blizzcon

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Blizzcon: Thoughts on the annual WoW pass and challenge dungeons

mmo-champion has a roundup of the various panels and announcements from the first day of Blizzcon. Highlights include

  • some new units for SC2 (can’t really comment on that since I don’t play it)
  • a new trailer for Diablo 3 (in which the protagonist looks very Final Fantasy – I think it’s the hair)
  • announcement of the next WoW expansion which will indeed be the ‘oriental’ themed Mists of Pandaria
  • New expansion will include pokemon style pet fighting, and a high score table for speed of completion of the new ‘challenge’ dungeons (which are actually regular 5 man instances)
  • a new incentive to pay for a year of WoW.

(Apparently the female mage in the Diablo 3 trailer is Decard Cain’s niece. Poor girl.)

After the flailing around of Cataclysm, it sounds as though the WoW team have come up with genuine direction for the next expansion and decided who they want to try to appease. I think there’s plenty of evidence that many players enjoy collecting pets and loads more enjoy dungeon speed runs so there’s good logic behind designing extra mechanics around both of those playstyles.

The new annual pass

The way I /think/ this works is that you sign up for the pass and continue paying your sub as usual. You get some bennies for being signed up, including a shiny flying mount, entry to the beta of the next expansion, and a free copy of Diablo 3. If your sub terminates at any point before the year is up, you lose access to all of those things. But if it doesn’t (ie. you pay for 12 months worth of subscriptions) then they become yours to keep.

Or maybe if your sub terminates before the end of the year, they bill your card anyway. I’m honestly not sure.

In many ways this is sheer genius. Anyone who was vaguely planning to play WoW for the majority of the year anyway is now getting some extra stuff to play during the slow periods (ie. Diablo 3 and the expansion beta, whenever that may be). And that extra stuff is of course Blizzard based and may discourage people from straying to other games – after all, they’ve already committed to paying for the whole year anyway so might as well get their money’s worth.

If you were considering dipping back into WoW occasionally, but definitely planned to buy Diablo 3, this might be worth a look too. Just for comparison, D3 is likely to cost the rough equivalent of 4 months subs if you buy it from battle.net.

If you’re meh on WoW, think there is likely to be a stretch of time longer than 4 months next year with no new content, or had sourced a cheaper version of D3, then it’s a wash.

The other reason this is genius is that unless there are plans to release the new expansion unusually early, it’s practically guaranteed that there will be a long stretch of time with no new content after 4.3 drops. This annual pass locks players in now to paying for that long break.

I think it’s likely that the expansion won’t turn up before Q4; they wouldn’t release against D3 even if they could, there will need to be a decent length of beta testing, and I don’t think they’d want to release in the Summer as it’s traditionally the MMO low season.

You pays your money and you takes your choice. I already have D3 on pre-order and I’m not currently seeing anything that would draw me back to WoW. I imagine I’ll check out the new expansion when it goes live because I enjoy their levelling content, but that could be a long way away.

Challenge Dungeons

I’m not that fond of speed runs, but I think having a high score table for dungeon speed runs is likely to be a popular move. Especially with repositioning Pandaria heroics to be more similar to Wrath ones, which were emminently speedrunnable.

A red flag for me though with my tanking hat on is how much timed speed runs can favour tanking and healing specs which produce more damage whilst they tank/ heal. The difference between the amount of damage that a tanking death knight puts out and a tanking warrior puts out in Cataclysm, for example, can be quite significant. In 5 mans where speed is of the essence, that will be more noticeable. Also expect the bloodlust classes (shamans and mages) to be in high demand for speedruns, especially mages.

I’d expect the new monk class to be well designed for this type of environment, and imagine both tanking and healing specs will involve a fair amount of damage on the side.

This could leave traditionally low dps specs like protection warriors and resto druids feeling sidelined. (Yes you can gear and spec your prot warrior for dps but that’s never really felt satisfying to me, YMMV.)

