Wrath of the Lich King expansion

[Morat20]

Death Knight will needs a quest to unlock, about the same as the warlock mount quest, and will start at level 60 or 70, its for end game content only. A bunch of classes got existing talent tweaks (Enh shammy get aggro drop).

Did Hunters get buffed from "suck" to "blow"? :)

[Merusk]

You're a funny, funny guy, Morat.

Funny because you still have hope.

[tkinnun0]

The stuff you can't get will always be the Good Shit.  This follows from a saying about grass being greener somewhere.

Defeating the gods of the Warcraft universe is the Good Shit compared to pushing back the Scarlet Crusade. This is true now and it would be true even if they made the Scarlet Crusade quest chain require a 40-man raid.

[Fabricated]

The stuff you can't get will always be the Good Shit.  This follows from a saying about grass being greener somewhere.

Defeating the gods of the Warcraft universe is the Good Shit compared to pushing back the Scarlet Crusade. This is true now and it would be true even if they made the Scarlet Crusade quest chain require a 40-man raid.

Wouldn't that make Shadow Labs/Arcatraz and possibly Shattered Halls "The Good Shit" since you're killing gods or decently important lore characters?

I mean fuck, Murmur is the reason that half of Terrokar Forest is a bomb crater.

[Paelos]

Yeah ...
... one.

I hereby agree to disagree. I want the worth of WoW raiders' successes to carry over into an expansion more like they did in EverQuest, and you don't.

Ok that's fine, but perhaps we don't even disagree that much. I honestly don't think I understand your position on what EQ did because I never played the game. Explain to me your ideal situation then. This would help me at least see where we are differing. What did Everquest do that you liked in detail? What was the progression? How did they deal with keeping people on the progression while raising the level cap? Did they even raise the cap?

Then, what would you have done differently in WoW in detail. Would you want to rasie the level cap at all? Would you want to bypass some, but not all of the pre-existing raid content, or would you want people to always start in MC with new characters no matter what?

[Chimpy]

I think the reasons for Blizzard totally negating the raiding gear by making lvl 64 AH greens on par with tier3 was that they took the opportunity to reshape the whole gear system and did not want to have to deal with the old uber gear and the complaints that would come with it being "needed".

Add to that the fact that the gear gap was way too big because of the long life-cycle of that content, and you get what happened.

I imagine that they will scale back the level of "resetting" of gear in the next expansion, and make the catass gear from BC actually helpful in the first iterations of the new expansion raiding dungeons.

But it won't be out for a while, and Blizzard has been known to make colossal mistakes in the past (their handling of the faction balance issues being the biggest chain of them, but that would be another thread unto itself) and they very well could make them, but it seems that they have learned from some of them with what I have seen from BC.

And I want to thank Oban for reminding me why I cringe at the thought of buying BC and resubbing...I would have to log in and see those fucking shoulders. Giantstalker ftl.

[Chenghiz]

Tier 3 wasn't eclipsed until Tier 5, or Tier 4 after the epic revamps. I saw a lot of people hitting Khara and Gruul/Mag with their T3 on (if they had it) and even T2 wasn't bettered until the late 60s' quest rewards.

So in that sense, the people who did do Naxx got some benefit from that fact - they didn't have to get new gear to start the new endgame. But people like getting new gear, and I doubt those people were thinking 'wow all that time in Naxx was useful!'; they were probably complaining about how bad the new gear was (it was).

[Merusk]

Ok that's fine, but perhaps we don't even disagree that much. I honestly don't think I understand your position on what EQ did because I never played the game. Explain to me your ideal situation then. This would help me at least see where we are differing. What did Everquest do that you liked in detail? What was the progression? How did they deal with keeping people on the progression while raising the level cap? Did they even raise the cap?

Then, what would you have done differently in WoW in detail. Would you want to rasie the level cap at all? Would you want to bypass some, but not all of the pre-existing raid content, or would you want people to always start in MC with new characters no matter what?

EQ's progression was something like Nagafien > Vox > Plane of hate > Plane of Fear > Plane of Sky > Chardok > Sebilis > Veeshan's Peak > Velektor's Lab > Temple of Veeshan > Dragon Necropolis > Avatar of War > Sleeper's Tomb > Ssraeshza Temple > ?Vex Thal? > Planar Progress (PoP Expansion) > Council of Rathe > .. and after that I lost track because I quit around the time Gates of Discord came out.

