Lazare

Outlands is probably "done" from a raiding point of view. There's really no major zones or lore left; Illidan and Black Temple finishes that I think. Unless they do something really weird have have an Old God invade or something...what's left?

That doesn't mean they can't add more raid instances to Azeroth - but my feeling is we'll only see Zul Aman unless the next xpacs release date really starts to slip. There just isn't time for them to do much else (even if it made sense for them to try, given how empty BT/Hyjall is on most servers).

What I'd like to know is whether A) The next xpac will completely outdate all TBC content, and B) Whether they have any plans to revamp pre-TBC content to make it relevant. My guild wasn't advanced enough to really see Naxx pre-TBC, and I'm afraid we may not really see BT/Hyjall before the next xpac either. (What can I say? We're a pretty casual lot.) I'd love to hear that they were going to redo Naxx as a lvl 70 25 man raid. A dream, I know...

 

Malan

I know some people who got a tour of Blizzard HQs and they said there are SC: Ghost posters and giant figures all over the office still.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

• Chicken

Unless there's another map I missed, that was actually taken from the manual of Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal.

 

Vaccine

Well I really thought about it and I can't justify anything to top Illidan being brought into Outlands. Except for the slight possibility of Deathwing, though I think we're gonna see that story run a long time before we get to face off against him.

Whilst you could justify many many instances around Outlands (raid instances that is), not many of them could come close to topping Illidan in power levels. You could easily add another Ogre raid instance in Nagrand or Blades Edge but random gronn/ogre would have to be harder than Illidan to fit progression wise which I don't buy. The same can be applied for most other ideas, Ethereal raid instance, Auchindon one (although maybe potential for an Old God or something) or even some form of Hellfire Catacombs.

That leaves a few options in my opinion.
1) No raid instances coming in TBC. Most plausable for me.

2) New floaty region appears. Deathwings lair or a similar floating island is "discovered" and players are directed to it by NPC. They fly out into the twisting nether to the new place Blizz added. Whilst possible, it would not only require the work of creating a new Raid instance but also, in my opinion, the creation of a new zone for single player quests and even possibly a 5 man instance encounter to give something to casuals.
Theres also the question of another TBC storyline from this. We know Kael went over to the Burning Legion and that he isn't really dead, maybe Kil'Jaeden will show up.

3) The instance is in the old world. This is very possible. There are a lot of unanswered questions lore wise and you could certainly justify many of these o be harder than Illidan. You got Emerald Dream and the nightmare (hakkar/old God/Archimonde, whatever you believe it is), the titans and their instances, Northrend (probably xpac), Maelstrom (probably Xpac) or something to do with the CoT portal.


What might be a possibility is another Gruul style dungeon to tide raiders over till the xpac, a quick dungeon with 2-3 bosses and barely any trash. Could have a black drakonid and cos, a black dragon then Deathwing or one of his chiefs as the final boss.


Not long to wait now though so I guess we'll just have to be patient.

 

dukes

On the topic of the expansion/patches: There's 2-3 portals (like the dark portal) that are currently sitting "inactive" in parts of Outland. Western edge of Zangarmarsh and far western edge of Nagrand (behind the forge camps) are the two I can think of right now. They could do something cool with the opening of one of them - maybe a massive Burning Legion invasion led by Kil'Jaeden.

On the topic of Blizzcon: I think they'll probably just stick to SC2. It's going to be their main showcase game and any information about anything WoW-related is likely to divert a lot of attention away from that. It's possible that they'll bring out something about the WoW expansion/patches either at Leipzig or E3, but still focus on SC2 more than anything else. In the WoW-section of Blizzcon I should think they'll focus more on PvP implementation and spectator stuff rather than "brand new" things.

 

◊ Cadfael

Both of these are in use in quests.

The one in Zangarmarsh you get sent to in a quest series, which I think starts with the lone Demon Hunter guy in Nagrand with the Netherdrake, not 100% sure though.

The portal in Nagrand is now in use for the Netherwing daily (and one single) quest you get once you reach revered with Netherwing.


