PsiVen

Age of Conan is expected to be an M-rated PC/X360 hybrid with high system requirements; I wouldn't expect it to seriously conflict with WoW's market share.


No information on it afaik, but I would guess Fury since anything else wouldn't really be warrior-specific.

 

◊ Kalman

It's also developed by Funcom, which is going to redflag it a bit to a lot of people who've been playing MMOs for a while. AO was a decent game in the end (no competition to WoW, though), but it had a *rough* launch period.

 

Seneku

From my understanding there will be no "alpha" per se this time as it's much further on already so no Red/White cube's running around (though I miss the Bear Reavers!), it was supposedly originally going to be released around Jan but ofc this has been put back and the last word was around May/June. Friends and Family beta testing is due to start "soon" (prob in a month or two), no word on a wider beta after that atm however I'd probably be surprised if there wasn't something similar to the TBC one with the guild invites, competition entries etc.

2.3.2/2.3.3 is only really taking so long on the PTR's because it's the holidays, they'll never put a bigger patch live over the 2 week xmas period unless there's something seriously in need of a fix as it's a nightmare for them to support it with the reduced staff available.

 

Renew

Killing one of the opposing factions leaders is not something an elite rated team can do. Most of the top teams on my battlegroup (BG9 sup) are barely large enough to fill their 5s roster.

A secret level is something I doubt the best players are looking for. They are more worried about finding someone that can actually give them a challenge. Limiting the pool of people they can play is not going to help that at all.

Confidence is not Arrogance.

 

Renew

I think for the most part WoW raiding needs a new direction. 100->0 tank and spank bosses are getting pretty stale.

I would like to see more puzzle like events that require the raid to think outside the box. Razorgore sorta comes to mind, but it could be more.

Also this whole 6+months of no new content can be fixed with adding in a single boss/encounter zone every so often. We don't need a whole raid zone (they are nice), but just having new content pumped out every 3~ months would be pretty sweet.

Confidence is not Arrogance.

 

Mideci

Am I really? I don't agree. Most of us don't care if there is another game. We are only invested in this one. It has our characters and our friends and is just complex enough and just easy enough for us. We're not looking for another game. We are the masses.

 

Cthalupa

I think you're overestimating your "masses"


As you put it, you're there for your friends. Well, what if one of your friends - just one - tries out WAR, and likes it. He logs back on every now and then, and talks about how good WAR is. He tells you that there's a 14 day free trial. You try it. You like it. You tell some more friends it's a fun game, and the cycle continues.

Something led you to WoW. There is not something magical in WoW that will prevent that same type of thing leading you to another game.

Is WAR a wow killer? Well, as it's not very fun, I doubt it. Is Conan? If it's executed properly, I suppose it could be. Still, I doubt it. But will there never be a WoW killer? Of course there will be. Games are not diamonds. They are not forever. Eventually something better will come along. And Blizzard is not infallible - WoW2 might not be as good as Cyberpunk Fantasy World Z, and the competitor might end up with 10 million subscribers.

It is not a simple issue, and acting as if WoW is some sort of CD with a 40 year time limit where any withdrawals make your forfeit the entire amount is absurd. WoW is a great game - but it is not the end all, be all.

 

Valen

It's in my opinion not very constructive to discuss whether another game will affect WoW or not with the information we got. It's something that even the game companies can't comment on. Also, Neither WAR nor Conan are the first games that get released during WoW era. I think you all should remember Vanguard which was *the* game alot of old MMO players looked forward to, being made by EQ team and all, but it simply had no chance versus WoW. Also, majority of WoW players are not interested in heavy PvP environments in my opinion.

 

Shadout

Hehe, ye, those bears was still around in late beta, so its hardly alpha-related. You are probably right they dont call it alpha, considering its just more content for an existing and working game. What I meant was the F&F Beta. It cant be (I hope!) that far away.
F&F beta for TBC was the time where we got some leaked information about new talents, skills etc. and the time the hype starts to build up. It surely makes the waiting a bit more interesting
2.4 wont do that much to reduce the wait time, even tough it seems to be shaped greatly, by offering both "casual" and raid content which can be consumed for a while by everyone.

