Today marks the Shattering of Azeroth in WoW.

All the zones change, new race/class combo's are available, Orgrimmar is COMPLETELY changed, as well as Stormwind AND Cairne Bloodhoof the leader of the Tauren is dead!

If you haven't been in Beta trying the game out, now is a good time to check out all the new content. Well after what is sure to be 10 hours of server maintenance downtime!

I'm excited! :)

Maint. extended surprise there :P I am looking forward to seeing all of the changes as well.

Ya know, I am surprisingly not excited. They are replacing what was (in my opinion) good content with probably just as equally good content needlessly.

Ya know, I am surprisingly not excited. They are replacing what was (in my opinion) good content with probably just as equally good content needlessly.

They are replacing what WAS good content with what IS good content. See quests of the past were great in the past, but as new expansions came out and things like phasing and really fun quests that make you feel like you are a part of the story were developed, it really made the old world quests boring and dry.

The quests they have now from 1-60 are awesome quests where your actions affect the world around you thanks to phasing, and you really do some fun stuff like scaling a tower as a little ninja goblin and jump over the rail and assassinate someone and do some really fun stuff.

The new content is what a MMO of TODAY should be. The old content is what an MMO should have been in the past!

They are replacing what WAS good content with what IS good content. See quests of the past were great in the past, but as new expansions came out and things like phasing and really fun quests that make you feel like you are a part of the story were developed, it really made the old world quests boring and dry.

The quests they have now from 1-60 are awesome quests where your actions affect the world around you thanks to phasing, and you really do some fun stuff like scaling a tower as a little ninja goblin and jump over the rail and assassinate someone and do some really fun stuff.

The new content is what a MMO of TODAY should be. The old content is what an MMO should have been in the past!

That's all well and good besides it being thousands and thousands of man hours for content that an average current player has already out-leveled OR content a new player will blaze through ridiculously fast with the improved experience at lower levels. Either way ... for a game that puts out new content soooo painfully slow already it seems like very little gain for the amount of effort put in. They could have kept all of the previous content, created a new goblin / worgen starting area, and put all of the effort into max level or close-to-max-level content instead of the 10-60 bracket that people generally level through after ~20 hours of playtime.

I think I am going to play it for a bit to experience the "new" stuff, before making any commentary on it. :p

I am having a blast with the old world changes. First bit of advice, watch where you step! you could land in a hole while on autorun lol.

Not having portals in Dal makes me want Dec 7th to get here ASAP so I can fly everywhere.

The new quests are fun! It actually makes me want to level new characters again. I am also so happy that damn shaking is overwith. The new SW looks amazing and actually I notice all new textures everywhere, this game is gorgeous. :)

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/

Org. looks amazing as well. Such a welcome change even though it will take a bit of getting used to I really like it.

I haven't got to look around to much yet as i've been taking advantage of all the high glyph sales hehe.

ORG IS EPIC!

The score is like that of an epic movie and the whole city just screams HORDE!

Ughh!, getting soo lost in Org now. havent got to explore to much but did run the new mor'shan ramparts quests alot of fun. that and talendris(sp) point in Azshara.
I'll admit i had no interest in starting a Gobbie until i saw Azshara. now i'm going to have to as it looks like a blast of a starting area.
The goods news is it looks like Makirk has gotten the hint that his wife is dead and moved on. to Rfk area =)

Well, I had been holding my new pute for mostly my music stuff, but decided with the new stuff to swap over my WoW from this Vista 4 gig ram to the Win7 with 8 gig ram and faster CPU. Definitely is some good looking stuff, and looking forward to taking my time and exploring all the goodies.

Almost reminds me of old EQ trying to come up with new content and mechanics to take advantage of the advances in computers, but haven't had any crashes yet. :rolleyes:

So its been a week, I wonder if you all are starting to agree with my point of view now that there's been a bit of time to reflect. Keep in mind that all of these low level quests came at the expense of 5 additional levels of content. Some old-world evolution makes sense, but there really wasn't a need for them to redo everything to the extent they did in my eyes while cutting the max level content in half.

To quantify the content differences is hard, but maybe a good window is that there is 3 less reputations and 5 less dungeons and it is estimated to take only ~15 hours to get to level 85 versus it taking well over a day in WotLK. Admittedly there is 3 raids at release instead of WotLK's 2 (and one of which was recycled) - but wouldn't it have been great if there was MORE leveling content appropriate to your max level character (as well as the new heirlooms that would make that level 1-80 grind less tedious and repetitive) and MORE dungeons and MORE raids instead of just 1 of the 3?

