World of Warcraft expansion announced.

KenM · Oct 29, 2005

I hope its at least a few months until the expansion. Give me time to get some of my characters up. My problem is I grow bored of running the same character. I have 2 characters like level 15, one level 22. I need to buckle down to get to high level. I play on Icecrown.

Captain Tagon · Oct 29, 2005

To quote Tim from Ctrl-Alt-Del:

What's the new Alliance race going to be? Blue Orcs? Happy-fun-time Trolls? Heck, why even do that much work? Just give dwarves some different beard options and call them, oh, I dunno, Blood Dwarves.

shaylon · Oct 29, 2005

KenM said:
I hope its at least a few months until the expansion. Give me time to get some of my characters up. My problem is I grow bored of running the same character. I have 2 characters like level 15, one level 22. I need to buckle down to get to high level. I play on Icecrown.

I am Shaylon on Icecrown. If you need anything, send me a tell.

-Shay

shaylon · Oct 29, 2005

kotik2 said:
As expansion info is now available on the WoW site, I'm not going to delve deeply into what is there, but rather share what comes from hands on time with the expansion, and a couple of panel discussions.

First, I'm about dead certain the alliance race is not the Pandaren. Chris Metzen wouldn't share what the race was, but indicated it is one we already know, but would not really be looking at for an ally, and that it was "really cool". Yes, pandaren can be really cool, but lots of people have been discussing them as a possibilty. I'm leading toward the Draenei, the "Lost Ones" from Swamp of Sorrows. After all, the Horde is getting a pretty race, why not suspect the Alliance might get an ugly one?

I was dubious about the Lore behind the Horde getting the Blood Elves. These folks fought violently against the orcs and the trolls for a long time. The logic is a bit two pronged here. First, Sylvanis, the Banshee Queen, is a former High Elf, and still feels a loyalty to them. Second, as with the Forsaken, there is an element of alliance of convenience. There are simply not enough Blood Elves for them not to seek allies, but they dare not go to the Alliance, because their Night Elf cousins will be able to detect the magics they continue to use and abuse.

The BE racials are mana tap and arcane torment. Mana tap steals 50 mana, and charges the air around the BE with arcance energy. It stacks up to three times. Arcane Torment is an AoE silence for 2-3 secons, which does damage if you have mana tap stacked. These will make the BE's formidable against casters.

Much of the expansion content takes place in Outland, which is through the Dark Portal. When the Alliance heroes (those statue folk outside SW) closed the portal from the Draenor side, they were not counting on the Blood Elves viewing the place as the promised land. The portal will be reopened, likely in a world event.

Those same heroes are currently alive and well and "Kicking ASS!" (Metzen's exact words) in Outland. Frustrated with their inability to destroy Azeroth (the only planet to ever defeat them), the Burning Legion have redoubled their efforts to destroy the rest of the universe. The Burning Crusade will take the battle from Azeroth, to the Legion, via the portals of Draenor/Outland. Flying mounts are a necessity in the zone, as what remains of Draenor is effectively large meteorites, held together within the twisting nether.

The new profession, Jewelcrafting, is the making of rings and necklaces, with the first ring being wearable by a level 5. It is +40 attack power. All I could see was the recipes at one trainer, so there may be drops that do something besides rings and necklaces. That trainer said a level 15 was required to learn the apprentice level of the skill, and did not offer a journeyman level. (This could easily be because they didn't want to deal with having the content available for the demo.)

Expect at least one patch yet this year, likely in mid-December. That's from a CM, but I'm not going to rat out who, just in case they weren't supposed to mention it. We will be seeing the instance at Karazhan, and the Caverns of Time soon, and the aim is to have the fee based character transfers available before the expansion as well.

The dungeon and raid developers are not working on making instances for groups larger than 40. In fact, they would like to get them all tuned better and get some lower level caps in place. (One of them told a story about being playing incognito on a realm and having people insist that UBRS couldn't be done with less than 15 - they think 10-11 is just fine, and only the top part is tuned for 15 (I'm guessing that's from maybe the balcony on, but definitely from the beast on).

By the way, things that are definitely not exploits - jumping off the balcony at UBRS, and mind controlling the mob with fire resistance (can't remember where this was, and haven't seen it myself). If a GM tries to say otherwise, send him to Jeff on the development team .

While I had originally suspected a pre-Christmas launch for the expansion, I am less sure now. That was based on my experiences in the software industry, and time tables for registration of copyrights etc.. The way they registered the title, they either need it on the shelves by May 2006, or to reregister, justifying the delay. They weren't coy about much in the panel discussions, and I didn't really pick up any of the body language that says they are hiding a release coming sooner rather than later.

By the way, the Devs lost in the BG's in the final match .

Edit: I forgot the dances! Silly me. The BE males do the twist, and the females do a combo of the NE female pole dance, and the twist. The "nifty" racial jump is a spin, rotates either 2 or 3x.

Thanks for this. The FR mobs that you want to control are right in the door of BRS. You can mind control one of the casters and cast a FR spell on all your guys for MC. I think it lasts an hour or so. Obviously it helps with some of the mobs in MC. My friend's guild used to do this all the time when they started farming Ragnaros. Now they are all geared well enough that it doesn't matter.

-Shay

KenM · Oct 29, 2005

shaylon said:
I am Shaylon on Icecrown. If you need anything, send me a tell.

-Shay

Alliance or Horde? I have a level 22 orc fighter: Hackenslash.

shaylon · Oct 30, 2005

KenM said:
Alliance or Horde? I have a level 22 orc fighter: Hackenslash.

Oh sorry I didn't mention that. I am Alliance. NE Hunter. I have a Troll Shaman but I rarely play her and she is only level 12 or so.

Powerlevel that fighter and I will see you in Battlegrounds! Or start an Alliance guy and shoot me a tell.

-Shay

Whizbang Dustyboots · Oct 31, 2005

Dark Jezter · Oct 31, 2005

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
My wife and I hit BlizzCon with some of our guildmates from Silver Hand. We wrote up reports for the panels on the guild message board:

http://www.sawed-off.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=1275
http://www.sawed-off.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=1273
http://www.sawed-off.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=1274
http://www.sawed-off.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=1278
http://www.sawed-off.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=1276
http://www.sawed-off.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=1277
http://www.sawed-off.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=1279
http://www.sawed-off.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=1281
http://www.sawed-off.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=1282

Nice job on the info, Whiz! Thanks for posting all of it.

It looks like World of Warcraft fans will have a lot to look forward to in the coming months.

Krug · Nov 1, 2005

Hmm oh well reaching level 50 as a Tauren Shaman on Argent Dawn. Not sure if I'll keep my account too long after reaching 60. The game has spots of being fun and sometimes quite a bit of a grind. What kill Harpies and trolls... AGAIN?

Whizbang Dustyboots · Nov 1, 2005

Krug said:
Hmm oh well reaching level 50 as a Tauren Shaman on Argent Dawn. Not sure if I'll keep my account too long after reaching 60. The game has spots of being fun and sometimes quite a bit of a grind. What kill Harpies and trolls... AGAIN?

I find the instances and, to a lesser extent, the raids and battlegrounds keep it from turning into that for me.

And the Bloodlord in Zul'Gurub may be a troll by birth, but he's anything but just another troll. (Raar, so much hate for him!)