Some kind of alternative advancement similar to the titles in LoTRO is an intriguing possiblity.

Another avenue could be an expansion aimed explicitly at the "real casuals" (TM) - the ones that don't get to the level cap. A complete revamping of level 1-60 content that adds new instances, new questlines etc. Hey, maybe even have some real progression of storylines. What happens *after* you foil the Defias plot?

This would fit in well with new classes. One of the problems is that introducing new classes means rerolling, and rerolling means repeating content you've already seen. So if they ever want to add new classes, they need to add new content not just from 1-20, but right the way up to the cap IMO.

Of course, you could comparatively easily add level 70 Heroic modes for the new low-level 5-man, so you'd get levelling content and casual-endgame content for the price of one, and even the people that don't reroll will get access to some of the new content. A new raid or two somewhere in Azeroth could go there for the real hardcore, but if there's one thing TBC has shown, it's that no company on Earth, anywhere, can ever turn out content at a rate fast enough to make sure bleeding edge raiders always have something to do.

Sure, there'd be massive outcries from a small but vocal percentage of the player base if Blizzard ever did release such a "kthx and reroll" expansion, but I think a much larger percentage would want to try the new classes and be interested in new levelling content.

Something I'd like to see would be true multi-classing. Once you hit level 20 or 30, you're allowed to pick a second class and level that up too. You can switch your "active" class when you're out of combat. When you gain XP, you can choose to advance either of your two classes.

Conceptually it would be the same as relogging to an alt, except that both "alts" share faction advancement, soulbound items, etc. Game balance shouldn't be affected, since you can still only have 25 in a raid, of the known classes. However, when you hit a fight like 4HM, you don't have to swap people out and swap your tanks in, you could have some of your dual-class DPS/tank people switch to their other persona on the fly. Used creatively in the arena, it adds another level of complexity. You take down the other team's healer - whoops, their mage just went invisible and swapped to paladin.

Very nice ideas, but that would still require a lot of balancing and work, and as I see it at the moment the current classes still need way more improvements and balancing before going into another game dimension.

I would love to see an expansion or patch that only addresses old quests and broken quest lines. How about reviving the rogue quest line from Hillsbrad foothills for example? The missing diplomat, or the essence of Eranikus in Sunken Temple.

Blizzard was put in a tough spot. It seems the new sound system is ready, but nothing else really is. They've completely revamped the sound system, making a "minor" patch with an 2.1.x revision not fit well.

It could have been turned into a "balance Arenas" patch, but since 2.1 Blizzard seems to be sticking hard to the "baby steps" philosophy, outright refusing to do anything that might tip the scales too far.

Next expansion would probably be South Seas.. They want us to return to Azeroth.

Level cap increase? most probably. It's the easiest way to make character progress. Alts are screwed and should be imo. Unless you can take the 80 levels again.. (say hi to outland at 60-70, say hello to south seas 70-80).

Instead of new races we could probably get hero classes. I don't believe it tho, no new race, no new class.


I see Zul'Aman as RAQ, a straight alternative progression to karazhan. It's a more casual approach to raiding. Guilds will have more easier time getting on the 25 main raiding after ZA comes.

I believe there will be 1 more major instance before expansion. Grim'Batol seems plausible, brings us back to Azeroth and kind of prepares us for the next expansion (which will be in Azeroth - emerald dream is out of the question).


As for Blizzcon. SC2 will ofcourse have the biggest showcase but WOW will have something big too because of COA, WAR etc.
I would be suprised if they announced the next expansion. Doesn't seem that exciting to pay for yet another expansion - rather buy COA or something people will think. Just more stuff in general I think; voice chat, guild banks, pvp content, pve content. And something a bit more special - but not that big - maybe mini games ingame, that could draw attention from other MMOs.

I rather fear that Blizz will up the level cap again. Honestly to some extend i have a hard time seeing that hardcore raiders will keep up with scrapping all their gear every 12 month. It's fine to have some sort of item reset like the last one - where you had a lot of time with your stuff before that, but to do it on a rather regular basis - dunno at least myself would be very tempted to just call it quits.

