Kashir

Is there any reason to believe they will discontinue WoW once they release their new MMO?

WoW has an insanely massive playerbase, and that base is not going to switch to a new MMO overnight. It's a mature and proven cash cow, while any new game (particularly based on new IP) is a significant gamble. I would be surprised if Blizzard does not release at least one expansion for WoW after the new MMO goes live.

They could also take the two games in quite different directions; continue to build WoW as a PvE dominant game, and have the new MMO focus primarily on PvP and competitive content. Or WoW casual, new MMO hardcore. Or WoW subscription, new MMO free + microtransaction based.

 

Starfire

There is definitely room for other MMOs out there. Perhaps they want another SciFi MMO or something but the StarCraft world just doesn't work for them anymore.

Or maybe it's another one of those Cyber-Punk games or what not. As long as the new MMO isn't another fantasy game similar to Warcraft there is definitely room for them to develop and maintain two concurrent MMOs.

I'd imagine there is room for some sort of Vampire/Werewolf MMO too considering the relative popularity of White Wolf stuff (or more specifically stuff like Vampire: the Masquerade). There are a lot of themes and ideas out there for MMOs, uncharted waters to bring in new or different people.

 

Krixooks

Most people have been speculating that Undermine will be the ‘new Dalaran’ with the Goblin trade princes being the new Kirin Tor.
This would make sense, but what about Zandalar? We have a few options here I think, here are some ideas:

1. Zandalar could become the new Dalaran/Shattrath with all races welcomed to help combat the threat of Azshara/Old Gods etc.
2. Zandalar could become a major horde city; perhaps in this expansion there would be no neutral city (expecially with the enmity brewing between the Alliance and the Horde at this point).
3. Zandalar could become a ‘troll zone’ much like Zul’drak in Northrend.
4. Zandalar could become the ‘troll raid’ 4.0.

One way or another Zandalar will not be overlooked.

In the Wowwiki article it states “…it is neutral territory for their kind, so trolls don’t battle each other when on Zandalar. The same courtesy doesn’t extend toward other races, though…”

Thus far our in-game involvement with the Zandalari has shown that they have been very un-trollish in their methods.

In Stranglethorn they recruited us, the heroes of Azeroth to battle against a common enemy- The Gurubashi high priests and Hakkar. I feel that another world event such as the cataclysm might bring them to recruit us once again; to help them defend their island kingdom against the naga and whatever else is swimming around the South Seas.

Our questlines with them in Zul’drak were heavily based on helping them chronicle the downfall of the Drakkari empire, rather than looting the spoils or headhunting (as I remember). In fact the Zandalari are beginning to remind me more of the Dwarven Explorers League than the other tribes of trolls..

Worst case scenario: Zandalar lore and concept is thrown into another melting pot of ‘King Rastakhan goes mad and wants to eliminate everyone’ and becomes a levelling zone/troll raid.

edit: grammar

 

Jessamy

If not required to be a blue dragon, what about Keristrasza? Yes, we killed her, but that's easy enough to retcon.

 

Monocle

I remember that! It was a bit vague though. Didn't Metzen mention it during the NYC Comicon back in February?

As for Cho'gall, he can serve a very good role now, that being the mouth piece of the Old Gods. Even with his heavy involvement in WotLK, YS did not do much on his own in the zones, but was a background threat. Loken ended up being the main bad guy representing him, and Blizzard did an awesome job with him. Cho'gall could do a similar role, but with his history, he can have an even bigger impact. Besides it is about time we get a really threatening, well developed Ogre NPC in-game.

Besides Cho-gall already got a redesign in the comic that would be great for a new skin or even a model.

 

Nuke1096

Well they could aways change up the number of levels it takes to cap out in each X-Pack. Anotherwords, instead of the Maelstrom pack going from level 80-90, they could easily make it go from 80-85 and double the amount of time it takes to raise one level. That would also only give us 5 talent points to spend, which would help alleviate alot of the talent tree issues foreseen in future expansions.