With each level cap increase, you COULD skip parts, but you could never skip to the new shiny straight away, because the gear that droped overland wasn't good enough to take-on that new shiny.   For example, I joined a raid guild in PoP-era.  We still had to go through Sleeper's Tomb and Ssraeshza Temple to gear-up before even attempting the gods in PoP seriously.    Trying to have your raid jump to the 'new shiny' in world drops rather than boss drops would be akin to trying to take-down Illidan in L60 greens, because that's the difference in power between "normal" gear and "raiding" gear in EQ.

  Sure, we could take some of the low-hanging ones like Plane of Innovation by zerging it (there was no raid population cap, after all)  but for some of the bigger guys you had to  have the majority of your group in decent gear - same as WoW - but it also required a lot MORE people, to avoid the zerg tactics.  Rathe Council, for example,  REQUIRED 72 well-geared people - 12 groups of 6 people for the 12 bosses that spawned at once.  That's before you get into the logistics nightmares like figuring out which of those guys spawned with which random immunity or whatever their trick was and communicating it to the 71 other people in the pre-teamspeak days.

The difference between WoW and EQ is that without instancing EQ was FORCED to keep this progression going, or else find a huge amount of fighting at the top end for spawns.  So upgrades were far far smaller and lasted you a much longer time, because of competition.  The player characters also didn't get the huge boosts in power that they do in WoW.  This was primarily to enforce the forced grouping design, and later served to reinforce the raiding progression ladder. A level 50 war was still going to get pwnd by a L30 mob in Everquest and I'm fairly certain that held true up through L80 wars and L60 mobs if that war isn't in uber gear.  The only way to get that gear was raiding.

[Tale]

I'll go with that - thanks for doing all the typing.

The other thing they did was retune old raid content to suit the new level cap. They didn't just abandon it, they revised it so that it was still on the progression scale.

Tale EQ WoW? Nah, it's not about that. Overall WoW is a better game than EQ, more fun and less hassle. But the time and effort in raiding is at least the same in both games (it has actually seemed more in WoW). So having grown used to what progression meant in EQ, it felt like a letdown to have gone along part of what I thought was the progression scale of WoW, then have it mean nothing when an expansion arrived (I was in a guild that got through BWL and into AQ40)  ... in a game designed by people like EQ raid guild leader Tigole.

Having seen old content cleverly retuned in the past, it's also sad to see the devs' work on places like BWL, AQ and ZG abandoned. MC was just a generic lava cave, so I don't miss it.

[Paelos]

I will admit that I was dissappointed that my group never got the chance to raid Naxx because it was impossible to get any interest once the gear eclipsed the amount of effort you'd need to be successful. I will admit when I had to vendor my mostly T2 armor, I was a bit cheesed. Were it possible, I would have liked my gear to be viable up to Karazhan, rather than destroyed at level 65.

I will agree with you there. If I'm running the show this time around, T5 gear will be solid up to level 80, but I'm not sure that will happen.

[tkinnun0]

Wouldn't that make Shadow Labs/Arcatraz and possibly Shattered Halls "The Good Shit" since you're killing gods or decently important lore characters?

I mean fuck, Murmur is the reason that half of Terrokar Forest is a bomb crater.

It might, if
A) I had gotten that far, and
B) I had any idea who those people were. I mean, Murmur had 5 levels of progression time to make an impact, and nothing.

As it is, I have some unfinished business with Lady Onyxia, Nefarian and Ragnaros, and no way to bring about a satisfactory conclusion. The gear might be outdated, but the story isn't.

[Ratama]

Majority of the development dollars?  So you're saying that it costs more money and development dollars to come up with a harder boss?  I think you don't understand game design very well. The developers don't have to beat the boss themselves to convince it to sit still for players. They just script it like any other boss.

Apparently you have no idea how much time, effort, and testing is required to get 25-man stuff designed, tuned, and itemized, compared to solo/5-man content.

I guarantee you the outdoor zone designing/itemization of Northrend is already done, or nearly so.  The raid zones?  They started working on designing the layouts and art/models for those before the concept art was even in for the outdoor shit, and I bet, just like BC, they'll still be working on more content that less than 10% of their customers will ever see 6 months after the expansion ships.

On your other point, I think you just entered circular-argument-land.  The stuff you can't get will always be the Good Shit.  This follows from a saying about grass being greener somewhere.  Personally, I don't consider something you have to spend 10 hours a day, 7 days a week to get to, which is no more purple than my Kara and heroic purples, to be the Good Shit.

