World of Warcraft - Wrath Of the Lich King Is In Alpha

simrook writes to tell us that World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, has entered closed alpha testing, as reported by WoWInsider. Wrath of the Lich King, which we've discussed previously, will raise the level cap to 80 and introduce a new class: Death Knights. World of Warcraft remains the most popular MMORPG on the market with over 10 million subscribers. WoWInsider notes, "Various players are being invited to check it out, under a strict NDA."

Comments

No permadeath

[QuantumG]

means you've gotta keep moving those goal posts, cause anyone who grinds enough can get to them, and so the carrot keeps being moved further away from the donkey.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's a subscription game, and if a player dies, there's a good chance they'll say to hell with it and quit. They're not worried about making a game that doesn't go stale, they're worried about keeping money coming in.

Re:No permadeath

[snuf23]

How would it make the game not get stale? Rerunning the same quests in lvl 1-20 zones over again because you accidentally ran into a couple bears you couldn't handle?
Not too mention that many of WoW's encounters almost guarantee you will die the first try or second try until you get your strategy down (especially in instances and raiding).

Re:No permadeath

[LordKaT]

Oh boy.

OK, first off "it works in Counter-Strike" isn't a fair assessment. It's not a permadeath for a character that you've poured days/weeks/months of your life into.

it would prevent the game from getting stale - guess what? when your character dies you have to (*gasp*) PLAY THE SAME GAME OVER AGAIN! How is that NOT stale? In a permadeath situation you get to relevel in the same leveling spots, with the same quests, and grind the same bullshit you were grinding before.

solve the grind problem - do you even know what the "grind problem" is? Removing the grind is the only way to solve the grind problem. Permadeath is only going to cause characters to (*gasp*) grind to their original level AGAIN! That's just grind-tastic.

it works for Nethack - because Nethack is built around a game mechanic that makes it unique from World of Warcraft: the entire game is a random dungeon. World of Warcraft is a static world (aside from the expansion packs). If Nethack was the same dungeon, with the same monsters, the same story, the same items, the same skills, it would become very tedious to play.

it works for a variety of MUDs - people who play these MUDs are fucking psychotic.

it worked in almost all pencil-and-paper RPGs - because you didn't play the same campaign over and over and over again. If you did play the same campaign with different characters until you beat it, you a) missed the point of having multiple campaigns and b) have a serious OCD problem. Oh, and c) never experienced having your level 19 warlock die at the hands of a bastard GM.

Unless you change the core mechanics and introduce a random story generation algorithm, Permadeath would be the single most mind-numbingly annoying thing you could introduce into a modern game.

1984 called, they wanted to let you know that the gaming industry left you behind.

Re:No permadeath

[Todd Fisher]

Not too mention that many of WoW's encounters almost guarantee you will die the first try or second try until you get your strategy down Kinda like in real-life, except for the whole second try part.

Re:No permadeath

[Spokehedz]

I wish there was a server with permadeath and you were on there. And while you were complaining on why this wasn't a Permadeath PVP server--I would gank you in the back.

Re:No permadeath

[Starrk]

Leveling in WoW is easy; getting the best equipment from raid dungeons or pvp can be very, very hard. If there were no more expansions, the vast majority of players would never be able to finish the existing content, so that's not the real problem.

No, even if you had permadeath (like that's a fun idea in an RPG that takes hundreds of hours to get through), you'd still get bored of the same old content, and want something new.

Re:No permadeath

[P51mus]

Diablo 2's permadeath was optional, and was called "hardcore" mode. A lot less people played "hardcore" than normal mode.

Re:No permadeath

[FooAtWFU]

Well, Angband and Nethack and its Rogue-like friends manage pretty well. (Not quite WoW-level, but they don't have quite the same resources behind them.) They have different dynamics, though. The WOW dynamics, indeed, won't work for permadeath.

When death is a big deal, you take a lot more precautions to avoid death. In rogue-like games, you will typically try to maintain a stockpile of 'escapes' and 'healing', the two primary ways Not To Die in a tight spot. You also pay attention to various sorts of Detection - ways of avoiding tight spots altogether. And, of course, armor and resistances of various sorts. WoW does feature some moderate amounts of healing, but fewer escapes, and much less detection. There is also a disparity with the tactic of simply Running Away. In a game like Angband, the dungeon is infinite, and randomly generated each time, so if there's a room stuffed full of Big Evil Nasties in front of you, well, you just turn around and head another direction; there will surely be treasure later to make up for the loss. Nethack has random-but-finite dungeons, but it's still usually feasible to avoid tough spots until you're better prepared. And in either, there are often a variety of ways around a spot that could avoid that trouble altogether. (WoW, in the meantime, generally litters important areas with baddies, and doesn't provide sneaky back routes.) Here notice another facet of a randomly-generated world: in Angband and Nethack there are very few Important Areas. Most are throwaways.

I guess that the key thing, though, to avoid repeating Tedium, you simply need to avoid Repetition and Tedium in the beginning altogether, as much as you can. To make a good game, rather than just a decent one that's good and long.

