This just depressed me. For the first time, Blizzard's slow release of extra content is really starting to get to me. I think this podcast just reinforced how long it is since we've seen some actual content. The 2.2 (i.e. voice chat) wait was a total waste of time for the vast majority of players. Whoever thought spending several months of development time on a technology that very people cared about and even fewer actually used should be shot. The amount of time 2.3.2 spent on the PTR was boggling, even taking into account the festive season, which in reality should've only taken 7-10 working days out of development time if Blizzard is like any other company.
I don't know why Blizzard let it be publicly known they were trying release an expansion every year - I genuinely think it's going to be nearly two before we see WotlK, and with what, four content patches in between, one of which's major "feature" was voice chat, a facility no one uses. If they are going to test WotlK in a similar vein to BC, and there's no reason to believe they won't, then even if 2.4 hits the PTR next week and is released a month after that we're still looking at a 2 month alpha test period followed by another couple of months of beta testing. And that is a best case scenario. Mind you WotlK absolutely has to be out before Conan and Warhammer Online, both scheduled for a summer release, so who knows /boggle
Again, you are just completely failing to grasp the idea.
Their dedicated, existing players are going to get this information anyways, so why would Blizzard not do it in a way that gives them a large amount of publicity in the mainstream media as well?
Saying that making major announcements about content through mainstream channels instead of smaller channels that cater only to existing players is "showing no love for the loyal customers" is useless and whiny QQ. It's going to be on the front page of MMO-Champion within 30 minutes either way.
I love how you convieniently ignore the last part of my post, commenting out of context. You fail to grasp the worthlessness of a podcast releasing no new information behind instead of in front of this so-called exclusive release. How do we even know that some magazine is getting this info before we see it on the website?
Blizzard is slow with releases. Every game, patch, expansion and bug fix they have ever released (at least since D2) was delayed. I don't see that ever changing. That's why their product comes out polished. Everyone should just expect things to be delayed and that way they'll never be let down.
I also think Snowy is on point here. I'm not sure they're even that worried about delaying content that only .5% of the game's population will immediately be able to experience.
I would like to see numbers from Blizzard on the retention rate for players that don't pvp or raid. Or players that don't hit 70. Do one of us = 2, 3, 4, 5, 5.5, more people that fall into the latter categories? By that I mean the number of months, not to mention multiple accounts.
Anyone who has ever worked with a subscription company knows that retention is more valuable than simply a new client, except on product launch.
The fansites we produce (yes, not me specifically, but the more involved gamers) offer tons of publicity as well. We're also the ones providing the most constructive feedback that Blizzard can leverage to improve user experience. It's the more devoted players that are responsible for sites like Wowhead and the old CTProfiles that made Blizzard an even better game than it is. I quit LotRO after a few weeks primarily because of the lack of info available outside of the game. Would be nice to reward that contribution with info that's a hell of a lot more relevant to them.
Last edited by Benegesserit : 01/10/08 at 6:16 PM.
I would like to see numbers from Blizzard on the retention rate for players that don't pvp or raid. Or players that don't hit 70. Do one of us = 2, 3, 4, 5, 5.5, more people that fall into the latter categories? By that I mean the number of months, not to mention multiple accounts.
Unscientific survey: I joined WoW following a bunch of my RL friends. My wife and I are the only two that raid. Most haven't hit 70, some took a break and then returned, but right now all bar one are still plating. There's one that has NINE level 70s and has barely ever set foot inside an instance - any instance. Obviously this is only anecdotal, but I'd be surprised to find a large difference between the various groups in terms of retention rate.
If anything, I'd expect raiders to have a lower retention rate due to burnout - how many people do you personally know that have quit the game entirely, for example?
Well, this is where the one simple feature I wish they would implement (and it is kind of shocking that they haven't) is a Dev Blog: EVE Online | EVE Insider | Dev Blog
Random developers at periodic intervals release some neat info on stuff - players can reply to the entries and it really is catering to the "Sold Customers" instead of to new folk. With the EVE one, they talk at great length about features they're working on and upcoming things - and it can be fascinating - I just am surprised that Blizzard has yet to make one of those.
