World of Warcraft - New Expansion

Blizzard will announce more details about another World of Warcraft expansion.

Link - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/19841681

Join us Thursday, August 6 at 9 a.m. PDT for a special World of Warcraft event streamed live from gamescom 2015 in Cologne, Germany—where we’ll be unveiling the next chapter of the World of Warcraft saga. . . .

Tune in again Sunday, August 9 at 8:00 a.m. PDT for a World of Warcraft developer chat before the show ends, and find out more about what’s in store.

Stay tuned to our dedicated gamescom page for further details on the live stream. Those who are able to join us in person at gamescom can visit us at the Blizzard booth in hall 7.1. We hope to see you there!

They really need a revamp fast they lost 1.5 million players over the last year. From 7.1mil to 5.6 mil.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/hom…l#.VcGONPmqpBc

I wonder for how long they can continue this success. 5.6 million is still huge and will bring in sums that most other companies can only dream of.

Looks like the same old style of expansion (new zones, level cap increased, new dungeons and raids). And the setting is a repeat of Burning Crusade with the Burning Legion and Illidan .

Originally Posted by Damian
They really need a revamp fast they lost 1.5 million players over the last year. From 7.1mil to 5.6 mil.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/hom…l#.VcGONPmqpBc

1.5 millions in the second quarter only. Their end of 2014 player numbers was 10 million (Q4 2014) because of the new expac, it dropped to 7.1 million at the end of the Q1 of 2015 (March).

In other word, the game lost ~45% of its playerbase in 6 months…

Zzzzzz, but ok I guess.

It looks interesting, but it's still more of the same. Anyone tired of the concept won't change their minds due to this.

They're still overly conservative and they play it too safe for my tastes.

I kinda like the idea of the Artifact weapons - but I have a feeling they won't do what they should with them, which is to get rid of the loot treadmill and let players have their work pay off for a change.

The new hero class is very late, but it's a nice addition.

I'll probably play around with it for a few weeks and then get back to waiting 1-2 years for the next one

wow, the interesting part is that even if i never play this game anymore since pandaria, i want to keep it updated at all times with the latest expansions.

Why would you do that? >.> waste of bandwidth…

I've completely uninstalled WoW off my PC. If I leave it on my hard drive, I might be tempted to go back again and say bye bye to life forever

Not that I really enjoyed WoW anymore when I cancelled my subscription, but I don't think there is another MMORPG that can potentially compete with WoW in long term.

Still trying to get into GW2 and DDO, but nope. I just can't seem to get myself hooked for different reasons. DDO is a crashing issue. On some nights, it's fine, but on some nights, I cant even log on. I find GW2 bland… only thing that keeps me going is pretty outfits lol. Gems are b*tch to collect.

Well, as you said wow is the best MMORPG so if i EVER feel in mood wasting my time, ill have it installed. After all i live in Germany, that means is a nightmare to download anything with the speed of 720kb/s (At the best) That will make wow to come after 20+ hours.
I never was a huge wow player, at max i would play for something like 1-2 hours MAX and not every day. The only reason i play was that this game was really relaxing me (rain outside stormwind :X:X)

If anyone actually believes World of Warcraft to be among the best, let alone the best mmo, you really need to try more of them. Out of the seven I played/tried over the years, Warcraft was the absolute bottom for me. I found it way too simplistic, and I'm not really a graphic chauvinist, but that game always looked like some three year olds' nightmare imo. Give Everquest One or Two a shot instead.

Well, I think I've played more MMOs than anyone here - and I still think WoW is the best at what it tries to do - by far.

As for being the best overall, that's down to subjective preference, but it's most definitely the MMO I've played the most and had the most fun with.

That's despite disagreeing with its design all the way from the beginning. It was more the case of absolutely mastery in terms of execution and content.

The games that only give you like 6-8 abilities over the course of the entire mmo aren't for me. That was how EQ one was fifteen years ago, and when I moved to EQ two I was totally impressed with all the skills each character has. I think in total my assassin has 48 abilities he can use in each combat, which means that even with some cool downs, I can always be doing something, not simply auto attacking. My enchanter has maybe 40 or so, and the dirge roughly about the same.

Soloing, grouping, raiding, I've just always found Everquest to be above every other mmo in those regards.

WoW does what it does very well, and no other MMO I've played even comes close to the time I spent with it. I'm just not a fan of the changes Blizzard has made since WotLK. The elimination of the skill tree is a real interest killer for me, and really highlights a long standing inability to create interesting choices and balance within the trees for high level raiding.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
The games that only give you like 6-8 abilities over the course of the entire mmo aren't for me. That was how EQ one was fifteen years ago, and when I moved to EQ two I was totally impressed with all the skills each character has. I think in total my assassin has 48 abilities he can use in each combat, which means that even with some cool downs, I can always be doing something, not simply auto attacking. My enchanter has maybe 40 or so, and the dirge roughly about the same.

