Is Cataclysm the Next World of Warcraft Expansion? 259
ajs writes "There has been no official announcement yet, but a number of moves by Blizzard Entertainment seem to indicate that the next expansion for World of Warcraft could be titled Cataclysm. Speculation began when Blizzard trademarked Cataclysm recently, and then later when a test server briefly popped up with the word 'Maelstrom' in its name. If true, the name would fall neatly into the WoW lore and expected expansion list. The Cataclysm is another name for the Great Sundering, an event that created a swirling vortex of water and mystical energies (the 'Maelstrom') that has appeared on the world map in-game since release. There are also indications that early design work included some of the islands in this area, which has long fueled anticipation of a Maelstrom-based expansion involving the former Night Elf noble, Azshara, queen of the Naga and the Goblins whose main city is in the south seas."
The next WoW Expansion... (Score:2, Funny)
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Everything can be described as a big time and money sucking void, really.
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They've never said 100 is the max level. That statement is GENERALLY attributed to the fake "expansion list" that people keep linking to. Here's the original source for that list:
http://wow.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=21;mid=119012268058738816 [allakhazam.com]
It's fake. The 1st expansion, Burning Crusade went live in January 2007 -- but Wrath of the Lich King was announced (INCLUDING zone information) in August of that year. By September, all of that info was everywhere, including approximate level of the zones, prelimi
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Possibly-- or they want to move on to the next MMO. Ever wondered why the patches and class balance and new content have been coming slower and slower?
It's entirely possible they don't want people to become MMO'd out. Too much of a good thing...
My guess-- next is World of Starcraft, with not two, but THREE factions. That will make it very interesting. Timing would be perfect, too, they could release it just one or two years after the last Starcraft 2 Campaign is released, and just ride the wave of that mark
Re:The next WoW Expansion... (Score:5, Insightful)
The next MMO is, according to statements from Blizzard sources, to be a new IP - not based on any previous franchise. Given that 3 of their upcoming products are sequels or expansions (Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, next WoW expansion) it stands to reason that they might want to try to launch a new franchise - they need to keep the future markets in mind.
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I don't think it's going to be World of Starcraft. Even if it was, you could pick out anywhere from 3 to 7 fractions potentially depending on how it is done. You have Arcturus Mengsk and the Terran Dominion. You have Jimmy Raynor and his bunch of guys. You have the UEF (can't count them out). You have Kerrigan. You have Artanis and the Protoss survivors. You have Zeratul and the Dark Templar. There's also always an opportunity for another Overmind causing a split of the Zerg forces.
No, I think Blizzard isn'
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I'm going to say sci-fi or horror (pleasepleasePLEASE be a Zombie theme!). Though, horror might be too close to fantasy for some.
An interesting easter egg from WoW: in some of the skins for certain devices (shredders and other things like that), there seems to be a part that looks sort of like a display, and Kerrigan is shown repeatedly.
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I don't think it's going to be World of Starcraft.
I agree, but it's a shame. The ominous proclamation "Nuclear launch detected" would have a lot more visceral impact if you knew you were standing around ground zero.
but I can't see them doing another fantasy genre MMO
Well, they do have the Diablo milieu, but I don't see much opportunity for innovation there. Besides, they can't even get the 3rd title [blizzard.com] in the normal isometric-scroller game series out the door.
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By 'shut down' he meant that the company that should have taken over, still haven't gotten all their ducks in a row, meaning that the people there can't play on the servers unless they move to Taiwanese servers.
So you're only partly right.
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Naah. They'll keep coming out with new content as long as it's profitable for them to do so.
The only foreseeable problem is that, with the expansion packs, they're slowly going through every big bad they established in Warcraft 3, which makes it difficult to pull the story back together if they ever decide to do another game in the Warcraft world.
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Or they would allow old classes start right at 'heroic' levels.
Archmage class - mage starting at L55. ...
Blademaster - warrior starting at L55.
Ranger - hunter starting at L55
He has no idea what he's talking about (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe it is a lame joke, maybe he's a WoW hater who wishes it was the last, whatever the case it has no basis in reality. Currently, there are over 11 million subscribers to WoW where a subscriber is defined as someone who has paid to play in the last month. That number continues to increase, and accounts for about 60% of all MMO players. Eventually, it's popularity will peak and numbers will start to wane, but not at this point. Right now, it is still extremely popular.
