Anyone looking to start over? :P

[Nebu]

Yes, come to venture Co and play horde with us.  We're fun, damnit!

[Miasma]

If anyone is still on Earthen Ring I'm rolling an alt for each class and going with a levelling guide so if you wanted to bring up another class we could quest together.  Most are horde but I also made an alliance shaman to see what their towns look like and such.

Why don't you do Venture Co?

I like my PvP in FPS form only, I really hate it in MMOs.  I also have my main there with a few thousand gold and now seven alts in their teens running through ghostlands.

[Signe]

So, I was reading about the expansion that comes out sometime or other and I don't understand.  They're going to have ONE hero class?  And it's a mage-y one?  What about people who don't like mage-y characters?  Do they have to wait another four years for something?  This expansion sounds like crud... except for the hairdo thingy.

[stu]

There's a hairdo thingy?

As far as I know there's only the one hero class, Deathknight, coming up. I think Righ was saying there were originally supposed to be more, but I haven't been around the game long enough to know much about that stuff.

[Kail]

So, I was reading about the expansion that comes out sometime or other and I don't understand.  They're going to have ONE hero class?  And it's a mage-y one?  What about people who don't like mage-y characters?  Do they have to wait another four years for something?  This expansion sounds like crud... except for the hairdo thingy.

From what I hear, the new class is a combination DPS/Tank thing, some kind of dual-wielding, plate wearing, PvP nightmare.  I've heard rumblings that it's got summonable pet zombies or something, too (from people who are unlikely to know what they're talking about, but meh).  That seems fairly comparable to what was added with Burning Crusade; no new classes, just new zones, raised level cap, more dungeons, et cetera.  No new races this time, though.  But there's a few other things that are sounding interesting to me, especially the alleged siege warfare zone.

[Miasma]

I don't understand how they're going to do a hero class.  If it's actually as strong as a hero it would be terribly overpowered in both PvE and PvP.  They would have to either not allow them to participate in some areas or give them their own faction or some Achilles heel, I don't think that part of the expansion is going to go very well.

[Xerapis]

Wrath of the Lich King

World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, will add a host of epic content to the existing game.
Death Knight - World of Warcraft's first hero class
Ten More Levels - Level cap increased to 80, along with potent new abilities and equipment
New Profession - Inscription allows you to customize your favorite spells and abilities
Northrend - A harsh new continent in Azeroth, packed with new zones, quests, monsters, and dungeons
Character Customization Options - change your character's hairstyle and dance animations.

AKA - hairdo thingy

[Kail]

I don't understand how they're going to do a hero class.  If it's actually as strong as a hero it would be terribly overpowered in both PvE and PvP.  They would have to either not allow them to participate in some areas or give them their own faction or some Achilles heel, I don't think that part of the expansion is going to go very well.

As I understand it, "Hero Class" means that they start the game at level 60 or so, not that they're more powerful that other characters of their level.  Seems like a good idea to me, actually, since it's a nice way to skip the Old World content once you've unlocked it (though I agree it would be nice to have an alternative to being the Litch King's emo bitch).  Especially if they're viable tanks; if they eventually throw in another Hero Class that can do some decent healing, it could go a long way to easing up a lot of the class bottlenecks for things like 5-mans.

[Signe]

Character Customization Options - change your character's hairstyle and dance animations.

AKA - hairdo thingy

Yes! 

[Righ]

Especially if they're viable tanks; if they eventually throw in another Hero Class that can do some decent healing, it could go a long way to easing up a lot of the class bottlenecks for things like 5-mans.

Honestly they only need to do one thing for that - allow people to have two talent builds and switch between them for free on a shortish cooldown. As it stands, the people who want to be tanks or healers in group encounters generally have to compromise PvP and solo questing or grinding unless they are willing to pay the regular respec costs. 50 gold may not be a lot, but most people don't get their jollies from farming gold, and so they play a class that doesn't require constant respecs, ignore portions of the game (they play a PvP warrior but don't group much, group as Prot but don't PvP much) or buy gold from RMT sites, or play so much and so obsessively to tank, PvP and farm on a daily basis that they're on a fast track to burnout or are dangerously unstable personalities. Most people fall into the 'play another class' category and end up sitting in town looking for a tank or a healer for their group of three DPS/CC characters.

One class that starts at level 60. That's going to be a hoot. If you thought there were an asston of blood elf paladins, wait until you see several hundred identical death knights in the same place. Its going to be like some gnome protest rally.

[Simond]

The Forsaken has better get Thriller as one of their new /dances.

And I expect that the DKs will play out exactly like BE paladins/squidhead shaman - tons of them at launch, but a good three-quarters of them will get shelved within two or three months as people go back to their pre-expansion mains.

(Not me, though - I finally get my shadowknight-analogue that I've been wanting since before WoW launched.  )

[Signe]

It would be nice for the female characters had dances that weren't wank vehicles for pervy teen boys.  My favourite female dance is the Cow one, at the moment.  Not just  because I don't have to constantly touch myself but it really does look very cool.

