Blizzard Announces New WoW Expansion: Mists of Pandaria

Blizzcon 2011 kicked off today, and the biggest announcement from the opening ceremonies was the development of a new expansion for World of Warcraft. Titled Mists of Pandaria, the expansion will focus on the battle between the Horde and the Alliance instead of a traditional Big Bad Enemy. There will be both a new race — Pandaren — and a new class — Monk. The level cap will be raised to 90, there will be "challenge mode" dungeons, and they're introducing a pet battle system. Blizzard also mentioned that people who buy a 12-month subscription to WoW will get a copy of Diablo 3 for free.

Comments

Still a grind

[jhoegl]

Zzzz..... WoW bores me to no end these days. A new expansion will not help.
PvP is gear based, which requires grinding, Dungeons are gear based which requires grinding, crafting requires grinding....

Same crap, different day.

Re:Still a grind

[rossz]

And grinding is damn annoying to casual players such as myself. I would like to go after the lich king, but my gear sucks. Even at the max level of 85, I get my ass handed to me. In the group I'm usually the first to die because of my gear (being a mage doesn't help, either). I do not want to run through the same dungeons a hundred times hoping for an epic drop that might give me a slight improvement in stats because that is boring. I will say, however, that WoW's reliance on gear is a whole lot better than Diablo 2, where gear was the only thing that mattered.

Re:Still a grind

[jhoegl]

Yeah, added on top of that casual that they tried to limit the runs to 24 hours+, it made it terrible.
Hell, MC was fun even though I was geared out because of the 40 people I hung out with. Now its 5, 10, 15... little groups of friends. What is the point of big guilds now?

They screwed up big IMO...

Re:Still a grind

[Wyatt Earp]

Eve is skill training, mission running, ratting grind based.

Even if you bring outside money into Eve you have to grind skills out.

Re:Still a grind

[scubamage]

Agreed. There was nothing quite as fun as a 40 person raid. Such utter chaos. "YOU'RE THE BOMB!!!!"

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

Any crappy green level 85 gear you have today is still much better then the epic level 80 gear from the litch king era. If you are dieing trying to kill the litch king at level 85 with level 85 gear.... I hate to say it but gear is not the probelm.

Re:Still a grind

[mwvdlee]

As a casual gamer, I can confidently state that MMORPG's are not for casual players but only for hardcore gamers willing to spend large quantities of time and money. I have yet to encounter and MMORPG that doesn't feel like endless grinding within the first hour of play.

As for the extensiion in the topic; Kung Fu Panda.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

if you're level 85 and you're dying to the lich king, it's not because of your gear, since it's trivial to kill the lich king in greens at level 85. most likely you're dying to the encounter mechanics, which involves dispelling diseases onto enemies (but not friends, or everyone dies), not standing in black puddles (everyone dies), not standing under ghosts (everyone dies), etc.

Re:Still a grind

[Stradenko]

The beauty of 40-man raids was that you could have a half-dozen casuals and as long as they understood the mechanics of what was going on (i.e.: they didn't do stupid stuff) there's still a sizable group of folks to pick up the slack.

Re:Still a grind

[Clsid]

PvP has always been gear based. It seems like you weren't there when twinks roamed battlegrounds. If anything it is better than before.

Dungeons and the gear they might require is nothing to the crap you needed to do back in WoW classic where you needed to have a couple of resistance gear and the grinding was absolutely horrible. Again, in this regard they kind of dumbed down the game so I don't get you.

And with crafting, recall when you had to do the different specializations for each profession, like armorsmith or weaponsmith which by the time you were able to get the extremely difficult mats, most likely it was an alt who was going to be using whatever stuff you created.

I think you just grew tired of the game by playing so much. There is only so much novelty they can introduce to a game to make people feel entertained. I would suggest that you go and play or do other stuff and then comeback. You'll see that you will enjoy the game a bit more.

Re:Still a grind

[whereiswaldo]

To deal with the huge range of ability (or patience for grinding) of different WoW players, one feature idea I had was what I would call Difficulty Scaling.

Basically, you could scale your character to take a lesser percentage of damage, but in return you would get benefits like experience/honor points, and could affect drop rates, too.

So you'd be slower to level, but wouldn't die all the time, allowing you to participate in activities you normally wouldn't be geared for.

On the flip side, experience players could scale in the opposite way and take more damage but in return would get higher than usual benefits. That would provide faster leveling and more of a challenge to those who are already skilled at the game.

Re:Still a grind

[whereiswaldo]

Basically, you could scale your character to take a lesser percentage of damage, but in return you would get benefits like experience/honor points, and could affect drop rates, too.

Should say:

Basically, you could scale your character to take a lesser percentage of damage, but in return you would get lower than usual benefits like experience/honor points, and could affect drop rates, too.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

" (i.e.: they didn't do stupid stuff) "

LEEEROOOOOOOOY JENKINS

Re:Still a grind

[RingDev]

If you are the first to die, especially at level 85 doing Litch King content, the issue isn't your gear.

The issue is almost NEVER gear, atleast for PvE.

The issue is almost always player knowledge/skill with their class, situational awareness for avoiding extraneous damage, and lack of knowledge of raid mechanics.

An excess of gear will allow players to overcome MOST mechanics. If your tank has 250k health and you're dealing with bosses that are only hitting for 20-30k, your healers can be half asleep and keep him up.

A green geared 85 putting out 10k+ DPS going back to an instance geared around 5-8k DPS should have no problems beating enrage timers.

For the most part, if you are the first to die, you did something wrong and while more gear might have mitigated it, it was your mistake to be in the position to die.

You're casual! Great, so am I these days. But I still make sure to take a couple of minutes and review the boss fights, or ask for a clear description of the fight, what my responsibilities are, and what I should look out for. Being casual doesn't mean you get to be ignorant and depend on others to carry you. It just means you can't grind like the hard core folks.

-Rick

Re:Still a grind

[ackthpt]

Zzzz..... WoW bores me to no end these days. A new expansion will not help.

PvP is gear based, which requires grinding, Dungeons are gear based which requires grinding, crafting requires grinding....

Same crap, different day.

I was saying the same thing about MUDs back in the 1990's. Life suck. Only MUDs were free.

Re:Still a grind

[superwiz]

Isn't one the mechanics on HLK based on health %? That wouldn't change regardless of the level or gear. WoW has a few mechanics like that which don't change with the level (enfeeble is another one I can think of).

Re:Still a grind

[Clsid]

My brother is a casual gamer and he enjoys Warcraft a lot. It all depends on what your goals are. If you are the kind of casual gamer who just wants to finish the game, have the top score and best gear of course you'll need to grind. But in the case of my brother he just enjoys doing quests, leveling whenever it may come and even just enjoying flying and trying crazy stuff to test out the virtual world.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

The beauty of 40-man raids was that you could have a half-dozen casuals and as long as they understood the mechanics of what was going on (i.e.: they didn't do stupid stuff) there's still a sizable group of folks to pick up the slack.

Yep - and when you extend that to the occasional 90 man EQ raids (which didn't need 90), it was still true that you really only needed a dozen people that actually understood the whole game.

Re:Still a grind

[elrous0]

I second that emotion. I've tried to get into MMO's, but every side mission is basically "go fetch me 10 wolf pelts" or some variation. I played MUD's back in the day, and they never seemed like this kind of grind. So I'm killing 10 wolves in WoW, mining some asteroid in EVE, or whatever, OVER AND OVER AGAIN. About the only MMO that I have liked so far was Guild Wars, not only because it was free and easy server-changing made it easy to play with friends, but because it was one of the few MMO's I've seen with an actual epic *story* behind it.

Re:Still a grind

[geekoid]

NO you could not. One under geared person, and it would be TPK.

Re:Still a grind

[mwvdlee]

Thing is, all those quests usually are the same deal; slay a dozen of those creaters over there or collect a dozen of these objects.
Another thing that annoys the hell out of me in most (though not all) MMORPG's is the sheer amount of time it takes to move around. I enjoy the visual aspects of games; I enjoy wandering around, exploring sites and discovering things in them; I don't enjoy walking for 15 minutes in a monotonous forest just to kill some wolves. Seems like all quests involve killing something. Perhaps there are more interresting quests at the higher levels, but as a casual gamer I can get in maybe four or five hours of gaming a week at most so I simply have no time to spend on reaching such a level.
Sadly, the entire business model of MMORPG's revolves around very slowly opening up new content to keep players paying monthly subscriptions as long as possible.

Re:Still a grind

[mitgib]

Any crappy green level 85 gear you have today is still much better then the epic level 80 gear from the litch king era. If you are dieing trying to kill the litch king at level 85 with level 85 gear.... I hate to say it but gear is not the probelm.

I didn't replace any of my 80 raid gear until actual better pieces dropped, and that didn't happen til heroics and rep gear, nothing green or blue is better then well geared 80 raiding gear. but the grind got to me and moved on to other things and let WoW lapse like millions of others did.

Re:Still a grind

[babywhiz]

I spend 3 hrs on Rated BG's on Sat night, and then wait till AV weekend to fill in the rest. I have my 4 pc Ruthless. I have done more grinding for my PvE set than I have my PvP set. *shrug*

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

Got to 85, raided and dabbled in PVP for a while. Realized that not only was all my gear now useless but I had to go through the same grind as in WotLK with the same old complaining players and pecking orders as before. I've decided when I game it will be games I can pause or walk away from when I want without causing a disaster or infuriating others and I don't have to schedule like they are work. Left WoW cold and have never looked back.

If they came out with a true pick-up version of Wow or solo play version I'd consider it just for the pretty graphics and fights but that will never happen. I'm sure they'd still leave the miserable grinding in there too.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

As a casual gamer, I can confidently state that MMORPG's are not for casual players but only for hardcore gamers willing to spend large quantities of time and money. I have yet to encounter and MMORPG that doesn't feel like endless grinding within the first hour of play.

Actually, there is one.

Vendetta Online does not require a lot of grinding. Being good is 75-90% skill, and only 10-25% gear. A veteran player can very easily kick ass of a newbie who has the best gear avaiable.

However Vendetta has another disadvantage comparing to WOW or other MMOs: it is boring, there isn't much happening there really.

Re:Still a grind

[RingDev]

Heroic Litch King has a number of issues that are completely non-gear determinent.

If you can't move out of the blast wave, you'll get knocked off the platform and die. Doesn't matter how much health you have, if you can't move, you die.

If your raid doesn't burn the angel chicks, the member they are carrying dies, again, doesn't matter what gear that person has, if folks don't switch targets, the person dies.

If people are standing in the black puddle, it will grow and encompass the entire platform. With a huge overgearing, you can survive this for quite a while, but odds are, you're going to wipe the raid if people don't get out of it.

