[WoW] 4.0 - Cataclysm

[Sean]

Originally Posted by Rusty Dagger

PS: They said they were redoing racials to be more like goblins/worgen. Considering the 2 both have very good racials I'm wondering if this means they're being buffed when people already bitch about half the racials in the game being too strong already.

S'okay, people can just race change into the FOTM now!

[Azrayne]

Why don't they just allow class changes and be done with it?

[Goofy]

so any guesses on when expact will be out?

It better not be november 2010

[Sharmai]

Originally Posted by Goofy

november 2010

..

[Rusty Dagger]

Originally Posted by Sean

They need to completely overhaul as much as they're doing though. The system has become far too convoluted and all of the talent trees are bloated as hell. The game just flat out needs some heavy pruning.

I'd generally agree and if WoW was deleted and was started from scratch it would be absolutely essential. The problem is going to come from the fact hey only have X man hours to think about and test the new talents. We are going to be the beta testers and good money is on their being some sort of overpowered something when 4.0 hits. I won't deny I'm coming at this primarily from a pvp angle but even in pve you just know we're going to see the X class dominating, Y class sucking even if it looks just so damn good on paper.

Also they said they were going to go with diminishing returns on dumping talents into a single tree.

That's definitely good news but I'm still dubious about Mastery. The scaling difference between it being dog shit and overpowered is very small. I frankly just don't trust Blizzard enough .. nay .. Blizzard hasn't given me reason enough to trust them that they know how to put it between those 2 points. You want a scenario where someone wants some mastery and some of the rest like crit and hit. But, at least at launch, and I'm willing and hoping to be wrong about this, I'd say it's far more likely people are either going to pile Mastery as high as they can or avoid it like the plague. It's kind of like the change/removal of defense which in theory is good but the one good thing about the stat is that up to a point it was the single best thing a tank good get and past that was fairly meh. Are they really going to be able to design several stats to be able to work in tandem without one overshadowing the rest in its scaling?

And Path of the Titans won't be much of a grind as they said it's heavily gated and you can only do so much per week.

While that might be true, I imagine alot of people, such as those that would frequent this board, are going to rush through it as quickly as they can, even if it just saves them a day, and not really care about it in any other context than what it provides when completed. Kind of like how 1-79 currently have no purpose whatsoever except twinking (which is all but dead) and for getting to 80.

[Burkex]

From what I have read so far here, it seems that everyone seems to love all of the new changes, but after reading about the changes I really was disappointed. I did in fact love a bunch of things they are going to do but some things really made me scratch my head and were disappointing. First off I don't like how they are getting rid of a ton of stats, like spell power. I remember as a hunter going from vanilla to TBC it sucked when your 1 agil was no longer equal to 2 AP and you couldn't wear some of the sweet gear you had because it was all agil and no AP. Now they are doing the opposite for all classes--go figure. And what really kills me about this is that they are getting rid of a lot of stats and basically dumbing down the game even more--which is way too easy now as it is. Ever since the nerf SWP patch the game really hasn't been the same and the level of difficulty for all but a few hardmodes in Ulduar has been WAY TOO EASY. Now it seems they are dumbing it down more with this change. Plus people complain that gear was pretty much the same and now it will be even more so. I actually love tons of stats on things because it allowed you to switch around stuff for different fights--for example: you could make an int set for general or a crit set for hodir if you wanted to, you can stack all spell power, or you could stack all armor pen, and so on you had the choice.

Secondly, I read for months and months at the beginning of WOTLK how people were upset that they redid Naxx and we didn't really get any new content for awhile in WOTLK. Now in the expac they are redoing all of the old zones and even some instances like SFK but NOW people are okay with it. There will be new instances but no new zone. They are even redoing Onyxia a fight I did a billion times already and people can't wait for it. I don't get it? I have done all of those fights and zones so many times that this really disappoints me. Personally I love going to a new world/zone in WOW, in TBC when I went through the Dark Portal for the first time it was amazing. Now I will be doing old content again with some minor changes. It just feels lazy to me.

I could be overreacting and I will have to wait and see but it just feels like the game is getting dumbed down every patch/expansion and it also feels like the content is getting less and less time and effort put into it. The last dungeon we got was an arena with no epic feel or scenery to it at all. To some extent I miss crawling through a dungeon, not like in AQ40 but in Naxx and BWL it was pretty fun. I played because it was fun to beat a hard encounter but those are few and far between now and the hard modes are only optional, 99% of the people seem to just play now for the +stats on purple gear. I guess for me I am close to or at that point where WOW has jumped the shark and it's pretty sad. I guess on the other hand it will make it easier for me to stop wasting my time by playing it all the time.

[Troll]

Looking over the info again, I think the Path of the Titans stuff may be the smartest move Blizzard has made for the expansion (aside from bringing back Dwarf Mages). It allows for sideways growth of a character (as all classes have access to the same paths) and hopefully each path will bring something worthwhile to each class. And it allows for a more flexible system for introducting future character content.

Whether or not it's implemented well is, of course, the hitch.

[Sean]

Originally Posted by Rusty Dagger;1482590good money is on their being some sort of overpowered [i

something[/i] when 4.0 hits.

Sure, but that's MMOs for you. Nothing is ever perfectly balanced and really I think that's part of the fun. At least coming from a PvE perspective - it's fun having overpowered shit.

PvP... well that's never, ever, ever, ever ever even remotely resembled balance so business as usual there.

I'm pretty excited by all the 4.0 stuff. It's changing a lot of the core game systems for the better.

