WoW expansion sneak peak -- any details?

[XMackenzie]

Isn't the rule of thumb that peak populations are roughly 20% of a games total subscriber base?  As such total online users at peak time would be roughly 700K so that 118K ends up as roughly 17% (nominally 1/6th) which is actually a decent chunk of population.

The other thing (and I'm banking on this) is that the high-end content of today is the casual content of tommorrow.  Level 70 - 15 man raid through MC sounds a lot more appealing to me than mucking about in there with 39 of my closest friends right now.  The ubers can do all the bug testing and whatnot (and bitching too) for those zones right now and hopefully most of the kinks will be sorted out by the time my "family" guild or PUG group gets in there.

[Nevermore]

It seems like much more than 17% of the new content that goes in is geared towards that 17% of raiders, though.  What about the 83% that makes up the rest of us?

[HaemishM]

It seems like much more than 17% of the new content that goes in is geared towards that 17% of raiders, though.  What about the 83% that makes up the rest of us?

That's my point. Most of the new content being put in and worked on is raid content, which no matter how much you slice the numbers, isn't what the majority of players are doing. The numbers he threw out there about the number of instances being up each night are misleading. Think about how many asstons of servers there are and how many asstons of people at that. If each server has 2000-3000 people online every night, and only 500 people are raiding, that's a lot less than half or a third of the people playing. And yet most of the development time to new content is focused on those 500 people in exclusion of the other people.

I'd rather see them focusing on more 10 and 20 man raids if they have to raid, as well as making some raids for content between 30 and 55.

[SurfD]

Corruption and Redemption assumes some sort of Good Vs Evil or other kind of morality framework to the world.  Tolkien had this, so the elves were 'corrupted'. Blizzard's story doesn't frame either side as good or evil, so no such distinction would exsist.  Yeah, it's different so it seems weird, but it's nice to not have ALL the followings of the traditional Tolkienesque world.

Course, just about all trolls in the WoW world are actually evil.  The ones siding with the Horde are a splinter faction.

Where do you get that idea?  Primitive and Violent, with rather protective Tribal instincts maybe, but evil would be streatching it quite a bit.  About the only really "evil" trolls out there would be the ones who willing worship Hakkar as a god and are trying to bring him back.  The rest are just the lost and scattered Tribes of what used to be a mighty civilization that dominated the world way back in the days of yore.

I mean, to call the trolls evil would be to call the Aztecs or Mayans evil.

[MrHat]

Haemish, I watched some interviews with Dabiri and he does say that they're focusing more on small raids (10-15-20) because that's what the majority of the population wants.  His example was that a druid in a 40 man raid watches one bar and hits one button, but a druid in a 15 man raid gets to change forms a few times, cast spells and heals.  More epic.

15 man raid is nice.

[SurfD]

It seems like much more than 17% of the new content that goes in is geared towards that 17% of raiders, though.  What about the 83% that makes up the rest of us?

That's my point. Most of the new content being put in and worked on is raid content, which no matter how much you slice the numbers, isn't what the majority of players are doing. The numbers he threw out there about the number of instances being up each night are misleading. Think about how many asstons of servers there are and how many asstons of people at that. If each server has 2000-3000 people online every night, and only 500 people are raiding, that's a lot less than half or a third of the people playing. And yet most of the development time to new content is focused on those 500 people in exclusion of the other people.

I'd rather see them focusing on more 10 and 20 man raids if they have to raid, as well as making some raids for content between 30 and 55.

The problem with that is, how usefull will it be in the end run?  Raid content is the "end game".  After you hit 60, if you arent Raiding, there isnt a lot to do in the game other then grind faction with BG Factions or NPC Factions (Argent Dawn/cenarian circle/Firbolgs/etc) or run endless runs of Scholo/Strath/Ubrs/Diremaul

yes, another couple o instances betweeen level 20 and 40 might be nice, but what they really need is a few more 5-20 man instances, in similar difficulty to old school Strath, available for the 50-60 crowd.

Thing is, level 1-30 in the game are rather a joke (i had a level 31 shaman alt, total time played, 2 days).  Thats around a week or so of moderate gameing.  The place the game really picks up is level 35+, where 80% of the world is now open to your character.