With Tier 11ish gear, the disease is pretty well mitigated, especially since the DPS should burn through phase 1 waaaay faster. But if you're not careful with cleanses, or your DPS is really slacking, and people aren't doing the disease dance, the raid with wipe.

Gear can help, predominently in the following ways:
1) DPSers - more gear = more DPS, reducing phase and fight durations, less time = less chances to screw up = better odds of success.
2) Tanks - more gear = less healing, more heals for DPSers that would otherwise be dieing, or dropping a healer for a DPSer (see #1)
3) Healers - more gear = more efficient healing, less OOM issues, less healing pressure, possibility of swapping a healer for a DPSer (see #1 again)

Virtually every fight in WoW can be simplified by just adding more DPS. LK for example, if you have enough DPS to burn through Phase 1 before the explosion, it's way easier. Phase 2, the more dps, the faster the angels die, making it less likely that people will die, and the shorter the phase is meaning less angels and less black pools. and so on. So if your tanks are surviving the hits, and your healers aren't running OOM, it's all about the DPSers not dieing to raid mechanics and doing as much damage as they can.

-Rick

-Rick

Re:Still a grind

[citizenr]

Eve is skill training, mission running, ratting grind based.

Even if you bring outside money into Eve you have to grind skills out.

only if your definition of grind includes 'not doing a damn thing while you gain skills'.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

"As a casual gamer, I can confidently state that MMORPG's are not for casual players but only for hardcore gamers "

As a hardcore gamer, I can confidently state that MMORPG's are only for casual players. They take huge amounts of time, yes, but that doesn't make them a hardcore game.

Try ascending in nethack without cheating the permadeath. That's hardcore. MMPORGs are not hardcore, and I have played 5 of them all the way back to the very early days of EQ. They're grinds. Grinds != hardcore.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on the fights. If you have a TPK due to a single player then the leader needs to review the fight, even then it is very hard to wipe due to one guy unless they are trying to sabotage the fight. Also, that wipe would be due to messing up the game dynamics, not due to gear. Gear usually just means that guy dies, not the whole party.

Re:Still a grind

[nedlohs]

Aren't skills in eve just on timers? So the "grind" is just wait however long it will take - either doing other things or just logged out not actually playing at all.

or did that change (I played Eve long ago and not for very long then)?

Re:Still a grind

[Kjella]

Somehow I suspect this has a lot of unpredictable side effects, like one person supertanking by turning it way down so everyone else can score XP. Unless it affects party drop rates, but then everyone would hate you. Not saying it couldn't be done, but it would be a lot more complicated than adding a slider...

Re:Still a grind

[TheBlackMan]

As a casual gamer, I can confidently state that MMORPG's are not for casual players but only for hardcore gamers willing to spend large quantities of time and money. I have yet to encounter and MMORPG that doesn't feel like endless grinding within the first hour of play.

Actually, there is one. Vendetta Online does not require a lot of grinding. Being good is 75-90% skill, and only 10-25% gear. A veteran player can very easily kick ass of a newbie who has the best gear avaiable. In VO, it only takes 1-3 weeks of play to grind up to playable levels, so you can fight with the best. However Vendetta a big disadvantage comparing to WOW or other MMOs: it is boring, there isn't much happening there really.

Re:Still a grind

[AngryDeuce]

That's a fucking 50 DKP minus!!!

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

HLK was a positioning/organization fight, and (especially in 10-man) a perfection/comp check.

You had to have the entire fight planned perfectly. You had to move the moment you were told. You had to set yourself up properly for the fight.

Every last player needed to have their awareness on 11. Two-healing it was a nightmare, and you routinely had to save each other's asses. Ranged/melee had to bail each other out at times. Tanks needed to be picture-perfect with cooldowns, positioning, taunts.

And you really couldn't afford more than one mistake. As awful as ICC was (I personally will remember Ulduar as the best raid instance), HLK was the perfect way to end the expansion. One of the few truly satisfying kills I experienced.

Re:Still a grind

[X0563511]

Sure, if you include "doing anything else" as grinding. You don't even have to be in game. I can be skilling up while I'm at work, or eating dinner, etc.

Re:Still a grind

[EXTomar]

A lot of the world must bore you since "Diablo 3" is going to have grinding. "Dark Souls" has grinding. "Battlefield 3" and "Modern Warfare 3" are going to have grinding. So on and so on.

I am not defending "grinding" where I do find it an undesirable side effect of multiple game systems but I suspect "grinding" isn't the real reason The Parent Post don't like "World of Warcraft" any more. "WoW" has the most streamlined leveling system of any modern MMO and has the most dynamic raid content where no two fights are the same and they keep introducing new setups. If there is a game that has done a lot to mitigate "grinding" it has been this one so it makes me scratch my head when The Parent Post goes "Still a grind..."

Re:Still a grind

[Chris Burke]

Zzzz..... WoW bores me to no end these days. A new expansion will not help.

WoW doesn't bore me at all these days. Because I stopped playing when Cataclysm dropped. Not because of any changes in Cataclysm or anything... just because I was very bored with all non-raiding parts of the game, and the part that was still fun, raiding, was too much like a job with bi-weekly appointments that interfered with the rest of my life. So the new expansion's arrival seemed like the right time. I made my last few attempts to get Kingslayer (nope, didn't do it) and then made a clean break.

If you're bored, quit. If you're bored, if it's all "same crap, different day", but you can't make yourself quit, get help. For reals.

Re:Still a grind

[Bucky24]

The Guild Wars story was epic, one of the reasons I greatly enjoyed playing. That and it's a one time only cost. Can't wait for Guild Wars 2.

Re:Still a grind

[SmurfButcher Bob]

> I didn't replace any of my 80 raid gear until actual better pieces dropped, and that didn't happen til heroics and rep gear,

Please don't tell me you used "maxdps.com" and no greens were suggested as upgrades. I'm pretty sure that every AEP calculator on the planet agrees that you're doing it wrong.

I ended LK with a full set of top tier, as did most in my guild. And almost all of mine was gone within two levels. If you actually believe that your hit, expertise, or any other caps were being maintained as you leveled up...

Re:Still a grind

[Bucky24]

Yeah I agree. People would create characters for the sole purpose of being a damage sink... Though since they would probably do very little damage (even for a tank) you could likely ignore them and concentrate on the more important targets.

Re:Still a grind

[mitgib]

I ended LK with a full set of top tier, as did most in my guild. And almost all of mine was gone within two levels. If you actually believe that your hit, expertise, or any other caps were being maintained as you leveled up...

Yeah, being hit, expertise and all the other caps really make a difference lvling, NOT!

Re:Still a grind

[McGuirk]

Do some DAoC. There are big storied questlines, but for me, the majority of the experience is just the backstory and lore of each realm, and feeling like a part of it. The leveling is a bit of a grind, but they're about to release a major patch to make the game MUCH more newbie-friendly. But the game is not PvE-centric. necessary gear items are attainable both through PvE or PvP.

The purpose is the RvR, which is 3-faction PvP. There are no pre-arranged scenarios, it is all open world. Whatever the odds are, those are the odds: there are no handicaps. The PvP is very tactical, and skill matters more than gear (though gear does matter). PvE is simple, you can reach max level in a day or two doing quests in the battlegrounds. Likewise, you can actually level from PvP in the battlegrounds.

The PvP is highly engaging in and of itself, but if you're looking to further your realm, you can assist in capturing keeps from the enemy and defending your own.

It just turned 10 years old this week, and it shows a bit. The game started as an MUD and a graphical client was added later (during the game's development), so it's very different from modern MMOs. It is often considered to have the best PvP of an MMO to date. It's truly a gem though. There's a two-week free trial. If you are interested, shoot me an email, I can show you the ropes.

Here's one of the more recent trailers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th-yov-jENM

Re:Still a grind

[tnk1]

You could probably deal with the supertanking in a mixed raid by also linking "threat" level to the difficulty level as well. The tank would be able to absorb a million points of damage, but it wouldn't matter because they couldn't keep the boss or adds on them.

You could turn down the difficulty of the dungeon itself and then scale the rewards based on difficulty level as well. That means that you would still all do the same roles, but the fight would be more forgiving. You would get to see the content, but it would still leave major rewards for the hardcore players who took the challenge of doing it on Nightmare.

Of course, balance is always a bitch, especially in a big MMORPG, so I don't see that sort of thing happening unless some sort of competition or external pressure comes to bear.

Re:Still a grind

[Elros]

As a casual gamer, I am quite pleased with WoW over most MMORPGs. I can play and enjoy storyline and mechanics with out the pressure of focusing on the absolute optimum gear/rotation/etc. The grind is a lot less painful than it appears to be in most other games...until the top tier. However, if you want to get top tier in a week, don't play any MMORPG.

Re:Still a grind

[Straif]

Almost any basic level 82 green will beat 80 epics, except possibly where set bonuses come into play, and even then you'd only have to wait for a level 83 green.

I ran a LK raid for fun while leveling a toon not too long ago (was either 83 or 84 at the time), wearing almost all greens with an occasional quest blue, and was pulling dps that I only dreamed about when actually wearing full icc gear.

The changes in stats on even level 78+ cata greens compared to pre-cata everything else is like day and night.

Re:Still a grind

[dave562]

I have not even made it through Cataclysm yet. I made it as far as collecting some stupid tree marks. Blizzard set it up so that you can only get about 14 marks per day, and you need 200 of the damn things. I understand that they wanted to slow down the people who rush through to the end of the game, but seriously? I have better things to do with my time. If I have time to play a game, I want to be able to play the game. Being told "Come back tomorrow, do the same thing again, but even then you still won't be done." really pissed me off.

I will save myself the $15 per month.

Re:Still a grind

[daveywest]

Still remember nearly getting kicked out of my guild for aggroing a boss with my Eye of Kilrog in MC. Good times.

Re:Still a grind

[Splab]

Blizzard actually aproach this with the newest expansion. A lot of the world changes as you do quests, storylines will cause entire areas to turn from devastated to green and flourishing. It's actually quite nice.

That being said, WoW was still a major grind so I dropped it for something else :-)

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

MANY WHELPS! LEFT SIDE! HANDLE IT!

Yes, I realize it is like yelling. Thank you for that /. filter. I am yelling.

Re:Still a grind

[dbet]

What is the point of small guilds if you need 40 to do something? I'm in a big guild, it's fun, and not because of raids.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

At level 85 you are Way stronger than any level 80 will ever be, and, LK is level 80 content. You probably cant dodge traps, stand on the defile and so on... Learn to play first, more gear will not help you.

