WoW: Wrath of the Lich King Catch-All

Raiding Changes

• Similar to World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, all 5-person dungeons will have a Heroic mode
• All raid dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King will have both 25-person and 10-person versions
- 25-person raiding progression is not dependent on 10-person raiding; players will not have to obtain keys or attunements in 10-person raids to participate in 25-person raids
- 10- and 25-person raids both have their own, independent progression paths
• Players will receive more, higher level rewards for completing the 25-person raid dungeons over the 10-person version

The Deathknight class

A quick description of some of the spells:

• Death Coil -- Depletes all Runic Power, dealing 600 damage to a non-Undead target, or healing 900 damage on a friendly target.
• Death Grip -- This is the Death Knight's "taunt" ability. It also pulls the target to the Death Knight, forcing them to attack the Death Knight for a short amount of time. Yes, I said pulls the target; Blizzard is going to allow players to move mobs in the expansion both with Death Grip, and other knockback/pull abilities. This works on players too, so PvP balance ahoy!
• Chains of Ice -- Roots the target in place. When the spell fades, it places a snare on the target that reduces in potency as the duration runs out.
• Raise Dead -- Raises a nearby corpse to fight for the Death Knight for 2 minutes. If used on a player corpse, the player has the option to play as the ghoul for the duration -- gaining access to the ghoul's abilities.
- The ghoul has the ability to do the following:
-- Leap to the target
-- Rend for decent damage-over-time
-- Stun target, and of course more
• Death Pact -- Sacrifices the raised ghouls to heal the Death Knight.
• Death and Decay -- Targeted, AoE Damage-over-time which pulses similar to the Paladin spell Consecration. Anyone affected by Death and Decay has a chance to be feared.
• Frost Presence -- Increases Armor by 45% and allows the Death Knight to generate 25% more threat. Only one presence can be active at any time.
• Unholy Presence -- Increases Attack Speed and Movement speed by 15%. Only one presence can be active at any time. This was described by Tom Chilton as the "PvP" presence.
• Anti-magic Shield -- Reduces the damage of the next magical spell cast on the Death Knight by 75%. It also converts the damage reduced into Runic Power.
• Strangulate -- Depletes all Runic Power, dealing minor damage and silencing the target for up to 5 seconds.
• Summon Deathcharger -- Allows the Death Knight to summon a Deathcharger mount. This mount is acquired through quests, similar to the Paladin and Warlock land mounts.

A quick recap of the information they were told about the Death Knight:

• Death knights will be available to all players with level 55 characters
• Players can create one death knight per realm, per account
• Death knights can be any of the races
• Once created, death knights can undertake a series of quests to introduce the player to the new class and its associated lore
• Death knights utilize a rune system as their resource mechanic
- Three different rune types are available: Unholy, Frost, and Blood
- These runes allow death knights to cast spells and abilities; spells can cost any combination of these runes
- Spent runes automatically refresh after a set period of time, similar to a rogue’s energy bar
- The death knight will have the ability to customize which array of six runes is currently available
• As rune abilities are used, the death knight also generates another resource called Runic Power
- The death knight will have several abilities that cost all available Runic Power, with varying levels of effectiveness based on total Runic Power spent
- Runic Power decays over time if it’s not spent, similar to a warrior’s rage bar
• The death knight has three different presences to use: Blood, Frost, and Unholy; each presence grants the death knight a unique buff that will allow him or her to fulfill different roles in combat
• The death knight can serve either as a tank or as a melee-based damage-dealing class
• Death knights are designed to be highly viable tanking, magic-using characters
• Death knights will have the ability to summon undead guardians to fight by their side
• Death knights will have the ability to summon a Deathcharger mount.

Ripped shamelessly from World of Raids, emphasis mine.

Blizzard has to be the most business savvy player in the MMO market today. This change should satisfy not only the hardcore raiding group but the more casual players as well. By having separate progression paths for identical dungeons they allow the silly hardcore people to e-peen and the rest of us to just get in and fight. For what's it worth, I think I'm up to the challenge of a Death Knight but I will probably park an alt at 55.

