What I *wish* Blizzard would learn from the past -- both the original game and BC:

(1) Revamp the LFG tool and chat channel: Players should have the option to list themselves as available and interested and to view all other players also interested in said quest or instance in a very simple form, sortable by region or level or instance:

Name. Class. Subtype. Level. Description/Note. Instance(s).

For example,

Joetauren. Druid. Resto. 61. Trollbane, Matriarch. Ramps.

Better still would be if the LFG tool would tell you who in the region you are in has the same quest(s) as you do. So if you click on a quest in your quest log you can find out who else in Hellfire Peninsula has that quest -- or even who serverwide has that quest. Perhaps have this feature "toggleable" so if you don't want to be listed you can turn this feature on and off.

The current LFG system is unbelievably awkward and annoying. When you use "/who" to list all the players in your area, there should be a "Notes" section so others can see not only who you are but what quests/instances you'd like to do. There should be 2 or 3 LFG channels: 1 for lvl 1 to 30, 1 for lvl 31 to 60, and 1 for lvl 61 to 70 -- that you can click on or off at will.

(2) Scale instances to group size, at least the 5-man instances, so that smaller groups (or even a single player) can run an instance without having to wait and wait and WAIT for the group to fill out to the magic number of 5. This is especially true for the lower-level instances (lvl 1 to 60).

(3) Allow more character customization options -- and allow druids to choose their own cat or bear forms. The current models (especially for horde cat) are incredibly lame.

(4) Allow players/accounts to buy time increments, like blocks of 100 hours of play time, rather than pay a flat monthly subscription. That way, if you play only a few hours a week your buck goes farther.

I think WoW is a fun game, but I play for a while and burn out and only come back to it when there's nothing better out on the market -- as is the case now. WotLK really has nothing about it that appeals to me, as far as I can tell. It seems to do little to nothing to enhance the lvl 1 to 70 gameplay experience, with the exception of the Death Knight ... and the Death Knight is not enough to get me to buy the expansion.

At least BC had *something* for new players (the two new races, new starting areas, and new profession). WotLK looks, to me at least, like Blizzard is catering only to veteran and harder core players. So, no thanks.

Like TBC this is going to rock.  I love WoW, I love TBC and WotLK is going to be great.   

Wotlk = Wrath of the loser King. What a joke. Blizzard doesn't realize WOW is dead in the water after 5 years the only new content you can expect is more of the same. This is the way Wotlk expansion will go. On day 1 of release it will be a race to see who can get to 80 1st, my guess is most people will be 80 within 2 or 3 days and then after that it's back to the grind for another 3 years waiting for the next boring expansion.

AOC on the other hand is getting better and better and when they get all the bugs worked out it will be a solid game.

What makes AOC better than WOW?

 uh darn near everything even with its bugs. The combat system is a ton of fun and it requires skill where in WOW all you have to do is you make a macro and you spam spam spam, yeah that takes alot of skill. The character creation is better, theres not 500 taurens running around that look alike. Mounts don't cost 800 gold, 5000 gold.

I can go on and on, but im sure ill be called a fanbois because thats the most intelligent response most people can seem to come up with. I won't even get started on WAR, we will just call that WOW2.

Yeah Yeah WOW has 9 million subs, and all 9 million of them are actively playing, I doubt it.

And if you say you have played AOC and you hated it for whatever reason thats your opinion but leveling a character over in over in Tortage is not saying you have played the game.

Man, I hate to WoW bash, but everything I keep hearing about Lick King twists my bowels.

So, Arthas is your buddy now? You can hang with him? WTF was wrong will Illidan being an end game mob? I don't want to play mini golf with the guy, I want to earn the right to face him and defeat him after hours of gameplay, raiding, and questing. That's why we put so much time into the mmo's, so that our achievments actually reflect our commitment.

I loved Kara, but 25 man and 40 man raids have their purpose as well. Blizzard just needs to get better with the rewards. 25 People to go in and kill Gruul and he drops one crappy axe. He needs to drop 3-5 pieces of tier 6 gear and there would be just as many people lining up to kill Gruul as Kara.

Yes Halaa was cool. I can't believe it has taken blizzard three years to figure out that meaningful world pvp is what people want.

And this whole 'everyone gets a jedi... i mean death knight' thing sounds all too familiar sadly.

Making a game easier and more accesible to the casual gamer isn't neccessarily making it better.

 Blizzard is in a good position, and it is easy for them to stay there.
 
