BlizzCon: New content playable on Friday

[nobbie]

Sounds like a preview of the next WoW expansion is right around the corner:

http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/07/28/confi...ed-at-blizzcon/

[ima_nerd]

Sounds like a preview of the next WoW expansion is right around the corner:

http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/07/28/confi...ed-at-blizzcon/

Oooohh, exciting. I seem to recall Blizzard saying they wanted to release expansions on a yearly schedule. Anyone else remember that or am I crazy?

[Taelas]

That's what I seem to remember as well.

[nobbie]

Also just in: "Northrend" music leaked:

http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/07/29/leake...c-points-north/

[Quark]

Also just in: "Northrend" music leaked:

http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/07/29/leake...c-points-north/

On a tangent, why do people so easily distort what was said?

Blizzard has said in the past that a full raid of level 80 players would be needed to beat him (at least), so if we are going to Northrend in the next expansion, we may be looking at yet another 10 level cap raise.

Here's the real context:

Finally, someone asked about Arthas. When are players going to get to beat him down? Metzen seemd to relish the prospect. "Oh yeah, he's gonna get his!" he said. But it's not going to happen anytime soon. "At level 70? No way!" Metzen said, "The game has to catch up to him." So yeah, that's one massive villain that players won't get to hammer on for quite some time... but he's out there, a looming presence, sneering in the distance. Someday friends! Someday.

That mentions nothing about what level you can fight him at, just what level you can't.

[oldmandennis]

To say that "you can play new content at blizzcon" means that an xpac will be out soon is silly. I'd be suprised if it wasn't Zul'Aman. I seem to recall the TBC being announced and teasers about the content well before anything was playable.

They did say they wanted to release xpac's yearly, but I haven't seen any decent rumors about it. Also, Illidan has been dead for a couple of months now, and there is no hint of new high end content. That seems to be a bit of a lag from what they've done previously, and it's bad enough that D&T is trolling for Warhammer beta's.

[nobbie]

Well, the news source said that even if we see Northrend next this doesn't necessarily include Arthas raids (or another 10 levels to climb up)?

[Legedi]

To say that "you can play new content at blizzcon" means that an xpac will be out soon is silly. I'd be suprised if it wasn't Zul'Aman. I seem to recall the TBC being announced and teasers about the content well before anything was playable.

They did say they wanted to release xpac's yearly, but I haven't seen any decent rumors about it. Also, Illidan has been dead for a couple of months now, and there is no hint of new high end content. That seems to be a bit of a lag from what they've done previously, and it's bad enough D&T is trolling for Warhammer beta's.

Who really cares that D&T has "beat" the game is bored. Good for them! They, and like 20-30 guilds world wide have beaten the game. So less than a thousand people out of NINE MILLION are bored with the contend that is out. Lets release a new expansion, make Hyjal Summit and Black Temple obsolete so everyone can level up again!

I was pretty disappointed that I didn't get to see more of Naxx at level 60. I've only started getting into SSC and TK. If a new expansions comes out again so soon I don't think I'm going to be too interested in the hurry up and level then wait for everyone else to catch up.

[nobbie]

I was pretty disappointed that I didn't get to see more of Naxx at level 60.

I'm pretty sure we will be seeing Naxxramas in the Northrend expansion again, if not a "heroic" version of it - this thing can fly!;)

[Monkey]

To say that "you can play new content at blizzcon" means that an xpac will be out soon is silly. I'd be suprised if it wasn't Zul'Aman. I seem to recall the TBC being announced and teasers about the content well before anything was playable.

Yeah, I'm sure that the "new playable content" is the Zul'Aman patch. We may see an announcement of the next expansion , but I doubt their pipeline is so full as to have a playable alpha of ZA and a playable alpha of new expansion. If I recall correctly from the last pre-TBC days, they have the same team doing patches and expansions.

However, because it would easy to field an unrelated team, I think we'll see the announcement of an upcoming title other than SC2 or WoW 3.0. Blizzard's built an absolutely massive customer service and support organization to service their WoW customers and they need things in the pipe for when WoW eventually experiences a ...ah ..."reduction in active subscriptions".

Or maybe they're going to close up shop and spend their days doing laps in the money bin. It does take a lot of hard practice to swan dive into fat sacks of cash, after all.