Really, there is a good reason that most of the new content is for "high end" players. Its because many (perhaps a majority) of the players ARE high end.  If you play on a high population server, pick any character under level 30 and ask them if they are an alt.  chances are, the answer is yes.

I dont consider myself a hardcore player.  I dont play for obscene amounts of time in a week or whatever.  I have owned the game since about 2 weeks after retail.    I have:

a 45 mage on the first server I chose (Earthen Ring, i should probably give away all my shit, since i will likely never go back)
a 60 mage, in full Arcanist, with a bunch of other MC epics and Neitherwind Boots on Tichondrious
a 60 druid alt in assorted Strath/Scholo gear i use for Herbalism/Alchemy
and have been through about 20 alts, some deleted, some on long aborted f13 guild servers, in various places between level 10 and 30

The leveling curve in this game is pretty shallow, low end content (anything pre 30-40) would really only serve as maybe a minor point of interest on the road to 45+, and (in the case of Gnomegragen) probably be forgotten or skipped alltogether. I mean, many people only go to gnomegragen for the engineering stuff.

And lets not forget, the first time a new level 20 instance comes out, people will just take their level 50+ main through it to learn the lay of the land anyhow.

[El Gallo]

A 20 hour instance? You've got to be fucking kidding me. Science, hurry up and invent a time machine so I can go back in time and grudge-rape Tigole and Furor's mothers until they're knocked up with my seed instead of whatever the fuck produced those two cunts who think shiting into a shoebox for a day is big fun.

Deep breaths.  It's supposedly a miltiwinged instance a la Scarlet Monestary or Dire Maul.  Not intended to be done all at once.

[Simond]

Corruption and Redemption assumes some sort of Good Vs Evil or other kind of morality framework to the world.  Tolkien had this, so the elves were 'corrupted'. Blizzard's story doesn't frame either side as good or evil, so no such distinction would exsist.  Yeah, it's different so it seems weird, but it's nice to not have ALL the followings of the traditional Tolkienesque world.

There's also the point that technically, in the Warcraft universe, the shamanistic/voodoo trolls that became the original night elves were corrupted by the arcane magic of the Well (being that, generally, spiritual magic = good, and arcane magic = demons = bad in WoW), and that a demigod had to teach the night elves to go back to using nature/spirit/faith-based magic otherwise the Highbourne (proto-high elves) were going to welcome the demons into Azeroth.


(My main in WoW is a troll shaman, and I like annoying NEs on the RP forums while staying in character. That's my excuse for knowing this ;))

[Llava]

Corruption and Redemption assumes some sort of Good Vs Evil or other kind of morality framework to the world.  Tolkien had this, so the elves were 'corrupted'. Blizzard's story doesn't frame either side as good or evil, so no such distinction would exsist.  Yeah, it's different so it seems weird, but it's nice to not have ALL the followings of the traditional Tolkienesque world.

Course, just about all trolls in the WoW world are actually evil.  The ones siding with the Horde are a splinter faction.

Where do you get that idea?  Primitive and Violent, with rather protective Tribal instincts maybe, but evil would be streatching it quite a bit.  About the only really "evil" trolls out there would be the ones who willing worship Hakkar as a god and are trying to bring him back.  The rest are just the lost and scattered Tribes of what used to be a mighty civilization that dominated the world way back in the days of yore.

I mean, to call the trolls evil would be to call the Aztecs or Mayans evil.

The vicious Jungle Trolls, who populate the numerous islands of the South Seas, are renowned for their cruelty and dark mysticism. Barbarous and superstitious, the wily Trolls carry a seething hatred for all other races.

Cruelty and dark mysticism, along with "seething hatred" go a bit farther than primitive.

Maybe not EVIL, but these certainly aren't good guys.

[stray]

Well, I think the seething hatred pertains to the invasive High Elves and Humans who, in the Trolls' minds, were the "evil" ones. They only fought for what they thought was theirs. It's OK to have seething hatred for invaders, y'know? And it's OK for Elves and Humans to consider space wasting, "selfish" Trolls to be "evil" if they want to as well. 

The dark mysticism part doesn't pertain to all of them, I think. Just like it doesn't pertain to all Humans or Orcs for having warlocks around (which is a discipline that originated with the Burning Legion).

[Merusk]

Maybe not EVIL, but these certainly aren't good guys.

