f13.net

Not dead at all actually.

2.4 million Burning Crusades sold in one day.

I could link it but why bother? From a Vivendi press release.

Yeah, it's pretty sad.

Never thought I'd defend the Master Chief in my lifetime, but I'm glad he won this battle (barely). Even overhyped shooters deserve more popularity than an MMO.

Burning crusade?

I think they have an ointment for that.

 :rimshot:

 :roll:

I had more typed up, but that'll suffice.

Hey, just shoot. It's OK.  8-)

Zerg rush.

http://gaming.monstersandcritics.com/pc/news/article_1250560.php/World_of_Warcraft_The_Burning_Crusade_scorches_day-1_sales_records
http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/6363/7387/world-warcraft-sells-24m-copies.phtml
http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=37489
http://www.pcvsconsole.com/news.php?nid=3233
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12488
http://gamedeveloper.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=99152

All pretty much the same, I found this UK specific one interesting.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12490

Good ole Championship Manager...

I can't login. you're right. WoW's dead  :-o Why'd they have to choose today after I got my TBC client to fuck things up >_<

Well, the thread title is partly-right. All the old 58-60 content (and instances) are dead and buried now.

All hail the new king! Mudflation!

(yes, I know it's actually a flattening-out of the playerbase at the onset of the content, and that it's actually a good idea)

Still sitting back, wringing my hands in anticipation, as the people who have never played an MMO before come to realization that everything they have previously done is now worthless.

...And in a few months, everything they're doing right now will be too.

Delicious.

Yeah seriously I didn't make it to 6 months in WoW but fuck off, Halo are you fucking kidding me?  Shit if you say "the Master Chief" again I'm going to just skip your posts from there on out.   :-P

Felt like Rasix let you off too easy there.

Heh, I had a good time playing the game so far, but I also had no interest in catassing raids. I see guildmates crying regularly about their superceded raid gear, yet they were still trying to raid MC a week before the expansion launched and whining about the lack of interest that caused those raids to be cancelled.

Still though, a bit of a shame to send so many instances into the bin just like that. I guess revamping them right now won't help BC expansion boxes sell, but I'd expect some Runnyeye/Cazic-Thule/Mistmoore/Unrest style revamps eventually for the 5-man places like Strat/Scholo/Dire Maul, and probably even UBRS/LBRS eventually.

If all sports sims were like CM, I'd be a happy camper.  It's the game I always go back to when mmogs let me down.

Heh, you're not kidding.   I only play WoW very casually (highest character is a 25 rogue) and Ashenvale and Stonetalon mountains are completey and utterly devoid  of  other players.  Definately has the  modern day newbie EQ1 Freeport vibe going on.  In my travels though, I did see a level 26 Blood Elf that had surpassed my labour of the years in just a few days.  So continues the slow march to 60.

Hah. You have no idea how it pains me to say it.

But that should illustrate something.  :evil:

Good!  Less Ganking for my lowbie characters on PvP servers. ;)

My server is still fairly busy in the low-areas. A lot of Draenae, of course -- but people working on their alts too. Of course, I also play on a server that's probably in the top ten list for forced splits...

I play on a medium and I see people.  Then again, it's a PVP server and I have a guild to keep me company, so everyone else can just fuck off and let me level anyway.  :-P

They'll very likely revamp the old instances. It's a waste to not do it. All that content. No matter how many money hats they have, if you can repurpose the old, you do it. Like that Inn in Honor Hold. Or the reskinned models.

EQ1 goes through the same cycle. You want people to move on so you can upsell them on new content. Then you take your profit and revamp the old stuff and, maybe, upsell them on THAT too.

As too the people who cry for being mudflated, welcome to the genre.

I'm hoping to see the overall expansion box sales done 1 month from now.

It's probably a more reliable count of current WoW players than active subscriptions, which would include those who may not be playing but didn't care enough about $15/mo take the time to unsubscribe.

I kind of thought they were being obvious about that with the "Heroic" slider for dungeons. It seems a no-brainer that now that they have a mechanism in to switch instance difficulty and drops, that it'd be easy to set the old dungeons to heroic -- or have them be utterly different at level 70.

Maybe they'll take the oppurtunity to redo Molten Core for the 70 crowd, and remove all the suck.

Instances, yes. However, it would be risky to revamp the "old" world too much because WoW's strength is the ease of adoption. The newbie game is very good and should not be toyed with.

I'm not thinking of the newbie or even mod-level instances, but of the 4 previous "endgame" casual runs. Scholo, Strat (both), DM (since noone ever goes there anyway), and U/LBRS since aside from quests, those places have been totaly wiped off the map now. Time shortly to scale them either up or down, becaise they don't cut it anymore for the 58-60 crowd..

ZG and AQ20/MC are also pretty redundant now compared to level 58 green world drops..

I agree Morat and Shiz. Heroic slider is an easy win, and you don't want to mess with the old world stuff too much because of the low barrier. They could easily make sweeping changes in content, but as long as they continue to scale to what can be provided by drops and questions along the way, they're fine. They absolutely shouldn't tune the old world for the powers players gained in the new one, including all the new talents that happen through many tiers.