Re:Still a grind

[Artifex]

If he's casual and likes visually appealing stuff, have him try the free trial of Rift.
From wallhacking (no flying in Rift, yet) I've discovered that so far they use very few invisible barriers, and in fact put cairns with loot at the tops of some mountains.
So far haven't found any crazy not-supposed-to-be-seen unfinished areas like pre-Cata Old World had, but it's fun to try. :)

Re:Still a grind

[QuantumLeaper]

Play a Freemium MMO, if you don't want to pay...

Re:Still a grind

[UnknownSoldier]

> If you are the kind of casual gamer who just wants to finish the game,

Uhm, you DO realize there is NO way to "finish" WoW -- there is no "game over" that good, traditional games have.

It has a "soft win", not a "hard win" -- it is shitty gameplay designed for one thing -- string out the customer to keep the paying as long as possible to play.

Re:Still a grind

[UnknowingFool]

The issue is almost NEVER gear, atleast for PvE.

Er? It's been a while since I played WoW but gear is important. To overcome the hard fights you need skill and gear but there were quite a few of the early raid fights that were essentially gear checks. For example, Patchwerk was a tank and spank gear check.

For the most part, if you are the first to die, you did something wrong and while more gear might have mitigated it, it was your mistake to be in the position to die.

There is always a bit of chance in every fight and sometimes it isn't on your side. There were a few fights where the tank died because he got 3 critical strikes in a row followed by a special boss move on a boss we routinely beat. Now the rules of the fight were that it was possible but not likely but given enough fights, it was going to happen . Better gear would not have helped.

Re:Still a grind

[FrootLoops]

I imagine you're talking about marks of the world tree. After you turn in the IIRC 150, you get to do it twice more, albeit with a few more marks per day in additional quests. At least, that's as far as I got before I quit that grind.

There's a lot more to the game than those Firelands dailies, though.

Re:Still a grind

[blahplusplus]

"Dungeons are gear based which requires grinding"

As opposed to cinematic story narrative driven crap? Games are about doing things. RPG's took the doing stuff out of the game and that's why it's boring. If WoW played like darksiders I'd be all over that. But WoW is a casual game so all they have for you is tedious autocombat.

Re:Still a grind

[billcopc]

Gear is not (always) a substitute for skill and teamwork.

I'm not a super-hardcore player, in that I only have one main character, and I raid one night a week. I have a normal life, as normal as I.T. consulting can be I suppose, and I have very little trouble keeping up with the no-lifers. When the last expansion came out, I beat the leveling content in 2 days, as I only had a few small contracts going at the time. Then I quit for about 6 months, came back after a new patch and content update, and caught up to my peers in the space of a few weeks. I don't earn as much gold as they do, but with the daily and weekly caps for endgame content, I'll raid for 2-3 hours, run a dungeon or two, and hit my weekly cap for whatever token-of-the-month. Then every other week I have enough to buy a new epic item. I am perhaps the least dedicated player in the guild, but I can keep up with them and they value my participation - sometimes I screw up boss strategies, because I don't have time to go read all the wikis and watch the videos, but I pay attention, learn from my mistakes and nail it the 2nd time. WoW is very much tuned for average players. They throw a bone to the hardcore players, but those represent a tiny portion of the user base.

So for me, spending 4-5 hours a week on the game results in a safisfactory experience. I log in on a Wednesday night, run a raid with my buddies, get my fix and log off.

Re:Still a grind

[dave562]

There's a lot more to the game than those Firelands dailies, though.

The game lost all continuity for me when dungeon finder came out. Any relationship between the instance and the zone it is in vanished. I had no idea where to find quest chains, or what quest chains led to which dungeon. I could be wrong, but it seems like Blizzard might have phased out that dynamic by putting the quest givers right in the beginning of the dungeon. That just increases the disconnect and makes it matter even less what zone the instance is in.

Re:Still a grind

[billcopc]

In my case, I'm in a small "casual" guild. Casual in the sense that we have about 40 regular members, but we can only reliably pull together 10 people for a raid. We're an older crowd with jobs and families, and we have no patience for trolls or troublemakers, so our roster consists of a core group of people who've known each other IRL, and friends-of-friends. The few 25-man raids I've done were PUGs, or collaborations with another friendly guild. I just play a few hours a week, and some weeks I'm too busy to play at all, so a larger more serious guild is out of the question.

That said, they should offer 40-man raids for those who do have the numbers to run them. I'll pug them when I can, for fun. But if they make it into a progression requirement that punishes smaller guilds, a majority of players are gonna be pissed.

Re:Still a grind

[El Torico]

As much as I wanted to like DAoC, I just couldn't get past the poor graphics. Too bad Mythic/EA/Bioware/whoever hasn't seriously improved them. DAoC and Warhammer Online could have been serious competitors to WOW, but Mythic just didn't put enough into either one.

Re:Still a grind

[osu-neko]

Yeah, I was planning on dropping WoW as soon as GW2 is out (I only started in 2009 after playing GW to death). OTOH, I was planning on buying Diablo III as soon as it's released, and with the offer to get it free... I may just commit to another year of WoW (which won't stop me from getting GW2 the moment it's out, but may drop me from immediately dropping WoW if it's within the next year).

Re:Still a grind

[osu-neko]

You've apparently never played Guild Wars. On virtually every point you raise, WoW is just terribly bad in comparison. WoW is a horrible grind, and terribly non-dynamic/repetitious in comparison.

Re:Still a grind

[osu-neko]

They seem to be aware of this -- one of the goals they've stated for Mists of Pandaria is to get people out into the world more instead of hanging around Stormwind/Orgrimmar all day once they hit 85, so they'll have a bunch of stuff for you to head out into the world to do.

Re:Still a grind

[shutdown -p now]

If you drop the "massive" requirement, there's still NWN/NWN2 (typically 32 to 64 players per server), where you can find many good roleplay or social-centric servers with active DMing. Granted, roleplay ones are still somewhat hardcore - it may not be the time sink that is grind, but you're still expected to put some effort into, well, role-playing, and doing it right still does take time (it's not uncommon for a party to spend an hour or two gathering and chatting, telling their chars stories and exchanging news, before actually setting off onto a quest). Still, it is probably much more "casual" than your typical grind, and definitely much more fun.

Re:Still a grind

[shutdown -p now]

"Hardcore gaming" these days is defined as "not casual". And "casual gaming" is basically defined as "Farmville", or, at best, "something I can pick up and have fun playing in 10 minutes without getting pwned".

Re:Still a grind

[bluegreen997]

The beauty of 40-man raids was that you could have a half-dozen casuals and as long as they understood the mechanics of what was going on (i.e.: they didn't do stupid stuff) there's still a sizable group of folks to pick up the slack.

This actually lasted up until AQ40 and Naxx40. However in both those raids the whole raid really needed to be on top of their game or you can and would wipe.

Re:Still a grind

[silas_moeckel]

The only things that kills anything but the tank in dungeons and raids is standing in fire or grabbing aggro. Those are each learn to play issues. Mages have a pile of get out a jail free cards to play. If your dead and your ice block and blink are not on cd you have nobody to blame but yourself. Wow is a very easy game until hard mode raiding.

Re:Still a grind

[superwiz]

I was talking about the fact that you can't overgear the fight at level 85 because this specific fight has a mechanic which scales with gear and health. Just like the enfeeble on Prince (which still takes you to 1 hp) and makes gear irrelevant.

Re:Still a grind

[superwiz]

I left the game, but I would imagine that a dk tank with t12 and the ICC buff would pretty much not need any healing due to the fact that self heals scale with dk's health pool.

Re:Still a grind

[KingMotley]

Sure there is.. Get a complete set of the best gear. Then max out every faction. Then get all the achieves. Then you are done unless they've added somethign else.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you want to be able to go after raid bosses and kill them without actually raiding or doing anything that would allow you even into the entry level raids. Not to mention you blame part of it on being a Mage which has nothing to do with anything (all classes and specs have a spot in raiding and have in years).

You do realize that that's quite the sense of entitlement you have their. You are also part of the reason why WoW and other games get continually dumbed down.

Re:Still a grind

[Renraku]

Best PvP? Really?

90% of the time you were getting completely curb stomped by groups of 50-200 people in the frontier areas. Whoever got the area mez (basically it stopped everyone in a given area from acting for a good thirty seconds, until damaged, or they used a (purchasable through PvP points) skill to break out of it) off first. Also, hacking was rampant. As soon as you stepped into a frontier a group of people would come running at approximately the speed of sound with their weapons out.

The only fun I EVER had was in the battlegrounds, where it wasn't always 200 people with the absolute best of the best gear. I quit the game for good when a guy casted the same spell five times in about two seconds, and Mythic said it was impossible, but was widely reported on forums..also them nerfing my class (berserker) into doing slightly less damage over time than a caster using only their staff..

Re:Still a grind

[Endo13]

Yeah, but you didn't even mention the best parts about GW:

1. No gear grind.
2. Very dynamic and powerful skill system

I thought I was bored with WoW, so I moved on to Rift. Then I discovered it wasn't WoW I was bored with, but gear grinds. Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, just give me max stats gear out of the gate and let me go play the parts of the game I find interesting. With GW you could pretty much do that with the third campaign, and even the first one didn't take more than a few weeks to max your gear.

Sadly, #1 is almost certainly gone from GW2 and #2 is absolutely gone. As a result, I have no interest in the game.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

Basement dwellers are funny, and if your not in your moms basement get the fuck outa your socially funded housing and get a job! frankly im tired of paying for your ass to live. This is all

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they've taken out almost all of the random walking. You have a *little* grind until you reach - what, level 15 or 16 or so and can start putting yourself into the instance queue. Then you get to visit all the cool low level instances. Granted, they've been dumbed down a bit - you don't have to, or even want to get all the side quests that you once had to get to "properly" do some thing like gnomerang... on the other hand, if you're casual, you'll at least see the instances instead of another dumb kill X spider things and deliver this message to the guy standing right over there missions. They're still there if you want to go totally solo, but you don't HAVE to.

Somewhere between the two extremes seems a nice middle ground for me. At least knowing what the instance was about was kinda cool. Now the instancing is so quick you just group up, slaughter everything until the boss, then kill him too. I'm thinking gaming with a group of friend's alts is the way to go if you want to know about the instances...

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps everyone who wanted to join a raid would have gear scores within a certain range the the difficulty and rewards would scale accordingly

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

wasn't really an mmo, everything outside of town was instanced

Re:Still a grind

[muindaur]

I played DAOC, the WoW grind is nothing, and even then I hear Everquest is worse for the grind. As for WoW, they streamlined it in Cata. It's not very hard to level fast, even quicker if you're in an old guild with friends and family (mine is like that, got an IRL friend that will fit or family member then bring em in), or can get the heirloom items.

