I know there are some other WoW players on here (current and lapsed). I'm just wondering if anyone else is excited for the next expansion and its features or if anyone is concerned that the game is (further) going downhill.
Personally, I'm excited, although I don't know how I feel about the villains being more orcs after we just slogged through Orgrimmar in the last raid. Also, I'm worried about how long its going to take them to get this out, since Blizzard's been pushing to get content out quicker, and at best we're looking at a good six to ten months before this is ready. Still, garrisons look cool and the boost-to-90 is a long overdue feature. And the inventory fixes can't get here soon enough. Anyone else excited?
I haven't played regularly since February. I logged on a few times to maintain a guild bank for a guild I had. My sub ended in October and I won't renew.
I don't see anything about the expansion to change my mind.
I played it a bit at Blizzcon, so I can offer a few tidbits:
Pros:
-The updated character models are awesome, and they are really getting the most out of this engine which is over ten years old at this point. That said, I am a bit concerned that they're just going to be buried under armor and viewed from behind the whole time.
-The Horde starting zone was a lot of fun. There's definitely a good mix of combat and story sequences thrust at you right out of the gate.
-The "item squeeze" is barely noticeable. I did notice that my DPS was way lower, but it was all mitigated by the enemy's health being just as much lower.
-All the quality of life changes (account wide Heirlooms, toys and possibly tabards no longer taking up bank space, a free level 90 alt, etc.) are all huge reliefs. My bag space thanks them.
-The Garrison and it's ensuing series of minigames blatantly stolen from SWOTR (and Age of Conan, and....) are some of the coolest things they've added to the game since Burning Crusade.
The Bad:
-There doesn't seem to be much "meat" to this expansion, even with the 10 levels of content and a "New" continent.
-The Alliance starting area is neat (they start at what will become the Black Temple) but crawling with constantly regenerating mobs that make the zone an absolute nightmare.
-When grilled on the Lore of the expansion, the writers at the Q&A and Lore panels basically just shrugged their shoulders and said, "We haven't figured that part out yet." Not good a year away from releasing a block of new content.
-The Devs have been kind of snippy on Twitter over their two most controversial content additions. No flying until four months after launch doesn't really bother me too much. It should be a convenience for max level characters, not a crutch for questing. But I can see how hardcore raiders would be ticked off that competitive raiding has been set at 20 man teams.
-The changes to itemization in regards to removing reforging and a lot of the secondary stats as well as changing automatically to match your spec are welcome, but I can see that going the wrong way and having boring item sets. Gearing out your character is one of the cooler aspects of any RPG.
Overall, though, I'm pretty excited. The quality of life improvements are things I've been wanting for years, the character models are all really well done, and I can see myself sinking an obscene amount of time into Garrisons.
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Originally posted by Excalibur05 -There doesn't seem to be much "meat" to this expansion, even with the 10 levels of content and a "New" continent.
...
-When grilled on the Lore of the expansion, the writers at the Q&A and Lore panels basically just shrugged their shoulders and said, "We haven't figured that part out yet." Not good a year away from releasing a block of new content.
I'm not sure what you're considering to be a lack of meat. Its the same size as Outland and that provided an expansions worth of content.
As for the Lore, I watched the Q&A and I'm not sure what you're referring to. The part where they seem to be losing everyone is that people are getting hung up on how time travel will work, and Blizzard keeps saying to not worry about that and just enjoy the show. Given that they are already working on the next expansion(!), I'm pretty sure they have the lore as straight as they can. (barring Falstad-type oversights or Draenai-level retcons).
As for the "Meat," it seems like every other expansion has made a significant change to the gameplay or player options.
Burning Crusade: New zone, flying mounts, two new races, Horde Paladins, Alliance Shaman, the new continent, 10 levels.
Wrath of the Lich King: Death Knights, dual-spec, achievements, heirlooms, instancing, dungeon finder, glyphs, LFG, heirlooms, the new continent, 10 levels.
Cataclysm: A complete revamp of the old world, old world flying, two new races, Guild leveling system, Archeology profession, reforging, PVP realignment, underwater zone, 5 levels.
Mists of Pandaria: New race/class, new talent system, scenarios, pet battles, challenge modes, personal farm, new continent, 5 levels.
So far announced for Warlords of Draenor:
Garrisons, character model updates, free level 90, new raiding tier, ten new levels.
All extremely cool additions, but outside of the garrisons, it's mostly just an extension of what they did in Pandaria. That's not a bad thing, I loved a lot of the game systems, but people looking for something "new" get one new feature that a lot of players aren't interested in. I'm jazzed about garrisons more than just about anything they've added in nine years, but I know I'm an outlier.
On the subject of lore, that's exactly what I'm talking about. They start off with "Garrosh travels back in time!" and when anybody asked what that even means, they just shrugged and said, "Ehhhh...It's cool. Draenor!" I realize that that's basically the tack that Blizzard has taken for all time traveling in the past ("No, YOU saved Thrall from the human slave camp, but he doesn't remember you because time travel is weird!")
But this whole expansion is based entirely on that concept. The entire world of Draenor is coming forward in time as an excuse to do some more orc and Draenei content, and I'm cool with that, but the justification has to be better than "Garrosh did it!" and then a shrug.
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Again, I don't think the on-foot stuff is all THAT badly done, but if you prefer the flying missions, there is the fact that the entire Rogue Squadron II game is available in multi-player ... That's pretty fun.
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