So one of the most exciting announcements from the recent flurry of news about WoTLK, at least from my point of view, is the that there will be 10-man and 25-man versions of every raid. Think about that for a moment. Yeah, that's right. That means that you and 9 other friends will be able to scale the heights of Icecrown Glacier and topple Arthas himself from his frigid throne.
With solid confirmation that Naxx will be "floating" off to Northrend (and not exist in two places at once) also comes a strong hint by Bornakk that they will be removing the ability to get Tier-3 armor pieces along with the rest of the current Naxx loot. Bornakk says that "For players who want the look and the stats of tier 3 armor at level 80, hopefully they are already farming the dungeon for them." This is a very strong indication that post WotLK, the current Tier 3 gear will be no longer available.
Before today it has been pure speculation that this removal of loot would or would not happen. The only time that the WoW Insider staff can think of this happening before (save for the holiday and special events) is with a few old mount models getting changed. And that is nothing compared to entire loot tables being removed from the game. Note that the changes in patch 2.3 to old world loot were just that – changes, not removal.
In many ways this removal does make since, given that the armor models will be reused in Wrath of the Lich King's version of Naxx. While there is similar looking and colored gear floating around WoW, none of it is really twenty levels apart and powerful each in their own right.
However with that said, the removal of items from the game like this stirs a mixed reaction in me.
Very interesting. Unfortunately, we're not quite clear on what "entry level" means -- it seems unlikely that Naxx would be a level 71 dungeon (or that there will be any "raid dungeons" before level 80 at all). And the fact that he uses the word "raid" definitely means it's either 10 or 25man, then, though whether it will be the new Karazhan or Gruul remains to be seen. Bornakk also says that attunement isn't solidified yet -- a lot of players are hoping that all that Argent Dawn rep doesn't go to waste, but he says it's a matter of balancing "special quest lines" with opening up content to many players.
Finally, the Ashbringer gets a mention -- apparently it will be discussed in the next Blizzcast. It's great to finally be hearing some official information about Wrath of the Lich King, vague as it may be. Hopefully there's lots more to come, sooner rather than later.
While the removal of the attunement is obviously a way to get more people to see their new raid zone, the Sunwell Plateau, all is not golden. Many, many, many raiding guilds and players who have already made the brutal trek through Vashj and Kael will be quite upset. On the other hand players who are not yet able to, but perhaps ready for, the first few bosses of MH and BT, will undoubtedly rejoice.
What are your opinions of this change? How do you think it will affect the raiding landscape?
After reading yesterday that Bornakk confirmed a "gear reset" (which is not actually a reset-- more on that in a sec), reader John had an interesting thought about using current high-level instances (Hyjal and BT) to attune players for future high level instances, so that neither the gear or the content would go unused. Which is kind of happening already-- it's all but confirmed that Naxx will be repurposed in the next expansion. But that just suggested something else to me: what if, rather than worrying about a "gear reset." Blizzard actually made the current endgame mandatory for entry into Northrend? What if you couldn't move on without doing all the current content?
That would ensure that you got the use you needed out of the gear you had now, and it would also make sure that everyone coming through saw everything-- your guild would have to down Archimonde to enter into the next 10 levels.
Now, it's pretty clear that won't happen, because Blizzard is much, much more inclined to make things more open rather than put more requirements on their new content. But you have to admit that it would solve the problem-- either run and experience the content, or don't move on.
Finally, other readers did note one more thing about the "gear reset" and that's that it's not actually a reset at all-- much of the highest level gear won't be replaced for quite a while (I was still wearing my Tier 2 helm when I hit 69, and people wearing full T6 right now likely will keep their gear even through the starting quests in WotLK). But that still doesn't change the fact that Blizzard is basically running two gear paths here-- either fight in the raids for the high-level armor now, or just pick it up later when you enter Northrend.
There's a discussion going down on the forums about what many consider to be the most exciting part of MMO games, including World of Warcraft-- world events. As many drawbacks as there were to the AQ events, no one can argue that they didn't affect everyone in the World-- everyone was able to step up and help the war effort, and even though everyone didn't fit in Silithus, everyone came across some of the invaders that spread across the world. While the Naxx event was that way as well, we haven't really seen anything else on that scale even in this, the largest MMO ever. And let's not forget that since Burning Crusade was released, we're dealing with a lot more people-- there are huge amounts of the population who have never seen a world event yet.
