This would bring me back to WoW

DeathwingCame across this while surfing the webs tonight and I think it’s a load of misinformation, but it would get me to subscribe again:

“Azeroth is changed completely. Some zones are completely destroyed, some are shattered, some are flooded (Thousand Needles), some are ripped in half. Coastlines the world over are changed. Durotar is wrecked, along with Orgrimmar, which is torn in two. A new orc city is rebuilt over the course of the expansion. Gnomes retake Gnomeregan in an instance.

Malfurion comes back and helps activate the new Guardian of Tirisfal – Thrall. Thrall hands over leadership of Horde to Garrosh Hellscream while Thrall serves as a coordinator for both Horde and Alliance forces and players to combat the Naga and Black Dragonflight. Garrosh declares open war on the Alliance, and you can expect more Wintergrasp like areas on the old map. Due to some political manipulations, Cairne Bloodhoof gets painted as a betrayer and is murdered by Garrosh. Cairne’s son takes over as Tauren chief.

For Worgen, the Cataclysm brings the Greymane wall down, revealing their secret — that the worgen curse has ravaged the kingdom. They’ve managed to find a cure that keeps their human mind permanently but also keeps them in their worgen form. Seeing that they can no longer survive alone, the worgen residents of Gilneas rejoin the Alliance.

As for Goblins, Deathwing calls on the goblins as slaves like he has in the past. Their leader decides to go with Deathwing and enslaves his people because there’s no crossing Deathwing and surviving. Fortunately, a large group manages to escape and join the Horde, knowing that they can’t go it alone. See the pattern here?

The level cap is 85. New landmasses include islands that are raised as a result of the cataclysm, underwater zones, and the newly-redone old-world zones. Flying mounts will be useable in Azeroth. Many old-world dungeons are changed completely.

Half the point of Cataclysm is to remake the old quest lines, eliminate redundancy and give an overall narrative to all players, whether level 1 or 80. At any particular vanilla area, you can expect to see reconstruction/relief efforts, or all out war between Horde and Alliance NPC’s. Wailing Caverns is going to be completely redone into a lush green tropical area, as a result of the druids working their magic to prevent it from falling into lava.

Leveling from 80-85 will be a MUCH bigger deal. Initially in 2008, they considered not raising the level cap at all, as making those quests takes a lot of manpower away from raiding content. But they are trying to make the story so grand and sweeping that ding’ing will actually MEAN something and not just be something you do.

Expect a couple of underwater cities to be on the backs of giant sea turtles and whales.

Make no mistake, the Old God content is not done. Since Netharion and Azshara both have ties to Old Gods, it is now clear that the SERIES wide antagonists of WoW are the Old Gods.” [Source]

Yeah, it sounds like a great way to regurgitate content.   The rest of the information I didn’t quote states that they’ll introduce no new classes, but allow for combinations that have previously been barred, such as Gnome Priests or Human Hunters.  People are pissed off about all this information, calling it “game breaking”, but I’m not so sure.

This expansion would mark the biggest impact to the Warcraft lore yet for WoW.  Cairn being killed, Thrall handing over leadership and becoming the guardian of Tirisfal (weird), and bringing Deathwing into the spotlight (FINALLY!) are enormous leaps.   All this talk about Old Gods and the Supreme Dragonflight gives me goosbumps (Yeah, I geek out in a big way over Warcraft lore).

I’ve thought about it for a few hours and I’ve come to the conclusion that I like the idea of going back through older zones.  I never once had a problem with WoW’s leveling process – in fact I quite enjoyed it.  It’s just that the content is old and I’ve done it dozens of times.  Splitting the Barrens into two areas, breaking up and remaking the world to completely unite all the players of WoW once again in the old world is a genius idea.  They have the ability to redo all the old quests, dungeons, zones, and make them viable for veterans and new players alike.  Best of all, they can add content to the old world and have it be relevant for everyone.

This would bring people back to Azeroth and Kalimdor and make them relevant once more.  Think about how long the “vanilla WoW” held people.  The possibility is there for it to hold them that long again.  New players picking up WoW for the first time could actually feel like they’re apart of the story again instead of being so far behind everyone.

The PvP they could add to the game since the Horde and Alliance are being plunged back into a great war (bless you Garrosh!!!) could be amazing.  This is Blizzard’s chance to get open-world PvP right.  Since the landscape is being scarred and reformed it’s a perfect opportunity to do it right.  They could make good on their original promises of PvP they made for WoW before it launched.