Re:No permadeath

[daddyrief]

d) never had sex.

not so grind-tastic.

Re:No permadeath

[DrgnDancer]

Diablo II also had... saved games. I mean, seriously. Permadeath is OK when you can save the game and try again. Imagine every time your character died you had to start over again from level 1. Most people would never even see the stage 4 area Diablo lived in, let alone fight him if they had to restart the WHOLE thing every time they died. If you're talking about the multiplayer hardcore ladders, well a) I always thought those people were nuckin' futs, and b) the whole point of the ladders was to get as far as possible before dying. Hardly anyone ever beat the game that way. You played single player and/or non-permadeath multiplayer to see the content and get good at the fights before you ever tried the ladders.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

It does actually require skill. Not to the same extent that many other kinds of games do, and persistence is at least as significant a factor, but there is a level of skill required. And sure any idiot can get to level 70 given enough time, but once there only people with actual skill are able to do anything much in raids.

As for the kinds of quests you do while levelling, it's really only as mindless as you want to make it. If you only look at them as "okay, I just kill X number of Y and collect Z number of A, and do variations of that over and over again", of course you're going to see it as a mindless repetitive grind. But if you immerse yourself a little more and think of the reasons why this NPC is telling you to go on this particular quest and what you're achieving by it, and the places it takes you, it's more interesting. And of course, once you're at the level cap it's largely a different game.

Of course, it could be that this kind of game just isn't your cup of tea at all. My point still remains that it's not as mindless as it seems.

Re:No permadeath

[xouumalperxe]

What makes Nethack is not the randomly generated maps.

It's, on one hand, the fact that the whole world is random. Spell scrolls have different names for each spell in every game. Wands look different. Potions are of different colours.

On the other hand, and more importantly, the game is probably the most convoluted mass of hard-coded behaviour ever. Most items interact with a large portion of all other items in a meaningful manner. In fact, this sort of interaction is key in discovering what items actually do. Want to find out if an item's cursed? drop it on the floor and try to get your dog to voluntarily step on it (it's not cursed if he does). If it's not cursed, feel free to wear it and find out if it does anything unusual. Or zap a wand at the floor to see what it does. If the bugs on the floor stop moving, you're looking at a wand of death -- or perhaps just of sleep. If the bugs go away, it might be teleportation -- or invisibility! You also have to eat, or you'll starve. You'll mostly be eating stuff you kill, but you need to make sure it's both proper food (the gods don't like cannibalism, highly acidic monsters will give you a bad case of heartburn, and tripe rations are really meant for your pet. You might be able to stomach them, but odds are you'll puke, and be even hungrier) and fresh (food decays over time, and one of the first lessons I learnt is that zombies are, by definition, not fresh meat)

Re:No permadeath

[xouumalperxe]

Despite your arguments of freshness, the perma-death model of CS isn't in any way, shape, or form, applicable to WoW. You accept the death model because there was close to zero time investment in creating your character, and because death is not, in fact, permanent. It's only a 10 minute, or what have you, respawn timer until the next match begins. Elsewhere Diablo II's perma-death was discussed, and that is indeed much closer to WoW's scope, but even then I doubt it would really make sense.

In fact, part of what makes it genuinely fun for me is the learning experience of raiding, and that, almost by definition, involves wipe after wipe after wipe to figure out how to get a specific boss down. Other than giving everybody some sort of safe escape mechanic to abort failed attempts, and made bosses much more lenient, in such a way that "failed attempts" doesn't mean "people are dead", I can't see how you'd achieve that. If you *do* give such a safe escape mechanism, then for all intents and purposes you have achieved something that is almost mechanically equivalent to WoW's death except you don't see your character as a ghost.

Re:No permadeath

[zerocool^]

It's not the dying.

It's the lack of consequence.

In EVE, the mmo I play, taking a ship out is a risk. Take out a cheap ship, and you're likely to get wtfpwned by someone in a better ship. Take out an expensive ship, and lose it, and you may seriously be out an entire month's money making - but what a rush. Not to mention, if you die a bunch, someone else may move in and take your space.

In WoW, you die. Then nothing happens, you resurrect, and you pay 2 gold to repair your equipment that would be worth 45,000 gold if you could sell it (or more to the point, lost it and had to re-buy it), and then you go about your life.

Death needs consequence. I do agree with your qualm about not wanting to run 1-20 over again - but that's easily solved. You "save" your game in some magical fashion (i dunno, you talked to the tree faerie, and she knows of your deeds, and if you die, can revive a piece of your soul, with a loss of 10% of the exp you've gained since the last level up - whatever). In EVE, this is settled with cloning, but it could just as easily be called "magic".

If you want this in a fantasy game, wait for darkfall.

~X

Re:No permadeath

[kitsunewarlock]

I've tried to immerse myself. It ends up pissing me off when I get people saying like "oh, I did that quest. XY and Z happened." Plus the inevitable "LAWL NEWB JUST READ THE QUEST LOG FROM THOTTBOT!" when your in a group and want to skim the quest instead of just finding coordinates for the entity you need to talk with.

