I have been in a state of disbelief all weekend…  The rumors of Blizzard’s newest expansion to World of Warcraft were indeed accurate, down to the last bullet point.  Northrend (but we all saw that coming a mile a way), levels 70-80 with new talents and spells, new zones, raised skill cap and…
Wait… ONE new hero-class? ONE profession addition, and no new races!?
Not a single new quest or content addition sub level 70!?!
In Oz’s first post about the expansion rumors last week, I responded to a comment with this thought, “Verilazic, I think its bunk at least for now. I think as soon as the accidental leak from the German games review board happened, everyone decided to go for the fake patch notes game and create content.
I’m not saying the items listed aren’t real, but the lists seem too half-baked and inconsistent with the type of content Blizzard would be showing in a demo.”
Boy, was I wrong, but my reasoning was not… this feature list for Wrath of the Lich King, reads like a fake patch-notes post, hastily tossed together by a bored 10 year old, rather than the work of the most dynamic development juggernaut of the past decade.  Where is the polish? Where is the feeling of completeness and synergy?Â
If Blizzard loses their edge with content creation, and starts feeding the masses the tripe similar to the post-Velious EverQuest expansionary model, they have lost everything that makes them stand above the rabble.
There is plenty of time to add more items to the list, to flesh out their content additions, add Hero classes ‘for the rest of us’ and rethink some of their half-baked expansion concepts, but I am skeptical that they will.   My bet would be, come January 2008, everyone will drop what they are doing, and rush to Northrend never to return to the forgotten wastelands of Outlands, and Mudflation shall reign for ever more.Â
~Cyndre
This is the last expansion they can afford to fuck up or half-bake. I hope they realize this. By the time the next expansion after Wrath is due to hit (Jan 2009? Generously?), not only core WoW is gonna be really long in the tooth, but they’ll also have to deal with Conan, Warhammer, TR, PotBS already established.
Not exactly lightweights.
Given the currently revealed content, this mage won’t, and hopefully there’ll be other people who agree. Maybe a flop of an expansion will get Blizzard to see what people actually want, rather than what the ex-EQ epic raidz0rs want.
I dunno, I think it will be hilarious. 20 person raids filled entirely with Death Knights, all plate armor going for insane prices, arguing over whether a DPS death knight is better than a healing death knight or a tank death knight.
Death Knight-only guilds.
Guild lotteries to see who can play their Death Knight instead of their main that night.
Death Knight races!
Death Knight-only dungeons! “You Must Be a Death Knight to Ride!”
I give it about 3 in 5 odds that I won’t buy this expansion. Since I don’t raid, the price for admission to TBC didn’t quite seem worth it, especially now that I’m playing LotRO and CoH/CoV, both of which provide free expansions now and then. The idea of shelling out even more money for even more content that I largely won’t use… well, that’s about where I start saying the price is too high for what I’m getting.
First of all, many people will rush to the store and buy the expansion. It will not flop. Many people can’t wait to take the week off from work and grind 70-80 to be the first on the server. Then they will grind through the new quests and raids and continue what they have been doing since they level-capped their 60’s a long, long time ago. Too many people love the meal that Blizzard is serving.
One more thing, I think the 1-60 game is finished, as in complete. I don’t see them adding anything substantial to what is already there from now on. This is a game for the raiders and level cappers, and it will be focused on them from now on.
Step up to the table and eat, or walk away. It’s your choice.
I’m walking. The open sea sounds much more inviting. And later, what real war tastes like will be enough to fill my belly.
“This is a game for the raiders and level cappers, and it will be focused on them from now on.”
And that is too bad, because a lot of us that used to be like that dont even want that anymore. It is garbage. So I am guessing that this expansion will be good for the 10 new levels and that is about it.
I probably will do what I did for TBC: not buy the expansion for at least a month after it comes out. I’ll still probably get it though. Unlike most people, I’m not too interested in the endgame. I’ll probably get lvl 80 at some point, but I won’t be raiding, I’ll just keep doing lvl 30-39 pvp on my alts with friends.
I still think the concept behind Inscription has some promise to it, if only because it could give people the freedom to customize their characters in a practical way, and differentiate themselves from each other. Nah, what am I saying; everyone will just find the most efficient/effective/overpowered inscription for their most powerful spell/ability and just min/max like usual. Every mage will probably have some sort of “super improvempowered fireball” that increases it’s damage, crit, and casting speed, for raids or pvp.
