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10-24-2005, 08:09 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-24-2005, 08:26 PM by Quark.)
Why do you guys all assume its marketing putting this information out? The patch notes are fake. The screenshots obviously are not, unless someone spent a ton of time with a freelance server, but there have been rumblings about broken NDAs. And Blizzard has tried to crack down on a bunch of this information hard. Seems to me they didn't even want us to know what we do know yet.
Edit: what they want us to know post-Blizzcon (of which some seems to be here), well you may or may not agree with their ideas. But you're arguing that their implementation of that idea is gonna suck before you've even seen it played.
Trade yourself in for the perfect one. No one needs to know that you feel you've been ruined!
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10-24-2005, 08:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-24-2005, 08:56 PM by Bob the Beholder.)
[COLOR=blue] Rinnhart,Oct 24 2005, 12:33 PM Wrote:It's hard to balance world-destroying powers.
...And I think Medivh was a mage.
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Medivh was a mage. Sort of. The whole 'Guardian' thing was a bit beyond your average mage.
In the novel The Last Guardian, which it scares me that I'm nerdy enough to own and have read, the majority of Medivh's duties as a Guardian, before the whole 'setting demon-crazed orcs on every living thing', were mainly finding and stopping warlocks, before they screwed up and summoned a demon that was too much for them, which would then go about killing and maiming at random.
*edit*
As far as Warcraft novels are concerned, I may as well note that some of my opinion on the horde being particularly non-evil comes from the novel Lord of the Clans. For example, this quote from none other than Grom Hellscream, the first chieftain to drink Mannoroth's blood and doom the Orc's to the bloodlust:
"Listen to me, tiny human. Tell your people that the orcs had you, and chose not to harm you. Tell them that they showed you mercy. Also tell them that if they try to find us, they will fail. Will will be on the move soon."
And on the next page...
"Iskar, my old friend, you have seen me when the bloodlust has come upon me. You have seen me wade in blood up to my knees. I have killed the children of the humans ere now. But we gave all we had fighting in that manner, and where has it brought us? Low and defeated, our kind slouch in camps and lift no hand to free themselves, let alone fight for others. That way of fighting, of making war, has brought us to this. Long have I thought that the ancestors would show me a new way, a way to win back what we have lost. It is a fool who repeats the same actions expecting a different outcome, and whatever I may be, I am not a fool. Thrall was strong enough to defeat the finest we had to offer. He has tasted humankind's ways and turned his back on them to be free. He has escaped from the camps and against the odds managed to find me. I agree with his choices here today. One day, my old friend, you, too, will see the wisdom in this."
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Quark,Oct 24 2005, 04:09 PM Wrote:Why do you guys all assume its marketing putting this information out?
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I don't, but the logical follow from "they should just stop giving out these information tidbits and concentrate on more important things" is that "they" = Blizzard -- and given that (potentially erroneous) supposition, then quite obviously "they" then drills down to "Blizzard Marketing."
And last I checked, there weren't too many developers or QA testers in the marketing department, which was the point I was driving home there. If this information is indeed leaking from marketing, they're doing their job: to generate excitement, anticipation, and discussion over the upcoming product. They have no more "important" things to be doing.
Darian Redwin - just some dude now
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Pesmerga,Oct 24 2005, 09:21 AM Wrote:'Can' being the operative word there. Seeing as how we have no definites yet, we can't say one way or the other. Just a bunch of guessing that, in the end, leads us nowhere.
:D
Heh, but if they do add Blood Elves to the horde, I think I might actually be able to convice the wife to do a horde duo with me. :D
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Fine. "Usually."
"AND THEN THE PALADIN TOOK MY EYES!"
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Grom Hellscream: [Orcish] kek
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Rinnhart,Oct 24 2005, 03:49 PM Wrote:Fine. "Usually."
