New Expansion announcement on the 6th

[BloodOmen]

Blizzard posted earlier they would reveal the new expansion @ GamesCon on the 6th of August, you can watch the live reveal @ http://blizzgc.com/#schedule

 

[Moriath]

Blizzard posted earlier they would reveal the new expansion @ GamesCon on the 6th of August, you can watch the live reveal @ http://blizzgc.com/#schedule

Or not

 

[Gwadien]

Meh, last one was such a flop, but they probably have that many developers employed now that they have to keep churning out shit hoping some will stick.

They start on something fresh tbh, and lay off some staff.

 

[BloodOmen]

Yup, warlords was pretty boring. Too much focus on Garrisons and very little to do in the actual world.

 

[Gwadien]

I've never actually played WoW, but I would like to see them jump ship and start something anew, I've been told many times to 'get into it' but I can't help but feel that getting into a game that dated is a bit of a waste of time.

 

[BloodOmen]

You aren't missing much. I've come close a few times in the last few weeks to just deleting every character I have to stop me going back to it, I want to see what they do with the next expansion first though.

 

[Moriath]

You aren't missing much. I've come close a few times in the last few weeks to just deleting every character I have to stop me going back to it, I want to see what they do with the next expansion first though.

I play for a year or so. Maybe the second expansion. The trend for making everything irrelevent you spent hours getting just isnt funny. And seems the only way they can think of going forward

 

[Ormorof]

isnt that the same in pretty much all mmos?

WoW is just particularly gear focused

considering its coming from same company as Diablo which is also all about getting more loot and bigger numbers its hardly surprising

 

[BloodOmen]

Playing Elderscrolls Online with @Mabs at the moment. Probably going to try Wildstar out again when it goes F2P to see what has changed not really holding my breath for WoW.

 

[Raven]

Rumours flying about that they are making multi-classes, apparently its come from someone who was spot on about most of WOD long before release.

Large pinch of salt but interesting.

 

[BloodOmen]

Rumours flying about that they are making multi-classes, apparently its come from someone who was spot on about most of WOD long before release.

Large pinch of salt but interesting.

As in multiple new classes or new roles for current classes like tank mage etc? got a link to post so i can have a read.

 

[BloodOmen]

An intern at Blizzard apparently released this



it says "Yawning Chasm of Darkness" and shows a picture of Nozdormu

 

[Raven]

As in multiple new classes or new roles for current classes like tank mage etc? got a link to post so i can have a read.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1827853-Some-SPOILERS-about-New-Expansion-from-a-chinese-forum Mostly in there

 

[Raven]

Down to 5.6 mil subs. Ouch.

 

[BloodOmen]

Down to 5.6 mil subs. Ouch.

It'll be even less than that tbh, when you take into account Asian subs work differently than ours, they sub for 1 hour rather than 1 month at a time. I'd wager its even lower than 4,000,000.. explains why they'd announce expansion now rather than BlizzCon because by the time BlizzCon comes round it'll have dropped another million or so

 

[Gray]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmHY6hERT3s



View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6CWue7voA0


demon Hunters, was to be expected i guess...

 

[Raven]

Lots of hype, they better deliver.

 

[Yoni]

I liked the last expansion and still raid regularly and needless to say I'm looking forward to the next one a lot. Can't believe it's come around so quickly

 

[BloodOmen]

Well, there's me playing a Demon Hunter.

 

[Syri]

Well, I think that was exactly what they needed to announce... I know it's early days yet, but it does seem they've learned some lessons from Warlords, especially in the followers. I like the sound of the new system, where you actually work with the followers. Demon hunter, yep, sounds nice. More variety levelling and more class specific stuff, so alts aren't so similar, sounds good... At the moment, I'm hopeful. When patch notes start to surface with class changes and such, then I'll start to pay more attention.

 

[Raven]

I hope they deliver with the weapons. I like the idea of having something to work towards that isn't just "collect X amount of tomes from bosses" it doesn't feel legendary. A little worried they are making survival hunters melee orientated, with the spear. Will have to wait and see. Played survival as my main through its ups and downs since cata and I think I would probably end up just going back to holy paladin if they ruin survival.

I will probably roll a demon hunter as an alt and see what they are about.

 

[BloodOmen]

I hope they deliver with the weapons. I like the idea of having something to work towards that isn't just "collect X amount of tomes from bosses" it doesn't feel legendary. A little worried they are making survival hunters melee orientated, with the spear. Will have to wait and see. Played survival as my main through its ups and downs since cata and I think I would probably end up just going back to holy paladin if they ruin survival.

I will probably roll a demon hunter as an alt and see what they are about.

