f13.net

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Edit: Just found this link, Guess it's official.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/

Fascinating.

Outland, eh? Hopefully the Alliance race is a flightless waterfowl.

Question from a non-WoW-lore-nerd:  What the heck does a Draeni look like? 

If you've played WOW they're the guys in the northern part of Swamp of Sorrows or wandering around the Blasted Lands.  If you haven't played, they look kind of like the grey-brown guy from Deep Space 9 who always hung-around in Quark's bar, Morn. (http://members.tripod.com/~ds9promenade/morn4.jpg)

I've played but never gotten that far.  Your link didn't work for me, so I found this: http://www.garrisonent.com/morn/.   :?

Collecting confirmed info (http://www.darniaq.com/phpNews/news.php?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=145). I generally ignore even the most well-prepared rumours until then.

IGN's got a writeup (http://pc.ign.com/articles/662/662143p1.html). Blizzard's got an Official Expansion Site (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/). Plus a FAQ (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/faq.html).

Here's some facts. Mostly this confirms what we knew.

• Yes, level 70.
• New Talent points to spend, but this includes new Talents and revamping of existing talents.
• New world- Outland (formerly Drenai)
• Flying Mounts- Work in Outland only. Gotten from arduous quest.
• New Horde Race- Blood Elves.
• Alliance Race still not yet announced.
• New content for the old world too, specifically things like Caverns of Time (Tanaris) and Medivh's Tower (Deadwind Pass). Very cool descriptions of content here. Caverns of Time lets people visit existing zones as they appeared before the events of Warcraft III (like when Southshore and Tarren Mill were both Alliance, Orc were in internment camps, Hyjal was being attacked, and Medivh was opening the Dark Portal). Medivh's Tower is supposedly enormous, with save points, a Opera House that will spawn a random boss, and a gryphon/flight point near the top.
• New profession: Jewel Crafting. They create Rings, Trinkets, and Jewels.
• New equipment slot: Slotted Items. Insert Jewelcrafted jewels into slots. Probably like Diablo 2. They haven't decided yet things like removability and whatnot.

IGN's piece has some details on Patch 1.9. Basically, a new 20-man and 40-man Raid zone in Silithus, a new race of insects, and the opening of the Scarab Wall into Ahn'Qiraj through a dynamic world event apparently everyone can partake in some way across many levels.

I am very much looking forward to this expansion. It genuinely looks good and looks like it will be fun.

I wonder if the elfy dance will make the Orc's breath hard and sweat....

At some point, amidst all of the rumors, I read a bullet point that said in the expansion that BGs would be linked between the servers, so that queuing will be less of a PITA.. has anyone heard if that's true or just some bullshit fantasy?  Cuz if it's true, it's the only thing I really care about.. well.. that and Horde Boobies..

I see that there are actually a decent handful of 5-man instances! Holy shit!

Naturally, nothing for the players under 60 and new players. Same old chain of instances, same old quests, no new zones, no new equipment to differentiate the twinked out by a level 60 friend masses. A flying mount quest that will probably be even gayer than the insane amount of cash or time required for the epic mount. Go Go catasses.

Edit: Also, could I mention how much I hate whoever decided to make all these factions that require endless hours of grinding to get to friendly/honored, much less exhalted? Seriously, they deserve to die. Fucking sadistic prick.

Er, two whole new races with new zones would definitely be something for new players, or any players that want to roll a new alt.

As a sample of 1, my wife has been infected with the bug and is already planning her Blood Elf and drooling for the expansion.  She is in no way shape or form what I'd label a 'gamer' but she's genuinely excited that the Elves are being included for the Horde.  Despite voices to the contrary, I think this is really going to help out the pop imbalance.  Of course, now the Horde gets to know the joy that the Alliance does, where every other person you meet is an elf.

One race doesn't count.  I'd rather shave my balls with a chainsaw than play a Blood Elf. Thing is, the new alliance race won't mean much to me either because they already have elves (this really started to bug me when we played on Moonrunner).

I was hoping so desperately that it wouldn't be Blood Elves.  Yah, it was a futile hope, but at least it was hope.

I dunno if some new racial traits and just enough quests to get you to level 10 really counts as anything significant.

The Blood Elf architecture looks like Hibernia from DAoC.  Ugh.

Heck, even existing lowbies can use those to level up... unless they're as far off as say, the night-elves...  the run to anyplace useful from the Night-Elf newbie area is rather dangerous at level 12ish...  Why I decided to run to a different place, I do not recall...  I just recall it being a serious PITA.

Alkiera

While bows and arrows still materialize from thin air. It's a kind of magic!

I am sure other uses could be found for a "woodworking" profession, like making shields, staffs etc. and not just bows and arrows.

At some point HRose should pop in here and point out that the information he posted on his site http://cesspit.net/ a while back has been shown to be entirely correct. Oh, never mind, I just saved him the trouble.

Of particular interest is the fact that Outlands will be flagged for PvP on all servers.

Metzen basically said that the Blood Elves were modelled after Legolas.

Only, more moody.

Fucking elves.  At least make their fucking eyes glowy red or something, not cock-sucker blue.

Yes, hrose posted. So did a zillion other people, particularly when Jeff Green's 1up piece leaked some stuff and some folks got creative with that Italian Magazine article. Blizzard's about as secure as Paramount was with Star Trek information these days, which kinda sucks when I think about it. Blizzcon is costing them a lot of money, and there was a lot of benefit to going if you wanted to be the first to talk about it. But that flies in the face of the publishing industry which was going to print weeks ago, and thus had the information well before that.
That continues to be the rumour. Nothing substantiated yet.

