Next expansion rumours

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » August 15th, 2009, 8:22

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=92919.0

full of spoilers.

and

fucking gobbos

Post by **Dog Pants** » August 15th, 2009, 8:38

Oh. They're making the Horde bad guys. Great.

Imperatore · Post by **Imperatore** » August 15th, 2009, 9:32

Soooo happy to see old content being re-used again.

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » August 15th, 2009, 9:59

Goblins, eh? Terrible idea Blizzard.

And Deathwing and Azshara? Okay, this sounds like the endgame, with that there are basically no greater evils left anywhere.

Post by **Roman Totale** » August 15th, 2009, 10:27

Interesting.

Post by **Dog Pants** » August 15th, 2009, 10:28

Imperatore wrote:Soooo happy to see old content being re-used again.

Actually, I'm pretty pleased about that. I've not done a lot of old content, and nobody does any more. Opening up some of the blank areas on the old map would feel like an integral part of the world rather than another island tacked on like the last two expansions. I like the sound of the Cataclysm flooding Thousand Needles (and presumably turning the salt flats into a lake), and shaking up the old world a bit.

I don't like Thrall being replaced by Garrosh, and Cairn being killed. Those two are the entire basis of the Horde I love, the misunderstood monsters who are actually more 'good' than the supposed good guys are.

Imperatore · Post by **Imperatore** » August 15th, 2009, 15:19

I think this will be hte last straw for the old school lore loving players narf.

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » August 15th, 2009, 15:25

Well y'know there is still Emerald Dream and the elemental lords but then you're the very top of the food chain, everything from there is extreme lorelol.

eRabbit · Post by **eRabbit** » August 17th, 2009, 12:58

I think quite a chunk of that is utter bollocks, especially the killing Cairne bit. They've spent years portraying the horde as mostly good guys but misunderstood, I doubt they'd throw that out the window now.

Also, I thought Blizzard had stated they wouldn't redo the old world so that it would be capable of supporting flounts as it would be a ridiculous amount of work?

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » August 17th, 2009, 13:15

Nah, it's more of a set a boolean to true for each region, and put a few flying guards over each city and town. What they didn't want is people flying up to the unfinished Mount Hyjal or Gilneas.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » August 17th, 2009, 13:22

Baliame wrote:Nah, it's more of a set a boolean to true for each region, and put a few flying guards over each city and town. What they didn't want is people flying up to the unfinished Mount Hyjal or Gilneas.

Sadly not true. Azeroth is a mess from the air.

eRabbit · Post by **eRabbit** » August 17th, 2009, 13:55

friznit wrote:
Sadly not true. Azeroth is a mess from the air.

Yea that's what I'd seen, and there's a developer quote somewhere as well that said they'd have to pretty much re-work how azeroth worked.

Post by **Dog Pants** » August 17th, 2009, 14:33

How rare. Anery and I were only discussing this at lunchtime, and we pretty much came to the same conclusion.

They put code in for halloween masks for Goblins and Worgen. Previously only player races had masks. When someone pointed this out they put in a load more masks of NPC races, presumably as a smokescreen.

Thrall and Garrosh fought a duel over leadership of the Horde during the razing of Orgrimmar at the launch of WotLK. Thrall actually pretty much lost, but the Herald of the Lich King interrupted them before the duel was finished and big barney ensued. Garrosh was sent to Northrend by Thrall afterwards. Personally I find it extremely unlikely that Thrall would voluntarily give the Horde over to the rash and warlike Garrosh, although if Garrosh did assume command then a war with the Alliance would be very likely. However, if the Alliance and Horde did go to war, it would cause problems with neutral areas like Shattrath and Dalaran. Dalaran in particular, as it is an Alliance city (the Kirin Tor are an integral part of the Alliance), and only allow the Horde access after some Blood Elf chatted up Rhonin.

The flying in the old world, for reasons Rabs and Friz mentioned. They'd have to rebuild a lot of Azeroth. However, combine that with the fact that Cataclysm seems to suggest reworks of many areas, and maybe it still might happen. For example, splitting The Barrens (feasible, but will that need new quest hubs? Crossroads and Taurajo aren't ideally placed), and flooding Thousand Needles (less likely, because you'd have to flood the Salt Flats, Feralas, and possibly Ungoro Crater). Also, messing around with the Old World would affect people who hadn't bought the extension.

Azshara being reduced to 10~20 might indicate it's the landing ground for new Goblin PCs. My guess is that they'll start in Undermines then move to Kalimdor through Azshara, with a new path south to Orgrimmar.

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » August 17th, 2009, 14:34

What you see there is a private server. Have you ever used flight paths? I've done on both types of servres, and trust me it looks a lot better on officials. Although true, there a lot of inaccessible areas by foot which look like big plains of tiled 32x32 textures.

Dog Pants wrote:Azshara being reduced to 10~20 might indicate it's the landing ground for new Goblin PCs. My guess is that they'll start in Undermines then move to Kalimdor through Azshara, with a new path south to Orgrimmar.

