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?

[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

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.

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

[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

[geekoid]

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

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

[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

[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

[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.)

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

[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

[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?