WoW expansion sneak peak -- any details?

[HaemishM]

BRING ON THE HORDE MANGINA!

[Shockeye]

Mangina + 10 more levels

[HaemishM]

Manginic mudflation 4tw?

[AcidCat]

Hmmm "alternate advancement points" - ?

Man, we really need an Italian translator here!

[Nevermore]

Well, the caption for the bottom left picture on the first page starts off "Lo scudo di questa guardia sembra sia state rubate a un qualche Gundam."  Which tells me that since the Horde is getting Blood Elves, the Alliance will be getting Gundams.

[SurfD]

Why would anyone be a tank then with Spellbreakers being able to resist magic and doing "fierce" melee damage?

Kind of hard to tank nasty mobs when you have a 25% or greater chance to resist every heal that yor priest throws at you.

[Merusk]

Manginic mudflation 4tw?

If you're speaking in terms of mangina, wouldn't it be MUFF-lation?

[AcidCat]

At 70 you can quest for a flying mount - only for use in this new Outland area though.

[Ironwood]

I never thought I'd say this :  Get Hrose over here.  I want this translation into Hrenglish asap.

[HaemishM]

Hrenglish

Le brillant!

[stray]

Funny how little he posts in this section these days actually.

[Ironwood]

You shouldn't cut your own audience figures...

[Fabricated]

Please god, don't let any of that be true. Fucking 50-100 Man raids? No lower level content outside of starting area changes?

Way to fuck that casual player demographic and assure server domination by catass uber-guilds.

[Hoax]

The wowguru notes are obviously fake as fuck but anyone who thinks that the focus of the expansion will not be catass catering uber raids is a fucking idiot of the highest order.  If I have to eat these words good for all you people still paying for the game I'll come join ya and eat a bunch of crow on the way.  But the chances of that happening are as slim as the new and unimproved lindsey lohan -or is she hot again? and if so why no pics  :-D.

[Paelos]

I was with the wowguru notes until they listed about 8 instances that were all 40 player MINIMUM and 100 player Max. I'm sorry but that would do absolutely nothing but kill the game for Blizzard seeing as it would add absolutely fucking zero for the casual player who makes up a large part of the ranks. Bumping things up to level 75? What? No Hero classes? No mention of pvp changes or siege weapons? Yeah this was written by a wannabe catass.

Retarded.

EDIT: And to add, although small usually, Blizzard has acknowledged the casual players with event and solo content in recent updates. If they are stupid enough to shoot themselves in the head with a catass-only expansion even though most players have never killed a boss in MC yet...Well they deserve to lose subs for being horrible businessmen.

[Viin]

I liked the version that gave me a choice between Vin Diesel/Alliance and Bruce Willis/Horde... ;)

You spelled it wrong, that's "Viin Diesel". Two i's.

[HRose]

As written on Corpnews. The infos I have on my website are finally 100% confirmed. Plus new details I was able to gather (again confirmed):

- The new Alliance race WON'T be revealed at BlizzCon and there are more than just rumors confirming it will be the Pandarens.

- Kharazan should be playable at BlizzCon but it's still undefined how it will be shaped out (could probably start as a 5-man with a second part for a raid of 20 or 40 players).

- The Blood Elves will be Mages, Warlocks and Warriors but it's undecided if either hunters or rogues

- Their starting zone will be Quel'Thalas (what is left), north of the Eastern Plaguelands and with a three-zones valley inbetween (Eversong Woods with the capital Silvermoon, Ghostland and a troll themed zone called Zul'Aman)

- About the live content, the opening of Silithus will be introduced by a live event that will require the collaboration of everyone and that will only happen once for each server. Behind the gates there will be a open zone tailored for 20 players (defined by Blizzard "casual hardcore") with a temple at the center with an instance that will be the biggest to date (two-three times Molten Core). The players will also get access to special mounts (insects) that will be only usable in the dungeon.

- The Outlands will be divided into fancy regions (like -rocks- Hellfire Peninsula, -forest- Zanga Marsh). Within Shadowmoon Valley there will be the Black Temple with the Illidian guy.

- The flying mount will be for level 70 players and after an epic quest chain. But only usable in the Outlands (floating isles).

- No new engine changes or features. The Blood Elves models seem to use 20% more polygons. Blizzard is also sperimenting with Specular Environmental Mapping.

- The atmospherical effects should arrive soon(TM) as a live patch.

- Also, by the time the expansion is out, the BGs should be finally linked between the servers to kill the queues.