Re:No permadeath

[AuMatar]

No, it doesn't. Consequences aren't fun. I've played multiple MMOs with consequences, and I've played WoW. I would *NEVER* play one with again- its fucking annoying. Its one of the reason I quit them.

Re:No permadeath

[SL Baur]

Ditto. I tried out two MMOs when I first decided to try it. D&D Storm Reach was the first. In Storm Reach, you are penalized experience on death and after my trial period (and I had gone down to a store to buy a permanent copy to keep playing) I found out my character was permanently dead, well, that was that.

I then tried out World of Warcraft and I still have a running subscription. Two if you count the one for my wife.

I love Nethack, I've played it for over 2 decades, but it's a different sort of thing.

Re:No permadeath

[mindwanderer]

I agree that it's not grinding if there is challenge present. I lost count of the number of hardcore characters I took through Diablo 2, and they were always fun right from the Den of Evil all the way up to Bhaal. Thing is, permadeath wouldn't be much of a challenge because world PvE in WoW is a complete joke and you could even bypass the difficult quests. And no, permadeath on a PvP server would never be implemented for reasons which I believe are quite obvious.

Re:No permadeath

[ukyoCE]

FYI, World of Warcraft HAS "stateful shared quests" which remain active until completed by any character, which then triggers a different quest. They've had several world events such as this (not sure if Sithilius was first?), and in BC they now have several other world quest events and world quest cycles that depend on the world-wide progress, as opposed to single-character progress.

Funny how you seem to know all the secrets to making a MMORPG "fun and interesting and genuinely massive", yet none of the companies that make these games can figure it out. When are you releasing your amazing new MMO so I can experience your great work?

Re:No permadeath

[Molt]

If a player dies they're not likely to come back, but I think it it's just their character dying there may be more of a chance the player'll stay with it.

Re:No permadeath

[pokerdad]

Death needs consequence.

Death needs consequence if you want people to avoid dying.

I agree that the result of a world having no consequences to dying is absolute absurdity, however, most players seem to think that consequences to dying kills fun, and as long as the masses think that, no game will be as popular as wow without having carefree deaths.

Re:No permadeath

[Pecisk]

It is not lack of consequences that binds people to games like World of Warcraft. It is short term entertainment, or shortly, fun.

I _love_ reality and space sims. This would make EVE Online a ideal match for me, no? But I am very slow to try it, and it is exact of these consequences. Problem is that I don't that much time for games, and even when I do several hours of WoW, my spouse gives me body signs that she would like to get me off that game and computer. And I have lot of other interests too.

So, it is not that EVE online would be bad and Wow would be perfect - it is all matters of point of view. But WoW is king of online games for just that - you can keep your gaming sessions short, it has huge investments in community stuff, usually friends are those people who introduce new players to the game. Almost 60% of the game is only playable when you are have good communications. It feels like fantasy chat with nice story with rich background (altought it feels sometimes plastered together, I like world design and style).

Anyway, even saying all this, I still would like to try EVE, but I still have to find someone giving me 10 days trial to check it out.

Re:No permadeath

[Turnpike Lad]

Permanent death will never work in a static, quest-based MMO like World of Warcraft. But it could definitely work in a game that actually tries to simulate a virtual world. There was a game called Trials of Ascension that I followed for years. The developers lost funding and it was never released, but I think it had an amazingly well-thought-out design. It was a full PvP, skill-based permadeath game. Characters had 100 lives each, but they were planning on adding a single life server as well. The first central idea of the game was that real power must come via real risk. To become a powerful mage, you would have had to discover a unique set of formulae for your character's spells, all the while risking death from backfire from critical failures. The goal was that about one in a hundred players who tried to become real, full-blown sorcerors would actually make it. Those who succeeded would be rewarded with great power. I feel that that power has more _meaning_ than that of a level 70 in WoW who simply had to grind for 40 hours to get there. This significance is impossible without the risk of permadeath. Another main tenet of ToA was that the world would be run by players. Instead of having a central currency, each town would be encouraged to mint their own currency and value it how they like. The lack of an easy way to bring goods from one place to another, and the selective availability of resources, would contribute to a real scarcity-based economy. Almost all items would be player-made, including player-written books, music and pictures. Towns would be built and territory claimed by player organizations. Players would become the leaders of the eleven religions. There were to be no NPC quests and the sole role of NPCs was as guards and hired workers. This meant that a character could make a positive contribution to their organization from the very beginning. Not just as fighters, but as crafters, artisans, builders, farmers. And it would be that participation that would increase your character's abilities, not running a static dungeon. And if your character died, you would have left a tangible mark on the game. Starting over would not be going through the same old content another time, because each character you make would contribute to the community in a different way. In a virtual world, you're playing both your character and your community. Your effort both improves your avatar and enriches the gameworld. When your character dies, your contributions to the community remain. What it comes down to is this: Permanent death can be implemented in modern games, to great utility. But the game must be designed for permadeath from the ground up. Sticking it in WoW will cause a disaster.

