World of Warcraft: Editorial: The Burning Crusade

Dana · December 2005

Garrett Fuller pens his latest World of WarCraft editorial as he considers what people may do in the upcoming expansion pack "The Burning Crusade".

No release date has been announced. There will be a level cap boost to 70. There is a Horde race. The Alliance race has yet to be seen. There will be new instance dungeons. There will be new raid dungeons. There will be a new zone with flying mounts and quests. All this sounds nice and good, well actually not all of it. In this editorial I want to try and bring up some questions about what The Burning Crusade will mean for five million players.

That is right, five million! Congratulations Blizzard on the largest selling MMORPG to date! In doing more research on this game I am most surprised at the sheer amount of people who play. From executives and celebrities to my friends twelve year old son (who still beats me in duels), it seems like everyone plays this game. Is everyone happy with the content and game-play of Warcraft? Some yes, some no, we have all had a lot of things to say about the design of the game and its flaws. The biggest question players have is what will The Burning Crusade bring?

You may read the full article by clicking here.

Dragonmuse · December 2005

I personally welcome the Blood elves. I think one of the reasons for the imbalance between horde and alliance on most of the pve servers is largely due to the ugliness of the female models. Women don't want to play ugly, butch or hideous sounding characters and thus won't play horde. WoW has attracted many women, and they are the ones who often determine where the family ends up playing.

I am a hardcore gamer, which is unusual for a woman (have been playing MMOs since 1998), but I am not comfortable playing anything but night elf. It has taken me over a year to get accustomed to play horde at all, but I still have not gotten a horde character over 40. All my 60s are NE. Most women are new to gaming and I am sure would be even less comfortable playing horde characters than I am. We are trained all our lives to try to be as beautiful as can be, not repulsive.

I really do think having an attractive race will help fix the imbalance. I know of many guilds that ended up alliance even though the guys wanted horde because their wives/girlfriends flat out refused to play horde.

Unfortunately, it may be a bit late since most people are established and won't switch at this point. Many people tried to tell Blizzard this during beta, but they really didn't take this viewpoint into consideration. I don't think they had any idea of the demographic diversity they were attracting. Their traditional customers were teenage boys. They couldn't understand the need for attractive females in horde.

Anyway, I am looking forward to playing a blood elf priest. Have the name saved and am slowly gathering gear and cash to get her a good start

I would love to see new classes too. I love diveristy. I had at least 1 level 50 of ever class in every realm in DAoC. I would also like to see some new tradeskills too. Fletching and jewelcrafting come to mind. Would be cool to be able to make trinkets, necklaces, rings and offhand items. Wood collecting would be a nice gathering skill to go with fletching. More types of gems could be added in a number of aspects of the game, such as mining, fishing and drops, for the jewelcrafting.

Ionyssa · December 2005

While World of Warcraft is undoubtedly a great game for a lot of players there remain those of us that got bored with WoW after the first few months, lack of end game content being the major reason, and after getting 3 characters to level 60 cancelled.

The expansion does precisely nothing to address any of our concerns with the game and as such you won't be seeing me buying it.

10 more levels of mindless questing just so that I can get to the new level cap and spend the next two years raiding the new molten core equivalent for pointless magic items, oh yippee, where do I sign up!

</sarcasm>

In all honesty with the ridiculous amount of money Blizzard are raking in, taking this long (18+ months) to bring out what is going to be a fairly minor update to the game is just laughable.

To all those still playing, enjoy!

Ionyssa deWinter

elf8bliss · December 2005

I too welcome the new races, tho we don't know the Alliance race yet. I would really like to see another class or two, the most!

It will be interesting to see how Blizz handles the balancing issue between 60 & 70, but I guess it would be no different than a lvl 30-40 instance to a lvl 50-60 instance.

Blizz has already mentioned that the PVP is getting a new review and it will go through some changes. So, the rank rewards may change.

Small dungeons and group play will probably be harder if you get the same epic items as raid dungeons.