Problem with leveling is not level cap but rather pain of ~20-58 with old unrewarding content compared to outland and new races staring zones. But they will fix that. I would not be surprised seeing ZA in 2.3 (as 2.2 seems to be... nothing?) and then with 2.4 revamp of Azeroth zones. After that we got next expansion time which probably will be in Azeroth again.

I would not counting on any new classes unless they chance raid sizes. There is not really point to add new classes anyway, customize talent trees more and volia.

They scrap a piece every other week while raiding, if not more...

That's kind of short-sighted, you found the levelling from 60-70 amazingly fun, so did I, when i levelled from 60-70 i played nearly all day every day for a week and a half to level up and start gearing up, it was great fun. However there are also many other players who love raiding and gearing their character up. To see all that effort basically lost would be fairly disheartening for them i imagine.

If you loved the levelling up so much, why wouldn't you hope for a new class or revamp of the 1-60 content or both? That would provide you with alot more levelling time and also the players who don't want to have to redo everything every 12 months can also enjoy the game.

I think the problem with a new class is where it would fit into the raiding game, fitting something into PVP is quite easy in the scheme of things, however content has evolved to suit the 9 classes around, a new class would completely change that. I can't see a new class coming out without there being another level cap increase to effectively wipe the raiding slate clean and start again. Personally i think the game is ignoring movement as a part of it's game, every class moves at the same speed in combat, i'd love to see a class with a speed advantage as part of it.

There are other problems with leveling. I am on a backwater server with limited progression both pre and post TBC. Once October hit and we had an expansion looming over us almost every raid guild just gave up. There were no guilds in Naxx after October.

The other big problem with level increases is it causes the player base to completely abandon old content. If the next expansion was released and 70 was still the max level I think a lot of guilds would continue to raid TBC instances, some of us might not make it to Illidain before the expansion.

I'm fine with a level increase, there is equal bad and good to it imo. I think they could just add AAs like Everquest though and it would ease the progression a little, and allow old gear/tradeskill recipes/raid dungeons to remain useful.

I was pondering a bit, and i got one idea. There are abilities in game, like Steady Shot or Kill Command, which are called "rank 1" and there is no more ranks avaible to learn (i think rank 2 were previously announced on WoW website pre TBC, but didnt went live). Interesting is that other one rank abilities doesnt have anything mentioned about number of ranks in their tooltip (ie: misdirection, rapid fire). So perhaps there will be books implemented and they will train said abilities?

% based spells dont have any ranks, they scale with your level/gear.

If you ever got into the non instanced Hyjal there was a instance gate that looked more or less exactly like Onyxia's Lair door. Maybe they'll finally open Hyjal and have Deathwing hiding there.

An additional 10 level doesn't mean losing all raid gear. That's what happened with TBC, but it happened for a specific reason, namely PvE raiders rap... crushing pure PvPers. They've introduced a better system for regular PvPers to avoid getting too far behind on the gear curve, plus matching systems which reduce the full T3 vs dungeon blue syndrome that plagued the end of the first era.

So why reset the gear completely again? If a Northrend level 70 req blue is ilvl 115 (like TBC), and you get 4 ilvl per level (instead of 3 currently), you end with a level 80 req blue at ilvl 155, which is equivalent to an ilvl 125 epic. That resets the Karazhan/Gruul-level gear advantage, and let the high end guilds with a sense of progression.

Of course, that requires making a couple of introductory raiding tiers, and allowing the high end guilds to enter the raiding game bypassing the first two raids. Which, funnily, could be a 10-man, and a 15-man, allowing beginner guilds to grow a bit before tackling 25-man. With an initial gear at ilvl 140-150 for those dungeons, you have the choice of doing small raids, or running TK & SSC at 25 to get flagged for Hyjal & Black Temple and get similar level gear.

I call this a win-win.

The only cost is that you will need to make a bit more raids than TBC, since the forerunners will be able to bypass 1 or 2 of your raids to gear - they'll have the gear ready.