Re:No permadeath

[Angvaw]

Can't speak for the others, but in Nethack your death usually comes within the hour, or if you do really well, within several hours. You groan, check out your high score, and start again. Plus the game is mostly about handling random situations, so a replay of levels 1-n isn't going to feel too repetitive (others may disagree).

Re:No permadeath

[Anne_Nonymous]

On the permadeath server, I'm a Level 1 Couch Potato with a +1 remote of channel changing.

Re:No permadeath

[IndustrialComplex]

That's why I quit. Unless you can get a group of friends together to do an instance for the first time without looking at Thottbot at all, then it really just boils down to 'travel to position, interact with entity for x seconds, travel to position, interact....'

That, and how Blizzard started testing new encounters in beta. I loved Dire Maul when it was release because very few people had any clue what was going to be in there. Flash forward to Outlands where spoilers abound before it was even released.

Re:No permadeath

[Quill]

It's the lack of consequence.

No one who dies in WoW is unfazed by it. Dying sucks. Even if you take away the repair bill, it sucks.

You have to run your spirit back to your body and even though this only takes 5 minutes in the worst of circumstances...it still sucks. If you're raiding and you wipe, then you have to wait for 25 people to run back to their bodies and rebuff and reorganize themselves for another boss attempt.

The time penalty is significant...you're playing a game, even a single minute of "unfun" is punishment. But even more significant than the time cost is the ego-cost. Dying means that you failed and it stings.

Blizzard correctly determined that they didn't need harsh death penalties in WoW. Dying is its own penalty.

(I also play Nethack, and permadeath is an important part of the game. In the first Aliens vs. Predator FPS for the PC, the limited saves per level were also an important part of the game, and I'm disappointed that they eliminated that for the sequel. But WoW does NOT need a more severe death penalty.)

Re:No permadeath

[Daravon]

https://secure.eve-online.com/ft/?aid=102321&bid=&nogreet=1

From a google search of "eve online trial".

Mostly unrestricted access to the game. They only limit some of your skills (and therefore ships) that you can learn, but it is mostly late game ships.

I always felt the tutorial was a fun into to the game. They show you how to move around, do mining and missions and the like.

Re:No permadeath

[Fozzyuw]

I agree that it's not grinding if there is challenge present. I lost count of the number of hardcore characters I took through Diablo 2

It's interesting that you define "grind" as something that's simply "not challenging". I've always assumed "grind", in the context of MMO's, meant having to do something repeatedly, independent of difficulty settings.

However, since I see so many people passionately talking about MMO's and the designs behind them, I would like to encourage everyone to pick up the massively big book Designing Virtual Worlds by Richard Bartle, one of the "fathers" of virtual wolrds (aka MMO's).

In that book, Richard will talk at great length about the history of MMO's and how they started out as MUD's and where the term MUD came from. He'll go into his famous "Explorer, Achiever, Killer, Socializer" paradigm, and he'll explain why games like WoW are as popular as they are and why there isn't as many games as so many people on these boards "think" should be made. He even covers "perma-death", why it's not popular with the majority, and why companies don't make these types of games en masse.

Long story short, current MMO's like WoW, EQ, EQ2, AC, AO, DAoC, etc. all fall into the same quadrant of a MMO design box, that based on DikuMUD, which is more action based than anything else. However, back in the day of MUD's there existed all kinds of games that went from the fairly static world like WoW, to worlds where people could control every aspect of it. A new city/house/building could pop up anywhere. Trees could be planted and cut down and the landscape entirely changed.

If you're really interested in MMO design, I'd recommend this book and I have many times on /. Warcraft threads. I own it. I've never gotten through it, but it's really fascinating.

Re:No permadeath

[thefreeaccount]

>In EVE, the mmo I play, taking a ship out is a risk.

The problem is that increasing the death penalty doesn't necessarily make a game more exciting. Since no one wants to loose months of effort, players simply compensate for the increased penalty by becomming much more risk-adverse. In a games like guild wars and WOW, most combat revolves around fair matches between relatively equal opponents. You might loose, but it's no big deal - you can just queue up for another match.

In Eve, fair combat is almost unheard-of - very few players are willing to risk losses when the odds are only 50/50. Aside from a few wow-esque exceptions (gangs of so-called nano-ships that move so quickly, they can easily escape when the tide of battle turns against them), combat in Eve revolves around two main mechanisms:
1) Gangs of PvP-fitted ships hunting down PvE-fitted ships, which have little chance of fighting back
2) Massive 'blobs' of dozens or even hundreds of ships whose overwhelming numbers reduce the likelihood of combat losses.

When you're sitting on a stargate with 50 friends, waiting to gank the unsuspecting player who jumps through, the penalty for failure is just as high as ever, but the risk of failure is quite low - so low, in fact, that it could be argued this form of combat is actually LESS exciting. Most of the fun comes from your ability to inflict serious losses on your target - wiping out weeks, months, or in the case of exhorbiant 'faction' ships, even years' worth of his playtime.