Would have been nice, but I have always been one of those people that complained that they should advance the story and change the old world to follow the storyline. I won't complain, they did an amazing job!

Agreed, I think they did an outstanding job and I love the new content at lower level. :D

Expansion zones marginalizing old, low-level zones was always one of the biggest problems in EQ back in the day (e.g. who would ever waste time in Lower Guk when Karnor provided better XP and better drops, for less risk). Refreshing boring/dead areas seems like a great idea.

Expansion zones marginalizing old, low-level zones was always one of the biggest problems in EQ back in the day (e.g. who would ever waste time in Lower Guk when Karnor provided better XP and better drops, for less risk). Refreshing boring/dead areas seems like a great idea.

I can appreciate that BUT ...
...the re-designed zones still dump you out in Outland at level 58 and Northrend around level 70, and while all of the content in the 1-58 levels is all about how horrible Deathwing is its extremely jarring to then have to worry about the Burning Legion, Illidain, and so forth.
...Blizzard is notoriously slow to release content, and when the entirety of the $40 expansion is half as much content as the two $40 expansions beforehand. People will cap out their max level character twice as fast as you did in WotLK at the same cost.
...there were already plenty of built in mechanisms that will make that level 1-58 level trek go faster for veterans but it was all entirely relevant for new players (at least two new heirloom slots, XP boosts, increased exp at low levels), so most players are going to experience all of the content at levels double, triple, or beyond that which the content was designed for.
...its not Guk vs Karnors but a redone Guk replacing the old Guk, it would be like the developers redoing Blackburrow and Crushbone, making it so people will level past all of the old world content ridiculously fast anywho, and leaving out Emerald Jungle, City of Mist, Veeshan's Peak and Howling Stones.

I don't disagree that some old world changes made sense. I feel that re-purposing some lesser used zones (like Azshara) in order to become lower level zones for new races was a brilliant use of under-utilized content. But it didn't make sense to redo EVERY quest in EVERY zone, essentially undoing thousands upon thousands of hours of development time, in exchange for spending dramatically less time on the content for a max level player (which like I said, is a painfully slow process already).

I've stayed away from playing much in the beta because of how disappointed I was at hearing that people will be level 85 after 14-20 hours played when in WotLK the server first level 80s took around 40 hours and the average person was closer to 60 hours played.

People may level quickly but if what I hear about how challenging encounters and content are it might keep you interested for a while. In any case I have 4 level 80s to take to 85 plus I'll need to make new characters for the new races. So I'll be busy for a bit.

I have a seahorse, WIN

I am just blown away by how smooth this launch was. Servers stayed up, no lag, fortunately no login queue on my server and I haven't found one broken quest yet.

The transition of the world around you as you progress through a storyline is really damn cool. One minute the landscape looks one way and the next it's changed. I'm impressed and hooked again! :) Got one of my 80s to 81, started a worgen and piddled around with tradeskills. Had a few realm firsts in my guild but those guys were nuts and stayed up 24hrs levelling doing stuff.

I haven't messed with goblins yet but knowing they get a trike and have a posse just makes me giggle and I definitely plan on starting one just for that :p

I am just blown away by how smooth this launch was. Servers stayed up, no lag, fortunately no login queue on my server and I haven't found one broken quest yet.

The transition of the world around you as you progress through a storyline is really damn cool. One minute the landscape looks one way and the next it's changed. I'm impressed and hooked again! :) Got one of my 80s to 81, started a worgen and piddled around with tradeskills. Had a few realm firsts in my guild but those guys were nuts and stayed up 24hrs levelling doing stuff.

I haven't messed with goblins yet but knowing they get a trike and have a posse just makes me giggle and I definitely plan on starting one just for that :p

It was pretty smooth. Most of my guild wasn't able to get experience for about the first hour, unfortunately while they all turned in their stockpiled 25 daily quests, so we missed all of those realm firsts.

The guild experience thing is all sorts of fucked, hopefully they figure that out. Kinda dumb that the guild is capped almost the second the cap extends.

Otherwise no real problems. I guess because it technically was launched 2 weeks ago or so helps.

Love love love love love love IT!