Which makes it all the more likely that we will see a big one for Wrath of the Lich King. Bornakk says that while Blizzard realizes that a lot needs to go into creating a big world event, they've also learned a lot from Brewfest and the Hallow's End events about how to both tune the scale and get players involved. But Blizzard still wants to do a big one, and from what we heard at BlizzCon, they're going to come up with a reason for Alliance and Horde to head up to Northrend after Arthas.
My guess? Arthas is going to become a threat again-- he'll invade Undercity, or bomb Darnassus, or somehow attack our world. And for the first time that I can think of since the game has started, we're going to actually lose something-- an NPC, a city (at the very least, Dalaran) or something else. For all of the fighting going on in the world of Warcraft, it hasn't yet changed that much. And I think that with the next expansion, Blizzard is looking to have Arthas shake things up a bit.
Considering that Kel'Thuzad is basically "the boss of shipping WoW" (according to Metzen at BlizzCon), then Atiesh, the Legendary caster item that once belonged to Medivh, is the greatest item in levels 1-60. But we're at level 70 now, and when we get to level 80, Atiesh, a Legendary item, might end up looking more like a stick than anything else. So Asheen asks, knowing that Naxx is set to be "repurposed" for our trip to Northrend: will Atiesh make a return?
It's a cool idea. Bornakk says, "Maybe." There are a few tangles in the plan: currently, Atiesh requires a trip to C'thun in AQ to get the base (I believe because Brann Bronzebeard put it there), which is a 40 man raid that most guilds don't want to bother with. And of course the stats would need some updating-- it's a nice staff, but not exactly a Legendary level 80 any more. And finally, the staff provides a portal to Karazhan, and at level 80, will that really be as amazing as it used to be?
Bornakk also says the lore needs to be set in place, but that's a copout-- Blizzard can do whatever they want (what if the Kirin Tor decided to repurpose Atiesh and combined it with a new base that didn't need to come from AQ40?). But the biggest issue with bringing back Atiesh is that there's so many other good items that could just replace it. Medivh's staff is hardly the most important item in the game any more, and as Bornakk points out, even though Medivh had great power, it didn't necessarily all come from his staff.
I can't wait to see Naxx's new purpose in WotLK, but there are too many old items floating around for Blizzard to worry about updating. I'd rather see new legendaries, and maybe even some artifacts, come out of the new Naxx and Northrend.
Kavis wonders if he's the only person who wants 40 man raids back. I'm sure he's not the only person, but I'd bet he's in the minority. Forty man raids may sound super fun in theory, but in practice they are pretty miserable-- it's hell to coordinate the schedules of 40 people on a regular basis, and then it's even worse to actually get them to line up on time and do what needs to be done. I don't know if Kavis ever actually ran Molten Core or BWL or Naxx, but while 40 man raids were fun while they lasted, 10 and 25 man raids are much, much easier on raidleaders and guildies alike.
As Bornakk says, the devs love 25 man raids too-- since 40 man raids could be carried by about 25 good players anyway, it makes things much easier for everyone, in terms of individual contributions.
Now, if Kavis is asking to return to the 40 man content, I'm completely down with that. BWL, AQ, and Naxx were fun to go through when you had a good group rolling (as rare as that was), and the content there shouldn't be abandoned (Naxx, we already know, is likely being repurposed in WotLK). But as for a return to the days of trying to get 40 people together for five hours on a Sunday evening? No thanks.
The MMO Gamer sat down for an interview with WoW lead developer Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan recently. You can hear the audio or read the transcript at their site, but for my money, here's the most interesting bit. In the middle of a rehashing of the debate over whether Blizzard should spend a lot of time developing raids that few people will see, he drops this great idea:
So what I want to do in Northrend is to take Naxxramas in all of its glory, scale it down to the 25 man raid size, and then take the difficulty and retune it-obviously we'd tune for level 80, it would no longer be tuned for level 60, since that would be a little silly and it wouldn't be a lot of fun for people at that point-but I want to put rewards in there that are very exciting to level 80 players, but make it the entry-level raid, very accessible, tune the encounters so that there's something for everybody to do, and let the majority get a chance to see that content that they hadn't seen before.
