Menzo
1962
I think Flex Raiding is a great experiment, and hope that the next expansion simplifies things a lot. I don’t see why we need so many tiers, just have LFR, Flex, and Flex Heroic.
It’s time to get rid of set raid size requirements once and for all.
Jag
1963
They didn’t make an entire expansion around those and most of it was easy to ignore. An entire continent with Panda and Asian inspired lore just isn’t something I enjoyed. It’s a personal preference.
Gedd
1964
That was my thought as well when this was initially announced. I figured if Flex worked out well in this tier, then we might see them use the tech in normal (and maybe heroic) mode and get rid of the separate flex tier. It would simplify things for them from a development standpoint. I can’t imagine they like having to tune 4 difficulties (with various raid sizes) and separate iLevels. However some of the recent statements seem to indicate they think flex is for a separate set of gamers.
I’d like to briefly clarify Flexible mode’s target audience and what that means regarding how we tune the content: Flexible mode is primarily for roughly the audience served by 10-player Normal raiding in Wrath of the Lich King (10 Normal used to be a tier lower than 25 Normal). Not every guild that raids is a raiding guild, if that makes sense. I’d say that Flexible mode is for social groups that raid; Normal mode is for raiding guilds (and Heroic is for hardcore raiding guilds). That distinction consists of factors such as whether or not the group will ever recruit based on class needs, or remove someone based on performance (or even openly criticize them).
I still think we may seem them incorporate the flex technology into normal at least, but they seem interested in at least maintaining the flex difficulty level as well.
Gedd, I think nailing the Pandaria name had less to do with a leak and more to do with Blizzard registering the domain name before announcing the XPAC.
I was out to dinner with a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in a few years recently, and he asked if I still played WoW. He had played casually in Vanilla and a bit of BC, but had gotten back on recently, as his kids wanted to give it a go.
His comment? They really dumbed it down. He remembered getting killed all the time in Vanilla WoW, with elite mobs all over the place, hard quests and never having cash. Now the quests are pretty quick and mostly easy, there aren’t many elite mobs running around killing people, and he gets all the money he needs as a casual player via quests or dailies. He summed it up, “They really dumbed it down. WoW used to be really hard, and now it’s pretty easy.”
I don’t think it’s possible to be more casual or less invested in WoW and still play at all than this guy. So I think that’s a pretty reliable way to look at it. There is a lot more story, art and things to do now than ever before. But the game isn’t as hard, at least if you are a non-normal-raiding casual player.
I hear you. I liked the art in BC but wanted to claw my ears out after having to spend hours listening to that “a-whoom, a-whom” thrumming sound that the manaforges gave off. I also wasn’t as happy to return to familiar architecture in LK after Blizz stretched their concept muscles a bit for BC.
I can’t remember when they removed elite mobs from the world in general (maybe around the Lich King timeframe?), but I do remember it was a conscious decision in order to make the leveling experience easier for new players. I always liked having random elite mobs running around the world. It made it seem scary and dangerous when you could suddenly run into a camp of elite dwarves who would kill you in two seconds. Made me want to see what was in there!
My take on the old days was that the elites were there for you to group up and socially destroy them. My actual experience with elite quests was generally more like stand around for a half hour trying to get a guildie of passer-bye to group with you, then get frustrated and not finish the quest chain. This was especially frustrating, since the elite quests (like in Hillsbrad) were the end of very long questlines that had required a lot of time and work.
I’m not sorry that Blizz increased personal power vs. mobs in general, but do think they may have gone a little overboard. back in vanilla 3 things my own level were a) really easy to run into, b) pretty good at getting me near death or dead, especially if they ran off and brought reinforcements when wounded (I’m looking at the gnolls in the Wetlands here). Now? I marched an 86 druid up to one of the elite pythons (no idea at all why they are there) in the jade forest killed one, at not great loss of health to myself. That might be a bit too easy, methinks.
Yeah, I liked the elite mobs too. I also liked the elite mobs grouped in open world places because it was as close as you’d get to a dungeon that wasn’t instanced. There might be three players there doing stuff or maybe a dozen. It had a bit of the old EQ flavor of people congregating in a popular dungeon area.
WoW is a lot easier. It’s hard to get killed now.
Like Joe, I don’t see it as all negatives though. Sure, vanilla WoW holds a special place in my heart, but the majority of the quests were dull and leveling took forever. And good luck having a life if you wanted alts. These days I really appreciate their focus on story over grind. If the tradeoff for that was the challenge, which let’s admit was frustrating at times, especially for certain classes/specs, then I’m perfectly okay with that. Could they have appealed to both sides? Probably, but then the game might not have appealed to as many people. And Blizzard at least gives people the option of doing easy or challenging content at endgame, which was certainly not the case for vanilla WoW.
In other news, Ghostcrawler just posted a class-by-class analysis of all the changes that are coming in 5.4 (they sound good). He also mentions that he plans on doing a postmortem of Mists of Pandaria soon, and while “very proud” of the expansion overall, he indicates he has some grievances with it as he had with his Cataclysm postmortem.