The podcast series idea is nice, but they're going to take forever to do each one due to the required production values. This would be more like getting those "Battleplans" actually put into a blog on the site and having them a teeny tiny bit more frequently. Really simple to do, huge positive response from community.
Again, you are just completely failing to grasp the idea.
Their dedicated, existing players are going to get this information anyways, so why would Blizzard not do it in a way that gives them a large amount of publicity in the mainstream media as well?
Saying that making major announcements about content through mainstream channels instead of smaller channels that cater only to existing players is "showing no love for the loyal customers" is useless and whiny QQ. It's going to be on the front page of MMO-Champion within 30 minutes either way.
The reason they do this is because most game publishers have contracts with gaming media, requiring them to give out "exclusive" information of this sort. In return, they get readership circulation and buzz through corporately accepted and established channels. Such contracts are actionable if they do not abide by them.
These contracts are normally self-renewing. It's an old standby from many years in the industry, but are still around since it is very difficult to prove that websites like MMO-Champion, Gameriot, Curse, etc. can provide more marketing pull than print magazines. You need to prove that those website hits translate into direct sales/continued subscriptions.
By the same token, it is incredibly difficult for any Blizzard employee to actually say anything in public. I'm not allowed to talk to the media about the project I am working on either; I could easily lose my job for breaking confidentiality agreements. Everything needs to pass the PR and marketing departments, which is why there are so few direct posts from blizz employees, and everything comes through the CMs. It's the same reason that Tigole, Kalgan and the rest of the people at Blizzcon were unable to talk about the Sunwell at all, except in a roundabout way.
You may not like it, and you might lament the system, but it's pretty firmly entrenched and won't be changing any time soon.
Well, this is where the one simple feature I wish they would implement (and it is kind of shocking that they haven't) is a Dev Blog: EVE Online | EVE Insider | Dev Blog
The music game Rock Band really went all out with that feature. It was primarily to build hype on the product before release, but you got great insight on the step-by-step of the development process as well as the winds of change in its design. Games that are always in development (MMOs), would profit greatly by giving players a constant inside look on the development. Not like there's anything they should need to hide (except maybe copyright exclusive stuff like getting the trio of goofballs to appear in a commercial).
Confidentiality agreements should only exist for legal purposes or for enticing investors at the right time. I'd like to see evidence that magazines are more responsible for sub generation than the freakin internet. I'd bet my life savings that the majority of the gamers spend more time on the internet than they do reading magazines.
Getting KZ epics on a single day timer is what most people have been wanting for many months. Sure none of us care about that but we aren't representable of the average player in WoW. Most people aren't in T5 content, let alone T6 content. And the idea of getting 7 Prince quality epics per week instead of just 2 will be great. Also it will be great for those guilds struggling to gear up in ZA and KZ to switch to 25s.
And PvP gear, regardless of what season, is not ideal for raiding purposes for most specs. It gets the job done and we even brought people in with full S2 gear a few months ago, they just chain potted until they got PvE gear. So yes this is a good thing having more epics available. And I wouldn't doubt there will be more epics on this faction grind we all have to do, give the casuals more free epics. Might even be a necklace or something that gets better as you rep up.
Spellfire/spellstrike are ilvl 105. T5 are 133. Even though T5 was badly designed, it was roughly on par with spellfire/spellstrike. No matter how much resilience they have, S3 are still ilvl 146. Even if they aren't designed specifically for PvE, the ilvl alone would easily make them better for PvE than what that 5-man would be dropping, even on heroic.
Blizzard is slow with releases. Every game, patch, expansion and bug fix they have ever released (at least since D2) was delayed. I don't see that ever changing. That's why their product comes out polished. Everyone should just expect things to be delayed and that way they'll never be let down.
I also think Snowy is on point here. I'm not sure they're even that worried about delaying content that only .5% of the game's population will immediately be able to experience.