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Core Combat didn't break Planetside. It didn't much add nor do anything USEFUL, either, at least not at first, but it didn't break anything. And, later on, they (attempted to) improved the game utilizing it, without any further expansions needed. And some of the things it added were truly great; just that some didn't really do much of anything (i.e. added levels didn't see much action, unless the server was really full, and that only happened at peak times). Nothing really "broke", per se, at least that I noticed.
So, not ALL MMOs get ruined by developer's adding expansions. For that matter, SoE, notorious for their Everquest series (and truly the birth of multi-million expansions :P; UO doesn't count), has ONLY brought out Core Combat for Planetside, and actually did a decent job with it. The levels, IIRC, still didn't get much play-time, but they attempted (once again) to fix that with the introduction of BFRs (mechs that are only unlockable if you "capture" a Cavern system 10 times; Caverns were introduced in Core Combat to add more urban combat, but they didn't garner much appeal), so mayhap that change helped things. It's been a LONG time since I played Planetside, but I imagine that the expansion is more or less worth it these days, all things considered. At least it didn't ever break anything. ;)
Just playing devil's advocate.
Roland *The Gunslinger*
But BFRs did. They came in the next free exspansion for PS.
I think what makes exspansions so tricky for Devs is that one bad expansion can ruin a game depite many other good exspansions.
DAoC showed this. Mythic made several good exspansions, but ToA hurt the game something terible.
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One item proves that Blizzard is fully capable of ruining the game with this expansion;
The Unstoppable Force.
"AND THEN THE PALADIN TOOK MY EYES!"
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I don't know how one could consider an upcoming expansion as a disaster waiting to happen. Give credit to Blizzard... they're the single most meticulous and thorough game developer out there. No other development house can live up to their record of success, and with due reason. And unlike houses like SOE they are very premeditated. Given their track record of amazing expansion packs, not being afraid to scrap projects if they are sub-par (Lord of the Clans, Ghost now being in it's 3rd or so revision), general level of meticulousness, and the safe bet that the expansion to their largest game ever (and world's largest MMO) puts some serious pressure on them to do well, I find it hard to think of them even considering dropping the ball.
Regarding info getting out early - most here should know how careful they are to not let any information out until they're dead sure it will not be changed. Blizzard is renowned for their secrecy on projects, patches, and the like. They are aware of how popular they are, and do not risk information leaks of discrepant info... hence why the Italian article was swiped from the internet within hours of being hosted (thank god for the quick people re-hosting for our speculation eh? :)). In one week they'll be blowing the cover off this expansion, and they didn't want anyone stealing their thunder.
Ahh well. Jaded gamers and internet hate runs rampant everywhere I suppose!
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Bob the Beholder,Oct 24 2005, 03:26 PM Wrote:Medivh was a mage. Sort of. The whole 'Guardian' thing was a bit beyond your average mage.[right][snapback]93015[/snapback][/right]
Let us assume for a moment that the game lore overrides any novelizations.
In WCI we have the last female guardian, who sleeps with one of Azeroth's court conjurer's and births Medivh. He grows up. His powers kick in, his 'guardian' aspect does not. He is eventually in his own tower, consorts with demons, and opens the dark portal. He's slain in the events of WCI by Lothar's band. Kickstart to WC3, Medivh's back and finally is a guardian. There is no mention of Medivh doing good prior to WC3. Any 'guardian' duties he has performed, is pure novelization and has not been put in any of the games.
So what does make one a warlock? In Warcraft lore, they're mages or shaman turned bad.
1) Prior training and attunement to magic: Check
2) Association with Demons: I think so, but I need to check my WCI manual.
3) Destroyed while in pursuit of epic power: Definitely
WCI: Medivh's tower was full of creepy spiders. Sure they seem almost cuddly now, but back then units didn't self heal or even defend themselves without being ordered. Silly gits. Lothar didn't have healers alongside either, and he was required to survive to beat the level! Just nasty all around.
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While I bash Blizzard as much - and maybe more - than the next person, they're still leaps and bounds ahead of any other developer out there; Valve is the only one that comes close (Steam, now that it's working pretty well, is one of the most brilliant ideas I've seen).
