World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King Officially Announced 314
An anonymous reader writes "Wrath of the Lich King is official! BlizzCon is in full swing, and celebrants there are already enjoying the Northrend-themed imagery. For a look at what's going on, Joystiq has a liveblog of the opening ceremony up. Games For Windows magazine, meanwhile, will feature WLK its next cover. The post on the 1up site has a number of details on the next expansion, including the introduction of the Death Knight, the first new class since WOW's launch 'World of WarCraft's first Hero Class is a plate-wearing tank/DPS hybrid that works a little something like this: When players hit level 80, they'll be able to embark on a quest (similar in difficulty to the Warlock's epic mount quest, back before the level cap was raised to 70) that unlocks the ability to create a Death Knight character. The Death Knight starts at a high level (somewhere around 60 or 70, though Blizzard isn't certain yet), so you won't have to grind your way back up all over again. It's intended as an alternative, advanced class for end-game use only.'."
wow (Score:2, Interesting)
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Oh well. The more you know...
Re:wow (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds great, but I'm not sure I want to do the quest line that unlocks that hero class.
Re:wow (Score:5, Funny)
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So more grind... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So more grind... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So more grind... (Score:4, Funny)
>
>In the long run, however, it tends to kill the game.
"How do you kill that which has no life?"
Easy. Release an expansion pack for Star Wars Galaxies.
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Just take the scroll out of its head, I guess.
Re:So more grind... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So more grind... (Score:5, Informative)
If anything WoW is better than any other MMO I've played (EQ blaaah) for the sheer fact that they update content/balance/etc the game so much. And they do a bunch of it for "free" as well (read: you don't have to buy another expansion), they've released some monster patches.
Welcome, from those of us at eve-online.
All our expansions and patches are free. No stringing people along waiting for the expansion. Also, I think I might have paid $20 for the game, which included the first month fee (usually $15).
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Re:So more grind... (Score:5, Interesting)
If I wanted that kind of depressing reality, I wouldn't need to be playing games.
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It goes the other way too, with people who did raid 40+ hours a week, only to find their full suit of level 60 purples get shown
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It goes the other way too, with people who did raid 40+ hours a week, only to find their full suit of level 60 purples get shown up by BC green loot you can find at the AH for 10G.
Not to mention the fact that if you step away from the game for a while, say a year or so because you need a break, you're basically obsoleted when you come back, and have to bust your butt to become competitive (at Raiding or PVP) again.
No other real world hobby is like that. I have off and on spells where I get tired of one or the other, but aside from gaming I fish, target shoot, fence, fly, and build models. If I get tired of fencing and decide to take a break for a year or two, then when I come back
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Rigghhttttttttt.
This weekend is AV weekend. You could come back with nothing on and this weekend play hardcore for 2 days, work your butt off, and have a TON of epic gear from it. Prolly like 5 pieces worth if you played all day saturday and sunday. That isn't even counting friday and monday which are still double honor. Av weekend comes around regularly.
Not to mention quests you can do in netherstorm to get blues and greens th
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As far as getting to 70, even a casual player has had enough time to do that by now.
By the time this expansion actually comes out (I'd lay money on something like Q1 '09, though I bet they'll shoot for Q4 '08) people will be pret
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Most people haven't made it all the way through the last expansion
If you're counting only from people who have a full set of Tier 4, or arena gear, then I'd argue that hardly anyone is "finished".
Then we're in agreement.
I'd guess that they'd be further along with the next expansion though. I'd put my money on Q2 2008. I know they put two years between the original game and the first expansion, but Blizzard can't really wait another two years between expansions. There are just too many MMOs coming out between now and late 08 to keep people playing that long.
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I so seldom max out my characters in terms of gear that it would be easy to say that I'd never "finished" a MMO.
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More, I'd wager that they already have the third expac through the planning and beginning initial implementation, including artists going nuts.
Tier 4? Please. Tier 4 is easy. I'm not even in a hardcore guild and we have a number of people at 4/5 Tier 4. Only reason I'm not is I've been skipp
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Reset the hardcore people and give them another unattainable goal to strive for while the coders are hard at work on the next expansion.
Meanwhile the softcore players who haven't completed all the endgame stuff in the last expansion are given a chance to attain items of comparable power with a small commitment (new expansion green in AH for 10g that shows up last expansion epics).
This effectively allows the casual player to begin tackling higher content withou
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Re:So more grind... (Score:4, Interesting)
However at the moment it might seem that Blizzard is releasing new content a bit fast, I've yet to decide if that's a good or bad thing.
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The solution to your problem is word it so that it seems new and exciting instead of rehashing what you've just done (and redone).