Certainly, there are flaws.  But as long as there is no threat, there is absolutely no reason to innovate.  And if WoW does not innovate, then 95% of new MMOs will also not innovate, justifying it by saying, "Well, it worked for WoW!"
 
There is no doubt we want something new.  There seems to be quite a demand for it.  But unless some miracle MMO gives us something new, and POLISHES the living crud out of it BEFORE release, we will not have a viable alternative.

So here's to four more years of WoW supremacy, followed by another 8 of whatever MMO Blizzard has been working on in secret.

Sorry if these things have been addressed as I have failed to read the whole thread, sorry web purists it's so late it's early and I have to be up in 4 hours.

Reguarding raid instances

 -All 25 man instances will have a 10 man counterpart that is determined via a menu on your character   portrate.  This is similar to how heroics work now.  

-While all the same bosses from each instance will exist in both the 10 man and 25 man versions the fights will be diffrent, although similar in spirit.

-Loot from from the 10 man instances will resemble that of the 25 man isntance only with less partical effects and a diffrent color scheme.  Likewise the quality of the 10 man items while still epic will be of less quality than their 25 man counterparts.  An ananolgy would be if you could run black temple as a 10 man instance today the loot you got would be of T5 quallity not T6.

-Ten man and twenty five man instances will save a player seprately.  Thus a hardcore 25 man raider who wants to do 10 mans with his friends on the weekends can do so without his guild leader tossing him out for it.

-  Significantly more than 1% of wow's population raids.  Infact over 80% of all accounts have killed prince malchazar, over 40% have killed grull 30% have killed Magtheridon(no lightweight in wow lore).  While yes it's true only 4% of all guilds have killed illidan and less than 2% have killed the first boss in sunwell doesn't mean the community has given up raiding, rather it's a testiment to the difficulty of those higher instances.  Those who feel that wow is giving out T6 and beyond loot should consider instead that the community as a whole has had 4 years to practice at becoming better raiders and as such has finally caught up to mmo vets who started playing wow with a healthy advantage over their non mmo playing brethern.

The last bit was more editoral than informative but m'eh I'm tired.

M.V. out.

Originally posted by BigBlackWook

Man, I hate to WoW bash, but everything I keep hearing about Lick King twists my bowels.

So, Arthas is your buddy now? You can hang with him? WTF was wrong will Illidan being an end game mob? I don't want to play mini golf with the guy, I want to earn the right to face him and defeat him after hours of gameplay, raiding, and questing. That's why we put so much time into the mmo's, so that our achievments actually reflect our commitment.

I loved Kara, but 25 man and 40 man raids have their purpose as well. Blizzard just needs to get better with the rewards. 25 People to go in and kill Gruul and he drops one crappy axe. He needs to drop 3-5 pieces of tier 6 gear and there would be just as many people lining up to kill Gruul as Kara.

Yes Halaa was cool. I can't believe it has taken blizzard three years to figure out that meaningful world pvp is what people want.

And this whole 'everyone gets a jedi... i mean death knight' thing sounds all too familiar sadly.

Making a game easier and more accesible to the casual gamer isn't neccessarily making it better.

I was going to sleep but this guy seems a bit misguided.

1.  Gruul drops 5 epics 3 T4 legging tolkens and 2 other random epics.   Dragon Spine Trophy being one of those epics and is the second best trinket in the game for combat rogues, enhancment shaman, and beast master hunters.  In addition the eye of gruul is a fantastic trinket for COH priests so honeslty I don't know what the heck your talking about.  The boss before him (High King Mulgar) drops 3 T4 shoulders and 2 random epics.  I'd hardly call that bad loot.  Considnetly those two tolkens go well with the 2 you got from karazhan, they make a set.  :P

2.   Arthas is far from your buddy in WOTK.  What they mean by "he'll be visable the very moment you set foot on the island" is you'll see his workings on the land of northrend.  You'll catch glimps of him in the shadows, and you may even inadvertently find yoruself working for him through a few of the quest lines.  It's blizzards desire to make players in wow face more, "moral choices" along the way.  Things that don't necessarly feel right but are evils that are required if you want to achieve victory over your enemies in Northrend.  Even going so far as killing innocents allongside arthas the cavern of time in a recreation of the WC3 level: The Culling of Stratholme.  The whole point of all of this is to echo the journey of another aspiring hero who once strode upon the snow island of Northrend and so that the players get glimps of not just the figure that arthas has become but what turned him into the monster they see.