One thing that really help drive the WoW numbers to what they are is the staggered launch around the world. Every time they launched and broke records in the new territory, they drove up awareness in the old ones, and therefore box sales.

The expansion will likely go through the same cycle. As such, it might not be a month from now, but more like around Fall.

Otherwise, I agree with your point.

Ah, but look at the bright side of that, this way you can see active subscriptions per country based on expansion box sales.

Obscure question (slight thread derail):

How much of WoW's popularity could be attributed to Leroy Jenkins?




I was pondering sub numbers and such and began to wonder.  So I pulled up mmorpgchart.com and looked.  In May-June '05, WoW's sub numbers skyrocketed from 2 mil to 3.25ish million.  I googled Leroy Jenkins and found that the videos were May '05.

I'm sure someone has asked this question before, so if it's been answered or pondered, just ignore this.

Most of the jump was from China and other APAC nations. China alone accounts for, I think, 40% of all subscriptions. This is notable for two main reasons:

• Almost no other Western-brewed MMO has succeeded in China
• To operate in China they needed to use Chinese-based operator. This operator (The9) operates WoW entirely, paying a royalty to VUG. So that's not 3.5mil * 14.99/mo in China. I have no idea what it is, and it still is buckets of cash no matter how you measure it, but it's why you can't say "8.5mil * 14.99" and comes up with oil tanks full of cash. Just buckets :)

Leroy Jenkins was a cute little event that helped wrap WoW with some mass relevance. But it was already steamrolling into the public's mind (or at least the media) based entirely on its success.

China was at 3.5 million out of 8 million in January.

Vivendi ain't getting much from The9 hence the rumors about Vivendi wanting to renegotiate it before the release of BC in China. You can read The9's financial details for the gory details about their royalty arrangement (it's kind of complicated).

No, they absolutely do need to retune the old world. Remember how Strat was changed from 10-man to 5? BRS from 15 to 10? And who ran those instances? Especially after the changes? Level 60's for the most part. Dire Maul and Scholo pretty much fit the same mold, as do ZG/MC/AQ20..

Now, almost all of the drops from both of those places are utter shit compared to the opening no-danger quests in BC where you have to walk 25 feet over and say hello to some guy and get a reward that's a tier 1+ breastplate. Which you can do at level 58.

Those instances need to either be tuned down to the level of Maraudon or BRD at most, or completely rejigged to match the reward level seen in BC in a place like Ramparts etc so they can still fit into an active world. of warcraft. Because as they stand now there's simply no point to them for the effort involved.

It's like raiding TOV nowadays in Everquest. A bit of fun occasionally for some, but poinless for upgrades and consequently deserted.

Actually, I was talking about the public space stuff. The 0.5 stuff was retuned because of the relative power of players, to up what they dropped and to decrease how many could go there to make it a challenge. The outside world there, the one where players could solo 1-60 and exist on quests and drops alone, has largely remained unchanged.

They could retune that stuff, but then the leap from Azeroth to Outland in terms of gear wouldn't be so shocking. And man is it shocking for those not in Tier 2 stuff. I didn't realize it'd be so soon I'd be eyeing green gear to replace my MC (Tier 1) stuff. But that big jump is part of the compulsion to buy BC, which sells boxes.

Tuning the old world public space is something you do for free between expansions, when you see lots of players playing alts instead of farming whatever at the level cap.

So we agree, basically. They'll eventually need to tune, but right now is not the time. Either they'll make those places level 70 appropriate, tune them for twinked level 55+, or, err, make them ghost towns like 80% of EQ1's zones. WoW is headed down that path. More is more after all, and yet each server can still only suppoirt the same concurrency. So unless they sell an expansion that rejiggers the old world, there will be ever-growing numbers of ghost zones.

lol leeroy 'could' be percieved as a good marketing tool to Blizzard. I was in his guild once and he got a special pass to attend Blizzard's gameshow or something. And I've heard recently that the latest card game include him on it as well. So I can see how Blizzard liked to use him as publicity while giving him minor perks in real life not amounting to any substantial monetary amount.

oh shit no, I wasn't saying that they should do it now (from a business perspective) or that they would do it now (from a let's get real!) perspective. I entirely meant it as a "down the track" thing, in order to tune and make a half-dozen instances relevent again. My thinking was they they'll just need to rejig some mobs and loot in them and suddenly you'll have a half-dozen instances that fit into the dungeon progression again (either at low-50's or late 50's-low60's) instead of half a dozen instances that just got nuked from orbit. But it won't happen for months, at a minimum.

Leeroy is possibly the rarest (save maybe for the 3 loot ones) card of the first set of 361. That says it all.

This is an interesting comparison to make, because the level of loot power jump between World of Warcraft and Burning Crusade is bigger than anything EQ has ever experienced, including Omens of War, Depths of Darkhollow and Prophecy of Ro, all of which brought a pretty big jump in loot power for casuals, as well as the Serpent's Spine.