Instances are awesome, and for the first time me and my friends have decided to NOT read up on the fights and to learn them as we go, and it has been so much fun and pretty tough.

Vash'jr or however it is spelled is amazing! Hyjal is cool... Goblins are FANTASTIC.

This one will keep me playing pretty long between leveling all my characters to 85, leveling my goblin from 1-85 with my group of friends, and raiding on my main! Right now my problem is, I need a weekend to hurry up and get here so I CAN PLAY FOR HOURS ON END!

I agree learning the fights this time also. I didn't want any spoilers about this expac and jsut wanted to learn as I go. I'm so glad I did that so far, everything is a surprise :)

Main reason everything was so smooth on launch date was because everyone already had all the Cata files and infomation installed for more than a month already. All that was really needed was to activate the expansion to thier accounts. Blizz is getting sneaky in thier ways of making the game down time much more less and better :D

And on the 3rd day, there are already guilds that have beaten 9 / 12 raid bosses. Oomph.

And on the 3rd day, there are already guilds that have beaten 9 / 12 raid bosses. Oomph.

so?

so?

So with Vanilla, BC, WotLK no one was even max level the 3rd day, and no raid bosses were beaten in weeks. You had to take time, gear your characters, etc.

They keep making stuff so trivially easy that not only have some guilds killed some raid bosses already in quest greens, that most raid guilds have killed a few raid bosses.

So unlike an EQ2 expansion that you generally get a lot of mileage out of, most players will have played through most of Cataclysm before the new year.

I'm only level 82... Why do I care what no life losers are doing?

If by "no life losers" you mean "everyone who plays WoW" then yes, you shouldn't care.
But if it took people ~150 hours to get through all of the WotLK content and it takes someone ~75 hours to get through Cataclysm content that affects you and everyone else that plays the game.

Hell, it took people around 60 hours of /played to hit level 80 and only took people 14 hours of /played to hit 85. And now you can't do 10 man and 25 man versions of any raid, you have to pick one or the other.

If you don't understand how less content is bad in any circumstance, that's great - that's exactly what Activision shareholders hope you're foolish enough to not figure out. Since they already deliver major content patches slower than they have in the past (there were a lot more during BC than WotLK, for instance) they know they can continue to scale down their development staff as they have been already (moving people to Diablo and the new MMOFPS).

I on the other hand enjoy playing the game, and would like to not run out of things to do a few weeks from now.

Release your (nerd)rage!

I'm only level 82... Why do I care what no life losers are doing?

exactly :)

I on the other hand enjoy playing the game, and would like to not run out of things to do a few weeks from now.

I for one am glad they redid the old world, and a *lot* of content has been added in the sub-60 bracket - so much that one would have to make a character of each Horde (or Alliance I guess ;) ) race just to see the majority of them. Just so that I could experience the story arc, I ran all the Forsaken lines last week on Nydia - but I'm planning on making a Tauren priest once I get back from vacation so I can see all the content in Stonetalon, Desolace, Blasted Lands, etc.

To give you an idea of how much the flavor of the old world has changed, when I reached the Horde stronghold in Blasted Lands, Nydia was greeted by the Matron commanding it with "You're in Orc country, Forsaken", and while crossing the zone headed for a flight master I saw what can only be described as a Murloc Trail of Tears (the poor things were forlornly dragging their tadpoles on rafts down the beach in a long snaking line while the persecuting Naga looked on, and the disembodied ghost of the Murloc chieftain hands out a questline) - so there's a lot going on worth exploring while you're waiting for the next raid.

I'd wholeheartedly agree that the entire game has gotten way too easy even for most of my semi-casual players, and has largely turned into a game of 'Choose your adventure', where you are led by the nose - but that's a slightly different topic. The fact is that the game itself is very different than it was five years ago, with a different target audience, for good or ill.

Regards,
Nydia

Nydia, the entire game was far too easy from the very get go. It's why most avoid that game like the plague.

It's "MMO lite" for most, despite the graphics the game play was mastered by my very young son upon it's release.

Glad to see ya'll feed the machine that it is, the devs at WOW need to get paid as well dernit...till they learn how to design for a harder game, like perhaps an etch a sketch based MMO!

Says the girlyman playing an MMO with crutches like a GUI, 3D graphics, and sound. Real men telnet to their MMOs. Double-clicking's for pansies.