Naxx as the Karazhan of Northrend. I like it. I am one of the many who never got a chance to try Naxx the first time around, and I hear it's a well-designed raid. I also like that the entry-level raid is planned to be 25-man, not 10-man; the transition from KZ to Gruul and SSC has caused problems for a lot of guilds. Apparently it's also a bit of a misconception that raiding is unpopular; Tigole says out of all the instances in the live game right now, Karazhan is the one that gets done by the most people each week.
The interview goes on to discuss the links between WoW raiding and EverQuest raiding (Tigole was a raid guild leader in EQ for some time before working on WoW), and what Tigole would have done differently if he could go back in time to when WoW was first being made. It's a good read, like most developer interviews, so go check it out. But Naxx in Northrend? Awesome!
Overpowered on the forums wonders what the least popular instance is, and I'd say his guess of Blackfathom Deeps is probably pretty close-- it's a long run away for pretty much everyone but Night Elves, and at 25-30, there's so many more quests and things to do that BFD usually gets passed up. The other good guesses, I'd say, are the "old" late game instances like Naxx and LBRS. Unfortunately, while Blizzard tells us all about the most popular stuff in the game, they are pretty mum on what players don't like, for obvious reasons.
So how do you make an instance that makes players want to visit? Relmstein walks us through his idea of what makes a perfect instance ambiance: music, visuals, interactive features (the Chess Event is one of my favorite dungeon features, although almost all the dungeon dialogue "cut scenes" are fun for me), and memorable boss encounters.
But then again, BFD seems to have all of them-- it's a very pretty dungeon (I especially like the temple at the end), and while it might be a little short on interactive features, I really like the lore and the unleashing of the monster at the end. The last ingredient, I think, to a good dungeon, is just a storyline that drives you there. I'm sure Scarlet Monastery (except the Graveyard), and Deadmines are definitely among the most popular instances, and both of those have huge amounts of lore and mystery to make them interesting. Maybe if more players realized that Aku'mai was actually a pet of the Old Gods (or, you know, if there was a quest to kill him that explained that), BFD would see more traffic.
Have you ever wondered what the names and faces behind WoW do in their off time? In the recent interview 1up had with Shane Dabiri, Rob Pardo, Jeff Kaplan, and Tom Chilton, we get to find out a bit about that -- at least in regards to some of the games that they're playing right now. Two of them were really no surprise to me: Guitar Hero II and God of War. Those two have been all over the gaming media and are a lot of fun to play, so it makes total sense. The two titles that caught me off guard were several mentions of Viva Pinata and Rob saying that he plays the PopCap game, Peggle. They also covered some great background information from their gaming roots, to some ways they think WoW has changed the genre. Check it out!
On equip, you get a +14 to spell crit strike rating, as well as +29 healing (not damage, unfortunately), and +4 mana per 5 seconds
The crit is what really makes this sucker great. There are shields with more healing on them, so strictly resto shaman or paladins might look elsewhere (in the Heroic instances, for example). But the crit on this one is excellent especially for elemental shaman. At level 70, you get a whole extra .63% crit from just this one item. And if you've got Clearcasting now, since it's based on critical strikes, that's a nice little patch of mana that you'll get for free just from the shield.
How to Get It: Unfortunately, while getting this isn't as hard as it used to be, it's still tough, but for different reasons. The thing is, you've got to find a group that will take you into Naxx (are there any guilds still left running Naxx?). This shield drops from Gluth, the third boss in the Abomination wing there, at a 14.8% rate. So if you can find a guild that's still going to Naxx, get to the boss, and win the roll for this baby, you're golden.
Getting Rid of It: BoP of course. Sells to vendors for 5g 74s 2c, but even if you find a shield with more healing or damage on it, you might want to keep this one around just for the crit. And look at those skulls!
Update: No one likes the green skulls. Brandon points out this one, a BoE shield found in Sethekk Halls, easier to get and with better crit. But no skulls. Thanks Brandon.
I've been speculating a lot on what Blizzard is going to do with the old instances, just because I'm always ready for a challenge, and currently, at level 70, the old raids don't offer a full group much of a challenge at all. But as some of our wise commenters have said, you don't have to wait for Blizzard to change the old instances to have fun with them-- just go in solo.
