With the new ‘Events’ released this week there’s more and more talk about the upcoming expansion. We even have one doper involved in the Beta. But some people want to remain ‘unspoiled’ when it comes out. So I thought I’d start up this thread to have a place to share links/movies/info about the upcoming expansion.
I know I’m looking forward to leveling my Goblin Shaman. (no name picked out yet, but it’ll probably be Gobbybird knowing my level of sophisticated namings) And I guess I also want to level a Worgen-something and possibly an Undead thanks to the comment that the starter levels have changed significantly.
I’m the (well, one, anyway–I don’t think anybody else has stepped up and admitted it yet ) Doper who’s in the beta. I’ll be happy to try to answer questions, but I haven’t been playing that much lately (I’ve leveled my DK tank up to 83 and am heading to 84 now that they removed the level cap, my mage is 80 and questing in Vash’jir, and I’ve leveled a Goblin through the intro experience and a Worgen about halfway through).
All my toons are Horde, so I won’t be able to answer much about Allliance-only stuff (though I have friends I can ask, so it’s worth a shot). I can answer questions about the Hyjal and Deepholm zones and about half of Vash’jir. I’m about to head to Uldum on my DK.)
So far I’ve been very impressed with everything but the loader. I still don’t have the whole thing downloaded, and it’s slow as molasses. Fortunately, though, they did do one nice thing: they’ve now fixed it so you can play much sooner in the download process. It won’t look quite as pretty, but it’s playable.
Well you know all my characters, I’ll probably be an spell casting shammy. You can take the healing kind! Someone else can have the dual-wielding one. Hah! Jas09’s in.
I already have the BOA gear, I wonder if more BOA gear is coming with the xpac?
So what are the selling points for this expansion? Are they doing anything unique? Trying things that haven’t been done before in MMOs? Or are they playing it safe?
Yeah, they’ll have new zones, new gear, new skills, new races and raise the level cap. But all that shit’s been done before… Why would someone who’s been away for a long time want come back?
I wouldn’t say they’re doing anything that hasn’t been done before. If you’re looking for cutting edge, you probably should look elsewhere. WoW has never been cutting edge, really. They do what they do very well, and they just keep improving on it. The graphics are nicer, but you don’t need a bleeding-edge computer to play the game. You can fly in the old world now, which is great. I would say the best reason to come back is if you like lore, and want to see what’s been happening with ol’ Blackwing and his crew. The new zones are quite nice, the questing is much more streamlined and fun (and less random), and it looks like they’re going back to a more vanilla-WoW style of raiding/instances, where crowd control actually matters and AoE isn’t king anymore.
They are also making it so you don’t have to pull together a 25-man raid for the best loot in the game. 10s and 25s will drop the same quality loot, only more of it in 25s. This is great news for smaller, more casual guilds.
ETA: Guild progression has been around in other MMOs. Warhammer Online had it for sure, and it seems WoW has taken some great ideas from WAR and others (such as instant BG queueing from anywhere in the world) in order to evolve the game and keep it relevant against competitors.
I’ve seen helmets but I don’t know if they’re staying or were a PTR-only thing.
The new instances require (at least until players get back to “OP being the default”) something I’d been missing dearly: CC. I was going to say “I don’t know when do I find ‘dump it all DPS’ more irritating, when I’m tanking or when I’m healing,” but I actually do: it’s when we’re in an old instance, at level, and people manage to do things like pull the whole courtyard in RFK because they think they’re well-geared level 80s. People have had to brush up their sheeps, traps and saps.
I’ve long explained to my Hordie pals that one reason dwarves have to be in the Alliance is that the humans haven’t paid for the repairs to Stormwind yet… looks like it will be a while, because the whole northeast side of town has been revamped. Keeps our stonecrafters fed, that’s for sure.
The PTRs are in the US, which means that EU players get lag upwards of 500ms; 800ms isn’t anything to whine about. That makes being in the PTR unpleasant, so I don’t go in much. I can tell you that, while it’s pretty that quests are much more tightly woven (I’m a sucker for a well-told tale, even in vanilla one of the things that sucked me in was that things in WoW linked to each other), if there’s a step you can’t do you get stuck in the whole chain. Of course this will be less of a problem once the areas connect properly again.
Which brings us to: lots of new flight points, yay. Oh, and I haven’t flown all over, but Southshore has been, shall we say, heavily redecorated. I’m not saying no mo’.
I agree with winterhawk that everybody should do the goblin start chain. At a couple of points I was giggling so hard I couldn’t drive properly (not that anybody was expecting me to do so).
The professions weren’t up last time I went to the PTR, but the new Big Book of Skills (I don’t think you can call that a “spellbook” any more) is nifty. Spells “level up” automatically, you only need to buy them once (the “show all ranks” is still there). You can see which skills will be available and when. And it contains your mounts and non-combat pets too; the charsheet has been revamped as well. The new race skills weren’t in yet either (I’ve been expecting those since they killed treasure chests).
To see what’s changed in the old place - as the name implies, they are totally revising all the old areas. While I too have been deliberately avoiding specific updates, as I understand it there is a world-wide cataclysm that changes everything, so the levelling experience for even your old familiar classes will be quite different then.
How they will merge that with people still playing without the expansion I don’t know. Knowing me I’ll get it the first day anyway …
People playing without the expansion get the new versions of the old places too. They can not use new races if they play vanilla, or enter the areas introduced in whichever expansions they do not have.
Yes. Current BoA gear will only work up until level 80, and depending on how its new stats shake out after Cata, may or may not continue to be useful. The XP bonuses may still be worth it.
The Dwarves didn’t build Stormwind. As to whether or not it was properly paid for… that’s another matter, but it’s still all Human politics. Go look up the origins of the Defias.
The initial 1-5 questing is a little different–they’ve repurposed some of the quest NPCs and added another quest hub that makes it a little more convenient to get to places like Agamand Mills without having to run forever back and forth. The Forsaken architecture has changed–Brill now has the same building models as the Forsaken towns in Wrath (which I think is a huge improvement). Everything looks more impressive.
After you get to the low teen levels, you’re sent toward Silverpine Forest as before, but there’s now a new quest hub called The Forsaken Front (I think) where you observe some really cool lore-based stuff (spoilered below):
You observe a “discussion” between Garrosh Hellscream and Sylvanas Windrunner, where the Dark Lady demonstrates that she’s put some of the more intelligent “out of work” scourge (the Val’kyr) to work and discovered that the Forsaken can reproduce by raising the dead of other races. She demonstrates by having the Val’kyr raise a whole pile of dead humans as new Forsaken. Garrosh is disgusted and appalled. “What makes you any different than the Lich King?” he asks. “It should be obvious,” she replies with more than a bit of sarcasm. “We serve the Horde.” Sylvanas has gotten even more evil than before.
There are several quests you do at the Forsaken Front before you move on to the Sepulcher. I haven’t gotten that far yet so I’m not sure if the Sepulcher has changed any.
) Doper who’s in the beta. I’ll be happy to try to answer questions, but I haven’t been playing that much lately (I’ve leveled my DK tank up to 83 and am heading to 84 now that they removed the level cap, my mage is 80 and questing in Vash’jir, and I’ve leveled a Goblin through the intro experience and a Worgen about halfway through).