Yer this was what I was going to say. If they add a 5 man, 10 man and 25 man to Icecrown, along with new lucrative daily quests, recipie vendors for solo players upwards and maybe even a new faction (groan?) and a mini zone of quests, you get pretty much everyone working to open it. Its even easy to get pvp players to participate by having some form of pvp objective or resilience item rewards once open.

That was the big failure of the AQ event. Had AQ20 been AQ5, it would have had near universal support.

Yes, but it would still have had the "my contribution is going to be small compared to the total, so why not do little and reap the rewards of others doing the collection anyhow?" problem - though possibly of lesser magnitude than during the actual AQ event series.

As Groat and others touched on, unless there are valuable individual mini-rewards along the way it is unlikely that you'll ever see a true server-wide effort. If a player can see "just 10 more quests and I get my silver tabard, 20 more for the war-mount, 30 more for a useful shiny purple of my choice, 50 for the minipet, 100 for the Grand Poobah Tabard..." he has much more incentive to spend his time on helping out by doing good.

After watching the Lore panel from Blizzcon...

Can Death Knights be any race or what?

I don't think they said anything definitive, but IMHO they should be restricted to Humans for Alliance and Orcs for Horde, if you want to stay traditional, even if the two historical kinds of DK were basically completely different.

Currently they can, but Metzen doesn't like it that way. I'd expect UD and Orc (or BElf, there's one you have to kill to finish your tranquillen rep) and Human/Dwarf.

Undead certainly makes sense.
I had hoped/expected that Undead could have become paladins too.

When Blizzard said they would remove faction imbalances, the fear-ward issue wasn't the only issue they missed, imho. Alliance has 2 races that can be paladins. Horde has one race. Not everybody picks class first, and then race. Some pick race first, and then class. This can result in Horde having less paladins, even in the long run. Allowing Undead to be paladin would have solved it. I also thought that lore wise, it would be a pretty combination: undead and paladin.

The same is true about druids. Druids are the least played class since a long time. Imho the druid class is a fun class. But you can pick from only 1 race to play it. If you don't like Tauren or Night Elfs, you are less likely to play a druid. A shame really.

If Dead Knights are limited to certain races, I certainly hope undead are one of them. Dwarves are the least played race on Alliance, so there is a point in allowing Dwarves to be Dead Knights too.

My local (french) gaming mag got out earlier this week (I just got my copy, three days after it appeared on the newsstands), and they had the WotLK cover. They were at Blizzard before Blizzcon for a day of press presentation (no Tigole anywhere, Tom Chilton, Cory Stockton, J. Brack and Chris Metzen were their hosts). Funky stuff: some of the guys working on WotLK... aren't 70 yet (not enough time to play).

Most of the stuff got out from Blizzcon, however, there's a couple items to know (translated from french, two translations from english and back may fuzz things):

"As early as level 71, noobs will have access to item with higher quality than T4 - if you don't give them items, they get bored the casuals. Don't worry, you'll get better items as well, just later. Everyone needs to progress, that's the natural path in all MMORPG"

"No class trainer or auction house in Northrend, to differenciate zones"

A full insert on Sunwell Plateau (which is thus fully confirmed as the next raid zone):
"A gigantic instance 70 for 25 people, Karazhan-type"... "The summit of Burning Crusade"...
"It's a flying island, with an enormous work, with ladders, labyrinthic rooms, large green gardens, Bloodelf-style. Very beautiful, but you won't have time to take pictures - it's chockful of elven elites and undeads (????). In the middle stands an enormous energy pit (sunwell, I assume). There's between 6 to 8 boss, the last of which is unconfirmed to be Kil'Jaeden. Elements suggest Magtheridon-type fight, with clickable for the lazy while the rest of the raid mashes the beast to pulp. For difficulty, we're promised it's going to be harder than Black Temple, no less. For access, nothing defined yes as pre-required."
Comment: "Better stock on potions, it's not going to be done on an evening".

If I can get a scanner, I've got a map of Valgarde (the first 70 dungeon, "update 4.3.07" on the illustration). 3 bosses and the comments are so tiny, I can't figure them (looks like a shortcut for exits after last, like most WoW dungeons).