Heh, somebody give me an explanation on the Elf hate around here. I'm not saying I like them or hate them -- I just don't get it is all. Is this a geek thing or what? Maybe I haven't been exposed to Elves enough (WoW and otherwise).

The way I see it though (as far as Alliance goes):

Druid and Hunters = For the first, you have to be an Elf. For the second, well....It's pretty silly not to be one.

Dwarves and the Dwarf starting area look cool and all....But I'm just not a dwarf kind of guy, if you know what I mean.

Humans = Neanderthal and cleft lipped to boot (if you're male, that is). I made a human not too long ago, and while I liked the quests and newbie areas, I realized how much I hate the look of the humans in this game (Hell, most of the races look pretty lame actually. Taurens, Dwarves, Male Orcs, Elves, and Human Females -- Those are the good choices imo).

Gnomes = No comment

Also, I'm not much of a roleplayer. If I can, I try to just represent myself as best as I can in games (No, that doesn't mean I look like a Night Elf, but I am tall, skinny, and sorta dark). It's simply the best out of the 4 choices for me. I could give a fuck about Legolas, or whatever reason people "supposedly" play Elves for.

[edit] Ah yes. I forgot.

Blood Elves.

Eww. The pasty pink skin doesn't do it for me.

And ummm....I'm surprised that no one has really commented on the new level cap. A shitty mmo just became even shittier: This is news folks.

Just got back from BlizzCon. Funny thing was, I had to come home and look online to find out half the information about the expansion. The ONLY thing they really said about it was a short 5 minute video that kept looping, with very little real info in it. Also, "Playing" the expansion was just running around the Blood Elf starting area, or playing a ready made lvl 60 with tier 2 epic armor, but you coudlnt really do any thing.

All in all, for information about the expansion, Blizzcon was a major let down.

There's so little information about what else they'll be doing to the game mechanic that having a strong opinion about level is a bit hard. Will they cap entrance to the current endgame zones? Will the 10 extra talent points we get only go to brand new tiers and trees (they did say they'll be modifying the other talents, but there are already issues with them)? Will this accompany an increase in Profession skills or are level 70s still supposed to still love all of relevant stuff from 300-skill?

Battlegrounds should be unaffected, since they're already capped.

Do you think the Blood Elves will skip and tumble?  I hope so because it's REALLY annoying.

One of my guildies was Playing on Tich from Bizzcon yesterday, had a few interesting tidbits about the level cap raise:

First off, you DO get a new talent point for every level you go up, so 10 new talent points.
Second, yes, you CAN now do a 31, 30 build if you wanted to, or any combination in between, However:
Third, they are EXPANDING the talent trees, so there will now be 41 point talents.

Should be interesting.

And i really dont get the gripe about the level cap increase. Hell, most 60's will have maxed rest exp, which means that you will probably hit level 62-64 within about 4 days or so of gameplay.  I figure it wont take much more then a single month for most people to crack the 68-70 barrier.  And then it will be back to the "end game raid dungeon dance" and whining about lack of new content.   Hell, when this thing hits, there will be more Raid dungeons then you could effectively run in a week.

I was hoping for Spellbreakers.

Still, Blood Elves are cool.

No, I don't give a shit that you all hate them.  I've spoken on this before.

Perhaps if Blood Elf Warriors are unique enough, one might be able to approach a duplicate of the Spellbreaker.

I'm undecided.  I probably won't buy it.  At least, not until a long time after release.  (Same way I bought WoW.)

So, did they can heros?

The game needs more depth. Not width.

Hero classes were never going to happen. They are just a way of enticing people to stay subscribed even though they have hit 60.

This expansion is utterly predictable. A raise in the level cap, a couple new races or classes, some new raids - exactly the same as basically every other expansion for every other MMORPG ever made.

In other words, Blizzard are following a successful precedent?
Say it ain't so!

Err, considering over a quarter of the game has been 60 for months now (according to Blizzard), I doubt the vague far off promise of a non-existent Hero Class has any hold over people. Even the most patient eventually get bored and wonder why they keep getting charged $14.99/mo for a game they haven't launched in months.

However, I agree the expansion is predictable. Even the flying mounts only working in Outland is predictable. Some stuff they mention in various articles seems compelling, but we're a long way from release. Heck, at this point I wouldn't wager anything we know will remain.

You say that like its bad.

What I find funny is, knowing Blizzard, you wont see this expansion 'till Q4 of 06 if not 2007.

That's pretty much what the CM said a few months back when word that an expansion was being worked on was let out to the public.   Nobody believed them at the time, but really, it's BLizzard and as we've said in the past they're still running like it's a singleplayer game, not a MMO.  Rehash rehash.. all that needs to happen now is someone has to come in and mention all the great changes EQ2 has made in the last 2 months compared to blizzard's last year.

[strongbad] The circles and the ages and the ages.. [/strongbad]

Redesigning the game twice after launch does not a stable experience make  :evil:

I've heard a lot of criticism about the expansion, but it's all pretty silly.  Blizzard has shown that it has a relatively decent grasp of balance, so there's no reason to expect anything very unpleasant.  Furthermore, although this expansion pack isn't exactly revolutionary, it's not like there are very many MMO expansions that are.

Anyways, this is more of the same; retention.  I'm not expecting to see Blizzard changing the most popular MMO gameplay model out there..

Haha


Okay, no more posting in the WoW forums for me.

I didn't say whether predictable was good or bad. Just predictable. As I said in another post, MMORPGs enter retention mode almost from day 1. My point is just that the expansion is basically exact what any reasonable person could have guessed.

Yes it is what I expected as well. The only problem for me now will be the horrible hype-oriented wait between announcement and actual release.

It's not diablo 3, and it's not a FFA PvP server, so I could barely give a shit either way.  Blizz of today is not Blizz of yore.