Do you understand item level, or even basic mathematics?  BT/Hyjal items >>> Karazhan shit.  And if you PvP, or enjoy slumming 5-mans with casual friends, or just prefer faster gameplay in general, it makes a real difference in enjoyment of the game.

And that's no even taking into account the actual story/encounters themselves.

I don't *think* that grass is greener; seeing that it IS greener is as easy as looking at the stat totals, or videos of those guilds killing the NPC on the game box (an encounter that I, and 90% of their customers, will never get to see personally). Those items are better than the shit I have access to as a 'casual' player, and I'll never get to see the actual conclusion to the story that I pay the same $/month to experience as the trash that raids 60 hours/week while on welfare.

[Modern Angel]

They already said that level 72 greens will be better than tier 4. So, yes, it is going to be as big a gear reset.

[Margalis]

I liked "Hero Classes" better when they were called "Advanced Jobs."

For those of you who don't get that, FFXI has "advanced jobs" that you can unlock, pretty much the same deal. (Except advanced jobs start at level 1) They really aren't any better than normal jobs, just different, and I expect WOW will work in the same way. Creating a new class that is plain better is a really bad idea, especially given their attempts at greater balance.

The problem with releasing a single hero class is that everyone is going to want to play that hero class, so you'll see a huge glut of them. Everyone and their brother will be unlocking and rolling Death Knights.

[Venkman]

Making each new expansion give something back to the Raiders of the previous expansion does not get more people to Raid. This is WoW"s problem, one EQ never had. So many people are at the endgame and so many people want something to do when they get there, Blizzard can't require these people go through ever-lengthening Raid progressions. It has to be start-from-scratch new for each group that hits the new level cap because only a percentage of them were Raiding before the cap went up. Everyone else quested/grinded to the new cap and quit after some rounds of faction-grinding and PvP. These people need some new reason to come back to WoW, and telling them they'd need to farm MC/BWL/Naxx for T1/2/3 (iirc) gear just to get to that brand new raid zone launched with the new expansion they came back to check out isn't it.

[Threash]

It would be the same thing if they released any new class, hell you saw nothing but horde paladins and alliance shamans in the newbie zones after bc came out.  Adding more than one class at the same time would be a balance nightmare.

[Modern Angel]

Making each new expansion give something back to the Raiders of the previous expansion does not get more people to Raid. This is WoW"s problem, one EQ never had. So many people are at the endgame and so many people want something to do when they get there, Blizzard can't require these people go through ever-lengthening Raid progressions. It has to be start-from-scratch new for each group that hits the new level cap because only a percentage of them were Raiding before the cap went up. Everyone else quested/grinded to the new cap and quit after some rounds of faction-grinding and PvP. These people need some new reason to come back to WoW, and telling them they'd need to farm MC/BWL/Naxx for T1/2/3 (iirc) gear just to get to that brand new raid zone launched with the new expansion they came back to check out isn't it.

Yes, yes, yes. And there are tons of beginning to middle tier raiders who are absolutely fine with that status. Raiding for the masses is what Blizz has carved out for themselves, for better or worse. I know the top tier guys are going to scream bloody fucking murder over another gear rest but it works: have the middling raiders ooo and ahh over Illidan, let the big boys have a year in the sun to flaunt their dope lootz and then reset the whole thing so everyone's at the same level for three months.

Also, they mentioned that plans are to have Naxx retuned as an MC difficulty raid zone for Wrath. Good move on their part. Everyone I know who's been considers Naxx Blizzard's masterpiece and everyone I know who hasn't been still wants to go.

[Fabricated]

Making each new expansion give something back to the Raiders of the previous expansion does not get more people to Raid. This is WoW"s problem, one EQ never had. So many people are at the endgame and so many people want something to do when they get there, Blizzard can't require these people go through ever-lengthening Raid progressions. It has to be start-from-scratch new for each group that hits the new level cap because only a percentage of them were Raiding before the cap went up. Everyone else quested/grinded to the new cap and quit after some rounds of faction-grinding and PvP. These people need some new reason to come back to WoW, and telling them they'd need to farm MC/BWL/Naxx for T1/2/3 (iirc) gear just to get to that brand new raid zone launched with the new expansion they came back to check out isn't it.