This is why, in general, low-penalty games tend to attract competition-oriented players who enjoy the process of competition itself, while high-penalty games attract grief-oriented players who enjoy the process of inflicting loss on other players. It should be no surprise that the largest alliance in Eve - Goonswarm - is an alliance of somethingawful members - the same 'goons' infamous for their large-scale griefing campaigns in Second Life and other games.

Re:No permadeath

[Cornflake917]

CCP figured it out. Bullshit. The fact that Eve isn't sharded doesn't magically it make a fun and interesting game. I played it for 5 months, and I tried really hard to have fun with it, but it still is by far the most boring MMO I've ever played. The only thing that could have been fun in the game was the large scale battles, but those usually ended up being lag fests. Karma be damned, you Eve fanboys make me sick.

Re:No permadeath

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Also guns don't suck.

Lightning would kill you.

Fireballs would send you screaming in flames and pain.

9 foot tall bull men swinging a 200 lb. giant axe would slice you in two no matter how good your armor and dodging was.

And people with 200 int wouldn't be turtling on the Field of Strife.

Re:No permadeath

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Gee, you just figured out the main problem on the original EQ PvP servers.

A magician, largely naked, would start casting at a tank. The tank wouldn't fight back, but would instead start putting their equipment into their bags as quickly as possible. The ganker would get the money, and the ability to loot one thing on your body (or top level in your pack?)

In any case, PvP became completely stupid because of that. Of course, EQ I wasn't designed with PvP in mind, it was just an afterthought to satisfy a small percent of their subscribers.

Re:No permadeath

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> In Eve, fair combat is almost unheard-of - very few players are willing to risk
> losses when the odds are only 50/50.

Ironically, this is highly realistic. One poster on their boards even has the .sig of "If you find yourself in a fair fight, you haven't done your homework."

A fair fight you barely win = disastrous losses for your side. And half the time you'll lose completely. It is not the situation to be in in a fight, only barely more acceptable than going into overwhelming odds.

In the Battle of Britain, I think they considered 30% loss rate in an air battle to be unacceptably high, yet they were in such dire straits they exceeded even that, going nuts on zergling production.

Re:No permadeath

[QuantumPion]

I think this pretty accurately describes Ultima Online (in its early days). There was no permadeath, but dying meant losing a significant amount of skill points, as well as all of your armor and possessions on your character. There were no character classes, and "leveling up" a new character only took a couple days. Becoming a powerful mage was more difficult, and risky, beacuse the reagents required for casting spells were expensive and had to be carried on you. The questing in UO was as you described -- there were no NPC quests, just dungeons to explore and such. Also, the economy was 98% player based, with player crafted goods, player-run vendors, and even entire new player-made towns. While WoW is pretty fun as far as raiding and boss encounters are concerned, UO (in its early days) was really the pinnacle of MMORPG's.

Re:No permadeath

[danzona]

Maybe only alienating 98%. I would drop WOW in a second for a game like this, and I have no reason to believe (based on previous gaming experience) that I would be the "one in a hundred".

Re:No permadeath

[zerocool^]

The thing is - it's the rush I'm after. All this stuff about pirates and camping stargates and whatnot is all true - for low security space. It makes people risk adverse - don't go there unless you have to; use scouts; use less traveled routes; don't go to Rancer, etc.

But the thing that gets me going in eve isn't low sec or piracy. It's 0.0 security, lawless space. You can't *be* risk adverse and live in 0.0 (and I have, almost consistently, for two years now). Yes, it is sometimes blob or be blobbed, but really, you have to fight to hold space, and you will take losses. In part, it's a war of attrition every day - make other people so "risk adverse" that they don't want to come bother you in your space. But, really for me, what gets my blood hot is going out in roaming gangs - and the further you get away from your space, the further you get behind enemy lines, the better.

In situations like that, when you're taking a 10 man gang out, and your fleet commander jumps everyone into a 20 man gate camp - that's a fucking rush. Yeah, you might lose your ship, and in fact some of you probably will. But if you're better skilled, better geared, and most importantly, have a better fleet commander, how fucking epic would it be to jump into 20 people with only 10 ships, and completely own them.

Yeah, it doesn't happen that often. But, let me tell you - when it does, it's like heroin. Once it's happened once, you spend the entire game trying to recapture that feeling. Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's a bit boring, but... when you hit it again... what an adrenaline rush.

That's what I play for. I don't do non-consensual combat unless I am forced to, and only then as a military objective (securing a transportation route for POS fuel being the most common one). By going into 0.0 space, you are consenting to combat.

Live on the edge, man.

~W

Re:No permadeath

[nuzak]

> FYI Blizzard invented a game like this. Its called 'hardcore Diablo 2'.

I'd love to see a hardcore realm then. I don't even play PVP, but I think it'd be an interesting game. Unfortunately I also think it'd be full of nothing but Holy Paladins with a bubblehearth macro on a hotkey.

Re:No permadeath

[gad_zuki!]