Good points, and I particularly remember this because I tried to solo everything in my early days of WoW, and it felt like the questlines either stalled at that point, or I would eventually outlevel the area and not get any XP for the quest. On the other hand, when I was able to get a group together to do those quests, those experience are burned into my memory. Defeating some witch lady with her armed escort of twenty guards across Eastern Plaguelands. Assaulting a castle to destroy the general. Doing a death run away from some felguards so I could get my warlock spell upgrade. Those were all great experiences, possibly because they took extra time and effort to get a group together.
I don’t know where you draw the line to balance this out. It felt so immersive back in the day to have to actually find the dungeon entrance, and now it’s just, “Want to do a dungeon? >BOOP< You’re there!”
Daagar
1972
It is a level of degree. You dislike the theme, and that’s fine. It is the people frothing at the mouth (not in this thread, just in the world at large) at how Pandas are the downfall of mankind and the single thing responsible for all hate and evil in the world and how it is completely unrealistic that Pandas should talk in a world with talking cows and dragons that can be sent to you by mail.
I believe they’ve done a bit of this with each XPAC around the time a new one came out. IIRC the logic is that there aren’t going to be as many people in the old zone any more, so it would be really hard for people to level through with elites in a mostly abandoned zone. Makes sense.
Time for some speculation:
Blizzard just trademarked The Dark Below. There is actually a place in the Warcraft universe called The Dark Below (taken from the wiki): The Dark Below is a place inhabited by demons, devils and infernal creatures, from where some sorcerers take their power directly and sometimes have a patron beast to foster their magic. The demons from the Dark Below apparently exist apart from the Burning Legion, who reside in the Twisting Nether. The Dark Below may be another description for the “Twisting Nether”, in which case these are demons of a separate faction that live within the same plane of existence.
There is also speculation it could be referring to Azshara and N’zoth (an ocean expansion?). But I suppose the safe bet would be that it is a Diablo 3 expansion since we know Blizzard will be making an announcement at Gamescon in a few weeks:
“We’re making a special announcement that’s sure to capture the attention of the Heavens, Burning Hells and all the shadowed places that lie between.”
True, it could be a clever fake out. Use a place from WoW lore for the D3 expansion. Could relate to the black soulstone falling from heaven with Diablos body and a quest to try and recover/save Leahs soul.
Hmm, two more pieces of evidence that could indicate it’s a WoW expansion:
Ozumat is the Fiend of the Dark Below
and
“But there is a yawning chasm of darkness beneath you mortals, vast, endless, and all consuming. I do not believe that you can correct this doomed course.” This is a quote from the Heroic-only Throne of Thunder boss, Ra-Den.
Also, this is about the time Blizzard trademarked Mists of Pandaria (August 2nd, 2011) and Cataclysm (July 1st, 2009) in the past, following a 2 year cycle.
See, now that’s good gossip, there!
Ghostcrawler was some sort of oceanographer or ichthyologist in a past career, wasn’t he? Vash’ir was his baby. But one complaint that he mentioned previously was that Vash’ir was too slow, and that people were done with it when they finished questing there. They also killed the underwater raid when Firelands came out. So I’m a little sketchy about an underwater “Dark below.”
Mind you, I’d love a crack at Azshara. If they just tighten up the scope on underwater zones (and oh, yeah, give us spear guns or something so we can actually --fish-- in the big underwater zone) I think they’d be a hoot.
All the foreshadowing with Wrathion, combined with a total and complete lack of anything to do with naga or underwater adventures this XAPC, makes my suspect burning legion. That wouldn’t necessarily be bad. The art, architecture and design of Burning Crusade was great.
I’m fine with alien places, so long as they are cool-looking and not too awfully bleak. WoW in the past has spent entirely too much time centered in bleak, barren, dark landscapes (Shadowmoon Valley, Netherstorm, the Whole northern part of LK, Firelands, etc.). one of the things I like about Pandaria are the lovely, wide-open vistas.
The timeline on this one is going to be interesting to me. They were (and presumably still are) under a lot of pressure to get content out quickly. I don’t think they will want the next XPAC to come out nearly a year after 5.4, like happened in Cata. I also think it would be a waste to just abandon Pandaria as another throwaway place once the XPAC run its course. I’d like to see them somehow leverage Pandaria into the next XPAC. A little less design framework might lead to a lot more fun stuff.
Jag
1978
Anyone know if new higher level drop dungeons will be released with the Siege Raid like they did with ICC at the end of WOTLK? It was a good stepping stone to get decent items to raid with. Maybe it’s not needed now with LFR.
RickH
1979
Nope. They have said they will have no more 5-man content in this explansion.
MMO-Champion is reporting that Reaper of Souls is Diablo 3’s next expansion. So unless we are way off and it’s another game entirely, The Dark Below is most likely the name for the next WoW expansion! I’m excited now. :)
Gedd
1981
WoW in the past has spent entirely too much time centered in bleak, barren, dark landscapes (Shadowmoon Valley, Netherstorm, the Whole northern part of LK, Firelands, etc.). one of the things I like about Pandaria are the lovely, wide-open vistas.
Agreed. Nagrand was probably my favorite TBC zone because everything else just seemed like it was made from different colored rocks.