Well, as you can probably guess, Blizzard and more specifically Vivendi (their parent company) aren't stupid and wish to make as much money as possible. That means they'll keep releasing expansions and content for WoW because they want to keep all those subscribers. They aren't going to say "Let's just let the game atrophy and have everyone run off to play something else." They want those dollars, they will keep developing it.
What's more, an MMO doesn't even have to be growing to be worth developing content for. It just has to have enough players such that the money pays the bills to run the game, pay the developers of the new content, and make a profit. Thus you find even old games are still under active development. Everquest released their 15th expansion last October, and they've got a 16th planned for this November. It has been running for a decade, and the sequel has already been out for a couple years. However people still want to play, so Sony is still making content for it.
So no, this isn't the last WoW expansion. They are going to keep working on that game to keep getting subscribers for as long as it is profitable. To do anything else would be to incur the wrath of their shareholders.
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Just one minor correction - Vivendi is no longer Blizzard's parent; Activision Blizzard is.
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Sony / Everquest vs competition (Score:2)
Hopefully for the Druids... (Score:2, Funny)
/dr00ds represent!
A new book also kinda confirms it (Score:2, Interesting)
when coupled with the "Cataclysm" name, one of the Lich King's visions in the new book "Arthas, Rise of the Lich King", everything gets a lot clearer and more certain: ...the silver waters of a vast expanse of water... a sea... ...Something was roiling just beneath the ocean's surface. The hitherto-smooth surface began to churn wildly, seething, as if from a storm, although the day was clear. A horrible sound that Arthas only dimly recognized as laughter assaulted his ears, along with the screaming of a wor
Re:A new book also kinda confirms it (Score:4, Funny)
But before she can, she needs you to collect 8 pale seahorse manes and 6 crystal jellyfish extracts.
Re: the islands (Score:2, Interesting)
There are also indications that early design work included some of the islands in this area,
It's true that a couple of islands appear on the map near the vortex. I heard a rumor about them once indicating that they were at one point accessible to players. Swimming there wasn't possible due to the fatigue that resulted from the deep water. However, if you had a couple stacks of elixirs of water walking, you wouldn't be affected by the fatigue since you weren't swimming. According to the one player I knew who had claimed to have been there, it took about 45 minutes of wandering around with nothing
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[...] I mounted, and as I lept off into the horizon, I casted levitate. I came to a point where the map disappeared, but the water continued to stretch out into the distance.
Some theorize that this is where GM Island is located.
Okay, so we all know that GM Island is in an instance now. But like any instance, there's a non-instance version of it. Like when you set old world instances to "Heroic" and walk behind the portals. GM Island wasn't always an instance, and programmers just don't delete environment from the game. Case in point, Old Ironforge and Ironforge Airport.
Granted, you'd have to walk pretty far, assuming GM Island IS in that direction...
Moving on, it's unreachable alone...attempted it. However, multiple priests together could do this easy. Have 5 or so in a group together so they can heal off of each other with renew and circle of healing. Another tip, wear +healing gear that has no stamina. Fatigue hits for 20% of your max health every 1-3 seconds. Low health means low damage, high healing means you can heal over it. 5 priests means you can have a few of them sit back and relax while the others cast, so not everyone wastes mana.
If you are really interested in doing this, make it 4 priests and a warlock.
"Harmonex wishes to summon you to GM Island." [...] Of course, this is all under the assumption that GM Island even exists on the main map...
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Obviously this is all unconfirmed at best. and I still have some serious doubts about the story,
and
Again, this is all just rumors and lies at this point
And from my subsequent post
Okay, I need to get my facts straight. After doing some reading up on the topic (too late obviously) it is not clear to me that this guy's story was crap.
Now, what part of all that indicated that I "believe anything someone tells [me]?" I apologize if my post came across as if I were preaching doctrine from the mouth of God Himself, but I thought I was pretty clear that this was all speculation.
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South Seas Lore (Score:4, Informative)
Here is some lore of each isle in the South Seas:
http://wow.incgamers.com/blog/comments/south-seas-lore-the-eye-maelstrom/ [incgamers.com]
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Excellent stuff. I've added a link to this to the original article. Thanks!
Will Interest Wane? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Will Interest Wane? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Heck, I'm falling into this cycle while waiting for patches. I'v done Uldar a few times, I know I'll never finish it. So now I'm bored and waiting for the next patch to come out and give those raids a try.
Re:Will Interest Wane? (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the WORST quests in the northrend expansion has you free a storm giant, and ride his back while he runs around squishing legions of the undead and exacting revenge on his captors. Then you set him free, and unlike the old world quests, he's not back in the cage when you run around there later. He's actually free.
