compared to the number before. If the items had actually been given new 3D models it would've been ok, but most are still left overs from pre-BC or just the same model with the colour changed. Same with the zones, recycled orcs, ogres (level 30 quest, or is it 65?!), spiders, wolves were abundent everywhere.

The main thing that might hook me to buy the expansion is real hefty update to the graphics engine, not just some new looking fire and ice. That's probably the biggest part of the game for me, exploring the new zones and areas. Having played (or still playing) Gears of War, Team Fortress 2, Bioshock, Crysis beta and numerous other games I see WoW screenshots now and think really, how are the playerbase so uncritical and apathetic of the graphics? The character animations still look superb, but the texture resolutions, lack of shader effects except a few spell particle effects look tired. Keep the cartoon-like graphics sure, but there's nothing wrong with making those 8800s and dual cores sweat a little.

Re:Itemisation, re-used models

[vimh42]

I think the stats were more to catch everybody up in terms of quality of gear quickly before they hit the new dungeons and raids. Penny Arcade even made a great shirt that said "Green is the new Purple." I very quickly replaced my tier1/tier2 class gear with greens and a few blues at level 60. As I recall, one piece was statistically better than the tier3 of that armor type (fewer stats of course). So it was more a balancing everybody out really.