WoW; 4th expansion Mists of Pandaria

Zorachus said:
Totally agree, my Brothers hate end game WoW, but LOVE the leveling up and questing together around the game world.

I kept telling my brothers, WoW doesn't start until you reach max level, then the game truly opens up and starts. So they both get to end game, run a few dungeons, and say WTF ? They ask, where is this new game, that starts now ? They were like, it is just repetitive dungeon running for gear and badges, and then get geared enough to run Raids, they both LOL'd at me, and said this game sucks at end game, too much of a time sink, they have no patience or even any desire to run the rat race of end game.
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i was always the opposite. i loved raiding. atleast some aspects. especially progression when you were in a higher end guild
 
dremic said:
i was always the opposite. i loved raiding. atleast some aspects. especially progression when you were in a higher end guild
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I didn't like doing the same shit over and over again, by that I mean raiding, but I did enjoy the BT and Sunwell zones, was fortunate to have cleared SWP a few days pre-nerf. Newer raid zones just aren't as appealing or epic.
 
I think a cool fresh idea, would be to add new content ( not just Raids ) with big patches like every 6 months, and not have to wait 2 years for the next expansion.

Like 6 months after MoP launches, add a new zone to the continent for level 90-91 and a new talent for 91, + new Raid. Then 6 months later do it again, another new zone for Levels 91-92. Just an idea, to keep the game fresh, and not such a empty feeling between patches and expansion, which can be very long dead times. Look at Patch 4.3 the last patch to WoW was in December, nothing new at all until MoP 10 months later, that is a long freaking time, with nothing new.
 
I don't know, I feel people missed out on the best raids in vanilla if they just plain didn't try, BWL, MC40 and Necro were great fun.
 
The big issue i see with that it would take them forever, not like it doesnt take them forever now, to adjust the classes. They do try and often fail miserably to balance the classes at end game. EX: the class that i played Warlock, would be significant underpowered compared to the other classes till max level because their dps is expected with demon soul and dark intent. You get dark intent at 83 which was 3% or more dps, and demon soul at 85. This would also affect pvp. Warlock portal wasnt available till 80, which made us easy killing because of limited escape abilities.
 
Zorachus said:
I think a cool fresh idea, would be to add new content ( not just Raids ) with big patches like every 6 months, and not have to wait 2 years for the next expansion.

Like 6 months after MoP launches, add a new zone to the continent for level 90-91 and a new talent for 91, + new Raid. Then 6 months later do it again, another new zone for Levels 91-92. Just an idea, to keep the game fresh, and not such a empty feeling between patches and expansion, which can be very long dead times. Look at Patch 4.3 the last patch to WoW was in December, nothing new at all until MoP 10 months later, that is a long freaking time, with nothing new.
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EQ2 tried this already. They did 6 month cycles in the beginning for the first few years where they released a mini expansion for like 5 bucks, then 6 months later a full expansion for normal price. It didn't quite go over too well there imo. I think they actually gave the players too much content...
 
And then again i seriously doubt there was much of a player base playing EQ2 anyway.
 
With this expansion and GW2 both due out soon, I wonder how the big MMO will fair; SW;ToR ? That game had crazy buzz last year before launch, and seemed to just fade away, nothing in the news anymore ?
 
Zorachus said:
With this expansion and GW2 both due out soon, I wonder how the big MMO will fair; SW;ToR ? That game had crazy buzz last year before launch, and seemed to just fade away, nothing in the news anymore ?
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Nothing in news because it support the players with anything to do.

Lack luster reasons for PVP
Lack of end game content to raid
Lack of stuff to do at the end game
Space missions weren't very dynamic or interesting
Dungeon finder? Players to run Dungeon's?! where were they?

These are all my opinion, I loved the game, wanted to keep loving it because the trade skill system and single player questing was so much fun! But it abruptly ended :(
 
Zorachus said:
With this expansion and GW2 both due out soon, I wonder how the big MMO will fair; SW;ToR ? That game had crazy buzz last year before launch, and seemed to just fade away, nothing in the news anymore ?
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There's also TSW, which has been out for about a month with mixed reviews and seemingly small community. GW2 and MoP might be a 1-2 punch that just puts that game down pretty fast at this rate.
 