Looks like you only need one character at 55 to create a DK.

While i probably still wont raid i'll definitely be experimenting with the DK.

Death knight is not going to be the ONLY "epic' class right?

People will still whine about this dungeon change.

HOLY CRAP!

That raid change is AWESOME! AWESOME! AWESOME!

I seriously can't rave about it enough. I LOVE it. Have the content more small-group approachable, but have super-heroic versions for 25-man groups that give bigger rewards. I love it! It's almost exactly what I've suggested mmo devs should do in the past.

Blizzard, I love you guys.

Death knight is not going to be the ONLY "epic' class right?

Correct. They've hinted broadly at the Demon Hunter and Archdruid.

The Archdruid will probably be able to shapeshift, heal, tank, and do caster DPS. It is expected to have high survivability and great utility in PvP. It should be very adept at CC and breaking CC.

...

Oh, wait.

Reaper81 wrote:
Death knight is not going to be the ONLY "epic' class right?

Correct. They've hinted broadly at the Demon Hunter and Archdruid.

The Archdruid will probably be able to shapeshift, heal, tank, and do caster DPS. It is expected to have high survivability and great utility in PvP. It should be very adept at CC and breaking CC.

...

Oh, wait.

I WIN!

And the QQ in the official forums is hysterical. OH NOES 10 PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO KILL ARTHAS!!!!

Like all of the sudden its about the lore.

Considering what a hard time we've had putting together 25 fun people for this kind of thing, I think that's a good change. It's two separate tracks, but everyone gets to see all the content. The idea's full, nay.... replete with win.

If we maintain our ability to field 25-person raids, great, we can go do that -- but if for some reason we don't, there's still stuff to go see/do in our more usual 10-person teams.

(as an aside, I'm amazed that people managed to do the 40-person raids in the old world. Wow.)

Is the Archdruid for real? As your "oh wait" sort of indicates, it's kind of "Meet the new class, same as the old class!" Well, except regular droods don't get much CC.

Oh, and as far as lore goes... as someone said here recently, ever since the elves teamed up with crashed space goats, it's fairly safe to ignore most of it.

Love the dungeon change.

Get prepared for groups of 7 deathknights, 2 healers and a tank.

Is the Archdruid for real?

Both the Archdruid and Demon Hunter have been named as potential post release hero classes. I was mainly joking about the abilities.

Considering what a hard time we've had putting together 25 fun people for this kind of thing

And we're hardly the only ones. Blizz has said that even with the badge rewards they haven't got nearly the numbers in BT that they'd like.

And frankly, this is the best possible change they could make. Lore is not a concern of Blizzard's anymore. The Draenai prove that more than anything else. How are you going to shoehorn a draenai death knight into the lore? You can't. There were no draenai on Azeroth during either the first wars or the Plague.

So, I pose this question: who cares? I loved reading the Warcraft lore. I thought the Warcraft 2 instruction manual was the coolest book I'd ever got from a video game. I read that stuff all the time. But from a gameplay perspective; I'm very excited by this change. Retcon all you want, Blizz. Just let me see some of these fights!

Malor wrote:

If we maintain our ability to field 25-person raids, great, we can go do that -- but if for some reason we don't, there's still stuff to go see/do in our more usual 10-person teams.

Exactly! I expect we'll start off doing 10-person versions of this stuff, and as enough guildies hit 80, we'll start in on the 25-person stuff too. I absolutely want to see all the content, and expect that it will be done initially through the 10-person instances, but I also expect that the goodjer gang will tackle the 25-person content simply for the fun and challenge of it.

I cannot emphasize enough just how excited this change has made me for the expansion. THIS is the content I've wanted to play since they first announced WoW (tackling Arthas himself!), and now I know I'll get to see it with the GWJ crew as long as I develop my player skills and put in some time. I'm a very, very happy camper.

Hey Blizz, where's my lifetime sub option?

I too think this is a good change. Make the casual happy, keep the hardcore satisfied.