@Tipa, lol. Death Knight=Jedi?
TBC was a wild success for Blizz because many if not most folks do what we do with most games from the few rare studios like Blizzard: bought it sight unseen, mostly by pre-order, taken on faith that it would be a highly polished, well-crafted addition to the extraordinary Blizzard canon of games.
Many bought, many, like me, have been disappointed.
Not so for the Lich. Without some horizontality to it, I doubt I’ll drop $50 on a new hairstyle.
I already walked away from WoW. I had two interests in the game, leveling up new characters and PvP. New characters is really only fun maybe once through every class, if that… the way they funnel you through the exact same quests and instances just gets mind numbing. I’d love to see more well done parallel content where you can choose between a dozen different paths and when done with your path you’ll be too high a level to benefit from doing the other paths. Its almost there in WoW, but not enough, you keep getting pushed back to the main path.
As for PvP, it was great at the beginning, but every time they inflate the armor, the more they make raiding a PvP requirement. I don’t want to do 25 man raids. I want to do battlegrounds and not feel like a gimp versus everyone else in their tier blah blah raid gear…
‘Flop’ was perhaps a strong term, but if a non-negligible number of people don’t buy it and/or cancel, I think that’d send strong signals, even if its only a couple of percent
With 9 million people, how large is “non-negligible”? Even if only 25% of people buy the expansion, that’s still more box sales than most games ever see. 2.25 million sales is something most people would kill for, and I’m certain it would cover the cost of development and even make a profit.
If you are thinking “non-negligible” equals like 2 or 3 percent, I’d be willing to safely say that at least that many people didn’t buy The Burning Crusade, but that didn’t stop them from charging down the path of “more of the same”.
Lets say only 5% do buy it. What then? Maybe I’m just horrible at getting my point accross here
The vast majority of the people who play WoW, the Asian gamers, don’t buy the box. You’re left with the NA/Europe market, who do. Much easier to make an impact.
It won’t flop. This is just the start of EQ’s long tail for them. After Velious, fewer people bought each EQ expansion — they’d lose some people each time, until, little by little, a dozen expansions down the road, what was once the star player is now a niche game.
WoW will still be the leader for quite a long while, and when the end does come, it won’t be sudden.
@potshot — yes, I was DEFINITELY thinking of Jedis from SWG. Death Knights are WoW’s Jedis. It doesn’t make sense if there are more than a couple running around.
Tipa is spot on, in her comments about the beginning of the end. Blizzard has decided to emulate the (failed) expansionary model of EverQuest, and for good or ill, it will begin a slow errotion of the game until all that is left are a few uber-guilds clinging to the top and chomping up content faster than the devs can shovel it to them, and a smattering of jaded casuals still pining for the days of lore-based advancement and charachter development.
“It won’t flop. This is just the start of EQ’s long tail for them. After Velious, fewer people bought each EQ expansion — they’d lose some people each time, until, little by little, a dozen expansions down the road, what was once the star player is now a niche game.”
Actually, according to SOE themselves, Scars of Velious was one of the WORST-selling EQ expansions prior to EQ’s implosion – Luclin, PoP, Ykesha and GoD *all* sold better than Velious.
But that’s just me being pedantic.
Simond, that is because Velious distribution was Borked. No one could get it because it was a direct sales method and the computer system failed to mail like 90% of the boxes out.
After Velious SOE started putting expansions in stores.
So its hard to use that information to make any comparisons, because its apples to oranges and not indicitive of anything otehr than SOE/ Verant’s lack of expereince distributing online games.
I know lots of people who didn’t get Velious until they combined box hit the stores, then they bought it and used it to upgrade their existing account.
The problem with EQ’s numbers is that they did so many configurations of every expansion that its really hard to get “real” numbers. I know people now who still play EQ and they don’t buy expansions, they wait for the next roll up box that comes with toys and buy that instead. Why buy “EverQuest: The Damp Basements of Norrath’s Pubs” when you can buy “EverQuest Super Diamond Encrusted Platinum Edition” for $5 more and usually get a map and some trinkets? If you love the game, the trinkets are worth it.
[…“EverQuest: The Damp Basements of Norrath’s Pubs ]
OMG, I just snorted coffee all over my desk when I read that!
This is about as mediocre an announcement you could make, only thing worse would be a major MMO company’s secret game announcement being an embedded micro-transaction trading card game in their two landmark titles.
