More Lich King Details, Apologies For Burning Crusade? 165
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.'"
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:3, Interesting)
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:The Expansion they wish they made first (Score:3, Interesting)
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 immersive), but also with regards to adequate equipment as quest rewards, to alleviate the need to buy equipment from vendors or make it yourself.
They definitely learned how to optimize the whole beginning-of-game experience between the initial release and TBC.
Re:Not an apology (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Expansion they wish they made first (Score:2, Interesting)
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.)
Re:The expansion decline (Score:3, Interesting)
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 BC is 5 man heroics. There's no larger group instances that don't have a raid timer. Raid timers suck because they are used as both a tool for progression and as a punishment. If you kill a boss in Khara you can only return to Khara with the people you killed the boss with or as the leader of a group of people who haven't come to it yet (and the bossses that you killed are then dead). It's good that you can do a night of Kara and then come back to finish it at another time without having to restart from the beginning, but the mechanism for doing makes coordination and cooperation a pain in the ass if you have more than 10 players interested in running it in your guild and you want to have more than 10 because the content aftersward is geared for 25 players.
Honestly I think if they had done something smart and put 3-4 10 mans like Khara in to start for the expansion it wouldn't be as big an issue. You'd have 3 different paths of progression to get to the first 25 man and it'd be much easier to make sure all 25 members of your eventual end-game raiding crew get opportunities to do the 10 mans without quitting your guild and going somewhere else until your finished with Kara.
If they reduced the raid timer, you'd be able to do about 2 Khara runs a week, giving more opportunities to gear up other players in the guild. If Khara was easier the you could split your A team to get the B team players through it.
I think if you fix any of the issues, the others become less important. I think Kara is, over all, a colossal implementation screw up on Blizzard's part. And they're being stupid about it too a Blizzard rep said (paraphrased) "More player time is spent in Kara than any other raiding instance, we don't think that would happen unless players really, really enjoyed it". Really? You can't think of any other reason why people might spend lots and lots of time on the introductory raiding instances than because they like it?