As far as future expansion ideas, there are still some quality super villains to utilize. In addition to Aszhara, there is Deathwing, Sargeras and likely 2-3 different Old Gods, plus the 3 other Elemental Lords. I still think Deathwing is too big a villain and lore magnet to be used as a side boss. He is a prime candidate to be the focal point of his own expansion. Here are my ideas on what a x-pack progression could look like.


Expansion III - Maelstrom and South Seas


Pretty much what's been discussed already in this thread. I expect Nazjatar to be risen from the sea as outlined in the Arthas novel. This would easily allow a new "continent" to be in place with multiple zones. In addition, the surrounding islands that would be needed, Kul Tiras, Kezan, etc, could easily be moved on the world map to be near this new risen continent, thusly making them easily accessible via standard flight paths. If Blizzard wants to continue with the dual starter zone philosophy they started in WoTK, they could easily use Gilneas or Kul Tiras as a good launching point. They could even redesign the existing Azshara zone as a level 80-81 starting zone. That zone surely needs some tender loving care.

Azshara would obvisouly be the big end boss, with Neputalon/New Old God making a perfect middle tier "Yogg Saron" boss. I love the idea bringing Cho'gall into the mix, but I think he would be better suited for an Old God focused expansion. As far as the Emerald Dream goes, I dont know. Its a tough call to figure out where it's going to come into play. I see it as being too big to be just a raid zone, yet too small to be it's own x-pack. I think the better option would be to greatly expand the Emerald Dream and give the place it's own expansion pack.


Expansion IV - Emerald Dream


Ideally, what they can do here is more or treat The Emerald Dream as an entirely different planet. More or less, what they did with Outland. Instead of making everything just a dreamy version of existing zones, which from what I understand is how the Emerald Dream is suppose to be, they should just completely scrap all that and make everything brand new. Alot of creative freedom to do all sorts of weird dark twisted looking zones. Think Alice and Wonderland entrenched into a dark evil twisted nightmare.

As far as villians go, I dont know. You'd have to most likely make The Old God behind the corruption the super villain and main focal point of the expansion. They'd really need to play him up though. The only other viable alternative as far as I can see would be making Malfurion into a villain and using him as the focal point of the expansion. They can easily use the corruption within The Emerald Dream as a reason for him going mad and becoming corrupted. You wouldn't even necessarily need to kill him off either. Once defeated as the final raid boss, he can easily be saved from the corruption somehow. Alot of different things you can do.

But yeah, I think that right there though is the biggest obstacle to doing an Emerald Dream expansion...not having a popular enough super villain to be the focal point.


Expansion V - Deathwing and Old God Themed Underground Expansion

This is where you could tie up most all the Titan/Old God lore and introduce Deathwing as a major player. We know he is tied with the Old Gods, and Blizzard can easily expand upon that in much the same way we expect Azshara and the naga to be tied into Neputalon and The Old Gods. In addition, this would be the perfect setup to introduce either Uldum or Grim Batol into the fold, or both. Uldum would make a perfect raid dungeon and Grim Batol could either be used as a dungeon itself, or an underground zone even, with Deathwing being the final encounter of the expansion residing there.

On top of all that, you could finally get to introduce Azjol-Nerub as a zone. The idea being that you can easily setup an underground "continent" so to speak to easily lay out all sorts of different zones, Azjol-Nerub being one of them. It would also be a great opportunity to bring Cho'Gall into the mix with all of his Old God tie-ins. Cho'Gall, A New Old God, and Deathwing would be a pretty stellar raid boss tier lineup.


Expansion VI - Sargeras and Burning Legion Expansion

This expansion would be pretty easy to setup and visualize. Basically, it would be Outland all over again, with the setting being Argus or some other Burning Legion occupied planet/homeworld. Obviously Sargeras residing in The Burning Citadel not only makes sense as a main villain/setting in his own expansion, but he also would work as the last boss/dungeon in the final expansion.

Setting up a continent with new zones to explore would be easy as pie. In addition, the amount of freedom to create any type of crazy zone Blizzard wants would be fully there, since it's an entirely new planet just as Outland was.