Before you blast Blizzard too much I think they’re announcing Wrath of the Lich King way ahead of their release date and they will be including more work, possibly a revamp on the 1-58 experience with new content or a increased leveling rate to lessen the grind. I’d expect them to get 1-2 other Hero classes in too, otherwise it’ll be a horrendous mess of things with everybody taking one of their alts through the Death Knight questline and playing them up to lvl80 causing a glut of that class.
Whatever they do I don’t ever forsee it being “enough”, Blizzard just hasn’t shown any initiative with WoW to introduce the ground breaking features the playerbase has continually demanded and they simply continue to stretch out their core game to its detriment.
WoW is really crying out for something to break the norms and challenge its gameplay, and I think its players like us that are the ones to champion that.. However of the 9 million people that make up the WoW playerbase I don’t feel they’re all as jaded or tired as we are, with most being very new to this style of gameplay. Until that other group of players makes their voice heard I don’t think we’ll see any indication of a change within Blizzard to alter WoW’s direction beyond the baby steps they’ve taken in the past.
Regardless of what they do in the expansion it wouldn’t matter for me, I’m beyond re-subscribing as the WoW experience is simply done for me and I’m looking for a completely new experience away from the tired MMO treadmill.
Blizzard said in one of the panels that if raids are ALL death knights then they havn’t done their jobs.
Possibilities?
– The death knight quest will be just too long, costly and difficult to make 8.5M people say “forget it”.
– Death Knight only usable in a raid and/or 1 death knight per party of 5. (UI/Blizzard enforced.)
– Death Knight rune timers. Can only use your big spells/runes once per day.
I’m just rambling, but I’m sure Blizzard is not going to have a bazillion DK’s running around. AND if they do, as soon as DK’s are overpopulated the next hero class will be released. When that is overpopulated, the 3rd hero class, etc.
I think it is obvious from what we have seen of starcraft 2 and this next WoW expansion that blizzard is no longer willing to take creative risks.
They are so worried about upsetting the already established communities in their current franchises that they won’t allow themselves to take any risks or develop content that is remotely contemporary.
What I think they are forgetting is that the game itself was a huge risk, and it is risk taking like that-betting what they have on bright creative ideas-that made them into the massive company they are today.
I really love the work blizzard has done. Starcraft 2 is looking promising now, if a little redundant. This next expansion though, looks like it contains even less than the burning crusade did. The BC contained new races and class switches, plus the level addition. This expansion adds a class that only contains 10 levels, showing a lack of work needed to balance and add additional long-term planning. They could have made content for new hero classes to level up, in a fun way, and gain many new abilities over time. Instead the hero class will gain 20 levels, be done with it, and join the raiding masses with everyone else. How droll. I just want the game to take itself in some new directions, or if anything, look at other games that have put out yearly expansions and borrow their models.
People want new races, new classes, and new professions. They also want in-game mini-games, such as the card game being added to eq1 and eq2, or even the gem game added years ago to eq1, and people also want unique new features. The hero class is not a unique new feature. As this article detailed, it is just a jedi rehash.
Does blizzard understand that there is a large community of people who like low-level content? Does blizzard see that there can be fun outside of raiding? Or is it because there company hired so many members of elite raiding guilds that they now focus on this content only? I don’t know. I’m certainly no expert, but I do know that as someone who bought the last expansion, leveled a character to 70 and then cancled, they certainly aren’t getting me to do it this time. The most fun I had playing the game was leveling my first 2 characters from 1 to 60 with my friends. But their content isn’t for me anymore, its for the raiders. Are the raiders even satisfied?
From the sounds of it, you are going to have to play the hero class(es) the entire way from 1-80, and my guess is that the average player who has at least a level 70 at that time will have had 3-5 characters played through level 30, with probably at least one other level 60 or 70. If they force their way through to 80 with a DK, they are going to be extremely reluctant to do that yet again for another hero class. Unless they allow hero classes to start at 40 , it’s just going to be another thing to add to the treadmill list that Blizzard has given us: Faction grinding, gear farming, attunements, raiding, gold farming, craft grinding, hero class leveling… It’s just too much. Without fun, meaningful PvP (and don’t give me that destructible building in an instance crap, IT’S AN INSTANCE, WHO CARES!) or interesting quests, or real time events, or housing, or a revamp of 1-60, they are going to get even less 3-month resubs(the time it takes to get through the non-raid content and realize that you’re left with nothing but raiding for gear that will be less-than-obsolete with the next expansion, get disheartened and leave) with each expansion they put out until it’s too late.