I predict this is going to have a huge impact on balance if it takes off.  But who knows, maybe the new redesigned talent system will even things out.

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What’s your one great wish for Blizzcon?

If I could see one dream announcement come out of Blizzcon this weekend, it would be that they have some ideas for an alternative to the raiding endgame. (Maybe influenced by public raids, dynamic Rift-like events or LOTRO skirmishes.)

And the second one would be an open Diablo 3 beta test.

How about you? Any interest in Blizzcon, any thoughts about what you’d like to see announced?

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Are any gaming conventions fun?

I’ve read a few blogs from people who went to PAX East over the weekend. And what they had in common is that no one really found the convention itself to be all that fun, it was more about being able to meet up with fellow bloggers/ guildies/ etc there.

Now last year I went to a couple of conventions. One was the Eurogamer Expo, which is a gaming convention, has a show floor full of demos that you can try, and that’s about it. I wasn’t impressed. I wonder if it was partly my own fault – what did I really expect from a gaming convention anyway? There were games, right?

The other convention that I went to last year was Eastercon, which is a sci fi convention. We had a blast! There were panels on all the time, there were films to watch, demos to take part in, panels with well known authors who you could go talk to, a chocolate tasting (yes really). even a room full of board games to play. Some of the panels were even about games, and we also got to meet friends from around the country.

I know which convention I would go to again and it would be the scifi one. But why the big difference? I wonder if it’s because sci fi conventions tend to be fan run, with lots of volunteers stepping up to offer to run sessions on just about anything under the sun, lots of families and family oriented activities, and people with years of fandom under their belt who are keen to welcome newbies into the convention scene.

Maybe it really is about the people, and not about the big shiny demos that you need to queue for hours to play or the devs who probably don’t have time to talk to you anyway.

In any case, me and Arb are going to Comic Con 2011, one of the biggest conventions of them all. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous. Will it be more like the scifi conventions with fans, fan run activities, panels and crazy things to do, or will it be more like the gaming conventions with silent anonymous queues to see the good stuff.

Has anyone actually had fun at a gaming convention? I wonder a bit about Blizzcon too, because really the main fun there seems to be meeting guildies which you don’t actually have to do at a Blizzcon.

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No extra slots, no wardrobe, and plenty of whines: what we learned from Blizzcon Q+A

The question and answer sessions at Blizzcon are one of the great puzzlements of the event. Do people really want to go halfway around the world and get the chance to talk to the developers in real life just so they can repeat endless whines about paladins?

Why yes, yes they do.

WoW Insider liveblog of the Class Q&A panel

WoW Insider liveblog of the General Q&A panel

To me, the class Q&A in particular is a waste of an opportunity. If there’s really nothing new to say, then let the designers talk about class balancing and how they approach the challenge of making a class fun. Maybe we can all learn something (because this is something that Blizzard do very well.)

Larisa commented on Tobold’s blog that when she compared Blizzcon to fan-run SF conventions, the content seemed very weak. I cannot get that thought out of my mind when trying to think what the class Q&A could have been replaced with.

Where are the panels on gender or disability representation in WoW, or roleplaying different races? Where are the theorycrafting nuts talking about how they approach the task of modelling new mechanics? Where are the panels about blogging, about organising raid guilds, about crafting and items? Where are the panels about the economy? Where are the panels on raids and instances? Where are the panels that talk about MMOs in general?

They’re not there. And the reason they aren’t there is the same reason why SF conventions will always be more fun than gaming conventions. It’s because the organisers think we’re thick.

General Q&A hits some points home

I wish they’d monitor the questions better in this session, because half of them are class related and belonged in the other Q&A. Generally still a waste of time but it’s nice to know finally that they didn’t think it was worth adding extra character slots for Cataclysm. Or a wardrobe function.