[oldmandennis]

Or maybe they're going to close up shop and spend their days doing laps in the money bin. It does take a lot of hard practice to swan dive into fat sacks of cash, after all.

The trick is to aim for the stacks of bills, and avoid the diamond encrusted scepters.

There was an interview somewhere where they stated that they were forming a third team, aside from the WoW team and the SC2 team. They are also looking for developers for mobile devices, which probably doesn't fit on either of those teams.

Who really cares that D&T has "beat" the game is bored. Good for them!

Sure it's only a handful of guilds right now, but there is probably 1-2 per relm that are making good progress in BT. Most of those guilds will be done or nearly done by the time ZA hits live (remember it's not scheduled for 2.2 - and 2.2 doesn't seem like it's going to hit any time soon), and they will probably all finish that on the first night.

My point is that usually the next high end content is announced by the time the last is beaten (even if they have to enforce that with bugs), and is out within 4 months or so. You can't pretend it wouldn't strongly affect the population on your server if 5 months from now the top 3 guilds, the guys you see wandering around Shatt with the shiny purples, all said "Warhammer is way better then this game" and ebayed. Maybe you would still want to keep working on BT, but it would get much harder to recruit quality raiders to do it with you.

[Warlock]

Hey, I beat the game too (albeit because raiding doesn't feel like a game to me). Hope they do manage a BC quality expansion a year.

[Taelas]

Ehh. 1-2 per realm with good progress in BT? Earthen Ring is one of the original servers in Europe, and I think the furthest progress the top guild has is mid-to-late TK. (Admittedly, I don't play much these days and haven't checked.)

There is a huge difference from server to server as to how far progress is. 1-2 per realm with good progress in BT on average is too high.

[oldmandennis]

You may be right. http://www.wowjutsu.com/us/index2.html is a automated progress tracker, though it tends to round up when people transfer. It has about 150 guilds in BT, or about 3/4 of one per relm (US only).

I still maintain that this gap is unprecedented. Remember, there are no hints of the new content - no activity in MPQ's, no obvious portals with nothing behind them. It takes around 6 months from when they start teasing something to when it goes live. If they don't do something about it soon, other games will be happy to eat their lunch. They have had a nice run without any serious challengers so far, but that will be tested (I hope) by some much anticipated games.

[Artega]

On a wild tangent, am I the only one that thinks Zul'aman is the most ridiculous idea they've come up with so far? That it's a raid instance featuring trolls isn't what I mean (hey, Zul'gurub rocked); I mean that it's a raid instance for both factions located inside a Horde zone. This won't really impact people leveling in Ghostlands very much unless the Allies decide to camp Tranquillien while waiting on the rest of their raid (and that will happen), but I know that I'll be setting up a tent city at the EPL portal, ganking and camping Allies porting in.

Seems like it'd be a much better idea to make Zul'aman a Horde-only raid, and make another raid - completely identical in encounter design, terrain design, loot, everything - in space squid land (Bloodmyst Isle, I think is what it's called), with whatever their "natural" enemies are (Eredar, maybe?) You'd have two identical raid instances for the factions; the only difference would be cosmetic. Hell, you could even have the same lore (simply replace trolls with whatever the space squid enemy is.)

I'm not really complaining; I'm looking forward to the waves of tears that will be unleashed when the hapless Allies stumble into my tent city at the EPL portal, but I do think it's a pretty stupid idea.

[NuurAbSaal]

I'm going to do the unthinkable and trust Blizzard with having thought of that. The easiest way to do it: make the staging grounds for ZA a Sanctuary like the Dark Portal or Shattrah.

The end of a ganker's wet dream :P

take care
Tarabulus

[Quark]

You may be right. http://www.wowjutsu.com/us/index2.html is a automated progress tracker, though it tends to round up when people transfer. It has about 150 guilds in BT, or about 3/4 of one per relm (US only).

I still maintain that this gap is unprecedented. Remember, there are no hints of the new content - no activity in MPQ's, no obvious portals with nothing behind them. It takes around 6 months from when they start teasing something to when it goes live. If they don't do something about it soon, other games will be happy to eat their lunch. They have had a nice run without any serious challengers so far, but that will be tested (I hope) by some much anticipated games.

It's always the end of the world, isn't it?

Anyway, no activity in the MPQs is false ... there's Northrend stuff in there, among other things. A bunch was added in 2.1.