I think they've done some pretty retarded moves with WoW (making the server transfers to existing servers instead of creating new ones for the specific purpose; adding The Unstoppable Force to the game; Rob Pardo's Awesome Changes⢠after Indalamar damned the Warrior class by releasing a video), but that would bring their track record down to 95% from 98% :)
ArrayPaladins were not meant to sit in the back of the raid staring at health bars all day, spamming heals and listening to eight different classes whine about buffs.[/quote]
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I always remember having trouble with the slimes and fire elementals :)
ArrayPaladins were not meant to sit in the back of the raid staring at health bars all day, spamming heals and listening to eight different classes whine about buffs.[/quote]
The original Heavy Metal Cowâ¢. USDA inspected, FDA approved.
Artega,Oct 24 2005, 08:14 PM Wrote:While I bash Blizzard as much - and maybe more - than the next person, they're still leaps and bounds ahead of any other developer out there; Valve is the only one that comes close (Steam, now that it's working pretty well, is one of the most brilliant ideas I've seen).
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Hardly. Valve has thus far put out one great game which it has repackaged a dozen times and followed it up with a mediocre one. If you had made this comment five years ago, I would have agreed with you. The only thing Valve truly gets credit for is knocking Id of it's pedastle.
There are many game companies that have produced better overall results than Valve. Rockstar (undeniably successful, although unlikely to appeal to the lurker crowd) and Relic come to mind, although there are probably better examples. Which is not to say Valve is a bad company. They are light-years ahead of the travesties that are such companies as Ion Storm and 3DRealms.
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The only thing I am not looking forward to is the level cap raise , by around may 2006 I will have around 4 lvl 60's at least , now I have to grind those characters to 70 and it will probably take longer gettting 60 - 70 than it did getting from 1 - 60 , I dont do many instance runs so dont really have the best gear I wonder how that will affect solo grinding , but then again the game might have lost all interest for me by then , we shall see .
Take care
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Planetside! Oooh... I've played this game! Bought the expansion too. It was really a wonderful idea, unfortunately it was so pointless conquering a continent, when it could be retaken half an hour later. Anyway, I loved playing Planetside. Just couldn't bring myself to play it for more than half a year. I think I got enough fun out of it to justify the monthly fee.
Regarding the information policy about future stuff by Blizzard. Thinking about it I'm doubtful that they have a marketing division. Being a part of Vivendi, a publisher who certainly has its own marketing, they don't need it. I think. The closest thing to a marketer Blizzard had was Bill Roper. He left. I know that a game developer needs someone to present prototypes, that is to say: unfinished products, to get a publishing deal. But Blizzard does not have to anymore. That is my layman opinion about this.
For the question if expansions break a game. In the past Blizzard really had great success with expansions. I believe that LOD made Diablo II better. The same goes for Starcraft. Warcraft III and the Frozen Throne, well, the story got a continuation.
World of Warcraft as it is now is a wonderful game. It has flaws. But overall I think it is a sounding success. I doubt that anything what Blizzard does will kill the game. Even if they would horribly mutilate it, it will keep millions of subscribers. It does not matter if I leave. Not everyone will be pleased with every change. That is only natural.
Now I have not much experience with MMOs and expansion. Planetside is one. But one can hardly compare PS with WOW. I had only one other experience with an expansion of a MMORPG. There they did not raise the level cap. They added new gear and armour (or costumes ;). They added new areas. Only the players with the expansion installed could visit these areas. But everyone could see and use the new items and armour. New monsters were only visible in the new areas. To access some of the new areas you had to do some difficult tasks once. The net result was that people who did not want to buy the expansion were not hurt by that decision too much.
How about other examples? For example what happened to Everquest? They have how many expansions now? Any EQ oldtimer here who can relate his experience?
Dark Age of Camelot, another PvP MMO; did DAOC have any expansions? Did they hurt or enhance the PvP or the PvE experience with the expansion?
