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New World of Warcraft Expansion reveal confirmed for Gamescom

I think people who don't want Duty/Raid/Whatever Finders and such are fooling themselves. I think these features are mainstays of MMORPGs.

I'd have no issue with dungeon finders IF they gave us an option to search for players on our realm(s) only. I've no interest in playing with folks I'll never see again.
 
I think whats really slowly choking the game to death is the content droughts, and they have been getting worse since Icecrown Citadel, where people though the wait from ICC to some new stuff was a joke and turned out to be very good compared to the wait from DS to Mists...which compared to the wait from SoO to WoD was very generous, etc

Sure Garrisons and stuff are pretty bad but people will eventually stop paying to do the same thing for a year.
 
Biggest case is that the majority of people like that NEVER did the hard fnord back in BC or earlier and look up to it like some kind of shining star. They couldn't do hard fnord then, and they can't do hard fnord now.

Who are "they"? Everyone dissatisfied?

This has been the reddest of herrings over the last 6 years but whipped up class warfare like this obscures the same problems that have only gotten worse since 2008.
 
As far as ambience and actual sense of place go, nothing beats Karazhan or Ulduar.

Ulduar is the most brilliant raid in any MMO ever. The lore, the aesthetics, the clever difficulty switches, the great bosses, the "extra" boss. Unbeatable.

Can apply all of that except the difficulty to Kara, which would come a close second for me.

Battle tag friends. Enjoy the run? Add them and invite them to future stuff you do.

Would be possible if random runs had personality. As it stands, you might get one or two people saying "Hey" and perhaps one "Ty" before people start to leave the group ASAP at the end.
 
Who are "they"? Everyone dissatisfied?

This has been the reddest of herrings over the last 6 years but whipped up class warfare like this obscures the same problems that have only gotten worse since 2008.

No, people who whine about the "good ol' days", "welfare epics", "being too easy", etc. I'm not satisfied with Warlords - but I'm also not going to spew that it's somehow easier than ever to do the difficult content.

Ulduar is the most brilliant raid in any MMO ever. The lore, the aesthetics, the clever difficulty switches, the great bosses, the "extra" boss. Unbeatable.

Can apply all of that except the difficulty to Kara, which would come a close second for me.

Ulduar was so good. SO GOOD. Old God, Earthen Dwarves, Titan watchers, Algalon (even if his fight was pretty shit)

The only thing that's come close for me is Throne of Thunder
 
I actually think that was a really bad move.

Eh, the 25-man hard mode mounts were already made meaningless when they opted to leave them on the loot tables at a 1% drop rate in perpetuity. Didn't take long before having one didn't mean you were good, just lucky.
 
Eh, the 25-man hard mode mounts were already made meaningless when they opted to leave them on the loot tables at a 1% drop rate in perpetuity. Didn't take long before having one didn't mean you were good, just lucky.

Also think that was a bad move. As much as I think everyone should be able to see content, exclusive awesome rewards are fine.
 
I don't raid, what happened at the end of 6.2? I wonder what the story will be about in the new expansion.

A black wind howls. The forest rumbles. The seas part. Arising from the coral reef is the Naga Orc hybrid, Pirate PayneGrill and his ship of death OrcBlade. The world shall tremble in this high seas adventure.
 
Ulduar is the most brilliant raid in any MMO ever. The lore, the aesthetics, the clever difficulty switches, the great bosses, the "extra" boss. Unbeatable.

Can apply all of that except the difficulty to Kara, which would come a close second for me.



Would be possible if random runs had personality. As it stands, you might get one or two people saying "Hey" and perhaps one "Ty" before people start to leave the group ASAP at the end.

Try doing mythic content or using the premade group finder for dungeons. It changes the social aspect quite a bit.

This person gets it!

I would also put SCC up there but people hate jumping scalding on water and I cant blame them



He/She is not joking... seriously...