TSW is a niche product but can be a relatively successful one if Funcom

1) Doesn't allow greed to get the best of them. They have a subscription fee PLUS an "Item Shop" for cosmetic items with relatively high prices. These items are NOT account bound at the moment, single character only for stuff like clothing you pay for with real money. They basically say there is a technical reason they haven't implemented it yet, but considering that you can claim the pre-order and "Initiate/Master/GrandMaster-Lifer" pack items on unlimited characters, that doesn't sound right. Thankfully they are saying they'll look into it, but it seems annoying to me. The prices are already too high for my taste, as a single shirt can be like $3. I know its "cosmetic" blah blah blah but especially as a Roleplayer, it used to be that I got ALL the content for my subscription price, including cosmetic content. If they're not going to be free-to-play (if that happens, Grand Masters better get a bloody stipend!), I don't believe they should sell ANY in-game content for extra money, but if they're going to do so, they would be best to do it cheaply, account wide, and make it a good value and high quality for players. Steam sales and humble bundles alike have shown that greed isn't the way to profit.

2) They don't cut corners. "MultiSlot" outfits overwriting their admittedly awesome clothing socket scheme with single skins is absolute bullshit. You get a "multislot" outfit it basically acts as a skin, as it doesn't have component parts like a jacket, mask, gloves etc... that you can wear individually. If they would just make them all able to be broken down and used as individual component parts, things would be much better. We were told that body morphs (even heights!) were not present at launch because it would mess with the clothing setup, and now they're offering some of their "coolest" outfits that don't even take advantage of the system they've built and instead are just halfassed. Another cut corner is Magic "weapons/focus items" which are not at all involved in the casting animation. You literally have a big old tome stuck to your back for Blood Magic - how silly is that it neither opens nor is actually held or floating in front of you, yet it is needed for casting! These cut corners and halfassing isn't going to do, but they have made some changes already so at least they are willing to be open to community requests
3) They actually make good on additional content, swiftly. They've talked about all kinds of neat stuff added in patches on a Monthly bases or more frequent. July 31 is their first big "Issue" which will bring in tattoos, face/body changes and other options as well as apparently a "new" weapon or two, plus other content. If they can bring it in quickly, that's great. However, if they slow down they risk ending up like SW:TOR as players leave, dissatisfied. Much of what they had would have been revolutionary a couple years back, but it just isn't up to snuff - for instance, they have great storytelling and vocal cutscenes which would have been nice in 2009. However, the fact that your character is mute and you don't have any "choices" during conversations means it falls short of SW:TOR (the one thing it was good at!) and even Guild Wars 2. However, the writing and atmosphere are top notch, so if they only added choices and consequences for your character depending on what you chose in conversations/quests, it would be great! Likewise, they've built a world that is evolving (ie In New York there are vendors selling from unloading trucks, then in another patch the trucks were gone and they had moved into a storefront with increased inventory! etc) so its just up to Funcom to keep things moving and growing.

I'm highly critical, but I think that if some issues are fixed and content keeps rolling out The Secret World could be an excellent, enjoyable MMO. Right now its not "bad" by any means, but I see it lacking compared to the heavy hitters in terms of even stuff like polish and its featureset isn't up to snuff compared to Funcom's older titles like Anarchy Online and Age of Conan (ie. Housing. Interact with furniture. Animations for eating and drinking etc...).

Time will tell if TSW will be a solid entry in the MMO world for those who want something a little different than fantasy or future-sci-fi, or if it will be an expensive "also-ran" that fades into obscurity. I hope that Funcom can move fast enough, let go of short term greed, and make it worthwhile. It would be a pity for it to falter for these very easy to see pitfalls.

WoW, RIFT, and Guild Wars 2 are coming out swinging, so they can't afford to let up. As for WoW itself they are hopefully moving the whole game to a more fun, less grind kinda place and I see they've cribbed a good bit from RIFT to make it so. RIFT itself is one of my favorites and it is chugging along actually gaining subscribers and putting out content swiftly, with the Storm Legion Expansion on the horizon.
 
Well Funcom did manage to turn AO around and make pretty damn good profit off of it. Not to mention kicked off the F2P craze as well.
 
I'm enjoying the shit out of TSW, I was hesitant when trying the 24 hour trial, if I would continue playing after, but after a few hours I'm hooked like a trout. Watching the videos is nothing like playing the game, it's so much more smooth and seamless when it's right in front of you and you're controlling everything.
 
I'm not even sure I'm going to grab this. I have all my characters "ready" at 85, geared through the HoT heroics, gold stashed up, Cata mats cleared off. Account's been inactive for a month or so again after a six month break late last year into this year. I haven't been following MoP really at all. I think maybe I'm done for good this time. /shrug
 
BiH115 said:
They'll probably throw the other raids out there shortly after, like they said. There'll be enough to do.
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Not to mention one of the raids these past two expansions was pvp oriented, and the other was more like a gimme raid then a ful on raid. If like a nother bwl style raid included in this expansion, but I'm already kind of disappointed with garrosh being the main point if this expansion, bring on more creator stuff put please!
 