One final thing I wanted to touch on that isn't related to this expansion idea, but there is currently a large section of unused space on Azeroth that could be utilized as it's own expansion.

The South Pole.

What's down there currently? Nothing right? Perfect place to put in a new undiscovered continent with who knows what.

 

buttah

As far as I've read the continent that the dream would be located on would be nothing like current day Azeroth. It wouldn't have been affected by the sundering, would have no human or elven influence. I'm not really a big fan of the Dream, or druid lore, and don't really see how this could receive it's on expansion. Well, I guess they could fabricate a lot of content for it but I think a large content patch would be a much more justifiable way of adding the dream.

One rumor I've heard floating around is that this could possibly be used as a sort of mini zone for leveling the next hero class, starting around the well of eternity. I tend to invalidate this argument almost immediately as I mentioned above the dream is supposedly void of any mortal being.


I think we can all agree that the last major expansion that follows current lore will be us taking the fight to Sargeras on his now? home land of Argus. This expansion would have the main antagonist as Sargeras with lower tier raids consisting of the full embodiment of Kil'jaden.


Other then your opinions of a future Emerald Dream expansion I think you have some pretty solid predictions.

 

edder

On the topic of what would be the new class in a hypothetical (though all but confirmed) Maelstrom expansion, i feel that the Shadow Hunter (Ranged dps/healer hybrid which uses thrown weapons and is featured in wc3 as Rexxar's companion) is a possible candidate. Some lore would have to be added for the alliance versions, maybe creating a special Zandalari training course a la Deathknight starting event. It would add another ranged physical dps (only hunters fill that spot atm) with healing capabilities (since they already added a tank with the introduction of DK's).

About their combat abilities, they could work as a buffer/debuffer with skills that benefit and work with their own buffs, in different combinations, in order to create a special kind of mechanic. For instance, you would chain debuff a target for some time, then unload main dps abilities, which would charge up the buffs to deal damage and vanish, and you could do this in different ways (bit like the way they implemented chimaera shot.
Healing could work in a similar way, they would combine different spells for different purposes (single target and raid healing, over time or instant, or even shielding?).

 

gaerthe

I have a game mechanics question about future expansions. Not sure if this belongs here, but since we're discussion expansions, I'll ask it.

At what point will Blizzard have to do a gear reset?

At level 60. a good player did 1000 dps. At 70, that was raised to 3000 dps. By the end of this expansion, players being able to do 10k dps isn't an unreasonable expectation. If we're looking two expansions out, will players be doing 50k dps?

While Blizzard may be able to balance classes doing that much dps, at what point does it become silly? I already need to use tools like Rawr or Simulcraft to determine whats better gear. Calculating combat ratings on the fly will start requiring a calculator - calculating hit rating by dividing by 8 was pretty easy, by 45.9 not so much. What happens when it's 217.3 rating per percentage? There's also a practical side to consider for screen real estate. When spell power moves into 5 digits and combat ratings into 4 digits, text has to be shrunk to occupy the same space on screen.

How have previous MMOs handled the MUD-flation that occurs? Does Blizzard need to devalue all stats and create "new" spellpower and "new" dps that's 1/10th the previous values?

 

Nathanyel

I doubt that, even with the current brink of war between the player factions, neutral factions, especially the Zandalar, won't encourage such a separation when there are more pressing matters. Or from a point of view this side of the fourth wall: While PvP has a major influence on the game, they want the factions/opposing players to get closer together PvE-wise, when you see other players standing idly around the city, without being ganked, you could start to actually view them as other persons, too, not just really smart NPCs with a large aggro range.
This has nothing to do with with laziness on Blizzard's side.

 

Jessamy

A lot of WC3 units were combined to form the WoW Shaman class. Aside from the ranged weapon, Shadow Hunters in WC3 look a lot like resto spec Shamans in WoW. The unit has Chain Heal, Hex, Searing Totem, and a raid wide Glyph of Stoneclaw. (source)

 

Ukerric

They have locked themselves in with the "sanctuary city" model. There's now a number of achievements that require you to find, target and "tag" players of the opposing faction.