Then there's the dungeons, where you fight bosses with all sorts of fun abilities, like the one that renders the entire party insane - forcing you to kill your teammates twice, or the one that you ride a dragon to fight the boss, or the one that gores party members at random forcing you to play without a party member for a short while.
They've come a long way from the boring version of wow. Even though I did get burned out after the expansion hit, it wasn't because of the game, but the people in it. I think that makes it as much a success as any game can be expected to be.
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Ah, the Occulus...
I don't know anyone who's ever done the occulus twice, except those going for the achievments. It's a horrible instance mainly because of the free-form nature of the dragon riding.
It is the WORST instance to go into with a pick-up group, as undoubtably someone will not know what to do and the final boss turns into a horrible clusterfuck. Assuming you get that far.
Arguments over how many green drakes we need, who gets to tank on the red drake, who gets to do this, who gets to do that... and
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Whether people will get tired of it will, IMO, mostly depend on how long Blizzard manages to keep the cardinal sins that have been commited before at bay. And arguably it gets harder with every expansion.
1) New players vs. old players and catching up
One of the most devastating problems of MMOs so far was that old players quit over time, but new players are not drawn into the game. The main reason being that it's hard to catch up to the old players, so why bother trying? So far they managed to make it easy f
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1) New players and catching up: I'm not sure we're playing the same game. They announced Refer A Friend, wherein a veteran can refer a new player (well, a new account) and when they team up, both characters get a huge boost to their experience up to level 60. This lets new players get into the game, learn from their friends, and generally get to explore a lot of stuff. It also lets older players level that other class they've always thought about but never done. Plus, they also re-itemized the quest rewards
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I said that the catching up problem has been the killer for many games before. WoW so far, as you point out, managed to give the new players a way to catch up. The "bring a friend" program is ok, but only works where you already have friends playing WoW. In that case, you will already keep playing, if for nothing else then to stay with your friends.
The problem WoW faces now is the problem all aging games (hell, pretty much all human interaction) face: Clique mentality and a very, very tough time to get into
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That's been entirely different from my experience - maybe it's a server thing? I've rolled alts on maybe 20 different servers since launch and generally people are reasonably helpful and friendly. If I want a group for a dungeon, I'll generally find people in about 10-20 minutes, tops (general chat if the zone is busy, in a nearby city if it isn't, but I do think they can make this less of an issue). There are often leveling guilds that advertise looking for recruits in the main cities. I guess I just don't
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Maybe it's an Euro Server thing... Or maybe I'm just antisocial even when I try to be social.
Hey, I have to uphold my geek status somehow, now that I'm forced to wear a suit!
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The obvious answer is to completely uproot yourself and come to the US so you can use our servers, of course.
If you roll on Sentinels or any of the other servers I play on, I'll stake ya 100 gold to get started.
It has a story? (Score:5, Interesting)
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The storyline is awesome, but it takes a LONG time to really get to know it. Not only that there is alot of lore that goes back to WCIII. If you played that you have a much greater understanding of the lore and events.
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Well, there's "story" and then there's "story". I believe the GP would refer to what you're referring to as "setting" or "backstory". Lore is an important part of the setting, but it is not itself a storyline. It's the backdrop behind the main plot, but it's not the main plot.
Nearly all MMORPG's (and some non-MMO RPG's, e.g. Morrowind), suffer from having a fabulously well developed setting and rich lore, but almost no actual story. If you're used to playing traditional RPG's, where there's an actual pl
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Actually Blizz has been really pumpimg up the in-game story. All throughout the new Xpac you see the Lich King, and you take part in scripted epic events (Death Knight LHC confrontation, Wrath gate). Not to mention the Thrall/Garrosh fight, the Dalaran incident with Varian and the upcoming Crusaders Coliseum story.
They have gotten much better about getting the STORY out there, a vast improvement over Vanilla/BC. In those 'xpacs' almost all story was advanced through quest text and it was hard to stitch it a
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The Death Knight introductory sequence has another odd moment to it - something I found novel and rather fun. When you walk into Orgrimmar to face Thrall after your "conversion", the locals want to lynch you. They don't, but the tension it builds is remarkable. I've never seen another game where you were hit with rotten fruit and insults by NPC's on a quest, rather than swords clubs arrows and spells (sounds like a card deck, eh?).