To be fair, this was not really what happened at all back then. By the time people were in Naxx, let alone getting full tier sets, there were ways for casuals to get nice items via ZG and AQ20. Also as the game progressed it became more easy even as a casual player to get into MC and BWL a few times and come out with some loot, even if that meant buying epics from more progressed guilds hoping to line their coffers for Naxx or whatever.

The time when the rift was largest came after BWL came out and people were fully clearing through Nefarian- mages with Staff of the Shadow Flame squaring off against players in blues. After that period things steadily improved in this regard.

Many servers had this issue, but I feel this was more because Naxx was such an economic sinkhole to many guilds, literally costing 1000s of gold a night. Now I can't speak to BT because I've never been there, but I imagine the Alchemy changes from a few patches ago made this problem go away. That is without taking into consideration that they changed the Itemization formula to discount STA making TBC gear with the same Item Level far superiour to it's pre-TBC counterparts. Finally, they also changed the Honour system the month before TBC's release meaning lots of people switched to farming BGs to give themselves massive weapon upgrades (I know my guild at the time did).

So assuming they don't change the Itemization formula (which is a safe bet, the 1 shotting in PvP is all but gone), the way PvP works (again, a safe bet), and that raiding doesn't cost as much as it used to, then I think you'll see people raiding BT right up to the expansion release date.

Back to Blizzcon, if they do announce the release of an expansion, I can't see it being out in Q1 2008, I'm sure we would have hard more by now about it. Makes me think of a Summer 2008 release, but when it does come out I do see Undermine as one of the locations but maintaining the lvl 70 cap. As for the Northrend content in game, I think that's probably a CoT instance. They still have another few expansions on the horizon, and I think the Frozen Throne is at least two years away...just in time for WoW 2 so we can start all over again.

This is not a win-win for most people that have aspirations of downing Illidan. My best guess is that it will take our guild until sometime this fall before we beat all of the TBC content. An expansion in the near future would mean that we wouldn't make it (well, without going back for it as an afterthought). Guilds at the top shouldn't be determining pace for level-cap-raising releases. Another raid? Fine...but I don't think that we should have to raid 4 or 5 nights a week just to get to Illidan before Blizz releases another expansion that puts the cap at 80. Hell, wowjutsu is only showing ~1% of the raiding population in T6 zones. I can't see Blizz releasing content that will pretty much make the TBC content obsolete when it just came out in January.

Of course. Maybe I misunderstood the previous poster's tone, but it seemed like he was rooting for a release sooner rather than later. My main point was that we should be able to enjoy life at 70, maybe get a couple more new raid zones, then raise the cap sometime next year. Just give people who are pve focused but not completely hardcore a shot at seeing everything there is to see in TBC before the next expansion.

I don't see why not, actually. In WoW 1.0 Zul'Gurub presented gear with rares on par with MC items (achieved primarily through the better use of itemization budget) and epics that were, in general, better than those from MC. The advent of AQ20 presented a 20 man with rare and epic gear that blew MC gear out of the water and epics that could give some BWL epics a run for the money. This development, however, did not lead to people writing off 40 man raiding in favour of 20 man raiding, and I do not see why a 10 man instance giving items of T4-T5 quality would lead to people abandoning the T4-T5 instances so long as a) some obvious itemization holes existed in the 10 man instances or b) the tier sets have attractive set bonuses.

I mean, assume your guild is the type that would be raiding 25 mans but now have the ability to run a 10 man instead for loot of the same quality; Once you've done the instance (and an instance we've been told can be cleared in one evening of a few hours), people are admiring their new epics, and your are waiting for raidids to reset, what are you going to spend your time on? I'm pretty sure the answer for a raid guild would be "raid the other content we have access to that gives upgrades over our current gear" rather than "don't raid other content, as, while it does give us upgrades, it gives us upgrades that are not necessarily bigger upgrades than those from this instance we are waiting for reset on"... Take a 3-day reset; is your wanna-be hardcore raidguild flush out of Karazhan going to cut down to two raid nights - or is it going to do Zul'Aman, Gruul, Magtheridon, and then start SSC/TK when Gruul and Magtheridon are on farm. (For another WoW1.0 comparison - people kept doing Onyxia to the very end despite Zul'Gurub and AQ20 being available)

