Burning Crusade Will Introduce Difficulty Settings

[Monkey]

Looks to me like Blizzard have taken the easy way out, only tacking them to the existing map and only providing 1-20 lvs of "NEW" experience until the next 40 lvs of running around the same old places, doing the same old things, what a missed opportunity to reach more ppl.

I'll dig for the quote later, but there was an official indicateion in the last week or so that they were going to add some mid-level new content to help keep it interesting for people starting over from the beginning. This came out in a discussion about what people without the expansion could do (They get some of the new mid-level stuff). I'll edit this post if I find it again.

[Kevin]

They are also making so much money from this that there really isn't such a thing as limited resources, just limited willingness to improve resources ;-)

Not quite.

You can't always just throw more people or money at something and make it better. There are only so many programmers that are good enough and have the interest to work on games out there. Blizzard doesn't write the best of code as it is and a lot of Comp Sci's simply write hack code that is pretty much crap too you can't just higher someone with a degree or even a degree + experience and expect to write anything of quality.


Now admittedly what is being asked for is likely something that if you can get the people you can just throw more people at. Assuming any modularity to the code at all you just get another team to make an instance that gets plugged into a zone. Then get another team to simply make a new zone. But there are limits on actually getting people that have the skill to do it.

I do believe they should be trying harder to look for people that have the skill to do it and simply expand the team. Though at this stage from the business cycle point of view they are probablly figuring this is the peak, it's all decline from now anyway because someone else is developing something that will look prettier and have some new feature, heck they might be doing that. The expansion will blip things up a bit and extend the life for some of the current folks, but this is it, we are at the top of the mountian. The trip down should still be good and this mountian is bigger than anyone before it, but I can't blame them. Now if they have another MMO in the works, it might not be bad to hire in the extra work for this one now, get them more experience doing some content then move them on to the next thing which you can likely expect to be as big if not bigger than WoW. And it's obvious they didn't expect WoW to be this big. No one really expects to be 3 to 4 times more successful than anything that came before.

[lfd]

Correction: They've been developing 60+ raid content for a long time. New 60+ group content has been pretty thin on the ground for the last sixteen months. Around 70% of level 60's don't raid.

That's just what they've put live. What I meant was that they'd been developing Outlands as a zone - and all the non-instancey, non-raidy places you will use to level from 60 to 70 - for a long time.

There hasn't been nearly enough non-raid level 60 content. And yes, I know this is MM, but for me that doesn't mean "force into groups with". I liked being able to pretty much solo to 60. I'd have liked for there to be more for me to do on my own or in a duo when I got there.

I'd far rather have new content I'll go back to again and again than a zone I'll visit once while levelling and never see again.

I'd rather have both. The problem is that it's not somewhere I'd never see again. It's somewhere I'll pass through again with my next alt.

Taking a leaf from the first post in this thread how about a 'set this dungeon to level 60' switch for the earlier dungeons, making them reusable content as well?

I have little confidence in Blizzard being able to balance it appropriately.

[Xanthix]

Blizzard cannot add content fast enough at the high end, but by adding mid-level content - and there are some level ranges that are pretty painful to get through if you don't spend your life in instances - they add replayability to the game.

I'd rather have both. The problem is that it's not somewhere I'd never see again. It's somewhere I'll pass through again with my next alt.

My point about mid-level content versus high-level content is that since it is easy to get to the level cap in WoW, and there are so many 60's already, that it makes sense for Blizzard to devote the majority of their dev time to high-level content.

I think most people run through mid-level content one or two times per character, since characters are constantly leveling. But players spend much more time at the level cap, playing through high-level content. Give players more high-level content to work on and they are likely to spend even more time on their 60's instead of rolling alts because they are bored.

I know we'd all like to see new zones for the 30-50 run, but for the most part I have heard people very happy with the leveling system in WoW (at least their first 2-3 times thru it), but unhappy with the lack of options at 60. Therefore, focusing on level 60-70 content gives something for everyone: Level-capped players will have lots more options, and currently-leveling players have more end-game content to look forward to as well.

Overall I think Blizzard is learning. Instead of just having a few 5-man 55-60 instances, some insane rep grinds, and then big raid instances for the raiders, WoW:BC should have lots of options for groups of 1, 5, 10, 20, and 40.

And if it was a choice between that, or a few more mid-level zones I can run because I'm sick of STV and Uldaman, I'm glad the former was chosen.

[ZugzwangZeitgeist]

POOR, POOR, POOR. :angry:

Such a shame, here i was thinking that with this so called expansion bringing 2 new races into the mix that they'd actually "START" in the outlands and have new area's set up to add the flavor of the outlands to them.