[Mrbloodworth]

It would be nice for the female characters had dances that weren't wank vehicles for pervy teen boys.  My favourite female dance is the Cow one, at the moment.  Not just  because I don't have to constantly touch myself but it really does look very cool.

Isn't the Toren (sp) one the electric slide?

[Miasma]

One class that starts at level 60. That's going to be a hoot. If you thought there were an asston of blood elf paladins, wait until you see several hundred identical death knights in the same place. Its going to be like some gnome protest rally.

Do you automatically get to make this class or is there going to be some huge, punitive quest line involved sort of like Jedi in SWG to reduce the number of people who have them?

And if you can just make a level 60 or 70 character and are allowed to do your faction's quests that would be a tremendous way to get money by just doing the Outland stuff over again.

[MrHat]

IMO, they really shouldn't implement this without letting anyone roll any class straight @ L60.

[Nebu]

I just hope to god they aren't falling into the same trap that happens to every other MMO.  While adding a new and overpowered class SEEMS like a good idea it invariably throws the rest of the classes that don't work with it out with the trash.  Also, allowing players to jump immediately to 60 or 70 means that the newbie towns/area will be even more of a ghost town than they are already.  This is terrible for the new player.

[Dren]

I just hope to god they aren't falling into the same trap that happens to every other MMO.  While adding a new and overpowered class SEEMS like a good idea it invariably throws the rest of the classes that don't work with it out with the trash.  Also, allowing players to jump immediately to 60 or 70 means that the newbie towns/area will be even more of a ghost town than they are already.  This is terrible for the new player.

My experience with newbie town activity right now is not the same as yours.  I've been running several alts up through 60 and found that fighting for resources, mobs, quests, etc. are just as hard now as when I was doing it at launch.  The only thing that is less of a fight (which is better in this case) is in Hellfire.  Launch day for that was a fiasco.  Now it is quite nice, yet very active.

I do agree that activity will drop like a rock if you make everything start at 60.  That really would be a shame.  It would also disrupt a lot of mechanics that I can think of and many more that I can't I'm sure. 

This new class will have to be done quite carefully really.  It cannot be the most powerful.  It also can't be weak and useless.  It has to add a lot more to what is already out there at the same time too.  It has to balance the advantage of starting at 60 with some other disadvantage that other classes don't have that won't also kill the class.

Maybe it doesn't get rest experience.  Maybe the cost of repairs is much much higher for them.  Maybe their cost in general is so high that having alts is a requirement to just support them?  Maybe they can't have professions.  There HAS to be something to balance this.

Hell, I'm just hoping there is at least one other hero class to be announced, because come 2-3 weeks or earlier from launch, you will have thousands of Death Knights crawling all over every major city and landscape.

[Simond]

IMO, they really shouldn't implement this without letting anyone roll any class straight @ L60.

Pretty sure that Blizzard's plan for DKs is that you need one character at L60+ (or 55+ or 65+ or 70+ or whatever) then that unlocks death knight which starts at 60 (or 55, or 58, or 65, or whatever)

The original plan was "One character at L80" but Blizzard figured out fairly quickly that making people powerlevel from 70 to 80 for the sole reason of unlocking a new class...to level to 80 was moderately stupid.

They've also repeatedly stated that the DK will be in line with other classes, balance-wise*. It's not jedi all over again. In fact, knowing how Blizzard tends to perform balance nowadays there's a fairly high probability that the death knight will be slightly underpowered at launch, then tweaked upwards in the following patches.

*There's two reasons for calling the Death Knight a "hero class" - 1) Gives them a semi-plausible explanation as to why it starts at mid-high level (allowing people to skip going through STV for the umpteenth time) 2) Let's Blizzard go "Here's your sodding hero class. Now will you stop asking about them?" (See also: Siege engines in that doomed-to-failure world PvP zone).

[lesion]

I think they'll be able to balance it well enough.  Tanking through doing damage is probably the most fun way to do it, and Blizzard has been pretty good lately about lowering the suck (faster levels pre-60, daily quests to help fund mounts, adding a small +damage boost to healing items...the list goes on).

[Abelian75]

It would be nice for the female characters had dances that weren't wank vehicles for pervy teen boys.  My favourite female dance is the Cow one, at the moment.  Not just  because I don't have to constantly touch myself but it really does look very cool.

That's my favorite dance too, actually.  I actually find female tauren in general to be charming in almost every way.  Their appearance, animations and voices are all adorable in a very consistent manner.

And yeah, calling it a "hero" class is pretty much entirely cosmetic, other than that it starts at a higher initial level.  I also don't recall ever seeing mention of them starting at level 60 specifically, so I think the actual level is still quite up in the air, and I personally would suspect it would be lower than that.

Basically just ignore the "hero" part and just read it as a new class being added, that's all it really is.

[Merusk]

IMO, they really shouldn't implement this without letting anyone roll any class straight @ L60.