Random name list (some already listed in the thread):

Valgarde
Daggercap Bay
Ingvar the Plunderer (boss)
Skarvald the Constructor (boss)
Dragonblight Temple
Grizzly Hills
Utgarde Keep (70 to 80? instance. I assume heroic mode for 80)
Borean Tundra (main horde base)
Nexxus Dungeon ("onyxia-like")
Isle of Spears
Lake Cauldros
Dalaran ("the sphere is moving")
Halgrind
Twisted Glade
Fort Wildevar
Gjalerbron
Malegos
Caldarra
Scholzar Basin
Wintergrasp
Icegrow Glacier
Vrykul
Zul'Drak (troll? no kidding)
Shovelthorn Stag (beast, looks like a cross between a moose and a mammoth)

Limiting DK class to certain classes/races will be a mistake imho and will cause enormous outcry. I know I will whine

While this 'is' the Elitistjerks forum Eylirria ( :P ), that is a bit extra elitist don't you think? After all, this is a MMO'RPG'. Look and feel do account a significant amount, and race factors into that greatly. After all, if it was 'just' about the numbers and mechanics, we technically could be just all using white, bland, stick figures w/ no animations that just had the talents and abilities that scrolled damage over a target's head.

Selecting a race for something outside the the numbers/abilities is a very realistic (and common) thing in a video game, and so people wanting a tad more selection than 1 available from each faction for a class is really not absurd at all. IMHO

If I can't make a Troll Death Knight I will pout for days. I still wish my Warlock could be a Troll.

I perfectly understand that race/looks/game art makes a difference, but in the end, let's say only Gnomes could be paladins for alliance, and only Trolls could be paladins horde side. Now, while those 2 races are the ones I dislike the most, if I really wanted to play a paladin, I wouldn't refuse to play one solely based on this limitation.

I've had my share of interactions with people that get caught up WAY TOO MUCH into these details that I think are minor (minor, not insignificant), and they were always bad experiences, like people that refused to use ventrilo (not a pug scenario, I refuse to use ventrilo for pugging myself, I think it's a waste of time) on guild runs because "it took away from immersion", or melee hunters that just pictured the class as a dual-wielding mail-wearing warrior with a pet friend that aids you, mages that think they are supposed to just be the 'Masters of Kaboom' and so all they did was spam AoE spells... the list goes on.

Bottom-line is, if someone would be so outraged at the fact that they could only choose from one race, enough that they'd not play it, then chances are (in my experience) that they'll turn out to be another disastrous situation I don't wanna get caught into.

Anyways, sorry for the de-rail, and I should've kept my opinion on the previous post to myself, or at least explain why it is so.

On the topic of Death Knights, from a purely design stand-point, I think they'll have to allow every race to become one. They already said it will be a quest that starts at level 80, it would be really not cool if someone that doesn't have multiple max-level characters for whatever reason found out they have to level another character if they hope to one day make a Death Knight. From a lore stand-point, only certain races should be allowed to be one, but unless they announce early on the race-restrictions, so that we can get a jump on it, it's going to be really a pain in the ass to powerlevel a character solely for the purpose of unlocking the hero class.

From the Blizzcon news earlier, it is pretty clear that your character does not "become a Death Knight" - instead you get the ability to create a new Death Knight from scratch. This means that, should Blizzard choose to impose race restrictions on the Death Knight, it will have zero impact on which races can fulfill the quest to create a Death Knight, thus neatly doing away with the problem you contemplate.

I'm guessing it'll work like that as well, the only thing I'm kind of curious about is whether they'll impose faction or server limitations on your ability to create Death Knights.

Being able to create a high level character from nowhere on your opposite faction on a PvE server would still be fairly weird, though it's obviously not an issue on PvP server. As for the server limitations, Blizzard is already reluctant to allow people to transfer a character from a PvE server to a PvP server, let alone allow them to create a new character at an already high level. It thus wouldn't surprise me if you'd only be able to make Death Knights on the faction you're playing and/or server types you're illegible to be able to transfer a character to.