NSDragon on LJ asks what instances (Mara and up) can be soloed at 70. You don't have to wait until 70 to solo Mara-- I know folks who were soloing that one back at 60. Sunken Temple might have been tough at 60, but a well-geared 70 should be able to take that place down.
I know for a fact that a guildie of mine has repeatedly soloed BRD all the way to Emperor for farming, and a hunter in the guild was farming Stratholme for Righteous Orbs a while back. So I'd guess that most of the 5mans can be soloed pretty easily. Has anyone tried to beat UBRS solo? That seems much harder, but a duo seems pretty easy, and I'm sure a trio of the right classes would probably take down Drakk before he even knew what hit him. Someone on the LJ thread says MC has been 5manned, and I've heard that Ony has been three manned. Anyone know about BWL? Or Naxx? It's really hard to believe that Naxx doesn't still require at least 15-20 well-geared 70s, but I guess anything's possible. ZG and AQ20 are probably easy with ten 70s, but I could definitely see those getting 5manned as well as more people head into the new endgame.
When a five man group downs Kel'Thuzad, you know it'll be time for Blizzard to worry about the old instances. But until then, I guess unguilded 70s can just enjoy all the new solo content!
Before the expansion came out, we wondered and wondered what would happen to the old level 60 instances when the Dark Portal opened. And now that it's here, we know: no one's running them. Oh, there's a few quest groups here and there of people working their way up to 58 (the bare minimum to come through to Outland), but there's almost zero reason to run AQ or ZG 20-mans, considering the loot is just so much better, even just in Hellfire Peninsula. And MC, on my server at least, is a barren wasteland-- why take four hours with 40 people just for a few good pieces when you can get much better loot in 15 minutes of questing in Outland?
So what to do? We're sure Blizzard will come up with a way to make these instances relevant again-- in fact, I'd be surprised if, despite what they said earlier, they weren't already working on it now. But just to help them, here's a few suggestions of how to fix the old instances.
-First, and most obvious, is enabling Heroic mode. We already have dungeons in Outland that will be able to be tuned to Heroic mode, which means bosses and mobs are harder, but give much better drops. In the same way, Blizzard is likely going to let us optionally turn up the difficulty in UBRS or Stratholme, offering better loot for a bigger challenge.
Lots of people have already tagged Blizzard's move to start dropping Pally items to Horde and Shaman items to Alliance in raids (even though neither side can actually roll those classes for another month, much less have 60s that can use the BOP stuff) as a bad one, but here's more proof. A-Team, a guild over on Stonemaul-A dropped Kel'Thuzad, and got a server-first loot item: the Ring of the Earthshatterer, the ninth piece of Shaman Tier 3 armor. That's right, they got a historic, server-first, BOP drop-- and none of them could use it.
The drop went to a pally (screenshot) in the hopes that a GM could come along and make it the Pally ring, but as you might expect by now, no dice. As a guy who plays a Shaman main, that especially tugs at the heartstrings.
Unfortunately, don't expect a change on this one-- the CMs have said any non-faction drops should be considered free Nexus shards. But considering that a guild running Naxx could farm Nexus shards in their sleep, that these drops mean there's even less chance that the right stuff will drop for a guild that actually needs it, and that these useless items will continue to be useless until someone finally gets a BE pally or Draenei Shaman to 60 (at absolute best, you're talking days after the expansion releases, if the servers are even up by then), it's too bad that Blizzard has resolved not to fix this one. Grats to A-Team for the nice drop, but shame on Blizzard for not letting them use it.
With solid confirmation that Naxx will be "floating" off to Northrend (and not exist in two places at once) also comes a strong hint by Bornakk that they will be removing the ability to get Tier-3 armor pieces along with the rest of the current Naxx loot. Bornakk says that "For players who want the look and the stats of tier 3 armor at level 80, hopefully they are already farming the dungeon for them." This is a very strong indication that post WotLK, the current Tier 3 gear will be no longer available.
Bornakk, who apparently looks like Abe Lincoln, has revealed that Naxx will be an "entry level raid dungeon" in Wrath of the Lich King, and EU CM Vaneras adds that unlike Kael'thas (who exists in two places at once ingame), it will be moving whole hog up to Northrend -- the 40 man dungeon that we have now will no longer exist.