I think quests will still play a big part of it, making them interesting and fun, and still important after 70 is key!

I would also like to see crafting improved, it's to paper-cut.

Blizz needs to give the players a little more control over their environment, and less of the linear play.

SpiritofGame · December 2005

Much ado about nothing.

However successful WoW is it still is the McDonald's Hamburgers of the MMORPG world.

Personally, I like to eat steak.

But, can 5 million subscribers be wrong? Well, not wrong ... just easily satisfied with bland offerings.

Reminds me that, "Nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of consumers." So, go ahead, underestimate away. Seems like a winning strategy.

Rinna · December 2005

I can't wait for the expansion. I've been playing since Beta and still love the game. I have 2 level 60's now, and I'm working on getting my hunter and troll mage to 60 before the expansion.

Once the expansion comes out I hope to check out the new dungeons, I plan to make a new character of each race, at least one will be the new profession of jewelcrafter... and I'd like to level my current then 60's to 70.

I do think that new classes, player housing and shortened queues for pvp battles would greatly increase the fun of the game. I also agree that Blizz took it's time on the expansion, I was hoping to be able to buy it for Xmas. I'm still really excited about where they plan to take the game

korric · December 2005

I can only agree with Ionyssa, as I too got borred of the mindless end-content found in WoW.
I know that this an issue found in most mmorpg's, and that generally, they offer bad end-game content... but for crying out loud.. Blizzard is making so much more money on this, than most other mmorpg's (IMO), so why do they keep making such low-quality end-game, that is so predictable and linear..

I, unfortunately, feel that the money that I spent on WoW during my subscribtion has been wasted, and that I would so like to go back and change that. But my money is lost and wasted.. Ive gamed many other online games, but have never really felt that I had wasted my money, once I stopped subscribing.. not until WoW came around.

This new Expansion, is just another way to make people continue to grind/subscribe, doing yet a whole bunch of mindless grinds and quests.. Its sad... As a player in WoW, you never feel that you make a difference in the world.. not even for your one character's sake... the mobs respawn excactly where you killed them last night.. the bosses spawn where they were slaughtered an hour ago, and the race leaders spawn where they stood a minute ago...
The only thing that makes a player unique in WoW is the account that he/she transfers their subscribtion from..

-Korric-

Ionyssa · December 2005

Well said Korric.

For actually feeling like you are contributing to the world, helping to defeat the forces of evil, or what have you, WoW has to rate as one of the worst. But as another poster said, can 5m subscribers be wrong, well not wrong, just easily satisfied.

Blizzard has certainly done a stellar job of capturing the market and even expanding it beyond all previously thought limits, it's just a shame that for the next few years all we will see are WoW clones, bleh.

Give me a game where I can make my impact on the world, a solid crafting system and decent pvp with consequences for my actions and I will be happy. Unfortunately it looks like I won't be happy for a while yet.

Have a happy new years everyone!

Ionyssa deWinter

Ian_Hawkmoon · December 2005

If you are looking for a game where you can actually make an impact on the world... You will have a very long wait. Just look at what it would take to make that happen... Using WoW as an example. You have 100 servers, each being it's own seperate world in essence. If you each server would, basically, have to be run as an independent game. My reason is this, you play on server X and make an impact on your server by doing "such and such". I am playing on server Y, and no one has made that impact yet. When it comes time to do an update, your server would need a different update then mine. Now multiply that by 100. Not much chance of that happerning.

mrslater · December 2005

One of my biggest concerns is that it seams that you more or less need to buy the expansion if you want to continue to play the game. It will most likely have new "molten core" instances and if you dont have the expansion, then the guild dont need/want you anymore, you wont be able to play the things that the guild arranges. All of a sudden the endgame is the expansion.
And another thing, I really think it is very greedy of Blizzard to make an expansion and charge for it. In my opinion the monthly fee in an mmorpg should be used for server and bandwith and improvement. Yes I know that all? other mmorpggames do the same thing, charge for expansion, but in my opinion this is so wrong. And now when blizzard have such a big playerbase, it would be much better to do a free expansion.