Yes, yes, yes. And there are tons of beginning to middle tier raiders who are absolutely fine with that status. Raiding for the masses is what Blizz has carved out for themselves, for better or worse. I know the top tier guys are going to scream bloody fucking murder over another gear rest but it works: have the middling raiders ooo and ahh over Illidan, let the big boys have a year in the sun to flaunt their dope lootz and then reset the whole thing so everyone's at the same level for three months.

Also, they mentioned that plans are to have Naxx retuned as an MC difficulty raid zone for Wrath. Good move on their part. Everyone I know who's been considers Naxx Blizzard's masterpiece and everyone I know who hasn't been still wants to go.

I thought like half of Naxx was awful gear cockblocks, even if the encounters were as perfectly tuned as people said they were?

[Modern Angel]

There were a couple in there as I understand it (I only fiddled around in there, nothing serious). But it was either Kaplan or Chilton who said Naxx=25 man MC in the next expansion. You can tune stuff tightly and still have it "easy" pretty simply by removing hit points or mob damage.

[Trouble]

Apparently you have no idea how much time, effort, and testing is required to get 25-man stuff designed, tuned, and itemized, compared to solo/5-man content.

I guarantee you the outdoor zone designing/itemization of Northrend is already done, or nearly so.  The raid zones?  They started working on designing the layouts and art/models for those before the concept art was even in for the outdoor shit, and I bet, just like BC, they'll still be working on more content that less than 10% of their customers will ever see 6 months after the expansion ships.

I'm pretty sure you're way off base with this assumption. Creating an entire zone of interconnecting quest hubs, mob spawns, and dozens/hundreds of quests requires a magnitude larger amount of development time than creating a raid zone. The whole reason raid zones exist is because they are a CHEAP form of entertainment, when you compare development hours to "entertainment" hours. It takes a few hours to zip through a few dozen quests, it takes hours or days to kill a single raid boss. I guarantee that raid boss and the trash surrounding it was a hell of a lot cheaper to design than those few dozen quests.

Creating well balanced raid content is technically more challenging than say pounding out a bunch of quests. But in terms of actual man hours it takes much less time, and then you compare how long it takes to beat the raid boss versus how much time it takes to complete the quest/solo content/5 man content.

If I had to make a bet, I'd guess that it took more combined man hours to create Hellfire Peninsula and the 5 mans in it than it took to create all of the raid content in TBC.

[KyanMehwulfe]

The art assets for all the Northrend zones may be done or nearly so, but I'm be surprised if they actually had any serious amount of content in them yet. Especially an amount ready for serious testing. Just look at TBC. When beta started, half of the zones weren't even in yet because they were finished the itemization and other content. Blades Edge arguably wasn't even for release.

I expect with Northrend will be paced a lot better since they were pretty eager to finally get their first expansion out after 2 years, but if all of Northrend's exterior zones are ready for beta test when we get into it, I'd be surprised. Blizzard typically seems to try to really linearly push through content from start to finish rather than slowly bring everything (even most things) up at the same time.

[Amaron]

I don't *think* that grass is greener; seeing that it IS greener is as easy as looking at the stat totals, or videos of those guilds killing the NPC on the game box (an encounter that I, and 90% of their customers, will never get to see personally). Those items are better than the shit I have access to as a 'casual' player, and I'll never get to see the actual conclusion to the story that I pay the same $/month to experience as the trash that raids 60 hours/week while on welfare.

He probably knows what you are saying but he doesn't care.   There are a lot of hardcore gamers who will make arguments against what you are saying because they will gladly accept a game catered to their tastes where 90% of the customers must deal with cockblocks.   Sadly right now the mentality in Blizzard is to remove most of the cockblocks to appease casual gamers and leave in the really important cockblocks to let hardcore gamers have their cake at least.  This is definitely not the smartest way of doing things for Blizzard but with Tigole running the show sound reason is probably not prevailing in their meetings.

It works for the most part because nobody has any alternatives and anyone who tries will probably deliver a half-assed product.  Basically you are SOL for several years till the market has less growth and people have to start fighting for customers.

[Jayce]

I don't *think* that grass is greener; seeing that it IS greener is as easy as looking at the stat totals, or videos of those guilds killing the NPC on the game box (an encounter that I, and 90% of their customers, will never get to see personally). Those items are better than the shit I have access to as a 'casual' player, and I'll never get to see the actual conclusion to the story that I pay the same $/month to experience as the trash that raids 60 hours/week while on welfare.

