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The next expansion should be released with a "meaningful difference" in the release timeline compared to previous expansions. Please, please let this not be another lie! Good riddance to Cata! Give meh pandas!

Originally Posted by Belial

And you really belive that? No.. as one wise guy said on these forums not long ago: Blizzard, at some point stopped catering to the gamer and instead went to cater to the consumer.

Wise indeed. The more I think about it he more I realize how true that statement holds. Its completely obvious with the addition of all these silly features like mobile AH and the Blizzard store and I fear that despite resources being allocated to each separately the gaming aspect is being detracted from in order to provide more features. I feel as though Blizzard has become obsessed with bringing its battle.net system to the current digital age forgetting that they are game creators not social network providers.

Originally Posted by Eleveneleven

A friendly NPC that follows you, fights in combat with you, and takes you to your objectives (and to the trainers) are probably going to happen.

They have this for the new troll starting quests, maybe not as useful as he could be, but he does kind of give out hints and follows you around.

I feel bad for this source of updates, the lack of class quests, just shows that somehow they have less resources than vanilla than they do now, how is that possible? I think that they should put more emphasis on fun things to do with smaller amounts of people rather than 1 big event to do with 10 or 25 people. As the game wears on, there will be less and less people that care about the story, about raiding and serious raiders will adopt games that have more challenging raids and game mechanics.

They need to think of a secondary strategy to cater to smaller groups of players that don't have as much time to invest. Raids are fun, but how many times can you go through Firelands in 1 tier? It would be nice to have twice as many 5 mans that offered a varying amount of challenge, so you could have a ridiculous 5 man that was so hard you needed 5 really good players to beat it, etc.

Makes me sad to see that there are still no plans for a paid class change..

After this pathetic excuse of an x-pac I wont be buying any future wow expansions period

"New players are still having trouble with the first 30 minutes and five levels of the game, more hand holding is coming for very basic concepts like moving, questing, fighting, and looting."lol.. are they serious? Makes me wonder how I ever got to 60 in vanilla. Shesh. I didn't think it could be any easier than it is now. What are they going to do, let you watch the game move your character for the first level before gaining control of it?

The Deathwing raid will be smaller than Ulduar with many phases or encounters with Deathwing.

FML, Blizz really throwing in the towel hmm... And it means less bosses, not less space. Nobody cares about space.

Originally Posted by Kamakiri

This also means I have just lvled up a hunter to 85 (Ding this week) and I can now change him to my main and I don't have to /love all those critters again right!!!!????

I'd hold your horses there, Blizz has something "in the works" for years usually.

Originally Posted by hawtlol

So this whole update is one huge troll right? Cuz there is no way that this can be serious.

Actually I would of said the same thing had I not watched my friend try to play who has never played a computer game before. It was the most painful thing I have ever seen and it took him an hour to try to get the movement and pushing 1 down. It is just for beginning tutorials which some people actually need.

Originally Posted by greyghost

neither game has been released yet, nor do they even have a release date for either game.

***whooooooooosh***

---------- Post added 2011-08-23 at 02:30 PM ----------

Was this post edited or something after the initial posting? It states quite clearly that the difference is to the "release timeline", not any kind of in-game timeline. I'm guessing this means Blizzard are planning to stick to their promise of "smaller expansions, faster". However, the amount of success they've had sticking to their "smaller patches, faster" commitment leaves me doubting it. I'm going to guess that the Deathwing raid is going to be with us for a looong while before Mists of Pandaria is released (and with their talk of final raids, quickened releases of the next XPac and such I don't think there can be any doubt that Mists of Pandaria is the title of said XPac, not some side-project). Overall, I think Cataclysm has been an interesting experiment. Blizzard made quite a few mistakes with it - but I'm willing to bet they have learned from these mistakes and I'm quite looking forward to seeing how they implement those lessons in Pandaria.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Transmogrification Options
The gear also still has to have stats aside from armor on it. That means that there are a lot of white or grey items that might not be available initially when Transmogrification goes live.

Oh come on ! There is no actual leather gear that I would like for my Nifght Elf Druid more than the Suncured Set

Originally Posted by Strakha

I feel bad for this source of updates, the lack of class quests, just shows that somehow they have less resources than vanilla than they do now, how is that possible?

Simple.. Titan. Blizzard openly admitted their core talent has moved from WoW and onto Titan. That's where the main people are working now. But I sometimes wonder. They have the time to re-do 1-60 for Cataclysm but can't insert some class quests. Hmm. I guess they have to prioritise and class quests just aren't on the list.

"Patch 4.4 will bring a world event before the next expansion."

Disappointing. I was hoping that after the Deathwing raid there would be one final raid involving N'Zoth.

Cataclysm has been a huge failure imho compared with TBC and WOTLK and I can't help but feel short changed.

I'm not really fussed with the lack of raid content as it seems the in thing to give less and less with each passing xpac.

But the lore and story lines have been rubbish and have not engrossed me at all. Where's the villains at? In TBC you had a raft of villains and their mottly crews ready to wage war against you. In Wrath, LK popped up all the time giving you the sense he was the king of the jungle, the Yogg and Ulduar story, Blue Dragonflight, Yrykul (forgive spelling), Nerubians and Anub (albeit no underground zone disappointment), sheesh even if it was the worst raid in the game argent tournment at least had a story behind it.

