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http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14990474128 (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14990474128)

Arenas it is  :awesome_for_real:

Man do I feel stupid.  I used to play EQ with that guy and I had no idea he was working for Blizzard. 

Sounds like he's doing well in the gaming world.  Good for him.

My thoughts exactly: "Tigole leaves, WoW gets more hardcore. News at 11!!.

Note to self: don't raid in the new MMO for at least a year after release.

You played on The Nameless in EQ also?

Amusing. He's learned quite a bit from his experiences with WoW, and seems to have toned down on his hardcore mentality. I expect to see some amazing set pieces, but less of the "dedicate your life to the fucking game, bitch"

However, I think the WoW live team just lost a voice of reason.

Yeah, nameless, prexis (?) and also a bit on Tallon Zek (? the pvp server).  I quit when Velious released.  I think I played cleric with those guys once in a while when they were desperate for a fill in.  Was fun being among the first to see the kunark dungeons.  

The rumor I had always heard was that the move towards 10 person content, actually rewarding heroics, etc., was largely over his objections, so who knows what it means really as far as 'voice of reason' goes.

If yall believe he's a voice of reason, you're crazy. He's a total raid-favoring shitheel who was basically bitchslapped by others over his personal and horrible raid designs in TBC. This is the same idiot who came up with massive attunements, fights that were so punative early on that they had to be toned down repeatedly, and the abundance of huge linear instances where shards fell from the heavens from the first 3 bosses you'd killed 100 times.

He was a tool, and I hope whatever game he goes to keeps reigning him in, because it's certainly not his call to go to less hardcore content.

Which is all of the stuff he loved in EQ. I still don't really get how a guy known for being a poopsock guild leader/ranter got to where he was.  It was explained at the time that he had an English degree.  I guess he worked his way up.

Even funnier is that most of the stuff that he implemented in TBC as his pet project was completely reversed in WoTLK and considered retarded. I'm not going to shed a tear that he's not "helping" design things anymore.

He was a huge poop socker, that I will completely agree with.  How much of it remains is anyone's guess since he's been quiet since the reversal of his asinine decisions has made the game more popular.   I guess how much of LK's current ease of entry can be attributed him depends on what the Game Director position does.  I figured it was just oversight and not direct design decisions.

Tigole's largest known contribution to Wrath was the achievement system; it is very much his baby.

which is useless (stat wise) and is wholesale stolen from LotRO and SWG's / CoX badge system.

Blizzard stealing ideas from elsewhere? Surely this has never happened before!

Achievements SHOULD be useless. They're just supposed to be a fun extra, not a new grind. It's what makes me think the achievement system did not even THINK about the LotRO version, but instead gleefully ripped off CoX and CoX alone.

*deleted, I ate too much candy today.*

Inspiration though feels more like it's from Xbox Live.  The entire system feels directly pulled from it.

True, it even has points!

In the other two games every achievement gives you a title, which is total fluff but makes it worth getting.

A good number of the seasonal and higher end achievements give you titles too.  I've got 4 to choose from and it's quite nifty.  But that's all it is...

There should be more titles in WoWs system. Other than that and some of the "Must be L80 to aquire" ones I've got no complaints about the system, myself.

Tigole gone = better WoW game in the future.

I'm still laughing at that "Voice of Reason" thing.

Yay for WoW.

WoW is getting old.  Tigole might be working on the FUTURE WOW!   :ye_gods:

Seriously, Tigole is pretty strongly associated with the single movement in the development of WoW that I think came close to sabotaging the game's success. It goes live with a lot of content, a forgiving levelling curve (by the standards of the time), an emphasis on casual play. It lacks only a well-conceived answer to the problem of the endgame.

