BlizzCon Keynote — New WoW Expansion, Diablo 3 Details 316
BlizzCon kicked off this morning with a keynote address that brought some major announcements for some of their games. First, World of Warcraft's third expansion, Cataclysm, was officially revealed. It differs from the previous expansions in that they will not be creating an entirely new continent for players to explore. Instead, the two huge continents from the original game will be going through a literal cataclysm, causing some zones to be destroyed, new ones to become available, and existing ones to be entirely revamped. Big news came for Diablo III as well, with the announcement of the Monk class and a trailer showing how it plays. More details for both games as well as StarCraft II will undoubtedly become available over the next few days, but read on for more about what we already know. If you have any questions, don't forget to post them here.
Cataclysm will also be different due to the fact that the new level cap is 85 — a five-level increase, as opposed to the ten-level increases from previous expansions. That's not to say there is less content, but the idea is that each individual level will be more meaningful. There will be two new playable races for this expansion: Goblins for the Horde and Worgen for the Alliance. The disaster apparently strikes the Goblins hard, forcing from their lands and into conflict with an "unknown enemy," which the Horde helps them with. Meanwhile, the Greymane Wall has broken open, revealing the kingdom of Gilneas, the residents of which were turned into the werewolf-like Worgen, but were able to keep their human minds.The revamped Azeroth will include updated dungeons — heroic versions of Shadowfang Keep and the Deadmines — as well as entirely new dungeons for leveling and endgame. It's not yet clear whether the old version of the damaged zones will still be around in some form, but look for an explanation in the next few days. Players will be able to use their flying mounts in the new Azeroth. The dragon Deathwing is making a return, and will serve as a major villain. In addition to the damaged zones, some will change in other ways — Desolace, which is currently a barren wasteland, will find new life from the water of the tidal waves, turning the land green. The more damaged zones will feature lots of lava and broken terrain. There will be new Battlegrounds, new Race/Class combinations (we saw a Troll Druid, Tauren Paladin, and Gnome Priest), a new profession called Archaeology, a guild leveling system, tons of new monsters and quests, as well as a new "character progression" system called "Path of the Titans."
From the Diablo III Monk trailer, you can see that the class seems to have an area-of-effect swing of his weapon, a way to reflect spells, and an attack that sprints between a bunch of enemies, hitting each of them. The monk also seems to be able to make enemies explode quite easily. And messily.
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Cataclysm will also be different due to the fact that the new level cap is 85 -- a five-level increase, as opposed to the ten-level increases from previous expansions. That's not to say there is less content, but the idea is that each individual level will be more meaningful. "
What does that even mean?
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
It means that you'll be spending an excruciating amount of time grinding to level cap, with less to show for it than before.
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I'm actually pretty tired of that, but the problem is that theres no fun content for lower level players either. I hate the 1-10 lvl grind, and its specially bad because there's no instances, dungeons, battlegrounds or arena teams for us still at that level. Not everyone has the time to play World of Warcraft 24/7, so we could we get something too?
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Coupled with the whole "Path 'o Titans" thing, I imagine the levels will be different from your standard "1 more level, 1 more talent point thing."
There are a lot of things you can do with leveling outside the standard "grind xp until you puke" methodology...Maybe they're experimenting in that direction.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, leveling in WoW was never really the problem (well, the 30-40 stretch in the pre-expansion game was kinda a drag). It was once you hit the max level that you learned what grinding really means. Grinding rep, grinding raid instances, grinding for items, blech. Chased me away from TBC.
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Agreed, though the addition of repeatable daily faction quests and tabards and crap dropped that to a more bearable level.
The end game is where you get to stop pretending that casual gamers have a role in the game at all...Grinding faction is about the only way to get gear for the casuals, but it takes so much time, only hardcore people do it.
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Coupled with the whole "Path 'o Titans" thing, I imagine the levels will be different from your standard "1 more level, 1 more talent point thing." There are a lot of things you can do with leveling outside the standard "grind xp until you puke" methodology...Maybe they're experimenting in that direction.