It’s all a genius idea because a change to the game of this magnitude will bring even more people to WoW, and back to WoW, than ever before.  This would crush any competition save perhaps SWTOR.  I would certainly return to WoW and play through all this content again.  Although I still think this is a load of dragon dung, I would fully support and tip my hat to Blizzard if it’s true.

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  • It’s pretty much confirmed as all true and represents a much-needed complete reboot of “Vanilla” WoW which really pales in comparison to the later Continents.

    Level 85 with those level-ups being a bigger deal.
    2 new Races and lots of new combinations.
    Remakes of other Dungeons (so not just Onyxia).
    Flying in Azeroth – at last.

    It all sounds good to this 5-year veteran.

  • Perhaps I just bought into a wheelbarrow full of dragon dung, but I think it works. There are things, including the lack of flying mounts, about the old world that needed to be fixed but that cannot unless that becomes the focus of an expansion.

    A smaller cap increase would simultaneously fix the problems of both the vanilla and TBC endgames (pivotal content that most players never get to see) and the start of the Wrath era (no time to make an elite endgame, because Blizz was busy making an entry level). Tune Icecrown right in the context of a smaller cap increase and no gear reset and it becomes your level 85 entry level raid zone.

    This plan suddenly causes the increased access to Ulduar-quality loot in five-mans (the expansion might be balanced around it) and the increased access to mounts (lots of emphasis on new alts) to make a lot more sense. The entire pacing of this expansion cycle does not make sense if you believe that Cataclysm won’t be out until two years post-Wrath, but all indications are that the team is paring down and would NEED to lean on recycled content to make a faster expansion happen.

    Like I said, if it’s fake, it’s an unusually good fake, even by comparison to some of the great hoaxes of WoW years gone by.

  • All of this is what WoW needs to do in order to reinvigorate itself. What needs to NOT happen though is to have Blizzard rework old content without changing it at all. Changing the world so drastically allows Blizzard to create a “sequel” inside the original game and they need to reinvent the game.

    The real worry I have is that Blizzard will take this opportunity to do a repeat of the Naxxrammas debacle. Updating Onyxia is one thing, but if we get updated but not fundamentally changed content made as “new” it will just be a rehash of the disaster that was the tier 7 endgame.

    Listen up Blizzard, do not try and give me a Heroic Shadowfang Keep for level 85 and expect me to be happy. The entire concept of destroying the world and rebuilding it is an awesome one, but do not dare to rehash old content and expect me to be happy.

    Finally, a level 85 cap is horrible. The majority of the beauty of Wrath was new zones, questlines and the level up content. Its true they need to put more effort into other portions of the game (endgame, moving away from daily quest grinds, and new pvp options), but the level up content is what an expansion is about.

  • If this goes through it’s probably the end of WoW for me and I have being playing for 4 years. Mostly because I fear it will be exacly how Jericho says it will be, like Naxx.

  • Yeah, we were wondering how they might keep going after killing off The Lich King and this is an answer to it. I’d want to play that.

    “Thrall handing over leadership and becoming the guardian of Tirisfal (weird)”

    It is weird, but he does probably work better as a faction-independent elder/ advisor type. And that lets the Horde get back to its roots a bit.

  • This “news” comes two expansions too late. It’s awesome that WoW players could get a world changing event, but it doesn’t change the fact that the game is the same.

  • While the lorelol about a druid appointing a shaman as the new champion of an all-mage organization sounds like 100% Chris Metzen, I really doubt that Blizzard’s going to revamp the world. Until the news about Onyxia, they’ve mostly just hummed really loud whenever customers asked about revamps, and even complained that adding starter zones for Blood Elves and the Draenei took time away from developing Outland. But then again, this would give them at least a year of extra time to finish Nazjatar.

  • It is awesome, yet I have already done this. Maybe I have already forgotten it and ride again through Azeroth, starting with my level 80 char and re-explore old content.

    Does nobody feel this is a bit like the sellout of a game.

    “Re-visit your favorite stars/heroes! You can now be everything you want, no more class/race restrictions! You get Ulduar epics shoven in the ass for free on your bus tour through Azeroth 2.0! Moar raids, you can now even raid Van Cleef!”

    I mean they are re-doing old content, maybe phasing it or giving old instances a new heroic-mode for level 80/85 players.

    They might add more Wintergrasp battlegrounds to Azeroth in order to promote more faction pvp. We know how much Wintergrasp rejuvenated faction pvp, NOT AT ALL.

