WoW expansion sneak peak -- any details?

[Llava]

Those racial abilities look Spellbreaker-y.  Nice.

Too bad Warriors don't use Mana, do they?

[stray]

No, they use Rage. That's why I like them.

*And yes, if anyone cares to recall, I said that I give up on the WoW forums.....But it doesn't hurt to speak of the one good idea that I thought Blizzard came up with.

[SurfD]

i believe it was actually mentioned that the racial will be different depending on if you are a Mana / Rage or Energy class, granting a boost to whichever one you happen to use.

[Ironwood]

Eh ?  That makes no fucking sense at all then...

[HaemishM]

God, Valor STILL is going to be the best looking warrior set. What the fuck are the people designing the high end armor models smoking?

The shredded remains of Games Workshop art books. 

[Venkman]

I imagine the Blood Elf starting area will be swamped to the point of slideshows on release.

Actually, in both Stresses and the first few days of Live, I didn't find the graphics performance took a nose dive from the number of players. I attribute that to the low tech engine maybe.

What did get fubar'd was the spawn. I imagine since they think it works they'll have the same series of Kill X of Y quests from 1 to 4/5, run to Inn, do same there after maybe finding an NPC with a side quest, and rinse repeat until you visit the Big City(tm). It's almost irrelevant what Alliance race they announce. Yes, Pandaren would make people giggle for a few minutes. But because there's no new classes, and a crap load of people at 60, and playing an Alliance race means eventually hitting the same alliance content 60-70%of the players already have (due to the imbalance), the new race better have some equally kick ass ability, like some +Spell/Weapon Penetration aura or it'll be less played the the first compelling Horde race to hit the game.

I didn't find Horde ugly. I found them boring. And it wasn't just about Badlands. It was about their story, or specifically, lack thereof. The Orc and Undead made sense. The Trolls and Tauren felt like add ons, the need for two more races to balance out Alliance while enusring good races are left for the inevitable expansion.

I don't claim that's the true root of the factional imbalance, but I would imagine it's a part.

[Lt.Dan]

It'd be cool if the Tauren decided to anull their alliance with the Horde and join the Alliance.  Every Tauren has to choose sides :)

Now that would be an expansion.

[MrHat]

I honestly felt that having a third neutral faction would've been the best thing.

Quest areas up till 20ish at which point they had choose sides.  Hero classes/races that were neutral in TFT could be included.

[Fabricated]

I still think it'd be nice if Blizz added a couple more lower level instances and more low-mid level crafted equipment, if for nothing but to keep the twinked-by-an-alt masses from looking like an army of clones with the same drops, and to make rolling non-twinked alts a bit more fun since you don't know the ins and outs of every instance (even if the effect is only for a short time).

[Margalis]

That was my impression of playing a troll. Everyone was talking about backstory and how alive the world is and such. But trolls can be summed up like this:

They are displaced, and speak like Rastafarians. The end.

That's the entire Troll "lore" right there. Apparently it's better as other races. The trolls really did feel like "ok we need to add another race but we are shipping in 2 weeks...somebody re-skin an Orc asap!"

[Fabricated]

That was my impression of playing a troll. Everyone was talking about backstory and how alive the world is and such. But trolls can be summed up like this:

They are displaced, and speak like Rastafarians. The end.

That's the entire Troll "lore" right there. Apparently it's better as other races. The trolls really did feel like "ok we need to add another race but we are shipping in 2 weeks...somebody re-skin an Orc asap!"

Bonus: No Capitol City.

[MrHat]

Second Bonus: 80% of the enemies in WoW have exactly the same skin as you.

[stray]

That was my impression of playing a troll. Everyone was talking about backstory and how alive the world is and such. But trolls can be summed up like this:

They are displaced, and speak like Rastafarians. The end.

That's the entire Troll "lore" right there. Apparently it's better as other races. The trolls really did feel like "ok we need to add another race but we are shipping in 2 weeks...somebody re-skin an Orc asap!"

They should have put them on the Eastern continent with the Undead. After all, that's where they originally come from, and the story could be more Troll centric there (instead of Orc centric in the barrens).

Another interesting thing that isn't really touched upon in game: Elves were originally Trolls (mutated by the Well or somethin'). There could be plenty of spin on that angle too, I think.

[Velorath]

They should have put them on the Eastern continent with the Undead. After all, that's where they originally come from, and the story could be more Troll centric there (instead of Orc centric in the barrens).

Another interesting thing that isn't really touched upon in game: Elves were originally Trolls (mutated by the Well or somethin'). There could be plenty of spin on that angle too, I think.

You going to quit the board as many times as you quit the game?   

[stray]

Right before you posted, I reminded myself of this.

Damn.

[edit] I kind of like the old WC games and the lore though. I'll pop in every so often for that at least. 

[Llava]

Huh.  I didn't know that the Elves used to be Trolls.

So it went:

Trolls
...I...
Night Elves
.I...............I...
Satyrs......High Born
................I...........I...
..............Naga.....Regular Elves
.................................I....
........................Blood Elves

Not even mentioning all the breeds of Trolls.

That's what inbreeding will get you, I suppose.

[Paelos]

Let's just put all the elves in a box and light it on fire.

[Llava]

That won't help.  They're trolls.  They'll come back to life.

Deal with it, MANGINA RULES THE EARTH.

(I should point out, just in case it's unclear, that, while I do genuinely like elves, I'm not sincerely rooting for the manginas among them.  Elves are misused.)

[Ironwood]

I'm confused.  Elves are trolls in WC ?  Doesn't that fly in the face of, well, everything ?

[stray]

I'm confused.  Elves are trolls in WC ?  Doesn't that fly in the face of, well, everything ?

Hmm? How? This is like eons before the actual WC stories. Primitive age shit. Or so I've heard/read somewhere.

[Ironwood]

Flies in the face of any other Tolkien like mythos I meant.

[stray]

Flies in the face of any other Tolkien like mythos I meant.

I applaud Metzen for that.  Tolkien derived Elves have been done a bit too much. Even the way he names a lot of Elves in Warcraft don't have the Tolkien sound or spelling.

"Malfurion Stormrage"

Definitely not Tolkien like (Though to be fair, it's still deritative. That sounds more like a Warhammer Dark Elf name).


[edit] Oh yeah, Llava, add another branch to that tree you've got there:

Cenarians

Besides Cenarius, of course, the stag like druids used to be Elves. They were the first Elf students of Cenarius, who later transformed. After them, came Malfurion (who only grew antlers).

[Simond]

http://www.wowwiki.com/Troll/Elf_Lineage
(Complete with pic)

Yes, naga, satyr, blood elves, harpies and night elves are all cousins and all decended from trolls.
Probably.

[Nevermore]

Here's a couple of interesting second hand notes from people who went to BlizzCon.  Note that both are long reads, and the second one links to the official WoW boards, though it's a server forum link.

Link 1

Link 2

The first link is longer but is interesting because it gets into some of the behind the scenes decisions the devs make.

[angry.bob]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

I like your thoughts and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[HaemishM]

Here's a couple of interesting second hand notes from people who went to BlizzCon.  Note that both are long reads, and the second one links to the official WoW boards, though it's a server forum link.

Link 1

I love this:

The 1% myth. They talked about how on the forums they are flamed for making “content” that only 1% of their player base is playing. According to blizzard, during the week… during peek hours… at any one time there is
500 Molten Core instances
1500 Onyxia instances
250 BWL instances
700 Zul’Gurub instances
All going at the same time. If you consider that this is all week long (for instance 800 MC on weeknights) that is far more than 1% of their gaming population.

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%.

Way to be a douchebag.

[Alkiera]

Actually, the concept of Elves as twisted trolls or vice-versa is not uncommon in fantasy stuff.  I believe Shadowbane's lore had a similar thing.  As have several books I've read.  That Blizard should do the same thing, then, is not shocking.

Alkiera

[Ironwood]

Actually, the concept of Elves as twisted trolls or vice-versa is not uncommon in fantasy stuff.  I believe Shadowbane's lore had a similar thing.  As have several books I've read.  That Blizard should do the same thing, then, is not shocking.

Alkiera

Vice-versa is usually the norm.  It's easier, thematically, to believe someone got corrupted than redeemed.

[Merusk]

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.

[Furiously]

I just can't get excited about an expansion that is 9 months away.

[Zane0]

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.

[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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[Shockeye]

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.

Which means that if they pulled out all the raid shit, they'd still have over 3 million people playing.