WoW: Cataclysm - SPOILERS WITHIN

This really excites me! Thank you for posting it so I could read.

the instance thing has me excited most. Here I come ST and SFK I love you!!!

I always hated ZF but the temple event could be hard and fun.

Enix wrote:
Pirate Bob wrote:

I'd be curious to see the numbers of how many groups actually complete Uldaman, RFK/RFD, Dire Maul, or Mara without being twinked through.

The over/under on that is 1. I'd take the under.

hah!

btw that's not 1 group per server -- that's 1 group, ever, since 2.0 was released, and I'm with Enix in thinking that number is greatly exagerrated.

I just ran an actualy RFK on my hunter 3 days ago. I must be that one!

My mage alt has run several non-twink instance runs in the old-world while levelling up. Granted, that was very much the exception than the rule while levelling, especially compared to pre-TBC WoW.

Seth wrote:

FEd's got a point. Unless you think Blizzard can wrangle even more market share out of a market that is 90% them, it's the time for them to shift to full fledged retention mode, and that likely means a hefty portion of fan service with just enough original ideas to keep people guessing.

I think Blizzard's real strategy at this point is to grow the market. Blizzard's only going to do that by reaching out to a more mainstream audience. Such as through commercials in mainstream channels or making a movie.

I'm wondering if Blizzard will align the release date of a future expansion (probably not Cataclysm, maybe the next one) to the movie.

If thos efforts don't work, sure, Blizzard will do its best to retain.

Well, they're certainly not going to grow market share by having an expansion of nothing but fanservice tweaks to old world content.

Seth wrote:

Well, they're certainly not going to grow market share by having an expansion of nothing but fanservice tweaks to old world content. :)

Unless that fanservice brings together newbies and high-level players more frequently. Right now the playerbase is far too segregated. Newbies start the game in an old gameworld right out of 2004 with very few other players around. Midbies are even lonelier, especially in the desolate lands of Outland. It's not until Northrend, an entirely separate continent, where the majority of the game population is encountered.

If Cataclysm were to redo the old world in a way that makes it the center of activity for lowbies, high-end players, and a lot of midbie content too, it would actually promote growth through giving a gameworld that feels not only more dynamic, but livelier too.

I know I give a lot of examples with Everquest, but they did such a great job of mixing up zones in EQ classic and even Kunark that you very often would run across players of all kinds of level ranges crossing paths. Velious did away with this a bit, with the content being much more like TBC or Wrath, dumping all the higher-end players into their own continent. Even LotRO keeps the player population mingling together pretty often throughout all level ranges via the fewer but larger player hubs and through questlines that carry players all throughout the lands at various points in the level range.

This is something WoW sorely needs to get players crossing paths much more often. Levelling my mage alt in WoW has shown the gameworld to be amazingly desolate most of the time. This is in HUGE contrast to the gameworld of LotRO, where I'm constantly running across players of all kinds of levels in my travels.

This would probably be a great way to both grow their user base and maintain the one they already have. They can advertise this as a new beginning, a way to level the playing field to a certain extent. I'm sure some players are are reluctant to join now, because they feel like there's just too much to catch up on, there isn't a good entry point for them. It would be pretty easy for them to spin this in a way to attract those players.

I'll be interested to know what they've learned from wrath, specifically how they are going to use vehicles and phasing as I don't think either are loved by all. The other thing would be how they structure the endgame for this expansion...

That's another thought, is it technically an expansion if you're redoing the main world? TBC and WotLK both had separate continents that could not be entered unless you owned the expansion. What parts do you have a gate on (Your character must be at least level 78 and own the cataclysm expansion)?

Which leads to wild speculation, would blizzard give a small (5 level) expansion away to everyone as a bridge to a larger expansion?

Seth wrote:

Well, they're certainly not going to grow market share by having an expansion of nothing but fanservice tweaks to old world content. :)

To a newbie, the old content is new.

I love phasing. Pre-Wrath, the game world never changed. Now it does, some, and Cataclysm could be the culmination of that experiment.

Vehicles, not so exciting, imho.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I love phasing. Pre-Wrath, the game world never changed. Now it does, some, and Cataclysm could be the culmination of that experiment.

Vehicles, not so exciting, imho.

Exactly what I was in the middle of writing.

Man, I wish it was Friday already so we could be done with all this damn speculation.

Farscry wrote:

This is something WoW sorely needs to get players crossing paths much more often. Levelling my mage alt in WoW has shown the gameworld to be amazingly desolate most of the time.

Indeed, it sounds like a conscious decision to bring the players closer together using the world they already have instead of just adding another big landmass and further spreading out the playerbase. Smart thinking - assuming this is all correct of course.

