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Next World of Warcraft Expansion: Warlords of Draenor 156

JestersGrind writes with news that Blizzard has announced the next expansion to World of Warcraft, titled Warlords of Draenor. This expansion raises the level cap to 100 and introduces a new world/continent full of zones: Draenor. They're also introducing 'Garrisons,' player-built bases on Draenor that individual users will be able to customize and upgrade. Your garrison will have followers which you can send on missions, and you'll be able to invite other players over to visit and trade. The expansion will also revamp a number of aging character models. Blizzard is also making it so new and returning players can immediately boost one character to the current level cap (90), so they can immediately jump into the new content.

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Next World of Warcraft Expansion: Warlords of Draenor

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  • I guess I'll see (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xevioso ( 598654 ) on Friday November 08, 2013 @04:37PM (#45372663)

    Do you still have to grind to get anywhere? If so, I won't be back.

    • by JustAnotherIdiot ( 1980292 ) on Friday November 08, 2013 @04:41PM (#45372691)
      Has there ever been an MMO where grinding wasn't a requirement?
      • Re:I guess I'll see (Score:5, Interesting)

        by X0563511 ( 793323 ) on Friday November 08, 2013 @04:43PM (#45372721) Homepage Journal

        GW2 [guildwars2.com] doesn't really do the whole "grind" thing - at least not with anything you actually have to do to advance.

        Hell, just hop in WvW and murder people. You can level up that way.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          Hell, just hop in WvW and murder people. You can level up that way.

          Sure if you just want to level up, and do so really slowly. However once you hit level cap, there's still a lot of grinding to do. You have to grind faction reputations, you have to grind heroic dungeons, you have to grind professions, and if you want to pvp you have to grind battlegrounds.

          WoW is a game full of chores, with you having an assload of chores to do each time there's a new expansion before you can start doing endgame content.

          • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            He's talking about GW2 world vs world mode. He's also either ignorant or lying about its mechanics, as scaling in that game only scales your level and base health, and in that game vast majority of stats at maximum level come from gear that requires maximum level and is massively more powerful than even gear that requires one level less than max, much less the crappy starter gear.

            A decent player in exotic lvl80 gear can easily take many low level scaled up people and never break a sweat.

          • What do you mean have to? You don't have to do any of that shit.

          • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

            it's not the grinding itself that sucks.. life's a grind.

            it's grinding the same fucking content that sucks,which is why I quit wow.

        • Re:I guess I'll see (Score:4, Informative)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Friday November 08, 2013 @05:38PM (#45373161)

          GW2 grind is souldcrushingly long and tedious, as the game not only has far more grind than WoW ever it, it does the grind in a massively boring way, just like GW1 did. You just repeat the same small subset of actions in the same place all over and over and over and over again. I absolutely love their art, which is by far the best in the industry, but gameplay was remarkably boring after a few hours with very little depth and grind was just soul crushing. And I say this as someone who played GW1 for years, where best form of farm was running two instances with a solo build that could be (and widely was) botted.

          WoW felt like a game of LoL in terms of speed of character progression in comparison to GW2.

          As for WvW, you either don't understand how it works and bought arenanet's lie about scaling, or are intentionally misrepresenting the facts. Sure, you get boosted to maximum level but without gear, you're a useless dead weight. It gives you levels but without all the stats that come from level-specific gear, meaning one properly geared lvl80 can easily drop 5-7 scaled up low level guys and not break a sweat in the process. Done that myself several times on a warrior and elementalist before quitting the game.

          Imho if you want to get into GW2, stick to PvE, go through the storyline once and quit. Because once you have done so, you enjoyed all the enjoyable content that game has to offer. Rest is simply about monetizing the wealthy min-maxers who can't be bothered to grind for months of redoing same easy instances for gear tokens, AoE bot the events for karma or botting gold.

          • I dunno, I function perfectly fine in WvW with a level in the 10s or 20s. I don't expect to lead the pack or run around in a 3 person squad and succeed, but I can certainly function fine with the larger mass. I even get kills!