"The Scourge killed my family, you monster! (FWAP)". You finally get to T
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Most memorable quote ever: "SCOURGE! Gamon [wowwiki.com] will protect you!"
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Well, there's "story" and then there's "story".
Just to give you a sense of how seriously different WoW (as of the Wrath expansion) is on this point, let me describe the events of the Wrathgate from the Horde point of view (warning, spoilers):
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Yeah i know, but a 'literal' fuck ton of anything before WCIII has been retconned to hell and back. I knew my statement would draw this argument out right around when i was hitting submit. :)
Re:It has a story? (Score:4, Interesting)
"but WOW is one of the only games in which I didn't care at all about the storyline."
I think the problem is that the the storyline gets garbled because anyone who never played warcraft series (from the first on) won't have a damn clue WTF is going on. World of Warcraft is REALLY bad at what the RTS games were good at: Story telling.
I really think the MMO genre is not suited to storytelling unless you go the way of Guildwars. Guildwars with more story polish would have been an outstanding single and multiplayer game, even though it's primarily "multiplayer" because the groups are so small and everything is instanced.
Plus there's no rule saying you can't play the campaign by yourself, and they BOTS/NPC characters you can add to your party, and play in your own instance. Guildwars is pretty much one of the only games that got instancing dead on right out the gate.
WOW is really a crap MMO from a lot of standpoints outside the aesthetics of the cartoony graphics, I couldn't stand wow when I first played it. I forced myself to play it for 2 or 3 months and it still didn't hold a candle to Blizzards previous games like Warcraft and Starcraft in terms of fun and quality.
Most WoW'ers I suspect have really awful gaming tastes. I call it the "bottom feeders" MMO. If you're used to single player RPG's of yesteryear it breaks all the conventions and sticks in maddening things like extended travel time (instead of town portal like in say diablo 1+2 another blizzard game).
It seems in many ways MMO's are sabotaging all the lessons learned about making fun games to extend playtime for $.
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cartoony graphics
Has anyone else noticed this as a shibboleth of WoW-haters? I can't help wondering if there is some sort of deep neurological structure that makes certain people immune to the uncanny valley effect of supposedly "realistic" video games, as if they are in some way autistic. Perhaps they see it all as an abstraction, so that the lack of jumping and the environment-on-rails nature of Guild Wars doesn't feel constricting, and the insta-port towns conform to a conception of the game as a graph o
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Your post had no points in it, the idea that MMO's are all about socializing is BS
".. and not a virtual place to inhabit and explore."
This is the most vaguest thing I have ever read on slashdot it says nothing and it really shows how non-savvy you are about games and gaming in general. Games are about interactivity and experiencing "the best parts of the movies" where you are *in control*, the more abstract and robotic and automatic you make a game, it becomes a 3D rendered movie on a computer with only mi
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After you've explored a world once it gets really fucking boring treading back and forth, and you're wasting real world time that could be spent on other games
You do realize that WoW has put in city portals, a 30-min CD on hearthstones, summoning stones at instances and given Warlocks what effectively amount to portable summoning stones. Right? Or is this a rant about WoW from 3 years ago?
Most WoW'ers I suspect have really awful gaming tastes..... If you're used to single player RPG's of yesteryear it breaks all the conventions and sticks in maddening things like extended travel time (instead of town portal like in say diablo 1+2 another blizzard game).
I played the single player RPGs of yesteryear in to the ground and I loved many of them. Besides your extended travel time canard do you have anything else to add besides insulting the game taste of 11 million people with one broad stroke?
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Your post had no points in it, the idea that MMO's are all about socializing is BS
MMOs are about ... well, they're not about anything. They're what you put into them. WoW can be about raiding every week to get a shiny new toy.
It can be about taking out opposing players in the arena.
It can be about building the perfect "RP set" of gear with the perfect look to match the background you've written for your character.
It can be about crushing the competition in the auction house.
It can be about collecting every non-combat pet in the game.
It can be about exploring the world (more on that below
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Actually, something that I think a lot of people fail to notice is that extremely high detail graphics in a computer game, eg Age of Conan or Crysis, are HARDER on the eyes than the simpler graphics in, eg World of Warcraft.
The graphics in WoW are VERY high contrast.
This means that its very easy for the eye to pick out the details it needs in order to see what is around you.
In high-quality graphic games the contrast is usually pretty low, they seem to compress the color palette quite a bit. This means that
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Story does not matter in an MMO. Period. Simple as that. Yes, you may enjoy it if you like, but it's not important.
