Cataclysm

[Nevermore]

PvP that matters in some way.  Such as DAoC's relic system.  Yeah, it was flawed, but it mattered.  More importantly, it mattered in a way that didn't cripple the losing side, and gave incentive for the side without relics to try to get them back.  Of course, there were problems with it, mostly population, but it was more meaningful than anything in WoW.

You mean like how Wintergrasp opens up a dungeon and provides the side that controls the zone the ability to get extra Stone Keeper Shards which can be turned in for items?

[Malakili]

Wintergrasp and to a lesser extent the spirit towers in terrokar introduced tangible benefits to wow pvp.

The question is, how could you make things like Wintergrasp and the spirit towers available at all times.  Those actually do work to a certain extend, but you only get them every few hours, it would be (theoretically) nice to be able to log on at any time and have meaningful PvP going on.   I realize the shitty things that come with this idea though, such as whoever can sleep the least, or have people on  in the middle of the night, etc.    I don't expect to see this in WoW, but if someone can manage it, maybe its blizzard.

[Slyfeind]

Anyone who uses the word "Easy" to describe any aspect of game development, let alone MMO development, does not know what they are talking about.

It also depends on the tools and resources available. Something like Redridge could be done in a couple hours in the Dungeon Siege engine, but I hear WoW's editor (which is different from the WC3 editor) is a bit more cludgey.

[Soulflame]

PvP that matters in some way.  Such as DAoC's relic system.  Yeah, it was flawed, but it mattered.  More importantly, it mattered in a way that didn't cripple the losing side, and gave incentive for the side without relics to try to get them back.  Of course, there were problems with it, mostly population, but it was more meaningful than anything in WoW.

You mean like how Wintergrasp opens up a dungeon and provides the side that controls the zone the ability to get extra Stone Keeper Shards which can be turned in for items?

I was kind of vague in that post, but I did address this.  Yes, that's sort of nice, but it's only available if you log on when WG is starting or in progress.  Access to VoA is meh, since it's a once a week instance with two loot pinatas.  Stonekeeper shards are either achievement fodder, or currency for pvp items, which is also, at least in my opinion, meh.

Don't get me wrong, I think WG is a good first step, despite my earlier scorn.  I just want there to be -more- PvP.  Although I'm currently a borderline catass raider at the moment, I wouldn't mind having decent PvP options open that weren't BGs that are broadly disorganized PUGs.  (And I could go off on a completely unrelated rant here on how it makes me seethe that BG players can't seem to grasp simple concepts such as "leave one person, at least, at each node in AB" despite repeated requests that someone, anyone, please for the love of god just go guard a node, you useless tools.)

I played DAoC for 5 years, and only did PvE if there were new loots that would benefit me in PvP, or if I was leveling a char to PvP with.  Often as not, my guild would just haul me out to RvR to level up regardless.  It just doesn't feel as possible in WoW, particularly since all PvP, aside from World (which is a complete joke, in my opinion) is very much built around the "carnival ride" model.  Where not only must you be "this tall" to ride, but you have to stand in line just to get on the ride.  I'd much rather PvP be more open to simply joining when I want, rather than sitting in a queue for up to 30 minutes while I wonder if maybe I shouldn't just log off instead.

[Simond]

Apparently, there will be a playable demo of Cataclysm at Blizzcon. Probably one of the two starter zones.

[DraconianOne]

Source?

[Simond]

One of the same people who leaked the whole thing previously.

[Tarami]

It also depends on the tools and resources available. Something like Redridge could be done in a couple hours in the Dungeon Siege engine, but I hear WoW's editor (which is different from the WC3 editor) is a bit more cludgey.

You mean aside from the time it takes to do the concept art, writing, itemization, quest implementation, QA and all the hours spent in design meetings? And then of course each of those tasks gets atleast two iterations. That's time and money, too. Redridge probably took 500 manhours or more to do and that equates to just 3 guys over a month, which seems really novel in the grand scheme of an MMO. I'm betting a lot more time went into it. WoW as a whole took what, four years to make, with hundreds of team members? Good tools are indeed important (for the sanity of your employees, if nothing else), but they do generally not make or break a deadline.