Are there any projections for release date? I'm assuming Thanksgiving-ish like usual. That would give us, what, a good 6 months to grind content. Is Black Temple possible for GWJ? I think so. What is harder anyway ... Black Temple or Sunwell?

I am glad they finally borrowed a little bit from their Diablo model where they had scaled zones. It's a step in the right direction. Certainly give more opportunity for those who aren't hardcore raiders a chance to see more content. And for the folks here who can run seven days a week, they still have additional incentive to run all the time over the more casual players. Win - Win, as far as I am concerned.

Copingsaw wrote:

What is harder anyway ... Black Temple or Sunwell?

Sunwell...and there's still one more gate to open as far as I know (so no one is able to beat it yet).

Meanwhile, I also agree with this change. Had they done this with TBC, we would've gotten to BT by now on the 10man version. Also the fact that the 25man and 10man versions are separate is good, as we will likely have a solid team or two hitting the content hard, while then being able to do the 25man versions without people already being "saved". I'm expecting to keep my Taliban-Tanker, but will check out the Death Knight...maybe make it my melee dps. I find if I'm leading a raid, I need to know what every class is able to do, so I'll consider it research

Now the question about the 10/25man versions: Is it the same gear, but less of it in a 10man, or is it better gear AND more of it in a 25man? I question the idea of having to farm a 10man, then turn around and replace it all in the 25man version, while the hardcore raiding guilds will QQ if 10man teams can (eventually) get the same gear that 25mans put in. This could cause some problems...

I expect it'll be the same gear for the most part, but the 25man may include some additional drops not available in the 10man (like 1 or 2 items per boss), also, that the 10man will have 1 or 2 drops like in ZA, but the 25man will have 3 - 5. Effectively 1 drop per 10 people with a slight advantage to going 25man.

• All raid dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King will have both 25-person and 10-person versions

Indeed, this is awesome. Also awesome, though, was some other news I saw today:

The 5-man instances are designed to not take more than an hour

The long dungeons can be fun for sure, and do give a certain sense of accomplishment, but honestly they just don't get played as much as the short ones. For pick up and play content people don't want to be committing an entire afternoon, you know?

Now the question about the 10/25man versions: Is it the same gear, but less of it in a 10man, or is it better gear AND more of it in a 25man? I question the idea of having to farm a 10man, then turn around and replace it all in the 25man version, while the hardcore raiding guilds will QQ if 10man teams can (eventually) get the same gear that 25mans put in. This could cause some problems...

I expect it'll be the same gear for the most part, but the 25man may include some additional drops not available in the 10man (like 1 or 2 items per boss), also, that the 10man will have 1 or 2 drops like in ZA, but the 25man will have 3 - 5. Effectively 1 drop per 10 people with a slight advantage to going 25man.

I think I read somewhere that at least for tier drops, they intend to have the 10 man versions always be a level below the 25 man versions.

Another huge step to make the game more casual friendly. The small, renegade guild leader in me approves of these changes, finally me and my crew will be able to see the entire end game without churning through members on a regular basis.

My questions:

- Will we get to see the entire instance, or will there be a separate smaller "wing" or "mini-boss" for the 25-Man? Will it be the exact same experience? I'm sure the mechanics would have to be changed to adjust for the huge attendance gap.

- This is a big blow to the 25-Man folk who used exclusive end-game content for bragging rights (ie. I'm in Black Temple you noob, you're still in Kara). Now that they've lost the bragging rights, how will this affect the overall community? Will the hardcore be happy to be doing the exact same thing as the "scrubs"? Which brings me to my next question..

- Warcraft is all about gear. What iLevel difference are we talking here? iLevel 180 to iLevel 190? Or will there be a massive gap? If it's too close, the hardcore will be pissed. If it's too far, everyone's going to want to do the 25-Man anyway and we're back to square one. Once the initial ooh and ahh of the instances are said and done, and you settle into grinding mode, this could be an issue. I hope it has the right amount of balance to make both happy. How about making the gear almost on the same scale, but allowing for a Legendary drop in the 25-Man as incentive to grind?