There are no 'good guys' in Warcraft, really. Which was my point.  Blizzard's lore writers really bought into the 'shades of grey' theory of relative morality.

[Malathor]

The other thing (and I'm banking on this) is that the high-end content of today is the casual content of tommorrow.  Level 70 - 15 man raid through MC sounds a lot more appealing to me than mucking about in there with 39 of my closest friends right now.  The ubers can do all the bug testing and whatnot (and bitching too) for those zones right now and hopefully most of the kinks will be sorted out by the time my "family" guild or PUG group gets in there.

It's already happening. Onyxia was 10-manned tonight on Mal'ganis, Kazzak has been downed with 12, Azurgos 10. Level 70s will be able to do those with single groups, and MC with 10. All the raid content filters down, and usually much faster than people suppose is possible.

[stray]

I like the way this thread is going.

It's the Lore thread!

No wait, it's the Catass to 70 thread!

No wait, it's the Lore thread again!

[Rasix]

Didn't you quit the WoW forum or did the temptation of the new expansion drive you to resub?

[stray]

Didn't you quit the WoW forum or did the temptation of the new expansion drive you to resub?

I'm here for the Lore thread.

[Llava]

Well, I think the seething hatred pertains to the invasive High Elves and Humans who, in the Trolls' minds, were the "evil" ones. They only fought for what they thought was theirs.

Then why do they attack everything on sight, including orcs and other Trolls not of their faction?

This is a group that either takes xenophobia as far as it goes or just really likes killin' stuff.

I suppose I mostly agree with "Merusk".  There are some factions which are just plain evil (The Scourge, the Burning Legion) and some factions that are always good (the Paladins- except Arthas, who doesn't count because that's like saying Jedi aren't goodguys because Anakin was evil), but for most of the playable factions even the most evil (the Forsaken) have some sort of redeeming quality.

But I dunno.  Most of the time the Trolls have been portrayed, they're bloodthirsty, cruel, and seem to enjoy mayhem for mayhem's sake.  If I recall, they joined the Horde in Warcraft II (when it was still dominated by the Burning Legion) out of free will because they wanted to join in the carnage- that was the general troll population, not the splinter faction that stands with the Horde now.  They're not necessarily mindless killing machines, but they seem about as good as ogres- which is not very.  In fact, the ogres are a good comparison.  They're big, cruel, and brutal.  Just because they don't have some sort of world domination plan doesn't mean they're not evil.  They're just disorganized evil.

The sad part is, I like the Night Elves better after thinking that they come from that.  They always were too fluffy.

[stray]

Point conceded. I'd like to defend the "goodness" of barbarism actually, but that's probably out of the scope of this discussion.

Besides, every other post here needs to be about Lore, with a second discussion about Instances and Catassing in between. So it's time to make room, I guess.

[Llava]

Huh.  Why did I put Merusk in quotes?  I must be tired.

Anyways- I'm all for the noble savage type of thing.  Hell, the Horde has that in spades.  That's what the orcs are all about.  And even they look at most groups of trolls and go "Those guys are fucked up."  I think it's more than just plain barbarism.  Reading about the Trolls in the lore, I imagine stuff like ritual sacrifices, torture, etc.  Just going apeshit and killing the things that are a threat to them isn't enough for me to call 'em evil.  Though this stuff hasn't really been diagramed out for us- it's really hard to say just what the Trolls do in their spare time, when they're not wandering aimlessly around Strangethorn Vale.

I think it comes down largely to what pops into your mind when you read the description "cruelty and dark mysticism".

[Phred]

Yeah, at 40 people per instance, that's about 118,000 people for that night. Which at 3.5 million accounts is actually 3% of the player base. So instead of designing asstons of content for 1%, they are designing it for 3%.

Mm, although this data is interesting, it doesn't give a very good picture of how many people actually raid, in total.  There are countless more on top of this figure who are waiting for their instance timer to reset, or who didn't log on that night, or are waiting for a spot to open, or whatever.  I can't even begin to guess how many extra people that represents. 

The only thing this figure actually demonstrates is that about 3% of the game's population is immediately raiding, at peak times.

You can juggle that figure by probably a good 10% or more and it still doesn't change the fact that the majority of the population does not raid.