  • Blizzard aren’t sure how well LFG will work when instances are harder. (They haven’t thought about this? No plans for cross-server friends lists for example?)
  • Jeers for the woman who asked if future female characters could not be dressed in underwear. All they had to say was that they agreed it was an issue and (in fact) that they’d been moving away from that in Wrath anyway. But nope.
  • More jokes for the person who asked for female druid forms. Take a moment, if you will, to imagine the outcry if the standard druid forms had been female …
  • No plans for achievements points to ever be useful (hurrah!).
  • Guild mounts in Cataclysm will be account bound. That means that you could send them cross faction.
  • No immediate plans for a wardrobe (somewhere to store gear that isn’t your general bag space.)
  • No immediate plans for more character slots – wait and see, it’s been discussed. Well, maybe they should have gone a bit further than discussions.
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Gaming News: Blizzcon, Why LOTRO F2P delay in EU, Medal of Honor and Fallout: New Vegas disappoint, Prof Layton vs Phoenix Wright, DDOS Minecraft attack, EQ2 Server Merge

demon hunter

 

So, Blizzcon was this weekend and as I noted yesterday, there weren’t any huge announcements from Blizzard.

Still, here’s a picture of the last Diablo 3 class, the Demon Hunter. And a link to the (cheesy) trailer.

Badass female? check.

Spiky plate armour? check.

High heels? DOH!!!

And of course, in D3, all classes are available as both genders so there will be a male demon hunter too, we just haven’t seen him yet. We can only hope that he gets to totter around in high heels too. (btw this trailer, despite the heels, is way more female friendly than 90% of the stuff you get from other game companies.)

Main announcements were:

  • Demon hunter for D3
  • PvP arenas will be available in D3. Apparently during the Diablo Q&A they clarified that they don’t plan for Diablo to be an e-sport, so they aren’t aiming to balance all builds.
  • Cataclysm to be available digitally so you can download it from Blizzard and have it ready to run on release day.
  • Defense of the Ancients style map to be available (free) for SC2, along with other new maps/ minigames. The SC2 DotA is going to use characters from Warcraft and Diablo as well as Starcraft, and sounds like a Big Deal.

Relating to DotA, Blizzard chiefs have commented in interviews that they are talking to Valve about rights to use ‘Defense of the Ancients’ and it sounds as though there is some confusion about who owns what. Doubtless the mod designer does own the name, but it’s true that a lot of people would associate it with Blizzard’s wargames.

Why was the launch of F2P delayed for LOTRO in Europe?

The general manager of Codemasters posted an explanation for the delay in the EU LOTRO forums. As has been widely suspected, it was due to legal/ contractual issues rather than technical ones.

We can confirm the launch is imminent and we should be able to announce the dates later this week/early next week.

I still resent Turbine for going ahead and launching in the US even though they knew these contractual issues had not been resolved. Will certainly bear that in mind in future.

Medal of Honor and Fallout: New Vegas both disappoint

Two big games were released recently but neither has really achieved greatness. Reviewers have not been thrilled and sales back that up.

Professor Layton to meet Phoenix Wright!

Apparently there is going to be a crossover DS game featuring Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright in a game that is described as a combination of puzzles and crime mystery.

That is just too much awesome for one tiny game cartridge to contain! If it doesn’t get released over here there will be … troub^D^D^D^D^D frantic ordering from overseas and heavy use of any friends who happen to speak Japanese.

Of course, I’d have to actually finish DQ9 first which doesn’t look to be happening any time soon. I was quite impressed that Reggie Fils-Aime claims to have spent 150 hours playing it too.

DDOS attack on Minecraft

How stupid exactly do you have to be to think that the best way to encourage an indie game designer to add more content to his game is to take down his server?

I’m not sure if the source of the DDOS attack has actually been proved but 4chan was mentioned in the link above, where a post was made claiming that the attack came from impatient fans.

I have no words. Tobold had a similar reaction.

EQ2 Servers Merge

SOE announced some server merges this week. These are (of course) subscription servers, which are still kept separate from the EQ2X F2P plebs.