But as has been said already: Hang a bit around in the dragonmaw base in SMV and wait for the appearance of "Lady Sinestra". That's a possible expansion lore wise right there.

 

Kink

A lot of people seem focused only on progression while the vast minority of plaery are even at the edge of progression (albeit the population on these forums is skewed a lot).

However what the game really needs is a new 25man newbie instance of equivalent difficulty to Kara. So many guilds are stuck clearing Kara and can simply not make the jump from 10 raiders to 25. These guilds just stagnate and become "Gear up guilds" for the larger, more successful guilds. A nice starting 25man instance would alleviate a LOT of the problems for these players.

However, you DO need to keep everyone happy as best you can. And while there are very few players with all the content dead, those 0.5% are very very loud. So a new instance for them would obviously be great also. Something Naxxesque with quite a long learning curve, innovative and fun fights and a great layout to let you choose from the start where you wish to go.

Hopefully these will get sorted in the 2.2 patch =).

There is light at the end of the tunnel.
The only problem is, it's often an incoming train.

 

Vaccine

Surely thats what High King Maulgar, Gruul and Magtheridon are already? They are all similar difficulty to Karazhan and all drop Tier 4 like Karazhan. Those are the stepping stones, once you've mastered those its time to head to SSC.

 

Metrosexuelf

As far as that interview with Metzen and Chilton goes, I possibly stand corrected, although I've never seen it before. Still, given the numbers, I would still be fairly surprised to see another 25-man raid instance intended for level 70 play.

 

Ghorthor

Looking at the numbers of people raiding Karazhan and people raiding SSC you easily see, that the intention of Gruul/Mag to bridge from Kara to the 25-mans isn't working. The amount of coordination and adaption Gruul takes compared to Karazhan is too much for your average Karazhan raid.

 

Gryzemuis

The problem is the size of the raids. Not the difficulty.
If you are in a small guild, and progressed past Karazhan, you are forced to either a) recruit more people, or b) merge with another guild. Both actions highly increase the chances for drama. If you don't want to do that, or can not do that, you are stuck. The solution is more content for 10-man groups. And I think everyone who cleared Karazhan wouldn't mind something that is harder than Karazhan. (And with improved loot of course).

I think you are over-estimating the difficulty of Gruul, and underestimating the skill level of the average Karazhan raider. Imho the difficulty is mostly in the logistics of growing the core of your guilds from 12-15 players to 30-40 players. Once you are in an established raiding guild this problem seems non-existent. But if you are not, this is the hardest challenge in the game.

 

Ghorthor

Let's bring in some more reality. My guild tried to get from 2 Karazhan groups to a valid 25-man raid. To kill Gruul it would take us 25 people with lots of Karazhan gear and properly specced. What we had were around 15 people properly specced with Karazhan gear and 10 people with 1 or 2 Kara items and pew-pew specs. Trying to convice those to respec or to drag them through Karazhan was really hard. This is exactly my point. Your average guild may have the sheer manpower to built a 25-man raid, but it doesn't have 25 properly specced people with equal playtimes to realize proper Karazhan farming.

What we ended up with was the slackers being upset and rather not raid at all than to change their gaming habits to get a valid shot at this expansions endgame. All the quality raider material was sucked up by the few top tier guilds of the server. Even recruiting new ones was a dead end, cause we came up with applicants who needed at least a month of gearing/learning in Karazhan. A lot of us got sick of clearing Karazhan over and over again. In the end this broke the guild.

Those wowjutsu numbers speak for themselves.

 

songster

I'd agree with that. However I'd disagree that it's solely about group size. Instance lockout (and the logistical management of lockouts) comes into it as well.

Yes, there is a logistical difficulty in growing from 10-40 players (exacerbated by the effects of cross-server transfers constantly removing the best players on the server).

There's also a logistical difficulty in going from no lockout straight to a week-long lockout.
These difficulties are synergistic. One of the reasons it is hard to grow above Karazhan-size is that to do so pretty much requires you to go through a stage of running parallel Karazhan raids, and get appropriate class balance in each, every week.

A raid (which could be anything from 10 to 25 man) with a short lockout timer, pitched at a comparable risk/reward to Heroics and/or Karazhan, would be very very useful in helping the logistical flow.

