Cataclysm

[Hawkbit]

It wouldn't hurt for them to turn WoW into a testbed for future games.  They already do it to some extent through trial and error.  But having a base game that you test then port the successes over to the A title is win all around.

[jpark]

These extra class/race combinations seem like a simple cash grab by the developers to me.

I am not a "lore guy" but the "vision" blizzard has had or implied for certain races is contradicted by many of these combinations.  Undead hunter?  etc.

If the player base likes it that's a good decision - but it turns me off.

I hereby dubb this the Cash Cow game - hopefully we get a peak soon at whatever game has garnered Blizzard's talent from Wow.

[tmp]

I hereby dubb this the Cash Cow game - hopefully we get a peak soon at whatever game has garnered Blizzard's talent from Wow.

I wouldn't exactly expect the next Blizzard game to ignore the Low Hanging Enormous Moneyhats when it works so well for them with WoW.

[Paelos]

They just need to release Diablo already. That way I'll have something else to focus on when I'm not raiding.

[Musashi]

They just need to release Diablo already. That way I'll have something else to focus on when I'm not raiding.

That way I can stop raiding!

[Rasix]

These extra class/race combinations seem like a simple cash grab by the developers to me.

I am not a "lore guy" but the "vision" blizzard has had or implied for certain races is contradicted by many of these combinations.  Undead hunter?  etc.

Of course it's a cash grab.  It works on multiple levels.  You get the alt-o-holics loading up the one combination they've always wanted.  You get the min-maxers rolling some new combo they think will rule the day.  And finally, you get a lot more mileage out of your faction transfer service (already mentioned).  The last thing alone will probably buy every dev a new porche.

Undead anything works.  Why is a pulse needed for any job?

[Paelos]

Certain class/race restrictions never made any sense to me. The only ones that should probably be restricted are Druids, Paladins, and Shamans for the lore reasons. Stuff like humans not being able to shoot a gun, or dwarves not being able to be offensive spellcasters don't really make any sense.

[Rendakor]

No Dwarf Mages is probably a carryover from a traditional D&D view of dwarves. All I can say to belf Warrior is fucking finally. Tauren Pally is nice, although I would've prefered undead.

[Righ]

I will be back in for yet another brand new character if they let me be an Orc mage. I like playing different character classes, but I don't really get into it unless they are Orcs. I have a Gnome mage, because they're pretty much the next best race after Orcs. Tauren, Trolls, Dwarves and Draenei are just okay. All the other races suck. Especially elves.

[Merusk]

No Dwarf Mages is probably a carryover from a traditional D&D view of dwarves. All I can say to belf Warrior is fucking finally. Tauren Pally is nice, although I would've prefered undead.

They had dwarf mages in the beta.  I recally they got removed shortly before I got in and there was still a little outcry over it.  The logic for removal at the time was "They're already all these other classes, there's just not room for it as we'd rather have another priest race than another mage race."

[WindupAtheist]

Let me get this straight: we get cursed by the Lich King - after saving your pitiful arses in the second war, I might add - and you lot effectively declare war on us for even existing.

I want to know what game/book/whatever people think this is supposed to have happened during, because everyone who loves Forsaken spits it out like it's unquestioned, but as far as I can tell it's a total fabrication. When Alliance forces first came into contact with the Forsaken in WC3, it was Sylvanus who resorted to betrayal.

edit: Anyway yeah, I'm curious how the hell this is supposed to work. WoW has always functioned with the implicit assumption that the "present" is where/whenever your character is. As I'm standing in Grizzly Hills listening to Gryan Stoutmantle tell me how great it was that we saved Westfall, some newb is in Westfall saving it for Gryan Stoutmantle. The same guy exists in multiple places, but it's implied that those different places also represent different times.

So how do you bring Azeroth forward in time while leaving Outland and Northrend alone? "Yeah, after the Lich King died there was this big cataclysm that made the world all fucked up. Anyway now that you're level 68, go to Northrend and do a bunch of quests where you meet the Lich King." Maybe this IS fake.