Or, maybe people should just play what they enjoy and not base their self-worth on how hard they think their favorite video game is.

Says the girlyman playing an MMO with crutches like a GUI, 3D graphics, and sound. Real men telnet to their MMOs. Double-clicking's for pansies.

Or, maybe people should just play what they enjoy and not base their self-worth on how hard they think their favorite video game is.

Careful San... Fandros prolly heard about how easy wow is from his neighbors daughters bosses son, and that kind of real world knowledge beats your nonsense anyday!

Says the girlyman playing an MMO with crutches like a GUI, 3D graphics, and sound. Real men telnet to their MMOs. Double-clicking's for pansies.

Or, maybe people should just play what they enjoy and not base their self-worth on how hard they think their favorite video game is.

I felt they captured the right balance early on. The "Vanilla" gameplay, as well as BC, weren't as tedious as the Everquest grinds but you still felt a sense of accomplishment as you leveled up, getting upgrades and so forth as you went along. Now essentially every dungeon you run, every quest you do, the rewards will last you for roughly an hour at most.

They also are going out of their way to take the massively out of the game. Where they once centered around the 40 man experience, PVP is designed around 3v3, 5v5, 10v10, and 15v15 man encounters. Raids too have gone from being designed around 40 to 25 and now down to 10 players. Outside of dungeons and 1 quest you never need to group with anyone. Even their new guild system, promoted as a way to bring guild-members together, is designed around a 2-person guild and any additional members you have don't help you advance that any.

They've done a lot of things right. The game is dramatically more polished than any of the competition on the market. There is certainly a reason for its vast member base. It is just a shame that every expansion and every content patch they continue to push towards the game being single player, and MMO veterans and fans such as myself continue to get disappointed.

Release your (nerd)rage!


haha, worthy of requote.

ding 85 yeaterday /flex

Grats. I am still trying to figure oiut how to get back to Hyjdal, or whatever, to finish quests there. Made the mistake of going back to SW, and cannot find my way back yet, lol. "Inner nerd" is confused. Is portal from a Mage only way?

There are portals in Stormwind.
And you can fly.

ding 85 yeaterday /flex

gratz!
I'm just approaching 84 one character and have 3 level 81s lol. I'll be 85 before we raid though so I'm safe :D

Bah, play a real adult MMO, play EvE Online! :D

LOVING Null Sec and the battles it brings!

I on the other hand enjoy playing the game

Sure doesn't seem like it with the amount of ridiculous hyperbole you're using to put down the game. Yes, it's just so terribly surprising that people who spent a large amount of time preparing and planning in the beta and admitted to playing 31 hours straight since the game came out have killed most of the bosses on easy mode.

I'm liking it, though I haven't played much. Hopefully the ret buffs come soon though, the spec could be great in pvp with a few fixes.

Sure doesn't seem like it with the amount of ridiculous hyperbole you're using to put down the game. Yes, it's just so terribly surprising that people who spent a large amount of time preparing and planning in the beta and admitted to playing 31 hours straight since the game came out have killed most of the bosses on easy mode.

I'm liking it, though I haven't played much. Hopefully the ret buffs come soon though, the spec could be great in pvp with a few fixes.

Ridiculous hyperbole is pointing out that the max level content is a mere fraction of what it was in previous expansions? These are just facts:

The leveling experience to 85 takes the average person 20 hours of gameplay. The leveling experience in WotLK took the average person well over 70 hours.

Cataclysm has only 7 dungeons instead of 12.

Cataclysm completely removed group quests from the world, WotLK had a few in every zone.

Cataclysm has only 6 reputations and associated daily quests, WotLK had 6 base ones as well plus reputations such as the Oracles, Frenzyheart, and Kalu'ak.

Cataclysm has 4 raid instances. WotLK shipped with 4 as well, albeit 1 was recycled and there were less overall bosses in WotLK. However, it took the top guilds at least weeks to clear WotLK while Cataclysm's normal level content has already been beaten by a considerable number of guilds. In other words, the raid content is progressed through much faster. Even my guild, many of the members w/o finishing a single heroic yet, managed to kill a few raid bosses on 25-man difficulty.

Just look at the credits for Cataclysm vs Wrath. You'll see that every expansion they make the team smaller and smaller while continuing to have record numbers of sales and reporting record returns to investors. Your comments just continue to emphasize how they simply don't have to work as hard for your money and their average player.