- Deathknights I'm still confused about, are we expecting a Badass FOTM before an eventual nerf, or is it a delicately balanced and situational class?

- Dungeons in under 1 hour? Oh god yes. Finally.

I imagine the differences between 10- and 25-person will be similar to the differences between, say, a normal-difficulty level 70 instance and the heroic version. i.e. same content, only tweaked with tougher stats, new abilities/increased challenges, and additional higher-quality drops.

And I say, awesome, that'd be perfect.

I very much expect and hope to run all the 10-person versions of these, but you can bet I'll be eager to pursue the 25-person versions too. The 10-person ones will serve to ensure I see the content, the 25-person ones will be for the fun and challenge of tackling tougher encounters with a bunch of goodjers.

I cannot emphasize enough how excited I am for the expansion now! And like you, Zero, I'm a huge fan of making the 5-person content roughly an hour in length. Awesomeness!

And Cope, I strongly suspect that, if we really do work on the 25-person content as we intend to now for progression, we will be able to tackle Black Temple in the fairly near future.

Although, I suspect that we'll find that Gruul's & Mag's isn't a good indication of how much effort it will take to get through all the 25-man content. My experiences in SSC & MH left me with the strong impression that the ramp was much steeper getting those on farm.

Swat wrote:

- This is a big blow to the 25-Man folk who used exclusive end-game content for bragging rights (ie. I'm in Black Temple you noob, you're still in Kara). Now that they've lost the bragging rights, how will this affect the overall community? Will the hardcore be happy to be doing the exact same thing as the "scrubs"? Which brings me to my next question..

- Warcraft is all about gear. What iLevel difference are we talking here? iLevel 180 to iLevel 190? Or will there be a massive gap? If it's too close, the hardcore will be pissed. If it's too far, everyone's going to want to do the 25-Man anyway and we're back to square one. Once the initial ooh and ahh of the instances are said and done, and you settle into grinding mode, this could be an issue. I hope it has the right amount of balance to make both happy. How about making the gear almost on the same scale, but allowing for a Legendary drop in the 25-Man as incentive to grind?

The bragging rights will still be there. Blizzard's making the 10-man dungeons have their own progression. Think the jump from Kara to ZA-you need to gear up in Kara first, then you can move to ZA. There will still need to be gearing up for the raid instances, but the 10-mans will be balanced around only that content, and the 25-mans will be balanced around that. Blizzard has shown in ZA that they can make quite difficult 10-man encounters, so I wouldn't say that will be many real complaints by the "hardcore" crowd. Most of the hardcore raiders are pretty excited about this anyway, because more people seeing the content is, in the end, a good thing.

From what I've heard(I don't have the link, only the elitistjerks discussion), the difference between the instances will be approximately one tier of gear. So if the 10-man Naxx is like T4, the 25 will be T5 level gear.

Has Blizzard had any talks at all about other bragging features?

In the past it was gear and content. I have this uber gear, this uber recipe, and I can see this uber content. But aside from that, gear, recipes and content are frequently replaced through the standard cycle.

Branching out and playing some different MMOs again, I've noticed a bunch of other really cool things. Why not take more of the focus off the gear and onto some other meta-achievements? I really dig the way some of the other ones have a persistant way of tracking literally everything you've done, similar to a GTA stats screen.

More Titles

- "Orc Slayer" for killing 2,000 Orcs in PvP
- "Deviate Fishmonger" from eating one too many Deviate Fish
- "Lore Master" for not using quick quest text and actually reading through quests
- "Rare Vanquisher" for finding and killing 500 Rare Spawns

Trophies and Instances Guild Halls

- Having a really cool Onyxia head hanging above your fireplace.
- Having a really cool Hogger head hanging next to Onyxia's head.
- Having a bucket of gnome heads in the corner.

Any word on professions? Do they intend to repeat past mistakes and have mostly everything useless up until the last skill point where you can make the one really neat thing? Will crafted items ever have true value in comparison to rewards from other outlets? Will the new inscriptions nullify any inscriptions through the current rep grind?