He probably knows what you are saying but he doesn't care.   There are a lot of hardcore gamers who will make arguments against what you are saying because they will gladly accept a game catered to their tastes where 90% of the customers must deal with cockblocks.   Sadly right now the mentality in Blizzard is to remove most of the cockblocks to appease casual gamers and leave in the really important cockblocks to let hardcore gamers have their cake at least.  This is definitely not the smartest way of doing things for Blizzard but with Tigole running the show sound reason is probably not prevailing in their meetings.

It works for the most part because nobody has any alternatives and anyone who tries will probably deliver a half-assed product.  Basically you are SOL for several years till the market has less growth and people have to start fighting for customers.

Wait... I'm confused.  I think you are obliquely calling me hardcore (which is laughable) but also said that it's sad that they are appeasing casual gamers?  Whose side are you on, anyway?

[Paelos]

I don't *think* that grass is greener; seeing that it IS greener is as easy as looking at the stat totals, or videos of those guilds killing the NPC on the game box (an encounter that I, and 90% of their customers, will never get to see personally). Those items are better than the shit I have access to as a 'casual' player, and I'll never get to see the actual conclusion to the story that I pay the same $/month to experience as the trash that raids 60 hours/week while on welfare.

He probably knows what you are saying but he doesn't care.   There are a lot of hardcore gamers who will make arguments against what you are saying because they will gladly accept a game catered to their tastes where 90% of the customers must deal with cockblocks.   Sadly right now the mentality in Blizzard is to remove most of the cockblocks to appease casual gamers and leave in the really important cockblocks to let hardcore gamers have their cake at least.  This is definitely not the smartest way of doing things for Blizzard but with Tigole running the show sound reason is probably not prevailing in their meetings.

It works for the most part because nobody has any alternatives and anyone who tries will probably deliver a half-assed product.  Basically you are SOL for several years till the market has less growth and people have to start fighting for customers.

Wait... I'm confused.  I think you are obliquely calling me hardcore (which is laughable) but also said that it's sad that they are appeasing casual gamers?  Whose side are you on, anyway?

I didn't get his point at all either. It's like he jumped boats in mid-sentence.

[Ironwood]

It actually makes sense if you read it aloud.

Kinda.

[Ratama]

Sadly right now the mentality in Blizzard is to remove most of the cockblocks to appease casual gamers and leave in the really important cockblocks to let hardcore gamers have their cake at least.

As in, Blizz removes the artificial attunement bullshit for SSC/Eye to give the appearance of fairness regarding casual raider access, but leaves in the real cockblock of BC; BT access.

Of course, even if they lifted the Kaelthas/Vash cockblock (Winterchill seems to be about on par with the average difficulty SSC/Eye bosses), Illidan's been balanced around raiders that 'play' WoW like it's a job.

Blizzard should be aiming the story in the expansions, if not the phatest loots, at the bulk of their playerbase.  Instead, Blizzard's apparent strategy is to throw casuals just enough bones to keep them paying & subsidizing the development of premium raid/story content for less than 10% of their customers.

[MrHat]

They pissed away 'story' a long time ago.

[Jayce]

Blizzard should be aiming the story in the expansions, if not the phatest loots, at the bulk of their playerbase.  Instead, Blizzard's apparent strategy is to throw casuals just enough bones to keep them paying & subsidizing the development of premium raid/story content for less than 10% of their customers.

Maybe you're right about story, but a) what Hat said, and b) I think there is a lot of story in the non-raid content.  The entire story of the endgame of BC is "guild 54684 went in and killed Illidan.  The End".

Throwing casuals just enough bones to stay subscribed sounds like smart business practice to me.  The second part of that statement only works if you subscribe to your theory that the upper-end raid content takes the lion's share of the development budget.  I really don't think you've proved your point there.

High end raids are a handful of encounters to script versus tens of regular and heroic 5 mans and 10 man raids.  The loot will be held by a fraction of the populace instead of most of the populace in the case of 5 and 10 man loot, so it can be more haphazardly balanced.  The 5 and 10 man content is more beat up by more players so it has to be less buggy.

Now I'd like to see some hard reasons you think that Illidan and Vashj make up some large % of the the entire BC development budget.

[MrHat]

wowinsider.com has a pretty good summary of Blizzcon regarding WoW.  I thought I could fight it, but I suddenly have a very strong urge to roll a UD Death Knight at some point. 

Also, "Refer-a-friend may make it easier for friends to play by offering leveled characters " intrigues me greatly.