Soloing, grouping, raiding, I've just always found Everquest to be above every other mmo in those regards.

I hope you're not suggesting WoW only gives you 6-8 abilities? Because that would be entirely wrong.

As for giving players a ton of redundant abilities, like EQ2 did, that's not really for me.

I like a happy medium with a good amount of abilities with totally unique properties and a reason for being in the game.

It doesn't hurt that WoW combat is utterly fantastic when it comes to responsiveness and fluidity.

EQ2 is clunky as hell.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
I like a happy medium with a good amount of abilities with totally unique properties and a reason for being in the game.

3 more days!

Everquest isn't clunky at all if your system isn't 10 yrs old, and you aren't using dial-up. Most of the abilities per class don't even overlap, let alone duplicate. I know you weren't suggesting either, I'm clarifying

But I'd say EQ isn't aimed at todays gamer, that might want to just log in and win. Everquest Two actually requires you to be good at the game and your class. This is also a clarification, statement, and fact.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Everquest isn't clunky at all if your system isn't 10 yrs old, and you aren't using dial-up. Most of the abilities per class don't even overlap, let alone duplicate. I know you weren't suggesting either, I'm clarifying

EQ2 was and is clunky as hell. It's almost entirely CPU bound and its prediction code is a mess. It's a crappy engine and it has a crappy combat system.

I don't know if they changed the system in the last few years, but when I played - a lot of the abilities overlapped and had essentially the same function in a slightly different way.

If you like having 48 abilities on the screen, that's cool. Some people consider that meaningful complexity - but I think that would depend on how each ability sets itself apart from the rest. I don't mean dealing similar damage in slightly different ways, I mean doing actually different things that impact gameplay.

But I'd say EQ isn't aimed at todays gamer, that might want to just log in and win. Everquest Two actually requires you to be good at the game and your class. This is also a clarification, statement, and fact.

EQ2 did everything it could to emulate WoW after the initial complete failure - and they've done a pretty good job even with the awful engine they have to work with.

I'd say both WoW and EQ2 have content that's easy and content that's EXTREMELY challenging. In WoW, it's almost entirely optional, because Blizzard believe in letting players decide how they want to challenge themselves.

As for your opinion as fact, that's cute - but it's not going to convince me.

That said, I really like EQ2 in many ways - especially for the crafting system. I like the amount of classes and races, too.

Unfortunately, I despise the look and the engine - so I can't get into it anymore.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Everquest isn't clunky at all if your system isn't 10 yrs old, and you aren't using dial-up. Most of the abilities per class don't even overlap, let alone duplicate. I know you weren't suggesting either, I'm clarifying

But I'd say EQ isn't aimed at todays gamer, that might want to just log in and win. Everquest Two actually requires you to be good at the game and your class. This is also a clarification, statement, and fact.

EQ2 is my first MMO and I have played it for good 9/10 years now. I stopped playing it just before the last expansion (Altar of Malice). I have played quote few MMOs and I still consider EQ2 to be the best MMO I have played and that's mainly due to the social aspect of that game in the vanilla days.

EQ2 was actually "hard" over WoW in the early days (EQ2 vanilla and the first expansion DoF) in that it required a group to progress and you can't really solo. Also failure was heavily punished. This was the best time for the game since created strong bond between players and created an awesome community. Most of my EQ2 friends were made during this time.

Once EQ2 went solo mode and got dumped down(I consider RoK as the starting point), it really went downhill and to be honest, EQ2 was an inferior game to WoW. After this change, you don't really need to know your class or the game to be successfully at all.

As for the 40 or 50 spells. There are simply not enough variations between the spells. Most of them are copies of each other with differences in time (cast, recast), mana cost and damage amount etc. On top of the spells, you had cures , potions and stuff on your hot bard and that actually added another 10 or so buttons. This is actually worse if you played a healer since you were staring at your bloody hot bar screen and not game/monster for 50% of fight! You can simply take away about about 20 spells from each class and nothing much will change fundamentally. This was bad design and some of the designers even admitted in various forums posts. One of the reason for the many spells is crafting so that sages have lot of things to sell like other crafters.

Also EQ2 had open parer 24 classes. This will be great if they are all unique but like spells they are not. At best, some of the classes are like different specs from WoW. So once can argue WoW had LOT of classes too! This in it self is not a problem but for the the inability of the EQ2 dev to balance class. Some classes were out of favour for the whole of the expansions. If you are serious about raiding in EQ2, you really benched people. In WoW, if your current spec is crap, you can easily switch to another spec and change role and still can raid but not so in EQ2 since you can't change classes !