When you, and everyone else, get to the point where you've run out of things to do - at least weeks if not months before you did in WotLK - I'm sure you'll see the light.

I will also chime in that the content that is there is spectacular. Tol Barad has been a little bit disappointing but I imagine when more than 5 people queue on the Ally side that'll be fun. Every encounter is very clever and the throwbacks to old games (Mario's Boos in VP, Joust, Plant v Zombies) are all great and the story lines are great.

My only (and biggest) complaint is just the ease of getting through said content and how little there is compared to past expansions.

Cataclysm has 4 raid instances. WotLK shipped with 4 as well, albeit 1 was recycled and there were less overall bosses in WotLK. However, it took the top guilds at least weeks to clear WotLK while Cataclysm's normal level content has already been beaten

I have no investment in any of this, but people I knew, much less the top guilds, had cleared Naxx25 and most of the dragons before Christmas 2008.

This game is and was always easy and fairly disposable, and they've only been making it more so over the years, particularly after the massive revamp of raid and heroic requirements in TBC. That it is somewhat more so now is likely not the end of the world. (har har). WotLK was a joke in terms of difficulty even by the standards of BC, where a handful of the heroics were still intimidating to the deluges of morons until the bitter end (here's to you, Shattered Halls and Magister's).

Ridiculous hyperbole is pointing out that the max level content is a mere fraction of what it was in previous expansions?

Yes.

However, it took the top guilds at least weeks to clear WotLK while Cataclysm's normal level content has already been beaten by a considerable number of guilds.

No it didn't. (http://www.wowwiki.com/Guild:Ensidia_(Tarren_Mill_EU)) (wotlk came out on the 13th) In fact I remember someone on this board saying pretty much exactly what you are now about wotlk.

just liek in the past, 6 months from now there is going to be a big patch that will release new quest, raids and what not.

Yes.

No it didn't. (http://www.wowwiki.com/Guild:Ensidia_%28Tarren_Mill_EU%29) (wotlk came out on the 13th) In fact I remember someone on this board saying pretty much exactly what you are now about wotlk.


I stand corrected on that, I was misinformed. Though I think you may want to look up what hyperbole means since you don't seem to quite understand it.

just liek in the past, 6 months from now there is going to be a big patch that will release new quest, raids and what not.

Yep, just like ICC didn't come out until.... Jan/Feb? of this year. I frankly like the huge content patches and not everything at once. It flows with the story too. In any case, still not 85 on my priest yet but I have to be honest and say I'm levelling too many characters at once. I'm having a blast, most fun I've had in a game in a long time :)

Has anyone had good experiences in the heroics? I keep seeing lots of bitching in /trade that the heroics are insane and like raid encounters and that the queues are 40min or more for DPS classes.

Yep, just like ICC didn't come out until.... Jan/Feb? of this year. I frankly like the huge content patches and not everything at once. It flows with the story too. In any case, still not 85 on my priest yet but I have to be honest and say I'm levelling too many characters at once. I'm having a blast, most fun I've had in a game in a long time :)

Has anyone had good experiences in the heroics? I keep seeing lots of bitching in /trade that the heroics are insane and like raid encounters and that the queues are 40min or more for DPS classes.

I am only 85 right now on my main, and queues for DPs run 35-45 minutes... HORRIBLE queue times!

With a tank it is instant. Thinking of leveling my warrior instead.

Haven't done a heroic yet, but I look forward to the difficulty.

I'm actually glad they didnt make the expansion soley about endgame content. you right on the money about it having less high end content but they put a butt load of work into the 1-60 revamps along with 2 new races alot of new race/class combos and thnak god no stupid death knight type class.
It's as if blizz is saying " hey, chill roll a worgen and experiance the brand new world" and I cant blame them. they figured out you just cant keep the hardcores happy no matter how fast ya try to churn out content for them. and at least they decided the semi-afk snooze fest that was LK heroics was a bad thing.
Suck though as i wont haveit till wed or thur. this week so my little gobby spudsnugget will have to wait a little longer.

Though I think you may want to look up what hyperbole means since you don't seem to quite understand it.

Nope

I'm rather glad I decided to switch mains to my paladin, my main spec is Ret, but I play holy in heroics and just roll on dps gear unless the dps I'm rolling against is actually good... which is rare. Many people aren't taking the requirement of actually having to help themselves survive very well.