My reaction to the Mists of Pandaria thing was "WOOHOO!" To me the expansion looks fun, and that's the point of gaming for me, and I dare say most casuals.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

If the lich king can wipe the floor with you at 85, you're doing it wrong

Re:Still a grind

[drsquare]

How exactly do you get 10+kdps in quest gear? I have all the right glyphs, do the rotation prescribed in EJ, and struggle to break 6-7k on bosses. I even do that stupid thing where you start with the felguard and switch to the felhunter. If I'm lucky enough to have the doomguard off cooldown I can get 9k. I can't think of anything else to do other than get more gear.

Re:Still a grind

[drsquare]

How do you even get the gear to raid on such a tight schedule? Considering how many dungeons you'd have to run to get the gear to even be allowed into a raid, on one night a week it would surely take the best part of a year to get the gear.

Let's assume it takes 30 minutes in the queue to get a dungeon, that the dungeon takes an hour to complete, and fifty percent of the take the group collapses and you're back in the queue. If you're lucky you'll get one dungeon done a week. Would that give you enough points to get a full set within a few weeks?

That's not even counting time doing daily quests to fund repair bills, or to learn the raids.

Re:Still a grind

[oook_in]

Pretty sure you were doing it wrong. I was fully decked out in heroic gear from ICC and I started replacing pieces with quest greens at about level 82.

The last things to go were trinkets as they're generally hard to come by, but even those I got a blue trinket from questing in Uldum and a green one in Twilight Highlands.

Re:Still a grind

[oook_in]

I think you mean Anub'arak and the Leeching Swarm ability which takes a percentage of each players health and heals the boss. This bit makes it really crazy with the level 85 health pools of players.

I don't think any of the LK's abilities are based on percentage of player's health. It's been over a year since I last did that fight, so I could be wrong! :)

Re:Still a grind

[realityimpaired]

Please don't tell me you used "maxdps.com" and no greens were suggested as upgrades. I'm pretty sure that every AEP calculator on the planet agrees that you're doing it wrong.

I ended LK with a full set of top tier, as did most in my guild. And almost all of mine was gone within two levels. If you actually believe that your hit, expertise, or any other caps were being maintained as you leveled up...

I was in the same situation... full 266 or better gear, working on LK heroic (everything else down) when the last expansion came out. But I still had a couple of pieces (well, one, a trinket) when I hit 85. You're right though... most of it was de'd and gone by the time I hit 83. And that was working on two gear sets at the same time: shadow and holy.

That said, my priorities shifted, and I stopped finding WoW to be fun. I canceled my subscription in February, and haven't looked back. The game really isn't fun for a casual player, but I don't think it's the game mechanics that made it not fun, it was the player base. Specifically, the game seems to be overrun with testosterone-fuelled 13-year olds who don't seem to understand that there's adults who play the game, and people who have real lives. I got tired of being yelled at by prepubescent twats with delusions of adequacy, to say nothing of being asked for naked pictures or to get on vent to cyber. It's revolting, and juvenile, and was enough to drive me away from the game, and I know several others who left for the same reason.

Re:Still a grind

[VGPowerlord]

If you do, sign up for Blizzard's Annual Pass for a free copy of Diablo 3.

Just keep in mind that it is essentially a contract.

Re:Still a grind

[mhelander]

Why did your guildies not just let you die and then resurrect you after the boss went back to his spawn place? Unless the rest weigh in, the fight is between you and the boss, not you and the whole raid.

Re:Still a grind

[mhelander]

last part should be "not the boss vs. the whole raid."

Re:Still a grind

[mhelander]

On all class/race combos, with all talent tree specializations.

Re:Still a grind

[Moofie]

Thanks for taking the time to share.

Re:Still a grind

[Rogerborg]

Whelps! Left side! Even side! Many whelps! NOW! HANDLE IT!

Aaah, good times.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

As a gamer, I can confidently state that if you ask one hundred gamers to define "hardcore" and "casual" you will get one hundred different definitions. I'm sure you fit your own definition you prefer.

Re:Still a grind

[RingDev]

The first recommendation that is almost always a help is ABC: Always Be Clicking.

If a fight is 1 minute long, and you have 0% haste, you have a max of 40 possible casts thanks to the 1.5s global cooldown.

If you're not hitting long cast spells (ones that are longer than the GCD) you should be doing everything you can to get close to that 40 casts number.

If you're in the 20-30 range, even with the perfect rotation, you'll always come in low on DPS.

I'd recommend getting the mod Quartz. It replaces your cast bar with a new one that indicates lag. As soon as the cast bar gets to the red, hit your next ability.

-Rick

Re:Still a grind

[drsquare]

I have button timers, and press whatever's about to expire. Most of my abilities have cast-times so the GCD isn't that important.

Re:Still a grind

[RingDev]

Of all the spells you have in your arsenal (assuming you are a Warlock), only 5 have cast timers longer than the GCD. And one of those is a PvP spell and the others you're only casting a handful of due to your spec:

2 Seed of Corruption
2.5 Incinerate
4 Soul Fire
2 Immolate
3 Shadow Bolt

Everything else is 1.5 seconds or shorter. So I would say that the GCD is absolutely important to your DPS. Losing even just a 1/4 of a second per click will cost you about 15% of your peak DPS. Waste a 1/4 second on any of those above spells, and it's even worse.

Gear is virtually negligable. For example, the folks who clear heroics as the server first hits max level have no gear. Heck, the people who raced ahead don't even have the best quest gear. Nor do they have rep gear, wellfair epics, or anything else. Folks run into Heroics with the bare minimum ilvl, in greens and blues.

People who run raids as soon as they come out don't have gear, heck, when the first batch of Cataclysm raids came out, people were scraping by to hit the ilvl marker, holding on to a healy item in their inventory to make it to the cap. And you know what? They made it through those raids.

Point being, when it comes to WoW, untill your gear level is completely out of whack with the tuning level of the instance, Skill trumps gear. Once you have uber gear though, anything not tuned for that level is going to be silly easy and Skill becomes unimportant (with the exception of raid-wipe mechanics such as Heroic Litch King)

So stop blaiming your gear. If you want to increase your DPS, learn more about your spell priorities, situational awareness, and ABC.

-Rick

Re:Still a grind

[djnforce9]

@Splab: But then you hit level 60 and have to enter into the dark portal to continue onwards until level 70. The Burning crusade content becomes incredibly tedious and grindy compared to what you were doing beforehand where the quests were far more unique and fun. That part of the game really needs a makeover. Lich King is then somewhat better but still not up to Par with Cataclysm's content.

What I hated even more are encountering "group quests" and having nobody within the area to do them with because they have already moved on. I ended up coming back on level 85 and just sailing through them (even though the rewards were completely useless at that point).

My biggest complaint is that there really isn't anything to do when you hit the level cap (outside of more instances of course) unless you are in a raiding guild. The quest chains end and you can't even try your luck soloing the older raids for the heck of it (e.g. Lich King) because the game FORCES you to be in a raid group. The expansion will at least extend things further.

Also, there is a definite pattern in this game from level 1 through to 85:
1. Enter an area
2. Do some minor quests (get X of this item from monsters or the environent, kill X number of monsters, etc)
3. Do somewhat more significant quests which may be a bit more involved (generally exploring a cave and what not).
4. Fight a mini-boss.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 at the next section of the area
6. Complete all sections of the current area and receive a quest to visit the next one.
7. Repeat steps 1-6 until you reach the end-game.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on your class. For some classes the set bonuses were so strong that they overpowered the replacement pieces with stronger stats... mages, in particular. Also, many people (and dps calculators) ignored the fact that stronger gems made old equipment with lots of gem slots far stronger than they would have been otherwise.

Re:Still a grind

[Anonymous Coward]

LOTRO isn't bad for the casual gamer... Skirmishes let you avoid a lot of the "need to group for X reward".

Pet Battle system?

[Anonymous Coward]

When did Michael Vick join Blizzard?

Re:Pet Battle system?

[knight24k]

Oh for mod points....you made me choke on my coffee. lol

Re:Pet Battle system?

[ttong]

I don't get it. Is OP FunnyBot?

Re:Pet Battle system?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I'd said that.

Re:Pet Battle system?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Vick#Dog_fighting_investigations

WOW gamers

[Synerg1y]

I wonder what priceless videos we can gain out of this expansion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc

I'll keep looking for an mmorpg I can get into, till then SC2 and it's 100% free somewhat crappy servers ftw!

Re:WOW gamers

[sexconker]

Very old and very fake.
Onyxia Wipe is better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtvIYRrgZ04

Re:WOW gamers

[Clsid]

Holy cow, that video was hilarious. Thanks for posting. Still laughing my ass off

Re:WOW gamers

[sarysa]

Everyone thinks it's fake, except I had a brother who was exactly that flavor of mentally ill. Though none of us were giggling like the other kid...it's pretty miserable to be around. He'd just do stuff like that for hours on end, even into the night sometimes.

I'm leaning toward skepticism of skepticism on this one. Is there any confirmation that it's fake?

Re:WOW gamers

[UnknowingFool]

This isn't a freakout but part of the lore: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU

Re:WOW gamers

[sexconker]

Everyone thinks it's fake, except I had a brother who was exactly that flavor of mentally ill. Though none of us were giggling like the other kid...it's pretty miserable to be around. He'd just do stuff like that for hours on end, even into the night sometimes.

I'm leaning toward skepticism of skepticism on this one. Is there any confirmation that it's fake?

There's an entire series of increasingly retarded videos with that that.
They're all fake.

He's been on a ton of interviews, and while he was adamant about them all being real at first, he admitted they were fake in later interviews.

Re:WOW gamers

[X3J11]

Yeah, Daniel Tosh had the kid on Tosh.0 (along with Michael Winslow). He eventually admitted it was staged.

Re:WOW gamers

[sarysa]

Cool. The giggling kid really gives it away then. The "star" is pretty convincing...especially the facial expressions. (and sorry for the whole Buzz Killington schtik, hehe...)

Got that backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard also mentioned that people who buy a 12-month subscription to WoW will get a copy of Diablo 3 for free.

Translation: The hordes of people who will buy Diablo 3 will get a free 12 month trial to our dying cash cow. All they have to do is get them in a different order.

Re:Got that backwards

[jhoegl]

Yup... that is why they are developing a new MMO as well.

It will be interesting to see what they come up with, but anything grinding endlessly without a point will not do well.
DAoC did well until Mythic screwed it up, because the end game was a constant challenge
Same with Planetside and soon, Planetside 2.


Now I will admit, it is fun to gain new armor, and weapons, and such... but when it is the same thing over and over again like Blizzard made WoW, then it gets old.

Re:Got that backwards

[Kaenneth]

Who else expects Diablo 3 to have 'micro' transactions? (and possibly free-to-play within a year of release)

Blizzard announces new WoW expansion

[Anonymous Coward]

Titled Jumping The Shark, the expansion will focus on the battle between the hip and the square instead of traditional adversary The Man. /eyyy

Re:Blizzard announces new WoW expansion

[mhelander]

well, that's how it started out, with the hip (horde) vs the square (the alliance) in epic outdoors battles that made the servers crash. That was before all this "an even bigger enemy will make the hip and the square join forces: The Man" nonsense.