Check out more information on WoW's upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, including Blizzard's recent interview about Northrend and the new creatures that infest of Northrend.
Blizzard announced the following important four lines in their 2.4 Patch Notes:
After reading yesterday that Bornakk confirmed a "gear reset" (which is not actually a reset-- more on that in a sec), reader John had an interesting thought about using current high-level instances (Hyjal and BT) to attune players for future high level instances, so that neither the gear or the content would go unused. Which is kind of happening already-- it's all but confirmed that Naxx will be repurposed in the next expansion. But that just suggested something else to me: what if, rather than worrying about a "gear reset." Blizzard actually made the current endgame mandatory for entry into Northrend? What if you couldn't move on without doing all the current content?
There's a discussion going down on the forums about what many consider to be the most exciting part of MMO games, including World of Warcraft-- world events. As many drawbacks as there were to the AQ events, no one can argue that they didn't affect everyone in the World-- everyone was able to step up and help the war effort, and even though everyone didn't fit in Silithus, everyone came across some of the invaders that spread across the world. While the Naxx event was that way as well, we haven't really seen anything else on that scale even in this, the largest MMO ever. And let's not forget that since Burning Crusade was released, we're dealing with a lot more people-- there are huge amounts of the population who have never seen a world event yet.
Considering that Kel'Thuzad is basically "the boss of shipping WoW" (according to Metzen at BlizzCon), then Atiesh, the Legendary caster item that once belonged to Medivh, is the greatest item in levels 1-60. But we're at level 70 now, and when we get to level 80, Atiesh, a Legendary item, might end up looking more like a stick than anything else. So Asheen asks, knowing that Naxx is set to be "repurposed" for our trip to Northrend: will Atiesh make a return?
Kavis wonders if he's the only person who wants 40 man raids back. I'm sure he's not the only person, but I'd bet he's in the minority. Forty man raids may sound super fun in theory, but in practice they are pretty miserable-- it's hell to coordinate the schedules of 40 people on a regular basis, and then it's even worse to actually get them to line up on time and do what needs to be done. I don't know if Kavis ever actually ran Molten Core or BWL or Naxx, but while 40 man raids were fun while they lasted, 10 and 25 man raids are much, much easier on raidleaders and guildies alike.
The MMO Gamer sat down for an interview with WoW lead developer Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan recently. You can hear the audio or read the transcript at their site, but for my money, here's the most interesting bit. In the middle of a rehashing of the debate over whether Blizzard should spend a lot of time developing raids that few people will see, he drops this great idea:
Overpowered on the forums wonders what the least popular instance is, and I'd say his guess of Blackfathom Deeps is probably pretty close-- it's a long run away for pretty much everyone but Night Elves, and at 25-30, there's so many more quests and things to do that BFD usually gets passed up. The other good guesses, I'd say, are the "old" late game instances like Naxx and LBRS. Unfortunately, while Blizzard tells us all about the most popular stuff in the game, they are pretty mum on what players don't like, for obvious reasons.
I've been speculating a lot on what Blizzard is going to do with the old instances, just because I'm always ready for a challenge, and currently, at level 70, the old raids don't offer a full group much of a challenge at all. But as some of our wise commenters have said, you don't have to wait for Blizzard to change the old instances to have fun with them-- just go in solo.
Before the expansion came out, we wondered and wondered what would happen to the old level 60 instances when the Dark Portal opened. And now that it's here, we know: no one's running them. Oh, there's a few quest groups here and there of people working their way up to 58 (the bare minimum to come through to Outland), but there's almost zero reason to run AQ or ZG 20-mans, considering the loot is just so much better, even just in Hellfire Peninsula. And MC, on my server at least, is a barren wasteland-- why take four hours with 40 people just for a few good pieces when you can get much better loot in 15 minutes of questing in Outland?
Lots of people have already tagged Blizzard's move to start dropping Pally items to Horde and Shaman items to Alliance in raids (even though neither side can actually roll those classes for another month, much less have 60s that can use the BOP stuff) as a bad one, but here's more proof. A-Team, a guild over on Stonemaul-A dropped Kel'Thuzad, and got a server-first loot item: the Ring of the Earthshatterer, the ninth piece of Shaman Tier 3 armor. That's right, they got a historic, server-first, BOP drop-- and none of them could use it.
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