Heck, even just having a second 10-man with a week-long lockout would help, because instead of teams A and B both going into Karazhan and not being able to swap members between the two, you could send A to Kara and B to $Newinstance. Come the end of the week, if B turns out short on tanks and A is short on healers, you could swap people between the two.

 

Malan

I think its interesting how the player base continually states that there can't be anything "bigger or better than Illidan." I don't have a link for this, so take it with a grain of salt because I'm paraphrasing, but there was a dev interview not too long ago where they said that Illidan is just a side character, admittedly a popular one, but that he's not pivotal to the WoW Universe, he's not the main attraction. And that's pretty much why he needed to die in the Xpack, so that they could start moving away from him.

Recent interviews also said that they basically scrapped all the Emerald Dream work they'd done so far and they don't intend this to be the next zone.

If you look at TBC wrapping up the Illidan story, its quite likely that they'd want to wrap up the Scourge and Lich King story soon before moving on to anything else.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

• Shabadu

Warcraft has only a few major characters left to provide meaningful milestones. Azshara, Arthas, and Kil'jaeden. You could argue for Sargeras and Deathwing, but it still remains to be seen as to their status. Kil'jaeden would give a pretty concrete ending to Outlands, Arthas and Azshara would provide similarly fitting ends to Nazjatar and Northrend. Whoever/whatever the Nightmare is would be a logical ending to whatever the Emerald Dream brings.

I can see a few major plot points that would make good CoT fodder though. Imagine having to aid Doomhammer in the opening of the Tomb of Sargeras, with the infinite dragonflight trying to keep Gul'dan alive. Or battling with Thrall and Rexxar against Admiral Proudmore, assaulting Grim Batol to destroy the demon soul, or witnessing the Scouring of Quel'thalas.

 

Lavode

There is no instance gap - there may have been before but after the trash and attunement nerfs, no, there isnt.
I'm in a "just starting ssc" raid, we got magtheridon down once, grull and kharazan on farm and wiped on the lurker at 10% this past sunday (ventrillo; "I just got eaten by fish".."oh fuck".. having that happen after everyone finally grogged the fight was a nightmare)

The one thing that struck us going in was that ssc is really very straightforward. We went from elaborate planning of the first trash pull to "Screw it, I'll swipe tank the lot, misdirect one onto bae (warrior mt) for killing" in about 8 minutes. And the boss fights really dont seem to be much of a step up in difficulty from kharazan. Getting a raid together with a non-retarded composition ? thats hard. Our first serious expedition into ssc had not a single priest in it. at all.

All of which goes to say that the raid instance which blizzard can put in next that will make the most raiders happy is not "even easier than ssc 25 man" its a kharazan sequel - Something which is flat out more challenging, and has better lewts than kharazan. Nearly every guild in the universe is somewhere in kharazan, and a large proportion of them have finished it, or will. Something that builds on that will make a lot of people happy.

 

Cloak-SH

Some of this probably has to do with the people involved as well. I think that if you take the average lvl 60 player pre-expac who was running UBRS/DM and occaisionally a MC pug that person isn't going to magically become a raider even with the onslaught of 25 man instancing. That person is probably now in a very casual guild that can do kara but usually not field two groups and more often than not wont get prince down every week.

This isnt a jab at casuals, everyone has a right to play the game as they see fit but there is alot of actual content that can be used to gear up characters to prepare them for gruul/mag. It's the actual coordination and skill involved in doing those instances that holds people back. Anyone who truely believes that gruul cannot be done in heroic/pvp gear is seriously deluding themselves.

Which brings me to my point, those people have ALOT of options to advance thier characters to the point where they can do kara/gruul/mag without mass leet purples. Pvp gear and heroic gear are more than sufficient for the task, it's the actual playerbase that is unaccustomed to raiding at that level and for that duration of time. Blizzard could introduce another 25 man but it's totally unneccesary and probably wouldnt help the situation. The tools that players have to train themselves and grow (gruul pun) are available right now, putting more stops on the progression roadmap isnt what needs to be done imo.