First of all whoever quoted them on this neglected to mention the figures were for US servers only, while 3 million subscribers is world wide. Secondly, do you really think every active subscription plays every night?

[stray]

That's what the orcs are all about.  And even they look at most groups of trolls and go "Those guys are fucked up." 

As for the Orcs, if you recall, they were originally shamanistic and peaceful. Much like Taurens. Their "savage" period in the early WC games was different than that of the trolls, with much more evil involved. It wasn't simple barbarism -- The Orcs were tainted and controlled by the Legion.

[Ironwood]

Fucking Aztecs.

[SurfD]

The other thing (and I'm banking on this) is that the high-end content of today is the casual content of tommorrow.  Level 70 - 15 man raid through MC sounds a lot more appealing to me than mucking about in there with 39 of my closest friends right now.  The ubers can do all the bug testing and whatnot (and bitching too) for those zones right now and hopefully most of the kinks will be sorted out by the time my "family" guild or PUG group gets in there.

It's already happening. Onyxia was 10-manned tonight on Mal'ganis, Kazzak has been downed with 12, Azurgos 10. Level 70s will be able to do those with single groups, and MC with 10. All the raid content filters down, and usually much faster than people suppose is possible.

How the FUCK do you 12 man Kazzak when a moderately organised 40 man raid can WIPE on him without any outside interferance?.  I have been to kazzak, and unless he was bugged to hell and back there is absolutely no way a 12 man raid could even remotely approach the DPS nessicary to kill kazzak before he goes "supreme" and shadowbolts their ass into the ground.

Azuregos (only on a PvE server), and Onyxia, possibly doable, but I would have to see it FRAPSed to believe it.  I simply dont know how you would avoid running out of mana on your healers, not to mention the Welp adds in Ony.

[XMackenzie]

The guys who 10-manned Onyoxia had the following make-up:

(The raw statistics, for the curious: 2 warriors, 2 priests, 2 shamans, 2 druids, 2 hunters. A lot of consumables. No buffs from other classes -- no AI, no soulstones, nothing we couldn't obtain given our class composition. 42 minutes of combat. No out of combat rezzing. One hell of a rush. Size of raw uncompressed FRAPS'd avi: 31.2 gigabytes. Edited video coming soon.)

Was also noted that they're all geared up to the teeth in BWL loot and have killed Onyoxia 28+ times prior - so they could do the encounter in their sleep.

[Zane0]

Our guild got Kazzak to 3% before he went supreme with a spontaneous group of 20 people about a month ago; PvE server, of course. I imagine two or three well-geared 'n balanced heavy damage teams with a few great healers and a decurser on the ball could get him without much trouble.

[cevik]

It seems like much more than 17% of the new content that goes in is geared towards that 17% of raiders, though.  What about the 83% that makes up the rest of us?

That's 17% of the online players on any given night, which is entirely different than 17% of the total playing population.  Are you being pendantic on purpose and just hoping people won't see the holes in your fallacy or are you really this bad at math?

[Shockeye]

It seems like much more than 17% of the new content that goes in is geared towards that 17% of raiders, though.  What about the 83% that makes up the rest of us?

That's 17% of the online players on any given night, which is entirely different than 17% of the total playing population.  Are you being pendantic on purpose and just hoping people won't see the holes in your fallacy or are you really this bad at math?

That 17% on any given night may be much lower when stacked against total population or much higher. All this is a rough estimate but we can safely say the majority of players are not raiding.

[Nevermore]

It seems like much more than 17% of the new content that goes in is geared towards that 17% of raiders, though.  What about the 83% that makes up the rest of us?

That's 17% of the online players on any given night, which is entirely different than 17% of the total playing population.  Are you being pendantic on purpose and just hoping people won't see the holes in your fallacy or are you really this bad at math?

And?  The point you've apparently missed is: at any given time, there are far more people not raiding that raiding.  Blizzard is focusing a disproportionate amount of new content to what is, at any given time, a minority of players.  To put it another way, if it were determined that roughly 1% of people are fishing at any given time, but that around 90% of the people have fished, does that mean a majority of new content should be geared towards fishing?  What exactly is your point, anyway?

[Zane0]

Alright, this picture from the first link seems to prove that the numbers are for NA alone.  There was a typo, obviously- looks like there were only 150 Onyxia instances up, and one has to take into account that ZG is a 20-man instance, not a 40-man one.