Sounds about right.

Also, I guess you read the books. Rhonin was never really anti-horde, he didn't need that much chatting up. It would be safe to assume that Dalaran will remain neutral, and also, seeing Blizzard's ongoing lorelols I'd say Garrosh will turn out to be a power-hungry guy with fluff for the alliance.

Post by **Joose** » August 17th, 2009, 17:48

I dunno. Whilst some of that seems feasable, a lot of it hits my bullshit alarms. I can see them opening up some of the previously unused old world areas, that makes sense, but dicking around that much with so many existing stuff for no apparent gain (cutting barrens in half?) seems *highly* unlikely.

Baliame wrote:What you see there is a private server. Have you ever used flight paths? I've done on both types of servres, and trust me it looks a lot better on officials. Although true, there a lot of inaccessible areas by foot which look like big plains of tiled 32x32 textures.

You know that the private servers are set up using the data from the official client, right? From the client end, all thats needed to get on a private server is changing where the thing logs on to, and making sure you are on the same version. If there were differences in what you could see from the flightpaths, its just because the private server you were on must have been oooold.

Post by **Dog Pants** » August 17th, 2009, 18:33

Well it is called Cataclysm. I've got a private theory that they're going to shake the game up ready to start revamping the whole thing. There's no real reason why a subscription online game should ever be cancelled as long as it evolves, and if anyone has a huge playerbase to want to keep it's Blizzard. There's no way they'll shut down the game while they're making a profit, and they'll be making a profit for a long time yet.

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » August 17th, 2009, 18:38

Joose wrote: You know that the private servers are set up using the data from the official client, right? From the client end, all thats needed to get on a private server is changing where the thing logs on to, and making sure you are on the same version. If there were differences in what you could see from the flightpaths, its just because the private server you were on must have been oooold.

this^ the not being able to see citites from above is most likely due to the culling method they use so the game got more than 3fps at release. not as much a problem with more modern computers but with the amount of people who play the game who arent on fairly new computers it would still be impractical to change.
more information on culling here http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articl ... le1212.asp

pretty much, why make a computer work harder for something thats not going to be seen.

although if they did rework the original land then this is something they could definately look into changing, but i think the revamp is probably the least likely thing on that list although it would be quite nice seeing as warcraft has been an unfolding story with each game, and obiously with WoW being a game the doesnt really have an end it would be nice to see some change in the already existing to progress the story other than just adding new races and lands and not touching the old one. again though i doubt they will as i expect 90% of the players couldnt give a crap about warcraft story and lore and just want to play the game and i doubt that a company would spent so much time and resources on something most players will probably complain about and send blizzard silly threats about how they are never going to play there game again and there going to kill everyone they have ever looked at

Post by **Joose** » August 17th, 2009, 18:49

Dog Pants wrote:Well it is called Cataclysm. I've got a private theory that they're going to shake the game up ready to start revamping the whole thing. There's no real reason why a subscription online game should ever be cancelled as long as it evolves, and if anyone has a huge playerbase to want to keep it's Blizzard. There's no way they'll shut down the game while they're making a profit, and they'll be making a profit for a long time yet.

Trouble is, where does that leave people who havent got the latest expansion? If they are redoing a load of the existing areas, they cant stop you going into them if you havent forked out for the new stuff. But that means that the people who *are* shelling out are doing so essentially for a couple of new zones and a couple of new races. That would be a bit shit compared to the last two expansions, seeing as one gives a whole new continent, and the other a whole new *world* (albiet a fairly small one).

Im not saying it cant be done. I just dont know how they are going to do it, unless there is a load of content for the expansion that *isnt* in that spoiler.

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » August 17th, 2009, 18:59

Joose wrote:
Trouble is, where does that leave people who havent got the latest expansion? If they are redoing a load of the existing areas, they cant stop you going into them if you havent forked out for the new stuff. But that means that the people who *are* shelling out are doing so essentially for a couple of new zones and a couple of new races. That would be a bit shit compared to the last two expansions, seeing as one gives a whole new continent, and the other a whole new *world* (albiet a fairly small one).

Im not saying it cant be done. I just dont know how they are going to do it, unless there is a load of content for the expansion that *isnt* in that spoiler.

ive been thinking about this aswell, and if they did revamp the original continents then id expect it to be for all versions of the game as they wouldnt be able to have 2 different things in the same place and it would be very emersion breaking to have seperate places for people who dont get the new expansion. and if they do use areas that wherent in use before it would be easy enough to have them inaccecable to players without the new expansion even though they could pottentially be standing right next to it. and i expect the other new content such as the races and raised level cap would be enough to entice people into buying the new expansion

Post by **Dog Pants** » August 17th, 2009, 19:09

Historically areas like that that might be accessible by foot have some sort of portal or ship. Ghostlands, Exodar, Outlands, they've all had some sort of barrier and it wouldn't be hard to stop people without the expansion reaching new open areas in the same way. I'm not even convinced by my own argument, but if they want to keep the basic game running they'll have to evolve it.