All of that always seems like a weird argument to make because of course they focus everything on the 5-man and level up content and cater to them exclusively. It is the raiders who get buggy crazy content and all of their dungeons patched in (where the buggy content includes artificial blocks to delay progression).
The game isn't launched until the primary 5-man and level up stuff is in place. Imagine the outcry if instead of them doing it that way if they had made it so that the lvl 70 5-mans were all patched in. Shattered Halls (Patch 2.1), The Shadow Labyrinth (Patch 2.2), and maybe they could have done all the Tempest Keep Wings as a "Huge" 2.3.
Instead of choosing to patch in the 5-man content, they delay the raid content in favor of finishing the 5-man content. The people who play in that model exclusively become jealous of the raiders who get all their content patched in, but don't realize that if they were getting it the same way, it would be ugly because of how little options they'd have until their content got patched in. Blizzard has done everything for them, yet they resent the handful of 25-mans that they don't go to. Heck, this patch they made the extra 5-man to appease them, but seriously...
Current Game: 4 Auchindoun, 3 Serpentshrine, 3 Hellfire, 2 Caverns of Time, 3 Tempest Keep for 15 available dungeons with Normal and Heroic modes (30 available dungeons in total). Karazhan + ZA = 2 10-mans available. Gruul's + Magtheridon = 2 Onyxia type 25-mans. SSC+TK+Hyjal+BT = 4 25-mans. BT and Hyjal functionally patched in. TK/SSC impossible until patched. All 25-mans severely out of whack on balance until sorted out.
They do prioritize the 25-man content last out of everything in the game - it isn't as though they don't have a whole team working on all the new 5-mans and outdoor areas for the expansion. Most of the energy and time goes into the content available for everyone. They just patch in the big raids so people who don't go to them feel slighted because THEIR content isn't being patched in. Theirs also isn't a buggy messy.
You do understand that they're working on WotLK in parallel to these patches, right?
Of course. And you think that they didn't do the same with BC and vanilla WoW patches? As I said, there is no reason to believe that WotlK won't be released in a similar time frame to that of BC, which means about a six month wait from now, assuming the best.
As Caligula points out, Blizzard always delay everything in order that it be polished. The thing is they're not delaying content that 0.5% of the population will be able to see - of what we know now (and that isn't very much), the new 5 man and the new quest hub, as well as the increase in daily quest limit is enough to keep me as a non-hardcore raider (currently) interested. That is content that pretty much every level 70 is going to want to experience to some degree or other.
But yes, delayed content is something we've just come to expect. Does that make it acceptable? Of course not, but if we know it's going to guarantee well-thought and polished gameplay experience then it softens the blow somewhat.
No one's questioning the quantity of current 5 man content, what they're saying is that there is no progression. You can't add up all the 70 5 mans and say there's heaps of content compared to the meagre amount of raiding material. For one, raids have a lot more bosses, a lot more items, take longer to complete, and take longer to be able to complete, in the first place. For second, the raids progress. Each new raid offers new challenges and better items. All the 70 5 mans offer exactly the same rewards and a tiny difficulty curve (compare Maulgar to Illidan, then compare... well... what are the easy 5 man bosses and which are the hard? I can barely even come up with names, they're all so similar.).
Offering a new 5 man was the perfect opportunity to give 5 mans the progression that raids have enjoyed since the game came out, and making it exactly the same difficulty (even if the rewards are slightly better -- if irrelevent at this stage of the game for most non alts) ruins that. There's only so many times blasting through heroic Black Morass is exciting. A new, challenging, 5 man (with, say, the normal mode tuned around mid Karazhan/heroic epics, and the heroic version being mid Tier 5) with commensurate rewards would have something to offer for nearly everyone - add in some belt enchants and some new trade recipes with decent rep rewards and suddenly everyone in the game has a reason to go there. As it is, I'm sure I'll go - there's bound to be something in there that's an upgrade for me on heroic mode (I just killed Vashj for the first time last night and my gear is around Tier 5) but most of it will be a waste, and I think that's a shame.