Excluding the Sundering, Cata has given very little, arguably due to have so few new zones. I'm not against re-hashing content and personally feel some old raids and dungeons have a place in new content, but Nef and Ony (seem them before), Ragnaros (hi again), new Mount Hyjal adailies (didn't we do this when levelling at 80), oh, let's pick on the trolls again (those dammed trolls, ethnically cleanse them. But if you are desperate for a story, include some trolls, and finally Deathwing. The deadly Deathwing, i'm going to fart my way out of Deepholm, caused some tsuanmis, few cracks in the earth, say Hi to Raggy, then spend the rest of the xpac flying around hoping some moron stands in my fire. He sucks as a villain. At least Chogall and his twilight crew were getting up to mischief and had a sense of story behind them.

I cannot help but feel that it is purely commercial decisions pushing these timescales. Not the love for story, of player base to give more exicting and enthralling content to play. Purely some nub in a blue suit in the board room has said,

"We have 3 mean titles coming out towards the end of the year and we need a way to counter them, and stop lots of subscribers leaving. Titan is not ready and will not be for a while. You got to release the Deathwing raid, and some other gimmicks (like transmorgrification and void storage). That way, raiders will feel obliged to continuing subbing to ensure they kill Deathwing, casual gamers will have the delights on the new raid finder to troll old raids to make their toons look shit hot. Hopefully, the new releases will not have such a massive hit on the subscriber base. By the time Deathwing is old new, we'll release a new and brilliant xpac to pull all the subscribers back and ensure people carry on playing, hoping we ride out the next gen mmo's waves".

p.s. excuse spelling and poor grammer.

I actually don't mind Blizzard's idea of doing half size expansions, 5 levels, half the length... BUT NOT WHEN WE ARE STILL PAYING THE FULL PRICE. If these expansions were $20 each, then I wouldn't mind as much. Currently WoW costs $100 to buy into as a new player, excluding the monthly fee ($20 for Battle Chest, $40 for Wrath, $40 for Cata). It's going to be very difficult to convince new players into the game as it gets more and more expensive.

Originally Posted by Arnolde

The next expansion should be released with a "meaningful difference" in the release timeline compared to previous expansions. Please, please let this not be another lie! Good riddance to Cata! Give meh pandas!

I doubt it's a lie, seeing as they wanted to release expansions faster (1 1/2 year between each?).

Blizzard seems to be going in the right direction, and I'm positive that 4.3 will be awesome

I'm kind of sad there'll be a 4.4 with the world event to the next expansion, seeing I was hoping to jump into 4.3 and datamine at full speed ahead. Oh well!

Originally Posted by Collected

Simple.. Titan. Blizzard openly admitted their core talent has moved from WoW and onto Titan. That's where the main people are working now. But I sometimes wonder. They have the time to re-do 1-60 for Cataclysm but can't insert some class quests. Hmm. I guess they have to prioritise and class quests just aren't on the list.

Never saw a post where they admit they changed their core talent, but yeah I can't see how they can re-do almost all the 1-60s quests but cant make 50 individual quests for every 10 levels or so (less for DK).

Originally Posted by greyghost

Neither game has been released yet, nor do they even have a release date for either game.

You're clearly unable to recognize Sarcasm.

alot of people say SWTOR or GW2 will trump WoW yet neither game are out to be proven to be anythnig special just like Warhammer killed WoW right? lol.

Don't get me wrong i'll be trying both SWTOR and GW2(Best looking upcoming MMO Gameplaywise) but i certainly don't see any of them capable of harming WoW whatso ever. Especially SWTOR it just doesnt do anythnig groundbreaking at all.


OT: Sounds like we will be getting a new expansion in Q2 2012 xD I'm certainly excited and I can't wait for 4.3 to hit PTR so I can play on their whilst I wait for it to go live. I'm pretty much bored of Live servers atm other than doing Arena. I don't do PvE at all.

(Darkain - YouTube)

Originally Posted by mvallas

Yeah... I wonder what a "meaningful Difference" means...meaning...what exactly?

I'm guessing that they mean that it's not like "Well, 1 year in terms of lore has passed, but guess what? That tower that's being fixed infront of Org still isn't finished". I guess it means that it'll be like "We want the timeline to fit with the changes of the world". So maybe we'll see the Park fixed sooner than we'd think.

New players are still having trouble with the first 30 minutes and five levels of the game, more hand holding is coming for very basic concepts like moving, questing, fighting, and looting. Fuck this game

Originally Posted by mmo_lol

Makes me sad to see that there are still no plans for a paid class change..

I'm so glad people like you don't get your way. If you did we'd be able to buy level 85 Characters from Blizz with full raid tier/pvp sets right? Thus rendering the game pointless for levelling or getting to know your class through Playing it.

Paid Race/Faction/Server change is understandable and im sure most have used the service due to their own reasons. But Class change is just ridiculous. And should never be included in any game let alone WoW.