So, this "Farewell Northrend" video is making rounds on the internet. Not only that, but there are many other commemorative photos, webpages, and videos being created for "remembering" Outlands and Northrend.
To be clear: Nothing is happening to Outlands or Northrend.
There are just some minor aesthetic changes. The Shattering/Cataclysm changes only affect the 1-60 Old World areas. The 60-70 (Outlands) and 70-80 (WOTLK) leveling zones are unchanged.
But, this just goes to show you the power of hype and how it shapes your perception. =]
If you've ever played "god games" before, you'll know what I mean. Everything looks pretty much the same, but it's like the developers just dropped in some trees and grass here-and-there, shoveled out some trenches, threw in some water, and reshaped some of the mountains. Once the geography was changed, it was just a matter of dropping in some new quest givers and NPCs.
For the new 80-85 leveling experience, don't set your expectations too high. I think the new zones are awesome, but please just ignore the hype as it will give you a false impression of what to expect. You might not remember this, but a lot of people complained about the new WOTLK leveling zones (ie, it was "too small"), but keep in mind that the new Cataclysm 80-85 zones are even smaller.
The original WoW had 2,600 quests (1-60), BC had 2,700 quests (60-70), WOTLK had 2,350 quests (70-80), and Cataclysm has just under 1,000 quests (80-85). (Note: 80-85 is supposed to take the same amount of time as 70-80 leveling.)
Although the number of quests isn't really a fair comparison of size, it does give you a pretty good idea of what to expect. =]
Cataclysm was more designed for the newbies and for veteran players who wanted to create new characters. It's a way to keep people playing longer, and encourages players to invite friends to play with them. Previously, many people didn't want to start playing WoW because of the sheer number of high-level characters and how far ahead everyone was - Cataclysm is a way to start players on an even ground and to bring in more new customers.
In regards to any New Realms, we won't know for sure until around Dec. 3-6. Currently, subscriptions counts don't warrant the creation of new realms and even with 1-2 million new players, it still wouldn't warrant new realms.
However, if Blizzard makes an announcement that "new realms are required to meet the demands of new players" - it sure would make their investors happy. =]
They might even wait until 1-2 months after launch to make it look like new realms were never actually planned and that they had to "suddenly" purchase and build out new servers and realms to meet the explosive growth. Realistically though, the new realms are probably ready right now and the servers were prepared months ago.
One of the biggest complaints that WoW users have are the extremely long queue times for Battlegrounds and Dungeons, and the always present shortage of sufficient Tanks and Healers.
With those most recent changes to Wintergrasp too, things are even worse now (there are heated arguments on the forums at the moment) and Blizzard may just have to revert back to the tenacity method until they can find a more suitable solution.
Note: Speaking of WoW Forums, I've still been monitoring them for Account Hack issues over the past several months and there has been a significant drop. It's absolutely nothing like back in June/July during that explosion of hacked and re-enabled/locked accounts.
Additional Note: Tenacity was pretty awesome actually.. sure the Horde were able to complete all 5 WG quests for a total of ~80 honor points - but I was able to complete 4 of the 5 quests and also one-shot Horde with my Arcane Mage. (Hell, even my Hunter dealt 20k white damage with melee swings.) Horde would get maybe 0.1 to 0.25 honor per kill, but I would get the full 3 honor points every 3 seconds or so. At the end of every match, I would get a minimum of 300 honor points from kills alone plus ~64 honor for the weeklies. Not bad for 15-20 minutes of work!
So yeah.. tenacity was great. In all of my experience over the past couple years, it's clear that WG losses were more attributed to failed organization and strategy then anything else. Much like AV premades, if you have good communication and players listening to you (even with bad gear), a win is very easily obtainable.
There is a SOLUTION however to all of these problems (e.g. tank/healer shortage, long queue times, and BG imbalances):
1. Cross-Faction Dungeons (Horde and Alliance together)
2. Cross-Faction Battlegrounds (Horde and Alliance on the same PVP team)
3. New Dungeon Mechanics
This solution will of course stir up some anger from the hardcore role players, but consider this:
- there are ways of doing this so that it fits in with the "lore" and updates to "historical facts" are made up all of the time
- you can already fight side-by-side with opposite faction players and NPCs
- NPCs from opposing factions also fight side-by-side against common enemies
- Horde & Alliance have worked together many times (hell, their leaders have even met with each other and sipped tea together at peace summits and various events)
- both Horde & Alliance have MANY common enemies and fight them in the same dungeons already
- they have also worked together in major wars and battles
- both Horde & Alliance are both members of the same "neutral" factions so they work together constantly for the same common goal
- both Horde & Alliance worked together (or cannot even attack each other) within the same specific zones/areas even when they're members of different factions
- there are a whole TON of factions that you can belong to where both Horde & Alliance work together
- there are PVE realms where you can't even attack them anyways (even though you should be able to and you're "supposed to")
- and there's so much lore out of whack already.. so who really cares?
Anything can work, you just need a proper justification.
Cross-Faction Dungeons
This one is easy. Allow the Dungeon Finder to group both Horde and Alliance together, and/or create a neutral meeting ground where PUGs can be grouped together for non-Dungeon Finder available instances.