Breagha · December 2005

I've played WoW on and off for the last six months or so. I have a female of all of the horde races and a couple of Night Elves, though I prefer to play Horde.

Just to prod at the idea that girls don't like to play Horde *smiles wryly*

Anyways. It's fun for some relaxing kill-loot-rinse-repeat mindless action, but there's not really any depth to the game. I doubt they'll put more depth in it with the expansiion.

On the other hand, people (well, most of them) know what they get themselves into when they subscibe. It's a really amazing-looking dungeon crawl. It can't really come as a surprice to anybody.

Blizzard's done an incredible job with it, though. As long as you take it for what it is. It's almost bug free - yeah, I know, there are some - the CSRs responds fairly quickly and are helpful, if you want to have an impact, it's actually encouraged that you make mods and other helping programs for the game, and your hands are basically free to do whatever you want. It's a game where you get what you bring.

I've been playing SWG for a year and a half now, and I can't help but being grateful to the Blizzard Devs for bringing such an uncomplicated game... It makes it incredibly easy to relax while playing it.

Mereinid · December 2005

* After all, Blizzard is located in San Diego*

Blizzard is located in Irvine, Ca. A bit over an hour north of San Diego. Just a clairification.

knowom · December 2005

Revised and being reposted

Zylaxx · December 2005

Originally posted by knowom

Well I've leveled 2 level 60's so far in WoW and have a level 42 and a 36 the level 36 I'm currently in the process of leveling all tho alot slower than I did my others because quite frankly the replay value on leveling in this game is extremly poor. Coming from other mmo's uo and eq being my most memorable ones character advancement in WoW is extremly dull the second time around. In uo skills gains were grandual and semi consistant so you always felt like you were accomplishing something while playing and personally my favorite system of character advancement from any mmo or rpg alike that I've come across I could freely pick and choose what I wanted to work on whenever mix and match things and see real results especially at the lower end of the spectrum it felt much more like a game than a job. EQ the grind was pretty bad in some aspects especially your first time around but it had the added incentive of power leveling and character twinking both of which were very effective and rather fun and the grind wasn't nearly as bad as people made it out to be. One thing in perticular about EQ that I recall people complaining about in that game was the nessecity to group in most cases it was rather hard to solo or slow I should say and very knowticably slower with the exception of a few very solo friendly classes bards,druids,and necro were all rather solo friendly bards in perticular were ultra cheese if they had the singing steel breastplate as it was a right click 100hp heal that could be cast instantly while running it did have a recast timer or caster on it but just the same it wasn't interruptable and a bard with that could quad kite all day long w/o fear of dieing if they knew how to twist songs. Anyways on to the point EQ semi enforced grouping by means of a xp bonus which was effective and actually a good system in my opion the problem with it viewed by some was that certain classes were weaker than others IE less useful to groups and were therefore considered obsolete which was really more of a balance problem than anything and is also rather evident in world of warcraft for raids but thankfully to a much lesser extent overall. I just don't know what to expect with warcraft and its expansion a little more crafting and some socketed items neither of which amount to much of anything other than a little bit more min/maxing socketed items sounds much like enchanting,librams, and armor kits. As for jewel crafting I'm sure that's just something to go with item socketing similar to enchanting nothing to get overly excited about either crafting in warcraft is very stale and doesn't serve a ton of purpose it feels like items are soulbound when equiped so being a smith/tailor/leatherworker ect just seems pointless especially when you topple on the fact that out of the items you can make id say over 95% of them are completly useless. As it stands engineering and alchemy seem to be the only real worthwhile crafting skills everything else is tradible anyways and half of its junk so whats the point? Maybe if blizzard changed crafted items so none of them were soulbound you might actually see a reason to pick up one of the real crafting tradeskills. Level increase I see as detrimental problem for a whole host of reasons. The first is the time involved to level up which in and of itself could cause controversy should players have experianced built up ahead of time or not some would say so and some would say no it creates a uneven playing field if they do but