Also seems to be fairly sure we will get a long "open" beta. The difference between the beta tested and the non-beta tested content in TBC was quite obvious. The latter was quite bugged (raids, heroics etc) while the former was probably the best tuned lvling experience so far in WoW.

2.3.2 is stopped because of the holiday sure, but I have a hard time seeing why they couldnt have released it a while before Christmas holidays. It seems more like an intended delay, where they get 2 extra free weeks because of holiday, by not getting it out first half of december. While 2.3.2 got quite a few balancing changes, its hardly a major patch, and the real effect of class balancing changes is unlikely to be seen on a test server anyway.

 

Derketo

If I had to guess I would say that we'll see some new orbs to tide us over.

I'll be alright when we get to pass out time.

 

◊ Quigon

It is human nature to look toward games like Conan and WAR - but since I haven't even heard through the grapevine if either game is decent, it probably means both are terrible currently. Usually when a game is good the good press leaks well in advance during beta. Call it a baseless assumption, but the bullshit about "its just beta, it'll get fixed" has not really been true for MMO's, or really most games for that matter. Maybe 1 in 10, or 100 get "fixed." Anyway, the proof is in the pudding - you can see that by the way the rabid yet eloquent fanboys of vanguard quickly changed tunes once reality dawned, and you know who I'm speaking of.

Anyway, many WoW players are itching for a new game, but it looks like nothing is out there that will unseat it from its throne - perhaps it won't be until WoW 2.0. And given the development time for new MMO's, buckle your seatbelt in for another 3-4 years with this one.

 

Malan

Well there's a Conan developer that posts in the Benefactor Bar and he's said a few times that Conan should be pretty good, but I believe he also said that they're aiming at a slightly different market than what WoW advertises to. WAR has been beta tested by many of the Benefactors and a lot of them said that right now its failing in a number of points - although thats exactly why the beta period for WAR ended abruptly and they said they're working on overhauling quite a few things.

From a few pages back, but it always amuses me that people will in one moment declare that there is "no difference" between a PvP and a PvE server, and in the next moment ask the devs to put in guards and separate faction flight paths because of the "inherent burden" on PvP servers.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Zaphid

The strength of Blizzard's games is in the community and only very few companies have been able to reproduce that so far, which is why i don't see any mmo taking more than let's say... 500k players which is a lot for every other game...except for WoW. The only problem could be next expansion(s) where the devs will have to come up with some new lore that is unknown from previous games.

 

snape

While the precedent is there for Kalecgos being Frost-based due to being a blue dragon, we should remember that the 25-badge reward, Talisman of Kalecgos, increase Arcane damage by up to 50.

 

Tyrian

What they will do after WOTLK will be extremely interesting from a story/direction POV. Its long-off speculation I know, but for years after WC3 we've been accustomed to the usual suspects: the Burning Legion, Arthas and Illidan. With the legions (presumed) story 'closing' in Sunwell, Illidan dead in TBC and Arthas' story fleshed out fully in WOTLK - it really begs the question of what direction the game is going to take. After all, Arthas was originally touted as 'the final boss of wow' and we want to make sure any content after that doesnt feel like tacked-on content 'because the game still happens to be popular' but rather is a strong continuation of the universe in story and depth.

Im very interested to see how Kil'Jaedens presumed death/defeat is handled in Sunwell and what happens to the legion as a result. Will we just be interrupting his summoning, leaving him free to come back at a future date? Will the Legion be defeated and retired if we kill him? Will we ever get to see Sargeras again? The way these questions will be handled/answered has me more excited than the instance itself.

 

Vanadi

There is always the areas like Ul'Dum, shattered islands, emerald dream, gilneas, Grim Batol and characters like queen azshara and deathwing left. I wouldn't be suprised if Medihv surfaces again in the future if a "new" threat appears. Lore wise they still have a few tricks up their sleeve.

 

Krazen

I doubt Illidan is dead. I think they'll work him into his brother' story in the Emerald Dream. IMO, the guy has too many fans for Blizzard to kill him off, plus they have that Druid diremaul book.