Any word on the economy? Do they want to keep with the dailies philosophy, or return to the days when gold appeared to have more actual value, instead of slogging through mind numbing dailies day in and day out?

Any word on battlegrounds? Are they simply providing one new one to appease the Battleground lovers while putting most of their effort into new PvP-Zones and Arena E-Sports? Or are there plans to release several new Battlegrounds during Lich? Any big changes to add another mechanic like resilience?

Any word on how the population is going to be spread out? Will Outlands turn into simply a hub for Shattrath and those grinding as quick as they can to 70?

Any word on updating the low polygon old-school character models with something more akin to Dranei and Blood Elf animations?

I know I haven't been following much in the past few months but I'm a bit scared to slog through the forums at the moment. I do check out MMO Champion when I can from time to time

My favorite housing was the player housing in Everquest 2. TONS of stuff to acquire to decorate your home with, and you were free to decorate almost completely the way you wanted. No "hooks" to have to connect stuff to, you just put it in the house, rotated and positioned wherever you wanted it. Best player housing I'd ever seen in an mmo!

My favorite progression and bragging rights feature was the deeds system in LotRO (and the badges system in City of Heroes/Villains; LotRO took it further), and I would LOVE to see something similar in WoW. I loved that the deeds had various types of rewards!

Blizz should really implement systems similar to both of these, with their own polish added onto them.

People on the official forums are whining about having the same bosses in the ten mans and the 25 mans in the new expansion.. thus I propose a system not unlike what we have now.

Tier 1 10 man: Kara (all level 120-126 gear, equivalent to T4), Kill lots of random bosses
Tier 2 10 man: Zul'aman (all level 128-135 gear, equivalent to T5 SSC/TK gear), Kill a Troll lore hero
Tier 3 10 man: Magister's Terrace (all level 138-145 gear, equivalent to HS/BT gear), Kill Kael'ethas
etc..

Keep something similar in the expansion where smaller guilds can progress on these bosses and have some content to work through, and I am sure that you would keep a lot of people happy.

Farscry wrote:

My favorite housing was the player housing in Everquest 2. TONS of stuff to acquire to decorate your home with, and you were free to decorate almost completely the way you wanted. No "hooks" to have to connect stuff to, you just put it in the house, rotated and positioned wherever you wanted it. Best player housing I'd ever seen in an mmo!

My favorite progression and bragging rights feature was the deeds system in LotRO (and the badges system in City of Heroes/Villains; LotRO took it further), and I would LOVE to see something similar in WoW. I loved that the deeds had various types of rewards!

Blizz should really implement systems similar to both of these, with their own polish added onto them. :)

Agreed.

One of the biggest gripes I have with the current system in place is that all your crap, minus a few neat trinkets, are vendor trash in a cycle that seems to be getting shorter all the time. What will really give the game legs, and a sense of accomplishment, is something you can "keep" through your entire career.

I mean even something as simple as a title like "Old Bones" for someone who's toon has been around since launch day. Hell, why not allow for a special haircut or beard to those who have subbed since 2004? That kind of stuff. Something that separates a toon with a fresh coat of paint to one that has been battle scarred, and up and down the block several thousand times. That kind of stuff gets me excited, and less concerned about the constant gear churn.

the 10 man / 25 man conversion is by far the best thing I've ever heard come out of Blizzard. It took my excitement from "meh" to positively drooling. From what I've been able to glean from curse and gamespy, the 10 man content will always give you tier (x - 1) quality loot, where X is the "tier" level of the same dungeon but 25 man. Using TBC examples, BT25 would have the gear it has now, and BT10 would have gear at the same level as SSC25.

Along the lines of just pure awesome, the fact that blizzard realized that a 60 minute instance is the goal, and yet another hallway of boring trash is completely useless, gets me all excited.