The real problem with that setup is that the "i have all day to game" demographic is usually just bored teenagers. So once they control the towns, the currency, and the quests you'll end up logging in and told by "GnarrlyDude" to "fetch me a burrito of knowledge for an advnaced twinkie." Thats the best case scenario. Most likely it would degenerate into a Second Life fetish fest.

WoW works for the exact opposite reasons. Its centrally controlled, quests and mobs are in-game, etc.

Dont get me wrong. ToA sounds like heaven to me, but you need some serious role-players and people dedicated to running this thing well. I doubt your average WoW player could fill those shoes. I would imagine this would only work with lots of "players" who were actually employees and some pretty strict filtering, censorship, and lots of bans and kicks.

Re:No permadeath

[Smauler]

I think he means 'gunk' as in 'you didn't get the really shit attempt at a joke'.

Re:No permadeath

[billcopc]

If I wanted a game that mimics real life, I'd get a gun and move to Detroit.

Re:No permadeath

[Planesdragon]

FYI, World of Warcraft HAS "stateful shared quests" which remain active until completed by any character, which then triggers a different quest. They've had several world events... If it's a major event, then it's an event, not a quest. City of Heroes has the same halfway attempt with invasions -- and they simply aren't up to snuff.

Funny how you seem to know all the secrets ... 1: "Design a fun game" and "Program a fun game" are two very different skill-sets, but the industry doesn't let you do the former until you've done the latter -- because they don't value the former as highly.

2: Who said it was a secret? City of Heroes was designed to be an amusement park. World of Warcraft was designed to be "warcrack." These were choices made by those companies, for justifiable fiscal reasons. The only possible thing that could keep either Blizzard or NCSoft or CCP from doing an immersive, player-driven PvE game is the likelihood of failure in trying something new.

level 80

[gangien]

ugh level to 80?

i mean i hear all the time how easy 60-70 is, supposedly, but man it's a pain if you're a casual player like myself. 62 and i need 600k to level or whatever. i have lost my motivation to play much.

Re:level 80

[snuf23]

I hear that. Basically if you getting experience from questing and especially soloing you will level very slowly. You get about 10,000xp per quest turn in.
If you can afford a 1-3 hour session the better route is to run the instances. I mostly do pickup groups which of course can be painful but still generally worth it. With rested XP you should get over 1000xp per standard kill.
I did 60-62 mostly through questing and it took me about the same time to lvl 62-66 mostly through instance runs.
Some of the Outlands instances are pretty short too. Hellfire Ramparts only takes about an hour. You will generally get better items than from questing as well.

Re:level 80

[InlawBiker]

I can beat that. I lost interest at level "Diablo II."

Re:level 80

[Admiral Ag]

Then you didn't really get very far into the game. Levels 1-20 are about teaching you the basics of the game, ending with a foray into an instance at about level 18-20. The rest of the time up until the level cap is learning about equipment and exploring the world. The first iteration of the game was pretty good, although it got boring from levels 30-40, but the expansion fixed a lot of those problems with better zone and quest design.

But it is, as someone said, a social game. You really won't have much to do unless you make friends in the game (or you're a healer, which means everyone is your friend). It sounds hackneyed, but in WoW the journey is the reward, especially in co-operative play. You will meet a lot of assholes in WoW (especially on PvP servers), but you will meet a lot of really good people as well.

If you ask people what their best memory of WoW is, they won't usually say something like "When I finally got my ghosthacker helmet", but rather "Remember that time when Wilbert aggroed 3 rooms of monsters and we still didn't die".

You are playing the right way when you log on and immediately get loads of tells asking how you are and if you want to do something. I stopped because I didn't have time, but I still keep in contact with many of the friends I made in the game.

Re:level 80

[DKlineburg]

I have to agree, I realized how social I had become in a MMO when part of a large guild, and I didn't log in for a week due to RL problems. When I logged in on the next Saturday (when everyone is on) I go inundated with "DYAS!!!! Where you been?" and such. I enjoy the social part, from grouping with that level 10 new member in the guild to kill level 8 bears I one shot for pelts, to running the high end instance with a group of 12 or 24 hard core gamers that still wipe because they made it insane. I have a hard time explaining to people what I do playing games like this. They want to know what I do, and I find it tough to show them. Well I log onto Ventrilo, and use my mic to talk to these guys from around so we can take down this really big boss at the end of a 6 hour instance so I can get the last piece of my set armor which took us a month to learn how to get to the guy, much less about 3 months to get the entire group the entire set. I think the best thing to relate it to would be football. I will watch it sometimes, but to me it is entirely social. Yes there are hardcore fans just like in MMO's, but most are there for the social thing. I think the social aspect can be said about anything, bowling league, pool league, and darts come to mind. MMO's have just taken an age old thing, a social gathering, and put a fantasy backdrop online to it. Now that a lot of larger guilds use things like Ventrilo, being able to log onto that and talk to people before you even get into the game adds to the social aspect. I need to now go back to this PVP war, and push the enemy out. I'm in a large 24 man raid and we are wiping the floor.

Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[The MAZZTer]

But how is this news? So it's getting closer to release... it was closer to release yesterday than it was the day before, too.