with BG tokens and argent dawn tokens quests ect it'll allready be a little uneven. Second you have to factor in items like others mentioned will your epic items from molten core be obsolete more or less will thoughs dungeons become trivalized as a direct result of the expansion what about pvp rewards how is it going to be impacted. Third is talent points how's that going to effect things will all the work blizzard has done over the last year be for nothing since it was based on balancing the current game system will the 10 extra talent points suddenly make a balanced class unbalanced and vice versa and how does blizzard plan on remedying the problem with nerfs? Fourth I guess would be what exactly is new and exciting about gaining another 10 levels hmm we get a few new spells that hit harder buff better heal better ect.... some hit points/mana 10 talent points which doesn't add anything new really just more of what we've allready tryed maybe a few new combo's but no actual new talents unless they plan on adding some higher tier talents as well new instances and dungeons which I don't see why they couldn't add w/o the need for a expansion its not like they can't afford it 5 million paying customers heck the expansion could be free and probably should be if lineage 2 can add free expansion I'm sure blizzard can afford it. Is there going to be any kind of new customizations facial expressions hair styles ect...maybe a graphics update or are we just shelling out $30's or so to have to level up some more just be able to stay competitive. I guess the biggest question I'm gonna have to ask myself by the time the expansion comes out is... "Is this really worth my money and time or would I be better off just buying a completly new game instead" don't get me wrong people WoW is a good game and alot of fun or at least was in it's infancy but I personally had to take a 4 or 5 month break from the game once because of lack of content I'm just skeptical a expansion is going to be much different and I'm allready starting to become bored with the game again gradually since I was gone they managed to come out with 3 battlegrounds and like 3 dungeons or so and a mixed bag of nerfs and enhancements. Now the dungeons are fine the first time you do the encounters but is running molten core 40 times to get items really some that excites me not exactly...ok so how about battlegrounds now they are pretty fun or are for awhile but maybe not to the same calibar as a fps like bf2 they aren't a real adreniline rush for the most part and they seem to really lack much diversity. I mean why can't there be like 3-4 maps like warsong gulch that are capture the flag that the server cycles between to gain your faction. I guess the immersion factor just isn't 100% there yet and somehow I long for the excitement uo brought to me back in 97-98 or EQ's pve and questing content prior to it getting completly redicliouse from SoV onward. I guess I'll just have to wait for a good game to come around hopefully either RF Online,Tabula Rasa, or Darkfall will be a hit and hold my intrest but we'll see otherwise I might just have to follow the crowd and continueing playing WoW until something better arrives. BTW sorry for the long post I rambled a bit.

Paragraphs and an occasional perior or comma will do wonders to you're posting abilities Knoworn. I couldnt read that gibberish and im sure im not alone.

Me personnaly I just hope that MC,Onyxia,ZG,AZ and the rest of the raid dungeons DO BECOME obsolete and here is my reason why. Too many times I hear the Hardcore raiders saying "us casual" need to work for their gear and you're not meant to have fun in doing it, so in keeping with this ever popular sentiment of the epic, raiding, no life geeks, I hope all your purty epic lewt turns to crap and you will in fact need to progress your loot through the new instances in order to do the new raid instances that will be added in the xpac.

What this will do is make it so that us casuals can then be able to 15 man MC and progress in it jsut as easily as we can in UBRS now.

Fojos · December 2005

Originally posted by Ionyssa
While World of Warcraft is undoubtedly a great game for a lot of players there remain those of us that got bored with WoW after the first few months, lack of end game content being the major reason, and after getting 3 characters to level 60 cancelled.The expansion does precisely nothing to address any of our concerns with the game and as such you won't be seeing me buying it.<sarcasm>10 more levels of mindless questing just so that I can get to the new level cap and spend the next two years raiding the new molten core equivalent for pointless magic items, oh yippee, where do I sign up!</sarcasm>In all honesty with the ridiculous amount of money Blizzard are raking in, taking this long (18+ months) to bring out what is going to be a fairly minor update to the game is just laughable.To all those still playing, enjoy!Ionyssa deWinter

Welcome to MMORPGs! That's how all of them are.