    What worries me is that other companies dare to deliver less content for their full products. Alternative MMOs to WoW feel like unloved stepchilds, and this is a pity.

    NOT EVERYONE LOVES WOW! I AM SICK OF WOW, and I am not really the hater-type, actually.

  • “ding’ing will actually MEAN something and not just be something you do.”

    That’s how you know it’s a lie.

  • I had a phase where I was really into Warcraft lore. I’ve lots my taste for it, and WoW as a game completely ruined my taste for WoW.

    WoW will never stop being WoW-ish. I’ll pass.

  • I wish they had gone with not raising the level cap but apart from that it all sounds very interesting and seems that Blizzard have finally worked out how to do expansions at long last.

  • Hmm. As a new player, and one who never played any Blizzard game before and so knows nothing at all about the lore, I am perfectly happy with “vanilla WoW” as it is.

    I’ve been through this daft “cataclysm” storyline before with EQ2 and it’s a terrible idea. Ditto the “war everywhere” revamping – that was one of the main things that messed up Warhammer Online for me. What is wrong with peaceful lands as a background for adventuring? War-torn lands filled with refugees and carnage are a real turn-off for a leisure activity.

    In the end it will all hinge on how well it’s done, but in prnciple it doesn’t appeal to me at all. The good part is that at the rate Blizzard put out expansions I’ll have had over a year in the current version before it all changes, and anyway by the time it happens I’ll almost certainly be playing FFIV anyway.

  • Maybe if they added broke it up into four Tiers and added zones for each person to level in. Also, they could have special PvP zones, we’ll call them “lakes,” to fight in.

    War is everywhere? Amirite?

  • I am so unbelievably tired of WoW I doubt any piece of “new” information could get me to re-sub.

  • Has anyone sat down and considered how much developer time would be necessary to make this happen?

    I guess we can expect Cataclysm around 2012. Makes sense, if you think about it.

  • I would come back if they got world PVP right, and there the devil is in the details. Otherwise I’m just too burned out on the PVE stuff in the game.

  • I would play WoW again if they bring something else to their end game other than Raiding. Fully fleshed out missions and quests (with CG or cutscenes) designed only for high level players would be a nice addition. As it stands, Cataclysm sounds like a nice was to bring back old content and life into ‘Vanilla WoW’ but it’s still the same ole game once you take the icing off.

  • This would ensure that I stay away from the game, if true. It seems mostly like a way to have people run more alts, and I detest making alts in any game.

  • I would play if I could level to 85 in the old word. Maybe it is just me but going to a whole new planet plus Northrend only to go back to Eastern and Kalmidor seems like a bad idea.

    Not only will those places be deserted you have no reason to, just take those out, update the old-content, and make it relevant again.

    I do not want to go out, buy 3 games, only to come back to the one I first leveled on.

  • This is an interesting idea. I always found that after a few months of release all the Low-level area are ghost towns. Sure in the beginning these areas are a buzz of activity. But then it is just lonely new players and those rushing alts. I don’t see this really fixing this problem. Sure it may be fun to run though the “low-levels” again, but after a while they too will be wastelands.

  • I love the idea. I’ve griped about the “old world” being abandoned in WoW. If Blizzard does this, it goes against everything they’ve always preached about sticking with new content and moving forward, not wasting time on re-working old stuff.

    Again, I love the idea and it would probably get me to re-sub and re-level a new toon. WoW is still my favorite MMOG of all time.

  • I dunno. It doesn’t grab me.

    Maybe I’m just skeptical because I enjoyed the original game of WoW a lot more than where it is today– I see this as just the logical conclusion of them sweeping the better parts of WoW under the rug.

    I just can’t jive with the folks who say the newer content is so much better. Not for me, for sure.

    Absolutely this is what they should do tho, poor Azeroth has been chewed up and spat out by the changes to WoW over the past two expansions.

    I just can’t see it resulting in the game I want to play.

  • I’ve made my own small post. I followed the info on WoW insider to the source(?) which doesn’t give any proof or validation of any kind, but does give info on how to sign up for the $40.00 blizzcon livestream.

    Maybe the source is a proven maverick that I don’t know about, but what I do know is this is one heck of a way to get people to fork over cash for the livestream, whether a skeptic of the “rumor”, or someone who wanted a sign that the livestream would be “worth paying for”.

    All I know for sure is, whether it was intended or not, this is a brilliant, albeit morally questionable, act of guerilla marketing.