WC3 was, story wise, a single player game. And there, story is an important element. Else... well, what's the difference between WC3 and any other RTS out there? The story that drove WC3 was critical to its success. Without it, it would have been just another RTS.
In MMOs, what makes or breaks the game is rarely the story. Mostly because you can only make it so credible that you, some lowly leve
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"Story does not matter in an MMO. Period. Simple as that."
You're missing the point completely, it's called world of WARCRAFT, if it was a new MMO and IP you'd have a point. And mostly I was just pointing out the fact that developers took their RPG properties and cajoled them into the "MMO" genre (if it can even be called that) while butchering the single player aspects of the IP in the process.
You're missing the point that all MMO's heritage are from single player RPG's, so people who played the previous
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WOW is really a crap MMO from a lot of standpoints outside the aesthetics of the cartoony graphics,
Such as....
it still didn't hold a candle to Blizzards previous games like Warcraft and Starcraft
Not MMOs...
If you're used to single player RPG's of yesteryear it breaks all the conventions
You're comparing apples to oranges and complaining that apples don't taste anything like oranges. Well... yes, but not really relevant to the quality of apples or oranges.
Out of curiosity, how far did you get in WoW? If all you did was level grind, then I can see why you didn't enjoy it much. Did you try out PvP, tradeskills, gathering, exploring the world, roleplaying, world events/holidays, Darkmoon Faire? If you played now, you could also explore the achievement system, daily quests
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"You're comparing apples to oranges and complaining that apples don't taste anything like oranges."
Games are fun or they are not, you don't say "Is an x type game, so I have to believe it is fun".
You've also missed the gestalt of what I was saying.
These games came well before "MMO's" (really RPG's with n many more players, except with the gameplay dumbed down to make it easy for the lowest common denominator to access the game).
The companies shoe-horned their single player properties and bastardized them in
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Cartooony graphics? Oh noes! Serious gamer can't be seen playing something that look cartoony that just can't be fun!
That is *prefect* graphics for this game for these reasons:
* Pretty much anyone can run it. And have great performance. Whole point of looking cartoony is that it lets artists get away with low-poly and low-res models that would look terrible if they attempted realistic look.
* It is iconic and stylish and well made. Very recognizable, very easy to look at.
* It avoids u
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i love the way GW handled moving the story forward. If you help the farmer get the bees back in their apiary, they STAYED in the apiary. The didn't reset. i hated that in WoW. No matter how many whatsits i kill, there's always more. i found the hirelings to be useless in the second phase of the game (where i quit).
The cartoony graphics makes the game easier to make look good on low end machines. It's basically inspired by Warhammer. i found MRPGs that when for realism (like Vanguard) to run slower an
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You summed it up succinctly, right on the money. I agree 100%, I did the details, you condensed it into a powerful phrase.
"it is just designed to be involving enough to keep you staring at the screen, but never deep enough to actually make you think enough to really become enjoyable"
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"I'm not sure how I came to read your shit dribbling because it's only at 1 as I'm responding to this."
Your post is one big long fanboy wank because you can't take any kind of WoW criticism, not only that you can't fucking read.
I said : "WOW is really a crap MMO from a lot of standpoints outside the aesthetics of the cartoony graphics"
Note I said : Outside the aesthetics, most of WoW is crap outside of the art and theme of the game, it's nothing new to the RPG genre and has been done better by other games y
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There isn't so much of a storyline (the "plot" of progression has become more pronounced in every expansion, and WOTLK did a good job at this) but most of what people call story serves purely as background. Most characters in the game have at least some that's conveyed through quest texts, and often this expands through series of quests. In an MMO the possibilities of storytelling could be much better utilised, but the world is fleshed out on such a scale that it would be a simply gargantuan task to play (n
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If you want to follow the story behind wow, can I suggest WoWWIki [wowwiki.com]? It's got just about everything about the WoW lore all in one place. Good places to start are outlined in a recent post on my blog about WoW lore [ajs.com] and what to browse through on WoWwiki.
In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Are questions as headlines overrated? Film at 11.
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How the... (Score:5, Insightful)
How the hell did speculation about the -name- of a possible future WoW expansion make the front page? I like games and MMOs, but this is beyond boring.