So far, no expansion in EQ has had easily obtainable casual gear make obsolete the raid drops of the previous expansion.  Quite often, even the raid drops of 2 expansions ago are still superior to the best obtainable casual gear.  The new gear was better, yes...but it never made raiders feel like they wasted their time raiding in the previous expansion, and it never made previous expansion higher-end content obsolete until an expansion or two later.  If we look at EQ's history...Kunark brought superior gear to Hate and Fear, as well as 10 more levels, and it was EQ's first expansion, so it could perhaps be most directly compared to the situation in Burning Crusade.  There was a huge leap in power for gear between old world and Kunark, and a lot of drops from named in various dungeons were made obsolete by superior spawns of similar level range in Kunark.  However, none of the drops from Kunark that could be easily one-grouped were enough to obsolete gear from Hate and Fear.

The Temple of Veeshan that you mention was not made obsolete with Shadows of Luclin, the single-group gear from Luclin was superior to single-group Velious content, but it wasn't better than raid content.  Only when Planes of Power came along, ramped up levels by 5 and gear by a lot more was Velious made mostly irrelevant.  Even then, drops from Vulak'Aerr could be compared to some of the lower-end raid gear from Planes of Power.  Velious was made irrelevant by the 5 level increase, because that increase in levels made Luclin content much easier.  And while many people skipped Vex Thal to go straight to Planes of Power, a lot didn't.  Vex Thal remained relevant for some time.  The same trend continues throughout EQ's history, in fact, the Plane of Time remained the standard by which loot was gauged for years, considered the point of division between lesser and greater loot.  Last year when I last played EQ, the Plane of Time was finally becoming irrelevant, but consider that it was EQ's 4th expansion out of....I think it was 11 at that point.

Burning Crusade, on the other hand, seems to be trying to obsolete all old raid content as fast as possible.  Single group content is not only obsoleted by new single group content, it is obsoleted by solo content.  Lower tier raid loot is obsoleted by the same solo content.  All of this says not only to raiders, but to every casual player that spent their one play night a week taking 5 hours to put together a group and run Scholomance/Stratholme/UBRS/Dire Maul that every bit of work they did is entirely worthless.

I have no idea or speculation on what all this will add up to, though.  It's a vast amount of old content made worthless and an unimaginably vast amount of effort on behalf of millions of players made worthless.  The basic idea is 'you may as well have gotten to 60 and quit playing until Burning Crusade'.  Because I, with a new character rolled on a new server and rushed to 60 before Burning Crusade, walked into Outland wearing level 40ish gear and less than a day later had changed almost my entire wardrobe by doing quests that I could solo, at 60, with level 40ish gear.  And my new wardrobe is superior to anything I could have gotten in the old dungeons, and a couple pieces are superior to low-tier raid loot.

Yes, that was one of the reasons I compared it to raiding TOV. As of the last time I played EQ seriously, there may have been a rare thingamabob of use, but it was pretty much all null and void. I wasn't directly comparing it to when Luclin came out, but to say a year or 2 ago from now maybe.

I know a guy who essentially lived in Naxx for months, right up till BC launched (seriously, he was in there like a day or two before release). he's replaced 4 items so far with greens. Not sure if they're quest or world-drop greens, but you get the idea.

My best guess is that they're simply trying to flatten out the playerbase's gear differential caused by 2 years of mudflating raid contentin the first part of the expansion to get us all on a somewhat even footing to start doing the content. How it pans out when we're mostly all 70 is going to be the truly interesting part.

It is an interesting design decision only because it is a new approach. It makes excellent sense to start a new expansion with a completely new gear tier because the content can be tuned more easily. This also lets a larger percentage of the playerbase actually enjoy the new expansion which will maximize its adoption.

EQ2 did almost the opposite with Echoes of Faydwer. Only the very top-end loot in EoF (the class-specific armor sets) is better that what one can get raiding in KoS. A character who levels from 1-60 in EoF will not be overpowered compared to a character that sticks to the DoF/KoS path. EoF is clearly an attempt to attact new players or encourage old players to come back/start over.

so, 2.4M BC copies sold for 8M subs?   Anyone figure out that delta yet?  just wonderin'

Look, it's someone crying about "work" and "effort" in an MMO being made "worthless".  What a surprise that it's someone who is intimately familiar with Everquest raids.

 :roll: :roll: :roll:

Pack up your poopsock and get out of my genre.

You do realize that Blizzard is just buttering you up, right? Making 60-70 relatively pain free is roughly equivalant to them making 1-60 relatively pain free. At 70, the poopsocking will commence again.

At which point I will do exactly what I did when I hit 60 pre-expansion: Play alts, look for rare solo quests, PvP. 
I will continue this until the next expansion comes out and I can level again. 

In the meantime, I will laugh at all those who perform activities that they consider "work" and "effort" to obtain things in the game that will be made obsolete by the greens in the next expansion.  I'll be too busy having fun to really care all that much though.

I agree with WUA.


Let's think about this.

The quote sort of makes sense, IF your only goal in the game is get loot, not have fun.  I don't know who plays specifically NOT to have fun, but I feel sorry for that person.  What is the payoff?  Why play?  The hardest hardcore catass, it can be assumed, expects there to be some positive payoff at some point, even if it's strutting around Ironforge with their new sword of wtfpwnage.

If someone plays both to get loot AND have fun, then the new loot in BC seems like it will be even better shiney which will enable the user to get to even more shiney at 70!  Problem? I don't see it.

