Jeff Kaplan, the lead game designer, posted in the forums under his username Tigole that Blizzard will be speeding up leveling in the 60 to 70 bracket just as they sped up the 20 to 60 bracket. This has long been rumored and it's great to see this get implemented.
Initial reports tell us the amount of experience points necessary to progress to each level has been decreased by 30% (for the 60 to 70 range only). Additional posters are reporting that mobs which give 500xp on the live server are now giving 600xp on the beta server. There doesn't seem to be any increase in the XP rewarded by quests yet, but this might be a future change.
Kaplan asks everyone to provide feedback on the change (if you're in the beta), and it looks like they've got his ear for the time being. So if you're in the beta and want to weigh in on the subject, now's the time.
Many thanks to the various users who submitted this news tip.
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.
It's a little early to get nervous about not being prepared for the upcoming expansion, but it's never too early to start the preparations. If you start ahead of time, you'll never even need to worry about it coming down to crunchtime. Plus, if you finish getting ready ahead of time, you can take those last few weeks before Wrath nice and easy. Something I noticed a lot as we neared The Burning Crusade, everyone and their mother spent eight hours a day in battlegrounds that final month before the expansion, and by the time we could go through the Dark Portal most of them were burned out on playing WoW.
The absolute number one thing we can be sure you'll need in Wrath is gold. It doesn't matter what they do to your gear or your class, gold will be needed. Even if gold won't be worth as much as it is right now, you'll need it. You can be sure of that. Heck, even if you don't need gold for anything at all in Wrath by some miracle, it's cool, don't worry. 10,000g can buy you roughly 6,666,666 bottles of Moonglow when the Lunar Festival comes around. Think about that, man. Moonglow is awesome.
Vaneras is apparently clearing house on cool Burning Crusade artwork before we get to the next expansion -- he's posted a new wallpaper up on the Blizzard site, and it pretty much rocks. Our good friend Illy D is still hanging out with that dusty old skull, literally dripping with demonic power, while a bunch of slimy Naga stand threateningly behind him. Very nice.
The second poster in the thread wishes Illidan actually looked like this in game, and to a certain extent, he's right -- Blizzard has always made games as easy on the CPU as possible, so ingame models, while usually textured very well, aren't quite as detailed as their concept art. But the concept art (and the cinematics) is what, I think, allows these characters to have so much of a life outside of the game. Most of us have never been told that we weren't prepared by Illidan ingame, but we surely remember him telling us the same thing before the last expansion.
Mages sometimes get a bad rap. Some say we whine too much, while others claim we stink at PvP, or pull aggro too often from the tank. Here at Arcane Brilliance, we ignore these people, because we know the truth. You see, it's a well-known fact that while people tend to like awesome, they simply can't handle too much of it. When people see Mages in the back row, flinging giant balls of flame and ice from their fingertips, landing ridiculously large crits on everything, or plucking delicious magical food out of the air before them, their sense of what is and what isn't awesome gets skewed, and this makes them feel weird. They don't like it. They fear it. The awesome that Mages bring to the table is just too much for most folks to handle. Remember this the next time you get yelled at over voice chat, or someone posts a nasty thread on the forums. We Mages are just too awesome. It's our curse. Luckily, we can remove curses.
Last week, we hit level 60. A long time ago, this was the end of the line, the top of the heap. Once you hit level 60, your experience bar disappeared, and only by improving your gear could you continue to advance your character. That all changed about 18 months ago, when Blizzard introduced us to the world beyond the Dark Portal, 10 more levels of experience, and level 57 greens that were better than level 60 purples. Last week, we brought ourselves to the brink of level 60, to the doorstep of Outland, and this week we'll explore that vast and dangerous new frontier and see where it takes us. Join us after the break for a look at what to expect from the last ten levels of the current game.
