The Future of WoW?Follow

I've kinda had this on my mind for a couple of months now, what is going to become of WoW?

They are coming out with a much needed expansion because a lot of gamers have multiple lvl 60 toons, tons of honor/gear, ran every raid/instance in the game and then some. Will Blizzard be able to keep up with some of the insane progress that a lot of people make? This game has really taken off in the past 2 years and is steadily getting more and more players into it.

I know they are adding a lot of PvP aspects to the game and tons of new dungeons, but outside of the shear fun of PvP has this game turned into a 'gear' grind like FFXI? The way items are soulbound and what not make it soooo much better but my point is; People usually run(clear) a raid 1-3 times just for the experience of running it and beating the cool bosses that were created. However, tons of guilds have put some of the obsolete raids on farm status just for gear, while others have stopped running certain raids altogether.

I really like this game, there is only one thing that I can think of that would make it better, and that would be a more defined storylines and cutscenes (the ONLY thing I like about FFXI). Will this game's players/maybe even the game itself divide in 2? The hardcore PvPers and the hardcore Raiders.....? If so, where will that leave the casual players that like to do both?

Once they have added a couple of expansions....what becomes of MC/BWL/ZG/Ony? Sure new players will want to run those, but getting 40 of them together with the right classes to run and clear the raid? The new pvp gear and honor revamp will make it much easier for casual players to get great gear, and since the expansion pvp gear will be 'on par' with the raid gear will that further divide the 2 groups or will it be easier to just pvp and get the 'top' gear? If so, what then?

Thoughts?

Edited, Nov 28th 2006 5:11am by Darister

I'm in an up and coming guild on my server, we broke into the top 50 a couple of weeks ago and we do MC/Ony occasionally (when enough ppl are on) and ZG/AQ20 quite regularly. The guild is laid back and oriented at having fun not grinding end-game content.....But....

It has been said/shown that the quest rewards and 5 man instances will have gear equal in quality to MC/BWL possibly and just wondering how many people will not even bother with some of the original raid instances at all? I hope not too many. I play this game for the fun of it, once I stop having fun I'll quit. There are tons of things that I want to be apart of and do because I've long been a fan of Warcraft and I really wouldn't mind Backstabbing Kel'Thuzad :)

Yeah there are high end guilds that have tons of requirements but mostly they are concerned with gear instead of personality and play style. So if it would be easier to have them run through simple instances instead of long raids....who knows....

I think the old instances (MC/BWL/AQ/Nax) will become more or less obsolete when TBC comes. Sure, some people will still run them for fun at lvl 70, and some guilds that reformed on a new server might run them for fun/practice at lvl 60 with Pallies and Shamans.

But they will be exceptions. It takes a lot of time, dedication, and organisation to run these isntances. Not only that, but running them for gear means you have to do them several times. And who, in their right mind, will run MC/BWL to get gear which will be obsolete a couple of levels later?

Not only that, but I've heard that bosses which are "??" are always 3 levels higher than you, no matter the level. Which means that at lvl 70, these raid bosses will be lvl 73.

Personally, if I level up a toon again, I'll go to the Outlands at lvl 59. No doubt about it. I won't bother running the instances I've run a thousand times before (either the 5-man, ot the 20/40).

I'm sure there will be exceptions. There always are.

But for the most part, the "old" content will be obsolete. And so what? Most people have run them to the ground. I'm actually happy I'll never have to set foot in MC/BWL ever again. I swear, if I see another Core Hound or hear "LOOT THE DOG" once more, I'm gonna puke.



I certainly hope so. But the best and most efficient way to get practice for them, will be to do them. Not to do some lvl 60 tank-and-spank raid.

Also, keep in mind that Blizzard will keep adding lvl 70 content. Apart from the nostaligic/fun value, there won't be any point in going to those old instances.

And imo it's a good thing.

The talk is that there will be new X-packs ever year after this.

As for MC/BWL/NAXX


There will be quest and Craftable items in TBC that you can only get in those instances.......

WOW will be around for long time.... I like the slow progression... It sucks for hard-core gammers but for more causal - gamers it gives us a chance to experinace all the content WOW has to offer. I been playing for 1 year with causal guild and we just started MC and had 1st Hakkar fight.... Yes I do hacve 2 Level 60's (Had wait for some to catch up) but have not gotten to board with the game even though I have started my 3rd major toon that may never see 60... LOL.

Well I know I shouldn't be mentioning this. But on private servers you can go up till level 250!!! I wasn't quite sure how that was possible but it was, and there wasn't even Outland or anything.

No, I doubt Blizzard will be able to keep up with the progress. There's always going to be some uber hardcore guilds that will devour content faster than they can produce it. That being said, the majority of the guilds/people won't run out of content any time soon. There's going to be TONS of stuff added with the expansion. For the normal raider-type person I'd look to at least six months before content gets old - even longer for casual players.



Well, 'supposedly' things are going to be different now, it looks as if they're trying to lessen the disparity of gear, trying to make things a bit more fair for casuals. But, I'm sure things will end up the way the are now, grinding instances repeatedly for gear. All guilds require their members to have top gear to progress further in the game, so obviously the instance with all the best loot will be run repeatedly.



Despite what everyone may say...IMO I think MC/BWL/ZG/Ony will be forgotten about, especially by the new guilds that have not have experienced 40man content. What's the point in learning difficult content (aq40, Naxx) when your guild could get comparable gear doing content which is easier/less tedious? Established guilds might run it from time to time to pick up specific items, but overall I think they're going to be forgotten about.

In regards to the PvP I really doubt it will be 'easy' to aquire the top-tier PvP gear. I think it'll just bring the difficulty (time required??) of PvPing in line with raiding. Right now, achieving top rank in PvP requires more time and individual effort than raiding - mostly because of honor decay. The new system won't have any kind of honor decay so it should require less of a time investment.

But, if you're right, and if it is tons easier to get gear via the PvP system there will be far less raiders IMO. People tend to follow the easiest gear in an effort to be the best of the best.

Edited, Nov 28th 2006 1:30pm by DRTACO

Future of WOW? You have to satisfy so many different customers that somebody is bound to get neglected.

TBC will offer new raids/instances: for the raiders, this would mean new challenges and new uber gear.

For those who like pvp, new BG and arena system to conquer.

For the casual player, new quests and rewards should also be satisfying.

But what you should be mindful of is the gap between the hardcore player and the casual player. Hardcore (raid/pvp) would have the better gear compared to Casual players. And that's where the issues usually start. The argument has always been there but with more expansions, the complaints and gripes will only get louder.

That's what happens to most MMOs that have been around for a while.