And the funny excerpt:

Now, instead, what will be a surprise: the maximum level for the characters will be upped to 70. As he heard about this, ToSo (an editor) started immediately to weep that he wanted back the all exp he wasted doing quests when already 60 ("and of course! I'm not going to clean cat ass forever!" -ToSo), so if you had the same reaction you are going to take it in the booty. Although the Hero classes haven't been announced (Rob Pardo, Vice President of Game Design, said: "if we screw the hero classes we risk to fuck up the whole game") Blizzard didn't deny they'll be in the expansion but also didn't promise it. So we cannot really say much more.

[HRose]

Well, the caption for the bottom left picture on the first page starts off "Lo scudo di questa guardia sembra sia state rubate a un qualche Gundam."  Which tells me that since the Horde is getting Blood Elves, the Alliance will be getting Gundams.

LOL!

"The shield of this guard seems stolen right from a Gundam."

[MrHat]

Fuck that all.  Nothing in that expansion appeals to me except Panderans.

*sigh*

In Blizzard I trust.

[HRose]

Btw, someone has saved the first page?

I only read the other two.

[Fabricated]

Great, another mount quest? Awesome. Maybe this one will cost 10,000 Gold.

I'm still waiting for confirmation on the rest of the new content. Would it fucking kill Blizzard to add some more sub-60 content or 5-man instances? Can't they just quietly kill Furor and find someone who isn't retarded for raid design?

[Margalis]

Can I just say that the photoshopped fish creature on page 5 looks better than any model actually in the game?

As far as the expansion goes, why would an expansion add more low-level content. At this point people have played through the low levels, and even if they re-roll a character they most likely want to steamroll through those low levels as quickly as possible. This happens in basically every MMOPRG. Over time the player population ages (in terms of level) On day 1 the average age is level 1. Now the average age is probably 30-40 and rising. Adding content for level 5 players doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you either:

Expect players to re-roll and not race through the first levels. (Stop and enjoy the flowers - does not happen)
Or you expect to attract a significant number of new players. (The older a MMORPG gets, the less this happens)

It's my opinion that MMORPGs go into "retention mode" almost from day 1.

[Zetor]

Level cap to 70? Helloooo, soloing Onyxia!

kek



-- Z.

[stray]

Level cap to 70? Helloooo, soloing Onyxia!

kek



-- Z.

Hellooo, anything dropping from Onyxia meaning jack and shit 2-3 years from now 

[SurfD]

I call hoax on that feature list that included Northrend and Spellbreakersr a couple of reasons:

  The ordering of some of their instances seems screwed up.  Uldaman is supposed to be one of a set of 3 dungeons, called the Titan Vaults, the second being in Tanaris, and the third being in Northrend.  I find it rather hard to believe they would release Northrend without releasing the Tanaris Titan vault either befiore it, or at least at the same time as it. (not to mention that one of those proposed instances is a direct assault on the lair of one of the titans himself, and you would think that all 3 vaults would have been opened first, before you start encountering beings capable of bulding planets as a hobby.)

  Spellbreakers just doesent work for one simple reason: It makes no sense to give a new class to only ONE race.  every class in the game has at bare minimum 2 races that can use it in each faction.  Limiting spellbreakers to a single race is asking for imbalance trouble.

  50-100 man raids is Ludricous to even contemplate.  I am willing to bet that the vast majority of people in the game dont have PC's powerfull enough to run any kind of encounter where 100 people are throwing around massive amounts of spell effects without grinding to a halt.

  50/50 man alliance/horde Co-operative raids is even MORE ludicrous, since they would actually ahve to allow horde and alliance to communicate to ccomplish their goals, which is basicly totally against everything they have currently set out as far as faction relations goes.
 
  Finally, new starting areas for existing races that allow you to level your character to 12?!?  Thats an entire area roughly the size of Durotar.  Where would they find the space for that in Gnomegragen?  And what happens to the old Gnomegragen instance?    Besides, what would be the point. Somehow i dont think that they will change the existing lore for trolls/gnomes just to give them a new starting area.
 

[Ironwood]

Cheers Hrose.  Stuff to think on.

[Nevermore]

Here is a translation someone did of those Italian article pages OcellotJenkins linked to.  Proves that those WoWGuru notes were fake, since even a non-Italian speaker can see that the level limit is 'only' being raised to 70, not 75 like the fake notes say.

  Spellbreakers just doesent work for one simple reason: It makes no sense to give a new class to only ONE race.  every class in the game has at bare minimum 2 races that can use it in each faction.  Limiting spellbreakers to a single race is asking for imbalance trouble.
 

