It says characters from 68 to 70. Therefore - new expansion.

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Not true.

Level 68's can go to Kara. I'm sure they have the capability of Zul'Aman

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"Level 68's can go to Kara. I'm sure they have the capability of Zul'Aman"

A druid can, but every other class has to be 70 to get into Arc for Kara key frag.

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The playable content will just be Zul Aman. I doubt they will have significant info regarding the next retail expansion much less anything playable from it. This is Blizzard we're talking about here. Experience shows us that the expansion wont be out until January 2009 so they can "polish it" or some crap like that.

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If they want to show off Zul'Aman, do you really believe that they let people wipe countless hours during BlizzCon in a rather difficult level 70 instance with thier own characters? All we'll most likely see from Zul'Aman is a gameplay video.

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Considering absolutely nobody besides Blizzard has any real, concrete information on what the 'new content' will be, let's stop pronouncing doom and see what happens. It avoids hype, yet allows for anticipation.

On the side, it's nice to know some posters have absolutely no business sense. These are the same people who said you'd never see anything besides World of Warcraft from Blizzard from now on.

Right, it's soooooo smart to keep all your capital in one single franchise. Good grief. People could use some patience around here instead of arrogantly denouncing Blizzard for being 'lazy' or 'slow.' They said it would take a much shorter time to release the next expansion than this one, due to a lot of features being ironed out with BC and the hard work they did pre-BC, and I believe them. They have far more authority to say such a thing than Master Sheldrake over here.

I'm expecting Blizzard to announce the next expansion at BlizzCon, but there's no guarantee of that. And even if they don't, there's plenty of content to hold me over until they do.

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I do think that the big announcement at BlizzCon will be the next expansion, no matter if the PTR's are for testing some early "Northrend" content or Zul'Aman, or both. As 'nirikun' said, Blizzard is now able to release new expansions quicker, plus, with competitor Warhammer Online due next spring/summer, Blizzard definitely wants to have the 2nd expansion on the shelves, too.

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Here's the excerpt from the Blizzard mail. Note the "level 68" - 'nuff said.

"If you are a World of Warcraft player, you have an exclusive opportunity to use a pre-made character OR your own level 68-70 characters to try out new World of Warcraft content at BlizzCon. You have the option to copy up to four level 68-70 characters to a special event realm to experience this content, which has not yet been seen on test realms."

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It took them until mid 07 to patch in the content they advertised BC with (Illidan, Black Temple). I very much doubt that they have content ready for a next expansion by now. I also doubt the playerbase will give it a very warm reception as I don't see the majority of players progressing beyond Karazhan much if at all until the end of the year.

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well... you can copy your toon, but the Blizzcon realm does not appear in gthe realm list after downloading (and patching) the PTR client. So for all the excitement, Blizz boofed this. My only realm choices are the standard PTR realms, one PvE, one PvP

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Ahn'Qiraj :D

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There is NO WAY they will have playable content from the expansion. They are no where near done and they will get enough hype from the announcement alone, not showing off half-ready bits and pieces. Expect the playable content to be Zul Aman.

PS: My dream is that they start adding mid-level content, independent of any expansions. I hope they realize that a lot of people love to reroll and play single-player content, instead of raids and what have you. It would be relatively easy to do. Just add new quests, change things up, refresh areas etc.

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>>are there any disadvantages to playing your own characters with new content?

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"are there any disadvantages to playing your own characters with new content?"

On the whole of things I'd say no. Blizzard likely wants the content to be easily accessible for people attending the con. So don't expect the usual attunement this key that if it turns out to be some new instance content.

The only real disadvantages of bringing your own character vs. rolling a premade may come down to how well your character is geared up. The premades I've rolled in PTR are full on epic geared with nearly every ability on tap so they stand a far better chance of dealing with new content.

Then there's pvp. I've noticed just about everyone rolling on the PTR is going for the premades. Again if your regular character is all geared up no worries if not be ready for the beating should you copy to a pvp server or try to fight on a pve server. Currently on the pve PTR (at least for Alliance since my Horde hasn't gone up yet) premades are dropped on Amani Pass when first logging in and they're pvp flagged. There's typically Horde players just waiting to gank the first thing to appear. Not that I expect Blizz to have such a fate awaiting con attendees but you never know.

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