Aye the artifact weapons look interesting however it wasn't clear if you just wielded them... but not actually hit shit with them as no stats were shown like dps etc.

It would be quite shit if they were just there as a secondary talent tree and not an actual weapon.

Also, if they can be wielded do they level up for the entire expansion? or do we need to mindless grind items for them like the legendary ring or will the DPS go up as the weapon itself levels.

 

[BloodOmen]

Quite interesting find by someone on Reddit tbh, the expansions haven't just been churned out because Blizzard has ran out of ideas, they've been pre-planned for a very long time. This was posted on wow allakhazam back in 2007.

So my computer died yesterday, leaving me no choice but to dig up my old laptop as my newer one is currently on loan to my mom. What an ancient thing. 8 gig hard drive, Windows 98, and just enough RAM to have a PDF file and internet explorer working at once...with a wait time of about 30 seconds every time I change windows. Useless for everything except surfing the internet for help reviving my desktop PC. As I waited for replies on tech support forums, I dug around a bit and found an old folder filled with crap I saved from my old desktop. I had kept the stuff there to transfer to my new PC, but it looks like I didn't care enough to go through with it.

Stuffed inside the folder were a crapload of documents and stuff pertaining to the World of Warcraft alpha and beta, back before I even cared about the game. I had been sent the stuff from my friend, who was in the friends-and-family beta that preceded the general closed beta in early 2004. Most of the documents were plastered with '2003'. A lot of them were boring, and I can't remember reading any of them. Maybe I looked at a couple and decided it was boring crap.

However, nearly four years later, I had enough of a mind to peruse them all. A lot of PDF-format conversions of early Gamespy previews, patents Blizzard took out for WoW, and so forth. I did find, however, a list of 'possible expansion sets' that looks really interesting. Some of the stuff looks a bit off, especially some of Outland and Northrend, so Blizzard isn't liable to stick to the rest of the plan down to the letter. But the quaint little PDF lists five expansion sets and the regions within. It goes as high as level 100. Nothing about it looks very official, though...it was nothing more than a wordpad document pasted into a PDF document, but I think it's of Blizzardly origins. I assume no responsibility for your actions if this list spurs you to run to the nearest auction house and buy thousands of golds' worth in armor so you can be ready for the Maelstrom.


Draenor Set

Azuremyst Isle - 1 to 10
Bloodmyrk Isle - 10 to 20

Eversong Forest - 1 to 10
Quel'thalas - 10 to 20
Hellfire Peninsula - 58 to 62
Zangarmarsh - 60 to 64
Terokkar Forest - 61 to 65
The Deadlands - 63 to 67
Nagrand - 64 to 68
Blade's Edge Mountains - 66 to 70
Netherstorm - 67 to 70
Shadowmoon Valley - 69 to 70

Northrend Set

Borean Tundra - 67 to 70
Howling Fjord - 67 to 70
Dragonblight - 69 to 72
Grizzly Hills - 70 to 73
Crystalsong Forest - 72 to 75
Zul'drak - 73 to 76
Sholazar Basin - 75 to 79
Storm Peaks - 76 to 80
Icecrown Glacier - 78 to 80

Maelstrom Set

Gilneas - 77 to 80
Grim Batol - 78 to 81
Kul Tiras - 79 to 82
Kezan - 81 to 86
Tel Abim - 83 to 85
Zandalar - 84 to 87
Plunder Isle - 86 to 88
The Broken Isles - 87 to 90
The Maelstrom - 89 to 90

Plane Set

Pandaria - 1 to 10
Hiji - 10 to 20

Wolfenhold - 1 to 10
Xorothian Plains - 10 to 20

The Green Lands - 88 to 91
The Dying Paradise - 91 to 94
The Emerald Nightmare - 94 to 97
The Eye of Ysera - 97 to 100

Deephome - 88 to 91
Skywall - 91 to 94
The Abyssal Maw - 94 to 97
The Firelands - 97 to 100

Legion Set

K'aresh - 96 to 99
Argus Meadowlands - 97 to 100
Mac'Aree - 99 to 100
Maw of Oblivion - 100+
The Burning Citadel - 100+++

I'm not sure what the plus signs indicate. I'm trying to get in touch with my friend (we had a falling-out a year and a half ago) to ascertain the origin of this strange little file.


Edited, Sep 18th 2007 7:41am by Reinjin

 

[Ctuchik]

A little worried they are making survival hunters melee orientated, with the spear.

I personally wouldn't mind a melee spec for hunters. Could live without the stupid spear though, gimme fist weapons instead ffs....

