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More Lich King Details, Apologies For Burning Crusade?
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Oct 01, 2007 03:02 PM
from the because-we've-all-been-deeply-offended dept.
from the because-we've-all-been-deeply-offended dept.
1up is hosting content from the most recent edition of Games For Windows magazine. The front page of that august publication features the grimacing face of Arthas, poster boy for the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion to World of Warcraft. The article inside has a bunch of new details on the game update, as well as a lengthy discussion with Blizzard's Chris Metzen on the first WoW expansion, Burning Crusade. Some of Metzen's comments along those lines are a bit surprising: "'It had a lot of high-concept ideas, high-concept environments,' he says, calling to mind the psychedelic mushrooms of Zangarmarsh, the tragic majesty of Tempest Keep, 'but other than some really nice moments, there was nothing really personal about it.'"
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World of Warcraft - Wrath Of the Lich King Is In Alpha 303 comments
simrook writes to tell us that World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, has entered closed alpha testing, as reported by WoWInsider. Wrath of the Lich King, which we've discussed previously, will raise the level cap to 80 and introduce a new class: Death Knights. World of Warcraft remains the most popular MMORPG on the market with over 10 million subscribers. WoWInsider notes, "Various players are being invited to check it out, under a strict NDA."
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august? (Score:5, Funny)
File this under "old news." We're already in October, Zonk. Sheesh... : p
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-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
2. a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark: a review full of sarcasms.
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-month
1. referring to the month when people should stop wearing white in summer
2. referring to the month when people should stop quoting thing
3. a time when the Lich King will take your soul for pubbing silly asides that have nothing to do with WoW
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High concept (Score:3)
interestingly enough, I felt EXACTLY the same (Score:2)
Not an apology (Score:4, Interesting)
They want a more personal experience in Lich King, in the sense that Arthas will be more in your face. Think Pathaelon the Calculator, who you keep running into as you level in BC. They want Arthas to be more visible and more interesting, rather then off in the background most of the time.
I view it as a good thing. They learned a lot from BC, and that should make for a better expansion this time.
Re:Not an apology (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure some people will eat it up. I'm just not one of them.
Parent
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I do similar, except I read the story bits. The WoW content people write pretty good quest stories, so I like to read them and get an impression of what's going on in-character.
Re:Not an apology (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Not an apology (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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oh, right, Homeland security.
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Fascinating. With a few rare exceptions, I find that it's usually faster to just read the damn quest descriptions (which generally tell you exactly where to go) than to head off to thottbot for coordinates.
Yes, really.
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Then why do you even play the game?
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That's an excellent point - every time I was doing a quest in which Pathaelon popped up and turned up to be the antagonist behind the scenes, I'd think "Not YOU again! You bloody troublemaker! Some day I am going to hunt you down in the Mechanar and farm you silly".
Some kind of incidental music that goes "Dun dun DUUUUUN!" every time Arthas pops up twiddling his moustache would be good too. "Where is the rent? I must have the
The Expansion they wish they made first (Score:3, Insightful)
My main bone of contention though is that the 1-70 grind is not getting much attention. Do they feel that all of that is throw-away? I understand adding new content to the end game to keep fanatics engaged. My guild is just finishing TK and getting ready for Black Temple so the timing is perfect to keep them all interested in future content. But what about adding new players, and expanding offerings for players that are new?
Re:The Expansion they wish they made first (Score:4, Informative)
Level 20-60 Quest EXP has been increased, while EXP to Level has been decreased
Parent
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So essentially, they're making changes so that the "middle" level grind is shorter.
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I agree. Even by going all the given quests, getting to 10 is easy, and 20 is harder only if you get bored easily or have to pee. Nothing particularly interesting gameplay-wise happens between 20-60, sadly. Sure you "get stuff" and improve abilities, but most of the time it's quest-quest-grindgrind-run-from-bored-70's-that-need-to-get-their-stupid-asses-in-a-raiding-guild-instead-of-ganking-in-stv-quest-quest
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DAoC, in its later revisions, introduced the ability for people who had max-level characters to start another character at an advanced level, in order to avoid the low-mid-level grinding (which was pretty bad in that game at times). This was done partially for the reason you mention, and partially to increase the diversity of character types for PvP (which was much better in DAoC than WoW, if you ask me). Since some character classes are also, obviously, harder/more tedious to level, and since DAoC has so
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I say, what does it matter, when people buy characters or buy leveling services, have a high-level alt, and STILL don't know how to play.
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I say, what does it matter, when people buy characters or buy leveling services, have a high-level alt, and STILL don't know how to play.
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I think they should actually re-tune those zones and quest lines to be post 60 content so that it's used. Put some rare spawns in there, give us a reason to go to WPL, Winterspring, and EPL. (I know that Nax is turning into the first lvl 80 instance)
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What would you consider an addition that would make it more meaningful?
Not that I'm disagreeing with you (I might be, dunno), but I'm curious as to what would make 20-60 meaningful in your eyes.
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I haven't played WoW since 3 months after the release, I can't speak to the game as it is today (I hit 60 and got bored. Sold my accout and came back to EQ). Actually right now I'm playing a
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There's some value to your ideas, but I think you're overlooking the fact that WoW has a huge allowance for the casual player. So making the system increasingly complex will hurt their revenue stream.
