If you ordered the live stream of the nerdgasm that is BlizzCon, then log in and check your in-game mail for your pet. Also, if you are there at BlizzCon and somehow find internet, your pet is waiting too.
BTW if you are there you are supposed to be drunk by now.
Thanks to Caritheri on Argent Dawn. Not only did she spy the Rawrcast van, but she pointed out that her pet was standing right next to mine.
UPDATE: Today MMO-Champion released news from the 4.3 PTR. It seems the Queen Azshara is getting a facelift. Coincidence? We think not…
When was the last time that you leveled an alt through Vashj’ir? With Blizzard making Hyjal a hub for the Firelands questlines and dangling easy loot in your face, Hyjal has become the de-facto zone to level alts.
So why would Blizzard create such a unique zone, with art assets that we have never seen before and quests that take us back in time and suddenly we are playing as a Naga? Vashj’ir is a uniquely beautiful zone, and one that has no equal in all of WoW. So why are we not playing it more?
Sure we all had a learning curve with the whole vertical, 3D aspect of the zone. Finding nodes on the map was a pain, some of the quests were a little hard to finish. However, you had to know that Blizzard was trying something new with the zone, and I always had a feeling that Blizzard was looking hard at the zone, collecting data on how players were interacting with the new content. Like a new raid boss mechanic, was Blizzard looking with its omnipotent eye in the sky? So what in the heck would cause Blizzard to abandon such a lush zone? We may have been beta testing the new expansion without knowing it! Rawrcast has learned from a source that the next expansion is going to take place in the South Seas area. Read more…
A recent focus of many of my posts has been the amount of content that Blizzard has been releasing, how that amount compares to what they’ve done in the past and the potential reasons why the content has slowed. I think many players feel like there simply isn’t enough content with this expansion and the sentiment that Blizzard is not moving fast enough/producing enough to address players’ concerns is a fairly common opinion expressed on the forums.
That said, it’s always been a principal of mine that you can’t simply criticize something that you see as flawed without providing a solution to the problem. It would be easy to say that the solution is “Hire more artists and engineers!” and call it a day. It feels like we can offer up a more thoughtful solution that is in line with Blizzard’s previous attempts at creating content.
For better or worse, Wrath of the Lich King offered up content to players that they had already seen before. Naxxarams and Onyxia both made triumphant returns and helped to flesh out the amount of raiding content that Blizzard had to offer to players. I propose something similar; there are tons of old instances and raids that are no longer being used. Blizzard could simply start at the oldest raid content and begin tuning it for level 85 raiders. All of the gear in the instances could have their stats adjusted to be in line with gear at level 85.
The advantages to this approach are pretty straight forward. Blizzard wouldn’t have to create any new assets/ animations, encounters or mechanics for any of the fights. The majority of the work would come from tuning the encounters to ensure that new abilities and talents don’t overpower old content. Tuning would also have to be done to ensure that many of the hyper difficult encounters from Vanilla WOW and TBC are not too challenging for players.
The disadvantages to this approach are pretty obvious as well. The main issue here is that many players have seen and played through this content when it was relevant. I personally played through all of the content in TBC and there are some fights that still give me nightmares when I think back (Kael’thas being at the top of the list). Additionally, some may argue that this is simply a band aid over a much more significant problem. Namely, Blizzard’s production pipeline has significantly slowed down and there isn’t much indication that its going to improve.
The approach taken by other games is to allow players to create their own content and then crowd source that content so that the best material is showcased for players (see City of Heroes). What do you all think? Are you disgusted by the notion of playing through old content again or would you rather have more content at the expense of originality?
One item that has gotten a lot of buzz on the PTR is Fandral’s Flamescythe. This item allows Druids to turn into a flaming cat while in Feral form! This is incredibly cool for Druids and I’ve got the feeling that many raiding guilds are going to be up to their ears with flame cats once 4.2 hits. Check out the video here.
Unfortunately for Blizzard, this item got me thinking about the amount of attention and care that they give to specific classes in game. While it’s nice for Druids to get this kind of individualized attention, it makes me wonder why all classes don’t have a dedicated team of artists and engineers devoted to adding slight graphical tweaks to classes? After all, how difficult is it to create and animate assets for existing characters in the game?
For instance, one of my wish list items for Warlocks has been to add in green flames for all Warlock fire attacks. Essentially, this boils down to changing the colors that are already in game for existing spells and abilities. Alternately, what Death Knight wouldn’t want to change the color of their eyes or what Shadow Priest wouldn’t want to alter the color of their Shadow Aura? It feels like with a minimal amount of effort, Blizzard could implement these slight changes and add some interesting choice to classes (Role Players would probably lose their minds for these alterations).
What all of this wool gathering comes down to is what are players’ expectations for $15 a month and what is Blizzard prepared to deliver? For me, some slight visual changes would go a long way towards keeping the graphics fresh and interesting and with the sluggish content release schedule, it could help appease players that would otherwise leave. What small visual changes would you make to your favorite classes?
Something is missing in this expansion and about half a million people have walked away as a result. The absence of a sufficient amount of end game content is having a nasty effect on Blizzard’s ability to keep its players playing. The biggest gamble that Blizzard made with this expansion was to focus all of their resources on fixing Vanilla WOW. After having leveled several characters through Old World content, I can’t help but feel that they’ve succeeded. The content feels fresh, the leveling curve is much less steep and the quests are interesting and compelling.
An unintended side effect of this focus on Vanilla WOW has been the absence of enough end game content. Further, the pace of additional content releases has been significantly slower than previous expansions. A couple of examples. The Burning Crusade was released on 1/16/07 and the Black Temple was released with their first major content pack roughly five months later (5/22/07). With the exception of the Sunwell, Black Temple and Zul Aman, the Burning Crusade was release with the following raid content: Gruul’s Lair, Tempest Keep, Karazan, Magtheridon, Serpentshrine Cavern and Battle of Mount Hyjal! Wrath was released on 11/13/08 and their first content release, which included Ulduar was released 4/14/09 (about five months later). With the exception of ICC, Ulduar, Ruby Sanctum, Onxyia’s Lair and Trial of the Crusader, Wrath released with Naxxaramas, Saratherion, Eye of Eternity and Vault of Archavon.
Cataclysm was released on 12/7/10 and the first content patch came on 4/26/11. Raid content included Baradin Hold, Bastion of Twilight and Black Wing Decent. The new patch included….Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub…and no raids. Instead of releasing MASSIVE raid instances like Black Temple and Ulduar in a span of 4-5 months, we’ve received…2 heroic 5 man dungeons.
A good friend has reminded me that WOW has been going for 6 years and maybe their decaying release pace is a result of the amount of time they’ve been working on the project. I countered that if anything, they should be going FASTER than they’ve gone in the past! Content should be flying out of Blizzard instead of slowly plodding onto the PTR. What’s become clear is that WOW has finally plateaued after six years. The long tail effect has begun. In order to extend that phenomenon as long as possible, Blizzard needs to be releasing content much faster than what they’ve currently done in this expansion.
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