Most people hate SSC because of the damn elevator boss lol
 
Eh, the 25-man hard mode mounts were already made meaningless when they opted to leave them on the loot tables at a 1% drop rate in perpetuity. Didn't take long before having one didn't mean you were good, just lucky.

Lucky still has more meaning in an MMORPG. that's the reason people still rock their glaives from time to time. Especially when they timewalk TBC

Most people hate SSC because of the damn elevator boss lol

Jeez... yes... how could I forget... ugh
 
I'd have no issue with dungeon finders IF they gave us an option to search for players on our realm(s) only. I've no interest in playing with folks I'll never see again.

That would be interesting; this is one of the reasons I love FFXIV's Party Finder, even though it isn't necessarily a queue and more of a Quest Board that you can join. But I like it because it's just my server and my server only, not to mention the communication and social aspect is better (I'll often find parties from players I have partied with before, and people recognize me from before, too).

I'm surprised WoW odesn't have something like this, but then again, you'd be people on super low pop realms bitching about queue times too...
 
Draenor was basically reverse Pandaria.

Pandaria received tons of negative reactions at reveal, wasn't hyped at all and was disliked upon release because of the daily quest grind. However the expansion turned out to be stellar, packed with content for every style of play with a pretty interesting storyline.

On the other, majority loved the direction of WoD, it was the most hyped expansion since WotLK and people loved the game at it's release because of great leveling experience. Beyond that however, it turned out to be terrible.

Summed up my opinion nicely. Pandaria was the first expansion I didn't come to at release (I waited a year) and I'm so glad I did.

WoD... says a lot about your expansion when you're already planning to announce the next one.
 
If this expansion is the same price, they better actually put content in it. People are really really soured after the abysmal showing WoD gave.
 
They have got to find a way to make the game more social again. I remember literally meeting tons of people even if you didn't want to BC times. Now it's go do whatever leave group instantly, go to garrison, it's pretty damn bad if 99% of stuff can be done completely alone in an mmorpg. Pvp has become a joke you can get pvp geared in a day, stuff is just given to you now, no more attunement, he'll even the leveling process is horrendous, just queue for dungeons you get ported there so no need to talk to people. It's just bad.
 
Anyone else want playable Naga? They were so much fun playing as in Cataclysm. Specially if this expansion is in the south seas dealing with Queen Azshara? No better time to add them.
 
No, people who whine about the "good ol' days", "welfare epics", "being too easy", etc. I'm not satisfied with Warlords - but I'm also not going to spew that it's somehow easier than ever to do the difficult fnord.

Who are they?

Besides, the real skinny is there's orders of magnitude less incintivization to, which along with lowering subs, makes it harder to do that difficulty. Much of that end tier is for Method and those of that calibur and has been since ICC.

Someone already tried this. Happened to be wildstar. No one played it. Regardless of how many people cry foul about how much more hardcore it should be the fact is not that many people are hardcore like that anymore. Times are a changing.

Same results for everyone but FF XIV and EvE: Demands -> Hype -> Devouring -> Ennui -> Crash

See past the class warfare, the red herrings, and see what results came from what changes and what that actually means for players and Blizzard.
 
Try doing mythic content or using the premade group finder for dungeons. It changes the social aspect quite a bit.

No. Fuck Mythic content. Back in the day, you had progressively more challenging content, not just the same shit on 3/4 difficulties. To me, that's not worth the sub fee, and I've no interest at all in doing so.

That would be interesting; this is one of the reasons I love FFXIV's Party Finder, even though it isn't necessarily a queue and more of a Quest Board that you can join. But I like it because it's just my server and my server only, not to mention the communication and social aspect is better (I'll often find parties from players I have partied with before, and people recognize me from before, too).

I'm surprised WoW odesn't have something like this, but then again, you'd be people on super low pop realms bitching about queue times too...

That's exactly what WoW had up until the current system was added in late 2009. It was great.
 
No. Fuck Mythic content. Back in the day, you had progressively more challenging content, not just the same shit on 3/4 difficulties. To me, that's not worth the sub fee, and I've no interest at all in doing so.