I'm not convinced that having more and more options is better, anyway. Inevitably the "choices" get narrowed down to a set of fairly-well-known templates that are optimal for a given task, and the other specs get left along the road.
Also, I don't really think that experience loss makes leveling more meaning
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It wouldn't have to be overly complex. You start out as a man, woman or orc. You have four bubbles on your stat sheet which have to total to 100%: one is experiance, one is healing, one is spell damage, the other melee damage, the fifth is personal enhancement. You can change at any time, from kill to kill, etc. Pick what you want to do.
Of course WoW would never go it. You'd quickly disenchant your least-common-denominator player, o
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All I know is I've got lots of level 4 to 29 characters and somehow the grind makes me not push hard to make them higher level.
It would help if they more clearly marked group quests.
For example, if I have to go into a physically constrained mine, in oh say, the Barrens, to get an elite level 25 surrounded by 10 level 20-24 warriors bound to aggro me, that's a Group Quest - not
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I do believe that at least the Cosmos addon will mark quests with a "g" as known group quests.
You mean like that (Group) marker? (Score:2)
Granted, they haven't gotten around to doing every single Elite-Mob-Bearing quest yet but it's there.
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Seriously, most of us waste a lot of time before we clue in it's a Group quest they didn't mark as "Group".
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Really, you want to keep the people playing so you need to please the end game people. They are the ones that have played the longest and invested the most. The early game content (while dated) is still quite go
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Was just talking about this with someone else. The original WoW noob zones could really use some fine tuning, as there's some situations where you run out of quests for your level and have to old-fashioned grind to get back up to speed. Plus the chaining of quests isn't all that well developed.
The Blood Elf and Draenei 1-20 quest chains, though, are extremely well developed not only with regards to keeping you stocked with appropriately leveled quests (and making those quests seem interesting and immersi
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Re:The Expansion they wish they made first (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, I don't get the impression a lot of people are running the old 60 uber-epic quests anymore. Not much point when you're just going to be replacing those Tier 1 and 2 epics with greens as soon as you get to the outland. If that's true, they could just make those dungeons challenging for 70 (or 80) level characters in groups of 5-10 and add some incentives to go back in there. There's no point in letting those dungeons go to waste.
It'd also be nice if they could add incentives to play classes that are needed. It's generally priests and tank guys but I bet they could come up with a dynamic way to encourage class creation of any class that's out of balance at any given time. Possibly give them better starting gear or a boost to the professions they choose or something along those lines. If the current state of affairs is going to continue for healers and tanks, lowering the respec cost caps for those professions would definitely be a nice gesture (If a priest is going to HAVE to respec for solo questing it should either cost a lot less or he should get some free ones every week.)
Parent
Allegedly (Score:2)
Personally, I think that's all they need. There's plenty to do for lower level characters, the only problem is that for someone who's new to the game the higher levels, and thus the ability to play with their friends, can seem very far away. So allegedly they are going to quicken the pace of the lower levels some, so that 80 isn't so far away.
The expansion decline (Score:5, Insightful)
I give WoW another one or two expansions before work begins on a new MMO incarnation. Whether it be WoW II or otherwise.
Re:The expansion decline (Score:5, Insightful)
As you said, the investment to "catch up" become huge, competition becomes fierce, the amount of cheaters go up (to try and catch up), and its just a downward spiral. While its easier to say than do, MMO devs (not just WoW) need to stop thinking that the end game, "long term" players are their main customers. At any given moment, they indeed are, but for the continual longevity of the game, its not these people that will fuel it, its the constant supply of "newbies", so to speak. People rediscovering the trip from level 1.
The games should make it interesting to continually start over, that way new players and old are closer together, mix better, etc. Originally FFXI had that decently, making players continually start back up, mixing up with the new, it was quite the experience. Then somewhere along the line they got caught by the vocal majority and down it went. Its not to say that adding content at the end isn't a good idea: people who are attached to some characters will continue paying longer, but it shouldn't be the main concern like it is in 99% of long lasting MMOs out there.
Parent
Re:The expansion decline (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, in some ways I second this, I'd love to see some new content lower down the levelling ladder, as the old instances and quests can get a little boring after having run through them a lot of times, and they never quite have the same magic redoing them on an alt as they did when you first when in and everything was new and mysterious, but you do need to consider that of the subscribing playerbase, quite a large proportion is at the endgame stage, ok, maybe not Black Temple/Mount Hyjal/etc, but a large proportion are level 70. (Census details [warcraftrealms.com])
I'd actually quite like to see some more stuff to do around the karazhan level, for those who aren't really interested in the 25-man stuff, or who can't commit to the time/organisation required. Zul'Aman could be quite good for this, but we shall have to see how it turns out.
Parent
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I disagree - "catching up" is really only for people who want to "race to 70" so they can raid. For everyone else, more expansions mean more content to explore and more playtime until you "hit the brick wall at 70."
In reality, it's only a small percent of people who raid. Most of us can't afford the time investment. Personally, I'd get v. bored doing the same ins
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1) It's got a raid timer.
2) It's got a 1-week raid timer.
3) There's only 1 ten man instance, and it's Kharazan.
4) It's actually difficult.
These are all problems which could probably be solved with a few minor changes. If you reduce the length of the raid timer, you increase the opportunities to run it. Zul'Gurub and AQ20 had 4 day raid timers, that made it much easier to have mixed groups. UBRS was 10 man and had no raid timer at all. The only similar content in