The only personality that I can see having a problem with better shiney would be someone who is very jealous of their status as "master of MC/BWL/etc" and who hopes there is never additional shiney put into the game, because they have to go out and earn it all over again. 

"Who moved my cheese?" is a stupid question to ask in an MMOG.

Well, that was apparently launch day sales. Since we all know that personal anecdotes are always the best measure of worldwide accuracy of any trend, I can say that I know quite a few people in my guild and a few RL friends who got it after day 1, though again I'm not sure of that was 2.4m shipped to stores or 2.4 sold through on day 1. Also, if 3.5m of those players are in China, I understand they haven't got access to BC yet. Not sure about Korea, etc (or even how Koreans get access to this sort of thing, what with the PC Bang thing and all. Do they need to buy a box each? NFI!)



I'm not quite so sure on that, this time around. The focus seems much more on small-group content and apparently the largest raid in BC there is 25 people. There's definately a feeling of them having backed up from the original catassiness of the former endgame. How it actually pans out, well thats remains to be seen.

I agree with what Jayce has said really.

Yea, 2.4mil is for day one. And doesn't include it launching in China, which accounts for 40% of the subscribers.

So, on day one of BC box sales, roughly 60% of the current amount of subscribers purchased the box. 60-effing-%! That is unheardof.

But the 60% itself is sorta misleading because it doesn't tell us whether it was 60% of all current paying subscribers or people reactivating accounts to come back to WoW.

The number I'm really interested in is worldwide subscriptions around September, which I expect is about when the rest of the world has BC. Then we may be able to get an insight into how many people bought the expac and how many people re-upped their accounts. I have previously guessed in the 10mil accounts range. I just want to know if I will be close :)

I don't consider my time at 60 pre-expansion to be "worthless" since the gear I did have made it much easier for me to do the new content and get the upgrades (390 Defense at level 60 with pre-BC blue gear isn't too shabby). I'm HAPPY to throw all that shit away. I love upgrading my gear all the time so I don't have to stare at the same character every time I log in.

What's disturbing me about the WoW right now though is how priests DO NOT exist. I have not seen a single priest that isn't sporting Tier 1/2/3/Benediction, in other words, a priest from a raid guild. Has blizzard made them so awful to play that no one can stand to play them anymore?

I'm playing my priest alt and am thrilled at all of the upgrades I'm getting. I'm 62.5, and have already upgraded more than half my collection. It's pretty sweet, I got my first socketed chest armor from the furnace and that nice staff from the ramparts. The only end-game instance I did before the expansion was ZG once or twice, so that's the level of gear I had when I started.

My rogue, of course, is full tier 2+ w/ 2 pugios. He's less fun to play. I think I prefer melting faces.

It has nothing to do with poopsocking.  Playing with an achiever mentality does not by definition involve spending large quantities of time raiding to the detriment of your life in the real world.  Expending time and effort for loot, and having fun are not mutually exclusive; people can have good memories about crafting their drape of benediction, or killing Lord Valthalak for their 0.5 pieces, or whatever.  It is possible to argue that these accomplishments have been damaged by TBC inflation.  Personally, this isn't something that bothers me, but it is a legitimate concern that even 'casual' players can and have voiced.

My experience with the expansion so far has been great.  Instances are generally well done, rep 'grinds' can be finished in days, and the new content is very refreshing.  I am very concerned about what Blizzard is going to do to substain interest though, once the expansion stuff is burnt through.

Haven't tried heroic mode yet, but I have a feeling that they will use this idea a lot in the future.

Huh?  How would those accomplishments be "damaged"?  I don't get it.
If you do those things because you wanted the equipment and you thought it was worth it, then it was worth it for you. 
Those "achievers" still accomplished what they wanted.

You don't get it? 

Let's say you get your full GM PvP set after a few months.  It feels good because it is something of consequence, as the stats give you a leg up relative to the competition.  Now TBC comes along- virtually anyone can get something roughly comparable in a fraction of the time by doing a simple quest in Hellfire Peninsula.  If you look at the game in terms of achievement, your past accomplishments don't seem very resounding any longer, and the value of your future efforts come into question as well.

The rational decision is to shrug and carry on, or to try looking at the game in a different way, but that's not how everyone reponds.

It's kinda like the weenies on the City of Heroes message board who cried foul that vet rewards would be giving the unwashed masses their coveted prestige sprints.  It's an "I've got mine so fuck you" form of pathetic elitism.  As it's been already said, at least the whiners have still got all those fond memories of spending countless hours in company of 39 of their bestest friends.  *snicker*

 

I think the main issue I'm considering is that the old stuff is becoming obsolete too quickly.  Also, personally I don't like it when old zones are revamped (for the most part), I never liked any of the revamps in EverQuest, although I will say that the capping of dungeons and slight changes to them was something I liked in WoW back when they did that.  And right now it's clear that all the old dungeons will either be completely unused, or they will be revamped.

As people keep pointing out, right now, every bit of content designed for 58-60 players in original WoW below Tier 2 is completely obsoleted by Burning Crusade content that is available within the first few hours of entering the expansion.  The rest is obsoleted shortly thereafter, and all of it only provided a minimal benefit.  I mean, hell, doing Deadmines quests or running it for the Emberstone Staff/Cruel Barb/whatever is more useful to a character at this point, because those items will last a noticeable number of levels, which is not so for all level 58-60 things.