April Fools

[Anonymous Coward]

Pandarian exploits in WoW was the perfect april fools joke because the idea of it was so ridiculous... ...until they ran out of ideas, but still wanted more money.

Pandaren monk, so cute... and observations

[Dripdry]

-bow- My girlfriend and I just started playing WoW about 2 months ago. We've had a lot of fun, honestly. We're both working full time AND studying for professional certifications, so we don't really have time to go out. Staying in and playing WoW has kept us tied to our desks in order to get everything done, and allowed us to socialize together, with others, and have fun with the small amount of free time we do have (and stay up too late with gin & tonics occasionally). I can't speak for those who've played for a long time, but I love the way WoW has is set up now with the current expansion. The new enhancements sound like a delight, too. We're really excited! Some may say it's just renting a game every month, but compared to what we used to spend on going out to eat and socializing? Warcraft is a saving us quite a bit of money. Only thing is.... 12 months of WoW for diablo 3 free, when D3 basically sounds like a "rope'em in and then charge them" deal.. I don't know. A neat move on Blizz's part, though. Get new WoW members and Diablo 3 adherents... pretty slick marketing move.

Re:Pandaren monk, so cute... and observations

[eclectro]

Have you received any promotional consideration for that post??

Re:Pandaren monk, so cute... and observations

[Clsid]

Lol that is so true. Playing WoW saves tons of money even if it is at the cost of you becoming a hermit. In any case I've known people that met and dated thru the game and eventually got married, so it is just changing the way we interact I guess. Surrogates ftw :)

Re:Pandaren monk, so cute... and observations

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really an out of the ordinary post. It reflects the view of WoW that I've seen from the many couples who played it in my old guild. WoW isn't expensive when you consider all of the other activities it complements.

Re:Pandaren monk, so cute... and observations

[Dripdry]

Oh come on! I got modded down for expressing the unpopular sentiment that we are actually having fun playing Wow, and are looking forward to this, but that blizz has some interesting marketing techniques?

Look, I know it's not popular, but for someone new this game is a blast. It may be grinding, but it has it's challenges with lots of numbers to optimize and decisions to make (we hate PvP, we like working with others instead so don't worry about this "geared up" nonsense very much). We LOVE seeing the beautiful new venues, collecting outfits, and interacting together in this world blizzard created.

As far as a legitimate idea instead of gushing/ranting, here's one: I hope WoW gets more popularity because I told my girlfriend about Titan, that it's a sci-fi MMO, and she looked right at me and said,"Nope, not interested." I've gotten that feeling elsewhere, so I hope future additions breathe a little life into a franchise that will always have detractors and adherents.

Re:Pandaren monk, so cute... and observations

[Anonymous Coward]

professional certifications

this made me lol

Straight to the top in an hour

[Luckyo]

Funnily, this made front page within an hour of being announced.

Like it or not, WoW is still popular.

Re:Straight to the top in an hour

[scubamage]

You mispelled lame.

Re:Straight to the top in an hour

[Anonymous Coward]

Your disdain for a popular game definitely makes you cool.

Re:Straight to the top in an hour

[jm007]

You misspelled misspell.

Re:Straight to the top in an hour

[Anonymous Coward]

coffee + keyboard :(

Re:Straight to the top in an hour

[scubamage]

Hahaha, nice catch! Damn you Gnuspell!!!

kung fu panda?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were Dreamworks I'd be suing the shit out of blizzard right about now.

Re:kung fu panda?

[Mastadex]

The Pandaren have been in warcraft lore for quite some time. It would be an uphill struggle for Dreamworks.

Re:kung fu panda?

[UnknowingFool]

I think the Pandarens are not a new race in WoW folklore. They've been around since the beginning which pre-dates Dreamworks' films. They just haven't been playable.

Re:kung fu panda?

[Wyatt Earp]

Except Pandarens predate Kung Fu Panda.

Pandarens were in WC3 Frozen Throne expansion in 2003

http://www.wowwiki.com/Pandaren_Brewmaster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_III:_The_Frozen_Throne

Re:kung fu panda?

[theghost]

And you'd be laughed out of court. The Pandaren were an April Fools joke from 2003-ish. Kung Fu Panda came out in 2008.

Re:kung fu panda?

[JackDW]

The Kung Fu Panda expansion is no more (or less) of a movie ripoff than Lich King, who looked almost exactly like Sauron, wore the same armor as Sauron, and had a huge tower with an gigantic eye on it, just like Sauron. Blizzard got away with that. They also got away with Harrison Jones and the blatant Raiders of the Lost Ark inspired quests in Uldum.

There's no reason why they can't get away with the same thing for any other film.

It's just... couldn't they have picked something a bit less childish? Why can't we have a Monsters, Inc. expansion, or perhaps one based on Wall-E?

Oblig.

[Mastadex]

Skadoosh!

Re:Nice.. more grinding

[Wyatt Earp]

Except you can do racial changes.

And if Death Knights, Goblins and Worgen were any indication, the starter zones are worth the time of trying out a new character.

Kung-fu Panda

[Anonymous Coward]

Just what we need.

Always a place in my heart for WoW...

[Rhacman]

I don't play WoW any more but I always thought Blizzard did a good job with it. There will always be people who don't like the grind, or MMOs in general but for me it was a more enjoyable use of the money than the additional cable channels I'd have spent it on. That said, I've always wondered if the Pandaren would make an appearance, or what the end of WoW would be like and I suspect this expansion will answer both questions lol.

Re:Always a place in my heart for WoW...

[Dunbal]

Eh, I got a free trial of WoW with a video card I bought but didn't have time to grind as the program kept crashing.

Re:Always a place in my heart for WoW...

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW was slated from the beginning to have 5 expansions, this is only the 4th. So no, this won't answer the question of what the end of WoW will be like.

Re:Always a place in my heart for WoW...

[WillAffleckUW]

The End of the World of Warcraft is not yet here.

It will be started when a dwarf and his friends take on the unkillable player and a father gives up his life to save his son.

(cue South Park music)

Re:Always a place in my heart for WoW...

[WillAffleckUW]

I find to run most modern WoW content you're better off with a quad-core 1TB or 2TB machine with DRAM3

Running Win7 or better.

Re:Always a place in my heart for WoW...

[osu-neko]

Um, really? How bizarre. Maybe you need that much if you're running Win 7. Modern WoW runs beautifully on Windows XP, 2GB RAM, 1.2GHz single-core processor, and a six year old video card. Alas, it doesn't run any better if you have better stuff, since it's designed to run well on what was a casual, modest system in 2004 and they've steadfastly refused to update the graphics engine or anything to be more demanding. Hence, even today the most modern content looks kinda crappy compared to state of the art 2005 games.

Re:Always a place in my heart for WoW...

[Rhacman]

I said that mainly in jest, I see the Pandaren as Blizzards version of jumping the shark. To me though, that strategy sounds like saying you are going to eat five hams regardless of if you realize it is a bad idea part way through. In reality though companies plan for what they think is realistic but will cut out early if things don't go to plan. That said, I doubt people will leave WoW in droves even if it does (or has) jump the shark.

Re:Always a place in my heart for WoW...

[Anonymous Coward]

Running Win7 or better.

or better? You mean like a Mac or Linux?

Re:Always a place in my heart for WoW...

[thejynxed]

That is no longer true, the new visual effects they added for Cataclysm require no less than a DX10 stand-alone card to run properly (Mobility cards are right out). The new water and lighting effects come to mind.

woot woot

[hesaigo999ca]

I got my taking cap on, can't wait to brush off the keyboard cobwebs and get cracking on next n tier set.

Re:woot woot

[idontgno]

I got my taking cap on,

"Taking" cap? TAKING?

You're a ninja huntard, aren't you?

(I keed, I keeed. A little.)

I guess you meant "tanking", and for that I (the non-ninja huntard) thank you. A good tank makes being a hunter good. A bad tank makes a hunter bleed, and if the hunter is bleeding, something has gone horribly wrong.

Re:woot woot

[hesaigo999ca]

A hunter bleeding is always less important then a healer bleeding, and if a healer is bleeding, everyone will be dead within minutes. ...and yes i did mean tanking cap....my bloody massive tauren fingers could not really type properly on this keyboard,
which is why i switched to using my horns, although it has taken me about 25 minutes to write this small paragraph....atleast it is precisely what i mean to say

shark jumping

[coffii]

Well I'd like to thank Blizzard for the trailer, best laugh I've had in a long time. Awful, simply awful.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Adult diaper manufacturers increase production to prepare for the rise on demands of its products on the upcoming months.

Awesome

[Clsid]

This is a welcome addition. I think a game based in monks and Asian culture is going to be far more interesting than the current Cataclysm expansion. Cata was good but not to the level of Wrath of the Lich King which truly felt epic. I also like that they are having Alliance and Horde finally clashing since to me it all seemed like a bunch of crap to have these two warring factions almost taking a stroll and having tea together. This is a game of WARcraft in the end.

Re:Awesome

[Cinder6]

Agreed; I am actually interested in this, and may reactivate since I already plan on buying Diablo 3. I thought Cataclysm wasn't terribly exciting after hitting 85, whereas WotLK was great until the end. I always wanted a monk class in the game, too. But really, Blizzard, what we need is playable murlocs, not pandas.

Re:Awesome

[superwiz]

LK brought a new dps/tank class. This will bring a new dps/healer class.

Re:Awesome

[Sponge Bath]

...a game based in monks

It's a jungle out there / Disorder and confusion everywhere / No one seems to care / Well I do / Hey, who's in charge here? / It's a jungle out there / Poison in the very air we breathe / Do you know what's in the water that you drink? / Well I do, and it's amazing / People think I'm crazy, 'cause I worry all the time / If you paid attention, you'd be worried too / You better pay attention / Or this world we love so much might just kill you / I could be wrong now, but I don't think so / It's a jungle out there

Re:Awesome

[keytoe]

LK brought a new dps/tank class. This will bring a new dps/healer class.

Correction: Monk has a tank spec in addition to the healing and dps specs.

Re:Awesome

[superwiz]

I wouldn't bet on anything at this point. It's still in the concept stage. Remember the path of the titans system?

Re:Awesome

[MachineShedFred]

It depends on the implementation. If their "focusing on the battle between the Horde and the Alliance" means that they are going to have a bunch of compulsory pvp objectives, then they might as well just give certain servers to certain factions because of population imbalances.

They're going to have to come up with a way to make it work, because nothing they've come up with yet has.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a welcome addition.