Just as a side note, for anyone who thinks going from 10-25 man raiding is challenging as a guild, just try to fathom what it was like going from 40 to 25. Yeah, thanks have a nice day.

Edit-grammar

 

Zong

http://www.wowwiki.com/Imageraenor_map.jpg


I'd love to see a Deathwing related instance come into play sometime, be it through Grim Batol or CoT.

 

• Chicken

That's indeed the map from Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal that I was thinking of.

It's interesting how some of the basic features are still in there in Outland as it is in WoW. Fortress Shadowmoon would be the Black Temple, The Bone Wastes are on there (If a bit more to the northeast then we'd expect), Fortress Auchindoun is about in the place of where Shattrath is now, as opposed to in the center of The Bone Wastes, the area underneath the Bonechewer Clan appears to be drawn as marshy, and roughly reflects where Zangarmarsh is now, the Blade's Edge Mountains are a lot smaller, but they're there.

 

snape

Along those lines, it could be linked to the South Seas/Maelstrom or even the Tomb of Sargeras (not sure how Illidan and Maiev in hot pursuit got to the Tomb, but I can see the how the Infinite Dragonflight might want to alter this timeline).

Further, it could be the original ship Thrall took to Durotar after his escape from Durnholde, which is my favorite idea, since it seems the Infinite Dragonflight has taken quite an interest in Thrall's origins.

 

◊ Cylyna

As previously stated, the original Blizzcon provided quite a bit of information on the new expansion WELL before it was even close to release. I would expect this Blizzcon to also have information on the new expansion.

Based on what I saw at the first Blizzcon this is what I would expect for the next one:

1. Playable Starcraft 2. When I say playable think 1 map, 2 races, half the units available, 30 minutes of playing at a time, and an hour wait on the first day to sit down.

2. Playable Zul'Aman. Again, when I say playable think 4 or 5 premade characters in absolutely stacked equipment, no coordination among players on the server, lots of dueling, 30 minuts of playing at a time, and an hour wait on the first day to sit down.

3. An announcment of the next expansion, due out in January or Febuary of this year. My bets are on some kind of Deathwing flavored expansion because I don't think they will use Arthas just yet (unless you have a CoT event with Arthas). We might see a new race announcement along with a playable starting area to go with this.

4. People playing games of Warcraft 3 on a level that most everyone on this forum has never seen before. Of everything that happened at the last Blizzcon, these games were my favorite part of it. Wow.

5. Hopefully some good back and forth with the Dev's at their panels. I wonder if they will screen the questioners this time so we don't get more of the "Why can't mages POM/Pyro out of invisibility, when NE Hunters can shadowmeld and lurk and then Aim Shot someone for more than a Pyro is even capable of? I mean, what were you guys thinking?!?!"

6. Comical impersonations and some guy doing the troll dance for real during the talent competition. Hopefully they get a real MC instead of the dipshit who ran it 2 years ago.

7. Also expect that the beta key they will give everyone will be for the latest WoW expansion - not for Starcraft 2.

For everyone who thinks that Blizzcon will be dominated by Starcraft 2: In a way, you will probably be right. However, remember that WoW still brings in a LARGE amount of money for Blizzard currently. They aren't going to shit-he...err dung-heap it for Starcraft 2 just yet. Also remember the two games are entirely different genres, RTS & MMORPG. You all know Blizzard has two different developmental teams working on both games.

 

snape

Keep in mind that there is also an ancient Titan vault at The Storm Peaks in Northrend - Ulduar. I think that could tie in very nicely, and is basically a gut feeling as to why I believe Uldum will be released with [whatever expansion contains] Northrend.

Draenor was basically "torn apart" though due to the opening of all the Portals, so I have no squabble with things looking "out of place" on that old map compared to what we have today. Things can move!

Also note that Zeth'Gor (present day) is named Zeth'Kur (WC2). I have much more of a squabble with that than landmasses moving.