Originally posted by woody1974

Wotlk = Wrath of the loser King. What a joke. Blizzard doesn't realize WOW is dead in the water after 5 years the only new content you can expect is more of the same. This is the way Wotlk expansion will go. On day 1 of release it will be a race to see who can get to 80 1st, my guess is most people will be 80 within 2 or 3 days and then after that it's back to the grind for another 3 years waiting for the next boring expansion.

AOC on the other hand is getting better and better and when they get all the bugs worked out it will be a solid game.

What makes AOC better than WOW?

 uh darn near everything even with its bugs. The combat system is a ton of fun and it requires skill where in WOW all you have to do is you make a macro and you spam spam spam, yeah that takes alot of skill. The character creation is better, theres not 500 taurens running around that look alike. Mounts don't cost 800 gold, 5000 gold.

I can go on and on, but im sure ill be called a fanbois because thats the most intelligent response most people can seem to come up with. I won't even get started on WAR, we will just call that WOW2.

Yeah Yeah WOW has 9 million subs, and all 9 million of them are actively playing, I doubt it.

And if you say you have played AOC and you hated it for whatever reason thats your opinion but leveling a character over in over in Tortage is not saying you have played the game.

Hey Woody, if you like AoC that is fine, enjoy.  But coming here and trying to portray that game as better than Wow is a joke.  All their combat system is, is a exercise in button mashing.  Please, lets be frank and avoid attempting to call button mashing skill, it is not.  Funcom has no concept of online support either, it can take weeks to get tickets answered.  How can you even call it a MMO when you can level a character to 80 in two weeks?  It is more like a FPS.  Lastly where is all the content after level 50?  Come on, 30 levels of grind and then little to do at end game?  Going to be a long while before that game is going to be filled out.  Then to single out War when you and nobody else has played it yet, lets hold off on judgement on that game until it is released. 
 

As to AoC, it will be a ghost town by the time War hits the ether, get ready for server merges early next year, hope you enjoy playing by yourself.

as illidian said in wc3 tft if the lich king dies the scourge will be undone so undead killing there own creator is quite stupid and not true lore but then again more then 50% dont care and nor does blizz aslong as you get some epics

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PvP - I simply do not enjoy pvp in this game. Gear imbalance, not to mention exploits for rating, underskilled or afk'd teammates are just some of the reasons. Blizzard's increasing focus on something that was never originally intended to be much more than a diversion has gotten to the point where it seems more than half it's efforts are spent on this part of the game.

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It does disappoint me that gear imbalance plays a big part still. I remember the early battlegrounds twinks going around that with 8 people after them. I thought they were meant to be trying some system where they were trying to balance BGs...

WOW! This is my first time to post in a Forum so lets see. I have read the thread all the way through and have to shake my head at some of the comments. Some people are pretty passionate about how they feel about WOW and the upcoming expansion. I am a retired steelworker/truck driver/Naval electronics tech and finally former game designer for TSR.  I tried EQ/EQ2, CoH, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings and finally settled on WOW.

I like the color (technicolor) and vistas and enjoy playing in them. Since I like to explore and fight the solo route is for me. I have found that a common complaint of the Warrior class is that we can tank except against magic, which cuts thru high level armor with ease. Another thing I do not like is that solo players like myself will never have the top level gear and equipment available to PvP and raiders. A solo tank on Sunwell takes a long time to defeat same or slightly higher characters and the quests are, well, kinda odd for solo. Lack of knowledge as to where things can be found is a little easier for me as I can ask for help and the arrogant Pvp T6 supers just ignore me but there are a great many very nice folks who offer help.

My friends and I have a small closed guild, The Bounty Hunters, but none of us are interested in the raids or arenas and battlegrounds. None of us has had a good experience with the ones we have tried. Confusion and lack of experience has caused really hostile reactions in every case. Frustrating and disgusted I gave that up. I simply want to relax and enjoy myself. (For example....as a solo PvE I have never had a drop that was epic. I reached 70 with my first character about a month ago and mostly I hunt for hides and ores for money for my alts. I am slow to level, I realize that, but I have a number of alts in different classes and races as I wanted to find out what I enjoyed playing the most. I have played WoW for about 2 years now, I will purchase the new expansion and am looking forward to the new Hero class.

