General Discussion

I personally welcome the Blood elves. I think one of the reasons for the imbalance between horde and alliance on most of the pve servers is largely due to the ugliness of the female models. Women don't want to play ugly, butch or hideous sounding characters and thus won't play horde. WoW has attracted many women, and they are the ones who often determine where the family ends up playing.

I am a hardcore gamer, which is unusual for a woman (have been playing MMOs since 1998), but I am not comfortable playing anything but night elf. It has taken me over a year to get accustomed to play horde at all, but I still have not gotten a horde character over 40. All my 60s are NE. Most women are new to gaming and I am sure would be even less comfortable playing horde characters than I am. We are trained all our lives to try to be as beautiful as can be, not repulsive.

I really do think having an attractive race will help fix the imbalance.  I know of many guilds that ended up alliance even though the guys wanted horde because their wives/girlfriends flat out refused to play horde.

Unfortunately, it may be a bit late since most people are established and won't switch at this point. Many people tried to tell Blizzard this during beta, but they really didn't take this viewpoint into consideration. I don't think they had any idea of the demographic diversity they were attracting. Their traditional customers were teenage boys. They couldn't understand the need for attractive females in horde.

Anyway, I am looking forward to playing a blood elf priest. Have the name saved and am slowly gathering gear and cash to get her a good start :)

I would love to see new classes too. I love diveristy. I had at least 1 level 50 of ever class in every realm in DAoC. I would also like to see some new tradeskills too. Fletching and jewelcrafting come to mind. Would be cool to be able to make trinkets, necklaces, rings and offhand items. Wood collecting would be a nice gathering skill to go with fletching. More types of gems could be added in a number of aspects of the game, such as mining, fishing and drops, for the jewelcrafting.

While World of Warcraft is undoubtedly a great game for a lot of players there remain those of us that got bored with WoW after the first few months, lack of end game content being the major reason, and after getting 3 characters to level 60 cancelled.

The expansion does precisely nothing to address any of our concerns with the game and as such you won't be seeing me buying it.

<sarcasm>

10 more levels of mindless questing just so that I can get to the new level cap and spend the next two years raiding the new molten core equivalent for pointless magic items, oh yippee, where do I sign up!

</sarcasm>

In all honesty with the ridiculous amount of money Blizzard are raking in, taking this long (18+ months) to bring out what is going to be a fairly minor update to the game is just laughable.

To all those still playing, enjoy!

Ionyssa deWinter

I too welcome the new races, tho we don't know the Alliance race yet. I would really like to see another class or two, the most!

It will be interesting to see how Blizz handles the balancing issue between 60 & 70, but I guess it would be no different than a lvl 30-40 instance to a lvl 50-60 instance.

Blizz has already mentioned that the PVP is getting a new review and it will go through some changes. So, the rank rewards may change.

Small dungeons and group play will probably be harder if you get the same epic items as raid dungeons.

I think quests will still play a big part of it, making them interesting and fun, and still important after 70 is key!

I would also like to see crafting improved, it's to paper-cut.

Blizz needs to give the players a little more control over their environment, and less of the linear play.

Much ado about nothing.

However successful WoW is it still is the McDonald's Hamburgers of the MMORPG world.

Personally, I like to eat steak.

But, can 5 million subscribers be wrong?  Well, not wrong ... just easily satisfied with bland offerings.

Reminds me that, "Nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of consumers."  So, go ahead, underestimate away.  Seems like a winning strategy.

I can't wait for the expansion.  I've been playing since Beta and still love the game.  I have 2 level 60's now, and I'm working on getting my hunter and troll mage to 60 before the expansion.

Once the expansion comes out I hope to check out the new dungeons, I plan to make a new character of each race, at least one will be the new profession of jewelcrafter... and I'd like to level my current then 60's to 70.

I do think that new classes, player housing and shortened queues for pvp battles would greatly increase the fun of the game.  I also agree that Blizz took it's time on the expansion, I was hoping to be able to buy it for Xmas.  I'm still really excited about where they plan to take the game :)

I can only agree with Ionyssa, as I too got borred of the mindless end-content found in WoW.
I know that this an issue found in most mmorpg's, and that generally, they offer bad end-game content... but for crying out loud.. Blizzard is making so much more money on this, than most other mmorpg's (IMO), so why do they keep making such low-quality end-game, that is so predictable and linear..

I, unfortunately, feel that the money that I spent on WoW during my subscribtion has been wasted, and that I would so like to go back and change that. But my money is lost and wasted.. Ive gamed many other online games, but have never really felt that I had wasted my money, once I stopped subscribing.. not until WoW came around.

This new Expansion, is just another way to make people continue to grind/subscribe, doing yet a whole bunch of mindless grinds and quests.. Its sad... As a player in WoW, you never feel that you make a difference in the world.. not even for your one character's sake... the mobs respawn excactly where you killed them last night.. the bosses spawn where they were slaughtered an hour ago, and the race leaders spawn where they stood a minute ago...
The only thing that makes a player unique in WoW is the account that he/she transfers their subscribtion from..

-Korric-

Well said Korric.

For actually feeling like you are contributing to the world, helping to defeat the forces of evil, or what have you, WoW has to rate as one of the worst. But as another poster said, can 5m subscribers be wrong, well not wrong, just easily satisfied.

Blizzard has certainly done a stellar job of capturing the market and even expanding it beyond all previously thought limits, it's just a shame that for the next few years all we will see are WoW clones, bleh.

Give me a game where I can make my impact on the world, a solid crafting system and decent pvp with consequences for my actions and I will be happy. Unfortunately it looks like I won't be happy for a while yet.

Have a happy new years everyone!

Ionyssa deWinter