Blizzard Hints At New StarCraft, Launches Burning Crusade

Game Developer Blizzard Entertainment's long-anticipated expansion to World of Warcraft has gone live. Initial impressions are ... not available, since all 8 million players are currently in the Outlands. I'll take that to mean the servers for the most part have not melted yet. At a Burning Crusade launch party, a Blizzard exec revealed we may see a new StarCraft game very soon. But today is all about WoW. If you're not playing, and want to live vicariously, check out WarCry's extensive preview of the expansion. You could read designer Jeff Kaplan's comments on new features at FiringSquad, or Shane Dibiri's talk of inspiration at Next Generation. One new expansion a year, eh? Some folks are already looking to the future, where we probably won't see WoW on consoles, but may see it with security dongles. 0.1% of the Earth's population can't all be wrong.

Tag line from the theatrical trialer:

[Lethyos]

Your servers are not prepared!!

Serious aside: once you get your copy, there is no need to run the installer from the discs. All you need is the key to upgrade your account using the provided key—you already have all the content as of the 2.0 patch series. If you run the installer, it rolls your local copy back to 2.0.3, and once you start the game, you would go through two patch cycles back to 2.0.5. Save yourself some time and just upgrade your account directly at https://upgrade.worldofwarcraft.com/expansion/ [worldofwarcraft.com].

Outlands fun? Think again.

[BelDion]

Outlands is a gankfest right now and pretty much every quest mob is being camped...

Plan B: grind in Winterspring.

One New Expansion per Year??

[messiuh]

Uh... they barely gave enough time for the "hardcore" guilds to get through the newest content (Naxx)... nevermind the casual players that had -no- chance of ever seeing the majority of end-game content that was out for 2 years.

Now they are promising 1x expansion every year?

Well, I guess that ensures everyone that they won't have a life for years to come.

Re:Outlands fun? Think again.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah i got my first kill->gather quest done right outside thrallmar last night. Outlands is teh awesome so far, I wouldn't waste much time in winterspring, no phat lewtz, plus I was getting 1000-1100 XP per mob for the lvl 60-61 mobs... The green drops are awesome, time to head back to Orgrimmar and put stuff on the AH for those who aren't level 60 or don't have the xpac yet... mwuhaha!

Re:Tag line from the theatrical trialer:

[B0red At W0rk]

The 4 CDs contain a lot of content which was not distributed in any patches. All the patches since 2.0.x sum up to approximately 600 Mb.

Re:Tag line from the theatrical trialer:

[XMunkki]

Actually there IS a need to install the CDs, as not all TBC content came with the patches (I suspect mainly the Outland regions). Don't know how it is in the US, but it's like this in the europe [wow-europe.com]. It is true it will re-run a few patches after installing though.

And yes, you can play the non-TBC regions with a normal unupgraded client even if you have activated TBC.

Re:Sorry but...

[Jedi Alec]

World of Warcraft is simply a pretty world where all players are pampered all along the way...
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I would, but I'm reading this thread while waiting for today's extended downtime to be over...thanks so much for actually pointing that out to me :P

Re:Stop that

[kitsunewarlock]

Never mind, I was wrong: World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

Re:Sweet, sweet freedom!

[diamondsw]

And of course, that is exactly why Blizz generously doesn't delete your account info - so you can come back in six months when you need your fix.

Re:Tag line from the theatrical trialer:

[Tony Hoyle]

The European servers died at ten past midnight (the portal opened at midnight). After a server reboot they died *again* about 15 minutes later.

Oh and blizz sent out a load of duff CDs (many people can't read CD4) and they sent out the wrong keys with the collectors edition so you can't get the 'exclusive' content unless you take a pair of scissors to your box and send bits of it to an address in France...

Re:Somehow, I just don't care

[johnashby]

Actually, you get: 7 new outland zones and 4 new Azerothian zones. Something like 15-20 new dungeons for everything from 5-man parties to 25-man raids 2 new races, complete with the final merger of the class differences between the factions Team arena PvP combat An entire new profession(Jewelcrafting) is not something to scoff at...it's a fairly major addition Now, 500 hours is not an insignificant amount of time, but consider that it takes 250 hours to get the average character to 60. Since you say you raided MC, I assume that was your only character since the other 250 hours were spent there, no doubt. The game's flavor changes significantly even when you do simple things like play a new class. This expansion is quite large...but I sympathize with your viewpoint. Given that we've paid $15 a month for 2 years, I'd think the disc should cost $20, or if it's $40 it should include a free month of playtime.

Re:Tag line from the theatrical trialer:

[Spacezilla]

No, they didn't, I went through the portal at midnight and played all night on EU Jaedenar, not a single server crash.

Re:Tag line from the theatrical trialer:

[The Relentless]

From the official forums and WoW:TBC FAQ: Will I need to install from the CD? Why? It will be necessary to have a Burning Crusade CD and a Burning Crusade authentication key in order to play The Burning Crusade expansion. There is content on the Burning Crusade CD that will need to be installed that was not included in the patches we recently released. Each account (in the event multiple are played by one person) will need its own copy of The Burning Crusade expansion to install the additional content, and be upgraded with the included authentication key.

Re:Outlands fun? Think again.

[The Raven]

They are being camped... but they're respawning so fast it's not an issue. So I had to wait 2 minutes to kill a bossman to finish a quest... oh no. It's obvious that Blizzard tweaked the respawn rates far higher than you'd normally see; whether this is a permanent feature of the Outlands, or a temporary measure, I don't know. It can be disconcerting to kill a big bad bossman... and 30 seconds later he's respawned behind me, beating me in the back. Of course, within a few seconds another group of players has attacked him and pulled him off because they need him.

So yes, it's crazy... but it's not frustrating. And some of it is truly spectacular... the bombing runs are some of the most (solo) fun I've had in WoW in ages. :-)

The Raven