That's exactly what WoW had up until the current system was added in late 2009. It was great.


Couldn't agree more idk how people can think that it's ok that they just make the same raids and just have 3 difficulties wtf is that. What happened to progression through multiple raids. If blizzard wants wow to live they will go back to the old days this shit that wow has become is not good.
 
No. Fuck Mythic content. Back in the day, you had progressively more challenging content, not just the same shit on 3/4 difficulties. To me, that's not worth the sub fee, and I've no interest at all in doing so.

It helped that new raids never came with a catch-up mechanic like they do now. Siege of Orgrimmar? Gear up on Timeless Isle! Hellfire Citadel? Here's Tanaan Jungle!

Sunwell? FUCK YOU.
 
I think Blizz got tired of designing raids like Naxx and Sunwell that about 1% of the player population (maybe less) would ever see at their time of release.

Can't blame them.
 
It helped that new raids never came with a catch-up mechanic like they do now. Siege of Orgrimmar? Gear up on Timeless Isle! Hellfire Citadel? Here's Tanaan Jungle!

Sunwell? FUCK YOU.

BOJ vendor on IoQD at least gave some 141 gear, but yeah, I'm not against catch up mechanics at all.

I think Blizz got tired of designing raids like Naxx and Sunwell that about 1% of the player population (maybe less) would ever see at their time of release.

Can't blame them.

As above, they just need catchup mechanics. Progression systems like...

HM NM > HM HC > HM Mythic-----V
----------------V--------------^-----------------V
------------BRF NM > BRF HC > BRF Mythc
-------------------------------V-----------------V
---------------------------HFC NM > HFC HC > HFC Mythic

... Aren't compelling at all to me. I'm not going to raid the same shit on three difficulties.
 
BOJ vendor on IoQD at least gave some 141 gear, but yeah, I'm not against catch up mechanics at all.

Some is fine. There should be content for non-raiders to do, after all, and they want to get a sense of growing stronger as well. But on the other hand, they don't need to do a week of treasure hunting and be ready for Normal whatever the current raid is.

Really, it's a tough balance.

But then I also don't want to see someone locked out of raiding with their friends because they missed the first tier. A lot of recruitment in TBC involved guilds going back through Kara with new players, only to lose them once geared and having to repeat the process again and again.

Basically, I don't know the solution.
 
I contend that LFR and easy mode raids is what has led to the downfall of WoW. In the developer's selfish response to the percent of players seeing end-game content being too small, they felt as if their time was being wasted, or could be better spent if they didn't make content only a few would see.

So they removed the center of the donut model. Everyone can now essentially see all of the content with really little time or effort. You now have nothing left to work towards content-wise except for altered mechanics (at best) or inflated gear stats (which is only good for attempting harder modes). This doesn't get the 'casual' audience climbing upward, but it DOES deflate the sense of risk/reward for the hardcore audience.

Back when I was raiding (THE GOOD OLD DAYS, hear me out), I knew that there was a bunch of content I might never see - but that kept me playing because there was always content left to see. If they gave me an easy out I would have completed it and weighed the time investment involved in gearing up to attempt "Hard Illidan" and just... not done it.

The donut model is very important. If the WoW developers feel let down that there is content that some might not get to, make it relevant later. Put in a bunch of stuff people can go back and do, design them to still be challenging coming back and doing them post-expansion with a gear/level sync system, and/or add in aesthetic rewards that don't disappear on a timed basis.

Instead, they made hard content, didn't feel like people weren't seeing it, and then cried about that and then turned around and made the content worthless a few months later anyway. Dumb.

I think Blizz got tired of designing raids like Naxx and Sunwell that about 1% of the player population (maybe less) would ever see at their time of release.

Can't blame them.

I do blame them for this short-sighted and vain outlook on the great model they destroyed.
 
I think Blizz got tired of designing raids like Naxx and Sunwell that about 1% of the player population (maybe less) would ever see at their time of release.