Along those lines, in Vanilla you'd occasionally run into higher-level characters and guildmates randomly. I can't imagine that happens much right now. The only times I go into old Azeroth now are for holiday events and to avenge Alliance NPC killing-griefing.

Regarding recruiting new players vs retaining old ones: Never underestimate the evangelical potential of satisfied customers.

I think vehicles are okay if they're used in a manner that make the interesting. It was odd seeing Blizzard learn from 3.0 ("Drakes on Maly are dumb, 1,1,2 kthnxla"), do better in 3.1 ("Leviathan fight is neat at least different people do different things") and then promptly forget it for 3.2 ("Seriously 5 minutes of gay elf jousting?").

Phasing might be buggy but I have met very, very few people who plain don't like it.

With phasing they just a tool that they need to be careful where they use it. I have bad memories of the group quest under icecrown citadel and trying to get help from people who weren't on the same phase as I was. It's one of those 'so near yet so far' situations, they could easily remedy it by giving you the option to switch to the phase of the leader or a certain group member.

Bloo Driver wrote:

Dark Feed Pet.

My biggest "huh?" on the race/class combos is the gnome priest. I thought they were essentially atheistic and worshiped science?

I wrote up a long blog post about my skepticism on this that will be posted in the morning.

Based on the latest mmo posting, skepticism may be unwarranted.

Dr.Ghastly wrote:

Based on the latest mmo posting, skepticism may be unwarranted.

MMO-Champ?

"There's a teaser page on SoundBlaster.com"?

Sonicator wrote:

My biggest "huh?" on the race/class combos is the gnome priest. I thought they were essentially atheistic and worshiped science?

That's your angle right there! Just give them all TF2 Medic backpacks and make the spell names more science-y.
Greater Healing Ray! Levitation Boots! Portable Power Word: Shield Generator! Resurrection Serum!

muttonchop wrote:
Sonicator wrote:

My biggest "huh?" on the race/class combos is the gnome priest. I thought they were essentially atheistic and worshiped science?

That's your angle right there! Just give them all TF2 Medic backpacks and make the spell names more science-y.
Greater Healing Ray! Levitation Boots! Portable Power Word: Shield Generator! Resurrection Serum!

Well... what else were they going to get? They don't have any healer at all, and I believe they are the only race without one. So... Gnome Paladin? Gnome Shaman? Gnome DRUID?

A Gnome Priest makes the most sense out of all of them.

But dear god, if they did make a gnome druid, I would never play anything else again. Especially if they made the forms gnome-sized.

Sonicator wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:

Dark Feed Pet.

My biggest "huh?" on the race/class combos is the gnome priest. I thought they were essentially atheistic and worshiped science?

I feel most of them are logical. For instance: Reclaiming Gnomer after so long has given some Gnomes religion.

Heh.

Gnome Bear Form:

IMAGE(http://s2.buzzfeed.com/static/imagebuzz/web02/2008/11/3/14/650c844d0ea2241fbdc9ba140e64d66b_8.jpg)

Gnome Cat Form:

IMAGE(http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~kdavis5/lol-goggles.jpg)

Personally I was hoping for a Gnome Hunter. Probably because I have crafted so many guns for hunters and I want to use them myself :).

I can understand why they did it from a gameplay perspective, it just seems like a bit of a stretch. Gnome medics using healing technology for cleansing Gnomeregan kinda makes sense though.

Strewth wrote:

But dear god, if they did make a gnome druid, I would never play anything else again. Especially if they made the forms gnome-sized.

I endorse this idea. They already have a bear model, too:

IMAGE(http://static.wowhead.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/107130.jpg)

Strewth wrote:

But dear god, if they did make a gnome druid, I would never play anything else again. Especially if they made the forms gnome-sized.

That would be so very very awesome. Completely not in line with game lore, but awesome anyway.

Disagree with the CoT part. Phasing could easily be an option for azeroth changes and loremaster.

Also, I would totally roll a forsaken pally.

Your other points have been discussed in this thread both pros and cons Mord, but I wanted to respond in particular to one point you raised on your blog post (yes, I read it, and while I disagree with most of your conclusions it was well-written and interesting to read :)):

Mordiceius wrote:

The notes talk about a “100 cap” as if level 100 would be a level ceiling that you cannot go past. Since when has that existed?

It's purely a psychological thing. Crossing the 100 barrier in an mmo is uncommon so far, and I suspect that many people view 100 as a natural point of conclusion. You know, 100%, for example. 100C to reach the boiling point of water. And so on.

There's no reason that levelling should stop at 100, it's just the mental perception of going past 100 as being "silly". But really, any arbitrary number is just as good as another IMO. *shrug*