With ilvl128 BoJ rewards and ilvl146 honour rewards I'm just not sure what the audience for ilvl 110 epics is supposed to be. What's worse is just having better loot because it's expected, and not because the content is genuinely harder. Having one dungeon with far superior rewards for less difficulty than an existing 5 man is just going to mean that most people won't ever do a heroic that isn't Magister's Terrace ever again.
I love how you convieniently ignore the last part of my post, commenting out of context. You fail to grasp the worthlessness of a podcast releasing no new information behind instead of in front of this so-called exclusive release. How do we even know that some magazine is getting this info before we see it on the website?
You can't be serious. You're accusing me of "conveniently ignoring" the part of the your post that you hadn't even posted yet when I quoted you? I quoted your post in full, then you added more to it before anyone else posted so there is no edit tag. As for "How do we even know that some magazine is getting this info before we see it on the website?" I just had to laugh. Considering this entire thread is about information that appeared first in a magazine and was later duplicated in a podcast.
And Sillia, I'm not sure if you were addressing me in the last paragraph of your post, but I'm not lamenting the process at all. I was trying to explain why Blizzard does it the way they do, and you just reinforced the points I had tried to make, although with much greater detail.
You can't be serious. You're accusing me of "conveniently ignoring" the part of the your post that you hadn't even posted yet when I quoted you? I quoted your post in full, then you added more to it before anyone else posted so there is no edit tag. As for "How do we even know that some magazine is getting this info before we see it on the website?" I just had to laugh. Considering this entire thread is about information that appeared first in a magazine and was later duplicated in a podcast.
And Sillia, I'm not sure if you were addressing me in the last paragraph of your post, but I'm not lamenting the process at all. I was trying to explain why Blizzard does it the way they do, and you just reinforced the points I had tried to make, although with much greater detail.
Not sure where you came up with that but my post was there in full and frankly your response is coming off a bit convoluted. I'm sure you left it out as it supported the needlessness for an organization this size to have such advertising. Of course, I could be wrong, as that idea is just as convoluted
Something that happened in the past (the swedish magazine) does not prove or guarentee it happening again.
No one's questioning the quantity of current 5 man content, what they're saying is that there is no progression. You can't add up all the 70 5 mans and say there's heaps of content compared to the meagre amount of raiding material. For one, raids have a lot more bosses, a lot more items, take longer to complete, and take longer to be able to complete, in the first place. For second, the raids progress. Each new raid offers new challenges and better items. All the 70 5 mans offer exactly the same rewards and a tiny difficulty curve (compare Maulgar to Illidan, then compare... well... what are the easy 5 man bosses and which are the hard? I can barely even come up with names, they're all so similar.).
Offering a new 5 man was the perfect opportunity to give 5 mans the progression that raids have enjoyed since the game came out, and making it exactly the same difficulty (even if the rewards are slightly better -- if irrelevent at this stage of the game for most non alts) ruins that. There's only so many times blasting through heroic Black Morass is exciting. A new, challenging, 5 man (with, say, the normal mode tuned around mid Karazhan/heroic epics, and the heroic version being mid Tier 5) with commensurate rewards would have something to offer for nearly everyone - add in some belt enchants and some new trade recipes with decent rep rewards and suddenly everyone in the game has a reason to go there. As it is, I'm sure I'll go - there's bound to be something in there that's an upgrade for me on heroic mode (I just killed Vashj for the first time last night and my gear is around Tier 5) but most of it will be a waste, and I think that's a shame.
With ilvl128 BoJ rewards and ilvl146 honour rewards I'm just not sure what the audience for ilvl 110 epics is supposed to be. What's worse is just having better loot because it's expected, and not because the content is genuinely harder. Having one dungeon with far superior rewards for less difficulty than an existing 5 man is just going to mean that most people won't ever do a heroic that isn't Magister's Terrace ever again.