This isn’t really a surprise because it’s been known for ages that the populations on some of those servers has been getting quite low. Whatever server merges may or may not mean for the game, it’s usually a good move for players on those low pop servers when a merger is done.

Player vs Developer comments about what it’s like being on one of the low pop servers that isn’t being merged. In this case, SOE have been reluctant to merge a RP server with a non-RP server, and he’s feeling as though his character has been abandoned.

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What announcements would you like to see from Blizzcon?

So how is patch 4.0.1 treating everyone? I had to do a complete reinstall so haven’t had a lot of time to check out the actual patch itself.

I did wander into Thrall’s throneroom in time to catch a conversation between Thrall, Garrosh, Vol’jin and Eitrigg in which Thrall informs them that he’s going to Nagrand to investigate elemental issues and leaving Garrosh in charge.  I was too dozy to take screenshots, but a poster on mmo-champion captured more of the event.

In any case, Blizzcon is next  weekend (Oct 22-23), which is the traditional venue for Blizzard to make any large announcements about upcoming expansions and products. I think it’s expected that they’ll unveil the launch cinematic for Cataclysm and at least one more class for Diablo III (paladin perhaps).

But is there any other announcement that you would like to see?

I’m hoping for a lot more information about the online/ battle.net side of Diablo III. I’d like to see some kind of an auction house, and to see whether they are going to deliberately converge it more with MMO type playing styles. After all, hanging around in battle.net chat until you find a group for Scene X isn’t all that different logistically from hanging out in Dalaran while you wait for LFG to zone you into an instance …

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The Virtual Convention Goer

This year marks the first time I ever went to a sci-fi convention myself. I had a fantastic time, met lots of cool and strange people, got to see the first episode of the new Doctor Who projected up onto a screen in a room with 7-800 others,  and geeked my heart out all weekend.

Even last week, you could have read Arbitrary’s experiences of San Diego Comic Con here. Again, actually being there is a huge part of the experience. Yes, there are panels and they’re great but you can’t get recorded yelling DE-REZ to be in the Tron movie unless … you’re actually there.

Now, last week virtual tickets for Blizzcon also went on sale. For the knock-down price of £24.95, you can watch pretty much the whole thing over streaming video. They’ll record panels, PvP tournaments, opening/ closing ceremony, the whole works. And you can also spend more money on exclusive Blizzcon items and get whatever free pet is that Blizzard are giving away this year.

It certainly isn’t the same experience as actually being there in person. Especially not if one of your goals was to meet up with other players from your guild or server. Or to go to any of the parties or other informal events which fans will organise (I don’t even have to check to know that this will happen, it’s what fans do.)

Not to mention the fact that timezone issues mean that most of the panels will be in the middle of the night if you’re in Europe. And even though the video stream offers some DVR functionality, the content of the panels  (complete with liveblogs) will  be all over the internet before you get to see it anyway.

For all that, if you want to share part of the Blizzcon experience without having to actually go there, it’s not a bad option. If you collect pets or merchandise, then the price here isn’t all that much more than a sparklepony. In fact, the more mercenary minded could  pay the cost of the virtual attendance by buying and selling on the exclusive Blizzcon merchandise, and you won’t even have to stand around in queues to get it.

But this does all make me wonder about the notion of virtual convention going and what sorts of activities could make the virtual participants feel more part of the action. Certainly livestream viewers could submit questions to panels or take part in any quizzes or competitions alongside the real con goes. More online activities associated with the con might also pad out the subscription cost. It could also be really fun to sub to the livefeed along with other guildies and chat to them about it on twitter or IM (or in game) as it’s happening.

But ultimately, it will never be the same as being there. And you won’t ever understand exactly how it’s different from being there unless you go there.

I won’t personally be buying the virtual attendance because I’m going to be very busy in October and won’t have the time to watch all those panels.  But I don’t think it’s a bad deal at all.

And for anyone else who is curious about the virtual attendance but not planning to use it, Mana Obscura commented in their last podcast (which you totally should listen to) that they are planning podcasts every night to sum up the day’s events.