If it was an open alpha, that would be different. But nothing really changes, apart from increase hype from stories like this.

If you're in the closed alpha, I think there's a good chance you already know and hence this news article is old news. Hell, they're probably never going to see it, since they're probably playing it even now.

To those who AREN'T in the closed alpha this can only serve as a tool to help those who are flaunt their exclusivity.

In short: I don't see the point? Well, other than it's WoW and has made Blizzard billions of dollars.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[khallow]

How is it not news? Entering alpha, even if it is "closed" gives new information on Blizzard's progress to this upgrade. And some people care about that. So it has relevance too.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Planesdragon]

(And yes, it is 'bated breath, not baited breath. I have abated my breathing, not eaten nightcrawlers.) ARRRGH!

1: No apostrophe is necessary if you use the old spelling. "Bated" is a perfectly cromulent word.

2: English does not now nor ever truly had one singular guide to spelling. As with word definition, spelling is fluid and will change with time.

3: Go ahead and use thine old spelling, for verily it must make ye quite gay, else thee wouldn't use such. But, prithee, take no insult when another uses such new spelling in textual intercourse with you.

4: Go ahead and say cromulent isn't a word. I dare you.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[maglor_83]

cromulent isn't a word.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Anonymous Coward]

It's news, because it allows devoted WoW watchers to make a very good guess on the release date.

Burning Crusade entered this Alpha phase July-August 2006, with open beta in October and launch in January 2007.

With WotLK hitting Friends and Family alpha in April, that would put closed beta at June or July, and assuming no major problems, launch in October or November 2008. This is the first time anyone can give anything than a wild guess on the WotLK release date. I'm not saying it's definitely Oct/Nov 2008, but I say based on today's information, a very good educated guess puts it there, based on the previous expansion and it's testing schedule.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[khallow]

You're willing to bet $100 on when the game comes out based on the fact that it's entering alpha now and you claim this story tells you nothing? Think about it.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Spellvexit]

But it's through words like cromulent that we embiggen our vocabulary!

The Games section actually exists?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I know, offtopic. But it just seems like for the past couple of months the Games section has been primarily ignored - even through things like the release of Smash Bros. Brawl, a game that was worthy of a story when it was delayed but apparently not when it was released.

I'm glad to see Games stories like this making something of a comeback, but after checking the front page, a front page story on an alpha release of an MMORPG? Seriously?

I'd love to see stories like this limited to the Games section, but a front page story seems a bit much.

On an ontopic note, I wonder if this new expansion will get me interested in playing again. Probably not - I kind of ground myself out of MMORPGs. I've found that, if I'm forced to grind, I like portable games much better. I can grab the DS or PSP and grind for 10 minutes during lunch break or some downtime at home, but I can't manage the several hour commitment that an MMORPG requires.

I kind of wish some other company would do something interesting in the MMORPG space, but then I remember the Sony's "NGE" and the ever-so-innovative Square Enix "you can't pick your server" system and realize it's probably just as well Blizzard remains on top.

But even so, I'm still basically WoWed out, expansion or not.

Re:The Games section actually exists?!

[TheLinuxSRC]

...but then I remember the Sony's "NGE"...

Cringe.. twitch...

Now I feel _dirty_.

What I want to know is ...

[ScrewMaster]

will the King's henchmen be known as "lichens"?

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Rick James, Lich!

Now that WotLK is in Alpha..

[SYSS Mouse]

Can someone check whether the Bard is in it?

Re:Now that WotLK is in Alpha..

[Cornflake917]

You must not understand the concept of capitalization.

Time to sign up ... again

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

And JUST when I thought I was done with WoW. Honestly, a crack addiction would probably cost less - I might spend more money on it, but I'd also have more friends and more free time.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[ScrewMaster]

And JUST when I thought I was done with WoW. Honestly, a crack addiction would probably cost less - I might spend more money on it, but I'd also have more friends and more free time.

Yes, and if nothing else there will be a few crack whores around to help you through those cold winter nights.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[geekboy642]

Warcraft: $15 / month, 6 hours a day. It's a social event with friends...ever tried to raid with people you hate? No. You can hold down a job and even eat well. If you're careful, you can even keep a family.

Crack: $25 / hit lasting 10-15 minutes, and then you want another. Try holding a job when the urinalysis shows you a drug addict. Try caring about buying food when your entire body is twanging for the next hit. Try keeping a family when you steal and pawn your wife's wedding ring just for another dose. Do you have any friends? Do you know the expression "crack whore"?

Unless you turn tricks for $15 to pay for your Warcraft "addiction", you're not addicted. World of Warcraft is not just like Crack, and anybody who seriously claims it is should go and volunteer in a real rehab center for a full day. You don't have an addiction, you have a hobby. Learn some god-damned perspective, you molly-coddled children.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

My x-wife played Wow over 4,335 HOURS in one year.. Tell me that isn't an addiction.. And it is the primary reason she is the x.. and it ruined our family..

