Yep, it was all trash and nerfs to boss difficulty (specifically the mists dude, who got nerfed hard).
Blizzard gets $301 million over three years for the China license, which includes SC2 (and I think some other minor properties). The way I interpreted the statements, the revenue came from the Chinese players buying mounts and pets, so those must be outside the base license. WoW still dominates the MMO market, but it looks to me like it’s shrinking a lot in its original markets. If it carries on for years like EQ, Blizzard will have to make do with what, two million subs? Poor things! I’m mostly interested because assuming Blizzard knows the actual trends, the earnings call seems a little deceptive.
RickH
6163
My ICC-geared DK tank could solo most of Karazhan at 80 (I wanted the enchant recipes & to see the sights). Haven’t tried at 85 + geared.
I’ve finally started leveling a character from 1 to 85. I decided to with a Worgen hunter, so I could see the new content and also because I’ve never gotten past level 70 with one. My god, the mechanics for hunters are so much simpler than they used to be. Pets seem to be almost the same as warlock demons now, with a little bit of customization thrown in. That along with no ammunition make the class feel much more like a caster class than it used to. I’ve twinked this guy with all the Wrath and Cataclysm heirloom gear along with the perks offered by our level 25 guild, and the result is I’m one or two shotting everything. The main challenge is trying to keep my quests from going grey – I’m still doing Darkshore quests at level 23. I think back to the dwarf hunter that was my first character six years ago…running out of ammo, trying to keep my pet from going wild on me, etc. It’s almost like a different game.
Worgens are ugly, btw. The riding animation is especially unappealing. I’m going for exalted with Darnassus just so I can get a proper mount. Their story was pretty good though, aside from the horribly bugged Battle of Gilneas final quest.
Lorini
6165
I caved and bought the new mount from the Blizzard store for my Worgen. Gawd that has to be the ugliest mount animation ever done in the history of MMO’s, it’s just that ugly.
The flaming, flying lion? The animation is exactly like the griffons, isn’t it?
Lorini
6167
Sorry, I should have edited that. I meant the Worgen animation is ugly at least to me. I’m not paying $25 extra for ugly :)
Ah. Yeah, I liked the self-mount the Worgens get at first, but I realized later that I’d rather be on a fancy mount of some sort.
Lorini
6169
Yay! Real ID dungeon grouping will be free.
Heh. I was actually really excited about RealID dungeon finder, but I stopped logging into WoW other than at raid times.
If anyone wants to run heroics (or hell, normals, if I’m bored I’m bored) with a Druid (Balance or Resto in Firelands raid gear) or Prot Paladin, I’d be up for it. I won’t be logged on, but please feel free to IM me (my AIM is the same as my Qt3 name) or just PM me on Qt3, which I have open constantly.
They’re buffing threat (from 3x tank damage to 5x) because they don’t feel that watching threat meters is fun.
Good call, I think. Worst part about DK tanking is putting up two diseases and spreading them. Well, not so much that, but waiting for GCD three times. Now I won’t have to do that if I’m feeling lazy. Just Heartstrike away.
I like the threat change. I wish, frankly, that they’d take a bunch of buttons out of other classes.
I added it up and my warlock has like a dozen things he has to do, all on different timers/cooldowns. I hardly even see fights for all the whackamole I need to do. I’ve played that warlock since launch +3 days, but he has no fun in his pants now. Better to be doing 3-5 things, not a dozen. I want to see the fights and laugh at the amazingly dumb things we all do from time to time. I also like to admire the artwork and effects. It seems like there isn’t much time for that any more during fights.
Instead of a cash AH in D3 the Chinese will be able to buy and sell with US treasuries ;-)
85 Kara is cake with a blood DK. I used to run it up to chess on a weekly basis before they nnerfed the cash. Chess took too long, so I always stopped there.
So they just make the pandaran look like something other than a Panda for the Chinese release. Kind of like they had to make blood green because red blood wasn’t allowed.
No reason we can’t have our drunken Shaolin shenanigans.
Yes. I said shenanigans. Bring it.
Heroic Beth’tilac FINALLY DOWN, after over a dozen hours of attempts.
I must say, anyone complaining that this tier of raiding is too casual or too easy is insane. Heroic modes in 25man are solidly harder than most of the TBC progression raiding I did.
So I’m playing WoW again, but this time on a free account. I’m capped at 20 but the BGs are fun and pop pretty quickly, considering how low level they are – about every 10-15 minutes.
It’s a different challenge. I’m twinking my 20 but I can’t trade or get anything from AH, so I have to get it all myself. I’m two pieces away from all blues on my hunter. I got leatherworking up to get medium armor kits and then ditched leatherworking for enchanting. I have all my enchants now so I’m going mining to get raw materials and then I’ll drop that for engineering to get scopes for my hunter.
Just a different way to play WoW. And it’s free.
If the recent Gamescon news is accurate, it sounds like 4.3 is bringing Deathwing. The new Wardrobe/Appearance options will make for some interesting changes in appearance overall; if nothing else, it will encourage a lot of old raid farming.
Unless they do something odd, like adding a tier after Deathwing, that means that there will only be 3 raid tiers for this expansion – the previous expansions each had 4 tiers of content. 4.3 should be released by the end of the year, which would mean we are likely to see the beta of the next expansion around March-April 2012, with the release in a June-July timeframe. By only having 3 raid tiers instead of 4 in Cataclysm, they’re cutting out 6 months, allowing them to shrink the time between expansions.
SPECULATION -
Pandaren will be friendly NPCs, and unkillable. A new hero class will be added, the monk. It will be a hybrid melee dps and healer.
There isn’t any such thing as an unkillable NPC, is there? I mean, there are NPCs that are hella hard to kill, but if you’ve got the right faction allegiance you can try and kill anybody, can’t you?
I’ll admit that I’d have to get back in for a Pandaren expansion, at least long enough to see all the stuff in it, but I do wonder how they’ll get around the China problem.