Without a neutral hub, those achievements are nearly impossible. Want to try finding a troll rogue when the only reasonable way to find one is to try your hand at a BG for a couple weeks and hope for the best, or infiltrate an ennemy city, and tag him while all the horde are converging on you?

And those achievements aren't going away: the new Thanksgiving achievement has one that requires shooting each possible rogue/race combo. With turkeys. (mon', we troll rogue don' have it good. Dey all hate us, mon').

 

Ivriniel

Not to go to offtopic, but as an EvE Online player I can tell you that CCP Games has merged/owns White Wolf now and given their recruitment status they're developing an MMO based on that IP. (Which is a very good thing, as CCP are an awesome company)


About the new Aspect of the Blue flight, I remember a quote "it wont be a scaly one" but I can't find that interview anymore.

 

Lysara

I've been listening to the 3.2 voicefiles, and I noticed something interesting about Varian's quotes (particularly the Greeting and Pissed ones). He keeps talking about being "of two minds" and his "angry side" and "the other Varian, he's not here anymore. Now obviously these are just intended to be references to the comic where the King and Lo'Gosh merged, but I'm wondering if there's more to it than that. Maybe he actually has two personalities. Maybe the calm, diplomatic Varian is the King who keeps Lo'Gosh in check, but if angered or taunted by something/someone (usually Garrosh) Lo'Gosh the Gladiator takes over. Neither one like the Horde very much, but when Lo'Gosh takes over it's pretty much bound to end in bloodshed (or someone using magic to stop him).

 

Machinator

As long as the ratio of dps/boss hp remains the same the numbers don't matter much. Most stats are either get a 'magic number' in rating or stack it as high as possible. Neither really require a calculator, and the character sheet and mods like rating buster cover most everything else.


The problem with adding new classes with expansions is that anything that could have been a class based on the previous warcraft games has already been rolled into the current classes. The death knight is already redundant in several aspects. I hope they don't try to stretch lore to create a new class for the sake of having a new class.

On the Emerald Dream, game files have had terrain and models for it forever. So at least at one point they were considering it playable. The whole 'copy of azeroth' thing was only in one of the novels I think. If its being corrupted, and dragons come out of portals around azeroth, it seem pretty reasonable to assume we can go in there ourselves.

"Information is ammunition."

 

• Leguaran

I believe in the WotA Trilogy it is mentioned not only the "copy of azeroth" bit, but more, saying the Dream has multiple layers within itself, that are harder to reach, and easy to get lost into. (I think Malfurion navigates Deathwing's lair using inner layers of the Dream in hopes the Black Aspect wouldn't pick up on his presence, but found out rather fast that Deathwing knew about the multiple layers and although he couldn't get a lock on Malfurion, he knew he was there)

Really, they can do whatever they want as far as art/creativity goes for the Emerald Dream.

 

Exemplar

Zandalar (hopefully) will not be overlooked. But having us work for them again is a stretch for one simple game based reason: Reputation. You could max rep back in late Vanilla via Zul'Gurub. Blizzard sees it as unfair to have a faction re-use the same rep, because it benefits old exalted folks while the re-rolls have to rep up. See Cenarion Expedition rather than Cenarion Circle in Outlands as an example, and Argent Crusade vs. Argent Dawn as another.

If both factions work for a group of Trolls I would anticipate a different tribe (not Zandalar Tribe), although they could be physically located on the isle of Zandalar. One of the other, related tribes, or the "Zandalar <noun>."

Also note that level is a 2 digit field. They will need a (minor) change to the entire architecture to make level 100 feasible.

Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."

 

Nathanyel

It could be similar to the Bronze Dragonflight of Vanilla and the Wyrmrest Accord in Wrath, the new faction will be the joint Troll organisation, though it will probably be weird to have friendly Witherbark, Sandfury or Amani NPCs...