Actually, Spellbreakers were one of the more reasonable parts of those fake notes.  There is as class that's only available to one race per faction already: Druids.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, but Spellbreakers would ONLY be available to the Blood Elves. 

Hence, shite.

[MrHat]

Yeah, but Spellbreakers would ONLY be available to the Blood Elves. 

Hence, shite.

Read it again.  Draenor's too.

[trias_e]

*sigh*

Is it really necessary to put in yet another counter-mage class?


And raising the level cap to level 70 seems just idiotic to me.

First, if there are normal talent points for those post-60 levels, there will be total game inbalance.  I know people will be quite pissed at mages running around with 33 fire/28 arcane or 31 arcane/30 fire.  PoM + combustion, or Arcane Power + Fire Power and critical mass is just ridiculous.  Think PvP is already too much about 2 shotting people?  It will just get worse.

And then you trivialize all of the content that (sure, the catasses are burning through), the casual players won't even get to see all of before the expansion is released.  Now I don't mind this so much personally, but it seems like a waste of resources and dev time.  And time for all of the people who slogged through it all just to get hit by another massive stage of muflation that is sure to occur with level 70 equipment.  And is sure to unbalance the PvP even further.

[stray]

And raising the level cap to level 70 seems just idiotic to me.

First, if there are normal talent points for those post-60 levels, there will be total game inbalance.  I know people will be quite pissed at mages running around with 33 fire/28 arcane or 31 arcane/30 fire.  PoM + combustion, or Arcane Power + Fire Power and critical mass is just ridiculous.  Think PvP is already too much about 2 shotting people?  It will just get worse.

Workaround to that is Hero classes/trees, I guess.

[Dren]

I just figured they would stop rewarding talent points post level 60.  You'd basically get more hps, mana, or perhaps increase natural resistances, etc.  They might get creative and make addition racial or class specific advantages or just make the ones they have even stronger.

I don't see why they would have to be constrained to treat levels post 60 the same way they do pre 60.  Think SB where additional levels after 50 just help with peen-waving mostly, etc.

I would think Blizzard would be smart enough to recognize that adding more talents to capped characters would really throw their current balance way off.

Just increasing hps and mana would help PvE players surpass the current content and "feel" more powerful.

They can even start messing with the professions too.  Perhaps an additional 100 points could be added to each so more high end items are introduced to veteran players, etc.  You only get the 400 cap when you hit level 61 and it scales accordingly to 70.  There really are a number of things they could do.

[Fabricated]

Can I just say that the photoshopped fish creature on page 5 looks better than any model actually in the game?

As far as the expansion goes, why would an expansion add more low-level content. At this point people have played through the low levels, and even if they re-roll a character they most likely want to steamroll through those low levels as quickly as possible. This happens in basically every MMOPRG. Over time the player population ages (in terms of level) On day 1 the average age is level 1. Now the average age is probably 30-40 and rising. Adding content for level 5 players doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you either:

Expect players to re-roll and not race through the first levels. (Stop and enjoy the flowers - does not happen)
Or you expect to attract a significant number of new players. (The older a MMORPG gets, the less this happens)

It's my opinion that MMORPGs go into "retention mode" almost from day 1.

I was thinking more 25-50 content myself. Maybe another 2-3 instances. It's retarded to just ignore everyone who isn't level 55-60, sorry. A wide breadth of content will help lower the amount of people just steamrolling up to 50-60 for the high-end instances. The only reason I have my guildmates rape instances for my low level alts is that I've already done them legit 2-3 times at this point. I'd actually group at proper level ranges if I had some new shit to do from 25-50.

I find instances way more fun when you're grouped with friends or non-chuckleheads at the right level ranges, rather than watching a level 60 guildmate bend Arugal over again. "Damn, he didn't drop the belt again? Oh well, let's just run it again, I have 10 minutes to spare."

But hey, nothing but content for catasses is cool too.

[schild]

I am shocked and appalled that these are the changes Blizzard made - who could have ever seen this coming?!?!??!!

[SurfD]

Actually, one of the things i have always wondered about is why there isnt more variations between the different class/race combinations.

I mean, look at priests for example.  All races priests have special abilities that only that race gets (Dwarf: Fear ward, Elves: starshards, Undead: Vampyric Embrace, Etc).  Why arent some of the other classes diversified in similar manners?  Why are all mages or wariors exactly the same? I would think that an Undead mage and a Gnome mage would have some differnt tricks up their sleaves.