Is anyone excited about being a virtual con goer? Do you have anything planned to make the experience more special?

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Gaming News: Google App Store, Zynga ties the knot with Facebook, Aion server mergers, Blizzcon, DS to overtake PS2 in sales

Google shows off some longer term plans

At the I/O developer conference in San Francisco this week, Google announced their plans to launch an online web app store (for Chrome and Chrome OS). Undoubtedly games will feature heavily on the list, and Plants v Zombies and Lego Star Wars (are there any platforms on which those don’t run?) have already been announced.

Possibly of even more interest, Unity Technologies also announced that their 3D engine will run natively in Chrome – that is to say, with no  plugin. At any rate, marketing speak aside, that means that unity based games will run smoothly and quickly in Chrome. It’s certainly good news for Unity developers, and that’s good news for gamers also.

Is Chrome shaping up to be the gamer’s browser of choice? Google certainly hope so.

And in another big announcement, Google introduced an open source royalty free video format, WebM. It will be included as part of HTML5 and, of course, will be supported by YouTube. Adobe plan to build support for the codec into Flash as well.

Farmville Devs sign a 5 year deal with Facebook

A week can be such a long time in gaming politics. Last week everyone was speculating that Zynga planned to dump Facebook and go it alone (as if!) and this week brings the announcement that actually the two companies have signed some sort of cooperation deal for the next 5 years.

Facebook’s plans to force all app developers to use their new facebook credit currency for RMT, so that Facebook can take a cut,  is hardly going to be welcomed by the developers. But we can only speculate about whether Zynga was forced to the table (because they need Facebook more than vice versa), or whether they held the platform owner to a hard bargained deal.

In any case, all is smiles and flowers in the Farmville world. And expect to see facebook credits making a very real bid to become the global internet RMT transaction currency of choice. Scared yet? Well, you can always install a Farmville gamebar on your browser and let Zynga keep tabs on everything that you ever do online …

Playdom buy Acclaim, Perfectworld buys a stake in Runic

There are a couple of company related announcements. Playdom, the social gaming publisher, has acquired Acclaim. Acclaim have developed and run several F2P MMOs so it will be interesting to see what Playdom plans to do with them. I remember liking Chronicles of Spellbourne when I tried it, so let’s hope this leads to good things.

In other news, Runic Games announced that Torchlight had sold 500k copies worldwide since it’s release. Which is excellent for any game. And Perfect World Entertainment (a Chinese MMO Publisher) has acquired a majority stake in the company. We know that Runic had mentioned a MMO version of Torchlight, could Perfect World be the partner to help bring it to market?

Aion Announced Server Mergers

Aion producer released a community letter, with lots of information about forthcoming plans. They’re offering character customisation and transfer options, there are new patches coming soon and information about what’s going on with the Korean patches also even further out.

But it is the server merges that will attract most of the attention. Usually associated with a drop in population, merging servers is a way to bolster existing servers. However, it’s never really been a good sign for the health of a game.

In the same week, Everquest also announced server mergers … but they’ve been running for 10 years, as opposed to less than one.

Blizzcon Tickets to go on Sale on June 2nd and 5th

Put your lucky socks on if you want to snag a ticket to Blizzcon, even at the eye-popping price of $150 they’re bound to sell out immediately. The convention itself will take place on Oct 22/23 in Anaheim and the smart money says that Blizzard will announce their next gen MMO there. The unsmart money (ie. me) is hoping they’ll at least announce a date for Diablo 3.

In other Blizzard related news, they’re trialling a new premium service for WoW in which subscribers who pay an extra $3 per month can access the auction house remotely either from the web or from iDevices. They’re also disabling a naughty addon which made hard raid encounters much easier by allowing you to draw on other people’s screens. I never used it myself, but it does show that the lines between which addon is considered ok and which is forcibly disabled can be very unclear.