It seems that many of these instances aren't completely filled, because the bracketed figures add to 33,500, whereas if these instances were at full capacity they would add to 50,000.  We'll have to assume Blizzard knows how to do math, and that there's more to these figures than straight multiplication.  What are the exact WoW numbers in NA?  Bruce's heretical site mentions a figure of 750,000 boxes sold that Blizzard released, so between new subscribers and cancellations, this is a decent approximation(?) 

We're using the assumption that 20% of the total subscribers are online at peak time, so about 150,000 players should be online in NA at prime, yes? 

This means that 33,500 players out of 150,000 are in raid instances at prime-time- 22% of the population.  Now, the harder part is figuring out exactly how many raiders this snapshot is leaving out.  My guild for instance, has about 130 unique accounts, and we never have more than 70 online.  Other raid guilds are much smaller though, and rely on a dedicated base- say, 50 or 60 unique accounts, though I really have no idea. 

How to generalize this to create an overall picture?  Not possible without more data; I'm not confident enough to make any claims about exactly how many people go to raid instances out of the total population.  It does seem, however, that a significant percentage of prime-time players do instance raids.  How to account for those players who aren't likely to be on at prime-time, who play irregularly?  I dunno, but you have to question how much any type of new content will appeal to them, when they're not likely to have progressed through the existing stuff.

[Righ]

How the FUCK do you 12 man Kazzak when a moderately organised 40 man raid can WIPE on him without any outside interferance?.  I have been to kazzak, and unless he was bugged to hell and back there is absolutely no way a 12 man raid could even remotely approach the DPS nessicary to kill kazzak before he goes "supreme" and shadowbolts their ass into the ground.

There's just three things needed to kill Kazzak - tank him, keep everybody alive and kill him very fast. Any moderately organised 40 man pickup can kill Kazzak, even while most of them are wearing green junk. The PUG failures usually come because people die because of a lack of decursing, leave pets or totems out or some wanker wanders into the encounter area. The tank/heal bit is not a problem, he's actually a pussy compared to MC mobs. With only 12 people to decurse, you dont need many decursers. That just leaves the DPS. We're talking about a well selected group of 12, wearing 8/8 tier 2 armor and having the best weapons possible. So they're carrying a heap of shadow resist, are protected with shadow resist from a priest and supped demonslaying potions. Bandages will keep them healthy so long as they get decursed, now they just have to use their crossbows and over 1500 ranged attack power and he's dead in around 2 minutes 15. So you can do him with 10. I have to assume they don't all have close to full tier 2 and their top notch weapons yet.

[HaemishM]

This means that 33,500 players out of 150,000 are in raid instances at prime-time- 22% of the population.  Now, the harder part is figuring out exactly how many raiders this snapshot is leaving out.  My guild for instance, has about 130 unique accounts, and we never have more than 70 online.  Other raid guilds are much smaller though, and rely on a dedicated base- say, 50 or 60 unique accounts, though I really have no idea. 

How to generalize this to create an overall picture?  Not possible without more data; I'm not confident enough to make any claims about exactly how many people go to raid instances out of the total population.  It does seem, however, that a significant percentage of prime-time players do instance raids.  How to account for those players who aren't likely to be on at prime-time, who play irregularly?  I dunno, but you have to question how much any type of new content will appeal to them, when they're not likely to have progressed through the existing stuff.

Ok, I'll accept that. BTW, the released figures for US WoW subs is about 1.5 million, I think. So if 33,500 out of 1.5 million are raiding (and let's take the snapshot of just one night) in one night, it doesn't matter how many are generally on each night. If your guild is doing a raid, chances are you get online and do the raid. There are more guild raids than pickup raids. Sure, more numbers would help, like the number of people who have EVER raided.

But even if we take your 22% of the population figure, hell, even if we say another 10% on top of that could be raiding, for a whopping 32% of the player base raiding, that's still not a majority of the players. And if you look at the patch notes recently and the expansion content, well, most of the new content added is pure raid stuff, much of it either 20 or 40 man instances. That equals lots of development time for something 60% of your playerbase isn't doing.

But more relevant would be the numbers they aren't telling us, such as how many people have EVER raided, how many have raided less than 5 times, etc.