Maybe they want to repeat the success of Trials of Atlantis [mmofansites.com] in Dark Age of Camelot [darkageofcamelot.com]?
End level content is where the game is at (Score:5, Interesting)
What is means is that Blizzard recognizes that people don't like to wait to do end game content. While I expect the time requirement between levels to be higher I fully expect that they merely compressed eight to ten levels into five. It also is probably a method to bring back WOW from the rampant gear inflation it is suffering. Both expansions seriously ramped gear up to major importance over the previous. It is nearly monty hall in effect.
The level of 85 also makes it possible to increment levels between expansions. They can slowly add a level or two requiring play to reach newer raids and gear. Right now the problem is that all top end gear is level 80. This means each new raid just expands on level 80 gear making the game solely revolving around gear. The problem is that "why hate gear X at level 80 when gear Y is there as well?" It invalidates similarly level gear and the content that provides it. Will they do this? Who knows, but they have headroom to act should they choose.
Plus redoing the old world allows the overcome one major problem people had with it, no flying.
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It is nearly monty hall in effect
nearly???
Have you seen the new instances? 'Trials of the Crusader'?
That place is literaly *a* monty hall! Its pure cheese.
(yeah I know, Monty Hall was a person not a place).
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Speaking of talents, does anyone know of a talent calculator that lets you un-cap the max level? Wowhead's and MMO-champion's both were capped at 80 when I looked earlier today.
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Re:End level content is where the game is at (Score:4, Informative)
which led to situations like characters assassinating ''gods'' like Thor to gain their nifty weapons.
...which is basically the endgame of WoW.
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They've come up with a way to make gaining 5 levels take as long as it took to gain 10 levels in the prior expansions.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing was just recently announced, today. How about we let some time pass before we try to definitively state what is and isn't going to be added or removed? It's not entirely unlikely that during the course of development new spells abilities and talents will be fleshed out.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of the nice effects:
- Good gear: Your T8-grade gear, which many seem to have access to now, will make great leveling gear. I'd be surprised if you couldn't do l85 dungeons in a lot of them. (except as a tank, I imagine)
- Alternate rewards: While leveling, they can give rewards in terms of things other than gear and XP. They could give Marks of Whatever to let you BUY good gear (rather than receiving 15 different pieces of crap that you sell to a vendor), or give you plain money, or consumables, etc. (That reminds me ... make flasks for leveling. ;)) They could give you things/points/etc that would help you on this mysterious alternate leveling system, which I suspect will reflect role (healer, tank, melee dps, ranged dps) rather than class.
Talent trees, and the role of individual talents, seem to be changing, so I expect it won't be as simple as taking your current talents and adding 5 points to them. (In some cases, that makes for effects like "5% more damage", but other times it's something powerful like being able to get two powerful cooldowns or talented abilities which were previously separated by a lack of points.
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Holy crap again? I still havnt regained my soul from the 60-70 grind!!! Blizzard stop the insanity only you can release SC2 please save us from our endless struggles!
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I think the problem is that people are always trying to reach the max level without actually having fun and when they get to max level people complain that there is nothing to do. 60-70 are very interesting levels if you spend time on the Outlands, there are like 10 zones with hundreds of quests that have a lot of story behind them. I did 6 levels in 2 zones by turning off the XP bar and actually reading the quest text and trying to have fun doing quests rather than just trying to get 70 so you can move t
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I am going to take a stab in the dark and say that level 99 will be the max eventually
Miss and you are likely to be eaten by a grue. The maximum level is apparently 255.
New 3D engine? (Score:5, Interesting)
Good luck WoW.
Re:New 3D engine? (Score:5, Informative)
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I actually think it would be fun to go back to level 1 in a new game...and a lot of people in WoW feel the same. W
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after all this is why we like PC games, always delivering top technology.