Blizzard also resolved their legal issues in Korea by agreeing to everything the Korean Govt asked for, and censoring blood, swearing and cigarettes from Star Craft 2. I imagine there will still be plenty of good, wholesome, old-fashioned genocide though. And apparently the corruption scandal in Korea’s professional Star Craft scene is looking worse the more it gets investigated.

DS to Become Biggest Selling Console of All Time

I love my DS, and it was my faithful companion on many long train journeys to and from my father’s flat when he was ill last year. So I find it heart warming to report that DS sales are likely to overtake those of the PS2 later this year.

It’s just a great little console, and the games have been pitched absolutely perfectly at a puzzle loving, brain training older audience, as well as the usual crop of pokemon (of which I still need to buy the latest sometime) and other kid pleasers. This little console has done a lot to open up the gaming market, and in my opinion, Nintendo deseves all the sales that it gets.

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5 Challenges for Cataclysm

Chris at Game by Night is dubious about whether Cataclysm can really keep Warcraft players occupied for another two years (the average time between WoW expansions up till now). Yes, there are new races and new levelling content, but once people have worked up their new alts … what then?

In many ways, the most surprising thing about Cataclysm is how little we have heard about it. It’s going to be released this year, but when? Is it in beta yet? Where are the screenshots or artists impressions of the new zones? Maybe a picture of a well known zone seen from a flying mount? How about some more information about the dance studio (i.e. ability to choreograph your own dances) which was mentioned at Blizzcon?

Just for comparison, the first beta leaks from Wrath were in April ‘08, and the expansion was released in November of that year. If Cataclysm is aiming for a release before Q4, we should start hearing more about it very soon. The longer they delay, the more likely that the expansion won’t go live until the end of the year.

Aside from that, there is a question of what exactly it really would take to keep WoW players occupied for another two years.

For raiders, I’m sure Blizzard can dole out the raid content at the same rate they have been through Wrath. For alt-fans, an old worlde revamp, new races, and 5 new zones will certainly keep people busy for awhile. Blizzard have also mentioned reworking some of the old dungeons as high level heroics – if they did that to all of them in addition to any new instances then that’s a lot of instanced content also. Plus the rated battlegrounds, which I suspect will be one of the really big features in practice.

So, same old same old. More zones, more dungeons, more races, more battlegrounds. But is that enough? And if not, what exactly would be enough?

Here’s the five main challenges I think the expansion will face.

  1. Rated Battlegrounds. How well will these take off? If this plan works, then it will throw a nice chunk of both content and challenge at raid guilds who are bored of running the same raid four times a week. Plus should be fun for the more casual guilds too. They will need to find a way for people to opt out of the ratings if they want to go run a random battleground or else the whole casual friendly, solo friendly nature of bg PvP will be lost.
  2. People who can’t raid or don’t want to raid. Wrath opened up WoW raiding to more people than ever before. Some will be hooked and raring to go on Cataclysm raids. But what about the people who decided that actually it isn’t for them? It may be that some form of cross-server LFR tool will make raids a fun, casual friendly option. But as I’ve said before, I don’t think a regular tuned 10/25 man raid would work for a cross server PUG.
  3. Hardcore disengagement. Hardcore raiders have worked within the new hard mode /normal mode framework for raid instances. But how much do they actually enjoy it? Do they want to sign up for another expansion of more of the same? More working their guts out to beat hardmodes, when the majority of the player base just doesn’t care any more and isn’t especially impressed because they are happy with their normal modes and get to see the same fights anyway. How many will decide that it’s just not worth it?
  4. Levelling through Outland and Northrend. Now, Outland and Northrend both offer very cool and fun levelling experiences. But how are players going to feel when they leave the revamped old world and have to chug through 20 levels of unchanged content before they get to the new Azeroth zones? How many of those new alts will actually make it to endgame?
  5. Class Balance and Hybrid Vigor. Wrath has seen hybrids winding up with a good deal of in game privilege. They get the extra flexibility of multiple roles, at very little cost (apart from the extra time and effort to gear up). We know that Paladins and Druids (and Death Knights, natch) have all been gaining in popularity – last armoury survey showed that over 15% of all level 80s were paladins. I’d expect this effect to become even more marked as more people create new alts in Cataclysm. Druids will get vastly more popular because … worgen druids. Plus of course, a class talent revamp for all classes could unsettle everything.