What's the answer that developed by the time the pre-TBC game has fully matured? MC, AQ-40, BWL, Naxx. Basically porting over EQ's design philosophy, which is what WoW's initial design was trying strenuously to avoid. Tigole carried over some of the same error into TBC. I worry more about what this means for Blizzard's next project, to be honest: I had gotten vague indications that they really wanted to try something new rather than WoW 2.0 (because I think they have ambitions to make WoW itself continuously upgraded for as long as possible), maybe something with more world dynamism in it. If Tigole becomes a big influence on that project, that's not a good sign, because as far as I can tell, his big idea is "More cockblocks!"

I wonder what their new MMO is, and whether this implies that they see an end to WoW's life cycle.

I've got to think not.  They've been very slowly upgrading the graphics through minor stuff like weather effects, etc.  I've got to think that they've got a dedicated facelift team working on WoW, and eventually when they think the market has gotten to the point where they can release it without alienating the low end, they will.

That's also why I suspect (okay, more like hope) that they'll go the Starcraft action game route, rather than Diablo.  With the former they can grow their subscriber base without cannibalizing WoW too much.  With the latter, they'll still grow their base, but by neutering WoW.

What would a MMORTS even be? I'm having a hard time imagining the concept.


-edit- I totally posted this in the wrong 'Blizz new MMO thread'  :awesome_for_real:

There was a blue post right before LK that I recently read on one of the dev trackers.  It mentioned that Arthas is not the end of WoW and there's several other big players out there still.  Netherwing and one of the big demons (Sageras? Archimonde? I forget who's still 'alive') were both mentioned.

However, an expansion of all dragons would make me quit.  I've had enough of the fucking tail swipes!  :mob:

Dragons are a nice change up for me. I get to stare at monster flank instead of monster ass.  Hey, and tanks get monster face instead of crotch. Win-win.

Sargaras is a certainty at some point in the future for a raid.
Mal'Ganis is also reported still alive under another name, so he's a real possibility as well.
Deathwing of the Black Dragonflight lives under Grim Batol, goofing off until they decide to make that a raid.
DarKhan Drathir is a corrupted High Elf who helped the Lich King, so he could be a boss, but not a raid ending one.
Queen Azshara is almost a given as an end boss.
Also, they have a whole pantheon of Titans, and you know they'll just make up something with Trolls again.

*******Spoiler Alert**********








He is actually in LK.  He is at the end of a very long series of quests in Icecrown.  He turns out to be a leader in the SC army out on that island.

He has been disguised as a human all along and breaks the illusion when you beat him.  He stops the fight early and gates out to "recover."

He's very much still in the picture.

after turning in that quest the npc's reaction is truly priceless, essentially saying WTF?!

At this point, I don't think Mal'Ganis escaping in the nick of time should be all that unexpected.  :oh_i_see:

I think the dreadlords must be vampiric in the 'fucking impossible to permanently kill unless you know exactly what you're doing' sense as well as the "I drink your blud!" sense, or something.

I think there is some sort of resurrection ability that the burning legion has; I can't put my finger on it but I vaguely remember dilagoue to that effect in WC3 or WoW somewhere.

Well, when you kill them they turn into a hundred bats and fly away so if castlevania has taught us ANYTHING...

We get to raid Icecrown upside-down?

Didn't, like, every blood elf noob kill that guy at the end of Ghostlands?

No idea, I've never rolled an elf in my life. Nor did I ever venture up there beyond hitting ZA.

Yes, they did.  But that doesn't mean Arthas can't reraise him and make him stronger.

Well yeah, MAYBE, but if I was Arthas I wouldn't bother. Still, I was just making sure I was thinking of the right guy!

To be fair, he IS a group [5] quest.  :oh_i_see:

That means my warlock's shadowbolt constitutes 1 group [5]!

Unlikely. I think he ended up as a 20G5 boss because of his failure in capturing Anveena and the power of Sunwell for Arthas. Although how the hell he ended up in Deathholme is a mystery as Anveena vaporized him at the end of the Ghostlands manga story.

All I know is that at some point in each expansion there is a boss that can only be accessed by fishing.

He got better.

Corpse dust.