Speak for yourself. I'd rather have superior content than high-end graphics. PC games have much more memory and disk space to use (in general) than console games, so they could theoretically offer far more depth. However, since so many people think like you do, we are force-fed inane games that are very nice to look at but very little fun to play. WoW doesn't need a graphics overhaul. It needs a content and game-mechanics overhaul. The reason most people quit isn't because it isn't pretty enough, but rather
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I agree on the pretty graphics front. If we continue to expect newer and better quality graphics all we do is push the development costs and end-user hardware costs up to the point we get nothing but recycled sequels with no real content while paying rediculous sums of money. I'd rather fun games with old school graphics over super-pretty games that you forget in 2 weeks because they are hollow shells. I don't buy that a game is good because its super pretty, I say its good if people still play it 5 years l
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The only classes I never played much were rogue and warrior.
Yeah, I'm not one for melee either, but ...
Rogue is pretty cool. Who can resist running around almost invisible, coming up behind someone then robbing and killing them?
When I apply for a job as an IRS agent next month, I'm going to put in my job qualifications section Level 80 Rogue in World of Warcraft.
Re:New 3D engine? (Score:5, Insightful)
I love WoW and always will (even if I don't play it now for 6 months), but the 3D engine is getting old.
Be careful what you wish for.
A lot of games with 'high end' graphics like Crysis or Age of Conan for example, have APPALLING color depth. These games really may as well be using 16 bit color.
Age of Conan, the one I'm (shudder) most familiar with makes my eyes hurt after just a few hours play due to its lack of contrast, everything being colored with the same few shades of brown, green or grey.
At least with WoW they have highly colorful, contrasty graphics that make the world easy to see and separate one thing from another.
Re:New 3D engine? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, and another problem I have with better graphics is that developers inevitably use them to try to achieve photo-realism. This means we get stuck with bland, uninspired art where, in fantasy games anyway, everything looks like an Oblivion clone. The in-game characters look like second-rate actors from b-movies and monsters are unimpressive to say the least. It looks particularly ridiculous when you've got realistic looking characters performing cartoonishly unrealistic actions.
Some people don't like the cartoony look of WoW, but I can appreciate it for it's style and personality. It's colorful and fun. There are certainly other styles which take a more serious tone, but far too often developers go for "gritty" realism.
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Look at the new Star Wars MMO, or check out the trailer for Guild Wars 2 (released the other day). Neither of those is really a photo-realistic look.
When graphics hardware reached a threshold level, people naturally wanted to see if they could recreate worlds as realistically as possible. Now that we've seen that we can, we realize it's not always desirable. I think game designers are realizing that there's more stylistic choices than 'realistic' as well, and we'll be seeing those results in upcoming MMO
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Crysis looks like ass because they spent too little on art designers, not because they spent too much on 3D engine devs.
Team Fortress 2 has highly colorful, contrasty graphics yet looks *much* better than WoW: yes, it's an FPS so the engine doesn't have to draw as much stuff as that of a MMO so its not a 1:1 comparison, but it does prove it's possible to maintain the artistic style while improving the engine itself.
Re:New 3D engine? (Score:5, Funny)
Dammit, Low/unsteady framerate IS NOT LAG!
Lag is network latency!
I am so sick of seeing this! It ranks right up there with people calling their whole computer the 'hard drive.'
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Newsflash: lag is not just network latency. It's a catch-all term, which if I had to summarise, I'd say would be best described as a failure in terms of performance to maintain expectations. You know, like, jet-lag, or a runner lagging behind the pack. In the case of the GP post, it was the failure of the 3D engine to maintain the framerate at an expected lev
Re:New 3D engine? (Score:4, Insightful)
While hard drive is a technical term lag [merriam-webster.com] is not. At least, not yet. And even in hardware, I would would describe it as layer agnostic.
In the old days, I hooked my PS1 up to a TV tuner. There was a ~500 ms lag between the sound/controls and what I saw on the screen due to the hardware/driver layer it went through. The term lag is also used in film to describe when sound/video aren't synced.
I think lag being an agnostic term describing a temporal disconnect between the controls and reaction on the screen. There's also the term "lag spike" for when you temporarily lose control of the game.