 

[BloodOmen]

I've got a feeling Artifact weapons aren't going to work like we think they are. People are assuming we'll wield them like normal weapons. Personally I think we'll just attach them to other weapons, which will be shit.


Example

I have a blue sword

I apply Artifact weapon with its talent tree to blue sword

It's still a fucking blue sword but a blue sword with the looks and talent tree of the artifact..... /yay


That said, if it does work like that, it means we can use it for every single expansion to come in future, guess we'll find out when they give us a proper preview.

 

[BloodOmen]

Demon Hunters

• Demon Hunters will start somewhere around level 95 to 100.
• Glavies are a new type of weapon that Demon Hunters use. They are a pair that comes together and fills both slots. In the future, Demon Hunters might dual wield the standard agility weapons. (Currently the class page has different information)
• The Demon Hunter Artifact glaives can be see in some of the character creation screenshots for Demon Hunters.
• The team talked about having the Demon Hunter wear mail, but it didn't fit the class identity.
• Demon Hunters are agile, so they will be wearing leather. This isn't a huge problem now that Personal Loot is used in most places.
• The Demon Hunter is going to be a very agile class, so tanks may have lots of Dodge and Parry mechanics for their tanking style.
• For now, Demon Hunters are the only ones who get tattoos.
• Demon Hunter has been considered since Wrath of the Lich King. It finally fit the expansion's story and theme, which is why it can be added now.
• In order to fight demons, Illidan had to partner with demons. He had to sacrifice many things for great power and so do the Illidari, which is why Demon Hunters look somewhat like Illidan.

Classes

• No stat squish is planned for this expansion.
• The team hasn't decided if there will be another talent row or not, as the Artifact weapon will have a decent number of choices for you to make.
• Survival Hunters will be a melee class with pet going forward.
• Beast Mastery Hunters will fight at range with a pet.
• Marksmanship Hunters will fight at range with no pet.
• Survival and Marksmanship have been too similar in the past, which is why they are being changed in Legion.
• Demonology Warlocks will also be getting some bigger changes, focusing more on their demons.
• Demonology Warlocks will be refocused on summoning and controlling demons rather than having Metamorphosis dominate. Other specs will still have access to demons.
• Discipline Priests
  • Disc Priests are going to be a much more offensive healer after another pass on Atonement which will make it more interactive.
  • They will still have heals and PW:S, but they will sustain their healing through doing DPS.
  • Closer to 50% damage and 50% healing spec.
  • In the past, when Atonement was popular you would just spam Smite and Holy Fire all fight long and use the smart healing, which wasn't very interactive. This time, you may throw out some single target heals giving players a buff. Next time you Smite, people who have that buff will get your healing, and you will have to refresh the buff periodically.
  • These changes should fix the absorb heavy nature of Discipline Priests.
• Holy Priests will still be all about healing.
• The team has learned some lessons from how Fistweaving works now and will talk about what they are doing to solve the problems with it in the future.

Dungeons

• The team isn't sure how exactly they will incentivize players to keep going back to dungeons yet. Once you started to raid in Draenor, you had no reason to go back to a dungeon, which is not good. Mists of Pandaria was a better model, where you had a reward for doing a dungeon every day.
• Normal and Heroic dungeons will exist in Legion, but the team isn't sure if they will do Mythic at the start. They haven't decided when they will add Mythic, but they do like it.
• The team likes challenge modes and wants to try and make them more accessible. They aren't guaranteed to be added to Legion.

Artifacts and Items

• You will not loot weapons in Legion.
• The item bonus system (Warforged, sockets, and extra stats) worked out well, so it could be extended to have even more bonuses.
• The team has a few ideas for how artifacts will work:
  • Your Artifact will start at epic and then there will be some way for it to become legendary over time.
  • Your Artifact will start as legendary.
  • Your artifact may not have a quality, it could just be its own thing.
  • The goal is for players to have an item that they are working on powering up and it can become a legendary, rewarding players who do all of the expansion's content, similar to Mists of Pandaria and Warlords.
• There will be no catch up mechanics for Artifact weapons on alts.
• The team doesn't want it to be too painful if you want to change specs, so there might be some kind of catch up mechanic for getting the Artifact weapon for another spec.
• How we actually get the Artifact weapons from the characters currently wielding them will be revealed in the future.
• Eventually you will be able to unlock every trait in the Artifact weapon tree. You may be able to take different paths to unlocking them all though.
• You will be leveling the Artifact weapon throughout the entire expansion.
• The Artifact weapons have Relic slots, which will determine its raw item stats (DPS, ilvl, etc.) and modifiers to the traits you've chosen, so the Artifact's stats will still improve as you defeat bosses.
• Relics are things you can socket into the artifact and are rewarded from completing major quest lines, dungeons, and raids. This way you still get weapon upgrades from the same sources, but keep the same weapon.
• Artifact weapons can be transmoged into other weapons, but not the other way around.
• There are weapons cooler than Benediction and Anathema for Priest Artifact weapons.
• Earning the Artifact has a class and spec specific quest, but it isn't anywhere near the green fire quest in terms of scale and difficulty.