Is it? I recently read somewhere (no guarantee, though) that GMs could bump their level up to 255 - which only takes up one byte (I don't think they'd store basic data like level in a rather complex digit value)

 

Duilliath

It was in, among others, Wizardry 7 as well. It was just stored in hexidecimal, meaning you could still go to 255.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

Exemplar

To both Duiliath and Nathanyel - yes, I'm sure it's stored physically as at least a full byte, whether hexadecimal, decimal, or binary is rather moot. The game engine uses two digits for display purposes, merely stating this will need to be updated appropriately.

There was an old quote (from late Vanilla, I believe) along the lines of 'It would take a full raid of level 100s to defeat Sargeras.' I probably have the intention of the quote if not the exact text. I wouldn't use it to claim Blizzard plans to reach 100 and have us kill Sargeras - I'm sure it was an off the cuff remark just stressing how big and bad Sargeras is and that we wouldn't face him any time soon (being L60 at the time).

I firmly expect we'll reach at least L100 in the game before it's put to pasture and no further content is developed. Although I'd personally argue against we ants single-handedly fighting and defeating Sargeras at that stage, but many a power scale disparity has been sacrificed before in games in exchange for a fun fight. Just reference us killing Malygos in his own private dimension where he should have near godlike powers.

Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."

 

Ashur25

Or it's simply another Zandalar faction we'd be working though. No one says they have to be a perfectly united people with the only goal of stopping Hakkar. Maybe the Zanadalar tribe itself is rather hostile and the ones in Strangelthorn are a friendly split-faction and we encounter another spli-faction in the Maelstrom that wants to stop the Zandalar tribe from whatever the trolls are up to this time.

Edit: @Exemplar

I believe the quote was "it would take players lvl 100 before they can defeat the Lich King"

Edit 2: Seems we got almost a confirmation about the next expansion being a South Seas/not yet opened Azeroth zones/(maybe)Emerald Dream expansion.

For full interview click me

 

Douglas

I was going to say how unlikely that was due to the biology-changing old-god taint, but then I remembered the orcs, particularly Grom. Grom voluntarily took upon fel taint, and then managed to resist it and even kill Mannaroth. So there's certainly precedent for it, and it makes decent story.

 

Nathanyel

The other Zandalar faction was mentioned already in the post I was replying to Sure, not all Zandalar have to agree with their leaders' aim for unity, but just as we don't go friendly with the green dragons in Swamps of Sorrows/Sunken Temple or the red ones at Grim Batol when being Exalted with Wyrmrest, there could easily be individual trolls of other tribes who believe in the Zandalar's cause. So a "Troll Accord" type faction isn't totally out of the question. Though I still think a "Zandalar something" faction is more likely.

Indeed, and there already are some neutral/"friendly" Naga NPCs in the game - ok, Skar'this probably just uses us to "do the work of Neptulon", we don't know what's up with Zalashji, and Veehja is just desperate enough to cooperate with us ("As much as it disgusts me") but hey, you gotta work with what's given to you...

 

Douglas

Don't forget that it's also "layered" -- there's more than one. As I recall from the novels, the Emerald Dream was used as a blueprint for the world, and as the blueprint was revised, new layers were laid on top of older ones. It's like a palimpsest.

The "deeper" you go, the more primal and less finished the world is. In the novels it was pointed out that going deeper let you do things that people who couldn't go to those layers couldn't do, but this also carried greater risk, as ... if I am recalling properly, in a previous "draft", mountains could easily be in different places and "zoning in" in a place you didn't know could be risky enough to kill you, once you got to deeper layers.

Myself, I'm very curious to know whether the Nightmare is starting at the top layer and eating its way down, towards the "root of all things", or starting at a very deep, primal layer and eating its way up towards "our reality".

 

Leviathon

A recent interview with Kalgan almost seemed to be hinting that a Drakonid type race is possible. Guess Blizzard can just add a race we wouldn't expect at all as playable.

Blizzard's Tom Chilton on the future of WoW - World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King for PC News - VideoGamer.com

The interview also seemed to make it pretty clear that we shouldn't expect a hero class with every expansion and that adding new races is a bit more easier and possible.