Fojos · December 2005

Originally posted by Ionyssa
Well said Korric.For actually feeling like you are contributing to the world, helping to defeat the forces of evil, or what have you, WoW has to rate as one of the worst. But as another poster said, can 5m subscribers be wrong, well not wrong, just easily satisfied.Blizzard has certainly done a stellar job of capturing the market and even expanding it beyond all previously thought limits, it's just a shame that for the next few years all we will see are WoW clones, bleh.Give me a game where I can make my impact on the world, a solid crafting system and decent pvp with consequences for my actions and I will be happy. Unfortunately it looks like I won't be happy for a while yet.Have a happy new years everyone!Ionyssa deWinter

+ Right now that's almost impossible, everyone won't be satisfied, because if you did something wrong. You may destroy your character, COMPLETELY.

Breagha · December 2005

Originally posted by Ionyssa
Give me a game where I can make my impact on the world, a solid crafting system and decent pvp with consequences for my actions and I will be happy. Unfortunately it looks like I won't be happy for a while yet.
Have a happy new years everyone!
Ionyssa deWinter

Actually, SWG used to have a great crafting system... The CU sorta hit it hard, and then the NGE swooped down for the kill :P

The PvP was and still is as meaningless as in any other game.

Dair · December 2005

Originally posted by Dragonmuse
I personally welcome the Blood elves. I think one of the reasons for the imbalance between horde and alliance on most of the pve servers is largely due to the ugliness of the female models. Women don't want to play ugly, butch or hideous sounding characters and thus won't play horde. WoW has attracted many women, and they are the ones who often determine where the family ends up playing.
I am a hardcore gamer, which is unusual for a woman (have been playing MMOs since 1998), but I am not comfortable playing anything but night elf. It has taken me over a year to get accustomed to play horde at all, but I still have not gotten a horde character over 40. All my 60s are NE. Most women are new to gaming and I am sure would be even less comfortable playing horde characters than I am. We are trained all our lives to try to be as beautiful as can be, not repulsive.
I really do think having an attractive race will help fix the imbalance. I know of many guilds that ended up alliance even though the guys wanted horde because their wives/girlfriends flat out refused to play horde.

Interesting attitude but not all women gamers think "pretty" NE are the best. I play a lvl 60 male Undead Warlock and I'm a 37 year old woman, who started online gaming on Muds in the late '80s. There are at least 10 women in my guild and they all wanted to play horde straight off. You may be right that some women don't want to play horde but to judge all is wrong.

I will get the expansion and play it with my guild. I will advance to lvl 70 with my friends and play out the game. I may start a blood elf alt but they just aren't horde enough for me. Why give us a girly thing that we have for so long fought against.

I don't think MC or BWL will become obselete, there will be guilds who bypass them and just go on to the "end game" but I think the majority will still want to beat them.

I would like to see Blizzard give some reward to us lvl 60s who have done quests etc. Maybe 4 or 5 lvls of rested bonus or something like that.

dadown · December 2005

I was really underwhelmed by the announced expansion content. The new race is nice, but only 10 more levels?? The hardcore gamers will be to level 70 in a couple of weeks and most regular players in a month. I was expecting a new level cap of 100 or more.

Then there are all the things they didn't include... Where is the player housing, player vendors, towns that horde and alliance can fight for control of? WoW is already weak on the crafting side and all they are adding is jewel crafting? If any of the new games coming out next year is a decent compeditor for WoW and has good crafting, I'll be switching.

I used to play SWG before WoW, and to see what was going on there, I tried the 2-week free trail. Talk about major disappointment! My two favorite professions, Creature handler and Bio-engineer have been scrapped and you can't even mix the few professions that remain! So SWG is definately not a future choice.