Raids

• Raids today are harder than they have ever been.
• Raids worked out well for the most part in Warlords, but the team has talked about how to make loot better and how to improve personal loot for Legion.
• Having some encounters that favor melee and some that favor ranged is not a problem, as long as there isn't a huge gap between the two.
• On rumors that Sylvanas might be a raid boss: "That's interesting".

Order Halls

• Order Halls won't have an auction house or bank.
• You will spend less time in your Order Hall than you did in your Garrison. You go back to do quests, work on your artifact, and interact with your champions. You will likely spend a lot of your downtime in Dalaran.
• The Dalaran Sewers were mentioned as being associated with rogues when providing context for an Order Hall question.
• The Order Halls may have different sections. For example, in the Paladin's Order Hall, the Blood Elf Paladins may be in a different section from The Sunwalkers, as well as the Humans and Dwarves.
• The fantasy in Draenor was collecting followers to raise an army. In Legion, you are the leader of your class order and you have a smaller number of elite heroes by your side. They should complement and enhance your gameplay rather than compete with you.

PvP

• The Conquest system is going away.
• The goals is to remove PvP gear. There will be PvP ways to obtain gear, but the power in PvP will be about the gear you obtain and the PvP talents that you unlock.

World

• The location of the Broken Isles will be revealed in the future.
• The team isn't sure how they will handle Dalaran yet. They could do sanctuary areas again or split it up.
• Only the raid takes place in the Emerald Nightmare, but it could be expanded on in the future.
• Karazhan is an important place.

Flying

• The team is happy with how flying worked out in Draenor. You will have to level up and explore the land before you are able to fly, similar to what is coming in Patch 6.2.1.

Future

• The team still wants to release expansions faster.
• Legion will release next year, but no specific date has been set yet.
• There isn't a solid patch schedule plan for Legion yet.
• The expansion after Legion is already being planned.
• The cinematic isn't complete just yet.
• The transmog overhaul should make it easier to use. You should be able to browse through what you have unlocked and what you could unlock for each slot, more like a dressing room than the current system.
• As far as the listed social improvements go, the team has ideas on how to bring different servers together, different ways to connect to your friends, and on how to match-make friends better. Keep in mind that these are just ideas at this point.
• The team strongly believes that WoW is best played with friends. It is the most fun when you can make connections with other players in game or bring in friends from outside the game and play together.

Misc

• The professions team for Legion is the largest that Blizzard has ever had for WoW and lots of new things are coming. The team heard the feedback about Warlords professions.
• There are a lot of surprises in store for players in Legion and the team doesn't want players to think we are just going back to the same stuff.
• Patch 6.1 was not named correctly and they could have done better.
• Garrisons are staying in Draenor, so you can go back and visit them if you want.
• The subscriber count is more volatile than it used to be because players have gotten older and don't have as much free time anymore. As long as players are happy and enjoy the game, the team doesn't mind extreme peaks and valleys. They just want to ensure you have a great experience and feel like you got your money's worth.
• The team doesn't focus on or make decisions based on what their subscriber count is. They focus on making the best game they can, learn some lessons, and keep moving forward.
• Focusing an expansion on new places and characters, such as Mists of Pandaria is not a mistake. It was a nice break from having one big bad guy, with a focus on exploration and adventure.

 

[Cirventhor]

"The subscriber count is more volatile than it used to be because players have gotten older and don't have as much free time anymore."

This might be true to an extent, but it sure comes off as a pretty lame excuse.

 

[Raven]

Yeah, sounds like they still don't really know what they are doing. The subscription numbers dropped because the expansion is a bag of wank.

And survival confirmed as a melee spec. FFS.

 

[BloodOmen]

Yeah, sounds like they still don't really know what they are doing. The subscription numbers dropped because the expansion is a bag of wank.

And survival confirmed as a melee spec. FFS.

Pretty much, as for Survival going melee I really don't mind. I had a melee specced survival hunter in vanilla be nice to play one again.

 

[Raven]

The thing is, with the new artefacts they seem to be discouraging off specs (from what we know now!) I may well play one as off spec (and probably go BM main) if its viable. For raiding though I am ranged through and through and have been for ages.