Also, don't forget a fundamental rule of project management; make an initial time estimation, then double it.

[Soulflame]

Then add another 20%.

[Slyfeind]

It also depends on the tools and resources available. Something like Redridge could be done in a couple hours in the Dungeon Siege engine, but I hear WoW's editor (which is different from the WC3 editor) is a bit more cludgey.

You mean aside from the time it takes to do the concept art, writing, itemization, quest implementation, QA and all the hours spent in design meetings?

Yes.

[DraconianOne]

Sheepherder says you're wrong.

Anyway, we'll know in 24 hours or something.

[Kail]

I agree though that the whole emphasizing the conflict between Alliance and Horde seems stupid since unless they start really expanding pvp areas on all servers (which I don't see them doing and with good reason) any war between the two factions is a stupid backdrop that doesn't penetrate into normal gameplay.

Unless you do Battlegrounds. Or Wintergrasp. Or want your black war bear. Or are hanging around a capital city when the opposite faction decides it wants black war bears. Or play on a PVP server.

You're missing the point, I think.  The problem is that this stuff you're talking about is all already in the game.  The game wherein we are allegedly not at war.  Koyasha's (I think) arguing against using the war as an irrelevent background set piece.  You're arguing "but I can do PvP now," which doesn't really address the problem that if there was a major (presumably) PvP development in the storyline without a major development in the PvP gameplay, a lot of players would see it as a pointless story event at best, and a cop-out at worst.  What would be the point of saying "We're at war" if there's no accompanying change to gameplay?  I get that you like BGs and stuff, but it's not like they'd somehow become different or better because the lore says they matter now.

Personally, I'm not saying that I don't want war in Warcraft.  I'm saying I don't want it as an irrelevant background event, a kind of "Oh, by the way, you guys are at war now, BUT NOW ON TO THE IMPORTANT STUFF: NEW RAID ENCOUNTER ONYXIA XVIII REVENGE OF THE REVENGE OF FIRE DEATH MOUNTAIN: THE REVENGE WILL NOW DROP EPIC FUSCHIA SWORD 2% MORE OFTEN"  So far, PvP has been extremely limited to prevent Horde from dicking around with Alliance levelling.  It would take a pretty major change to have the PvP be anything but this, and I don't see this change coming along as a rider to a major PvE expansion.  I wouldn't mind being proven wrong about that.  What I would mind is expecting people to give a shit about being at war when you can't actually do anything about it in the game.

[Paelos]

Blizzard's lore logic is completely ridiculous as background, and I think we all know it. I mean the recent iteration of content makes absolutely no sense.

Jaina: "A huge threat looms in Icecrown. The Lich King could strike us down with his horrible undead armies. Our armies are also depleted after dealing with Yogg-Saron. What should we do to stop the apocalypse and turn the tide against Arthas?

Tirion: "We shall build...A REN-FAIRE!"

[Koyasha]

Yeah, that's a considerable part of it.  How would they make 'being at war' significantly different than 'not being at war'?  Because if it's not, then the change in the story is meaningless backdrop.  Unless war starts spilling out into the rest of the world regularly, allowing and encouraging people to fight outside of battlegrounds and other ultra-contained locations, then being at war is remarkably similar to not being at war.

WoW would make sense with more pvp, would make sense as a pvp-centric game, but it's not and probably never will be (if they're smart, which they are).  So being 'at war' isn't going to change the gameplay for the vast majority of players one bit, which means it's going to mean squat to people when it comes down to it.  There will still be battlegrounds, still be wintergrasp and whatever comes out of it in the future, and so on, so being at war will be meaningless.  On the upside, at least this expansion won't squeeze Horde and Alliance into the same city, which is one of the most incredibly retarded facets of both existing expansions.

The ren-faire thing is idiotic, but it almost kinda makes sense when you think about how the Lich King specifiically works.  I commented on this myself at one point, but someone made a good point.  When fighting him, you don't want to bring an army, you want to bring those who are least likely to die at all, so you don't have an army that shifts the balance two in favor of the enemy every time one of your soldiers dies.  So yeah, making sure only the strongest and most capable are sent against the Lich King is reasonable, even if they way they're going about it is utterly, completely moronic.