[ghost]

I really haven't been keeping up with WOW much lately.  Any chance that these new races will be a "third faction" or neutral faction?  That would beat War to the punch there again. 

[Nevermore]

These extra class/race combinations seem like a simple cash grab by the developers to me.

I am not a "lore guy" but the "vision" blizzard has had or implied for certain races is contradicted by many of these combinations.  Undead hunter?  etc.

Forsaken Hunter would work especially well if instead of being able to tame beasts, they could tame undead. 

[DraconianOne]

Gotta say, this whole thing reeks to me and I won't be convinced until I hear it come from Blizzard's gaping maws.  Redoing the entire old world, while an interesting prospect, sounds like a fucking task and a half and a whole lot more work than it took to add Outland or even Northrend with all it's phased zones. They were new, this requires substantial changes. Also, the headache, as Paelos implied, in maintaining the vanilla world for those without the expansion?

Of course, I may be wrong.  If I am then I think it's pretty cool. So many people complain that MMOs are static worlds and that nothing changes but this would be Blizzard making huge and significant changes to their persistent world, moving the story along and changing it. I don't think it's a bad business plan either. Make a change to something people are familiar with will get a lot of people who have left come back just to see the changes.  You say "hey! Did you know they flooded 1k needles, destroyed Orgrimmar and blew up the Barrens?" and old players curiosity will no doubt get the better of them.  Offer them flying mounts in the old world and that 12 million subscribers will skyrocket.  Srsly.

If I were a betting man, I'd bet against this. If Cataclysm is the name of the next expansion then yeah, perhaps it'll be the Maelstrom.  Gilneas may well be a new zone. Azshara might get a relevant makeover. But they'd be more likely to add a new continent in the form of the Maelstrom and the Undermine (which would also make sense of the new playable Goblin race too - if that's more than a rumour). Azshara would obviously be a boss and perhaps Deathwing although I see no relation between the two.

Anyway, if Emerald Dream/Nightmare is intended to be an eventual expansion then there's no way they'll do one expansion as an overhaul of the current world followed by another one which is a copy of the current world.

On the other hand, if someone said, WoW 2 rather than an expansion, I'd be less sceptical.

[ezrast]

Even among people who like leveling, the BC/Wrath content is widely considered to be vastly superior to the classic WoW stuff. The constant across-the-board XP increases and introduction of heirloom items indicate that Blizz knows there's a problem with their leveling content, but aren't themselves proper solutions. And old-world flying mounts are one of the most commonly requested features for the game, if not the most commonly.

Again, world revamp != new expansion. It's simply something the game needs, and tying it to the next expansion (which presumably will have plenty of its own new, non-revamped 81-85 content) thematically just makes sense.

I believe it.

[Sheepherder]

So how do you bring Azeroth forward in time while leaving Outland and Northrend alone? "Yeah, after the Lich King died there was this big cataclysm that made the world all fucked up. Anyway now that you're level 68, go to Northrend and do a bunch of quests where you meet the Lich King." Maybe this IS fake.

Remove them from the 1-85 sequence and then re-use the content to create other shit, like battlegrounds, instances, and starting zones for hero classes and/or appropriate racial/class pairings.  Comparatively speaking retooling the entire old world would take a shitton more work, and landscaping and architecture would be the least part.

But this is all beside the point, because my money is on all you people being trolled by a goon since he saw the Wolvar mask in the PTR files.

[Righ]

These extra class/race combinations seem like a simple cash grab by the developers to me.

I am not a "lore guy" but the "vision" blizzard has had or implied for certain races is contradicted by many of these combinations.  Undead hunter?  etc.

Forsaken Hunter would work especially well if instead of being able to tame beasts, they could tame undead. 

Scourge generally: crypt fiends, oozes, maggots, golems, bog fiends, abominations.

[WindupAtheist]

The only thing troubling me is the whole question of how Outland and Northrend would fit in. Otherwise I think this would be a god damned brilliant idea, to take the entire original content of WoW and basically chuck it in the trash in favor of a new-and-improved version. Forget that "LOL REUSING ZONES? LAZY!" noise, this would actually be a hell of a lot MORE ambitious than just opening yet another portal to yet another five-zone Awesomeland while letting the old world get even more abandoned and irrelevant. Some of these changes sound pretty goddamned drastic.