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The speculation about the name, had you read even the rest of the summary (not suggesting you have to go out of your way to RTFA, here), has lead to quite a lot of information about the expansion itself. If it is, indeed "Cataclysm" that almost certainly means that the next expansion will focus on the central ocean of Azeroth and the swirling vortex at its center which was formed in an even of the same name (AKA The Great Sundering where the single continent was split in half 10,000 years prior to the game'
Expansion List (Score:5, Interesting)
Haven't seen this posted, so here we go... this list was "leaked" or whatever before TBC, AFAIK remember...
- Draenor Set
Azuremyst Isle - 1 to 10
Bloodmyrk Isle - 10 to 20
Eversong Forest - 1 to 10
Quel'thalas - 10 to 20
Hellfire Peninsula - 58 to 62
Zangarmarsh - 60 to 64
Terokkar Forest - 61 to 65
The Deadlands - 63 to 67
Nagrand - 64 to 68
Blade's Edge Mountains - 66 to 70
Netherstorm - 67 to 70
Shadowmoon Valley - 69 to 70
- Northrend Set
Borean Tundra - 67 to 70
Howling Fjord - 67 to 70
Dragonblight - 69 to 72
Grizzly Hills - 70 to 73
Crystalsong Forest - 72 to 75
Zul'drak - 73 to 76
Sholazar Basin - 75 to 79
Storm Peaks - 76 to 80
Icecrown Glacier - 78 to 80
- Maelstrom Set
Gilneas - 77 to 80
Grim Batol - 78 to 81
Kul Tiras - 79 to 82
Kezan - 81 to 86
Tel Abim - 83 to 85
Zandalar - 84 to 87
Plunder Isle - 86 to 88
The Broken Isles - 87 to 90
The Maelstrom - 89 to 90
- Plane Set
Pandaria - 1 to 10
Hiji - 10 to 20
Wolfenhold - 1 to 10
Xorothian Plains - 10 to 20
The Green Lands - 88 to 91
The Dying Paradise - 91 to 94
The Emerald Nightmare - 94 to 97
The Eye of Ysera - 97 to 100
Deephome - 88 to 91
Skywall - 91 to 94
The Abyssal Maw - 94 to 97
The Firelands - 97 to 100
- Legion Set
K'aresh - 96 to 99
Argus Meadowlands - 97 to 100
Mac'Aree - 99 to 100
Maw of Oblivion - 100+
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You should note that that came from a forum post on Alakhazam, and that it's almost certainly a fake. However, it's also brilliant. It outlines the future of WoW with the kind of detail that only someone who had spent a lot of time on the lore could. I doubt that it was real, but I also wish I knew who did it so that I could congratulate them.
Test Server named Maelstrom (Score:4, Informative)
A test server named Maelstrom? Now I know they're pulling shit out of their ass, as Maelstrom [wowwiki.com] is an existing RPPvP server that launched in September of 2006.
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The test server was called "Maelstrom Test" which could be a copy of the existing live server, but given that it was yanked immediately and that it's the likely subject of the next expansion which Blizzard has said is in the works, it's more likely to be their internal test host for the expansion.
Umm... what? (Score:2)
No. not fucking naga please. (Score:3, Interesting)
one of the shittiest creatures in-game, which many people cant fit into a place and come to like. it would be another gnomeragan.
New Races? I'd like that! (Score:2, Interesting)
Goblin City? Hmmm...does this mean the Horde will finally have their comic-relief counterpart to the Gnomes?
What would the Alliance have as a new race? Pandaren?
An expansion called Cataclysm? (Score:2)
More useless content? (Score:4, Insightful)
Great more content that 80% of the players will never see. I still have friends that still haven't seen Molten Core, Naxx, or any other raid instance. The irony is when you release an expansion, none of the established players go tot he old content anymore (as a whole) which means new players coming in never see any of the old content because no one runs them anymore. I recently ran a new player through UBRS (Upper Blackrock Spire) and he never knew there were any other instanced dungeons outside of Outlands (He was a new player and started post-burning crusade.)
When Lich King came out the only Outland instances anyone ran anymore were heroics. New players coming in would never get to actually do those instances because, frankly the established players were at the point that only heroic mode was worth their time.
As plotted: Take the month to month changes in population (rather then total volume) and compare the data. Every MMO with an expansion gets a 3 month spike in uptake but every time the annual trend goes down every expansion.
Expansions are great for $$$ but bad for longevity. It becomes a drug addict's exercise in "Chasing the Dragon". Eventually you have to start churning out expansions quicker and quicker to maintain the high but ultimately you lockout new players and hit "the point of no return" on the decline.