If the WoW expansion costs more than $20, I'm not going to bother with it and may drop WoW completely. If I can't find another satisfying MMORPG, I may just focus on Civ 4, which I have really been impressed with. I still have a free AO account which can tide me over until the next great release.

psm · December 2005

Nice to see, that they are still developing. or at least act like they would.

The expension is worthless, as long as the current game is not running as intended. And for me it's not.

There are so many things missing at the Moment and I don't believe that these issues will be solved with the expension.

The role-playing servers which were bait for those looking for some decent rp in MMORPGs, nothing but a big disappointment. The names of some players are worse then most CS-nicks and reporting changes nothing. The small things (interactive emotes, like huging someone) are as much missing as are the bigger ones (housing) and the policy while there and "singed" by all players aren't put through by the staff.

I did quit a couple of month ago, because i was so disapointed (played since closed beta) in how Blizz handled the situation. and i am playing right now to see if things changed. they did, but only to the worse.
I might try the expension, but then again, i hope for other games to do what wow could not.

From an interactive world, a RPG i expect more. and as mentioned before the focus of Blizzard seems to be the lower range of the IQ-ladder, the easier satisfied. good for them. if they are happy with it. but dedicated RP-Servers? the way they are now, it 's plain cheating on customers.

i doupt that the expension will change that.
for one, i really appreciate what blizzard did, making MMORPGs less geeky. but then i hate them for making things worse for roleplayers...

i will follow the developement; as player maybe, as spectator certainly. and if it's only to see if they can loose 5 million customers just as fast as the gained them... time and the expension might tell

bnutz216 · December 2005

I Personally think that the expansion is a good thing in all reguards. I mean ok no new classes but you are bringing in more game content at just the right time in my opinion. I know alot of lvl 60 's that are not board but tireing of the same areas and same scenarios. One thing Blizzard has done is not overwhelming the WOW community with expansions like another company *cough* $ony *cough* who brings out a new e expansion every 6-9 months draining the wallets of it's players and providing little to no REAL content to the game I mean a dungeon here a new quest there or a few items. Yes there are some concerns about the xp gained at lvl 60 but I think that you give the current lvl 60's a few nice unique items and let them go for it and start gaining xp after. That way you keep the 60's playing and enjoying the full content of the expansion insted of having them purchase to miss out by jumping alot of the content through reto levveling. I mean you got 60 for yourself great now man up and get 70. just my opinion.

Paks · December 2005

Since we don't know that much about the finer points of the expansion, I think it's dame had to say anything like 'Blizzard hasn't addressed', and consider it a valid statement. For one, Blizzard hasn't said anything about how they'll address XP gained after 60 but that definitely doesn't mean they haven't addressed it in the expansion. I'm thinking there's a lot of things they're still fleshing out or just want to keep quiet about until the expansion is closer to going to beta.

Paks

knowom · December 2005

The expansion and what it means to the community. First off let's cover what it will add. New high end instances,new frontier,a new race for horde and alliance,socketed items,jewel crafting assumibly to compliment sockets,flying mounts, and last but not least a higher level cap at level 70 current cap is 60 which I'm sure anyone who plays the game allready knows. Now that the features of the expansion have been covered let's go in depth to what it might mean to the community.

1. New instances and frontier - What this means is the hardcore players have some new fresh content in the game to keep the occupied camping some purple or perhaps orange items for months on end and some new encounters to topple. What it means for the casual player is they now have either a wider or narrower equipment gap to worry about depending on amount of time they can invest playing. It also means new players and old players alike wanting to start a new character have some fresh new places to level up which could help make leveling a new character more enjoyable if ever so slightly. The thing that worries me and alot of other players is will the content trivilize the old content and will it make the old equipment obsolete or not. If it's just a timesink to add some longevity to the game why not just invest our money else where is what I'm sure I'll be pondering come closer to release time.