We've all heard the "just let every class start at 55" talk. If you don't want to make the original world totally empty by actually letting everyone start at 55, but don't want to keep making people play your shittiest content for the first 55 levels either, then this makes perfect sense. If you have the resources to be able to scrap that much old content.

I will officially be disappointed as fuck if this is all a hoax and we get just another "hop the portal to New Awesomeland and ding to 90 in these 5 zones, only seeing the old world on your bank alt" expansion. I want to take off from Theramore on my epic flyer and cruise west over the Barrens Volcano.

[Fordel]

Maybe they've expanded the phasing technology to include terrain? Maybe they'll just Ret-Con the entire old world so the leveling curve will shift into outland/northrend smoothly lore wise.

Clearly the Cataclysm effected time too! 



Really, Outland already has this problem, you can do a bunch of crap in Outlands while simultaneously seeing the results of the stuff you haven't done yet. Plenty of Old World stuff also has these issues lore wise. That Un'goro expedition, "halp we are trapped in the jungle!", try the Goblin Griffin master to your left there buddy. They've probably changed the quest text a bit for those, I haven't done them in years.


I think we are just sorta supposed to assume we are fighting the Lich King's remnants, or Illidan's shadow or whatever. Sure, we took out the big bad guys and mostly fixed things, but there are still a jillion zombies and demons to clean out.

[Simond]

I will officially be disappointed as fuck if this is all a hoax and we get just another "hop the portal to New Awesomeland and ding to 90 in these 5 zones, only seeing the old world on your bank alt" expansion. I want to take off from Theramore on my epic flyer and cruise west over the Barrens Volcano.

So you want to fly from a city built at sea level in a swamp after a giant tsunami rearranges the local geography? Step one: Make sure the city is still there. 

[DraconianOne]

Clearly the Cataclysm effected time too! 

There is a get-out clause: the Infinite Dragonflight. And Nozdormu. That story-arc, to my knowledge, hasn't been resolved yet.





Did I really just call that a story-arc?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Well, there's ALREADY plot and time holes in wow, it's inevitable when you add new content...I don't like it but if you gave me the options of

1. Redo all the old zones, give them new looks and totally redo all the questlines for wotlk quality(and by doing so make BC and wotlk seem out of time)

or

2. Discover a new planet and/or continent adding 8 entirely new zones.

I'd pick option 1 every single time, I want to see this world change, hell even with my hatred for garrosh(being a whiny and literally backstabbing little man-child) I still want to see what comes next for azeroth.

[WindupAtheist]

So you want to fly from a city built at sea level in a swamp after a giant tsunami rearranges the local geography? Step one: Make sure the city is still there. 

Oh god I hope not. I hope that Horde-loving cunt Jaina ends up on the bottom of the fucking ocean as fish-food.

Also, have you figured out when this whole "Evil Alliance declares war on peace-loving Forsaken JUST FOR EXISTING! BAAAW!" thing was supposed to have actually taken place yet? Because nobody could tell me last time we did this for pages and pages either and I'm really quite curious.



Let's do this! We've got a week of empty wanking to do before Blizzcon anyway!

[Hellinar]

If Blizzard can phase whole continents, then they could make the post Cataclysm world only visible the the lvl 80 characters that have done the quest. If you want to visit with lower level buddies, a quick portal to the Caverns of Time fixes the problem.

Maybe their next project will go into phasing bigtime, so it is worth the expense of testing it fully in WoW.

[Merusk]

Maybe their next project will go into phasing bigtime, so it is worth the expense of testing it fully in WoW.

I can't really see a reason NOT to use the tech in future projects.  It will probably be considered a standard feature, like a customizable UI, in upcoming MMOs as we go through the years.

[ezrast]

All phasing does is limit the visibility of characters/mobs (only) in a certain area of a given zone. Rearranging the entire zone (or anything involving a terrain geometry change) wouldn't be phasing - it would just be a new zone.