[Modern Angel]

Quick! Somebody phone Blizzard and tell them they should change the very fundaments of their game since it's not working out for them!

[Dren]

Yeah, I'm really not understanding the angst here.  You either don't like the game or you do.  This expansion is more of the same.  Stop playing it if it isn't fitting your needs.   I'm still playing and enjoying it and this expansion looks pretty decent to me.  I'm sure I'll purchase it just like I did TBC.

For those that don't think it is enough for an expansion?  Hell, they are just giving you a taste now.  There will be more.  You have plenty of time to decide once and for all, you've had enough! 

[Morfiend]

Being at Blizzcon, I saw the slides about expansion size. WotLK is going to be the same size as BC. Same amount of dungeons and around the same amount of bosses in those instances. Hell, adding a new class is much more than a new race.

Oh yeah, I forgot about this. Tigole said in his panel that he was hoping to retune Naxxramas for level 80, and have it be about MC difficulty. Thats pretty awesome. So the uber guilds wont go their except a few times for fun, and since they probably already experianced Nax, and all the casual/non-raiding guilds can have an easy, yet huge and very fun, and probably new to them, instance to play in.

[Paelos]

Quick! Somebody phone Blizzard and tell them they should change the very fundaments of their game since it's not working out for them!

Yeah that was basically my thinking when I read the whole "OH NOES! They are programming their main story at 10% of the players!" bit. Uh, so what? If you make is so damn easy that anybody can kill Illidan, it insults the story too. We're talking about something that is supposed to be the extreme last bastion of raid content that the expansion had to offer at the current time of release. Of course they are going to make it so only a few people complete it, but I think the 10% number is extremely unrealistic. Hell, my raiding alliance who didn't even start running MC at all until January 06 got to see Naxx and kill a few bosses in it before the expansion hit. That was basically 12 months from MC cleared to BWL cleared to 1/4 of AQ and 2 bosses of Naxx.

In a similar 12 months I could very well see our alliance doing the same thing. We've got 2 groups who've cleared Karazhan, we can clear Maulgar and Gruul with one group, but we're only 2 runs into trying Mags yet. That leaves SSC and TK to do once we have Mags done in ~ a month. Assuming those take 3 months a piece to clear, we'll still have 3 months or so to check out Hyjal and the Black Temple before March, when I think the expansion will hit. My point is that these are very conservative and achievable goals for a group that wants to run a raid 2-3 days a week. That's all we do. Gruul one day, Mags one day, SSC one day. Others can do this because I know for a fact that my rag-tag bunch of misfits is NOT at the high end of the raiding game. You can see the Black Temple if you are a middle of the road raider, and I would assert that there are a lot of more of those than self-proclaimed casuals would like to admit.

[Rasix]

Quick! Somebody phone Blizzard and tell them they should change the very fundaments of their game since it's not working out for them!

fun·da·ment      /ˈfʌndəmənt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[fuhn-duh-muhnt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1.   the buttocks.
2.   the anus.
3.   a base or basic principle; underlying part; foundation.

I like the first 2 definitions there.   :-D  I'd change the assy parts.

Sure, it doesn't matter to THEM.  They could have more subscriptions, but they're obviously not hurting for it.  They don't need to take any risks anymore and growth likely isn't the driving factor anymore. 

However, it sure as hell matters to some of us: the people they could be retaining and seem to be losing due a lack of a complete experience for the casual player.  They're missing out on becoming a great game. 

The second I saw the Black Temple trailer I knew this game was done for me on a certain level.  An interesting trailer delivering on the primary character for the expansion and closing out a major portion of the lore.. and it's not for me.  I may come back for some PVP changes if they turn out to be interesting or for the 70-80 portion of the next expansion, but there's always going to be that portion of the game that's specifically "not for me".  The part that's "not for me" is the part you play games for.  You don't buy Disgaea and hope that your game ends at Mid-Boss, do you? 

/end_pointless_rant

I hope that someone gets this right for me.  WoW isn't going to. 

[Modern Angel]

It just boggles my mind that people expect the expansion is suddenly going to be different than everything before it. The entire game is offering a blend of accessible and hardcore raiding. That's it. That's the endgame. It's what they've chosen. It's a pillar of design philosophy now not some tacked on sideshow which they can shuffle around like Battlegrounds. Play it until it sucks and move on; the raiders do. (see Death and Taxes advertising for WAR beta invites)