In a flash of understanding I finally figured it out. The Chinese are holding our WoW characters hostage and forcing them to mine and forage to offset the debt we owe them. It all makes sense now!
I see no reason why they wouldn’t continue with the Wrath model, which is what they’ve been doing so far in Cata.
x.1 - new features and bug fixes they couldn’t get out in time for x.0
x.2 - ZOMG FUCKIN’ DAILIES. And a raid.
x.3 - Final Tier and new dungeons.
Though in Wrath 3.2 had dailies, a raid, and a dungeon, although the dungeon was fairly lax.
Edit - it is frustrating that they don’t convert more Vanilla dungeons to Heroic. I imagine this would be fairly easy to do. When I first heard about the Heroic versions of Vanilla dungeons in Cata, I thought that all Vanilla dungeons would offer a Heroic version. I was very disappointed when I found out it was just DM and, um, that other one.
Erik_J
6143
I would say I’ve missed maybe 90% of the instances in WoW. Is it possible if I gear up a bit to go back to the old instances and get through them with 1-2 people?
Yes. I’ve been soloing some of the BC dungeons for the achievements. I already did them, of course, but the achievement system was implemented halfway through BC…
At 85 you can solo BC dungeons and the lower level Wrath dungeons. You’ll probably need a partner (probably healer) for the higher level Warth dungeons, and certainly the heroic ones.
Erik_J
6145
Cool. I think one of my friends plays a healer type, and I’m a paladin, so I have good survivability. Well, I did, anyway. Not sure how the new skill trees change that. Guess I’ll just pick up where I left off quest wise.
Roll a DK and solo Lich King
Depending on your character type and how much patience you have, you can also solo through some of the old raid content. Lots of people solo Molten Core for the windfury bindings (part of a legendary sword), and I think Blackwing Lair is doable as well. I don’t know about anything beyond that though.
Blackwing Lair is not soloable…unless you have friends help you with the first encounter. It requires two people to switch off on the mind control of Razergore while at least one person protects the MC’er…
Yes, they may have to start making their money hats out of $50s instead of $100s. The horror.
Lorini
6150
Trends matter. And that’s the issue. Had they lost 600K subs but then picked up even 100K subs, they’d be a lot happier. Naturally they aren’t pressing the panic button but still, they’d like to trend upwards not down.
The point is these people might influence people that played with them to quit as well as the personal hook is what keeps most of WoW together right now.
This could snowball pretty quickly as there is nothing to do once you finished the Molten Front dailies if you don’t raid / do arenas besides leveling the n th alt.
I’m suprised it’s only 500k subs and I assume that a lot of people like myself still are subscribed although they don’t play anymore as it feels like so many people left in Cata.
Would be interesting to see how many of these paying accounts haven’t logged on in 3 months.
I finally unsubscribed yesterday and will not be back until the next expansion at least.
This is the case with every single expansion, though. The issue now is that the game’s 7 years old and people are just starting to wander off for newer games. They’ve still got a fairly massive cushion, though.
Apparently a hunter can solo Razorgore if you work the encounter correctly. I just watched a video of someone doing that. I should level a hunter, so many things can be done solo when you’ve got one. My priest is pretty bad at that.
Except that they haven’t stuck to that model, in Cataclysm. 4.1 added heroic dungeons, but it did not add a new raid.
Both TBC and WotLK had 4 raid tiers each, and corresponding arena seasons. The question is, whether they can fit in 2 more raid tiers before the next expansion, or whether they’re going to just go with 3 raid tiers in total for Cataclysm.
it is frustrating that they don’t convert more Vanilla dungeons to Heroic.
That’s one of those ideas that’s very divisive. I tend to agree with you, that having old dungeons updated into new level 85 heroic versions can be a fun twist. (Although heroic Deadmines is far too long and annoying for a standard random heroic dungeon; it should have been chopped down, or at the very least, the entire new section with Vanessa VanCleef shouldn’t be required to finish the LFD requirements.)
For a lot of people, Cataclysm has been a hash of recycled old content, and they don’t like it. They do have a point: there are the two normal heroics remade, the two troll heroics brought back, and even Nefarian and Onyxia (again!) make another appearance in a raid. So there has been a good bit of older content recycled for this expansion.
Personally, I’d still love to see all of the wings of Scarlet Monestary brought back as heroic level-cap dungeons.
After playing Champions Online, it makes me wish that all the dungeons in wow scaled with level. Then there wouldn’t be a need to ‘bring something back’ or remake it.
(Although heroic Deadmines is far too long and annoying for a standard random heroic dungeon; it should have been chopped down, or at the very least, the entire new section with Vanessa VanCleef shouldn’t be required to finish the LFD requirements.)
Deadmines was chopped down, and is in a great place right now; certainly less painful than Heroic Grim Batol and less of a mob-grind than Heroic Lost City of the Tol’vir.
Personally, I’d still love to see all of the wings of Scarlet Monestary brought back as heroic level-cap dungeons.
Fuck yes, although from a storyline perspective it would make no goddamn sense.
Don’t forget the goddamn whole Molten Core is running around in Hiyal as non-elites.
All my friends from old (Lava Surgers, Core Hounds, Shazzrah, Geddon, Majordomo).
As someone who is exalted with the Hydraxian Waterlords:
NEVER AGAIN DO I WANT TO SEE FUCKING FIRE ELEMENTALS AND LIZARDS. I had enough for more than a life time of them…
I agree though that Scarlet Monastry would be cool remastered.
I noticed they carefully avoided mentioning the regions of the losses. Between that and the release of Cataclysm in China, I’m guessing most of the dip came from NA and Europe. Good thing they opened the cash shop in China!
I hope the chopping was trash, the Deadmines bosses are all frikkin’ awesome.
Even if the Van Cleefe fight screwed some PuGs, you could still complete the dungeon if the timer ran out.
Lorini
6160
The Chinese pay the equivalent of $4 a month for WoW so I don’t think they’d care much if they did lose 600K. My understanding though was that their earnings were up specifically because of the Chinese subs.