Xonim said:
I'm not even sure I'm going to grab this. I have all my characters "ready" at 85, geared through the HoT heroics, gold stashed up, Cata mats cleared off. Account's been inactive for a month or so again after a six month break late last year into this year. I haven't been following MoP really at all. I think maybe I'm done for good this time. /shrug
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Should read up on it, it's looking very promising, Beta was excellent I thought at least.
 
I'd be happy with 0 raids and nothing but really fucking hard 5-mans. And not hard in the way D3 inferno was hard--that gear-check garbage--but hard as in actually challenging shit to pull off, but when done right, is rewarding.
 
As long as it's a big raid, I wouldn't care. WotLK had like 3 1-boss raids (one being the vault of archavon PvP loot pinata) and the rehashed Naxxramas. I don't think it could get much worse than that. :p

chockomonkey said:
I'd be happy with 0 raids and nothing but really fucking hard 5-mans. And not hard in the way D3 inferno was hard--that gear-check garbage--but hard as in actually challenging shit to pull off, but when done right, is rewarding.
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The Cataclysm heroics had a pretty high difficulty curve at the start, somewhat resembling raid difficulty in terms of coordination. The response to it was roughly equivalent to the response to D3 Inferno. Two for two, people bitched about difficulty and it'll be a distant memory in no time, once everything gets nerfed to the ground or people outgear the content.
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
As long as it's a big raid, I wouldn't care. WotLK had like 3 1-boss raids (one being the vault of archavon PvP loot pinata) and the rehashed Naxxramas. I don't think it could get much worse than that. :p



The Cataclysm heroics had a pretty high difficulty curve at the start, somewhat resembling raid difficulty in terms of coordination. The response to it was roughly equivalent to the response to D3 Inferno. Two for two, people bitched about difficulty and it'll be a distant memory in no time, once everything gets nerfed to the ground or people outgear the content.
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Sounds like they disnged it similar to D3 inferno then... "difficulty" created through HP and damage stacking... instead of something where you fail and then begin to think... "what could we do with our toolset to beat this encounter?" which is where the fun is, for me.

I never liked the idea that because you could get more people together, that the loot should be better. Fuck that noise.
 
chockomonkey said:
Sounds like they disnged it similar to D3 inferno then... "difficulty" created through HP and damage stacking... instead of something where you fail and then begin to think... "what could we do with our toolset to beat this encounter?" which is where the fun is, for me.

I never liked the idea that because you could get more people together, that the loot should be better. Fuck that noise.
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It was a bit of both, but mostly an issue with players being able to coordinate properly. Naturally, the better gear you have, the more room you have for error. In the beginning, Cataclysm heroics left very little room for error, but I couldn't think of a boss that was a brick wall since there was a minimum gear requirement to do heroics anyway. There were a lot of "1-shot" mechanics that would kill you if you weren't paying attention, but most of it was 100% avoidable. You probably would have like it because it was *definitely* doable as a fresh 85 and it even started to become easy a few months after launch. People complained that it was a gear issue, same as D3 really. It makes me wonder who's playing "legitimately" and who's quick to jump the gun on the "gear check" complaints.

Get this: I had an easier time EARLY in Cataclysm heroics than I did a couple weeks later. It's because all of the early birds were eager and knowledgable players that had much better game sense than the masses that came after did.
 
Zorachus said:
When is the pre-patch for MoP ? The one that comes out before the expansion.
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In the past, I believe they come out about a month before the expantion drops. I'm not sure if we will see this one, its such a DRASTIC change in characters and item stats and ... well, everything?

ValeX said:
I'll second that, it was much more enjoyable the first 7 days or so after release :)
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I have to say getting End Time stuff was a refresh. But the amount of geared people there were to run these by the time they dropped was a bit of overkill, its almost auto matic right now. Old Heroics still have some of those "make sure you dodge or you die" mechanics but really, I can run through a heroic in a pug in about 20 minutes. This expantion was done in no time it seems. Bring on more content!
 
If I pre-order the game from Amazon it doesn't charge until it ships, right?
 
Zorachus said:
WoW Loses 1.1M Subscribers, Down to 9.1M
Activision Blizzard latest earning call revealed that World of Warcraft lost another 1,100,000 subscribers last quarter, bringing us down to 9.1 million players.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2872-WoW-Loses-1-1-Million-Subscibers-Down-to-9-1-Million
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I'd hate to be THAT fan-boy guy, but 1.1 million to anyone else is pretty much their entire subscriber base, to this game, it's like losing an eyelash. Once Mists is underway and content is coming out, it'll go back up, though doubtful it'll go back up by 1 million. This game will eventually lose steam though, and not like now, but much harder.
 