You misspelled addiction.

Re:Awesome

[keytoe]

I wouldn't bet on anything at this point. It's still in the concept stage. Remember the path of the titans system?

And the dance studio. And aerial combat. At least Path of the Titans ended up in the game in some form or another :)

Re:Nice.. more grinding

[ackthpt]

Except you can do racial changes.

And if Death Knights, Goblins and Worgen were any indication, the starter zones are worth the time of trying out a new character.

They really need to move on from this dungeon crawl stuff.

Maybe something like World of Banking - take your group down a dangerous trail of betting on derivatives and making high risk loans ...

Who comes up with the names for this shite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, who? Are they really out of ideas?

Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[rs1n]

I know that Blizzard is well known for little jokes and references to the real world... so I couldn't help but notice the connection between the new race and their semblances to a very well known kung-fu fighting panda of the big screen. Any idea if this was the "inspiration" for the expansion?

Re:Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[Anonymous Coward]

could be more the other way around. They had panderian brew master hero in warcraft3. and they had a quest mentioning them in vanilla wow.

Re:Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[gblackwo]

Nah, the Pandarens were sort of a joke starting back in 2002 (Warcraft 3), and the joke actually kinda became part of the blizzard universe.

Re:Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[Anonymous Coward]

No. There was a Pandaren Brewmaster in Warcraft III which is about 10 years old now. There has been speculation that Pandaren would be added to the game since the beginning of WoW.

Re:Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[compro01]

Or it could have been the other way around. In Warcraft lore, the Pandaren predate that movie by at least 5 years. They showed up in warcraft 3.

Also, a bare-fisted melee character was part WoW in the early alpha. It was the priest discipline spec, though that got removed very early, probably for balance reasons. Pre-cata, you could still see remnants of that in some of the discipline talents.

Re:Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[Sheafification]

The art director at Blizzard, Samwise Didier, has been making panda related images for a long time now. They crept into Warcraft 3 as a panda hero, and since become a full-blown race in the lore.

Re:Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[WillAffleckUW]

Actually, pandas as a playable race in RPGs predate the whole MMORPG experience by quite a few decades.

Most instances were, in fact, monks.

I'm surprised you don't remember your gaming history.

And that's just the US/Euro gaming market - you can see them in Asian gaming even further back than that.

Re:Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[Commontwist]

But if they included the dreaded arch enemy of the Pandas--Stairs--then there would be trouble.

Re:Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[Anonymous Coward]

an asianish panda was one of the primary artists' logos prior to working on wow.

a kung-fu panda is about as original a concept as a kangaroo with a boomerang; i'm sure you'll find plenty of prior art, perhaps directly inspirational, perhaps not.

Re:Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Still doesn't change the fact that at least what's been made available for trailers/screenshots it has the look that most of the general population will associate with Kung Fu Panda. Toss in the Pandaren island, lack of arch-nemesis type end boss, pet battles, and the ridiculous over-simplification of the talent system and it's clear that Blizz is targeting a new and much younger audience. To summarize, the new xpac is:

Hello Kitty: Island Adventure + Pokemon + Kung Fu Panda

Now all they have to do is toss in some real-estate mechanism and pet feeding and caring and they'll have World of Webkinz! ;-)

What's really going on here?

[H3lldr0p]

A new expac announcement inside a year of the last being brought out.

A race and class that's been begged for since the beginning. And was once a April-fools joke.

An additional game, gratis, for long term subscribers.

Is it just me or does this have the reek of desperation? They reported a drop in numbers earlier this year, and it makes me wonder if that drop has been steady all year long. Why else bait the hook with so much junk? It doesn't feel like Blizz has the same confidence in the game they had before.

Re:What's really going on here?

[Clsid]

The game is pretty old at this point you know. I think part of the reason is because Cataclysm wasn't as good as the other expansions. They are just fixing that by releasing a new one.

Re:What's really going on here?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Cataclysm was announced within a year of Wrath coming out, no? The thing about WoW being so old now is that they've made some bad decisions when it comes to fundamental aspects of the game over the years, and eventually those add up and kill, well, most games that change as they age.

Really, one of the biggest problems with the game (at least when I left in January) is that there isn't enough 'wild' player interaction. Except on large, well-balanced PvP realms, other players are either a nuisance or partners in organized activities. I really think player-controlled flight is the one aspect that really set the stage for the eventual death of WoW.

Re:What's really going on here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be. Is Blizzard attempting to mitigate potential losses to new games coming out relatively soon (i.e. SW:tOR and Guild Wars 2)?

Re:What's really going on here?

[Ruke]

I remember hearing, back when Cata came out, that Blizzard was disappointed internally with the rate that content was coming out; either they were creating patches and hotfixes and general maintenance, and not making any progress on The Next Big Thing, or they were working on their expansion, and patch updates were suffering. Right around when Cata came out, Blizzard actually split the responsibility into two separate teams; one who was tasked, full time, on the next expansion, and another who was responsible for intermediate patch updates. This looks like the fruit of their labors.

Re:What's really going on here?

[BinarySolo]

What's going on is that SW:TOR and GW2 are going to be out within the next 6 months or so. Pandas are basically their "in case of fire, break glass" plan.

Re:What's really going on here?

[osu-neko]

A new expac announcement inside a year of the last being brought out.

You mean exactly like all three previous expansions? They've all been announced at the BlizzCon following the release of the previous one.

Re:What's really going on here?

[Fozzyuw]

I disagree. Offering Diablo 3 for free for a 1 year WoW subscription is a the "break glass" plan. It's a marketing trick to get people to lock in 1 year subscriptions so they can count those people and be like "See! SW:TOR came out and our numbers are the same! Boooyah!". It's downright deception but that's probably good for business.

Re:What's really going on here?

[ildon]

Every new expansion has been *announced* within a year of the previous being released. The only thing different about this one is that it might be released faster than previous ones.

Re:What's really going on here?

[flimflammer]

The short duration between expansions isn't anything new. When they made and released Cataclysm they said they were moving towards a shorter expansion duration so they could put out more large content quicker. That's why the cap only increases by 5 now.

Re:What's really going on here?

[Rakarra]

A new expac announcement inside a year of the last being brought out.

No surprise there, Cataclysm was announced (with playable goblin/wargen starter zones) two years at that Blizzcon, so this expansion announcement is actually right on schedule. Too bad, WoW needs another expansion bad now.

They have mentioned they want to release more, smaller expansions on a faster pace.

Re:What's really going on here?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

MMOs are new and shiny when they first come out, but buggy and rough around the edges.
In the first few patches and expansions, the game grows a lot. It changes, it becomes a new thing.
But then the curve slows down. Subscribers are only going to keep dropping off of WoW over time. Blizz pretty much has to release more and more expansions to try to keep interest going until WoW 2. So yes, they are desperate, but thats kind of how the business model goes for subscription MMOs. Look at everquest, they're pushing expansions out like nobody's business.

Re:What's really going on here?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you haven't followed WoW expansion releases. They've always announced new expansions at Blizzcon within a year of the previous expansion release.

Burning Crusade: announced Blizzcon 2005. Released January 2007.
Wrath: announced Blizzcon August 2007. Released November 2008.
Cataclysm: announced Blizzcon October 2009. Released December 2010.

This announcement should not have come as a surprised to anyone.

Re:What's really going on here?

[Anonymous Coward]

That has been their development cycle since the first expansion. Announce the next expansion at the next Blizzcon after the current expansion's release. Releasse the new expansion around the end of next year.

Got tired of the drama...

[fallen1]

Even with the smaller guilds syndrome, I still got tired of all the drama 30 and 40-man guilds could create. Seeing as I was the guild leader, that made it even worse. So many fucking massive egos to try and placate or squash that I finally said "Screw you guys, I'm going home." I changed the officers of the guild around to who I thought was best to run it, left myself as leader (intending to go back and turn it over), and then logged out. I haven't been back in almost two years now.

And I really do not miss it. Amazing, I know. Level-capped multiple characters, profitable professions, cash on hand, decent 10-man core of players that did get along, and a lot of others I enjoyed talking to. Still don't miss it but, of course, all of those friends who formed the core left as well within a short span of time -- if they had not left before.

Now I play some DDO and an old-school MUD and am looking forward to Star Wars: The Old Republic. With a very small, friends and family only guild. Fuck being the largest or first to do X crap. I want to have fun with friends and socialize while killing those scum in the Republic.

Re:Got tired of the drama...

[elrous0]

Now I play some DDO and an old-school MUD and am looking forward to Star Wars: The Old Republic. With a very small, friends and family only guild. Fuck being the largest or first to do X crap. I want to have fun with friends and socialize while killing those scum in the Republic.

I too am looking forward to killing Republic scum. Who wants to be the boring good guys?

Re:Nice.. more grinding

[Wyatt Earp]

No one is forcing end game dungeons or raids on you.

My wife plays World of Auctioncraft, has fun.

MMO FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still waiting for an MMO FPS where there is no gear and the game is entirely player skill based (minus ping and hardware). The competition alone would keep people coming back for more.

Re:MMO FPS

[theghost]

http://www.planetside2.com/faq.html

No thanks.

[CFBMoo1]

I'll stick with Minecraft and Champions Online. I'm tired of the WoW treadmill after 6 years. Best of all Champions is cheaper then WoW if you stay silver.

Re:No thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Implying that champoins online wasnt so bad that it went FTP in 6 months.

Only if Jack Black does the voice work

[DynamoJoe]

I mean, really.

Wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this a joke?

Possibly Fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

Article promises something called Challenge Mode where gear is provided. The problem is, can you use Challenge Mode to get decent gear to use elsewhere?

Zero Interest In Diablo 3

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the thing that won't even run in single player mode if you can't connect to their servers, right?

Re:Zero Interest In Diablo 3

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Diablo III doesn't have a single player mode. You can choose to play alone and never interact with others, but that's not the same thing.

Analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW is like Paris Hilton... popular for being popular (naked night elves are like the sex tape). People are slowly realizing that there isn't anything to it any more.

Re:Nice.. more grinding

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Millions of people pay $15 a month to do that. It's a business model.

Re:Nice.. more grinding

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife plays World of Auctioncraft, has fun.

You live in your mother's basement, enjoy your hand.

Re:Nice.. more grinding

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Dammit Wyatt, tell her to post more greys below vendor price, please. :)

Re:Nice.. more grinding

[rwven]

More of the same? Hardly.

It looks like more of all the worst parts of wow, with a candy coated cartoon plot added on top. Ugh. This is embarrassingly bad.

News for addicts

[Anonymous Coward]

People that are interested of this are listed below:
-

Whole lot of meh

[Tridus]

WoW already jumped the shark in Cataclysm. This is just confirmation really. Nothing they've announced is all that interesting as a player from vanilla to 4.1 when I finally got bored.