I know there is an urgent attention being payed to the PvP/Raid etc....folks and I can understand that I won't be able to have what they have. Well, I won't have Donald Trumps money in my retirement either but I can live with that. As a game designer I can think of a number of ways to improve WoW but most people think the same. Creative out -of-the-box thinking has to face the computer construct engine that already exist, including computer game architecture and limits for a wide variety of computers. All in all I think they do well.

I do not care for the insulting attitude of some, that players like mysef are in some way stupid, or sheep-like, and feel that, really do not understand like them. They feel those like mysef should nod and agree with them or get flamed. I like and enjoy WOW despite what I would like to see improved. I will continue to pay because I do not pay for anything unless I am getting my money's worth.

I am looking to add another MMO to my computer so as to have some variety whenever I am a little bored and want something different. I thought about EQ, going back and trying again but was not able to get it working with their 'welcome back' program.  I have read the comments on this forum so as to get some suggestions for other games but the opinions about the other games vary in intensity, extremely.

Thats enough from me. Mark me down as an ordinary supporter of WoW, one of the millions who are simply having fun. Most of us do not flame, or even care much about what is written here. Which probably includes what I have written here.  Good gaming to all of you,,,,,,Garry Spiegle

*PS: I don't have a clever forum ID so thats my real name.

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Originally posted by Raizeen
as illidian said in wc3 tft if the lich king dies the scourge will be undone so undead killing there own creator is quite stupid and not true lore but then again more then 50% dont care and nor does blizz aslong as you get some epics

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The Forsaken (the playable undead) are escapees from the Scourge. In fact, they hate Arthas and one of their goals is to eliminate the Scourge.

Before you attempt lore-based criticism, make sure you know what you're talking about. Same goes for the Draenei haters.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by Ugottawantit

Am I the only person who likes TBC? I love flying around all of the floating Islands and stuff, in fact it's about the only part of the game that I do like. I guess that's why I don't play anymore.  Oh well,  I'll just wait for Aion.

Hmm Aion is from NCsoft in Korea and guess what Koreans enjoy in the games, grind, grind and more grind.  Sorry if I find your comment a bit funny as if grind is so much more fun.
 

Wow is certainly not perfect, nor will this new expansion be either, but when you stack it up against other games, it just owns them.

So go enjoy the other games you like and have fun.  Attempting to riducule Blizzard or Wow is an effort in the ridiculous.  It just makes you look like a wanna be.   Wow is not for everyone, but it certainly satisfies most of the players in this market far better than anything else out there. 

Someday one of the development companies will wake up and provide a real challenge to Wow, until then it is in fact the 800 lbs gorilla.

Uhm... see "Guild Wars", "Tabula Rasa", and "Exteel"... then tell me NCsoft is a Korean company that just likes to "Grind, grind, and more grind..."

I've been saying it forever... GET RID OF THE CLASS SYSTEM!

It causes all sorts of problems:

1. PVP balance issues - Less likely to occur or be as severe without the class system.

2. Grouping issues - What we have now is an expansion on the holy trinity. What's worse is if you make one tiny mistake while grouped, the group wipes and blames and flames you until their heads explode. Not being able to adapt to situations means that the game may as well be played by machines.

3. Inflexibility - Having to create and level new characters to try a different aspect of the game is annoying, and unnessesary. The ability for players to raise their character in multiple talents simultaneously gives room for specialization and true customization. Don't even give me the trait argument, there are ~2 builds per class that are at all worthwhile.

4. Tedium - Once again, get a character to 70 and it's another week long played time minimum to get another one up there. Plus, once you're lvl 70, you play the same raids or same pvps over and over with the same (or very similar) strategy each and every time, until you get the gear, and then you can only complete them more easily.

Ok, my last post here...

I don't understand how a company can put out an "expansion" like WotLK and charge the $50 box fee. Didn't we pay $50 for the origional game? Didn't vanilla WoW have content for levels 1-60? Didn't vanilla WoW have 8 races and 6 classes? Didn't it have 2 continents with dozens of areas to explore? Didn't it have 3 BGs and dozens of instances? Didn't it have 5 crafting trade skills, 3 gathering trade skills, and 3 secondary trade skills? Didn't it have hundreds if not thousands of pieces of equipment with special equipment at key level intervals?

Point: Why are we buying an expansion that's so incredibly pithy: 1 New class, several new areas, 1 new trade skill, maybe a hundred new equipment pieces, and a few new instances? Siege warfare is a decent addition but I really feel like this release should have a LOT more content for what they're asking of us.