The big problem of course is boredom. People who are bored of the game are not going to be enthralled by more of the same, and Blizzard has shown no signs yet that Cataclysm will include anything other than more of the same.

And really, they have to go with ‘more of the same’ for the players who aren’t yet bored – plus they will want to increasingly save their new ideas for the unannounced MMO that is yet to come. This isn’t to say that WoW is being short-changed, but that the original design might just not be welcoming to some of the new things designers want to do.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, I think they will at some point figure out how to make fun cross server PUG raids. I think the rated battlegrounds will be wildly successful, more than most people are expecting.

I think that the new expansion will struggle to hold a lot of existing endgame player’s attention for more than a few months. This happens anyway with any new expansion, but the drift will be faster than ever, and it won’t depend on new games coming out. But remember, a lot of new or returning players will be coming back to start again with Cataclysm. They won’t all be bored yet. They will enjoy the more accessible instancing and raid content. Blizzard is banking on the new wave replacing the old. Time will tell if they are right.

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Cataclysm! Did the earth move for you?

So the leaks were all true. How about that then?

New races, massive revamp of most of Azeroth and the levelling game, flying, underwater mounts and city, new raid instances to fill out some of the existing ‘blank spots’ in the lore.  The official Cataclysm site is up and wow.com can fill you in on specifics as announced at Blizzcon.

In addition, the team have plans to streamline existing game mechanics in the new expansion. Some stats will be removed (goodbye armour penetration, you will not be missed because almost no one really understood what you did), others will become secondary stats (eg. no more spellpower, instead it will be based on your int). So the intention is to make the stats simpler and easier to understand. No doubt some people will interpret this as dumbing down – because the alternative is admitting that the current system is obfuscated and unnecessarily complex.

In practice, what we’re practically getting is WoW2. And I know I’m looking forwards to levelling new alts from scratch with my friends with a whole new altered world to explore. I’m also awed by Blizzard’s sheer audacity in being willing to take on those sort of wholesale changes.

I’m an ideas person myself. If I am drawn in by the vision, I’ll stay for the ride. They blew me away with Wrath even though my initial reaction to the announcement was meh. Can they do it again? We’ll have to wait and see. While it’s fun to revamp an old instance to celebrate an anniversary, I’m quite anti-excited about the prospect of Heroic Maraudon.

It’s one thing to get all excited in the middle of Blizzcon but let’s see how people feel about this one in a month or two when they’ve had time to reflect.

How not to be a hater

It’s also inevitable that lots of bloggers will take the opportunity to rag on WoW, if only because it distracts players from other games.

Syncaine gets in first with a sarcastic sideswipe which has some salient comments but shows mostly that he’s missed the point about the revamp of old zones. An old zone can totally be new content if the graphics and quests are redone (what is a new zone after all anyway?) But one note about Barrens Chat; is he so sure that chat in his game of choice is better? Because you can’t entirely blame the zone for that.

Still, at the end of the day, I’d like it for everyone to get this excited about future updates to their favourite games. You need a certain type of miserable temperament to be so keen to jump in and ruin the party now. How about just letting people enjoy the hype and enthusiasm?

He does, however, make an interesting point with the post title. Which is the greatest expansion of all time? (and why?) Is it one that totally mixes up the gameplay? Is it one that offers ‘more of the same’ but in a really high quality way? Does it further the story? Is it one that is loved by the players instantly, or maybe it takes longer to get into but has more longterm appeal?

Or maybe it’s just the one that sells the most boxes. TBC and Wrath both broke sales records when they were released. Would anyone care to bet against Blizzard on this one too?