Stuff that worries me: The abilities they listed for deathknight are so broken for PvP that I'll be rolliing one specifically for the purpose. "consecrate that fears?" are you serious? the talent changes for current classes better be positively epic. Also, at the risk of sounding like a QQer -- hard to see where druid tanks will be needed when you now have a great AOE tank, Main Tank, and Magic tank.

side note -- the vehicles they're adding REALLY sound cool. they described one quest where you mount up behind an NPC on his horse, and have to use special abilities like throwing flaming oil bombs and using an AOE stun to keep the worgen who are chasing you from catching you.

Reaper81 wrote:

For what's it worth, I think I'm up to the challenge of a Death Knight but I will probably park an alt at 55.

I would be surprised if you are required to park an alt at 55, as opposed to just having a toon at L55 or higher.

Mayfield wrote:

People on the official forums are whining about having the same bosses in the ten mans and the 25 mans in the new expansion.. thus I propose a system not unlike what we have now.

Tier 1 10 man: Kara (all level 120-126 gear, equivalent to T4), Kill lots of random bosses
Tier 2 10 man: Zul'aman (all level 128-135 gear, equivalent to T5 SSC/TK gear), Kill a Troll lore hero
Tier 3 10 man: Magister's Terrace (all level 138-145 gear, equivalent to HS/BT gear), Kill Kael'ethas
etc..

See though, the big upshot to their new approach is that they can make more content available to more people. Imagine if, instead of heroic instances being included for more level 70 content, we had gotten maybe two additional 5-person level 70 instances. Total.

Heroics allowed Blizz to essentially create more instances overall in the sense that heroic Ramparts is a new experience compared to regular Ramparts back at level 62.

We've seen several new instances open up for raiders over the course of the post-expansion timeframe (that I recall): Black Temple, Zul'aman, and Sunwell Plateau. Of those three, I've only gotten to see one, and may not get to see the other two. I imagine this is true for most people.

By doing 10 and 25 person versions of all raid dungeons, Blizz can essentially get twice the mileage, as can most players.

Farscry wrote:

By doing 10 and 25 person versions of all raid dungeons, Blizz can essentially get twice the mileage, as can most players. :)

Then they are just lazy! They could create 25 man AND seperate 10 mans.

Mayfield wrote:

Then they are just lazy! They could create 25 man AND seperate 10 mans.

Then people like me would complain that I've been locked out of half of Blizzard's end game because I'm not hardcore enough -- which is exactly waht happened with naxx/AQ40 and BT/sunwell.

What Blizzard is doing is the best idea they've *ever* had.

Seth wrote:
Mayfield wrote:

Then they are just lazy! They could create 25 man AND seperate 10 mans.

Then people like me would complain that I've been locked out of half of Blizzard's end game because I'm not hardcore enough -- which is exactly waht happened with naxx/AQ40 and BT/sunwell.

Ditto. That's why I love the change, and hope they don't back off due to the QQ'ers on the forums.

Mayfield wrote:

Then they are just lazy! They could create 25 man AND seperate 10 mans.

It's efficient. And it also allows players to have access to the same lore and accomplishments.

It allows people who either don't have the time or the guild to commit to 25 man raiding to still feel like they've accomplished the task set before them (kill Illidian or Arthas or whoever), without getting quite as nice rewards for doing so.

Farscry wrote:

We've seen several new instances open up for raiders over the course of the post-expansion timeframe (that I recall): Black Temple, Zul'aman, and Sunwell Plateau. Of those three, I've only gotten to see one, and may not get to see the other two. I imagine this is true for most people.

Just to pick some nits, Mount Hyjal came out along with BT

Edit: bad quoting

It's hard to believe that these common-sense changes are coming from the same people who are requiring Arena ratings for BG rewards. They must have two departments at Blizzard: people who actually play the game, and monkey-brained ignoramuses.

Btw they have said several times that you won't have to sacrifice an existing character to create a Death Knight, because they don't consider that "fun". I tend to agree. Here's hoping they don't have to do any old-world content (other than maybe new class quests); having just been through it on my Shaman, that 50-60 stretch is painful.

Bring on WotLK!