Well that largely shows that what they need to do is actually stagger the rewards and difficulty in the 5-mans, which they definitely can do, but that often leads to both tears and nerfs (and buffs to loot). They definitely have 5-mans that are harder than each other, but the rewards are largely shared. They just need to distribute the difficult and reward structure a little more (and one of the best ways they could do it would be by actually using the "Epic" difficulty that is in the game currently - you can set it to Normal, Heroic, or Epic).
It would be great to have real progression available to 5-man players. But I don't think that's really an option after a certain point. There's only so much difficulty you can pack into a 5-man dungeon, just because of the coordination requirements and reasonable expectations of class balance (you shouldn't require 3-4 CC classes, shouldn't have to rule out hybrid specs, shouldn't have to stack melee/ranged/whatever, shouldn't have to bring 2 healers, the list goes on). I just flat-out reject the notion that you can make 5-man dungeons remotely as difficult as 25-man raids. You're basically forced to tune with numbers--make everything hit ridiculously hard and have huge HP. You end up with the original incarnations of Shattered Halls and Arcatraz heroics, which (interestingly enough) have been seriously nerfed since their first inceptions.
So...where does that leave us? You make things decently tough, you stick better badge rewards in the game, and provide those 5-man players with better gear and tools. That's what we're seeing now, that's fine in my opinion.
Well, Shattered Halls is harder than LBRS, and when everyone said at 60 that they wanted 5 man progression they were told that they couldn't be made any more challenging, so I think it's possible we're as wrong now as we were then. 25 man raids now are more complex than 40 man raids were pre BC, too.
As an example, imagine Bladefist. Now double the adds. Suddenly you need more DPS. You can't reliably CC all of them so your only option is for your DPS to scale up. Or you can add new elements like the Razorgore mind control orb, kiting, the Teron pets, etc. Have the boss do more avoidable AOEs. Add more chances to screw up, but the ability to avoid those chances if you play well. Have NPCs assist you in a fight (like Skyriss or Rajaxx). Look at heroic Arcatraz where CC isn't that useful yet it can still be challenging. There's heaps of ideas to make things tougher and more interesting. I don't think it's a matter of feasibility - it seems to be done by design. The design theory for 5 mans seems to be "log on and do any of the five mans with some of your friends. Switch between them when you get bored of the architecture in one." rather than raiding's "beat this instance, then beat this next instance with better rewards and harder fights then beat this instance." Blizzard's already shown us with BC, the Tier 0.5 questline and the Stratholme Atiesh event that they can create difficult 5 man fights, they just don't seem to want to.
When are being fed WolTK enhancements iteratively this is obvious. They are in no rush for 2.4 because they are hot and heavy innovating.
I personally think some of these delays are centered not around content but technical changes they are making to the game that have had unforeseen impact. Why are they changing the combat log? They have a million things to work on and they decide that its time now to make a super robust parameterized combat log. They even gave up something they never would and that's unique identifiers for mobs in the combat log. Sure a threat meter from Blizzard is easier to write with a new fancy combat log but I hardly think that's their big picture plan for something so fundamental and cool like the logging subsystem we are getting.
Some rampant speculation here but I think its at least possible that they are parameterizing the log files to enable storage of these log files on their servers and so they can add a suite of log analysis, guild accomplishment, raid progression and guild goodies that will be accessible through the Armory. You'll probably be able to pay for this service similar to WWS's paid accounts. Or, they will just give it to everyone. You don't make the Armory have a secure logon access area just so people can view guild bank log files on the web. You do this because you plan to offer a much bigger suite of guild and raid management and analysis tools.
Raiding has the same competitive nature of Arena and we all pay attention to progress at the edge of our seats. Blizzard needs to tap into this too and make it part of what they sell about their game. Arena isn't enough. Why have sites like WowJutsu and WWS provide incredibly valuable information when you could do it better with something done by Blizzard? Only Blizzard can really eliminate the subtle goofiness that those systems have due to their distance from the data. And just like the Armory killed CTProfiles, RPGOutfitter, and any other similar tool, a decent offering from Blizzard like Wowjutsu and WWS will kill those sites too.