Whether the cause is sudden increase in network latency, packet loss, or your graphics card overheating is irrelevant for the usage of the term (but you can't find the cure without describing the symptoms.)
Changes to old zones (Score:5, Interesting)
I read elsewhere that the changes to old zones are likely to be done with their 'phasing' method used in some zones of the current expansion. It kind of splits the zone into parallel versions, and what a player sees (and what other players they see)will be different depending on what quests they've done. What they've done with it so far did a great job of giving the illusion that players were making a difference in their world.
It makes sense that they would do this with the old-world areas rather than just replace them; low-level characters still need places to hunt and quest.
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I read elsewhere that the changes to old zones are likely to be done with their 'phasing' method used in some zones of the current expansion. It kind of splits the zone into parallel versions, and what a player sees (and what other players they see)will be different depending on what quests they've done. What they've done with it so far did a great job of giving the illusion that players were making a difference in their world.
It makes sense that they would do this with the old-world areas rather than just replace them; low-level characters still need places to hunt and quest.
Dude, if you want to see other dimensions, just use less tobacco. :)
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Dude, if you want to see other dimensions, just use less tobacco. :)
...Tobacco? Seriously? I mean, I see what you were trying to do there. But tobacco??
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A join? Since when do you smoke SQL?
Re:Changes to old zones (Score:4, Informative)
In Europe they usually cut the weed with tobacco and put a little piece of rolled up paper at the end for a filter when they roll joints. Just sayin'.
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Not necessarily, I've seen a lot more weed in Scotland than I've seen hash.
Erm, so I hear.
*shuffles away*
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It won't be phased. They specifically stated they have reworked 1-60 leveling completely, including examples of the reworked flow between zones while leveling up.
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"Will I need the expansion to be able to experience the Cataclysm changes? When the Cataclysm occurs, it will occur for all players, whether they have purchased the expansion or not--you will no longer be to play in the original version of Kalimdor or the Eastern Kingdoms. However, certain features such as the new zones, new races, and new level cap will only be accessible to players who purchase the expansion."
From the faq: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/faq/ [worldofwarcraft.com]
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I'd like to see servers that allow for older content, especially in light of events like this. Blizzard could start new servers that are further back in the storyline, allowing players old and new to (re-)experience what it was like before, and then put the servers on a storyline rotation, where every six months or so the storyline is advanced. In order to simplify the maintenance, new realms would all come up at the same time, and would thus advance at the same points.
There would probably have to be some
Monk Class (Score:3, Funny)
Blizzard: Do you have a special name for the female version of the monk class? Like nuns... or something?
-SanguS
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A majority of the premeds I teach are, in fact, women.
Wha? (Score:4, Informative)
No I can't! The only link in the article is to the "Ask Blizzard people something or another"... and every other comment seems to be a bunch of WoW zombies.
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Egg Zachery!! Fsck WOW. Gimme some Diablo III scraps
Ok. I'll feed myself. Oh, and you.
http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Monk [wikia.com]
Re:Wha? (Score:5, Informative)
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I love the thousands of people cheering on the ads that they paid hundreds of dollars to get to BlizzCon to see.
It's stuff like that that confirms my faith in the intelligence of humanity.
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Mindless hack and slay, you say? Like WoW? Like Left 4 Dead? Like countless-other-games-you-can-overgeneralize?
WoW zombies (Score:2, Funny)
Grinds...Griiinds..
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Grinds...Griiinds..
Holy cow level. Modded flamebait, but funny too.
I just wish I was quick witted enough to make it sound more like porn.
Yes, but... (Score:2)
Will this expansion be the one that finally makes Engineering something that people actually want to level for something other than toys?
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Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I don't think that I have.
I've played an engineer in WoW since the first day I created my toon.
Engineering items fall into a few categories. (Note: I haven't played in a few months, so it is entirely possible that some of these -might- have been addressed... but I rather doubt it.)
Vanity: The Hog, and similar items. To be honest, I wouldn't trade my Hog for any other land mount out there, but it doesn't offer anything that other land mounts don't. Admittedly, I liked it better when I could fall from any distance on without anything happening... But hey.