 

Malan

Blizzard has said many many times that Illidan, despite being a fan favorite, is nothing more than a minor character in the grand scheme of things. In fact I think it was Kaplan who said thats exactly why we face off vs Illidan in TBC - so that they could close the storyline on him and move on to other things. Same reason for facing Arthas in the next xpack, close the loop so that they can start on storylines that aren't reliant on the WC3 games.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

jusion

He's wrong. In it's current state, the game is horrendous.

 

Strifen

I'm actually really looking foreword to seeing what type of encounters blizzard is going to have down the road here. One thing's for sure, and that's blizzard doesn't need to keep us killing bosses that are 'known' to us. Just look at the draenei, they were completely new with TBC. World of Warcraft is supposed to occur after The Frozen Throne so they can surely drum up some new lore and bosses for us to kill. Wild speculation has me turning the next expac after WotLK will be the Maelstrom with under-ground water areas with sea mounts, the empires of the Makrura and Naga for us to raid, and non other than the queen her self Azshara as the end raid boss. By looking over at wowiki there's already 8 or so 'areas' aka 'zones' designated in the Maelstrom. The one part I look foreword in continuing playing this game is that It's going to be a lot of fun seeing what direction we get headed, the warcraft lore is really thick. Many years down the line I'm sure we'll be raiding the titans and the old gods. There's just so many other bigger and badder characters out there.

As for 2.4, I think that it's shaping up to be a good patch. I really am hoping that blizzard has some unique encounters up their sleeve for us. More Kael'thas and RoS nature fights would really be awesome. However I'm looking foreword to Brutalicus that guy seems like patchwerk 2.0 just from looking at his boss art. We haven't had a true patchwerk 2.0 fight that just needs massive numbers to down, one of them I would enjoy. It would make for a good first boss if there was no attunement. Just have a very easy in theory boss, but you need to put out massive dps/hps with geared tanks to kill him. That way guilds not ready for there will know right away. Make him the first boss (no trash to him) and this will solve the problem of guilds going in and farming sunwell trash for epics who can't even kill the first boss.

 

Nuveena

All the talk about which new release will "kill" WoW makes me nostalgic The same debate was all the rage back in Ultima Online as well, and in the end, none of the 5-10 (or however many there were) new MMOs killed off UO. Each MMO lives on its own merits, as long as the customers are happy and new customers replace those who leave, the game stays healthy. Even the 10 year old UO still survives with about half it's peak number of subscribers. It will be interesting to see if WoW survives with 4-5 million subscribers 7 years from now But, shorter term, no new release is likely to affect WoWs playerbase much at all. A much bigger threat to WoW is if the devs can't keep the game interesting for us but so far they have done an ok work, I think.

 

Krazen

Well, we sort of did. That's pretty much what Nalorakk was, and there were Blizzard statements to that effect. I don't know if they'll duplicate that effort in 2 dungeons in a row.

 

HaklePrime

I don't think it would be too hard to argue that the original live version of Gruul could be considered PWv2.0.

I still wonder how some of the Hyjal/BT fights would have turned out had the raid game not been nerfed as dramatically and frequently as it was.

(Disclaimer: I'm not arguing the justification of the nerfs, I just enjoy a challenge)

 

Viator

It should be noted that "unseating WoW" is the wrong argument because it's based on something most companies realize they can't do. An MMO can be imminently successful with very few subscriptions depending on what their development costs are. WWIIOL is STILL going as is AO, UO, DAoC and a host of others with very small comparative numbers.

So, if a company is setting out to beat WoW they're going to fail because I do not see that being possible. If, on the other hand, a company sets out to be profitable and capture a subset of WoW's population then it's entirely likely to succeed. I don't know of a single game doing the former but many doing the latter. I don't give a single thought as to whether any of the upcoming games will beat WoW because it's not something the companies themselves are thinking about for the most part.

 

Trouble

There's nothing that we as WoW players would recognize as an actual "MMO" that will even come close to unseating WoW. There's plenty of....other types of....massively multiplayer "games" that could claim to beat WoW currently, but that's not the type of game we're speaking of. Still, a game eating a half a million to a million players from WoW's fanbase would be felt.