Warlords of Draenor

I was right about a couple of things with the next WoW expansion, the Draenor Planet, and time travel, oh and the item squish. As everyone has heard by now, Warlords of Draenor is the next WoW expansion. So we get a version of player housing, basically a step up from the farm. New models, delivered in installments? Because I only see three showing right now. So what all do we get? Here's the most prominent things announced today.

•  Time travel and a new continent, with the old Burning Crusade feel. Playing the nostalgia card. I'll bite. I really did love the feel of TBC zones. From what we have seen, the artwork is quite lovely- Shadowmoon Valley looks gorgeous. It will be a nice change from Panda land. Time travel? Eh, not that inspiring. More spacegoats and red orcs? Still not super inspiring. Will they even have the new models? I guess the orcs will. 

• New models. Yes! They only have three to show. Kind of depressing, I'm thinking only a few will be released and the rest will be released with future patches. I will say these models look awesome, they fit into the World of Warcraft universe and look smooth. But, still they should all be released at the launch of the expansion honestly, don't half ass it. 

• Housing. Rejoice player housing enthusiasts! We will be getting a garrison where we can collect NPC characters to craft for us and go on missions. We'll have a little bit of choice on design it looks like. Is it true housing or just a step up from the farm? Okay, maybe it isn't player housing like EverQuest II, or Rift's dimensions, but it does look interesting, I'll admit that. It feels more like what I have seen for Wildstar. Better than nothing, functional housing seems like it could be fun. But what happens when the next expansion hits. We leave it behind like the farm and all our 'friends' we made there? And they are also phased, these little garrisons.

• Item squish? I read it on WoW Insider. All I can say is gross. Yay, let me get to level 100 to feel like it did two expansions ago, joy, joy, joy. Probably the biggest reason I'll never take this game seriously again. You can't undo how a game feels, it just isn't right. Oh yeah, we're time traveling... We lost some hitpoints on the way back through time. That's just me, I don't get excited losing hitpoints and stats with an expansion. 

So, those are the biggest things. MMO Champ has a huge pile of posts I need to sort through. Things got kind of dry for a bit but it seems more info is flooding in with the Q&A panel stuff. Massively and WoW Insider also have some great coverage too. So glad that we were able to get a play by play from all these gaming sites (many thanks), those of us not attending or watching. It was exciting to be able to pick up my phone and still share in on the excitement. I was excited to hear the announcement. I did almost order the virtual ticket at the last minute, but I still had second thoughts. We'll be able to delve over everything for days and weeks now. 

There are new raids, new instances, a new raid mode, which is harder than heroic. LFR will scale much like Flex, cool. So will normal and heroic modes... I don't really care about raiding anymore, LFR feels so dead and ruined. Will this kill LFR off? My ass hurts just thinking about raiding. I can't sit still long enough. LFR was a boon in my eyes. We really need this many modes? 

All in all it sounds like a decent expansion. Nothing earth shattering. I will probably go back, boost an alt to 90, play one of my mains to cap, play with the garrison then head back to whatever it is I was playing before. At this point that's my guess. I will probably be playing it alone, once again, because my family has mostly all quit. I have zero interest in raiding anymore, and I don't feel like being left behind because I don't want to. The artwork looks great, more polish overall to the game. It is all solid for an expansion, but just not really all that exciting. I do give Blizzard props for the lovely models and the garrison. They really look great and I know the team works hard on this game. I just can't help but feel underwhelmed. How do you feel about the future WoW expansion? 

Will Blizzcon Deliver? (WoW)

Flying off into the sunset... See you next expansion. Maybe.

So, tomorrow is the big day with Blizzcon. I had planned on ordering the Virtual Ticket, then as time crept closer I just felt a bit meh about the whole thing. I'm finally rather bored with WoW again. I've even gone and cancelled my account, which runs out of time tomorrow. Even if the expansion details are fantastic, how long are we even looking at until it hits? Six months? A year? I'm guessing somewhere between the two. Zzzzz...