BiH115 said:
I'd hate to be THAT fan-boy guy, but 1.1 million to anyone else is pretty much their entire subscriber base, to this game, it's like losing an eyelash. Once Mists is underway and content is coming out, it'll go back up, though doubtful it'll go back up by 1 million. This game will eventually lose steam though, and not like now, but much harder.
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It's remarkable to me, that they still have 9mil after all these years.
 
BiH115 said:
I'd hate to be THAT fan-boy guy, but 1.1 million to anyone else is pretty much their entire subscriber base, to this game, it's like losing an eyelash. Once Mists is underway and content is coming out, it'll go back up, though doubtful it'll go back up by 1 million. This game will eventually lose steam though, and not like now, but much harder.
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If SW;ToR lost 1.1 million subscribers, wouldn't that be their entire player base, and be game over for them :( But WoW loses a million players, and it's not even 10% loss. :eek:

But love or hate WoW, it is amazing the game is 8 years old, and still has 9 million players, holy shit that is unbelievable, all these years later. Name me any other game, that 8 years after release is still thriving and doing very well ? Once MoP releases, I bet they gane another 2 million players again.

WoW = Cash cow $$

All MMO Developers say they can be successful and make good money with around a steady 800,000 - 1,000,000 player base. Damn, I don't see WoW getting down below one million players for like 10 fucking years at this rate.
 
I know I went back after the new scroll of resurrection thing was announced with the free boost to 80. I mean, I had 10 85s already, but I saw it as a chance to get going on a new server without paying for a transfer.

Seems like a lot of my old WoW friends had the same idea. Our guild was more active for a few weeks than it had been since early Wrath. Then Diablo 3 happened. Every one of my friends that came back quit when D3 came out. I let my account lapse for my 2 week vacation and just never bothered reactivating afterward.

Between people still playing D3, SWTOR going F2P and GW2 coming out, I can't imagine they'll recoup a whole lot with MoP.
 
List of countries with the highest population in WoW players. (Rough Estimate as of 4th quarter 2011 according to Warcraft Realms and total number of players released by Blizzard)


1. China, Asian Realms: 3.2 million players

2. United States and Canada, North American Realms: 3.0 million players

3. United Kingdom, European Realms: 1.0 million players

4. South Korea, Asian Realms: 800,000 players

5. Germany, European Realms: 600,000 players

6. Taiwan, Asian Realms: 350,000 players

7. France, European Realms: 200,000 players

8. Russia, European Realms: 150,000 players

9. Australia, North American Realms: 120,000 players

10. Latin America, North American Realms: 100,000 players

11. Spain, European Realms: 80,000 players

12. Other, NA/EU/Asian Realms: 800,000 players
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From wowwiki
 
You're nuts to think that 1.1 million players won't come back for mop. They are going to start a marketing blitz in the next week or so and it will probably break the record (again) for most sales in 24 hours. Now that digital distribution is set for both editions, you will see the game explode again like it has for the last 3 expansions.

Selling mop and brining players back won't be an issue. Retention will be. 3 months after release it will be time for the big content patch for mop AND gw2. If blizzard doesn't deliver and gw2 is as good as people say it is, it's going to be interesting to see where players money goes.
 
All of my friends aren't even going to buy MoP, and they have been playing hardcore since Classic. I really doubt it will break any sales records.
 
CryingGod said:
All of my friends aren't even going to buy MoP, and they have been playing hardcore since Classic. I really doubt it will break any sales records.
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Because as we all know, anecdotal evidence is the truth! :rolleyes:
 
CryingGod said:
All of my friends aren't even going to buy MoP, and they have been playing hardcore since Classic. I really doubt it will break any sales records.
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It's been the same story for the last 3 expansions. Seriously you can do a search for the threads here on hardforum and see almost a cut and paste version of your post.

Burning crusades - "spaceships? Aliens? Horde get paladins? Me and my friends have been playing for 2 years and we won't buy the expansion". Release day comes and breaks records.

Wrath of the lich king - "bc was good but were done. Really blizzad? Another expansion? Me and my friends are done. This games going to flop. Warhammers going to kill wow". Release day comes and it breaks records.

Cata - "flying in old word? Death wing? What a crock of shit. Swtor is going to kill it anyways so me and my friends are going to play that. screw wow". Release day comes and it breaks all the old records yet again.
 
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