Single user items: Aka, the teleporters. I used them all the time when I was in the appropriate areas / level range, but they don't make the profession, in and of itself, worthwhile.
Explosives: Largely bloody worthless.
Scopes: Useful, but so flooded on the market that you don't really have to worry about making one yourself; just hit up the AH.
Item "enchants": Never used. Seriously, there's no point to them, everyone would rather have a real enchant to their items rather than something with a short use, long cooldown, and questionable utility (especially in raid). Boots? Enchant. Cloak? Enchant. Belt? Put the belt buckle on there and socket a gem. Etc.
Helms: Most engineers would greatly prefer if they could make them for non-engineers. It would actually be a moneymaker.
The problems with engineering could be solved in a few ways:
1) Recycling: Let engineers turn gray/white items into metal scrap which functions similar to ore, but you can't get gems from it.
2) Let them make items for non-engineers: Engineering is the only profession where the majority of the actual items (not parts) can't be used by non-engineers.
3) Give engineers a bonus on mechanical mounts. Bonus speed / damage. It wouldn't even have to be much of a bonus. Say, skill/75 as a percentage.
4) Give engineers something that actually makes them useful on a raid... other than repair bots. Yes, I recognize that there are certain things that are useful with single bosses (the Shadow Reflector for Twin Emps was one), but I'm looking for something with the more constant utility that enchantment or alchemy (flasks) provides.
5) Lower the failure rate. Engineering doesn't work like that; it's actually genuinely reliable.
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Tailors should be able to repair their own cloth gear.
Blacksmiths should be able to repair their own mail/plate gear.
Leatherworkers should be able to repair their own leather gear.
We shouldn't have to plunk down 15g per death in Ulduar to some stranger to fix a crafted item WE CREATED.
Sigh.
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Ah good point. You're both right. A tailor should be able to repair her own gear, but has to pay for the thread.
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Just when I think I'm out... (Score:2)
THEY PULL ME BACK IN!!!!
Damnit, I'm about to login to WoW to prepare for the expansion again.
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I haven't played WoW in 3 months, but I'll probably start up again when this expansion comes out.
More info... (Score:5, Informative)
Blizzard is brilliant (Score:3, Insightful)
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every online game that did this failed soon after.
Blizzard isn't the first.
It's also been in many fantasy games.
Of course, based on history, Blizzard will pull it off. This doesn't make them brilliant.
Troll Druids?! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't play anymore, but seriously, a Troll Druid? Is nothing sacred anymore? I can only imagine what kind of piss-poor retcon that will involve.
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In the first expansion, they put into the game space-faring goat men who, although crash landing in an interstellar spaceship, end up walking around whacking things over the head with a wooden club.
It's not like they have Tolkien working their lore department...
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Wait, what?
Is that something out of Scientology lore?
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In this particular case, Druids probably do need to be opened up to more races but there are some strange combinations that are even worse "piss-poor retcon". This makes me wonder if this is "necessary" why bother having factions at all? Is it crazier to have Tauren Paladin and Human Hunters or just have Human Paladins grouping with Tauren Hunters?
Cataclysm Trailer (Score:2)
What to do... (Score:5, Insightful)
See I quit WoW before WotLK because I knew it would mean that Burning Crusade Endgame would be pointless, much like Onyxia and MC and BWL and AQ and Naxx became pointless with the release of Burning Crusade. See I didn't have a problem with Vanilla Wow for that manner, you had to get attuned for Onyxia to get the gear good enough to go into Molten Core. You needed the Gear from Molten Core to progress to Black Wing Lair. So on and so forth (AQ could be argued though).
Anyways. So I was upset that all this really well generated Content was completely ditched with each new expansion, being that if you told someone about a 45 baron run and how pulling it off was the shiz, nowadays they'd either laugh at its easy sauce or just go "Whats a stratholme?"