Anyone with any MMOG experience knows that all they do will eventually be obsoleted, and all they gain will be worthless someday.  But I, at least, expect a certain progression, a curve rather than a sudden vast leap in power available to everyone.  I can't really say much about how I feel about it because I never had much of the better stuff.  I got to Knight-Captain on one character ever, and that's about the best gear I ever got in WoW, and it's on a character I don't even play anymore.

Personally I feel as though at least similar levels of effort should be put into upgrading so quickly.  There's no other point in the game where greens outdo blues that are in fact higher level than them.  If the items from the first level 58-62 instance were the ones that replace instance items from before, and items from 62-65 or so were the ones to start replacing epic gear, that would seem much more appropriate.  The curve would still flatten out pretty quickly but it wouldn't give the sense of 'all I have to do is go talk to this guy then talk to that guy and they hand me armor far beyond what I have gotten through dozens of instance runs'.

My opinion is that they should continue just as they are with the next expansion. Every time people start to feel they 'earned' their gear they should give it away free to the casuals. Just to prevent stupid elitism.

Ditto on the gear thing.  My view has always been 'the only reason I "need" this gear is to see the next level of raid content."   If I could do raid content in blues & greens I would (and did.).  That's where my interest lies, seeing multi-group encounters and beating them.  Nothing I did was 'worthless' because I had fun going there and doing the actual encounters, the loot was just a bonus or something required to get to the next tier.  I don't like the 'lets do this level for 8-months straight!" aspect of it, but nobody seems interested in changing that part yet.

Hell, that's why I also don't have a problem with non-raiders getting the same level of gear.  If anything it makes picking-up newbs interested in the raid game that much easier.  You don't have to spend all the time back-instancing them to gear them out, or turning away cool people because, 'well you just don't have enough +<stat> so you'd be a corpse/ unable to hit/ oom and just taking up space.'


Prettymuch, yes.  Low-level priesting is fucking hell.  I'm doing it again with the wife as we piddle around with blood elf characters, and I don't recall EVER dying this much with any other class and we're duoing for chrissake. Playing solo as a priest just plain sucks ass, and most folks who roll them want to heal and so go holy - the biggest mistake you can ever, EVER make trying to level.   I recall it getting better, but not until around level 20 or so. 

Then, there's grouping.  You take all the blame for everything in a group.  Tank dies, it's your fault.  Mage dies, it's your fault.  Try to some kind of dps becasue things are cool and you want to do more than stare at health bars, you get shouted-down by everyone else in the group. 

By the time anyone makes it to 60 they're looking for someone who's not going to treat them like shit.  Those happen to be raid guilds, but even there you suffer from burnout because priesting is the biggest pain in the ass out there.  Most seem to give up or roll a DPS class after 4-6 months.   So you suck in the next batch of 'new' priests and repeat the cycle.

This is the exact reason I decided to ditch my Draenei Priest for a Shaman. I don't care if I'm a clone. Just don't ask me to heal people. I don't like that level of accountability in my game.

"But DQ, it's just a game!"

Go play a Priest for a bit.

Priests in WoW, just like in RL, need to constantly remind their flock that "you will inevitably die.  Deal."  So, only Arrr-Pee-Erz need apply for the position.

This isn't new.

MMOGs that don't just make all new gear strictly better than all old gear are the exception, not the rule.

It doesn't change the fact in 6 weeks time when raiding has become established in the new areas, the catassess will be just as far ahead as they were prior to the expansion. All this means is that people who don't keep up go straight to the bottom of the ladder.


Usage based item decay is the only way you could ever change this. Unfortunately casual players will complain about usage based item decay even though their items will almost never get used enough to wear out.

Actually as far as I can tell it is new, or it's new compared to any other game I've played long enough to still be interested when an expansion came out.  I can't really think of any other MMOG I've ever played in which an expansion comes out and the solo-obtainable gear there that can be obtained at the same or lower level is superior to raid-obtainable gear from previous 'current content' whether that be the original game or an expansion.  No, the quest greens/blues aren't superior to all raid obtainable gear, but they are to some of the earlier raid stuff.  And they're superior to any groupable stuff from the 5-man dungeons.

The speed of obsoleting old gear is something that as far as I can tell has never been done quite this fast and this completely before.  It's definitely different to any game I'm familiar with.  If another game has obsoleted old gear this fast before, I'd be interested to hear which one and when it happened.  In the end, I wonder whether or not this is a good thing.  It has good points.  It brings people up to a more significant power level quickly.  It makes it less necessary to low-ball the power on newer dungeons to allow for people that aren't well geared, instead, it just gets them well geared before they go into the dungeon.  But it has a lot of bad points also, not the least of which is making every older dungeon and raid completely pointless to do anymore, thus making large quantities of content no longer used.

Interesting thoughts about this...back in EQ, before instances, the strategy of progressing - doing Kael before Halls of Testing before North Temple of Veeshan before Ssraeshza Temple before Vex Thal...and so on...was an important one in order to make an attempt to spread people out.  It kept as much content as possible being used at once, as newer guilds attacked the older content in order to gear up for the new content, thus lessening the amount of people who were all competing for exactly the same mobs.  Instances make this unnecessary, so it's not a problem to have everyone jump directly to the most recent level of content.  Not forcing people to go through years-old content dozens of times in order to be ready to tackle the new content is a good thing.  On the other hand, it still brings up the problem of making old content obsolete.

