New WoW Patch Brings Cross-Server Instances

ajs writes "World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion was staggered into 4 phases. The fourth and final phase, patch 3.3, was released on Tuesday. This patch is significant in that it will be the first introduction of one of the most anticipated new features in the game since PvP arenas: the cross-realm random dungeon, as well as the release of new end-game dungeons for 5, 10 and 25-player groups. The patch notes have been posted, and so has a trailer. The ultimate fight against the expansion's antagonist, the Lich King a.k.a. Arthas, will be gated as each of the four wings of the final dungeon are opened in turn — a process that may take several months. The next major patch after 3.3 (presumably 4.0) will be the release of Cataclysm, the next expansion."

Comments

Re:They're making the game far too easy

[imamac]

Whereas for me the leveling is incredibly fun. But I just started playing 3 months ago and have one level 43 character, one in the mid-20s and half a dozen others in the teens. I imagine they are /trying/ to strike a balance between people like you and people like me.

Trade with other players?

[WeirdCat]

Is it possible to trade with players from other realms via this cross-realm instances? Possibly players could even schedule a meeting in the lesser frequented instances.

Re:Old

[H0p313ss]

It means that some interesting gameplay aspects that can normally be found in MMORPGs (such as open world pvp) have been pretty much set aside in WoW to make room for more soulless dungeon crawling and loot whoring.

No, it has not been set aside. They have simply made it easy for those people who are already instance grinding to do so easily. Instance grinding has always been "soulless dungeon crawling and loot whoring".

Personally I'm on the last stages of equipping a character for raiding and the ability to go from instance to instance worked great for me yesterday, as it did for everybody I grouped with. I did not hear a single negative comment from anyone yesterday. (And we all know how much players bitch when they don't like a new patch.

Re:squeezing the players for subscription cash

[furby076]

Who plays this game, at the higher end of the spectrum, to quit after they beat a dungeon once? Most players, especially at the higher levels, want to complete there sets. So at the higher levels they will play the same dungeon 10, 20, 30, 40...100 times so they get all of their gear...then the random dropped gear or profession training drops, etc. Blizzard can add many incentives to the game to keep players involved that does not require them to restrict the timing of the bosses.

The reason blizzard is adding this timer is because it looks bad when they release a new boss, zone, etc and the 1337 guilds beat it that same night (they were probably practicing on the test server). It's like the players who went from level 60 to 70 in 24 hours. And then did it from 70 to 80. There are always going to be these players. These are the players who hang out on the test servers, have no lives, and figure out what needs to be done then. Once the release comes out BAM they are the first. Nothing wrong with this... but when some server beats the last boss of a new expansion in 24 hours it makes Blizzard look bad. Nobody cares that it's the super guild that gets sponsership, they just see that WoW = ezsauce