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Oh, you can grind it perfectly fine. All you need to do is find the zerg, pretend they're NPCs and sit next to them occasionally throwing in AoE to tag necessary stuff. Congratulations, you now know why botting is rampant in GW2 WvW. It makes no sense not to bot it. It's good income of gold and karma and actions of individual players and most squads are largely pointless in the large scheme of things. So just relax, turn on your favorite botting software and go do something fun while it grinds karma and gol

              • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                Should be "effectively buy everything" in the end. I'm sleepy...

              • [Disclaimer - it's been months since I last played GW2 as anything but "log on, run around, look at the new pretty things, and log back off."]

                The biggest problem with WvW is that players don't like being outnumbered and don't like being on the losing team. This results in players hopping between different PvP areas until they find one where their side has flooded the place, and sticking around there. This effectively adds a massive slippery slope mechanic to the PvP and guarantees that you will either be in

          • by TheLink ( 130905 )

            I haven't played GW2, but regarding GW1, other than the silly unlock skills and gear for PvP bullshit, very little grinding is _required_ even in PvE.

            You want the fancy armor - yes you grind. But the fancy armor has the SAME STATS as the armor you don't really need to grind for. It just looks nicer (or not depending on your tastes).

            You can play and experience all the story content including the elite areas just as well without the fancy armor. Having the fancy armor doesn't help you do better at all.

            If you

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Unfortunately they didn't see it that way in GW2. Hence the entire problem with massive grind and pay to win selling in game currency that can buy essentially everything including the legendaries for real money.

              They chose to monetize all of the progression, which brought in game currency inflation to hilarious heights as everyone and their grandmother has to bot for gold if they're not grinding materials required for legendary.

              • by TheLink ( 130905 )

                I don't play GW2 (sure seems more like WoW[1] than GW1, so not going to bother at least for now), but from what I see the GW2 players can't even agree whether there's inflation or deflation.

                http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/76265-inflation-out-of-hand-or-alright-for-now/ [guildwars2guru.com]
                https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/archive/jubilee/Do-you-notice-inflation [guildwars2.com]

                As for massive grind, if you want to max level and get the best gear etc ASAP, I can see how you'd have to grind in GW2 (and I don't like games like that). But g

                • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                  There is deflation of real money currency and inflation of in game currency, because there are less and less players willing to pay for the real money currency, and more and more botters grinding in game currency.

                  And really, no. Unless by relaxing you mean botting the game. Because a lot of people ended up doing just that. Put their character up with an AoE macro on a known event boss spawn spot with many others and just leave the game farming your exp, gold and karma. There was a lot of that within days of

          • GW2 grind is souldcrushingly long and tedious, as the game not only has far more grind than WoW ever it, it does the grind in a massively boring way, just like GW1 did. You just repeat the same small subset of actions in the same place all over and over and over and over again. I absolutely love their art, which is by far the best in the industry, but gameplay was remarkably boring after a few hours with very little depth and grind was just soul crushing. And I say this as someone who played GW1 for years, where best form of farm was running two instances with a solo build that could be (and widely was) botted.

            What are you talking about ? All my guild was unanimous when they said that the leveling in GW2 was the coolest one they've seen in a MMO for a long time. And that was the same for me. The levels came to me like nothing, I just traveled in a beautiful world and I even posted scrrenshots, a thing that I never do usualy. And one day I was 80.
            But nothing stops you from camping a place and doing the same stuff if you want to, just like IRL.

            GW2 was the most refreshing MMO I've played in a long time.

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Interesting. I was playing since the start, and I remember seeing first half assed AoE event botters when I hit level 10 just a couple of days after release. And there was a LOT of them withing just days after that. Because leveling in PvE, once you got your basic "priority order" was incredibly boring. Hell I played an elementalist just to make it at least challenging. With warrior, it was literally charge in, activate hundred blades, run to the next mob, charge in, activate hundred blades...
              So people just

        • by Clsid ( 564627 )

          I tried a lot to like GW2, with its fancy graphics and good pvp, open world progression, no level requirements for a lot of stuff, but to be honest, in my case it just wasn't as fun as WoW. To the point where I actually started playing WoW again, and one of the things that really shine are the professions, even if you play WoW solo the game delivers in a very simplistic manner one hell of an experience.