-Arnulf
Old age and treachery will always overcome youth and enthusiasm!
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Arnulf,Oct 23 2005, 07:42 AM Wrote:I cannot imagine why the Blood Elves would side with the Horde.
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I was playing my hunter in ratchet today when I did the Guns of Northwatch quest. Now there is also an escort quest that you pick up while doing that one. It occured to me that the NPC that you have to escort looks an awful lot like the Blood Elf pics that are circulating. I also looked at the captain who you turn the quest into and he looks Blood Elvish to me as well. I had always wondered why the horde were helping an elf for that quest, so now I'm wondering if maybe this is a sign that the Blood Elves are already on the horde side. I checked on allak and both guns of northwatch (which comes from the captain guy) and the escort quest (free from the hold) are horde only. Now its possible that these elves are just night elves. I don't know night elf skins all that well. They look different to me though. So now I'm wondering, are there other Blood Elves currently in the game and do quests involving them seem to lean toward either faction?
I would also like to say that while I don't like the idea of the horde getting a "pretty race", I can understand why they would want to give them one. Giving the horde a "pretty race" would help get more people to give horde a try. Kind of like how Pesmerga said that maybe his wife will give them a try with him. I'm sure others would do the same. Something like this may help many servers where the faction ration is heavy alliance currently. With a "pretty race" added to horde things could maybe even out some. I do like how sometimes it feels like the horde has less of the players that we all want to avoid, but maybe its worth giving that up to even up the two sides. This could also help with the complaints about not being able to get into battlegrounds as well. With more even sides there should be more games going instead of having alliance players waiting for enough horde to queue up. So I dunno. I kind of don't want the horde to have a "pretty race", but it does feel like it might be good as well. Of course then it may make the servers where there are more horde than alliance even more one sided.
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Artega,Oct 24 2005, 10:14 PM Wrote:I think they've done some pretty retarded moves with WoW (making the server transfers to existing servers instead of creating new ones for the specific purpose; adding The Unstoppable Force to the game; Rob Pardo's Awesome Changes⢠after Indalamar damned the Warrior class by releasing a video), but that would bring their track record down to 95% from 98% :)
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Numbers show that most servers are very Alliance heavy. My server (Mal'Ganis) is the flipside, we have about twice as many Horde! I appreciate their effort to get people transferred between servers with odd balances like that, even if they haven't gotten to Mal'Ganis yet. When you have two cups overflowing with water and one with just a little in it, it makes more sense to empty some of the two into the one rather than getting a fourth cup.
Sorry for derailing this topic more: What was in this warrior video you mentioned? The class is frighteningly awesome in pvp and pve currently. Was the video pre-talent revision, or what?
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MissileToad,Oct 25 2005, 12:43 PM Wrote:Numbers show that most servers are very Alliance heavy. My server (Mal'Ganis) is the flipside, we have about twice as many Horde! I appreciate their effort to get people transferred between servers with odd balances like that, even if they haven't gotten to Mal'Ganis yet. When you have two cups overflowing with water and one with just a little in it, it makes more sense to empty some of the two into the one rather than getting a fourth cup.
Sorry for derailing this topic more: What was in this warrior video you mentioned? The class is frighteningly awesome in pvp and pve currently. Was the video pre-talent revision, or what?
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It showcased the original Bloodthirst, which was a 200% damage buff combined with a 100% increase to crit chance after a killing blow on anything that gave experience. IIRC, he was killing elites (I want to say the dragonkin around Blackrock Mountain) in seconds - he'd proc BT, switch to a two-hander and decimate the next target (it was basically a BT hit followed by another hit or two and then an Execute) and he chained them together like this.