And like mentioned in some other comments in other articles, their new leveling system makes it easier to level up, and actually bypass alot of the content along the way. If I can get my lvl 30 - lvl 40 sprint in 1 or 2 zones easily accessible to the alliance, why would I go to Desolace, why would I explore Mauradon or whatever?
So I quit Wow. It was TOO easy to progress to endgame, and everyone and their mother could epic themselves with little to no effort. Dropping the regular raid size from 40 to 25 made Raiding seem more casual, which it shouldn't have turned into. Make the raids 25 man accessible? Sure, but why drop 40 mans? Apparently they made a comeback in WotLK so I'll quit my bitching.
Anyways, so NOW they're re-introducing Azeroth, bringing it back. This is what I would want to see. Especially with Deathwing being prominent again, he's probably my favourite Warcraft Villain. For whatever Reason Arthas didn't seem all that badass to me because its really Ner'zhul controlling him.
So what do I do? Do I return to WoW, try to pick up all the complex and convoluted new additions, like new talent trees? Do I go back to WoW to see if they'll turn Gnomer into an actual city? (Prays). Do I Spend a good chunk just to get back into a subscription video game?
But what about the old stuff? If zones are changing, wouldn't that mean some of the old content is gone and lost forever? To live only in my memory? Will Black rock Depths be wiped out with a volcanic eruption?
I... I feel so torn...
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It's like an abusive relationship.
I can't help but remember the good times and I keep hoping that if I come back, I'll get that sense of wonder when my toon took it's first steps into BRD. I remember the first time my toon helped drop Rag and Onyx....and then that big night when Nef died for the first time in our guild. The next week the expansion came out and it all went downhill from there it seems.
After that, nothing really seemed all that special. There was nothing like that first scholo or dead mines r
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"But what about the old stuff? If zones are changing, wouldn't that mean some of the old content is gone and lost forever? To live only in my memory? Will Black rock Depths be wiped out with a volcanic eruption?"
If they use their "phasing" technology - both zones will exist. Pre-80 you will see the old BRD and post 80 (the Cataclysm event), the wiped out one. This allows them to have their cake and eat it too...
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As has been mentioned a few times in the thread now, this will not be phased. The Old World will forever change. Leveling 1-60 will be a new experience, regardless of whether you have expansion or not.
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I loved BC, but quit recently because 2/3rds of WotLK endgame content has been partially or totally rehashed art and combat mechanics from BC or before. Why should I pay a company money months on end if they can't actually manage to produce new endgame multiplayer content.
Examples:
Naxxramas (exact rehash)
Colosseum daily quest patch before instance (yay grind content!)
Colosseum (uninspired instance using old models)
That leaves us with 5 man content, a couple 1 boss instances and 1 full raid (Ulduar) in 10 m
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1. Exploration
2. Challenge (raiders)
3. Grinding (collectors/professions/achievements)
4. Rewards (loot/gold)
I find the challenge aspect of games fun, as well as the exploration. Aside from Ulduar the exploration aspect after you hit 80 is done, so you're left with 2,3,4.
Ulduar itself is a hollow shell of what it used to be. My guild wasn't hardcore raiding, but we managed to get the first bosses down before any nerfs h
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It was TOO easy to progress to endgame, and everyone and their mother could epic themselves with little to no effort.
I'm sorry, but this reminds me of all the bitching and moaning that went on when they started letting people buy epic PvP gear with battleground honor....all the 1337 arena dudes were angry that their mighty e-peen wasn't guaranteed to be at least twice the size of everybody else's any more. For a couple of months it seemed like every time I set foot in a battleground, there was some wanker going on and on about "welfare epics" and how lame those of us were that were wearing them.
It also reminds me of the
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But they did make it too easy. WoW was never a really hard game for 95% of the content after the first level of "nerfs". Some of the original content was quite hard in 5 man groups (This is before MC). I tried WoW recently with the free 10 days to see how it was... every class has strong components of the others, so generic. It's so mind numbing easy that I was surprised after nearly a year off that the learning curve to get back in was basically 15 minutes on any of my 70s. Don't get me wrong I am all for
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So what do I do? Do I return to WoW
Butters, go to the store, buy the online sensation, and install it on your computer before we all murder you. (Unless you really like playing Hello Kitty! Island Adventure better).