        • GW2 doesn't require grinding?

          Lets see, legendary items, how long would you say it takes to aquire one? Down to the nearest month.

          New crafted ascended weapons bould down to one item, you can only get from endlessly grinding either puzzles or dungeons. You need lots and lots of them. Crafting at first is easy but the last levels explode with weapons going from requiring ONE item to FIVE.

          Items you buy with Laurels cost 50 or so, you can get 1 laurel per day and another 10 per month. So 1 item requires at le

      • In Planetside, you started out with enough Cert Points that you could get/use any gun in the game at level 1. Of course, grinding out more levels allowed you to have more guns at the ready without re-speccing, but that certainly wasn't a requirement to win or have fun. And given that it was a PvP game, I'm not sure if "killing more people" really qualified as grinding anyway.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        Eve. Just steal.

      • by Fjandr ( 66656 )

        Depends on your definition of "grind." If you mean killing the same things over and over to get anywhere, there are a numbers of MMOs without a grinding requirement.

      • by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Friday November 08, 2013 @06:20PM (#45373461) Homepage Journal
        I'm currently writing an MMORGY where grinding is the ONLY requirement! Level cap's 69, armor types are Latex, Leather and None, no questing (just grinding!) Only weapon you can equip is a whip! It's going to make ONE BILLION DOLLARS!
      • Has there ever been an MMO where grinding wasn't a requirement?

        Considering that people use "grinding" for whatever game play that prevents instant gratification, probably not.

      • Mmm hmm:
        http://www.eveonline.com/ [eveonline.com]

      • Has there ever been an MMO where grinding wasn't a requirement?

        Eve Online

        • Has there ever been an MMO where grinding wasn't a requirement?

          Eve Online

          You've got to be kidding. Unless your running around space in a pod, how do you gain the skills to get a decent ship? How you do get ISK to afford such a ship? Completing quests or mining ore or begging in newcomer channels is a grind in itself.

          • Eve Online

            You've got to be kidding. Unless your running around space in a pod, how do you gain the skills to get a decent ship? How you do get ISK to afford such a ship? Completing quests or mining ore or begging in newcomer channels is a grind in itself.

            There is no grinding, skills accumulate over time.
            You can buy ISK straight from CCP = no need to run stupid missions.

    • by Nos. ( 179609 )

      I can't see how it won't. You'll grind for rep and some sort of currency (valor points or what have you) to get better gear to get into end game raids, to farm gear.

      It's lost it's appeal for me and I really doubt I'll be back.

      • Every new expansion it's "Hey look, some new evil power has taken over and it's time to replace all of your raid epics with shitty mob loot and run fetch three gold clovers and a deer antler for this quest NPC about 200 times until you reach the new level cap. After that run heroics over and over again for 60 hours for the next two weeks, which are just scaled up versions of the regular dungeons you went into while leveling. And then you can start raiding to see a new twist on the same shit you did when the

        • Erh... how else could you possibly keep the game running?

          They have to do that. It only works that way that the gear you so painstakingly raided for, weeks after weeks, that you accumulated over months of game time becomes utterly worthless with the next expansion because the first green random drop from some trash mob blows the snot off your "epic" gear. Yes, it sucks for the long time player, but it is the only way to keep the game going. Simply because it's the only way they could possibly attract new pla

          • Erh... how else could you possibly keep the game running?

            Do we really need endless faction reputation? Do we really have to recycle dungeons to give "something to do"? Do we really need "kill some bird things and get three of their feathers and put them in my hat" quests? Especially the ones where the feathers only drop from one out of every 20 mobs? Cata they said they would end that but there were still plenty of them. Also, you know something is wrong with battlegrounds when people would rather bot them than actually play.