From a content perspective, it's interesting to note that Burning Crusade adds a lot of content, but a lot of what it 'adds' isn't entirely added, but more along the lines of replacement content.  Since, from a practical perspective, no one will go to Scholomance, Stratholme, Blackrock Spire, Dire Maul, Zul'Gurub, Ahn'Qiraj, or any of the 40-man raid instances, all of that content has been effectively removed.  It may still be there, technically, but from a practical perspective, since there's no point to going there anymore, it's not really part of the game.

Progression throughout the other dungeons in the lower-level game is an excellent comparison too.  You go to Scarlet Monastery and get some stuff, and a few levels later, you're replacing some of that stuff with things from Razorfen Downs, then Zul'farrak and then Maraudon.  You can skip any one of these dungeons and still get by, but at the appropriate level for the dungeon, you can't just go to a different zone and do a solo quest and get a better weapon/armor. 

I think I'm starting to understand for myself the reason that this all bothers me - it's no longer a part of the game.  I was looking forward to those instances no longer being the end of the game where all there was left to do in PvE was repeat them ad infinitum, looking forward to seeing them become another stage in my characters' advancement, just like Scarlet Monastery or Maraudon.  A place I go to a couple times to get gear and then move along.  I didn't want to simply never go there at all.

Although I have no problem with never seeing Molten Core again, The thought that there's not any reason to see Stratholme or Blackrock Spire again does make me sad.

As long as the quests still exist, players still have the compulsion to go to those places at least once. Just to see. I agree most people won't bother in their bid to get to 60 as fast as possible. But I never raided Scarlet Monastary either. I went for the quests and then to help others on their quests and then bid it farewell as I leveled beyond it.

And yet WoW did that anyway: MC>BWL>Ony>Naxx (I think that was it. I never did beyond MC though my guild regularly did Ony at times I couldn't go). I think this is for the same reason you stated earlier: distribution of players along the power curve. Instancing prevents the social issues of raiding in public space content, but the need to ensure everyone's not at the same level of uberness still exists in the game mechanic.

What I hope the previous ubers realize with this expac is just how many of them there were. As in, not. For Blizz to so seriously gut the size of raid forces, and to so radically increase the level of power across the board, even to the most casual soloer, is an indication that the power curve of the old world may have been too wide for too long.

This'll all come up again at 70, but will likely be mitigated by them pushing out an expac faster than two years. The road to Hyjal is long and wide. But a faster expac will prevent the power curve from broadening too much.

Some players do, newer ones perhaps.  But how many people playing now haven't seen the current instances at least once?  Probably not many, with the exception of the eternal-low-level types that have never made it to 60 and quite possibly never will.  And sure, we all go to the instances mostly for the quests, or occasionally for that one item that drops off a boss that we want.  But the difference is the quest rewards and the loot there are worthwhile.  No one would go to Scarlet Monastery to do the quests if you could get a sword that's better than the SM quest sword at level 32, would they?  I haven't heard anyone even consider going to Stratholme, Scholomance, etc, since the expansion hit...because, why would they?  Take the Ras Frostwhisper quest series.  It takes multiple runs to Scholomance AND one to Stratholme to get a Darrowspike (http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=13984&locale=enUS;source=live) which is inferior to the Screaming Dagger (http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=29909) from a soloable quest in Hellfire.  Only new players that have never been to Scholomance and Stratholme might even be interested in the 'just to see' aspect.

Well, yes, and this is why we were previously talking about the inevitable revamps of these places. It's sorta like what they've done with EQ1 over the years, except with much fewer zones.

Tune for a new generation of players and existing ones.

Mudflation is just a cheaty way to keep people interested in new content. And mudflation is all this is.

It will do nothing to flatten the power spread between casuals and catasses unless you think that the new zones' most powerful gear is easily reachable by casuals?

The fact that casuals can get access to what was previously catass-only gear tells us nothing about what catasses will be able to get hold of once they figure the zones out (which will take a few weeks, not the two years another expansion will take).

Green gear stats alone tell us nothing. It doesn't confirm what level of gear casuals can reasonably hope to achieve. It doesn't tell us the gap between the greens and the absolute best gear (which is what last month's best raiders will be wearing in a week or two). It doesn't even tell us whether the relative power of a casual player vs the environment has risen or fallen.

This is most likely to end up exactly the same way as mudflation vs raider races ended up in every other dikumud. The only difference being that shorter grinds all around means the barrier to entry is slightly lower than say daoc or eq.

It's very intresting in fact. Dikus are based on players sense of achievement once they finish a set up goal, more than often being getting a certain item. However, it's also common knowledge that the very item you're spending a lot of time getting will become totally useless in the future due to mudflation, effectively making that sense of achievement null. Of course all the sense of achievement you feel in a MMO is superficial, but it's still whack  :-P.

This isn't important.

And I'm repeating myself now - but just to call out the bold bit.