[Soln]

I just like caps. I gives me a good quote to come back to and shove it in the face of people who were wrong. If I'm wrong it's just silly, but I live on the edge.

Seriously though, I am as hardcore a financial guy as you'll meet while being a gamer, and to remake old shit in the guise of new shit isn't a business plan. It's a salvage plan.

QFT

the time to QA all these changes makes me suspect this isn't real. 

[WindupAtheist]

There's gonna be a new battleground or two, and some Wintergraspy type of world objective. If you're looking for more than that, you're playing the wrong game. My point is that if you're going to have those things, trying to paint the two sides as not being at war is flamingly fucking idiotic and has been driving me nuts for years.

[Sheepherder]

It also depends on the tools and resources available. Something like Redridge could be done in a couple hours in the Dungeon Siege engine, but I hear WoW's editor (which is different from the WC3 editor) is a bit more cludgey.

It's not actually possible to get any easier than the War III editor.  However, when a developer sacrifices ease of use they normally do it for the sake of other features, namely the ability to do large portions of work at once, or to allow for exceedingly fine detail work.  Shooters generally get the latter treatment, sprawling RPG's generally get the former.  A good example of the first approach is the heightmap import tools in Oblivion, which imports a bitmap and uses it to generate a heightmap; which allows interoperability with a number of fractal terrain generators as well as allowing the use of image manipulation software to generate terrain at a pace much faster than the editor's tools, yet with comparable detail.

You mean aside from the time it takes to do the concept art, writing, itemization, quest implementation, QA and all the hours spent in design meetings? And then of course each of those tasks gets atleast two iterations.

Because you don't need concept art, writing, itemization, or quests to flatten a path out from Menethil Harbor to the WIP super-sekret back entrance to Ironforge which I checked out on my private realm.  But how's your day?

EDIT: Former/Latter made no fucking sense, I shouldn't post after a mostly sleepless night of fucking with databases combined with beer.

[Koyasha]

There's gonna be a new battleground or two, and some Wintergraspy type of world objective. If you're looking for more than that, you're playing the wrong game. My point is that if you're going to have those things, trying to paint the two sides as not being at war is flamingly fucking idiotic and has been driving me nuts for years.

I agree, this is the wrong game to find more than that.  Thing is, story-wise it sounds like they're painting this as a huge, significant change.  So what I'm saying is that's damn silly, because 'more of the same' doesn't equal 'massive lore changes' and Horde shifting from 'cold war' sort of status to full war.

[Fordel]

Why is it so hard to imagine that instead of killing 10 Naga, we'll Kill 10 Horde NPC Invaders?

[Jayce]

The amazing thing to me is that as ridiculous as much of the storyline is, they manage to make it simultaneously relevant, compelling and unimportant.  I really get a kick out of the stories told by the lore, and being able to live in the world, while at the same time realizing it would fall apart without the highest level of willing suspension of disbelief I can muster.

[Koyasha]

That presents two possibillities, neither of which works well.  Either the NPCs are pvp flagged. So killing them triggers your pvp flag, in which case people will complain they can't do their quests without going pvp, or they won't be pvp flagged, and the infuriating occurence of people killing those on your side without you being able to do anything about it becomes a centerpiece.  There's some of that already, like in Ashenvale with unflagged Horde and Alliance NPC's, but that tends to be minimal and marginalized in the current game.  An entire expansion based around it would be annoying to anyone who tries to have a "side identity" whenn they play Horde or Alliance.

[Kail]

Why is it so hard to imagine that instead of killing 10 Naga, we'll Kill 10 Horde NPC Invaders?

I'm not saying it would be hard to imagine, just that it would suck (see also: Warhammer PvE, complaints about).

[Sheepherder]

Draconian, you need to get a new video.  I was screwing around today on my realm, and the wanker who made that missed some of the really fucking extreme shit, you were in fact dead right.  Blizzard quite literally has enough space for several expansions left in the old world.