Yeah, now I'm arguing semantics but the constant association of "any sort of persistent world change" with "phasing" annoys me.

[WindupAtheist]

If Blizzard can phase whole continents, then they could make the post Cataclysm world only visible the the lvl 80 characters that have done the quest. If you want to visit with lower level buddies, a quick portal to the Caverns of Time fixes the problem.

Maybe their next project will go into phasing bigtime, so it is worth the expense of testing it fully in WoW.

I thought of the same thing, but that would eliminate the benefits of ditching the moldy old leveling content.

[Hellinar]

Yeah, now I'm arguing semantics but the constant association of "any sort of persistent world change" with "phasing" annoys me.

Call it time travel then. Even if it means copying zones wholesale, it would still be worth it to see time actually advance.

I thought of the same thing, but that would eliminate the benefits of ditching the moldy old leveling content.

They could ditch the old content by letting you start new characters in Dalaran at 70. Then you would have to complete a lvl 80 quest to return to the old world in its post Cataclysm state.

[tmp]

If Blizzard can phase whole continents, then they could make the post Cataclysm world only visible the the lvl 80 characters that have done the quest. If you want to visit with lower level buddies, a quick portal to the Caverns of Time fixes the problem.

Maybe their next project will go into phasing bigtime, so it is worth the expense of testing it fully in WoW.

I'd think rather than mess with phasing technology which seems rather pointless in this particular case, it'd be much simpler (relatively speaking) to create separate zones representing "post cataclysm old world" and dump the lvl.85 or whatever players there, with the original version of the world locked to them as from their point on the storyline that version of world no longer exists.

[ezrast]

So now we've kept all the "expansion is just a rehash" complaints without any of the "get rid of the crusty old leveling content" benefits but further dividing the playerbase (old-world Orgrimmar is devoid of 80s but and new-world Orcopolis excludes low levels). Plus we have to stretch 5 levels' worth of content across two whole continents, and also the scheme leaves nowhere to shoehorn in that 10-20 Azshara zone.

edit: Oh, and the lore discontinuity still isn't solved because low-level goblins and worgen would be anachronistically stuck in the old world to level.

[tmp]

Yup. MMO business as usual.

(i wouldn't worry much about the stretching 5 levels of content over 2 continents thing, either. It can become much easier when you don't actually have to keep these 2 continents intact or anywhere near their original form/size. Cataclysms can be a handy device to explain changes like that)

[Malakili]

So now we've kept all the "expansion is just a rehash" complaints without any of the "get rid of the crusty old leveling content" benefits but further dividing the playerbase (old-world Orgrimmar is devoid of 80s but and new-world Orcopolis excludes low levels). Plus we have to stretch 5 levels' worth of content across two whole continents, and also the scheme leaves nowhere to shoehorn in that 10-20 Azshara zone.

edit: Oh, and the lore discontinuity still isn't solved because low-level goblins and worgen would be anachronistically stuck in the old world to level.

The answer is actually simple: Blizzard probably doesn't give a crap about raping their lore to pieces if they want to.

[Ratman_tf]

The thing is, WoW is not a world. It's a theme park. (Yes, that's an old point.) But it doesn't make the game very condusive to visiting old content like UO or SWG. We were properly shephereded through those zones in a very specific sequence. Re-visiting them is going "backwards" in the game.

They could have designed the game to have a more broad level range (Imagine SFK having three wings, 20-30, 30-40, and 40-50 level content) but they didn't. And it's kinda too late to take that kind of design back now... it will confuse the players.

[Hindenburg]

(Imagine SFK having three wings, 20-30, 30-40, and 40-50 level content)

That'd be horrible.

[Musashi]

It was pretty obvious to me when they yoinked old 40 man Naxx out of thin air, redesigned so cavemen could do it, and put it on a whole new continent that they are about as concerned with lore as I am.  That's not a lot.  It can fly!  Derp.

I know there's a lot of people who will have nostalgia issues, and they've every right.  Won't be too long before those people can roll on gated servers ala EQ Combine to fulfill their nostalgia rub.