  • This change in lore is what the Warcraft story needed to be back “up to par” of what it use to be. In Warcraft 3 we saw such dramatic changes constantly happening, and here we see it again.

    So very, very happy. I can’t wait to free thrall as a goblin 🙂

  • @heartless_: I immediately thought of the live event potential as well. They could stretch it out over several months.

    @Andrew: On the contrary. I don’t see this as a way of getting people to make more alts, but a way of making alts or new players feel relevant again.

    @Rog: The more I think about it, the more I realize that those being grabbed by this would need to already know and enjoy the lore. That’s why my interest was piqued immediately.

    @Hazzerd: Agreed. It’s a drastic change and a welcomed one. They’ve taken baby steps and really treaded lightly on the lore (even though they butchered it) when it comes to making huge sweeping changes.

    Overall, this direction would be all about bringing the game full circle and potentially beginning the self-imposed end of World of Warcraft – although it would simply be turning the corner and the end would not come for another half decade.

    This sets the stage for Warcraft 4.

  • I’ve resubbed to WoW so many times I can’t even remember how many. My son is a loreaholic. I love alts and old content always seemed fun to me. I thought I had left WoW for good but something like this would get me to resub once more. Thanks for the tease!

  • @Venidar: Its unfortunate, but they will never do it. I truly believe that the end game raid model is outdated and needs to die in a fire. Other games, most notably FFXI have been able to integrate plot driven storyline missions and quests into its end game to complement many other raidlike and non-raidlike end game activities. It would be nice to see Blizzard do this.

    The won’t though. It takes too much time to create the good lore based quests and quite frankly, with a handful of exceptions, Blizzard has proven time and time again that they just can not pull it off. The original Reginald Windsor questline in Vanilla WoW, the “Muradin is Alive!” questline in Wrath and the still yet to be continued (even though they promised that each content patch would add another chapter to the storyline) Wrathgate line are the only significant questlines that even approach that level of depth you are talking about. *Notice how all of these are Ally quests too interestingly enough.

    I for one would come back for these mission-like, lore-filled questlines that with phasing they are vastly more capable of doing in a real and intriguing manner.

    I would also come back if they said screw the raids, and just gave us a solid new 5man instance every 4 weeks for an expansion cycle. Raids have gone from fun to bleh, while a 5man instance is a much more intimate and fun thing to bang out in 20-30 minutes.

  • “(even though they butchered it)”

    You say butchered, I say improved!

    I remember Chris Metzen apologizing about the accidental Draenei retcon. He then goes into explaining that’s the reason he loves the Warcraft story so much, because of the flexibility. Here, I’ll post most of what he said here for those that haven’t read it yet:

    “Hey y’all,

    I wanted to drop you guys a line and explain what’s up with some of the recent changes you’ve all been seeing in the lore – and specifically address your concerns about the draenei and their revised backstory. Bear with me here, I tend to get a bit wordy as I build up steam. 🙂

    Anyway, here we go:

    Hit #1: Lore Train-Wreck
    Right… To be totally up-front with you guys, it’s my bad, straight up. The obvious lore contradiction with Sargeras and his encounter with the eredar was clearly documented in the Warcraft III manual. I wrote those bits about four years ago, and to be totally honest, I simply forgot. Genius, right? With my excitement to get the draenei up to speed and root them more firmly in the setting, I forgot to do my homework and go back over my earlier writing. I can assure you, no one’s more crushed about this mistake than I am. I’ve spent the last few days kicking my own ass over this one. Sucks to fail. It may not always be evident, but we take this story stuff really seriously at Blizzard. It’s been one of my personal missions at this company to maintain a high level of integrity throughout the Warcraft game setting (all of them, actually) and I think we’ve done a pretty decent job of upholding the continuity over the years.

    I think it’s important to note that world building is far bigger than just “storytelling,” and it requires (in my humble opinion) a certain amount of flexibility. Sometimes you need to expand certain ideas or retcon whole sections of continuity to broaden the scope and accessibility of your setting. There are a good number of these types of situations already (like totally revising our timeline, suggesting trolls were the progenitors of all elven subspecies, etc. – there’s a hundred other examples). To make an omelet, ya need to break a few eggs, and WoW’s one big omelet.

    The trouble is, this has become a pretty big setting. There are literally thousands of characters, hundreds of locations, and all sorts of creatures, items, and plot themes that all define this world. As you can imagine, it’s a lot to police. Sometimes things do fall through the cracks – mistakes get made and we’re forced to scramble to come up with clever solutions to continuity errors. (Hakkar, anyone? :-)). You not only have me jamming ideas, but a ninja team of quest designers, an army of freelance RPG writers, and a commando squad of red-hot novelists who are all involved in flushing out the lore and making it more than just wallpaper on a game.