As a side note, it looks like large sections were simply cut from release, because some of places are quite complete for a couple hundred feet and then just stop in a massive wall created by a flatten brush.  It may be that some work was actually destroyed in the process on the live servers in order to fit raids but still lives in archives (Hyjal, AQ, and ZG show signs of pretty serious but abandoned development, in the latter two cases behind where the instance portal lies).

[Tarami]

So we're back to saying that randomly filling in unoccupied space would be acceptable? I thought we had moved past that idea. That's a gain of absolutely nothing, because those that can fly have no real business on the old continents. That's just unnecessary tampering with working content.

[Sheepherder]

So we're back to saying that randomly filling in unoccupied space would be acceptable? I thought we had moved past that idea. That's a gain of absolutely nothing, because those that can fly have no real business on the old continents. That's just unnecessary tampering with working content.

You're going to have to explain to me how "filling in unoccupied space" is the least bit objectionable, because you've lost me.  As I recall, that's what expansion do, among other things, none of which are precluded by building in the old world.

Secondly, it does in fact need to get tampered with, because the old world has no actual purpose now except leveling, and that purpose is constantly being eroded as Blizzard needs to nerf leveling time in order to tack on their brand new big cockblocky leveling grind at the end without utterly fucking crushing the souls of everyone who rolls a brand new character because they're friend tossed them an invite.

[Tarami]

One guy populating an area equals randomly filling in, because you have no fine control over the collective result. Almost exclusively it gives a biased and uneven result with small hints of personal brilliance. The opposite is a team planning, conceptualizing and then implementing an area to a set standard. The latter takes a lot of time and effort.

[Paelos]

I'm beyond using time and effort as a reason not to do something anymore. The people who like the idea simply don't care. The main point now is that's it's stupid. The old world should be shot to shit. We've stomped it into the ground. The game is 5 years old and more popular than any MMO has ever been. The lore is pointless and there's no reason to hang around on some meaningless rock. Don't try to sell me that we can't just invent a new island in 20 minutes with some fun stuff on it that wouldn't be spread into a patchwork of odd redone zones.

[Sheepherder]

I'm beyond using time and effort as a reason not to do something anymore. The people who like the idea simply don't care. The main point now is that's it's stupid. The old world should be shot to shit. We've stomped it into the ground. The game is 5 years old and more popular than any MMO has ever been. The lore is pointless and there's no reason to hang around on some meaningless rock. Don't try to sell me that we can't just invent a new island in 20 minutes with some fun stuff on it that wouldn't be spread into a patchwork of odd redone zones.

What I'm getting from this is: "burn the old world to the motherfucking ground!"

It might just be the alcohol or the building of databases talking, but I like the concept of redoing it.  I fucking loved so much of the level 60 game (and hated a good portion of it, too), but it will never be the same, and pretending like it still has value as level 60 endgame content is just retarded.  However, pretending that we won't appreciate it if it's done well, without all the old circa 2004 cockstab, is going too far.  Really though, the way Blizzard has built their game something has to give, and I'd sooner it be the old world than them deciding we get to shoot out into space and kill more demons again, because the premise of that was pretty fucking stupid when they first came up with it.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Inventing a new island every expansion or yet another undiscovered continent....is fucking EQ stupid.

[Kirth]

Inventing a new island every expansion or yet another undiscovered continent....is fucking EQ stupid.

Azeroth has a moon right? 

[tmp]

Azeroth has a moon right?  

There's potential here

... for a realm-wide 'collect billion ore and shit so the gnomes can build giant cannon that can shoot all way to the moon' quest.

[Lantyssa]

Upon impact the characters should die, then find out there's no spirit healer on the moon.  It'd be hilarious.

[Jayce]

With the announcement expected today, the official site is now listing the Azeroth map as "outdated".

[Lakov_Sanite]

Cataclysm: So long and thanks for all the fish.

[Tebonas]

The lore is fucked up beyond reason by this. Isn't Thrall personally responsible for the Taurens being in the Horde? With him leaving, you don't even need the Assassination being public knowledge for them to say "Fuck those warmongers" and be neutral.

Good thing nobody plays for the Lore anymore. They would kill themself!