I agree with Tipa. WoW will continue to do great after all the next year’s new games are released, regardless of any lack of exciting new content. A good chunk of their current players are loyal customers now. They’ll still be playing 2 years down the line, because they consider WoW home now, have invested so much, and don’t want to be the first of their friends to break up the party.
Brad McQuaid said EQ once that Velious and further expansions were so problematic because they hadn’t anticipated that many expansions when they designed the initial game. Had they been able to predict EQ’s phenomenal success, they could have planned better so that expansion content wouldn’t undermine earlier content so badly. Maybe that doesn’t explain it all, but it sounds to me like a fair explanation of most of it.
Perhaps WoW is suffering from the same lack of foresight.
If MMOs were not so linear… if they included more unpredictable dynamics and horizontal gameplay (like helping a faction in a non-ranked way, only to be counteracted by another player supporting an opposing faction), then expansions would be more free to add content throughout the game, rather than focusing so much on the endgame.
Can I be the sole voice of dissent and say that this expansion is probably the most positive sign from Blizzard in the last year? What’s up there, right there in the most important featuers of the new expansion? “New dances, customisable hairstyles”. Which by itself sounds a little thin to be a headlining item of content, admittedly, but the emphasis placed on it suggests that Blizzard has realised that what has made the game such a (comparitively) mainstream success is not only the addictive gear grind for the raiders, but the friendliness of the game to the friends, partners and children of those raiders through its charming graphical style, range of gameplay avenues, and immersive social interface. The new expansion looks like part of a deliberate plan to expand the game for these players away from the “kill a monster, take its loot” model towards a broader social-based game. I’d back that up by pointing to the integrated voice chat and further guild support coming in the next patch to say that Blizzard are interested in making WoW as much about hanging out with your friends in a cool online environment as it is about questing and levelling up.
If you don’t believe me, look at the turnover some of these “buy an avatar, dress it up” virtual spaces like IMVU are doing (which feature no “gameplay” whatsoever) and tell me Blizzard’s not taking notes.
“From the sounds of it, you are going to have to play the hero class(es) the entire way from 1-80…”
Apart from the bit where the whole point of Hero Classes is that you start at L55/60/65/whatever Blizzard finally decides on, you mean? =)
Cyndre – OK, I’ll give you that one, but that still doesn’t explain why it took until SOE completely and utterly screwed things up with GoD, combined with the start of mutterings from around the same time of someone (namely Blizzard) actually pulling off “EQ-done-right”, for their expansion sales to start dropping.
Most people don’t want revolutionary changes made to their game (see: SWG). They want evolutionary ones, and that’s exactly the sort of thing Blizzard is very, very good at.
I actually await this new expansion with anticipation. An entire continent devoted to PvP warfare and a hopefully non-instanced zone that works similar to what AV used to be before they removed all the fun machines and whatnot.
Jason check out the9’s website. None of the chinese subscribers will be buying the expansion if they follow the BC model. BC is free for china. So that leaves around 2.5 million people to buy the box. If just 30 percent of those people don’t buy the expansion that’ll cause some angst.
Just remember. If any MMO company can pull in 3 or more million players in the US and EU they’ll make more money than blizzard with less infrastructure and overhead.
The9 only made 35 million dollars (1st quarter) with over 7.5 million warcraft accounts and Guild wars and the other games they sell. Someday china will be the place to be but not till thier economy supports wages like ours. For now the average chinese player brings in a couple of dollars a month profit on average. And that gets split between Blizzard and The9
GregT said: “Can I be the sole voice of dissent and say that this expansion is probably the most positive sign from Blizzard in the last year? What’s up there, right there in the most important featuers of the new expansion? “New dances, customisable hairstylesâ€. Which by itself sounds a little thin to be a headlining item of content, admittedly, but the emphasis placed on it suggests that Blizzard has realised that what has made the game such a (comparitively) mainstream success is not only the addictive gear grind for the raiders, but the friendliness of the game to the friends, partners and children of those raiders through its charming graphical style, range of gameplay avenues, and immersive social interface. The new expansion looks like part of a deliberate plan to expand the game for these players away from the “kill a monster, take its loot†model towards a broader social-based game.”
I didn’t really think about that. Lets hope their headlining of those items means as much as you think. I pretty much just figured they’d add a dance or two, make it possible to change your hair, and call it quits, but there is more that could be done if they’re willing to.