In the EQ2 model, where the mudflation variable is just set marginally lower, the outcome is the same....

Prior to an expansion
 - a pre-expansion casual was a significantly less powerful than a pre-expansion uber-raider.

After an expansion
 - expansion owning casuals may or may not get more power than no-expansion casuals. Though the casual playstyle will do more to minimise the difference than any stats ever will.
 - an expansion owning uber-castass-raider is much more powerful than everyone else.

 - a no-expansion uber-catass-raider may be more or less powerful than expansion owning casuals, but it doesn't matter, because by definition uber-catass-raiders without the expansion do not exist.

You can already see the new level of gear out there in the factional areas of Shattrath city. It's not that superior to the greens and instance blues I've been getting to this point.  That's the new "uber" armor.  Blizzard seems very conscious of the over-inflation they did with the previous raid instances, and doesn't seem to want that same extreme power curve to happen again.

For a more concrete example.  Hunter Riftstalker (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30139) A "tier-5" piece.   Vs  Feralfen Beastmaster's hauberk (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25614)  A level 62 quest in the second zone of the expansion.   The level of power difference between these two items is pretty marginal considering the 8 level and item-budget differences (green vs purple.)  Unless there are some extremely uber gems out there, you're not going to see your character's power increase anywhere near as dramatically as you do between Greens and BWL gear.

Now you're talking.

If the new uber gear turns out to not be so uber, that's genuinely a closing of the gap. But even in the example you gave, the difference between tier 5 and quest reward is three extra sockets, are the benefits you can get out of 3 sockets really not that significant?

And of course if uber gear really is only slightly better than green - the 'no end-game' uber whine may be along shortly.

Not sure where I said this? Unless you were talking to Koyashu?

In any case, I agree. It's mudflation to compel expac purchase and drive retention. But it's because it works (as we can see).

Right now things are as they are because people are leveling up. But once a lot of people are banging on 70, it'll be 60 all over again. There was a very big difference between Tier 0.5 and Naxx stuff. But at the same time, there was a lot more people in 0.5 and 1 than in Naxx. I imagine we'll see the same thing. Not sure of the level progression or the zones involved, but I can see almost everyone being able to at least get into Karazhan, where most probably not Hyjal (or whatever the endest-endedy-end place will be).

A few guilds started raiding back up this week, including mine. The word on the street is that it's insanely easy. Patchwerk's a joke, and Lotheb can now be done without potions

All factually correct. My initial comment about how WoW's approach is new is simply that the mudflation effect of the new expansion is virtually instantaneous. The mudflation dymanic itself will always be part of diku.

Tier 4 tokens drop out of Karazhan and the Tier 4 stuff is an upgrade over the best blue stuff from the 5-mans, but not nearly the "Holy Fuck" kind of upgrade the Tier 1/2 was over blues and Tier 3 was over 1/2. You won't be a demi-god in Tier 4 compared to someone in Dungeon Set 3, but you'll be measurably stronger. This may help for level 70 PVP as well.

Some of the priest tier 4 stuff is in fact worse than my tier 2/3.  I'll probably still be preserving my Trans 3-piece set-bonus until tier 5.

EDIT: To clarify, I'd say that while initial inflation is fairly high, it is definitely restricted to the lower end of itemization.  Everyone is essentially raised to around tier 2/3, but without good set bonuses in many cases, and after that point growth is far more graduated.

I wouldn't underestimate the fine-tuning you can do with sockets. Plus (and I don't know if that is actually realized in TBC) you can make raid drop gems that surpass the other gems, further improving raidgear compared to casual gear without rubbing everyones nose in it.

That's most of my point summed up in two sentences.  The instantaneousness of the increase in power is surprising and significantly different than any other game has done before.  It also has the effect of obsoleting large amounts of old content and equipment instantly on expansion release rather than slowly over the course of the next 6-18 months.

What I'll find most interesting is if they do this again in the next expansion or not.  It could be a one-time thing that they're using to try to flatten the curve, as some opinions seem to hold, and the next expansion won't be instantly obsoleting all old level 70 content.  Or it may be a standard plan for every expansion.

There's a certain benefit to it, however. It means they can tune quests/dungeons in TBC to fit a certain level of gear -- I don't think the WoW playerbase would appreciate being told "You can't do new 5-man X until you've raided MC enough to get a chunk of your Tier 1 stuff -- you'll just be undergeared". With "Heroic"  dungeons they can give the Naxx-geared guys a decent challenge (they'll still be overgeared for the early instances of course).

If they plan to go back and revamp the old 5-mans -- add quests and itemization that takes you back there to a new level 70 version (with the previous version still there for those at the normal level range) they're not exactly obsoleting old content. And if they were going to do that (no idea, but their dungeon difficulty slider means they now DO have the capability to have multiple versions of a single dungeon), you'd do it well after the expansion -- people are probably a bit sick of Strat, Scholo, etc. You'd layer in those through patches to keep content flowing as you move towards the next expansion.

Instancing means less zone obsolescence. When players click on the door, they can choose the appropriate version for their level. If no one ever plays the lowest level version again, nothing is wasted. The second a new instance goes live its development becomes a sunk cost.  It is much harder to re-populate an open zone without disrupting gameflow.