In virtually all dungeons, both Horde & Alliance are already fighting the exact same common enemy anyways - and both factions have worked together many times to fight common enemies or for different goals. So this shouldn't be much of a stretch.
If you want a role-playing excuse to group them together, a series of quests can be created where a player is "magically transformed" visually into a member of of the opposing faction for the purpose of gathering information or completing a side-quest that requires Horde's help without their knowledge. CoT already does this where Horde players are visually changed into Alliance and fight side-by-side with the Alliance.
Also, players wouldn't even be able to tell that they were previously Horde/Alliance unless they actually tell them. (It's that good of a disguise!) =]
Justification: Fighting a common enemy under the banner of a neutral faction's orders.
Cross-Faction Battlegrounds
This one is a little more tricky.
So.. why would opposing factions help each other out in PVP? Why, for Secret Intelligence Gathering Missions of course!
Repeatable Quests or Quest Chains can be created where players are disguised and therefore fight with opposing factions (to blend in and avoid "blowing their cover") during various battles. At the end of a battle (and if certain requirements are met), they can get certain rewards. This would definitely put SI:7 Stormwind Intelligence to some good use! This has also happened (and still does happen) in real life, so it's a very reasonable excuse.
Now if "cheating" is a concern, Blizzard already has several methods in place already to prevent this. AFK Reporting (for those who aren't fighting - but the purpose of joining BGs is for the accumulation of honor points anyways), random cross-realm queuing, chances of joining friends within the same BG is low, and inability to communicate with "opposing factions" in the same BG.
For those that really want to get away with cheating (ie, sending troop movement information), they can already do it anyways under the current approach. That sort of information is pretty useless anyways, especially in the smaller BGs.
As it stands, it would be very difficult and even non-productive for you (ie, no honor) to try and sabotage your own temporary faction. It's almost impossible too, since your real friends won't recognize you and they will attack you on sight! Although, sabotage does open up some interesting possibilities for BG gameplay.. and maybe it could be highly useful for new "Spy Vs Spy" Battleground designs. =]
One other option is just to make Battlegrounds less about Horde vs Alliance and more about Team A vs Team B.. but it's not as fun. =]
This approach is definitely a very smooth way of balancing teams so that you won't have the "10 Alliance versus 6 Horde" problem in WSG preceded by 30-50 minute wait times anymore. Plus, since players would be "in disguise", it allows VOA to be open to both factions after WG ends regardless of the winner. (This was actually one of the original reasons for the WG changes.. one faction would always be losing, and they could hardly ever get into VOA. Big complaints.)
Justification: You're a spy gathering secret intelligence information, so you need to fit in under orders from your King or Warchief. All of their deaths will be a necessary evil so that you can gather information of the utmost importance.
New Dungeon Mechanics for Tank/Healer Shortages
This is a pretty fun approach, but a little more challenging to implement. I'm going to focus on 5-man dungeons (and the Dungeon Finder), but these new methods could certainly be used for raids with some tweaks.
Option 1 is to create new dungeons (or modify existing) that break out of the 6-year old mold (ie, the fixed ratio of DPS/Heals/Tanking) that has obviously been creating a lot of issues related to player availability and time, but has never been solved.
If there were dungeons for example that attract 100% DPS class groups, it would significantly cut down on queue times for other DPS playeres who are queued for normal dungeons. Such examples would include dungeons that require no healing and instead involve puzzles and/or DPS combat alone, or dungeons with very little healing required, no tanking, but a completely timed instance that requires 5 DPS players to complete successfully.
There are many clever ways to build dungeons with these designs in mind, boss AND mob mechanic changes, there could even be NPC Tanks, NPC Healers, dungeons that require no DPS but rather all crowd control in a timed environment to win, or healing "games" where DPS players constantly need to run back and forth to a certain item or area.
This course of action no longer follows the classic Tank & Spank approach and unfortunately Blizzard might be discouraged from doing this since the more time a player waits in queue, the longer they play, and the more money they ultimately make. If they are more concerned about the players themselves however, you should see innovative approaches like this in the future.
Option 2 is pretty cool. Have a fun (and possibly long) quest chain where any class can summon a NPC that "magically transforms" them into a temporary class for (specific?) 5-man dungeons. Or maybe it can be available within the dungeons themselves, where the player temporarily inhabits a body or vehicle with the abilities that are missing from the group.
For example, a DPS class can be converted into a Healing/Tanking class by way of conjured weapons and gear that either meet minimum requirements for the dungeon difficulty OR they match in similarity to the player's existing iLvl gear. It would just be a temporary conversion for that instance only. Another example is to have more "vehicles" in dungeons what have certain purposes (much like the starting Ulduar fight), like support, healing or tanking.
I hate using this term, but Blizzard really needs to start thinking outside the box. There's too little innovation in dungeons and Cataclysm is no different (other than that they're bringing back crowd control.) There are many reasonable ways to combat priest/tank shortages and long wait times, and these are some good examples of changes that can make the game more enjoyable, more optional, more fun, and very different to combat boredom.