[Cybsled]

Secondly, I read for months and months at the beginning of WOTLK how people were upset that they redid Naxx and we didn't really get any new content for awhile in WOTLK. Now in the expac they are redoing all of the old zones and even some instances like SFK but NOW people are okay with it.

Couple points:

1) Much like how you can read a book, not touch it for 5 years, then come back to it and almost enjoy it like it was a new book, the gap in time between when most of the old-school population did the Vanilla stuff vs. today is rather lengthy.

2) You may have run Deadmines/SFK alot as a noob, but eventually you out leveled it and moved on. I'm willing to bet that Deadmines+SFK on a typical account were run far far less then any raiding guild ran MC/BWL/AQ/etc.

3) The Naxx revamp was the same fights, /w slight modifications. We can probably assume that SFK or Deadmines 2.0 won't be an identical experience. Although part of me almost hopes that during the climax of Deadmines, Van Cleef's ship busts out of that cave Goonies style and you have to fight him on the ship as it steams towards Stormwind harbor, then you have to sabotage it so it sinks/explodes and you have to escape Metroid-style before the timer runs out....but before you get to the end-end, Van Cleef returns again (he wasn't dead the first 2 times) and you have to dispatch him ASAP.

[Rusty Dagger]

Originally Posted by Burkex

First off I don't like how they are getting rid of a ton of stats, like spell power. I remember as a hunter going from vanilla to TBC it sucked when your 1 agil was no longer equal to 2 AP and you couldn't wear some of the sweet gear you had because it was all agil and no AP. Now they are doing the opposite for all classes--go figure.

If they do it right it will be great. Consider that ever since early tbc when you started getting blues your spell power/int ratio has remained roughly the same up until now, somewhere in the low to mid single digits. But there needs to be some heavy caveats here and I'm looking primarily at paladins; they said healers get spirit but didn't notice if that was INSTEAD of int for their spell power or if spirit was just for regen. Paladins getting +15% intellect as a talent and then +10% on top of it with kings is bad. Yes in pve the latter won't matter but it will make paladins--everything else being equal--the king healers in 3s. Depending on what if anything they're doing to address MS effects, rets for the same reason might be the best dps in 3s.

Originally Posted by Sean

PvP... well that's never, ever, ever, ever ever even remotely resembled balance so business as usual there.

Seasons 2 and 3 were solid; games were moderately long but burst still had its place. In general though, yes perfect balance is impossible but people tend to accept it as long as it falls within some margin of error. Time will tell certainly but 4.0 is bound to be well outside of this margin.

[farlin]

Originally Posted by spronk

Is this the earliest they have given such massive details on an expansion months away? I really like all the changes, sounds cool. However, now I am completely unenthuasiastic about playing the game until the expansion I can't see any way staying in the game until Icecrown, TOTC is so fucking boring and dumb.

Maybe TBC/WOTLK was the same, but I don't remember so many details being given out.

If I had to guess, they wont really have any other time.

Id hope its out before next blizzcon (a year away, we better not just get IC for a year -.-), but even if its not, it would be very late into beta that any information at the next blizzcon would already be common knowleadge to anyone that looks it up.

[Toxxulian]

Ony is being released in a mini-patch, it is either ony or nothing. Yes it is still just ony, but it is better then nothing. And they've already stated that any of the bosses they are re-using will be completely different.

It sounds like you have no idea what you are talking about and/or just want to bitch.

[DJk_zero]

It's not a QQ post, but I don't think Blizzard did much service to string along a future release like this with the current state of WoWs life.

I think for all the good that Wrath has done for WoW, it's the least retentive update they've done to the game since launch. It is really starting to lose the charm it once had, and the bite that kept people playing. In the drive to create the perfect mass-market appeal utopia, they've skewed the game into a glorified personal playpen for you and your 4 soon to not be required friends. This has destroyed the little sense of community that ever existed in the first place, and really gives the 'meh' feeling when you're going through encounters.

I was really impressed with the achievement system initially, but now the nature in which it's being perverted to pass as improved raiding content is disheartening. Everything has been reduced to iLvl hunting, and if we do this raid at this state, we will get +10 iLvl gear over that state. I guess from a design standpoint it is somewhat ingenious to be able to recycle brand new content 4+ times with the flick of a switch so to speak and keep the lemmings running, but it has just cheapened everything. The only people that really care about chasing the top marks first are the ones riding on a corporate advertising paycheck, with the player base as a whole sliding from admiration to apathy towards "world firsts" and the like.

I guess this is about the time that the 5 year burnout sets in and the soul of a game is basically gone. It happened to Everquest at about the same time, and now it is happening to WoW.

Will Cataclysm change that? I'm not sure. There are some very good decisions that seem to be taking place in context of advancing the setting, storylines and game functionality. Trimming the fat out of characters, abilities, talents etc is sorely needed. Since the local server community has already been destroyed, X-LFG fills a needed hole, and by release I'd wager X-Raid will also be functional in some form.

Raiding looks to be following the same mantra, but they're already set on that course so there is no changing things. The bad, or sad if you will aspect of it all is we are easily a year+ away from a Cat release (unless they have majorly changed development processes), and many of these changes are quite frankly needed now, but are so far away.

[Lambourne]

Yeah, when your own official promotional presentations start using characters named "Totheground", that's pretty much where you're headed

[Palum]

Being a sucker for lore and proper old school questing, Archeology is probably the biggest eyebrow raiser for me. I'm curious how far Blizzard will go in making people actually... know things. I would be tickled to death if the unlocks were random and a guide would be too cumbersome so people would have to actually do research. Guild chat would cause loregasms 24/7.