But either way, we won't know for 2 more years.  8)

As an anecdotal note, a friend of mine who plays has quit due to the huge jump.  15 days /played to get to 60, 45 days /played AT 60, had lots of high-end raid gear, and now n00bs are picking up equivilent stuff off random world mobs in the expansion...  He's pretty ticked about it.

Me?  I don't care, one way or the other, atm.

--
Alkiera

Better him than me.

Fuck your friend.  Fuck his self-righteousness.  Fuck him in the ass.

Your friend is clearly a pathetic e-peen measuring tosser. His crying is a good thing. Send him to Vanguard.

I am thoroughly satisfied with the expansion.  It has increased my "fun" with WoW 100%.  This is due to three things.

1.  I get decent items again.  Not since lvl 50 have I found items I actually have to contemplate if they are better than what I have.  I mean this from a casual perspective of course.  I was blocked from getting anything decent after that level unless I set aside 4+ hours of raiding time that never came to be due to my choice of a small casual guild.  Nothing was available on the AH.  My only choice was to wait for those 1 in 1000 chances of getting a world drop that actually worked for my class.

2.  More choices.  With more land, I have more choices and more variety.  I have another character I'm alt'ing too.  The crafting choices have increased, which satisfies the true crafter heart I have.  More is better in my book.

3.  The instances.  So far, I can now get online and ask around to get into an instance.  I don't have to wait long before 4 others say they want to do it.  An hour to an hour and a half later, we're done.  Some lewts was found and some quests were completed.  No fuss, no muss.  Love it.  The really fun part is working on finishing faster than the fastest time in the guild.  Or, trying to complete them with odd group mixes.  We get a sense of accomplishment when we get through it with no tank, no priest, just a druid, rogue, warlock, mage, and paladin.  Challenging and fun.

I haven't changed my playtimes or durations.  Good show Blizzard.

Heh, a buddy of mine was pissed when they turned the honor point grind into something anyone can do. He kept bragging about the rank he achieved as a measure of his e-peen. He didn't realize I knew wtf he was talking about though. "Sorry bud, First Sergeant is only rank 5. You were wearing roughly the equivalent of crap dropped in Felwood". Heh.

I find that the people who get most pissed about wholesale changes to their status as an uber are folks new to the genre, or the copious amounts of level 60s who never ever hit a high rank in these games before because they got bored before the end. Even the harder core veterans I know roll with the punches, based mostly on the deep and intrinsic understanding that NOTHING in this genre is permanent.

Changing/raising the bar generates new goals or new directions in gameplay.  It's just tough for some people accept change.  I happen to think that this dynamic is one of the things that makes mmo's interesting.  Each expansion creates a new environment that begs to be adapted to. 

Wait.. your friend who was bragging was a First Sergeant?

No shit. I half-assed my way to Knight-Lt, just doing the BG weekends.

Exactly :) Christ. Even I managed to hit Sergeant Major (Alliance) within a bit over two weeks. He's one of those irrationally competitive types experiencing his first MMO. We all know the type (maybe some of us were like that in UO, EQ, or AO): new game, OMGAWESOME_robotJesus, coolnewpeople_e-p33n, WAIT_WTF_youcan'tchangethegame! I just finished learning it!

I can relate. That was me when The Lost Lands launched in UO. What do you mean I can't sell runebooks with T2A runes?! That's my whole business! (was later glad though. Cleared out Destard for Mage/Bard Dragon farming)

/memories

I got three characters to Sergeant-Major back-to-back in a pretty short stint of catassing to get my 2 toons and my wife's toon the AV-rep caster books/Lobotomizer/AV Ram mounts (she saw my Ram and wanted one, too). Despite the fact that it was a pretty average-for-fun stint of catassing, the rank was incidental (I just wanted rep) and it's hardly a fucking achievement if I managed to do it once, let alone three times. A mate took slightly longer to get his rep and ended up some kind of Knight.  :roll:

GameSpot reports Vivendi Games Division profit (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6165026.html), for 2006.
Everything else we know already.

http://news.com.com/Warcraft+A+world+in+transition/2100-1043_3-6155592.html?tag=st.num (http://news.com.com/Warcraft+A+world+in+transition/2100-1043_3-6155592.html?tag=st.num)


It is like the press thinks WoW is the first MMOG ever made. The whole article is about how the BC expansion is changing the face of the game. Every goddamn expansion for every goddamn MMOG in the last 10 years does this. Yeesh.

It's hard to critise the media 'press-release reprint industry' for this when even people on this very board sometimes seem to think WoW was the first MMOG ever made.

And before WoW everyone thought EQ was the first MMOG ever made....

And before EQ everyone thought UO was the only multiplayer RPG ever made....

and so on...

Being aware of history is the curse of the relatively well informed. Probably.

I'll be interested in the time between everyone hitting 70 and how long the next expansion takes.  The two year wait turned the 'end-game' into a crapfest that would do the most hardcore EQ poopsocker proud.  Blizzard was too slow in getting it out so we ended up with all new content catering to the raiding end-game in a linear progression. 

Heroic instances are a move in the right direction, so if the next release is as slow (which I don't see why it wouldn't be), I hope that a) there's more to do and b) whatever gets added can actually be played by most players.