2. New races - To some it could make a world of a difference and to others they could just care less. The horde is getting the Blood Elves as a race which look similar to night elves but with more of a pale complexion and a bleech blonde look. Now the new look doesn't mean much to the guys other than oh great they've added a pretty boy legolos look alike but for some women that have been yerning to have a more femine look it's a sigh of relief, but also what that means for the guys as well is that they might finally be able to convince one of there girlfriends or there wives to play on the horde side. They will have there own unique racial abilities one of which is some form of mana drain which sounds semi intrigueing. What class's they can play I believe is still a big unknown but judging by the screenshots they appear to have at least one caster type IE either a priest,warlock,or mage. Overall not that impressed doesn't effect me much if at all and I'm certainly not planning to reroll so I can be a sally elf that actually looks less evil than night elves in appearance.

3. Socket items and Jewel crafting - I clumped these two together as I believe jewel crafting is meant to go with the new socket items. Socketed items mean more min/maxing of items and should be similar to enchanting and armor kits I believe. Now a new crafters skill is a nice thing because it just gives players something new to work on to keep them occupied. My only real complaint is I would have liked to have seen a new tradeskill similar to alchemy or engineering as I feel they're the only real useful ones in the sum of things since the other tradeskills the items can be traded or enchanted w/o needing to take up the skill yourself.

4. Flying mounts - well there's not a lot of info about these yet but they're mounts that fly and I'm guessing you can't use them while fighting or perhaps maybe that's going to be the benifit to them I'm really not sure. I might just be a asthetic thing mostly with probably a slight speed increase. One thing that worries me about them is how much will the cost. Are they going to costs a good 700 gold like epic mounts...maybe more...maybe less...are they pvp/pve rewards? It's really a bit of a unknown. What it means to me personally not much I really don't think it adds to the gameplay much if at all unless perhaps you can fight on mounts and we can finally get back to the good old days of playing Joust perhaps one of the best Atari games ever created.

5. Now last but not least the level increase. What it means to the hardcore players is well they have a new goal to reach perhaps first person to 70 on there server first class/race and so on. What it means to casual players is more grinding which may or may not appeal to them. It also means slightly increased stats hp/mana and agi/str/con/int/spi which doesn't ammount to alot but since people are a bit of stat junkies its semi appealing. I think the biggest thing tho is the increased talent points which means players will now have 10 more stat points to work with which should add some more possibilites for the different classes. The downside to that is that all the balance blizzard has done over the last year on classes could be shred apart and might need to be rethought once again IE id like you to meet my buddy nerf he wants to play.

Yup so that's it in a nutshell. Will I buy the expansion over another fresh and unique game that chances are has better graphics or is perhaps more artistic than WoW. I'll just have to wait and find out I guess. Personally I'm skeptical and have lost intrest in WoW a bit over time while I still play I'm not as addicted or passionate I should say about the game as I once was. Could the expansion rekindle spark my intrest in the game once again maybe not and if it does how long will it last.

On the horizen are a few different new and unique games and here's a short list of the ones I'm anticipating the most. RF Online in perticular looks very appealing atm to me and should appeal to the Darks ages of camelot crowd possibly especially if they like the idea of a fantasy-sci game sorta like mech warrior meets gundam meets lord of the rings in a all out battle for natural resources and supremacy of the planet. Another one to look out for is Granado Espada it's got lots of unique ideas for a mmo and kind of touches back to the olden rpg days of gameplay it reminds me of a mix between final fantasy tactics and suikoden in a mmorpg setting. Then there's Tabula Rasa a game being designed by Richard Garriot creater of the Ultima series and godfather of mmorpgs which is sort of another sci-fi-fantasy a little similar to planetside but with nicely up to date graphics ie eye candy galore and some intresting ideas to AI that should help pve feel less mundane since it has some variety to how encounters should be handled I'm looking forward to this title alot it could be a smash hit if it's a fun as he made it sound like and the graphics are suberb. Last but not least on the horizen is Darkfall which sounds to be alot like Ultima Online but also similar to Lineage 2,Shadowbane, and Dark Ages of Camelot as well. It's a small development team and they're trying to take the best of what made thoughs games great and put it all together to make a really happening PvP orientated game. It's actually been in development for quite a few years now and frequently quoted to be vapoware since they very infrequently post updates about the game. There's alot of undeground hype about the game but widescale the game is a bit of a unknown amounst the big contenders which is largely in part because of the dev team they aren't going out of there way to hype the game atm because I believe they're trying to focus development of the game and don't wish to be pressured into rushing the game by the player community. Let's face it that has happened to alot of companies. Also a big reason why World of Warcraft has been as succesful as it has is because they didn't rush the game and took there time to deliver a polished product.