    I’m explaining all this not to excuse this particular mistake, but to give you some understanding of how the mistake was made. I’ve read a fair amount of posts over the past few days and I know there’s a lot of confusion and frustration surrounding the whole eredar/draenei train wreck. Believe me – I know exactly how you feel. At the end of the day, we’re all just a bunch of geeky fanboys and fangirls, and we all get pretty fired up when people start screwing with the worlds we love. If anything, all of the venting and creative suggestions I’ve seen over the past few days have reinforced for me the fact that you guys really do care about this world and its troubled denizens.

    While I can’t promise that these types of mistakes will never happen again, I do want to state clearly that we take the responsibility of crafting and maintaining this lore very seriously. You all pay good money to adventure through this world month by month, and you deserve the best we can give.

    Don’t lose faith – we’ll do ya’ proud!

    Hit #2: So What’s the Story, Blizzard?
    Ok, so what’s the real scoop behind the eredar/draenei story then? At this point, even though the NEW lore directly counters the Warcraft III manual, we’re still going to run with it. There are a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which is that I think it’s far stronger than what I crafted back in the day. The eredar were not necessarily all evil. Sargeras did come to them and tempt them with power. They did NOT make Sargeras crazy. This gives the eredar more dimensionality and roots the draenei to a key moment in Burning Legion history.

    We’ve also woven all of this new lore into an upcoming novel by Christie Golden (author of Lord of the Clans) that depicts the draenei’s escape from Argus and the “RISE OF THE HORDE” on Draenor. The book DOMINATES, and you’re going to really dig it. Durotan, Ner’zhul, Gul’dan, Doomhammer, Hellscream, Kil’jaeden, Velen – this story is the one you’ve been waiting for. I’m getting geeked up just thinking about it…

    However, this new lore does leave a large hole – how did Sargeras go nuts? What drove him to fall and begin his Burning Crusade? I don’t know yet. It will be his encounter with some evil race (who dares me to use Old Gods???), but it won’t be the eredar.

    I’ll chew on this. Maybe we’ll solve this by the end of the expansion. See – this is that flexibility stuff I was talking about earlier… 🙂

    Hit #3: World of Spacecrafts
    Another concern I’ve been hearing about is the inclusion of certain sci-fi elements into the setting. I appreciate that this stuff is pretty far out, but that’s the whole point: Outland – and the greater universe out there in the void – ARE far out. Change is always difficult – I remember people getting really upset about dwarves with guns, steam-tech, Gnomeregan as a hi-tech city – many people had a hard time rolling with those technologies in a fantasy setting. But I ask you all – can you imagine WoW without those elements now?

    We’re definitely throwing some new concepts at you all, but I’m very confident that when you’re able to see these elements in context, over the course of the gameplay – you’ll understand why we’ve been so excited to include them.

    To be clear, we’re not talking about having the Millennium Falcon cruising around the Twisting Nether (I’m certain there would be some legal issues there, to say the least). The draenei ‘nether-ship’ you’ve been hearing about is far more than it seems. It’s part of a larger dimension-traveling fortress called Tempest Keep that essentially teleports through alternate realities. It doesn’t bank and roll or shoot proton torpedoes (not yet, anyway).

    While we will be introducing a number of naaru technologies (like this ship, for instance), we’re not planning on going hog-wild. Conceptual balance is everything. For those of you who are fearful of seeing jet-packs and laser pistols filling up the AH, never fear. If you did see them, they’d likely be goblin engineered and get your character killed anyway.”

    There you have it. This is one of the reasons why I love Warcraft story so much. People often forget (or plain out reject) how much Blizzard, or should I said Chris, really cares.

  • I don’t question whether Metzen cares. He probably did/does care, but still screwed it up (whether it was all him or someone else, I don’t know – but he’s the one who apologized).

    If this is handled well, it could make all of the mistakes go away. We would be set up for Warcraft 4.

  • @Keen: Absolutely this would be aimed at the players that already know and enjoy the lore.

    At this point, I’d say it’s likely that more players have quit WoW than are playing it currently.

    Regardless of how well they do this reboot of the franchise, it’s going to be a carrot that draws people back. The nostalgia alone would motivate a lot of players to return, curious what they’ve done with the remodelling of the place.

