The main reason that expansions seem to have time sinks seems to be they don’t have as much time to work on “full” content. You spend 3 years making your main game, and then have to come up with an expansion, which is basically 25%-50% (hopefully, heh) of your game again but in a much stricter timeline. Sure you don’t have to do all the aearly alpha stuff like trying to decide on your engine and the like, but someone still has to go around and make sure the trees touch the ground in the zone. I’ve done that. For hours and hours at a time. Not fun.

So you cut corners, and you do it in a way that makes sense - you put the players on a treadmill to slow them down, so that content does not burn out. Have to have that revenue stream. Additionally, you want people to buy it, so you make sure the Pointy Sticks in your expansion are now Shiny Point Sticks +1 and make then fairly available. Sure the raider will have Ultra Mega Gleaming Deathblade Stick of Vorpal Sundering +900, but even Captain Casual will have something. A reason for playing.

I’m trying to think of a good AO example, and the only one I’m coming up with is the pistol from Shadowlands. There’s an easily obtained pistol that can last an adventurer a hundred levels. However, you have to craft or quest (don’t recall which) it in the Shadowlands. It’s better than any other pistol on Rubi-Ka except the ultra rare ones. Carrot.

I seriously hope WoW can keep its quest-friendly mode come the expansion. As my current game of choice, and a MASSIVE lover of quests, I hope it beyond all hope. It adds flavor to the game, plus some story, lore, or often humor (FIFTY, YEP!). I’m too early to cry that the expansion stinks, but because I wonder if they can take the road less traveled. The shaman/paladin thing in the expansion (another carrot, and easy for anyone!) really makes me think they won’t.

Everquest evolved into a raiders game and the developers threw every time sink into the book to keep the population they had paying their monthly subs. It wasn’t tough considering the relative small selection of MMORPGs at the time. EQ could screw up big and not suffer badly from it. The playerbase was also considered “capped out” and the idea of “new players en masse” was not on anyone’s mind for an expansion.

WoW opened the floodgate of new players by doing what they’ve always done… make a polished and finished game with low barriers to entry. What you call “lack of challenge” many players call “my chance to play”. Blizzard never set out to innovate. Blizzard set out to get it right. They got it right for some 6 million players.

There is a very small % of the population that actually raids in WoW. The majority of players don’t and for good reasons… the barrier to entry is HUGE. Blizzard realized this a long time ago and has played catch up ever since. Planned 40 man raid zones have turned into 20 man raid zones. The expansion is going to insert even more step up raiding content with 10 man dungeons that require raid like coordination. Just like the 5 man dungeson were revamped to be more challenging offering MUCH BETTER REWARDS. Rewards should be based on challenge… not the # of people required to complete the encounter. If you don’t think Blizzard understands this then you are sadly mistaken.

Blizzard will sell this expansion by showing off all the cool uber gear, rare flying mounts, and other crap that 1% of the population will ever actually attain. Why? Because of the carrot on the stick. The majority of WoW players understand this stuff is out of their reach, but it doesn’t stop making them want to play. This tactic works and Blizzard will continue to sell the expansion this way.

Blizzard understands their basic quest based gameplay is what the majority of gamers want and Blizzard will deliver this with the expansion. They have no chance of an expansion being succesful if it doesn’t invite in the majority of their players. These players are not going to go out on their level 60’s just to “quest” because there are new quests to do. They are going to go out because they can quest and LEVEL at the same time. There would be no point in making all this content if people didn’t progress somehow while consuming it.

You have the EQ mindset and Blizzard is catching you hook, line, and sinker. They toss out the purple epicz and you are all over it. Blizzard knows their core audience and knows they don’t have to preach to them. They know the players will come en masse when they deliver the same gameplay that everyone is currently enjoying. What they like to do is appease the EQtards… probably because they EQtards on the development team can’t keep their retarded mouths shut. Its a good thing money talks.

From what I hear the expansion will have a lot of dungeons that are divided into wings with the last wing being the smallest but requiring a raid of 20 or 40 people. That way each dungeon will have content for casual and hardcore players. Also this layout might encourage more pick up raids since the raid objective will be next to single group content. Of course most of this is based on E3 interviews and hints from Jeff Kaplan. Who knows how the expansion will be for real.

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Combine this with a gear increase and there are two possible outcomes… the new gear is substantially better than the previous gear, making it even less desirable to do the older raid dungeons; or the gear is only a mediocre upgrade (like most previous gear upgrades, though most of those were all targetted at level 60 characters), thus making it less desirable to do the more “difficult” level 70 raids when similar equipment will be available in BWL/AQ40/Naxx for considerably less risk. Rocky ground ahead for WoW raiding…

Like I said, unless they completely buck what every other game has done on an expansion, if they put even one level 40 item in, it will have better stats than every other one prior.

“I would also expect there to be rich questing from 60-70. It’s not going to be a grind as you expect. The level/questing system is integral to Blizzard’s game design and they aren’t just going to *skip* it.”

I hope so. I really do. The questing in WoW is why I currently enjoy it. It adds a dimension to the game that isn’t easily replaceable. It’s fun as heck to be swimming around for giggles, suddenly finding a letter on the bottom of the river and end up a half dozen turn ins later commissioning a statue for a friend of IF’s king.

God I hope not the rep grinding is more than enough grind already..no need to add something like Funcom did.

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To be perfectly honest I am woefully underwhelmed by the announced contents of this expansion. They aren’t adding anything “new”.

Let’s see Their big deal is this

New races- Well whoopity doo, since there is essentially no significant difference in the races yay thanks for giving me a new skin so I can play the same classes I already played over again.

Hell Add some more customization (ok ok.. CoX spoiled me) or god forbid NEW classes instead of taking the cop out of just opening the two side restricted classes (and in the process murdering the background story…Demonic magic using Blood Elves are now Paladins…Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Ghost Rider)

My other thing is that other than starter ares, there’s been nothing announced for low to midlevel players. Adding soemthing in those areas would make my playing of alts a much more pleasurable experience because atleast for a short while it would be new.

I’d love to see more class specific type quests..even some small class specific instances made for a single person. It would give each class a uniquness instead of every class doing the same quests in the same instances.

I would also expect there to be rich questing from 60-70. It’s not going to be a grind as you expect. The level/questing system is integral to Blizzard’s game design and they aren’t just going to *skip* it. They set up at least one and maybe multiple “quest hubs” for each level range, normally covering 2-5 levels. They’re adding land mass about half the size of a current continent, and I’m sure it will be covered top to bottom in quests and quest hubs.