These are incredibly exciting times! There's something here, I don't know what it is but its not just Sunwell that is delaying 2.4. Never before has a game company paid so much attention to refining a product this old like Blizzard has with WoW. How freaking cool is the new ready check? You just don't get nice polish like that from a company that has lost touch with their customers and doesn't have a solid plan.
Raiding has the same competitive nature of Arena and we all pay attention to progress at the edge of our seats. Blizzard needs to tap into this too and make it part of what they sell about their game. Arena isn't enough. Why have sites like WowJutsu and WWS provide incredibly valuable information when you could do it better with something done by Blizzard? Only Blizzard can really eliminate the subtle goofiness that those systems have due to their distance from the data. And just like the Armory killed CTProfiles, RPGOutfitter, and any other similar tool, a decent offering from Blizzard like Wowjutsu and WWS will kill those sites too.
You aren't going to be able to sell tickets or advertisement for viewers of raiding. The time investment is way too long, and not enough people care. It may feel as competitive for the players, but there's no inherent marketability in competitive raiding, since it eventually comes down to time trials.
People are already chafing by watching a 5v5 arena battle, or 15-minute RTS/FPS match. What makes you think they'd be willing to sit and watch 25 people tackle pve for 6 hours?
It would be great to have real progression available to 5-man players. But I don't think that's really an option after a certain point. There's only so much difficulty you can pack into a 5-man dungeon, just because of the coordination requirements and reasonable expectations of class balance (you shouldn't require 3-4 CC classes, shouldn't have to rule out hybrid specs, shouldn't have to stack melee/ranged/whatever, shouldn't have to bring 2 healers, the list goes on). I just flat-out reject the notion that you can make 5-man dungeons remotely as difficult as 25-man raids. You're basically forced to tune with numbers--make everything hit ridiculously hard and have huge HP. You end up with the original incarnations of Shattered Halls and Arcatraz heroics, which (interestingly enough) have been seriously nerfed since their first inceptions.
So...where does that leave us? You make things decently tough, you stick better badge rewards in the game, and provide those 5-man players with better gear and tools. That's what we're seeing now, that's fine in my opinion.
Why is that the case? Tune with the numbers a bit, and remove Grip of the Legion, and you could make something very similar to Archimonde a 5 man.
When are being fed WolTK enhancements iteratively this is obvious. They are in no rush for 2.4 because they are hot and heavy innovating.
I personally think some of these delays are centered not around content but technical changes they are making to the game that have had unforeseen impact. Why are they changing the combat log? They have a million things to work on and they decide that its time now to make a super robust parameterized combat log. They even gave up something they never would and that's unique identifiers for mobs in the combat log. Sure a threat meter from Blizzard is easier to write with a new fancy combat log but I hardly think that's their big picture plan for something so fundamental and cool like the logging subsystem we are getting.
Some rampant speculation here but I think its at least possible that they are parameterizing the log files to enable storage of these log files on their servers and so they can add a suite of log analysis, guild accomplishment, raid progression and guild goodies that will be accessible through the Armory. You'll probably be able to pay for this service similar to WWS's paid accounts. Or, they will just give it to everyone. You don't make the Armory have a secure logon access area just so people can view guild bank log files on the web. You do this because you plan to offer a much bigger suite of guild and raid management and analysis tools.
Raiding has the same competitive nature of Arena and we all pay attention to progress at the edge of our seats. Blizzard needs to tap into this too and make it part of what they sell about their game. Arena isn't enough. Why have sites like WowJutsu and WWS provide incredibly valuable information when you could do it better with something done by Blizzard? Only Blizzard can really eliminate the subtle goofiness that those systems have due to their distance from the data. And just like the Armory killed CTProfiles, RPGOutfitter, and any other similar tool, a decent offering from Blizzard like Wowjutsu and WWS will kill those sites too.
These are incredibly exciting times! There's something here, I don't know what it is but its not just Sunwell that is delaying 2.4. Never before has a game company paid so much attention to refining a product this old like Blizzard has with WoW. How freaking cool is the new ready check? You just don't get nice polish like that from a company that has lost touch with their customers and doesn't have a solid plan.