It's been public knowledge (on the WoW website no less) for months that the races would be starting on the main continents. Outlands won't be immediately accessible - it will be opened with a world event. The Outlands will consist of 60+ zones and instances, filling out the new 60-70 level range.

If you don't like that fine, but this whole armchair game design is getting tedious. Yes, I'm sure they could have released an expansion with content for every level in the game, as well as expanding for the new range of 60-70. They didn't, and rather understandably focused on expanding and fleshing out the endgame. Considering it's supposed to take close to the time required to level 1-60 just to get from 60-70, I'm rather glad they did. I'd rather have 20 endgame instances and well fleshed out endgame (which WoW did not have by any measure at release) than spread themselves thin again and wind up with the exact same problem of people running out of content.

I'm looking forward to crazy demon dungeons and Illidan and customizable difficulty and doing Kharazan. I'm not going to fret that they didn't waste time making Razorfen Downs II: Outlands Boogaloo. I mean enough people skip the already existant instances, I'd rather they focus on expanding the game for their current player base.

[Chesspiece_face]

Razorfen Downs II: Outlands Boogaloo.

Actually i hear that is the name of the new MMO they are working on.

[Monkey]

Actually i hear that is the name of the new MMO they are working on.

I'm totally going to register outlandsboogaloo.net right now.

[MongoJerry]

Such a shame, here i was thinking that with this so called expansion bringing 2 new races into the mix that they'd actually "START" in the outlands and have new area's set up to add the flavor of the outlands to them.

Looks to me like Blizzard have taken the easy way out, only tacking them to the existing map and only providing 1-20 lvs of "NEW" experience until the next 40 lvs of running around the same old places, doing the same old things, what a missed opportunity to reach more ppl.

I'll still be around, even having 4 60's now and a 5th realy close, but i'm realy dissapointed that they couldnt have taken the time they've had to breath new life into the game with 1-60lvs of new area's to explore.

Oh, dear God, no! A thousand times no! The reason why the end game content currently in the game is so sparse is that they spent most of their development time refining the level 1-40 zones and left the 40-60 zones as crude outlines of what they should be. No, please, maybe they could throw in a few quests or zones for levels 1-60, especially for level 40-60's, but 90% of their effort should focus on level 60-70 content and half of that should be geared toward level 70's.

I'm confused by some comments in this thread about level 30's content being sparse. Levels 30-40 are the easiest to burn through, as there are a ton of areas to go to. Several of my characters have leveled through them without ever visiting STV -- and not even by my intentionally avoiding the place. 1k Needles, Desolace, Alterac, Arathi, and the Swamp of Sorrows all have plenty to do and that doesn't count spillover from high level quests in 20's zones like the Wetlands, Duskwood, and Ashenvale/Stonetalon.

[mistique]

Hey all,

Wow, never though i'd take such a bagging about a post, still i suppose it's generated talk about the topic.
Anyway i though i'd clarify some of my comments.

1. when i say the 30-40 areas are sparse to be adding 2 new races into the mix i ment that for the perspective of a player with multiple 60's, i have 4 at the moment & another at 54, 42,32,18. Those are all hoard, i dont have a desire to play alliance atm, so these characters have all made their way through the barrens/Silverpine then Hillsbrad/Stonetalon/1k needles..then Desloace/Arathi and so on, and there's only so many times you can go over those areas before it gets stale.

Now unless there are hoard quests in the alliance areas then that's a 1/2 a world that unless you like grinding is realy off limits, and if you play on a PVP server then i dont recomend you go there.

2. Blizzard is making an expansion to Wow, no i think we've all become accostomed to "expansions" taking a player "beyond" where it's already been, and the info i see on the outlands looks good and will add new life to the game....briefly...i dont see ppl taking a year to reach 70, or to have explored the new instances, even with the difficulty changes comming in.

So, that will mean that after a while depending on how you play and how many characters you have you'll be back to the ones you havn't played or the 2 new races, with their 10-20 lvs of NEW areas, and how long will those take?

As i said earlier we're accustomed to the expansion being beyond the current experience, but blizzard have seen fit to add 2 new races to keep ppl interested in the game but havn't realy added much to progress those characters storyline, since i thought they were linked to the outlands, i could be wrong?

I dont expect any of this to stop ppl from playing the game or even wish that, i love wow, i just think that given the time spent on this "outlands" that blizzard are taking the easy way out in a attempt to add new content before the new way of MMORPG's shows up, and they are comming.

Have fun....and lets see where it goes from here:wacko: