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New World of Warcraft Expansion reveal confirmed for Gamescom

A 'free' expansion would be unprecedented for blizzard and they're not going to give away potentially 5-7m in boxed copy sales at any price point.

they DID really quickly dump Draenor though. I said that comment because most people would see 6.2 and assume there have been two major patches..but 6.1 really was a joke of a patch and should've been a minor bump. It was wrong of Blizz to market 6.1 as such a big thing.



They've said they wanted to release yearly expansions, and players rightfully thought that the expansions would be as content rich as they have been. If the expansion is full price(have little doubt it will be), we'll have officially entered the "Milk the customers dry" phase.
 
I expect another price increase and a new, even more expensive "service" like the level 90 boost. Just because.
 
Considering that I have read a lot of negative things about every expansion released since Wrath, I wouldn't expect much.

MoP was their best and most complete expansion yet. Many just dismissed it because "Kung Fu Panda" (which is an awesome movie, so I don't see the negative there anyway).
 
That seems pretty scummy. Instead of trying to fix WoD with free content patches they want to release another 45€ expansion after one (1!) content patch for WoD? That's their plan to fight dwindling subscriber numbers?
 
Phoning up Spatula:

Let's recap for a moment here.

They have 500 demo stations (which is comically astronomical), announced their huge presence back in April in which they stated they have new content showing for five different games, have had six week-long contests fan contest to hype their Gamescom event, have a dedicated webpage for their Gamescom presence, and seem to have a hour long livestreamed press conference where they've invited everyone from major websites to small fansites.

Despite this, there seem to be people who aren't expecting a major announcement.
Blizzard has exclusively announced WoW expansions at Blizzcon probably because WoW is their biggest draw there. Outside of release dates, it's all been Blizzcon. Based on precedent alone you can with almost certainty say no WoW expansion will be announced. Reaper of Souls was announced at Gamescon but it's not WoW, it doesn't fill Blizzcon.

Hearthstone was a smaller project so the release place is understanding. Curse of Naxxaramas and Molten Core were announced at PAX as well. Gnomes vs Goblins was a Blizzcon announcement. Grand Tournament? It gets it own event.

I can see Starcraft II and Diablo 3 getting expansion announcements at other events now (and before) because they simply don't have a big enough following for a lot of people to care. Blizzard's RoS midnight launch may be the last big event for Diablo.

What this all means is Blizzard's current announcements (based on their previous big ones) seem to imply a Blizzcon announcement. They could pull a 180 and announce it at Gamescon but their history says no. I would put an expansion announcement lowest (besides F2P) for gamescon. I would not be surprised if they announced a 6.3. Honest to God, I would not be.

Regarding major announcements, Blizzard says every thing is major like an additional Sanctum, a shipyard, or updated character models.
 
I feel that they are releasing the expansions so soon to keep the game alive.
I remember between Bc and wlk and wlk and cata there were a lot of patches opening new dungeons and raids.
But like I said I have not play the game in a lot of time so I really don't know how the game is now.
The problem is that there's much less content in this expansion. I wouldn't say I was casual but I'm not a hardcore raider and this expansion just made me bored at level cap. There's 3 raids total and 2 were complete at launch (1 held back to space out content). There's no reason to do dungeons after you're geared for raids either, so its either LFR or sit in Garrison for many.
 
I'm pretty sure Blizzard had said recently that they're switching to a (roughly) one-expansion-per-year business model from now on, so this doesn't surprise me at all.

Yep. It's good to be honest, but imo, a monthly subscription was okay, but if i also have to buy an expansion every year ? mmh...
 
Gemüsepizza;173378754 said:
That seems pretty scummy. Instead of trying to fix WoD with free content patches they want to release another 45€ expansion after one (1!) content patch for WoD? That's their plan to fight dwindling subscriber numbers?
They had their chance to fix things but they fumbled the ball. People are tired of Draenor and want to get out. I just hope it doesn't cost $50!
 
Gemüsepizza;173378754 said:
That seems pretty scummy. Instead of trying to fix WoD with free content patches they want to release another 45€ expansion after one (1!) content patch for WoD? That's their plan to fight dwindling subscriber numbers?

WoD is unfixable without removing the idea that the whole expansion was built around.
 
It does kinda seem like they're just looking to get beyond WoD ASAP. And maybe it's for the best. :(

To be fair, they said quite a while ago they were starting parallel development teams to make expansion packs in order to try and get as close to annual as possible.
 
I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this is the most important expansion since BC. The game won't recover from another bad expansion. They need to knock it out of the park.
 
They've said they wanted to release yearly expansions, and players rightfully thought that the expansions would be as content rich as they have been. If the expansion is full price(have little doubt it will be), we'll have officially entered the "Milk the customers dry" phase.

I would be surprised if they knock the expansion price down to 40. then again, I don't think Draenor's high price really stifled many buyers at release (I don't have numbers to back this up though).

I know, personally, Draenor's high price turned me off of my usually expansion-return to WoW.

To be fair, they said quite a while ago they were starting parallel development teams to make expansion packs in order to try and get as close to annual as possible.

Haven't they been doing this parallel team thing since WotLK/Cata? (which backs up the pattern of Good Xpac/Bad Xpac/Good Xpac, which means this next one should be good...?)
 
- A return to 4- and 5-figure life totals, and 3- and 4-figure damage totals
- The return of rock, paper, scissors class balancing
- The removal of high stamina and resilience-like stats
- Linear loot progression versus the exponential itemization we've seen for the last decade since Burning Crusade.

Every single expansion has made the game less appealing to me, and I find unofficial vanilla servers much more enjoyable than anything officially released by Acti-Blizz. There's almost nothing they could do in this expansion that would even make me consider returning.
 
Warlords of Draenor was the weakest in terms of actual content.

This didn't become clear to me till I hit 100, as a solo player who generally just did dailies or ran dungeon finder at endgame, there just wasn't much to do. I liked the garrison at first, but then it just felt like busywork and a manufactured reason to log in each day. And the Iron Horde storyline just, meh, not very interesting.

I'm curious if there is anything Blizzard can do to get my interest again, this may be the first expansion I don't play. The game's more than ten years old, the overall fatigue is strong at this point.
 
With how much I disliked WoD I'm trying to think about how they could change things to really bring me back to WoW after having recently tried, and enjoyed, both Final Fantasy XIV and Guild Wars 2. I'm really not too sure. I still like the feel of the combat in WoW more than the others but since I'm not a serious raider I'm not sure what they could introduce or mix up to make me care about working towards other goals in the game. I'm sure I'll get the next expansion and hit the level cap but hopefully there's something that keeps my attention beyond that.
 
Every expansion feels like a reset. Everything you built becomes pretty much useless because they figured that instead of a normal increase in stats to the new items, a huge gap is needed so your old end game items become worse than the new uncommon greenies at the same level!

Because that's why i was wasting all my time in dungeons and end game raids. Because i like all my game time being wiped away like this and start over at the same point as any newcomer, every time a new expansion comes along. So i stopped playing after BC.
 
so this is what blizzard has been spending their time on instead of making content patches for WoD..... what a joke
 
To be fair, they said quite a while ago they were starting parallel development teams to make expansion packs in order to try and get as close to annual as possible.

Yeah because patch 5.4 and no content released for nearly 11 months before WoD was released was the dumbest thing they could do. No new content for that long and every year is better than 2 years of waiting.
 
It does kinda seem like they're just looking to get beyond WoD ASAP. And maybe it's for the best. :(

It is for the best.
Everything is LITERALLY black/brown and red all throughout their raid designs.
It is like WoD artists forgot that other color exists.

And they probably realizing right now that the garrison is killing their playerbase faster than gardening.
The facebook farmville concept destroys any incentive to play when the player realizes this are all chores, but the chores are a requirement to do them before you can set out to do anything else unless you want to forgo bonus gold/items.
 
Please no time travelling bullshit. And some factions taking part in the story other than humans vs orsc would be nice.
 
Every expansion feels like a reset. Everything you built becomes pretty much useless because they figured that instead of a normal increase in stats to the new items, a huge gap is needed so your old end game items become worse than the new uncommon greenies at the same level!

So i stopped playing after BC.

Ehh, to be fair, if you have the best gear from the final raid of an expansion, you won't be replacing it until you hit the next expansion's level cap.
 
wow, they really are pushing yearly expansions. Damn Sub fees and now $40 a year........fucking A. If its quality like expansions, I do not mind....but if its anything like WoD they can keep it.
 
I have a feeling that the release cycle will remain the same (because of delays) but they are just announcing the expansion early.
 
I don't have a problem with yearly expansions. My WoW playing time consists of putting roughly 60 hours into an expansion and then unsubbing until the next one. A yearly WoW expansion fix would be nice IMO.
 
I think they had to announce one soon and launch even sooner. I really hope it's not coming out with the movie. My guild is already losing people because they're bored and the only reason I still play is because of the tokens.

Can they also stop cutting class skills too please? FFS, I don't even feel like a warlock anymore.
 
They're gonna have to do some serious shit to get me back this time.

Same boat. WoD is the culmination of a lot of "game-first-world/roleplaying-second" design that WoW's been accumulating over the years. It'll be really, really interesting to see how they pitch this expansion and what the reaction is.

- A return to 4- and 5-figure life totals, and 3- and 4-figure damage totals

The stat squish really didn't have the impact I wanted. It definitely isn't the linear scaling from 60 that I was expecting.
 
Ehh, to be fair, if you have the best gear from the final raid of an expansion, you won't be replacing it until you hit the next expansion's level cap.
Not really... level 60 epic items from Ahn Quiraj were almost as good as level 60-61 green items in BC areas. And of course the normal 5-man dungeon blue items were superior with a huge gap in stats. Any player with no guild would get his toon just a well equipped as anyone in a raid guild with full epic vanilla gear by just completing normal starting quests in BC.

It was exactly like a reset.
 
Also, this time, try not putting obvious reputation mounts in the cash store instead.

:|

Not really... level 60 epic items from Ahn Quiraj were almost as good as level 60-61 green items in BC areas. And of course the normal dungeon blue items were superior with a huge gap in stats etc. Any player with no guild would get his toon just a well equipped as me having full epic gear from vanilla by just completing normal starting quests in BC.

It was exactly like a reset.

Yeah, that hasn't been the case for a few expansions now.
 
I have a feeling that the release cycle will remain the same (because of delays) but they are just announcing the expansion early.
I don't think so WoD has already going to have the 14 month void of no content that other expansions have had it was just broken up with 6.2 It has gone.

WoD Launch: -> 8 months no content -> 6.2 -> 6 months no content -> 7.0.
 
WoD did a lot right, but it was just so hollow. Orcs orcs orcs. I even play a fucking orc. It was way too much. Grommash is a shit character. Yrel is rad, though.

The stat squish was awesome. So happy they did that. Wonder if they are gonna have a policy of squishing the previous PREVIOUS expansion. So in this case, MoP.

But let's get back to the cool, mysterious shit WoW used to have.

The Dark Prophet sounds somewhat interesting, at least. I don't think the game needs another class, though. I'd love to have a ship in-game to customize and stuff, though.
 
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