[Quark]

On a wild tangent, am I the only one that thinks Zul'aman is the most ridiculous idea they've come up with so far? That it's a raid instance featuring trolls isn't what I mean (hey, Zul'gurub rocked); I mean that it's a raid instance for both factions located inside a Horde zone. This won't really impact people leveling in Ghostlands very much unless the Allies decide to camp Tranquillien while waiting on the rest of their raid (and that will happen), but I know that I'll be setting up a tent city at the EPL portal, ganking and camping Allies porting in.

You said it yourself, it's a Horde zone. As in, the Horde won't be automatically flagged in it. As in, no ganking of the low levels, even on a PvP server.

Worst case scenario is simply that a Horde gets an opening move on some Alliance flagged. That's PvP pretty much everywhere else in the world - one side gets a cheapshot in to start things off. If you have to deal with it, guess what? You rolled on a PvP server, deal with it. They can only get that cheapshot once (in five minutes).

Seems like it'd be a much better idea to make Zul'aman a Horde-only raid, and make another raid - completely identical in encounter design, terrain design, loot, everything - in space squid land (Bloodmyst Isle, I think is what it's called), with whatever their "natural" enemies are (Eredar, maybe?) You'd have two identical raid instances for the factions; the only difference would be cosmetic. Hell, you could even have the same lore (simply replace trolls with whatever the space squid enemy is.)

Wow that sounds like a colossus waste of time on Blizzard's part.

I'm not really complaining; I'm looking forward to the waves of tears that will be unleashed when the hapless Allies stumble into my tent city at the EPL portal, but I do think it's a pretty stupid idea.

Yes, we know, you're a jerk. You never stop broadcasting that to the world.

[nobbie]

Even more bones to chew on;)

http://pc.ign.com/articles/809/809350p1.html

[Kevin]

You said it yourself, it's a Horde zone. As in, the Horde won't be automatically flagged in it. As in, no ganking of the low levels, even on a PvP server.

Worst case scenario is simply that a Horde gets an opening move on some Alliance flagged. That's PvP pretty much everywhere else in the world - one side gets a cheapshot in to start things off. If you have to deal with it, guess what? You rolled on a PvP server, deal with it. They can only get that cheapshot once (in five minutes).

No worst case is that Tranquillen ends up in worse shape than the Crossroads. If you don't play horde on a PvE server that is 70% alliance don't quite understand how annoying it can be for your quest NPC's to all be dead for 4 to 5 hours straight (one group of alliance kills them, by the time they are bored another group does). And while it's just a game and you don't have to fight back, many people will want to.

However I don't expect it to be that bad, since ZA is only a 10 man, and it's loot isn't as good as some of the 25 mans already in the game and it's far enough away from Tranquillen that you would have to intentionally detour over there. And while the new zones are way better to level in up till your 20's than the old zone (better loots, better quest progression for less travel) it's really easy to just get out of there. I don't expect it to be bad, but Traquillen will be flattened a few times and simply annoy a few horde players with something that alliance players almost never have to deal with. I still laughed so hard on SR one day at the outrage some of those folks had when horde managed to kill all the NPC's in Westfall and had them all dead for all of about 15 minutes. All I could think about was the fact that I figured the Crossroads should have had an alliance FP because they generally had more NPC's alive there than the horde did.

Again it's easy to say, oh it's no big deal, until you've dealt with getting home from a crappy day and saying "I want to these 3 or 4 quests with my little so and so toon" only to log in and find out that you can't because the NPC is always dead so getting the prereqs for Wailing Caverns done so that you can run it with your friends isn't going to happen, you don't really get your relaxing questing done because your town is flattened. And yeah I don't expect it to ever be as bad as it was before battle grounds were introduced and I don't expect alliance to understand it at all. It wasn't a PvP server thing, it was actually more annoying on a PvE server because even if you have a bigger toon that can do something about it you can't because you will be outnumbered. I'm just happy that we can get Halaa for about 30 minutes out of the 10,080 minutes of each week.

And no this won't really affect the raiders at all, in fact on PvP servers it will be more annoying for alliance. on PvE servers it will simply be an annoyance to people trying to relax on lowbie hordes or level up a new alt or someone new to the game playing a BE. Unless of course they do something like give the alliance a teleported ala Gnomereggan for the horde that just ports you to an area near the portal. That's what I'm hoping for as that will be even less incentive to beat up Tranquillen before a raid.