Then again, I've played the game from release, very heavily over the years. I wish I could be one of those people who sticks to one game but that feels so... boring. I like adventure, a change of scenery. And I'm not getting either in WoW. More raids? Meh. Small expansion continents? Meh. I want new things. Bigger things. An island? Give me a dynamic island with more to do, more rewards to work towards. Stop inflating stats so that you have to throw a big loot pinata at the end of the expansion in order to keep people. Yeah, what was it... around half a mil players lost in the last quarter? What is wrong with Blizzard? That would devastate any other game! In the end if people keep leaving at this pace it will devastate this game. Why are people leaving in droves? Wolfshead has a great article, pretty spot on.

I think it is a combination of things. I think Blizzard, as a company, the developers, the whole- flipping- package is just a bit pompous. They've gotten too big for their britches. If you look through my archives, or are a long time reader, you know how I have beaten this horse to death. That isn't the object for today's post. What I really wanted was to just play the guessing game with what may or may not be revealed at Blizzcon.

So here we have a lot of ideas, a registered trademark name (or five), lots of supposed leaks. People think we're getting an underwater world full of naga. I say, nay. I don't see that happening. Most people hate underwater zones. The burning legion? Possibly. Here are a few things I think could be what we'll hear about:

• Time travel!  There is a rumor that we'll be going back to the Draenei land before the crash in Burning Crusade. Very possible, especially with the registered trademark- Warlords of Draenor. A lot of people have fond memories of BC, they liked the art direction, the feel of the expansion. More space goats? Could be Pandas, right? Space Pandas?! Seriously though, I mean the Draenei are a bit WoW thing, not a spin off thing, not that prominent in other Blizzard games. Just my opinion, something to consider.

• Time travel +infinity! Do you ever wish you could go back and relive those old zones you out leveled too quickly? Those old glory days? Do those old dungeons over and over, at the proper level?! Queue up for LFD for any old dungeon and do it? Not me, but there are those who'd love this. It is nice for running with your 'lowbie' friends,  instead of power running them through as a 90. I think player scaling will be a big part of the next expansion. Not only that, but the ability to mentor down to lower levels to group with lower level players. Much like many other games already offer. Blizzard touched on this topic saying it was in the works, maybe a year or two ago?  

• More bank space... kinda. I am thinking we may get a transmog system much like Diablo III will be getting. You only need to equip the item once and it goes into a storage window and saves, no longer needing the physical item. Which in turn frees up much, much bank space. I'd go on a limb to say armor dye or tinting, but this is Blizzard we're talking about. Maybe a year or two down the road. 

• No new races or classes this expansion. Nope, I don't think we'll get anymore. They already stress too much about balance and have some severely shitty specs out there that they can't even get straight. You can't even play the spec you may or may not want because one HAS to be the best cookie cutter, I mean spec. They don't want more balancing this soon after the monk class. No new races because... They have player models IN THE WORKS! Do you people want a new race or new models... Down the road?! I honestly think they are scared of competing with newer games on the character models, probably keep scrapping the models, thus we're still waiting. If they announce new models at Blizzcon, I'll eat my words and surely sub again when they hit the game... See you in a few years!

• The big squish. I think we'll see the big stat squish. We'll go down to, maybe 3k hp? Down from 500k dps, tanks with a MILLION hitpoints? How will that bode? I'm biting back sarcasm here, it is painful. I won't like it at all, people think they will, there will be so many issues with this. The game won't feel right. The point of leveling needs to be more, more, more. Not this crap. But it will happen, unless they start going the 'mega damage' route. Check out the developer's post about that here. 

I'm sure there will be some cool features, but nothing mind blowing or truly exciting. I think Blizzard needs to kick it into another direction or the game is really going to go stale. Seriously, the main focus is still raiding? The whole game revolves around raiding. Don't agree? Try to do your daily quests in blues and greens, it is painful! Those mobs were tuned for raid geared players. You might say, well, the game started with raiding. Eh, we had one raid? The game has changed so much over the years, you can't use that excuse. We need a new direction! Look how people flocked to the new island! I could offer many ideas but nobody ever asked me. I will say I think Blizzard needs to hold off on the squish, cap the game at 100 and branch out at 100, not keep climbing up. Else it will destroy the game as they make the older content such a blur that it is meaningless. I suppose it is working for Blizzard knows what they are doing. Or do they? With the losses to the player base over the last two years alone? Can Blizzard deliver this year? Will they milk MoP another six months? We'll soon see.