It gets old but most people don't realize this until after they've already gone through it a couple of times. The same can be said for most expansion packs MMORPG or not.
And I'll be honest, when creating a ti
Re:So more grind... (Score:4, Interesting)
More than once a year. We are running on 14 expansions in 8 years. But I disagree. Have you ever played EQ? There are basically 3 things that can get added in any given expansion, beyond land mass
1) more gear / items
2) Level cap increase
3) More Alternate Advancement points available to purchase
You always get 1. 2 happens every other or every third expansion. 3 happens about out of cycle from 2, it seems. You are probably complaining because a new expansion invalidates your gear. Well suck it up. You are no less efficient a day after the new expansion grinding the old mobs, than you were the day before. But to enter the new areas, yes, it will be a challenge. Cry me a river.
Raising the level caps? That's just a part of life. Without that, the game stagnates. Again, you can cry me a river and I won't care.
Now, here is the beauty of Everquest, in my opinion. AA's. They give you a reason to live after you hit max level. You can funnel your experiance from grinding into ability points. These give you abilities not unlike talents in WoW, but a hell of a lot more of them. And you aren't restricted in how many you can obtain.
Endless treadmill? Only if you make it such.
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Personally I love what they're doing with WoW. I don't play it myself, but it gives Blizzard a license to print money, which means they have an effectively limitless supply of cash to pour into other ventures.
Casual gamers? (Score:5, Interesting)
I feel a great disturbance in the force. As if millions of casual gamers suddenly cried out in terror, and then were suddenly silenced.
Seriously, though. I hear people on WoW complaining about "the grind" which to me is the best part. I like questing from 1 to 70. I like experiencing the story and still being able to play with friends if I want. If they're going to start only catering to the "end-game" users, maybe my WoW time is coming to an end. Full time job, side consultant jobs, a wife, a kid on the way, and everything else just doesn't leave a lot of room for a raid schedule.
Re:Casual gamers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, if you're a quest-a-holic this could be an issue because if you've done all the quests, you might have to grind your way back to 80 and that would suck.
Re:Casual gamers? (Score:4, Informative)
*throws continuity out the window*
Having said that, I expect that to change.
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Re:Casual gamers? (Score:4, Informative)
And for someone like you, that enjoys leveling toons, this sounds like a great addition.
Get to level 80 with your toon, and you unlock the ability to level another toon from 60 to 80, allowing you to see in new content you might have missed in the XPAC with your first toon.
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Re:Casual gamers? (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, yeah, I guess some people complain about the leveling "grind", but really WoW has one of the nicest leveling phases, replete with quests and things to do to fit a variety of playstyles.
"The grind" that everyone complains about is the one you do after reaching the level cap. The endless, endless rep grinding for faction rewards, heroic instance keys, etc etc. And actually despite there being more reps to grind, they aren't as bad as pre-expansion when the lvl 60 rep grinds were horrible time sinks of repetitive killing. Grinding Cenarian Hold or Argent Dawn rep was as arduous as the 1-60 leveling process, but much, much more boring. Or remember when you got to go farm for cloth so that other people could get to run a raid instance? That's what people complain about.
The leveling "grind" is great for casuals. It's the top-level content that at best tolerates casuals by giving them mindless repetitive tasks to perform.
Re:Casual gamers? (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you talking about? Are we playing the same game*? Leveling is the most boring part of the game period. Sure, leveling your first character can be fun, but with every other character you end up doing the same boring quests, killing the same monsters etc. And what play styles? There is only one play style when leveling. Grinding by killing monsters. Endless fun.
Not.
"The grind" that everyone complains about is the one you do after reaching the level cap.
Yes and no. The grind is omnipresent before and after level 70. No one can deny that.
Or remember when you got to go farm for cloth so that other people could get to run a raid instance? That's what people complain about.
They kinda complain about that but not as much 1-70 grind. It is horrible. But well, people complain about everything in WoW (many of those complaints do have merit though), but saying that leveling is great (as in fun) part of the game is like saying that working on the assembly line is the most interesting job in the world.
The leveling "grind" is great for casuals.
Yes it is a grind, and yes it the worst part of WoW.
* I did quit, before I ruined my life.
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If you can't see any difference between grinding and any form of gameplay that involves killing monsters, then it doesn
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They can't even do "find the" quests at all because after the fourth person that finds it is going to post the exact location on a web forum somewhere.
If your character walks into a tavern bragging about killing the king of the banditos and waving his severed head about, everyone else in that tavern can pull out
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So you can tell me where one can find some other "versions" of King Bangalash? You missed my point. With all your characters you killed King Bangalash exactly the same number of times (or even more). How that can be fun? Or killing 3x30 of his "lesser" clones? I get bored to the tears.