They've been out of ideas for a while and focusing on how to better monetize their existing players. Now they're trying to get people to keep paying by throwing in Diablo 3 (and its auctions for cash shop). Pandarens as a race don't fit the world, they were originally put in as a joke...

Then again, at this point the lore has been so completely butchered that it really doesn't matter if it fits or not.

It was fun while it was in its prime, but that time has passed. Hopefully Activision hasn't screwed up Diablo 3 too much, because I still love Blizzard.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW lore never mattered. It was always a hack job that stole shamelessly from everywhere, was more parody than story, and never met a cliche it didn't like.

But it was (and probably still is) a fun game if you didn't mind that and didn't take it too seriously.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[broken_chaos]

Hopefully Activision hasn't screwed up Diablo 3 too much, because I still love Blizzard.

Real money auction house and required to be online to play. I can't speak for you, but those two things entirely killed my interest in DIII (the former maiming it, and the latter being the merciful bullet to the head).

Re:Whole lot of meh

[benhattman]

Agreed. They've completely lost me. Prior to WoW, I bought every single game Blizzard released, and I loved it. Since then...I haven't bought (or even played on a friends computer) a thing, and I don't really forsee that changing any time soon. Blizzard hasn't been the same in years.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[Anonymous Coward]

This times a billion. It's creepy seeing even casual Warcraft fans treating the associated lore as if it were a religious text that should never be altered, changed, or revised.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Pandarens as a race don't fit the world

But space goats in transdimensional ships fit in perfectly.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed that Blizzard still manages to make some people think it's Activison that makes the 'evil' stuff while Blizzard is their friend.

It's one corp and they they have found a way to make a shitload of money and if that means giving a home to chinese gold farmers that they control (instead of ebay) then they will take that money.

SC2 has no lan mode and some other issues but isn't a real cash cow yet. D3 is broken before release by putting a priece tag on everything you find (yaaay i found a perfect windforce.. oh it's only 4$ anyway) and WOW will continue to make them money for quite some time.

Giving people D3 for free is only logical as to not split their playerbase and make people stay in both games.

My point: Blizzard==Activison==Evil. If you want to support people that won't try to get your money very time you play their game then f*** D3 and buy torchlight2 instead!

Re:Whole lot of meh

[osu-neko]

... Pandarens as a race don't fit the world, they were originally put in as a joke...

As were gnomes, and goblins, and tauren. Are you sure you've ever played the Warcraft games? Much of its content was there for the humor value. Pandarens fit the world perfectly. You just seem to be unfamiliar with it.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the first playable race that started out as a pet?

That is disappointing about the cash shop. I hadn't played the previous Diabloes but was considering trying Diablo 3 until I heard about that.

I wonder if it they have some secret desire to be yet another free-to-play Asian MMO.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[Omestes]

I felt the same way, mostly. I probably would still buy it ($60 = no big deal), but I was highly skeptical of it being anywhere near as good as Diablo 2 (among the top ten games ever). It was a lower priority than Torchlight 2 or Grim Dawn.

But watching some beta videos, I'm impressed. It still probably won't beat DII, but it still looks damn fun. I don't care about the cash auctions (and if you can still use in game currency, I will enjoy it, I spent more time in the AH in WoW than doing content), I can ignore them if they suck. Being online all the time is annoying... But I am online all the time anyways, and this already is dreadfully common. I can live with it, even if I find it a bit obnoxious. Blizz with get my money, and I'll like it. If I don't like it, it can sit next to Dungeon Siege III (the last $60 I blew on absolute, irredeemable, crap), and I can use it for target practice.

I don't understand the hate, personally.

As for, and on topic, the WOW changes... I thought it was April Fool's. The Pandaran were a great gag, but... it's a really stupid idea in practice. As is Pokemon pets, and completely removing skill trees (which oddly I was using as a punchline for the dumbing down of WoW three days ago... I'm prescient, it seems) I'm glad I ditched WoW before Cataclysm, there hasn't been a single change that impressed me. The next expansion is just going to have a single button, you press it, things instantly die.

I just hope that Blizz only jumped the shark for WoW, and not their whole line-up.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the WoW population tanks and some other franchise takes the lead as top MMO I expect to see a Star Craft MMO complete with space Battles. They may have to scramble a bit, or may lose the crown for a short while, but there is a lot there, and a lot that is different enough from WoW, that I can see them pulling it off.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Pandarens as a race don't fit the world

Yeah I mean talking pandas? So silly... talking cows, jamaican trolls, eskimo walruses, and frog-fish people? Totally legit.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[oneplus999]

Pandarens as a race don't fit the world

Yeah, talking pandas? How silly... but talking cows, jamaican trolls, eskimo walruses, and fish-frog men? Totally legit.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure they were a joke, but people kept asking for them as a playable race and kept getting excited about them. You already had the brewmaster panda, so adding in a liking for food as well differentiates them from dwarves, while still not breaking past lore (because there's not a lot there anyway). As an added bonus they get to ride the kung-fu panda express.

Currently I think I disagree with all of their changes, but then again, the game has changed so much from vanilla (good, bad and other) that I'm starting to expect each new expansion to essentially be like a new game in the same genre.

I dislike the +5 levels only - they're only numbers, why not make it 10 (same for cata)? Talents being "choose your abilities" sounds like they're actually removing customisation. I can totally see something like "the lv 30 selection for warriors will always be 'blah' because it's the best option".

Having the content the same for both factions really grates. I liked that you could get a different experience if you tried the other faction.

Panda people get to select their allegiance after 10 levels. Really? And then they'll suddenly forget how to speak to the other faction? What about panda-talk, will that be cross-faction? And what event will make you want to ally yourself with one over another to the point where you become kill-on-site to that other faction? And how does the faction know you're an enemy anyway? (Actually, that's already not explained with goblins... how do alliance guards know you're a horde goblin, not a neutral goblin?)

But yeah, a whole lot of meh.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[Phyvo]

At the same time when you accidentally rewrite parts of your lore to make it fit your new expansion it only emphasizes some of the lack of thought that goes into the writing.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[mhelander]

"and never met a cliche it didn't like."

I love the fact that this expression is by now cliche.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[wye43]

Fluffy Kung-Fu Pandas coming from a 1st April joke are simply too much to ask the poor customers to stomach. They threw all the lore they got in Cataclysm, and ran out of ideas. The original intended demographic has made a dramatic shift toward a way younger audience, to put it nicely. Its basically hello kitty online.

Of course such a big beast as Wow has a huge momentum, but if Wow still has 5 million subscribers by the time Titan is out I'd be shocked. Whoever came up with the ideas of pandaren will cause such a big loss for Blizzard it should be fired.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[WileyC]

There's still life in the ol' girl but, yes, I agree that this is much like the 'lock in' plans you get from cellphone companies. That said, I'm willing to risk a year's worth of payments. Arguably, this is a very nice perq for people who are in it for the long haul to begin with.

IMO, though, the Pandaren expansion is a lost opportunity: I really think that the game needs a third faction. Us vs. Them gets very old, very fast. Three-cornered fights are much more interesting even if the three sides are basically identical in terms of abilities. Put pandas, YAER (yet another elf race) and maybe two more new races in their own faction and then let the fur fly!

Re:Whole lot of meh

[neminem]

Dang... they finally decided to make a technically-neutral race? (I'm still bitter that goblins weren't. As you mentioned, goblins are *supposed* to be neutral. I wanted to be an alliance goblin (really, a neutral goblin that could raid with the alliance), but nooo.)

I'd be willing to forgive them if they did make panda-speak cross-faction, that would be extremely cool. Not that there's a chance in hell of it happening...

It's obvious how the other faction knows, though: you have a flag on your head, like everyone else. :p

Pandas ..... eh ....

[unity100]

So, this is where wow really jumps the shark.

Re:Pandas ..... eh ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Jumps the panda. With a panda. Riding a panda. Holding a Pokeball.

Re:Pandas ..... eh ....

[MachineShedFred]

Mists of Pandaria, or Mists of Pandering to who will still give us $14 a month?

Re:Pandas ..... eh ....

[pyrr]

Actually, one could pretty much call what they're doing "pandaring".

blizzard ?

[unity100]

there is no 'blizzard' since 2005 april or something. after vivendi bought them they werent blizzard anymore, and when the big developer exodus happened circa that april, there was little trace of blizzard left.

Re:blizzard ?

[flimflammer]

Bullshit.

Re:blizzard ?

[unity100]

ok.

My poor lvl 70 lock ...

[daveywest]

I played for nearly three years in WoW's earlier days. I started about the time of the Hakkar Blood Plague.

I enjoyed the story and the leveling, but after BC was released, there was a rush to push up to the new level cap. The expansion didn't add to the story – it just added more grinds. I finally quit when I realized I was paying to go to another job every day.

My kids play occasionally now on the free trial accounts, and they want me to pay for a sub so they can level a Worgen. I've told them I might pay for a month during Christmas break, but we won't get the expansions. With this next one, I'd need to pay hundreds before I even paid for any game time.

Blizzard doesn't realize their current model is prohibitive to new players. Even with Battle Chests, to get the full game experience, requires new players to purchase WoW, BC, Wraith, Cataclysm and now Panda. With each costing ~40 you're looking at a nearly $200 barrier of entry.

Re:My poor lvl 70 lock ...

[osu-neko]

Blizzard doesn't realize their current model is prohibitive to new players. Even with Battle Chests, to get the full game experience, requires new players to purchase WoW, BC, Wraith, Cataclysm and now Panda. With each costing ~40 you're looking at a nearly $200 barrier of entry.

First of all, that's not true, and secondly, your math is way off. You can't buy BC separately anymore, you just automatically get all BC content with WoW, and that costs $20, not $40. You then spend $40 for Wrath, or more likely ~30 on sale, and then $40 for Cata, for a total of $90 or at worst $100 to get you current. When Panda is released, they'll do the exact same thing they've done the past two expansions -- bundle more into the first package/battle chest/whatever, then you pay for Cata and and Panda, for a total of $100. It's what they've done with every new expansion to keep the cost of getting to endgame from becoming prohibitive, why do you think they've suddenly stop?

Re:My poor lvl 70 lock ...

[b1t r0t]

Damn, you actually think $100 is okay to get current? With FFXI you can get it with all current expansions for $15, sometimes less. (the code you get also works to fullly upgrade existing accounts) And I think that also includes the first month free for new accounts.

Re:My poor lvl 70 lock ...

[DJ Particle]

FF11 is also older than WoW by 3 years...

Re:My poor lvl 70 lock ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can go get a blowjob and free herpes for about $15 and unlike FFXI it will give me something to scratch later. FFXI isn't worth installing for free.