  • I would love to see this. Revamping the current content would be fantastic and definitely get me back into the game. Still, I highly doubt it. Highly doubt it.

  • That’s redoing all the old world content for 1-60? The leveling 80-85. That’s not an expansion that’s a whole new game. You’ll be waiting 3+ years for you next expansion.

    Our gamer eyes are getting to big for developers to keep up.

  • I dont believe this will ever happen. Think about all the work they will need to put in to make it si you can fligh there. They never made the game so with that in mind.

    I dont play the game anymore and nothing will make me go back to it. Its not that amount of content that makes me quit the game but its where the game is heading that made me quit.

    Please Blizzard, dont revamp the things that made the game what it is now. If you want to make the old content interesting again, then just make a herioc verion of MC, BWL, … But dont make it 25man en crap… it sucks big time.

    CuJo

  • to be honest I never really cared about the WoW lore, just didn’t really interest me, even when I played.

    thats why its strange that this expansion would bother me, but it does.

    it seems like they are just going to cheaply redo everything, its kind of a cop out.

    I doubt all of the areas are going to stay in the level cap they used to be, since only about 20% of the players weren’t already 80 =P

    I just have a feeling they are cramming all the leveling zones into one liner trail that will have you level as fast as possible, and then add more end game stuff.

    WoW was at its best when you actually enjoyed PLAYING the game, regardless of level.
    I had more fun in UBRS than I ever did with the newer content.

  • Boy does this post embody the eternal optimistic naivete of the MMO gamer.

    “ding’ing will actually MEAN something and not just be something you do.” – thanks pelkor.. you are so right, this really gives it away, what great guerilla marketing.

    But lets saythere are seeds of truth in this re-working

    1. To do it right really would be re-designing the game from the ground up. This is not an expansion, it is an enitire new game. Expect to see it in 2013 with a new graphic engine… called WOW 2.0

    2. Done quickly it really would just be a wierd re-hash of old content, that for most people would not make any sense. It would also make the new expansions seem ridiculous in retrospect.

    Hmmm let me clarify… The IDEA of this is great… just like the IDEA of WAR, AOC, AION, et all seems fantastic! We can sit around here discussing all the cool things they could do.. but really, when does it ever turn out that way?

    This is just an exercise in the construct of the mind… now BACK TO YOUR DAILIES! That is where the money is at.

    I of many have left WOW too far behind to care…

    but WOW 2.0? hmmmmmm

  • Well, let’s just wait until friday/saturday and we’ll see what happens on NarcissismCon… i mean BlizzCon.

  • Who knows how long they have been working on this…I think work on this started during TBC at least.

    And there will always be some who don’t like change and it’s certainly a risk. But I’d guess that a majority of players have done the old content many times and the only game left for them is stuck at the very top. It makes WoW a very narrow game for most instead of the huge world that vanilla had at the start.

    It’s bold…if this is true, then they have some serious stones. But a huge part of the game right now is more a bother than fun for most players. Newer players will still get to experience new content as well as those that have played for 5 years.

  • “It makes WoW a very narrow game for most instead of the huge world that vanilla had at the start.”

    Oh but here is the fundemental problem once you start dumbing down the leveling curve… who really cares how great the content is, if you pass through so quickly, barely even clearing half the quests from your log, to retain any gratification of the experience.

    “Newer players will still get to experience new content as well as those that have played for 5 years.”

    If Blizzard IS STILL catering to the new player, they will be going down much faster than I would have thought. For every player coming to WOW for the first time how many are leaving.. 1, 5 , 10, 20?

    I would think they are much more concerned about getting their immense player based hooked on their next release.

    Like many games, the expansions have painted themselves into a corner. This re-working, given Blizzards recent trends of design, seem quite at odds. Very much why I fight it about as easy to swallow as..mmm.. crushed glass.

    “Who knows how long they have been working on this…I think work on this started during TBC at least.” – The king is dead, long live the king!

  • Like others have said, while the redoing of entire quest lines sounds interesting and enticing to a degree, it’s pretty much the same old thing after you’ve gone through them a couple of times. In effect, if this expansion doesn’t change the dynamics of the game in some way (even slightly), then I don’t see it being as successful. What the game needs is some way to integrate all of the zones somehow, so that there is a purpose for high level players to visit and interact within them on a consistent basis, rather than them just being dead zones after they’ve explored and leveled through them.

  • So Mythic can officially shut WAR servers down after this expansion hits the shelves.