Blizzard is slipping. (Score:3, Interesting)
Compare this Diablo 3 Monk Trailer that just came out in 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFGXKV_45HQ [youtube.com]
With this Warcraft 3 trailer that was released back in 1999:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOdTeT1xUQQ [youtube.com]
Pretty wild. A 10 year difference, and the WC3 trailer still looks better to me.
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cinematics vs supposedly actual engine footage. Although still D3 looks barely better than black and white 2 crossed with WoW.
Re:Blizzard is slipping. (Score:5, Informative)
Pre-rendered cinematics are nice, especially the ones made by Blizzard, and there will probably be some in the game, but I expect Diablo 3 to continue the trend that they used in WC3 to tell as much of the story with scripted cinematic events that make use of the game engine and don't have to break the contnuity of the game. And save money on production costs.
Re:Blizzard is slipping. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not just talking about the graphics. The writing, voice-over, camera direction, and art direction on the 1999 cinematic is better, too.
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Agreed. That Monk trailer wasn't impressive at all.
I'd rather have seen some gameplay videos from D3, which look a lot better than that trailer.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
what it all means.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Another $45 to play new content for a game you already bought and pay $15 a month to play.
Hey Blizz, how about not charging for this one, say, maybe as a thank you to the suckers like me that have played for years and already bought the two previous expansions?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Good points.
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Or what, you'll cancel your account? as if.
There's no harm in asking, I know, but unless you provide an incentive for them to do so I don't see why they would just give it away.
Re:what it all means.. (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't think the 180 you are paying them a year should cover the expansions? What if you had played the original game for years? Considering Blizz sells the expansions to stores for much lower than the $40 you end up paying... it just seems quite petty to me. Where's the loyalty to your customers?
Tauren Paladins (Score:4, Funny)
Sir Mooselot the Brave; Sir Moolahad the Pure; and Sir Moobin the Not-quite-so-brave-as-Sir-Mooselot who had nearly fought the Dragon Onyxia, who had nearly stood up to the vicious Chicken of Felwood, and who had personally wet himself at the Battle of Hillsbrad; and the aptly named Sir Not-mooing-in-this-expansion. Together they formed a band whose names and deeds were to be retold throughout the forums, the Moos of the Round Stolen Table From Silvermoon.
new races non-alliance or horde? (Score:4, Interesting)
In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, players will be able to play as two new races -- goblins and worgen -- as they explore newly revealed parts of Azeroth and re-experience familiar zones across Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, areas rewrought by the cataclysm and filled with new opportunities for adventure.
Well, so - what do we know about those two races? Goblins are already all over, and thus have places they can be already. Booty Bay, K3, blah etc. What's important about these places is that they are neither alliance nor horde; in fact, alliance and horde players can use auction houses in goblin areas to buy from each other.
Worgen are killed equally by both horde and alliance. There are a few town-esque areas already established for them.
So...is blizzard going to keep the theme those two already have, and have 2 new player races that aren't associated with a faction? Seems like it be hard to do the group thing at that point...
Old versions of the zones (Score:3, Informative)
Really? The FAQ [worldofwarcraft.com] over on the Cataclysm page is quite clear about this:
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Recycle, reduce, reuse! Go Blizzard.
If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
But I agree, I want something better now, ffs! :)
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If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
It seems to me that this is a case where "breaking" it (Azeroth) is actually going to improve it, by offering new places to go, things to do, etc.
Re:I have a life (Score:5, Funny)
Must be some new definition of the word "life" I'm not familiar with.
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It's not like they couldn't simply use the same gameplay engine and provide multiple graphics engines. I would love to see engines designed specifically for low-end (netbook), mid-end (workstation), and high-end (Sli-rig), all optimized and tuned to give the very best of each (performance, balance, quality).
They've got plenty of funding, developers and experience to get this done.