Re:More useless content? (Score:4, Interesting)
You are looking at total volume numbers. You need to look at the month to month and over a year for growth. a 2% growth rate, in general isn't growth. Inflation eats a certain % of new players. Given a 3% rate of inflation you need to clear at least 1.5% subscription growth per year just to cover inflation. So on a chart the first 1.5% is wiped out (inflation adujsted).
So lets say we have 100,000 subscribers for something in January. The next month we have 101,000 subscribers. That is 1% growth. The chart investors and executives look at shows +1000. They could care less about the total volume on a month-to-month report. Now for Febuary we have a total of 101,500 subscriptions. The chart now shows +500 (50% reductino in new enrollment). The next month we see 102,000. Again +500 (0% change).
That is the longevity of an MMO. The month to month change. What happened with EQ, Shadowbane, ... , DAOC, Warhammer, and AOC is that the month to month growth eventually tapers and hits 0 (no loss, no gain.) They dump the expansion and temporarily for the first 3 months or so they get +20,000, +15,000, +10,000 but rapidly decline back to 0. Then the problems start. the normal non-expansion month to months start to drop even more rapidly. Instead of +500, +480, +320, and such you get +500, +250, +80, -20, - 60.
Then you have to dump another expansion and Get +12,000, +8000, +250, -120, and so on.
The highs get lower and lower and the rate of decline faster and faster. After about the 4th expansion so far based on observation and analysis, you are litterally in the hole at all times save the expansions. There amount of content is too vast for new players to get in and STAY in.
Eventually the annual report comes out and your only up, say, 4% of the population.
Operation costs went up 6% and the mandate comes down to cut costs by 3% to bring it back to parity cost wise.
Devlopers then have to try and augment newer players with an easier experience in an effort to better control retention which alienates long term players more often then not (easy mode) which causes more of the long term month-to-month players to drop (they'll show up at the end of the year.)
Rentention number are important, just as much as new enrollment but the enrollment numbers tend to be inversly proportional to the volume of content. Too much and you don't get new players to hold on more then 3 months (They get lost in the content.)
Expansions breath new life in to a game that has become a grind for a large number of EXISTING players.
So either you don't play or you just lack any deep insight on what is occurring.
Neither. It's called statistical analysis based on their reported population and account numbers across all servers using regression analysis (specifically we used Autoregressive integrated moving averages [ARIMA]) using expansion release dates, reported populations, sales figures, and information provided in shareholder conference calls as well as quarterly reports as regessors.
I have no interest in insight or speculation, I'm interested in analysis.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but do you realize how long you have to farm 'til you can afford THAT? It's hoarded by the effing chinese farmers (ok, they're russian here and called pimps), and last time I tried to get one myself, just as I was charging one and started my attack combo the GMs suspended my account by locking me in a little room. Ok, not so much different from my normal dwelling, but WITHOUT A FRIGGIN' COMPUTER!
RL sucks. When the GMs side with the farmers that hog the resources, you know it's a game not worth playing
Re:The next World of Warcraftt Expansion (Score:5, Funny)
You might even find some +12 Real Pussy...
In my experience, not only is +1 Real Pussy extremely hard to obtain, it is often not worth the effort.
Re:I hate WoW players. (Score:5, Funny)
"So, WoW losers ... grow up. Ditch the game, have a real life, and hang out with real humans"
I find this statement ironic coming from someone posting an entire books worth of trolling on slashdot.
Re:I hate WoW players. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does anyone play a game? To have fun. To some people playing a game is alot more fun then dealing with awkward social situations. My best friends are people I have met through MMOs. When you met someone in a MMO you at least know that they also enjoy the game, so you have that much in common. When I met a random person in the "real world" I have no idea if I'll have anything in common besides the need to breath, eat, and sleep.
Believe it or not, there IS hope. I have a buddy who gave up WoW entirely. Now he has a life, a job, and GASP - even a girlfriend. He is actually winning at life and says that he can't believe how much time he was wasting on such a stupid game.
You can't win at life either. All you can do is attempt to pass your DNA on to the next generation and figure out a comfortable way to live until you die. I have come to realize that 90% of life is just trying to pass the time until you die. The other 10% is in pursuit of some "legacy" that will never matter or even be recorded in history.
Playing life is just as pointless as playing WoW. They are both treadmills and neither mater when all is said and done. However, life is 10000x more boring then WoW could ever be.
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Playing life is just as pointless as playing WoW. They are both treadmills and neither mater when all is said and done. However, life is 10000x more boring then WoW could ever be.