 

Kesin

Personally I think they have to announce the next expansion because of Warhammer Online starting its Beta and hype machine. Also I think that the original plan for WoW 1 was to end with Northrend (leave the biggest baddy for last aka Arthas) but with Warhammer being the only real competitor for Blizz (yes I know Warhammer will probably be a totally different game more focused on PVP etc etc) in the near future they may have moved it up.

Also they went briefly over Heroic classes at the last Blizzcon, quite a trump card for taking the sheen off of Warhammer Online if you introduce one of the more sought after additions to WoW.

 

Talgog

Re: low penetration into 25-man raids. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If Blizzard wanted to make the average WoW player who wasn't a particularly adept 40-man raider if he raided at all into a 25-man raider, the beginning 25-man encounters needed to be truly entry-level stuff. Like Lucifron or Jeklik or something similar (Venoxis is easier than Drakkisath, sorry).

Instead, 25-man starts with Maulgar, which is like a much less flexible, far harder hitting version of Major Domo, and gets significantly tougher from there. Guilds, particularly guilds new to raiding or new to 25-man size, will fail at every barrier like always happened in WoW 1.0. The difference is the barriers start right away in TBC, as opposed to at the very end of MC or the start of BWL.

This doesn't work, it's just plain too damn hard of a learning curve for people who have minimal or no raid experience and Blizzard's idea of EQ-style brutal fixed "attunements" didn't work either. The proof is in the access numbers and Blizzard's decision to lift attunements for SSC and TK. Chalk it up to trying to design 25-man content for everybody, which meant not making it a walkover for Naxx guilds. Consequently, only Naxx guilds are successful in Tier 5 content, more or less, not the supposed flock of "new" raiders. 2.5% of guilds is not what they had in mind.

So unless there's a 25-man version of ZG on tap (or a punching bag 25-man boss), I can't see more 25-man content being added. Progression 25-man raid content? Please. I'm not a fan of the "wasted" resources quipr, but Blizzard clearly recognizes this problem, or they wouldn't have scrapped the attunemnets.

The playerbase can't do what they've got.

-

I doubt that we're going to see a new levelcap expansion announced in detail, especially one for January 08. At the time of E3 last year, there was ENORMOUS speculation and leading materials about Burning Crusade. Granted that was a November launch, but Blizzard was really not close to meeting that street date, so if this was anywhere near comporable size and depth, we would have heard *something* by now. Instead, we have heard absolutely nothing, beyond a few cryptic "blue" comments on the boards. No leaks, no screenshots, no even Alpha builds shown to gaming magazines.

Even without the glut of current TBC content, that leans heavily against truly major news. Complete total surprises are rare in this business. Lack of information usually indicates little or bad news. Companies *want* speculation and autonomous viral marketing.

I also lean against a small pay expanasion. We've been getting those for free for two years now, including some really big stuff (AQ, Naxx). If we had to pay for what's essentially a big patch, I cannot possibly imagine that going over well.

A future big patch without level cap increase is certainly a possibility, though.

I'd expect Zul'Aman (it's in the game and is intended as 10-man content), more about the VOIP implementation, at least one other "cool" feature, and probably some PvP tweaks of some sort, as there's major competition coming down the pipe soon in that arena and Blizzard has to know that the current Battlegrounds do not cut it to compete with an entire new, big name, big hype opposing game. A mass exodus to WAR will hurt Blizzard's monthly revenue far more severely than anything else ever has, so I have to believe they're at least aware of this and want to at least try something to mitigate it.

Blizzard might have our first look at what the next expansion will BE. Art, stills, zone concepts, something like that. I think they do know what it will be, but it's just not far enough along to be coming out in six months.

OTOH, I expect reams of Starcraft 2 information. There be the cash cow, mateys.

 

dukes

I'm pretty sure they said that hero classes were dead and forgotten in the last Dev chat.

I also think that the 2.5% comment people are throwing around is a bit too small. There are many, many people who have chosen to PvP in TBC who could do the raid content out there if they wanted to. I know a number of people on my server who chose exactly this, and so they aren't there to raid and "bump" the numbers up.

I also think that because of the casual-friendlyness and general lack of consistency in playtime needed for PvP, it appeals to a lot of people who would otherwise raid. This, again, cuts down on the playerbase for raiding.