I mean you're really comparing the wide variety of environments and tasks you're asked to do to level from 1-70, to the non-stop months-after-months killing
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Well yeah, they have to "balance" everything around people who can play the game like it was their full-time job, and they need these people to have to spend more than one month getting through all the content so they keep paying monthly fees. Which means what's d
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Or, heck, for that matter, might be one....
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I like questing from 1 to 70.
When I played WoW (for years, years ago), this was the single biggest appeal it held over other games. I am sure this is part of its enduring popularity. WoW is the only MMORPG where you can progress to the level cap without ever fighting the same monsters for more than an hour, and without doing the same (or pseudo randomly not-the-same) quests more than once. There is so much more STORY than in any other game, and it is laid out in a well designed balance including branches and just enough linearity t
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I'm tired of Blizzard's constant class tweaks which always screws up the balance.. makes 2 classes godlike and 2 classes worthless... and now they want hero classes.. sigh... not only that but they won't be easy to achieve.
I'll probably be done with WoW in 2 months when my account expires. I know a number of people who
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Either your wife is having twins, you're adopting, or you, my friend, have been working a different kind of "consultant jobs".
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The best part you say? So, and I'm not going to exaggerate here, you like to:
Go to place P and kill N number of mobs until you get M number of drops D?
Take item I and take it to the place P.
And doing that same old scheme for hundreds of times, doing the same quests with all your characters, killing the same mobs, going
Another hybrid.... (Score:3, Interesting)
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I would have expected the Death Knight to be a melee plate dps/debuff class.
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What makes a paladin a hybrid is the fact that it is literally, half warrior, half cleric. Gimped at both.
And the DK, I presume, will be the equivalent of EQ's shadowknight, half warrior, half necromancer.
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I'd say there are three actual hybrid classes in WoW: Druid, Shaman, and Paladin (don't know where 'warrior' came from above). All three of them can be accurately described as "Melee capable spellcasters with healing abilities."
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and yes, Warrior is not a hybrid.
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Hair splitting. (Score:2)
If that's the way you want to define hybrid though, I'm fine with that for the purposes of discussion.
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Half warrior/Half cleric and gimped at both?
So I guess it's my imagination that I, a 70 Holy-spec (45/16) Paladin, was at the top of the heal meters against Magtheridon last night, right? I guess it's my imagination that the same is almost universally true in general, right?
Gimp cleric, my ass.
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What I was saying is that a hybrid class is a compromise of the two classes it is inheriting from.
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For raids though, you're right; unless their gear is off the chart, it's not worth having one around if they're not tanking/healing.
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Remember, it's a plate -caster-. They're not going to suddenly make a warrior analogue into a caster - it's a non sequitor.
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Anyhow, Paladins are defined as Warrior/Priest so exchanging the Priest for Warlock should get you a Death Knight. Especially considering that the power of animating the dead is demonic.
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Still, when they have all that, you'd be surprised at how nasty they can be. Hardly any class has Holy resistance, so their damage isn't mitigated at all.
Levelling (Score:3, Insightful)
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In my best Shatner... (Score:2)
PS - The lameness filter won't let me shout in caps.
Mid Level Content (Score:4, Insightful)
And what's up with an "unlockable" end game class? Too lazy to balance the new class all the way through?
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Well, I for one am too lazy to level a whole new character up to level 70, but it would be nice to have another one to play. Especially as they raise the level cap it becomes more and more time consuming to create a new character that can participate in the endgame, which is where a lot of the new content is focused.
It makes sense as they bring us farther from level one to give more options for expanding your gameplay without starting all the way f
plate DPS hybrid (Score:2)
Wrath of the Licking? (Score:2)
That's how it reads to me, anyway.
Obviously, I'm not much of a gamer.
Screw the Lich King.... (Score:2)
Blizzard don't learn... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Both your post and the parent above you miss the point: It's supposed to be hard.
If you could blow through an instance with no effort, then what satisfaction would you get from doing it? Gear? Everyone else would have the same gear. Experience? Everyone else would have the same experience. It would crazy boring.
If you could level blacksmithing (I assume that's what the g-parent was talking about; the eternal instance-only iron grind) as easily as herbalism, no one would want to
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Heroic VC? Hell yeah!
Re:Blizzard don't learn... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have two friends that are pretty much the archetypes of WoW. One is a father of one (soon two), very relaxed about it all and playing it because he's having a good time. He'll do just fine. The other... well, he seems to want to "win" Wow, grinding away like crazy. You should almost think having a mega-character in WoW was some sort of investment, when you talk to him. Perhaps if you sold your account you'd get a pittance, but more likely he'll just keep it until it's no longer worth much - an expansion later and it won't be. I know hobbies don't need to be "productive", but something is wrong when you talk about it as if it were and it isn't. I mean, one thing is if you're a craftsman and make items - real, permanent and durable. Another is whatever you crafted in WoW which is a collection of pixels that'll be obsolete and worthless in a while, and meaningless if you quit WoW.