As far as the server transfers go, I hate them. Bloodscalp had a small, great community before they happened - because it was so small, almost everyone knew everyone else (literally), and our biggest guild (Alliance, of course) had 49 accounts. Before the transfers, UBRS was still a pretty big thing for us, and we were just starting MC (finding forty competent people was difficult.) Then Shattered Hand was allowed to transfer over, and they did; we got ninjas from both factions, uberguilds (e.g. people that had MC on farming status), and in general a lot of undesirables. Our small community was wrecked, our server economy was thrashed, and the uberguilds that transferred over paraded about OG and IF like gods. And just when we were FINALLY able to start recovering from the Shattered Hand transfers, Blackrock was allowed to transfer over. A large percentage of the Bloodscalp natives (myself included) rerolled onto the server from scratch due to our initial server choices becoming too crowded; that people were allowed to transfer over with all of their gear, and being capable of "starting over" (e.g. being able to ninja more loot before they got blacklisted) rubbed us the wrong way.
ArrayPaladins were not meant to sit in the back of the raid staring at health bars all day, spamming heals and listening to eight different classes whine about buffs.[/quote]
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Artega,Oct 25 2005, 09:28 AM Wrote:It showcased the original Bloodthirst, which was a 200% damage buff combined with a 100% increase to crit chance after a killing blow on anything that gave experience. IIRC, he was killing elites (I want to say the dragonkin around Blackrock Mountain) in seconds - he'd proc BT, switch to a two-hander and decimate the next target (it was basically a BT hit followed by another hit or two and then an Execute) and he chained them together like this.
He was in the Blackrock stronghold in the burning steppes and that video was awesome.
Rogues and hunters farm that place, now. They kill only slightly slower than he did.
Quote:As far as the server transfers go, I hate them. Bloodscalp had a small, great community before they happened - because it was so small, almost everyone knew everyone else (literally), and our biggest guild (Alliance, of course) had 49 accounts. Before the transfers, UBRS was still a pretty big thing for us, and we were just starting MC (finding forty competent people was difficult.) Then Shattered Hand was allowed to transfer over, and they did; we got ninjas from both factions, uberguilds (e.g. people that had MC on farming status), and in general a lot of undesirables. Our small community was wrecked, our server economy was thrashed, and the uberguilds that transferred over paraded about OG and IF like gods. And just when we were FINALLY able to start recovering from the Shattered Hand transfers, Blackrock was allowed to transfer over. A large percentage of the Bloodscalp natives (myself included) rerolled onto the server from scratch due to our initial server choices becoming too crowded; that people were allowed to transfer over with all of their gear, and being capable of "starting over" (e.g. being able to ninja more loot before they got blacklisted) rubbed us the wrong way.
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Kil'Jaeden had an account transfer to Boulder Fist a while ago. We didn't lose any big guilds, we lost all of our instancing people. Really sucks to find a group, ever since.
"AND THEN THE PALADIN TOOK MY EYES!"
Forever oppressed by the GOLs.
Grom Hellscream: [Orcish] kek
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The video was from fairly late in beta. I don't remember the exact details, but there was a talent that gave you a bonus when you killed somebody. It stacked with another talent in an absurd way, such that a warrior was able to go to the keep near the ramp to BRM in the burning steppes, and chain 2 shot the orcs there.
As far as server transfers go, I'm sorry it didn't work out for you Artega. I'm sure there are people on your server, however, that were able to get into the new guilds and are happily doing content they couldn't when the biggest guild had 50 people. Everytime they open a new server, there is a significant "Wahhhh we don't have enough people as is!!!" outcry.
And there are several Blood Elves in the game. The first one I can think of is the guy in STM who gives lowbie horde quests to kill the druids around there.
And there are still a few highelves in the game, I think. The guys in the library in DM, and the guys in the north EPL who have a hunting lodge.
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oldmandennis,Oct 25 2005, 11:03 AM Wrote:And there are several Blood Elves in the game. The first one I can think of is the guy in STM who gives lowbie horde quests to kill the druids around there.
There are lots of blood elves in Azshara. Also, I believe the NPC in the demon area in Winterspring is a Blood Elf.
Quote:And there are still a few highelves in the game, I think. The guys in the library in DM, and the guys in the north EPL who have a hunting lodge.
There's a high elf compound in the Hinterlands, too.
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