            Something similar applies to them practically disallowing town raids. Most servers have a, let's say, lopsided balance. In other words, it becomes rather difficult for one side to even get their quests done sensibly if their quest NPCs are constantly being killed.

            That's really not supposed to matter a

          • Erh... how else could you possibly keep the game running?

            They could have a level scale for every different content. Let's say you start a character at "snow region" and does all its content, thus becoming a specialist at surviving there. You'd be a "snow specialist level 10". But your knowledge doesn't transfer to deserts. Or forests. Or dungeons. Or alien worlds. Or dream dimensions. Etc. etc. etc. So whenever you want to experience a specific new content you start that kind of content at level 1 and have to progress to become proficient at that.

            Then comes a new

            • Oh yeah, and then deal with the whining on the board "why did you create content for X and not for Y, nerf X" ... "So create a Y" ... "But I wanted to play X!" ... whine, bitch, troll...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by twocows ( 1216842 )
      Experienced player here (since BC). It's WoW. Do you even really need to ask? The level grind is just one of many. Then you've got the grind to get LFR-ready equipment (right now that's not too bad, you just run around grabbing chests on the new 5.4 area and get free 496 gear). Then you grind LFR until your gear is good enough that people will let you in their flex raids, and then grind flex until etc. Also, there's a legendary questline that you need to grind. There was reputation grinding, and there still
      • Don't forget that if your done the Legendary questline, you'd have your cape and be grinding Ordos for 559 Warforged gear every week, plus killing a celestial every week for your 553 normal PVE/PVP gear drop.

        Right now that's all my toon is doing - daily grinds for the Shaohao reputation gain (for the mount that costs 100,000 timeless coins), a dungeon and scenario here and there for the 80+50 daily valor and the quest weeklies. I valor cap by Sunday normally, and spend about 2-4 hours a week in game. Any
    • by Anonymous Coward

      The only MMO I've played that didn't take excessive grinding to get to a decent level is Shadowbane. Unfortunately it was released with massive bugs (thanks Ubisoft) so there is no telling if a MMO that focused less on grinding and more on pvp and... world-building? (you could make your own cities buying buildings walls etc) would be viable. I think it had promise but what manager would approve trying to emulate that disaster even if it failed for other reasons.

      • Darkfall tried this, the mechanics were just abused (their are no "levels"). So instead of grinding, people would macro their guy into doing the basic task to up that skill. On paper Darkfall looked awesome, it may have been implemented poorly, but I'm not sure there is a way to do it otherwise. If you're not grinding...how else do you make it hard to level up?...that is the question....
        • Make every improvement in skill in one area balance with a loss of skill everywhere else. Then you basically end up with two kinds of players - those who focus on maintaining a few abilities to very high levels (a system like this doesn't really need a max if done right, as you can't do one thing only without doing anything else. Even traveling can have a cost - you level your walking skill while everything else deteriorates.), and those who try to balance out the things they do so that they can always do

      • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        World building is a grind. Every game is a grind. You are supposed to enjoy the grind. Or change games.
    • by s.petry ( 762400 )

      Do you still have to grind to get anywhere? If so, I won't be back.

      That's kind of a silly question isn't it? Progressive MMOs are all about the grind for enough gear to grind tougher mobs to get better gear to grind tougher mobs, etc... I enjoyed WoW early on, but don't feel like devoting that much time to a "game". If they ever get rid of the Flintstones graphics look I may go back and peek around, but no interest in the crazy cartoon look of the game as a time waster.

    • You can probably pay cash to skip most of the grinding.

    • by Cammi ( 1956130 )
      Never had to grind to get anywhere. You were only playing it wrong.
  • by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Friday November 08, 2013 @04:41PM (#45372695) Journal

    TL;DR We ran out of ideas so here's some Time Travel to fuck up canon even more.

    • As I understand it, the time travel was to unfuck all of Metzen's lorerape.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      As long as the time-swimming keeps the current hot Dranei, and the MMO players never have to even think about their Warcraft 3 model.

      (Alternately, that would be the best anti-player trolling, if the historic Dranei NPCs were the ugly things with the big mouths full of needle-teeth)

  • by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Friday November 08, 2013 @04:48PM (#45372763) Journal

    > The expansion will also revamp a number of aging character models.

    I hope it has a butt slider so I can make my Draeni mini-cowgirl's booty more properly Kardashinesque.

  • I won't be back (Score:4, Insightful)

    by acehole ( 174372 ) on Friday November 08, 2013 @05:17PM (#45373007) Homepage

    I played from launch up until just after BC came out and returned shortly just before CATA was released and left shortly after never to return.

    The game I loved is long dead, the soul was sucked out of it. You once knew all the people on your realm and could make 'friends' and contacts. Once they introduced the cross realm instancing it all stopped.

    The 40 mans were great fun and it was a sad day when they announced they were being removed from game. There were just things here and there that they streamlined the game for but it just well... didn't feel right.

    Purples used to mean 'epic' then part way through BC and most of WotLK it became the new green.

    Sorry Blizzard, you won't get me back.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Purples used to mean 'epic' then part way through BC and most of WotLK it became the new green.

      I know what you mean about epics. I'm was a somewhat casual raider but epics were fun upgrades and hard to get back in BC and even Wrath. You'd shit your panties if you played right now. They added an area in Pandaria called the Timeless Isle that is pretty much a re-gearing zone. It's like an Oprah special: "You get a purple, and you get a purple, and you can have ANOTHER purple!" Open a chest, get a purple. Kill a boss (there's like 50 on the island respawning all the time), get a purple. Complete

      • So?

        I'm a casual player...and i'm sure i'm Blizzards target demographic - sorry, but if all the elitists left tommorow, WOW and Blizzard would still be here and very viable based on our casual subscriptions.

        To tell you the truth about Timeless isle, I honestly appreciate being able to mail 496 tokens to my other toons and get them up to speed instead of having to log in and grind them in dungeons or whatever else - I simply DON'T HAVE THE TIME to spend in game getting everything leveled up. Some of us h
    • The magic's gone since they started seriously dumbing down the game at the end of TBC.... Have only done a trial period or two since then, totally unimpressed. Final Fantasy XIV is it now, unless that goes in a direction that is clearly upsetting to me. I am pretty damn nostalgic for old WoW memories, though. You can never go back.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I never understood the "dumbing down." The game mechanics are better now than they have ever been. There are more abilities to juggle, more decisions to make about when to use them, and more complicated situations than ever existed in Vanilla or BC.

        I hear people say things like the game is dumbed down because purples are easier to get. That the color of the text of an item could possibly have any value to the mechanics of the game is completely absurd.

        Clearly there's more content for casual players now. Tha

        • Wow, rogues got balanced and "weakened" so you now need a brain to play a rogue?

          What about the other classes? Warlocks are unplayable right now ... you don't need any brain anymore. (Did not play since march) As far as I can tell that is for all classes now. Hit random DPS buttons and you win, in pvp hit a random crowed control button.

          There is no "game mechanics" that got improved. The whole game degraded from expansion to expansion.

          The only phase where it imho was a really good game was end phase vanilla (

  • Seriously... They seem intent on not wanting money with the way they're treating this franchise.
  • 5 man content (Score:2, Interesting)

    by yoshi_mon ( 172895 )

    Obligatory WoW history: Started a few months into vanilla, ended that version as a Naxx 40 raider 9/15. Progression cleared everything in BC save the Sunwell and burned out of hardcore raiding. Took some time off during Wrath but came back for the end and did a fair amount of casual raiding as well as "fleet" building. (I had one of every class and had them all to the level cap.) Played Cata on and off but at most just leveled the fleet to cap. And then Mists hit and of all the versions of WoW it has

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by meta-monkey ( 321000 )

      But the thing is, only bads ever got their talent builds wrong. They still won't know how to not stand in fire, but at least now you don't have to worry about them showing up in your LFR group with points evenly distributed in every tree.