Can't blame them.

Oh they explicitly said as much. It has had unexpected results in player psychology though (partially on display here and in subscription results).
 
Acting like they're releasing the next expansion so soon because people don't like WoD shows a gross ignorance of how this shit works as well as what Blizzard has been saying for years. They've pretty much always wanted a faster expansion release cycle, they're just finally beginning to actually be able to do it. And the decision to only have one real content patch for WoD had to have been made before the "honeymoon" period of WoD (where the "new content smell" was still there and everyone was saying OMG BEST EXPANSION EVAR) even started, much less ended.
 
As far as ambience and actual sense of place go, nothing beats Karazhan or Ulduar.

Pretty sure Blackrock Depths has them both beat there. Karazhan gets pretty close though. Probably because it was likely being designed before they switched over to their more linear philosophy in TBC dungeon/raid design.

I think they could still be creating these huge sprawling places like Blackrock Depth or Stratholme which really feels like an actual place in the world. They just have to figure out smarter ways of gating the sections (that doesn't involve splitting them up into separate instances). LFD has them split up via objectives now, although the method is a bit clunky.

These old sprawling dungeons were also an aspect of the venerated vanilla WoW which felt more player driven. There wasn't some systemized checklist telling you where to go and which bosses to kill. The players themselves decided how they wanted to coordinate the dungeon session, and you saw terminology being established for different kinds of runs.
 
I always loved Strath, Undead side specifically. If I had to pick a favorite 5-man from vanilla, it's probably that. I agree that BRD had great atmosphere, but man I fucking hated that place. It was a dungeon I never wanted to run. I feel like the perfect dungeon would be a middle-ground between BRD and some of the more recent short, straight-line instances.
 
BRD went way beyond being a dungeon in my mind. It was a wonderful instanced land of possibilities. It had so many reasons to go in there, and so much to do once you were.
 
Shadowfang Keep, Blackrock Depths, and Sunken Temple would be my golden vanilla trio. Wiping on Arugal, in hindsight, was hilarious, and those robes were just way too good!
 
Would Naga even have a boots slot..?

Tauren and Troll boots are pretty much just ankle wraps, having them be like caps for the end of naga tails isn't that much of a stretch.
 
The only thing that's come close for me is Throne of Thunder

Yep, in fact I left WoW after that, I think we got to hc Iron Qon or Animus when I left the game. Felt pretty satisfied actually, that raid was top tier.

But yeah, the best has always been Ulduar, then Khaz for nostalgia reasons. I wouldn't mind and updated Khaz with less trash and improved mechanics on the bosses.
 
If the new WoW expansion is announced at gamescom then I think the new Diablo 3 expansion will be announced at blizzcon. Safe to assume?
 
Plus they already look cool in armor without much work needed!

WowList05.jpg
 
I just hope they do something so the professions don't feel as boring as in WoD. Seriously it felt like so much time was spent just waiting for daily cooldowns to get to max level and to buy new recipes than any other expansion I have played. Also I still don't understand the reasoning behind the removal of all professions perks and passives, did those really have any sort of drastic effect that hurt game balance? Same thing with the removal of the specializations (potion mastery, etc.), I did not like that change.

I did feel the new catchup mechanics were a decent addition, but overall I was not a fan of how this expansion handled professions. But then again, maybe I'm just still angry about alchemy being unable to make healing potions and the creation of healing potions in first aid requiring endless fishing.
 
I really dug MOP, had a lot of fun with it compared it Wrath and Cata.

I have only now gotten to WoD, still leveling my character.
Have only heard bad things about WoD from friends, and i'm pretty fucking sick of outworld and Orcs already.

Haven't gotten to do anything with Garrisons yet, I like the sound of them, but it sounds like blizz shit the bed with the concept.

What ever the new expansion is, I just really hope it is something completely different lore wise. I don't even care what, just something not related to Orcs, also no Troll bullshit, or Undead.
 
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