Pretty sure that Blizzard's plan for DKs is that you need one character at L60+ (or 55+ or 65+ or 70+ or whatever) then that unlocks death knight which starts at 60 (or 55, or 58, or 65, or whatever)

The last bit I saw was that there will be a quest series to discover a dellusioned shadow knight & help them to break from Arthas' grasp (*fudge over the whole "this is where Sks get their power from" bit) and then they become a playable class for you.   That's also how they'er working Arthas into the game, rather than being yet another 'supergod who 20 pcs can kill' character.  Since Arthas the Lich King is supposed to be THE superpower in Az, I like this solution a lot better.

Also, Sks are going to be 2h wielders, not dual wielders.  Their abilities are "rune" based instead of mana-based.  Each ability is supposed to be very powerful, but limited in timeframe, so your skill is in managing your rune cooldowns rather than efficient combo/ mana consumption.  (At last word at least.)

 Also, the whole 'summon undead' thing is from the Lich King trailer, and I'm fairly certain it was confirmed as being in-game.  No reason for it not to be there, since it only summoned 3 ghoul-type mobs, similar to those damned Druid treants.

[Kail]

Checking over the Wiki for this, and they claim (with a broken citation, grr) that once you unlock the Death Knight class, it's saved to your account.  According to the wiki:

There is no restriction to how many Death Knights you can create, and you can create a new character on any realm, as any other class.

Which sounds like someone could hypothetically unlock the character on a PvE server and roll a new Death Knight on a PvP server...

[Simond]

...and? 

[Tarami]

...and? 

Unless you've been ganked for the first fifty levels by people in epics, you have no right to be on a PvP realm. Such is the law.

[Simond]

You know what you call a group of new rerolled-from-PvE DKs on a PvP server?

Easy targets.

I mean, the death knight intro quest/"newbie zone" thing will probably end up with the newly-minted ~L60 DK appearing in EPL or wherever with generic_armour_set, generic_weapon and all their starting abilities but then turning around and being able to use all of those effectively in a PvP fight against a level seventy-whatever rogue/hunter/warlock/etc. in their TBC blues/purples & WotLK greens is an entirely different kettle of fish (especially as DKs are using this rune system instead of mana/rage/energy).

[MrHat]

Heh.  I'm just looking forward to 5-maning all the instances w/ 5 DKs.

[Dren]

Heh.  I'm just looking forward to 5-maning all the instances w/ 5 DKs.

I assume DK's won't be able to heal at all.  Otherwise, yeah, that's what will happen.

[Simond]

I'm guessing either lifetaps or heal-others-only heals...possibly combined health transfers. Like warlocks, but for other players rather than pets.

Probably with the word 'blood' or 'soul' somewhere in the spell names.

[Merusk]

Nah, they gave all the good death knight spells to warlocks already.  I don't recall the units being able to heal themselves either, but I'm going off of memory since i'm at work and google/ wiki impaired.

[Dren]

They should make it so they have a constant DoT on themselves while they use their powers.  Now THAT's what I call balance.

Plus, all the Emo's can walk around and seriously say, "I'm dieing on the inside..."

[Kail]

...and? 

And Venture Co. is a PvP realm, right?  So if the guild is still around then, we might theoretically have a way to get people up to a level where we can play together reasonably quickly, rather than having people spread around all over the place from level ten to sixty.

[Nebu]

I can tell you this: Playing on a well-established pvp server as a new solo player isn't very fun.  I'd be fine if the people attacking me were better geared people around my level but that's almost never the case.  I either get ganked by someone 10 or more levels above me or someone 3-5 levels above me that waits until I'm fighting mobs. Ganking gray players is like Michael Jordan going to an elementary school for a pickup game.  What's the point?  Fortunately there have been enough decent people to make up for the 90% that are mouth breathers.  The sociology of today's gamer is pretty pathetic.   

[Righ]

Stealth and humanoid tracking gives me a pretty big edge in that regard. Although ?? level players can see me stealthed from a fair distance, they wont notice me from the ranges that they see most other gankable players. Being cautious about how long I remain unstealthed and frequently checking my minimap for hostile players (a different shade of red from hostile NPC humanoids) may mean I'm considerably slower at pounding up levels, but there's far less frustration and running back from graveyards. Perhaps you should make a druid alt until I hit Hellfire - you could make him a miner and sell metal to finance you're shaman's ride too. ;)

[Cheddar]

Why don't we get a new thread where someone actually updates the main roster.  I will be joining today, pending my son feeding.   

[Dren]

I can tell you this: Playing on a well-established pvp server as a new solo player isn't very fun.  I'd be fine if the people attacking me were better geared people around my level but that's almost never the case.  I either get ganked by someone 10 or more levels above me or someone 3-5 levels above me that waits until I'm fighting mobs. Ganking gray players is like Michael Jordan going to an elementary school for a pickup game.  What's the point?  Fortunately there have been enough decent people to make up for the 90% that are mouth breathers.  The sociology of today's gamer is pretty pathetic.   

Nah, this was the same situation in UO at launch.  When you were a newb, you got ganked by tricked out tank mages or one shotted when low on health fighting something else.  When you had a decent character, you got ganked by groups of tank mages.  When you had a group of decent characters, you ganked by an even bigger group of tank mages.

That sociology has always been there.  The good thing, as you said, is the majority of people outweigh that crap.