They've already confirmed that this will be pretty much the case, its not that certain races etc wont be able to unlock them what they're doing is at lvl 80 (or whenever) there will be a big epic quest chain which any one can do on any class/race. Completion of this chain allows the user the new option on the character screen of creating a new DK character, just like any other character. Whats not been decided is what races will be able to be DK's not which ones can unlock them it seems.

There's also various other considerations as well:
1) If a player unlocks a DK is it account wide or server wide? i.e. if I level my warrior which is on a PvE server to 80, complete the quest etc, can I then create a new DK on another server? (PvP or PvE)
2) If its limited to server then what happens for Character Transfers etc? i.e. can I create a DK on my home server then transfer it to another one later after its been created or what happens if the original char I did the quest on is transferred?

I would guess it would be account wide but then that ofc opens up some new issues with people leveling on PvE servers rerolling DK onto PvP servers and leaving a gap (lets face it PvE servers really do lag behind on PvE progress ironically)

I would bet server wide. I see your point on transfers, but come on. Can't be done more often than every 6 months, and costs what, $25 every time? Kind of a slow, expensive way to seed many servers with a DK you only earned on one.

Almost certainly server-wide. Otherwise you could unlock the quest, and create a raw high-level character on a brand-new server.

Nope but another way to look at it would be how easy would it be to enabled DK's on your main account, purchase a 2nd WoW account, upgrade it with the expansions then transfer the DK off and ebay it...Willing to bet that you'd be able to get more than the transfer and 2nd account cost (at least initially if you're one of the fastest) and you could basically mass produce them on demand.

Either way thats prob moot as there's bound to be some sort of restrictions, the question is what they are.

Make the expansion cost prohibitive (you would already have to buy the original WoW, TBC, and WotLK too...)? But in actuality, this would likely only work for a very limited time with any sort of worthwhile profit margin.

Hmm, that does look like it could be a problem. Blizzard will probably create some sort of fix for mass creating/selling/transferring of Deathknights.

Your Dk starts at a high level.

I don't see it as that much of an issue. We're only talking another few days playtime once someone hit 80 to level their Death Knight to 80. Hell, if you wanna go tank spec you've already levelled yourself a pocket farming character too.

Hmmm, actually, that raises a point nobody discussed yet.

What happen for the ultra casual guy who has only WoW, and wants to pick up WotLK.

Without TBC.

One of the the things I disliked was that people had to grind low-level items. Allowing low-levels to contribute is awesome, but forcing level-60s to chain-run Deadmines is not.

Maybe make it require "100.000 boxes of bandages", and 1 stack of runecloth bandages equal one box, 1 stack of silk bandages equal half a box, 1 stack of linen equal 1/5th of a box? There would still be one best thing to grind if you try to max boxes/hour, but at least you have a choice what to collect. For AQ, someone had to get those 2 million linen (or what it was) linen bandages, no matter if you had some thousand runecloth left over or not.

The other thing was reward. A raid instance is a reward, people were pugging the first boss of AQ20 (Rajaxx was a brick wall for any pug though) so everyone could benefit. But there was no immediate benefit - well, there were tokens that could be turned in for boxes of junk, or reputation with your side's factions (or both, don't remember). Yay, mounts, but if you really wanted a mount, you could grind the faction with runecloth anyway (and it probably was cheaper too).

If they added such an event right now for BC, there would be a large variety of possible rewards:
- reputation increase with a faction (of choice)
- Hellfire/Halaa PvP tokens, spirit shards
- battleground tokens (WSG/AB/AV/EoS)
- honour points
- pots or flasks/mark of the illidari
- epic gems
Of course, there could be an event specific tabard/mount/dress/weapon/whatnot as well.
Also, of you're willing to feel the wrath and flame of some peopl, think about turn-ins for
- badges of justice (heroic instance tokens)
- arena points
- primal nethers, nether vortexes
- tokens for tiered gear

Make the turn-ins award event tokens, and make options to turn in event tokens for the things mentioned above.
In the end, it's still a grind. But there is an immediate reward as well.

As mentioned above, our guild did a resource collection giving the top 3 contributors an MC run where they could pick up items of choice. That bank character was literally drowning in mails.
I think we got them 3-4 items each, and an onyxia head for the first two, and they were happy with. It apparently was an better incentive than junkboxes and alliance reputation.