Next Expansion

[Krang Stonehoof]

If anyone is curious,

The Blizzard is streaming from gamescom and today they will present the next expansion:

http://www.twitch.tv/blizzard

[Nekatus]

yeah im watching it. i think its the right direction. they goes back to BC stuff

[spik96]

yeah im watching it. i think its the right direction. they goes back to BC stuff

As much as WoD was.
We can't judge an expansion by its art (which has always been pretty good with Blizzard), we need gameplay for that.
And, mark my words, they will fail at game design.

Buuuuut...
I will grab all those little 3D models and make whatever I want with them !

[Krang Stonehoof]

Fail at game design? Why you say that?

[Met@]

Someone was working on the demon hunter class here, now Blizz did it

[Rangorn]

[axel0099]

why so negative man?

[spik96]

Fail at game design? Why you say that?

They seem totally unable to balance anything, they are professionals at making good content irrelevant or too easy. They don't understand that while players always take the path of least resistance (which is perfectly understandable), they need challenge to be entertained.
And you also need to force people to meet themselves in the game, so you don't create a LFG tool with instant teleportation, you don't put overpowered flying mounts and you don't make the most profitable place a solo place (garrisons) or you're a retarted game designer.

But still, they have good points here :
The art is as always really good looking. Blizzard artists reign supreme.
The Demon Hunter class is a good idea and it's good they did not make them available for all races, they kept the lore intact with that for once.

[axel0099]

the part where I said you shouldn't be negative is that they definetely saw that they fucked up.
and they're finally listening to the player base which is a great improvement to how they used to act before.

[schlumpf]

So far no visible tech changes client side except for the still unanswered question if this is detail doodads clipping through models, just basic terrain looking like rocks, or detail doodads on blendmeshes/wmos/m2s. There are apparently quite a lot of server side tech changes, but obviously no details at all.

[axel0099]

just wait for sunday

[Amaroth]

I kinda dislike that they jump from Legion to Legion. Yes, WoD is not entirely about Legion, but quite a big part of it is. While I don't dislike demonical content at all, I would maybe like to see another undead and nordic mayhem again. Well, if we have to reuse old contents. But I can't imagine anything entirely new in WoW. Nearly everything possible was already put there.

About soloing, its definitely true. I play WoD now and I have to say that its largely solo game. I am in guild, indeed, but even without running any guild raids I have 670 iLvL just from running stupid easy-to-do solo dailies. I have also started to raid Hellfire Citadel with completely random guys from LFR, without any Teamspeak or something like that and guess what? With 1 tank, 3 healers and not even full DPS we still didn't even fucking wipe. And I was the 3rd in DPS - with my equip. That doesn't mean that I was exceptionaly good, that means that most of raid exceptionaly sucked. Still, nearly whole Hellfire is down for me. After 2 runs of Blackrock Foundry, 2 runs of Highmaul and 1 month of daylies.

- Wadafak?

I like nearly everything about WoD. Its wonderful game. BUT SOOOOOO FUCKING EASY.

[spik96]

the part where I said you shouldn't be negative is that they definetely saw that they fucked up.
and they're finally listening to the player base which is a great improvement to how they used to act before.

You should not always listen to players.
Image a government asking "Hey, do you want less taxes ?". The people will say "Yes" regardless of the real needs.
That's why you listen designers. Because the players don't know how they can be entertained the most and that's why they buy a game.

Oh and, a minor detail, the Broken Isles look really good and nice lore but... they are not isles. It's a compact continent. Why x) ? A bit strange but not important anyway.

[Method]

This WoW expansion is:

 let's throw every expansion idea into one and try to survive another year

. Illidian? yep!
Demon hunters? you bet!
Naga? Yep!
The legion returns? why not!
Alleria and Turalyon? of course!
Emerald Nightmare? Absolutely!
Fragments of Frostmourne? Yeah, okay!
Ashbringer for everyone? Go for it!
Tomb of Sargeras? Here we go!

Seems very lazy. This is maybe, three expansions worth of story and ideas crammed into one linear continent. Maybe it'll turn out good, but I'm not holding out hope right now.  Logically if you cram this much stuff into one expansion it'll all be done pretty shitty, especially if you have so many plot-points to cover, with so much potential lost along the way.

The things I liked:

Class Zones, these are a great addition to the game in theory, but Blizzards recent execution of ideas has been dreadful (Garrisons)

The Continent: looks varied and nice to look at, very "azeroth" mostly new assets that we can all use for different projects

Demon Hunters: every new class is good for this game, more varied. I'm looking forward to the questing experience, and all those lovely assets.

[Amaroth]

Spik has a point. If Blizzard was listeting to every pubertal kid who hates something because of its stupidity or worse, hurted ego, WoW would be much bigger piece of trash now. Democracy has the same problem. Its ruling of majority - that more stupid and average majority.