      • by Anonymous Coward
        This guy right here is one of many that killed WoW. He is one of the Elitist Jerks. The massive drop in WoW subs is people like him quitting because the non-hardcore people got access to "his" gated content without having to play 57 hours a day like he does. It eats his ass, so all he can do is unsub, go play EVE, and bitch on the forums about all those shitty n00bs.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      1. 5-man content is the bane of all MMOs. It is the singular type of content that forces people to do things in a way that they don't want to do, which is any or all of the following: (a) group with strangers, (b) rely on less competent players for individual progress, (c) waste time waiting for a viable group to form. 5-man content is the reason why many players disregard MMOs completely as a viable genre, whether they realize that as the cause or not.

      3. There should never be a way to build your character

      • Well instead of five man dungeons we now got LFR with 25 people. So 24 strangers which are often crap and can get away with it too since it's LFR difficulty. So if they don't want to meet people in a game then I suppose an MMO is the wrong place to be to begin with.

        And regarding talent trees I find that the MoP solution just makes the game far more boring. I don't feel enough of a different from the choices I make. They could just give me some fixed talents and I probably wouldn't notice. Was it with Cata t

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I don't feel enough of a different from the choices I make.

          As opposed to WoW before Mists, where you noticed a difference from your special-snowflake talent build in the form of (sometimes-dramatically) lower DPS? The "muh unique build" argument never had any credibility in a game where the measurement of performance is objectively quantifiable.

          Meanwhile, Team Fortress 2 fans complain about new weapons making the game's classes too customizable.

          Back in my day, you played video games because you wanted to ha

          • The measure is also having fun. Didn't say things were perfect before because they weren't. But I do think it got even worse removing choices.
            You still notice difference if you gem incorrectly, should we remove that too?

            And you can still complain and have fun. ;)

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You're not up to date on this at all then.
      Blizzard acknowledged that their idea of grinding dailies in MoP was a mistake. They removed it. Way too late... but they did remove it.
      I agree with you that the lack of 5 man content is a bit disappointing.

      As for a one time copy-pasting of talent trees from the EJ website into the game being a meaningful measure of skill is absurd. There are less skills, sure, but you can actually CHOOSE which skill you want since they are all similarly powerful in each tier. W

      • I am not nearly as fully informed about all the details of the game as I was when I was playing it but I have kept tabs on it. I did use the 10 days free offer IIRC about a month ago to just see what it was like. That new Isle of Catchup and all that. I was not looking for anything huge to do but the idea of getting my "fleet" to the cap was something that I thought might be worthy of resubbing for a bit.

        And then I started working on leveling and hit the lack of 5-man content wall and said nope nope nope

    • Seems like you got some of the problems at least.

      I didn't like the idea of LFR to begin with but I guess there is a point to it. However what we get now from Blizzard is four levels of the same RAID, from LFR to Heroic and no new instances at all since release. They got a few scenarios though but I honestly hate them and they're not the old five mans in any way.

      And daily grinds are indeed crap. I hate dailies and then they make them mandatory over time. At least they make them too important. I'd love to hav

  • i wonder how they are going to ruin this expansion like they did the last two. i also wonder how many million players they will lose this year.
  • I'll be back when they fix the fucking talent point system ("hur hur, users can't keep track of more than 4 points total") and murder every last panda.
  • We jumped the shark. We used the shark as a jump rope. We beat the shark to death with pandaland.

    Now we need to go back in time when the shark was still alive so we can beat it to death some more.

    Why? Because some people will buy anything.

    • HEY EVERYBODY! Look at this guy, he is cooler than World of Warcraft players and wants us to know that!
  • While my trusty well-worn characters, having struggled their way through Pandaria to a 90, must now somehow level even more?

    Sigh ...

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