Apex of wow was Wrath of the lich king

[unity100]

The story in northrend was so rich, the play was so grand, events and story was so worthy that, even i, as a casual gamer, actually played the game through its grind.

wrath was norse lore, epic dragonS (not one), a mega global war, norse myths and folklore, titans, and many more.

and cata was what ? a rehash of old world, which was sorely lacking in story and grand scale by itself in the first place.

i dont want to even comment on this panda business.

Re:Apex of wow was Wrath of the lich king

[UnknowingFool]

It seemed to me that WoW was going more and more towards PvP and ignoring the PVE. The new expansion not having a main boss seems confirms my suspicions. Also to get more subscribers, the game has been changed to cater more towards casual players than hardcore ones and allowing more casual players to see end game content. But it sorta takes away from the achievement of it. When my guild took down Lady Vashj in BC, it was announced server wide. We weren't the first or second or third. (I think we were fifth on the Alliance side). But it was a big deal and we spent months on it. In contrast it seems that the end boss can be defeated within days of new content being released. Nihilium (now Ensidia) beat the end game boss two days after WoTLK was released. And that also included time to level all their characters from 70 to 80.

Re:Apex of wow was Wrath of the lich king

[SilverJets]

Actually the game has changed to favour whiners more than anything else. Mounts at earlier levels and much cheaper. Equalization of abilities throughout the classes. Race abilities that are basically meaningless now.

It is eventually going to get to the point where there will be one race and one class so that everyone is completely equal (and people will still probably complain).

Re:Apex of wow was Wrath of the lich king

[oneplus999]

WOTLK was pretty casual friendly, for raiding. Cata has definitely NOT been. The top guild that took down the lasts raid boss (I forget which guild) took 500+ tries to do it in. So, while they may have done it about a week after it came out, it was definitely not "casual friendly". Fortunately, with the introduction of the raid finder next tier, they will have a new mode that will be casual friendly, while keeping normal and hard mode for the hardcore raiders. Next expac, at launch, will have 3 new raids, i think 9 new 5mans, 2 revamped old 5mans, new challenge modes for those, and a new group questing scenarios thing, while pvp gets 1 new battleground and a dinky looking pokemon clone, so, while the plot might end up involving more faction-conflict (which was actually a BIG theme in WOTLK too), there's no sign that the gameplay will be more pvp focused.

Re:Apex of wow was Wrath of the lich king

[UnknowingFool]

The top guild that took down the lasts raid boss (I forget which guild) took 500+ tries to do it in.

Firelands raid was launched on June 28, 2011 with Patch 4.2.0. According to this post dated 6-29-2011, Ragnaros was killed in 5 hours but there was some dispute as the guild got practice on the PTR. I doubt they got 500 attempts in with less than 5 hours. Now heroic Ragnaros might have taken longer.

Gotta catch 'em all

[tepples]

Probably after several other Pokemon fans did.

copyright lawsuit

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like an opportunity for a copyright lawsuit for DreamWorks and Paramount?

Re:copyright lawsuit

[flimflammer]

Yeah, with Blizzard as the plaintiff. Unless you really think Pandarens don't predate Kung Fu Panda by several years.

Wow

[Dunge]

Sound just like the april fool pages they create, but this time it's real! They will keep milking it out until you stop paying.

its a joke

[netskink]

Its a joke. They are not really making pandas. My god, surely its a joke, right? Right?

Re:its a joke

[idontgno]

It's not April.... not even in the Southern Hemisphere. So it's completely out of season.

So, no, it doesn't appear to be an intentional joke.

I for one welcome our Panda Monk overlords

[WillAffleckUW]

I for one welcome our Kung Fu Panda overlords ... um, I meant Pandarian Monk overlords.

Squirrel!

Sounds so cool, and I'm SO glad I quit WoW

[jbeach]

OMG, the hours of life that I lost to this so-called game before I dumped it cold turkey. Crack is less addictive.

Re:Awesome or why Murlocs are best

[WillAffleckUW]

Have to agree that the addition of Murlocs as a playable race, not just pets, is a needed addition to the game.

Yeah yeah,

[Cryacin]

Welcome to the NEW World of Borecraft

Bread Store? Bakery? Wha?

[HiggsBison]

Anyone else see that as Mists of Panaderia?

Good Idea, Bad Idea

[Ragun]

Good Idea: Bringing in NPCs of a fun race players have been asking for year after year.

Bad Idea: Making an entire expansion off of a joke race.

Re:Good Idea, Bad Idea

[osu-neko]

Good Idea: Bringing in NPCs of a fun race players have been asking for year after year.
Bad Idea: Making an entire expansion off of a joke race.

Stupid idea: assume that since the only thing you know about an expansion (apparently) is that it will include Pandaren, assume the entire expansion is nothing but Pandaren.

Re:Good Idea, Bad Idea

[meta-monkey]

Well, it's all set in Pandaria, and "Mists of Pandaria" is the title of the game, so he's not far off.

Oh, and there's also pokemanz.

As a long-time player, hardcore raider (top 40 guild on wowprogress.com), this is it for me. I'm not playing this panda bullshit. Star Wars here I come.

Fun on the Bun

[Anonymous Coward]

Pandaria? That dangerous 3D planet?

April Fools!

[AcerbusNoir]

Oh wait, it's not April....

Re:April Fools!

[Anubis IV]

No joke, the first thing I did was check the date. Well, that's not really true. The first thing I did was scoff and say to myself that this is just another Blizzard April Fool's Day joke. The second thing I did was check the date. But I really did check the date. Yeah...

Re:its a joke

[Anubis IV]

It HAS to be a joke. It has to be. I simply don't see how it can be serious. Surely Blizzard is just trolling their fans, right?

Re:its a joke

[netskink]

That is what I am thinking. It even has a pet battle thing which looks like pokemon.

Re:ROFL

[flimflammer]

ROFL yeah man. It's so blatantly obvious. I mean back in 2002 when Pandarens were originally created, Sam Didier hopped in his time traveling DeLorean, got up to 88 miles per hour, went to 2008 and totally jacked the Kung Fu Panda idea.

Casual Based Raiding

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's an idea for the developers... create a casual based raid finder for those who want to run raids, not as super geared players, but for the mid-geared players. something like the dungeon finder that they have right now. we can select the number of people per raid (10 or 25) and adjust the level of difficulty based on the average item level of the players within the group.

this way people can do the raiding that only properly geared players are doing right now. And get the experience needed to join a more experienced group.
Wait time may be considerably longer, I expect, but we'll get those gears that we always wanted.

Re:Casual Based Raiding

[Macgrrl]

Um... they already had this idea, and it's already on PTR to be released with patch 4.3, it's called 'Looking for Raid'. It will only form 25 man raids because it will be easier to balance a 25 man raid than a 10 man raid with PUGs (requires less tanks/healers per DPS, and most fights are easier on 25 man mode due to having a more complete set of buffs/abilities).

The gear it will drop will be of a slightly lower ilevel, and the mechanics will be easier than the 'normal' or 'heroic' version of the raids. I think it awards valor points, so you will be able to gear up and get some familiarity with the raid mechanics if you decide that you want to form your own raid to try out normal mode later on for the tier gear.

As pointed out a bajillion times before on pretty much any forum that discusses WoW, you don't NEED heroic tier gear unless you are running heroic raid content. The LFR gear will still make the 5 mans a faceroll.

If you read the Dungeons and Raids info from Blizcon, you would know that they plan to tune the normal/heroic 5 mans in MoP to be more casual friendly, and the new 'challenge mode dungeons will become the new 5 man hard modes. Challenge dungeons will use normalised gear so that everyone who runs them will in effect have the same level gear regardless of whether they run them the first week of the xpac or the last week of the xpac in T17 gear. You won't be able to ourgear them and they will be a skill check only.

Re:ROFL

[SilverJets]

Right. Since WOW wasn't released until 2004 and the Panderan pet only showed up for purchase in 2009. I'm sure back when developing the first release of the game they came up with the Pandaren pet then just sat on it for 7 years.

Re:ROFL

[bloodhawk]

You do realise WoW WASN'T the first warcraft game right? Warcraft 3 I think it was that introduced them.

Re:ROFL

[flimflammer]

Wow. Are you really that stupid? For someone trying to be so smug, you really know nothing.

Have you ever heard of a game called Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, or did you really think World of Warcraft was the only game Blizzard ever made?

Pandarens were created in Warcraft 3, with playable content and all, which was released in 2002. So no, the Pandaren pet that was released in 2009 was not based on Kung Fu Panda, nor is anything you've seen in this next expansion.

Before you go spouting nonsense, it's usually wise to actually know what you're talking about.

It's an expansion???

[Raved Thrad]

I thought it was a standalone co-produced with Dreamworks called World of Kungfupandacraft. I guess they're not getting Jack Black or Dustin Hoffman to do voice acting for WoK, then, eh? :(

So...

[DJ Particle]

We have Kung Fu Panda (Pandaren), Drunken Fighting (Brewmaster-specced Monks), and Pokemon (Pet Battle system).... I admit I'm interested in how the Creepy Crate fights.

panderan race: Free player or subscription

[Anonymous Coward]

do you need to buy the game to play as this race or can u play as a free player?

Re:ROFL

[Anonymous Coward]

I know right? When they came up with the Pandaren Brewmaster for the Warcraft 3 expansion back in 2003 they sat on it for eight years, not seven.

April 1st?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had such a WTF moment with this that I checked my calender 3 times to make sure it wasn't April 1st.

Pandas? Really?

[AlexReidy]

At first it seems like a joke, but after watching the pandas, I think they will fit in well with World of Warcraft's fantasy theme. WoW seems like a fun game, and the fantastic theme and somewhat cartoon-like, over-animated graphics are actually attractive. I don't expect to ever play WoW, though, because it's really expensive and I imagine it becomes addicting and takes up a lot of time. On the other hand, I'm extremely excited about Guild Wars 2. It might be more expensive to buy a copy of the game, but once you do so, you never pay any subscription fees. Plus, the graphics on Guild Wars 2 are closer to Halo: Reach than WoW, and the combat in Guild Wars is just outstanding. Let's just hope they hurry up and release it.

I don't like the idea of paying for another job

[Anonymous Coward]

And again showing that this is another kind of job... depending on what you want your goals to be. I tried playing for awhile but just got sick of ego problems. Self proclaimed awesomeness is the most useless thing you can find on this planet.

Maybe a few ruined the experience but when you talk big you better have a way of backing it up :P. "I'm way better than you. Such a dumb noob!" Just and example of many lines heard. Now the main problem I had is asking them to describe exactly what they are good at. Being good at playing a video game is not a valuable skill at all in any realm. Sure some get money for playing but that is about the same as getting into the NFL just about.

I will stick with my pursuit of usable knowledge within the reality that is forced upon us and being humble about it.