I agree, my father has been on the wagon for 25 years and I've seen all sorts of addictions destroy people's lives. But seriously, computer game addiction is real and it is as dangerous as any other addiction, just it won't kill you over night (no sleep, bad diet maybe help kill you sooner).

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Stalyn]

Unless you turn tricks for $15 to pay for your Warcraft "addiction", you're not addicted. World of Warcraft is not just like Crack, and anybody who seriously claims it is should go and volunteer in a real rehab center for a full day. You don't have an addiction, you have a hobby. Learn some god-damned perspective, you molly-coddled children.

You know being addicted to something doesn't mean you have to be a ragged homeless person wandering the streets looking for a a fix. There are millions of people who are addicted to alcohol/cigarettes/prescription drugs/gambling/etc who are highly functional. They have a job, an active social life, wife/husband, kids etc. But they can still be addicted to something. If anyone has a "childish" view of addiction it's you.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[eugene_roux]

Unless you turn tricks for $15 to pay for your Warcraft "addiction", you're not addicted. I'm rather glad to hear you say so... You see, I have MET people who have skipped work to play WoW; I have KNOWN women who have left their husbands because they would rather play WoW than have a marriage...

YOU tell me there is no such thing as being ADDICTED to WoW...

WoW is might not be all it's crack(ed) up to be, but it's not excactly innocuous either. Especially for people with naturally addictive personalities...

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[kv9]

can I have her phone number?

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[DarthTeufel]

But... if they weren't playing WoW what would they do? Its all about having a limited amount of free time and knowing how to spend it. If people's marriages are ending because of WoW, then there are much bigger issues involved. I tell my fiancee, "would you rather me go out and drink with the guys at a bar?"

Re:Death Knight?

[Zironic]

They're the opposite of a paladin.

Holy Light->Death coil
Devotion aura->Unholy aura
Divine shield->Death pact
Resurection->Animate dead
(WC3)

in WoW they'll be a dps/tank class like warriors only they only use 2-handed weapons and instead of stance changing they switch runes on their sword.

Re:Death Knight?

[Psychotria]

Apparently they are powerful necromancers.

From http://www.wowwiki.com/Death_Knight:

A new order of death knights emerged during the Third War, in service to the Lich King. They were created from living and undead humans (and occasionally other races) who had been granted unholy runeblades, and most were former paladins who had forsaken the Holy Light.

Re:losing interest

[mauthbaux]

From what I've seen, Warcraft merely provides context for a social scene. If leveling up your character really was all that the game had to it, most people would tire of it long before even hitting level 14.

However, it's the social aspect that makes it fun. It's the same idea as a family vacation; the importance is the shared experience. By insulating yourself from the social interactions in the game, you've essentially lost the real reason most people find the game to be fun.

In summary: the social aspect is what makes the game fun. The rest of the game is there merely to provide context for the social interactions.

Re:Death Knight?

[nuzak]

What just kills me is that they plan to have Death Knights for both Horde and Alliance. Wonder how they're working out the story for that one.

Logically the Scourge is its own faction, but I think the Horde/Alliance dichotomy is so hardwired into the WoW codebase, it'd be impossible to add a third faction.

Re:in other blizzard news

[Cookie3]

WoW and SC2 have completely separate developers, art teams, etc. I wouldn't worry too much about WoW impacting SC2 (or, vice-versa SC2 impacting WoW).

Re:in other blizzard news

[xouumalperxe]

You're obviously not familiar with the Tauren Marine

(In case you're wondering, it was part of this year's April Fools)

Re:Death Knight?

[deke_kun]

They have explained this a number of times already, including in the very first speech in which they announced the class. The PC Death Knights will be former minions of the Lich King (aka the aforementioned scourge) who have exerted their own influence on their destiny and broken free of his control. No longer a mindless pawn they swore allegiance to a new faction (insert horde or alliance here). They can be of any race, as all races are susceptible to the temptation and corruption of the lich king.

Re:HOBBY? WoW is NOT a hobby!

[lareader]

Ehm... what is a hobby if not an "entertaining waste of time"?

I mean, are you seriously contending that building model railways is not a hobby or that it is something more than an "entertaining waste of time"?

If it is not a hobby, then your definition of a hobby is quite different from what most people use it as.

In the end, passing time (and wind) is what life is about. The universe does not pass value judgments on the way you spend your life.
Your perception of reality is what determines whether you are living life or squandering it.

That said, IMHO, playing WoW is worse than having a meaningful relationship with another person, and better than drinking yourself into a stupor every weekend in the hopes of finding a meaningful relationship with someone.

Re:in other blizzard news

[cordsie]

As a matter of fact, you can thank the profitable World of Warcraft franchise for bankrolling the development of Starcraft II.

Instead of Gold Miners, will we have Rune Miners?

[WillAffleckUW]

I for one am wondering about the downstream materials requirements for the runecrafter class and all the new upper level addons for Death Knights, and how that will distort the WoW economy even more.

On the other hand, so long as it uses copper ore in vast quantities, my low level n00bs will be raking in the Gold ...