However, assume that I am wrong. Assume that the inclusion of a T4-T5 quality 10 man leads to people on the whole abandoning the T4-T5 instances in favour of spending their times in the 10 man raids instead and doing heroics/grinding/PvPing/enjoying RL between raid days. Why would this be a problem for Blizzard? What is important for Blizzard is that the players continue spending their money on playing - what they are doing while playing is much less important. It does not mean extra work in developing new content - if these players go directly from the new super 10 man to T6 content they'll arrive at a stage where there are already people waiting for new content; there's no incremental cost from having players "skip" SSC/TK at this point in time.

This is the nature of the MMORPG. I can say with even more certainty than "Players will fight Arthas at one point" that "Your current state and gear will become utterly obsolete." If that doesn't sound all that compelling to you, I'd suggest leaving sooner than later, because it always happens.

I have to say, I view it as a plus. I can't imagine anything more irritating than having an expansion come out, and *not* being able to get shiny new gear. It's one of the reasons I switched from my T2-geared mage to my rogue in DM blues when TBC came out. I don't *want* to blast through new content like a tornado because I outgear it before it's even released.

I'd wager lots of people feel the same way - I mean, look at the grumbles that are beginning to surface from people who will hit the end of BT soon and have no new, challenging content to tackle. The demands from the Kara-farming crowd for ZA to be a really hard 10-man instance, because what's the point of anything that won't give you upgrades?

In any expansion that raises the level cap, there will be levelling content and endgame/raiding content. The contention seems to be that people would prefer the former to be trivial, skipped past in a couple of weeks, and ignored as far as possible. This makes no sense to me. Why would you demand to have less challenge and fewer upgrades: to have only half of the expansion content mean anything to you?

If they introduce something that is worth leveling an alt, I think it would be neat/wise to include new content in the 20-60 area; 30-50 if I had to pick a 20 level range. The new race areas 1-20 have some staying power relative to original content, but it's a painful jump after that. Anything helpful along the way would be a plus, even if it's 1.5 zones and a 5-man.

I also think that eventually the talent system will need a revamp or a new twist; that could take the place of a new class/race.

Why? In that scheme, BT & Illidan's loot will still be desirable. It will be a bit easier to kill at the same gear level, because of the added levels, but in the same manner, if the expansion came and added no new progression path except for the handful of guilds killing Illidan... nobody would buy it.

The expansion has to offer something for most of everybody. If I'm in dungeon blues, I will get something better at my play level. If I'm heroic geared, I get something better as well, without requiring a change in my gameplay style. If I've finished BT, I get new targets.

What do you offer without a level up? Zero gear upgrades for the level 70 in dungeons? An endless rerolling? I doubt Blizzard is going to risk their next expansion on such a losing strategy.
Why? If, unlike TBC, there's only a moderate gear raise, then every single piece of loot you get is one better than what you'll find levelling. So why should you stop if it's loot that motivates you. The loot would be better than anything short of the 2nd or 3rd tier of raiding there.
I think you're mistaken if you think that the release of the expansion is motivated by the very high end finishing it. If anything, the expansion will be released because the non-raiding guilds have run out of options. More than half of the levels 70 have NOT raided. If they've not raided, they won't magically all start joining raiding guilds. Some might, but most won't - they would have done so if they could.

Those people are running out of content. They no longer have reasonable progression avenues. The next expansion will open progression avenues.

When they designed TBC, their stated goal was an expansion a year. Being Blizzard, they'll slip a lot on the final release date, but TBC was clearly not designed to last more than a year. By winter/spring 2008, the dungeon players will have run out of dungeons, the compulsive multichar/rerollers will be close to 70, the 10 man will be running Zul Aman, the very high end will have finished and twiddling their thumbs...

Ok, you don't want a level raise. What do you want then in the expansion - which satisfies the compulsive alt levellers, the guys who do pickups dungeons, the 10-man friend and family guild who will never kill Gruul, and you. What is the formula where everyone gains in the expansion?