Well it's a good and bad thing, sometimes it really feels like a waste of dev time to do some of the stuff they've done. While I'll agree with you on armory totally killing ctprofiles, I don't know anyone in my guild for example that uses blizzard raid frames or blizzard sct over external addons. I don't think I know anyone in the game that uses the built in voice chat over ventrilo/teamspeak. However, I don't often play with casuals and such, and I guess some people do find some use in those functions, but I'm really wondering if all this is necessary as long as they don't make it better than what already exists. Armory is in all forms much better than CTProfiles ever was(well I guess the good point of CT was that you could save different sets of gear, armory is only the one you log out with), but most of their UI changes are just integrating existing addons, and most of the time in a "not-as-good" way.
As for the comment about wotlk being worked on in parallel, while it's obviously true, if you've alpha/beta tested BC, you'd know that it'll still take a decent amount of time between the moment they start testing(which I'm pretty sure they haven't yet, since they usually announce it or NDAs don't cover the fact you can say you're in or not), and it's even more true as they're adding a whole new class into the game(new spells, new mechanics, new itemization, new talents and all the balancing that goes with it). For BC, they had 2races to test, but balancing was only a minor issue(racials aren't the most balanced thing in wow), it was mainly graphical stuff for the models/animations. In WoTLK, they have to do a lot of art stuff(armor sets for a new class in all the instances that have one, all the new spells and so on) AND balance heavily, especially for tanking.
When are being fed WolTK enhancements iteratively this is obvious. They are in no rush for 2.4 because they are hot and heavy innovating.
These are incredibly exciting times! There's something here, I don't know what it is but its not just Sunwell that is delaying 2.4. Never before has a game company paid so much attention to refining a product this old like Blizzard has with WoW. How freaking cool is the new ready check? You just don't get nice polish like that from a company that has lost touch with their customers and doesn't have a solid plan.
Call me a killjoy, but the new ready check doesn't really blow me away - why wasn't it implemented when they introduced their own ready check, something incidentally that addons had been providing for over a year anyway? In all honesty, I think Blizzard have already revealed everything that's significant in Wotlk in terms of new features (everything you can see on the website in other words). There's not a lot to get excited about; it's essentially more of the same. It's to feel enthusiastic when one of the main features is "new character customization options"! Wotlk needs to offer something radically different to WoW, not just more of the same. For me anyway, I really feel that WoW lost a lot of its magic with BC. It was something I just couldn't pin down, but raiding especially felt significantly less epic. Even on first boss kills, nothing beat killing Ragnaros or Twin Emps (as far I got in AQ40) for the first time. I know its easy to look with rose tinted specs and all that, but even taking nostalgia into account, WoW's raiding game lost something with BC, and Wotlk desperately needs to recapture it.
Why is that the case? Tune with the numbers a bit, and remove Grip of the Legion, and you could make something very similar to Archimonde a 5 man.
There are ways to make 5 mans challenging.
Odd, because in my opinion the only reason Archimonde is hard is the fact that you gotta do it with 25 man. It's infact the best example of why a 25 man encounter has more potential to be challenging, because you are going to wipe on archimonde if even a tiny part of the raid doesn't function perfectly. If you change the numbers and throw archimonde at a 5 man group, it will actually turn out to be an extremly easy encounter.
Besides, the 3rd boss in Arcatraz follows close to the same design idea of archimonde. It's not exactly the same of course but it is a close exmaple.
Wotlk needs to offer something radically different to WoW, not just more of the same
I dont think so. Even if WOTLK offers more of the same, itd be a great success. Lots of people just want more content - not necessarily caring for huge innovations to the game or genre.
Of course this wont be the case forever , and eventually there will be a time when people will get sick of 'just more content' and demand more innovation - but it isnt now. WOTLK will be lapped up by content-hungry players if its the same quality as TBC.
01/10/08, 5:56 PM
Similar Threads