I think this is why many people are religious :-P
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Now get out there, do some job quests, pickup some sweet loot, treat yourself to some sweet gear every so often and keep on leveling that RL character.
I had a decently well paying "engineering" job after college. You know what I realized, that I'd rather be running naxx for the 100th time then doing the same boring job every fucking day. At least I can watch tv while raiding.
Either way it is all pointless. Just a way to waste time till you die.
Re: (Score:2)
You should look on the sunny side of life.
Maybe get a new hobby? Bike riding? Fishing?
OT (Score:2)
Maybe you need to get a thrill out of life, but that's no reason to risk your life.
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You're so full of shit. They arent all dragons.
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It's sunday...
Ummm 11 million people care (Score:5, Insightful)
That you don't like WoW is fine, but it is a rather stupid thing to say "Does anyone care?" Yes, WoW players care and there are a LOT of WoW players. It is one of the best selling games of all time and is THE best selling MMO of all time by a wide margin. Thus, a lot of people care what is going on with it.
So if WoW isn't your thing then don't play it. However don't act surprised that a large number of techies are interested in it. It is an extremely popular game.
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Michael Jackson died. Apparently millions of people care. But really, who cares?
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Michael Jackson died. Apparently millions of people care. But really, who cares?
No, what you mean is "really, I don't care." That's fine, but again, you're dead-wrong if you think that there aren't a chunky fraction of those 11 million who care In fact, I suspect they care even more now that China managed a world-first takedown. That will likely spur a new wave of Asian interest.
For me, mostly it's about the lore. I really enjoy seeing where they'll take it. Sadly, most of the really good bits (like the curse of flesh) are spoiled for me when the beta hits, and I never get to discover
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For techies the tech could also be interesting, keeping all those servers running with all those players is quite an achievement in my opinion :)
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I'm fairly sure most WoW players of today will not care. They will care that there is new content, they will care that there are new areas, they will care that there is a higher level cap, they will care that there is new stuff, they will care that there is some new additional goodie they can tack to their character...
They will not care what it's called. I'm fairly sure you could call it "The quest for even more loot" and people will buy it. You could call that endboss drop "the superspecialawesome axe of leet" and they will go in and farm it, they will equip it and be proud to have it.
Name does not matter. Neither does the story. Not at all.
There are certainly players that match your description. They *might* even be a majority, but I doubt it. There's a lot of investment in this game, and many players are just as invested in the lore as the size of their sword. Sure, you have the "must have latest goodie" types, but Blizzard changed course on design in Wrath because the community didn't think TBC felt "Warcraftish". There are streams of complaints from the community, not that the art was bad, but that it didn't feel like Warcraft, and rockets
Re: (Score:2)
Yea, that's pretty much wrong. A lot of raiders care about the story and the lore, and many players absolutely love the graphics of a zone like Grizzly Hills or Nagrand. A plot about something that happen a LONG time ago is pretty interesting, as is the speculation over which new class will likely accompany such an expansion... a new healer of some sort? From the past?
There's a hell of a lot of stuff outside of the few kids that play the game just for bigger numbers. The rest of us like bigger numbers but also want context!
Agreed. It was the lore that originally got me interested in Warcraft, and a large part of what keeps me playing is the new content that they bring out at roughly the speed I can experience it.
The larger numbers are starting to worry me, though. Level cap damage numbers in the hundreds, as happened in the vanilla game, are fine. You start by hitting for 8-10 or something, so after 60 levels, hitting for a few hundred is a nice amount of progress. Vanilla -> Burning Crusade wasn't that much of a jump da
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
My experience shows that a lot of the top raiding guilds are full of people who don't care about Lore. Since the lore conclusion comes through the end raids, that means the fraction of players that can witness the end of the lore, is made up largely of those that don't care. When I start talking about the relevance of certain parts of a raid to lore I usually get the following responses on vent. "That's nice Tald, now shut up and tank." "Tald, no one cares about lore, shut the fuck up." "Tald, it's cool tha
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One of my friends plays FF11. According to him there aren't very many, if any new players coming in, and most low level jobs/players are people raising subjobs. I've wanted to go back and get my AF for Dragoon (Galka Dragoon Represent!), but unless my friend was willing to help me out in leveling, I'd be disinclined to go back.
The truth is that all MMOs are just pieces of money sucking crap, but we still go back to them because as players most of us desire multiplayer content, and a lot of us also desire mu