quix0te · December 2005

Dang. A lotta people hate WoW. What I find amusing in their little rants are two missing ingredients. First. What exactly is WRONG with WoW? Second. What game do you consider so much better, and why? I, for one, am always looking for new MMORPGs, but having played EQ, DAOC, SWG, AO, AC, SB, CoH, and GW, I can truthfully say WoW is the best I've seen so far.

I would also like very much to see new classes, but it doesnt look thats happening. And I also think that it will be a LOOONG time from release to the first expansion. How long til the 2nd expansion? How long til we have new classes? One possiblity is that BC will have the heroic classes. Certainly they will be OVERDUE by then.

The question "Hey! Am I getting any kind of xp credit for all these quests I'm doing at lvl 60?!" made me chuckle.

Did you EXPECT xp credit when you did them? Were you PROMISED xp credit? Obviously, you found them enjoying or rewarding in some way (items, social experience, challenge). Or if you didnt, you probably should have stopped. If that wasnt enough, then do what I do. Bust out your alt.

While there is a small chance blizzard will starting 'crediting' lvl 60s for kills and quest xp before BC, I'd say probably not. Otherwise you'd have people that would hit lvl 70 the day of release. And then whats the point of all that shiny new content they made?

I feel like the Devs of WoW have made it pretty clear that BC isnt for the end-game raiders. Its for the replayers (like me) who like having 10 alts on two servers, none of them lvl 60, and who are still seeing quests and adventuring areas for the first time.

Which, BTW, is one of the reasons I like WoW and one of the reasons I think its the best game out right now.

Hyoda · December 2005

Originally posted by mrslater

One of my biggest concerns is that it seams that you more or less need to buy the expansion if you want to continue to play the game. It will most likely have new "molten core" instances and if you dont have the expansion, then the guild dont need/want you anymore, you wont be able to play the things that the guild arranges. All of a sudden the endgame is the expansion.
And another thing, I really think it is very greedy of Blizzard to make an expansion and charge for it. In my opinion the monthly fee in an mmorpg should be used for server and bandwith and improvement. Yes I know that all? other mmorpggames do the same thing, charge for expansion, but in my opinion this is so wrong. And now when blizzard have such a big playerbase, it would be much better to do a free expansion.

Haha dude! Have you seen how much of a profit they make off of us? I think it was in a resent Computer Gaming Magazine that had a pie chart of where your money really goes. Lets just say the bigger part of the pie was Profit and 2nd to almost last was money that goes towards us the the gamer. As far as the expansion goes.....I mean its new content guys...I would not cry about how long you have been playing...its not time wasted. Its just new content...get over it lol! Lets put it this way .....think about SWG that should make you feel X100 better

diablo2211 · December 2005

well, I've doing WOw for some time now. My wife plays with me, but Eve captured my interest and it will stay that way.

Eve online has it's content expanded for free, and while paying subscription, and while Blizzard makes so much money from us, I think they should let us have the epansion for free. I won't buy it and most of people I know won't.

Also,
there are words that WOw is loosing subscribers in heaps....Is that true?

I saw many of SW G players coming to Eve, and now Wowers come in greater quantities...

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