So, this is the patch with all of the Deathwing content and other changes that are "paving the way" for the Shattering.
I'm still collecting more information on what WASN'T announced in their official patch notes, so I'll have more soon. But, it appears that most of the official changes are just bug fixes.
Here's the undocumented stuff though not found in the link above:
- One big change will affect players working on the [Insane in the Membrane] achievement. New changes are now in effect so that the [Gordok Shackle Key] no longer drops, and the Gordok Suit quest only rewards 75 points now (instead of 250 per turn in). So, if you've just gotten your Bloodsail Admiral title and were planning on building up your Steamwheedle Cartel reputation - you're pretty much screwed now until after Cataclysm. Stay away from Cartel cities in the meantime. :)
(Note: You can still kill Bloodsail Pirates at a rate of 5 rep per kill (for Booty Bay, 2-3 rep for other cartel members), but you'll lose Honored reputation. However, once you've obtained Honored for the first time, it already counts towards the Insane achievement.. so it doesn't really matter that your reputation with them decreases again unless you want to stay honored with the pirates.)
- The [Insane in the Membrane] achievement still includes the Exalted Shen'dralar requirement, however it will officially be removed on 4.0.3a when the Shattering occurs.
* Update: I'm told that the Shackle Key is still dropping, so I'm not sure if the change has been made yet. Right after the servers (US realms) went live, 3 guild members ran DM separately about 5-7 times without the key dropping which they noted has never happened before. So, there are some conflicting reports on this and it would probably be best if you just test this out yourself on your own realm.
- The new patch also contains more data for the various landscape and zone changes for the upcoming Shattering event which will take place within the next couple weeks.
- Wintergrasp tenacity has now been removed so there a limitations to a 1:1 ratio now. So if your server has an overabundance of Horde PVP players, you'll notice that you won't be able to join WG much anymore (it will be locked out and you'll be placed in queue.)
- Rewards for Random Heroics are now displayed properly in the LFD window.
- Shift-click buying of those Inks from Jessica Sellers is finally working again. It's been down for over a month and a lot of right-clicking was needed. =]
- It doesn't look like there are too many other interesting changes (that's all I'm really interested in). [Glyph of Mage Armor], [Glyph of Long Word], [Glyph of Vanish] and [Glyph of Armors] are all still broken too - they're still not available from the trainers and they cannot be researched. And there's a Cataclysm Cinematic available at the Login Screen, however it can't be launched just yet. Video is going to be streamed now for the Digital Purchase users.
I was hoping for more, but this recent patch is just a whole ton of data/maps/textures/sound/etc for the Shattering event.
4.0.3a is currently on the PTR, so you can see most of the aesthetic changes yourself. Old World Flying will not be live Cataclysm however, and I'm not sure if Archaeology will be implemented Pre-Cataclysm (* Confirmed: Archaeology cannot be trained in 4.0.3a, will only be available after Dec 7.)
[Glyph of Mage Armor] is working again on the PTR, so if you have any left you should sell those as quickly as possible before the next patch hits and Scribes will be able to start making them again. You can also sell a bunch for high prices that first week before other Scribes clue in too.
Yay, I was right again. It's almost as if I knew all of this information ahead of time.. ;)
So, back in August I was expecting Diablo's "BIG NEWS" at Blizzcon to just be the introduction of the final class (I was still hoping for more though), but my number 2 runner up was Diablo 3 for consoles.
Looks like I was 3 weeks off on the Diablo console "announcement" as Blizzard has just updated their Careers section with 3 new job opportunities.
Diablo 3 Lead Designer, Console
Diablo 3 Lead Programmer, Console
Diablo 3 Senior Producer, Console
I wonder if they have an official announcement planned.. but I think that these recent developments are very strong indications to convince the unbelievers. (Keep in mind that it won't be Diablo 3 exactly, they'll focus on the PC/Mac first of course and probably release the console version at a later date.. maybe under a slightly different name too like what most game developers have done with their PC to console/portable conversions.)
It's too bad they never made this revelation at Blizzcon, but they're probably still thinking it over. They've worked on console games in the past (Ghost), and ended up cancelling them.. so, it will all depend on how the game plays and if the console version is up to Blizzard's expectations and level of standard.
Anyhow - if you're bored and want to have some fun, do a Google search for "Diablo 3" and "will never happen", "Blizzard will never", etc. and reply to their forum posts/comments with something rude. =]
Oh! One interesting note, when Blizzard was asked a couple years ago whether there would be a console version for Diablo, their response was "We don't have any plans." Sound familiar? I've written about that very common (corporate) phrase in the past. =] It's actually the same thing Rockstar said about RDR for the PC.
* Quick Update:
Ah! Here we go, there was an update regarding the new jobs on the Diablo 3 Community Site.
It's what I was saying earlier: "We’re exploring a Diablo-related concept for consoles and are currently looking to fill a few senior console-related positions on the Diablo III team. We are first and foremost developing Diablo III for Windows and Mac PCs and don’t intend to allow any possibility of a console interpretation to delay or affect the release of the game."