So, is this level 68 start for us casual gamers? (Score:2)
Quite frankly, I find the lower level quests far more interesting.
Cue excitement in... (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to play wow (lvl 70 warrior, lvl 70 priest) for a couple of years. Guild raided MC & BWL back before TBC dropped so I have seen a good part of the content. I let my subscription lapse a couple months ago because it just wasn't fun and exciting anymore. I was wondering if the new xpack would be interesting enough to get mt to resubscribe. I guess not. Oh well, on to bigger and better things.
So long and thanks for all the epics.
A better idea would have been casual classes (Score:3, Interesting)
Battlefield surgeons - you go into the arenas not for Honor from killing but Honor from saving lives - and the chance for really neat medical equipment.
Philosophers - look, noone knows what they do anyway, even if one of my Ph.D. friends who discovered most of the Tuberculosis infection mechanisms got a degree in that, so WoW could make almost anything up about this and get away with it.
Bard - songs, stories, travelling to distant lands to get new songs and musical instruments, and so on, hanging out in bars, what more can one ask - also raises morale for parties, so people let you tag along.
Things like this that casual gamers could play and feel they are progressing no matter what else goes on.
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To make myself clear, I liked playing my warlock, rogue, mage and druid. I always preferred pvp, but after hitting level 60 or 70 and doing battlegrounds after a while you just get bored or frustrated with another players who mow you down just because they have much much better gear than you. So how that could be solved? They should open special servers where everyone have basically the same ge
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Besides, gramps might like to play as a wandering minstrel bard, even having to tag along on a raid to keep up everyone's morale scores.
Death Knight (Score:2)
End game in WoW since BC isn't just about raiding. (Score:3, Informative)
Heroic content, get this, can actually be quite hard. The concept at first seems flawed. "Oh boy monsters that can one shot people and are higher level, woopity." But the reality is that it forces each member of a 5 man group to be competent and for many of the more difficult encounters actually skilled. Because of the difficulty a 5 man player, non-raider, who only plays a few hours a week can actually attain gear on par with people who do raid days a week. Is this fair? In my opinion it is, the challenge of most raid content is learning the encounter and the logistics involved. The challenge in heroic 5 man content is each player making very few mistakes over the course of an entire run and playing their class and talent spec extremely well.
Heroics aren't all perfect but as a first go they show a real understanding on Blizzard's part that players can be rewarded for skill and not just grinding/time invested. One of the biggest flaws is the rep requirements for running them, while normal questing will get you close on a few of them, some do require you to go out of your way to achieve. In addition it is possible to "wipe" your way through content if your group sucks, it takes forever and costs a fortune in repairs, but it is possible.
I've raided in WoW and found it to be lacking, learning an encounter is fun and the first few kills are thrilling, but the time investment is quite insane. The same thrill comes to me from a really good heroic run, say one where everyone is top notch and you blow through a place with no deaths at a blistering pace.
WoW isn't perfect, but it is a hell of a lot better since BC. If the same level of improvement comes with the next expansion it will be very hard for anything other than "tiredness of the story/world/lore" to unseat them as #1 in America.
First we lose lvl 60 content, now they kill lvl 70 (Score:3, Insightful)
Then came the BC expansion just as I was about to at least finish these dungeons and everyone ran onto the new higher level green BC gear and I could not get people to run these old instances anymore (and who could blame them... it was too easy and the items were lame for BC players)
All of these instances were basically rendered useless... there is no point in them other than a brief popping into them during the brief 59-61 period.
I am a late-game content player, but I still love the grind and questing... the grind and questing has not been affected by this and is still fun.
Now comes a new expansion which is basically going to render all these lvl 70 dungeons useless JUST as we (our guild) barely finished Kara. Not even started on any of the serious dungeons because we were not ready.
So now I must pay because they are *replacing* a lot of content with new content? (Sure they do add a little as well...) It does not seem fair. And not paying and staying at lvl 70 until I can finish Kara lvl 70 is not an option because there will be no-one else to play along with.
Yea, perhaps it's time to have a look at Lord of the Rings Online... or go back to playing Diablo II.
Hehe...
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Obviously with less time into the game you won't be able to see the large/hard dungeons but you will be able to explore a bunch of the smaller dungeons, which take 1-3hrs to complete. It is easy to jump into pvp queues and pvp for 30 minutes a day and get decent gear.
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