[Nevermore]

But even if we take your 22% of the population figure, hell, even if we say another 10% on top of that could be raiding, for a whopping 32% of the player base raiding, that's still not a majority of the players. And if you look at the patch notes recently and the expansion content, well, most of the new content added is pure raid stuff, much of it either 20 or 40 man instances. That equals lots of development time for something 60% of your playerbase isn't doing.

Exactly.  Even at 33% of people raiding, that means for every one person raiding, there's two who aren't.  It doesn't matter if either or both of those two people have raided before or will raid again.  Give them something more to do while they aren't raiding.   That's the part that's lacking in Blizzard's content updates.

But more relevant would be the numbers they aren't telling us, such as how many people have EVER raided, how many have raided less than 5 times, etc.

Also, how many of all those people raiding would rather do non-raid content if given a choice?  Can't really be answered without some kind of poll.

[Hoax]

Well until they add in BG's of all servers being linked I dont see what other kind of content you want them to add?

They are locked into the same power creep as EQ, the raids will get bigger, and badder and you MUST participate because eventually everything that is non-raid orientated will be years old.  Power creep will be rampent, you better just hope Blizz comes up with a better system then flagging (which they will not, in fact I swear it sounded like you needed to beat some raids to get to the other better raids from the notes).  Soon players who join WoW will be completely fucked, you can't get into a good guild without being geared in top tier raid gear and you can't get top tier raid gear without a good guild.

I for one can't wait to see what the grind will be four years from now when they add hero levels.  We've been down this path before folks, just because they have some pvp and the game looks and plays better then EQ1 doesn't change the fact that this is the exact same fucking "endgame" formula.  I'll see you guys in a few years when you wake up and realize your hero class with maxed "hero levels and hero talents" an armored epic mount, flagged for all raid zones and equipped with the most recent xpack's best weapons/armor hasn't done anything but raid to get the DKP to get the latest best weapons/armor for 1+ years.

[HaemishM]

Well until they add in BG's of all servers being linked I dont see what other kind of content you want them to add?

5 and 10 man type raids. More instance stuff for levels 30-55, so those who have leveled to 60 can make an alt and have new content to see. Fuck it, give me 5 and 10 man battlegrounds that are HIGHLY mission-centric, such as the groups have to go behind enemy lines Dirty Dozen style to take out something or other, while another group has to stop them.

You know, things that don't require huge guilds or asstons of grabassing pickup retards to accomplish.

[Righ]

Also, how many of all those people raiding would rather do non-raid content if given a choice?  Can't really be answered without some kind of poll.

Actually that can't really be answered without some kind of non-raid content that they havent done to death. The best patched content that WoW has had to date was Dire Maul.

(I raid Molten Core & Onyxia every week)

[Rasix]

They are locked into the same power creep as EQ, the raids will get bigger, and badder and you MUST participate because eventually everything that is non-raid orientated will be years old.  Power creep will be rampent, you better just hope Blizz comes up with a better system then flagging (which they will not, in fact I swear it sounded like you needed to beat some raids to get to the other better raids from the notes).  Soon players who join WoW will be completely fucked, you can't get into a good guild without being geared in top tier raid gear and you can't get top tier raid gear without a good guild.

Yep, and unless they find someway to address this, even my shaman in full blue gear (more than half of the shaman set stuff), will be an anachronistic, useless turd by the time the expansion hits.  Of course, compared to folk with MC/BWL/Ony gear, he really already is (kinda).

What incentive is there to come back if the only path to progression and relevance is the same stuff you quit the game over?  My guess is that they'll put in another Dire Maul type dungeon with loot that outpaces Molten Core gear and touches upon the power of BWL gear.  Especially if this is a 60-65 or a 65-70 instance.  If just pray they're not banking on people new to the game progressing through the same path as the current raid folk or assuming that everyone in the entire game will have turned to the darkside and embraced "the raid".  Zul'whatever could be one such bridge, but even then, a 20 person raid might still be outside a lot of people's comfort area.

I really hope they learned that Dire Maul type dungeons are really a lot more fun that what they had before.  Re-slogging through 20+ runs of Strath/Scholo/LBRS clones would be mega-ass.

Cliff notes: rambling aside, power creep is probably my #1 concern for ever returning to WoW.