Eloren over on WoW LJ wonders if Blizzard didn't go far enough when they reduced the required reputation for Heroics to Honored level. Personally, even though I'm much closer to the casual end of the spectrum, I never had a problem with Revered reputation -- with my normal questing to 70 and a few instance runs in each zone, I didn't really have a problem grabbing most of the Heroic reputation keys. But even with Honored, some people with different playstyles (solo players, for example, since lots of reputation comes from running instances) are still having trouble.
The good news is that Eloren is basically going to get her wish -- as we talked about last week on the podcast, Blizzard is planning to mix up the ways you can get attuned to a Heroic instance. Heroic Countenance is the first example -- to get attuned to Heroic Magisters', all you've got to do is run the regular once.
In fact, I would be surprised if they didn't play around a little bit with attunements -- for one instance, they might require reputation, for another, turn-in tokens, and for another, a good old-fashioned quest chain. Most of the attunements in Burning Crusade were based specifically on reputation, but there's no reason that has to be the same way in Wrath of the Lich King -- why not give players lots of different ways to reach the different Heroics in the endgame?
One of the biggest and most successful features of Burning Crusade has been the inclusion of Badges of Justice. Especially in 2.4, these badges have allowed even relatively casual players to get their hands on gear that comes close to the same stuff raiders are able to pull out of end game instances. While the system seems to have been mostly a success, there's still some question as to how it will evolve in WoTLK. The current 2.4 badge loot seems to have been created in part to allow a smoother gear transition between BC and WoTLK for both casuals and ubers, with badges dropping out of 10-man instances and the most powerful badge gear yet. But the question is, will this continue in WoTLK? Will we see badges off of Naxxramas' 10-man version (perhaps earning it the name Badgeramas)? Will we see loot purchasable from a Dalaran vendor that will be comparable to what raiders are pulling out of Icecrown Glacier? Or will they dial it back, or maybe not even include the badge loot system at all?
Unfortunately for some players, very likely not. While Kil'jaeden was definitely one of the driving forces of the Legion (and I'm sure we'll see more in the lore cutscene that apparently takes places at the end of his fight, whenever SK posts the video of it), he's nothing compared to Sargeras himself, and we'll definitely need more than a raid to topple the World of Warcraft's biggest big bad. Throw in the fact that there are still demons running rampant all over Outland (not to mention portals from all kinds of various places bringing them in), and even though we've just spent a whole expansion trying to kill the Burning Legion, odds are that we'll see them again soon.
But not too soon -- hopefully, as Morbosa says, the next expansion will offer a return to the old swords, sorcery and politics that high fantasy lovers love so much. It's not that we don't enjoy fighting demons -- they're fun. But nothing feels as good sometimes as a mace cracking some skeleton heads towards the goal of beating a king of the undead, and hopefully that's what we'll find in Northrend.
The9, which is the company that runs Blizzard's World of Warcraft in China, has announced today that the game has hit a full million concurrent players (which means that they've had one million people playing the game all at the same time) following the release of the Burning Crusade expansion there last year. Here in North America, concurrent users hasn't really ever been as high (although that is of course unofficial data, and we don't have information after the first month of this year). But MMOs are a different beast in China and other Asian countries -- not only do players pay-to-play (instead of a monthly fee, many players often pay hourly or daily, which means concurrent users equals paying users), and there are actually three games that have hit a million concurrent users over there (while here, WoW is far and above the largest MMO online).
Still, it's quite an achievement. It's interesting that it's coming so late in the product's life -- it seems that, just as over here, the expansion had a significant impact on player interest. Definitely a big milestone for Blizzard's game in China.
Let the lore geeks at WoW Insider help you out a bit. We've put together a scene by scene analysis of the lore behind the Fury of the Sunwell trailer, and we're presenting it to you here. Hopefully, it sheds some more light on this whole "Did Kael'thas go crazy or didn't he, and what is up with Kil'jaedan anyway?" thing.
It's that time again. Those of you who were around right beforethe Burning Crusade release might remember this time -- there are no new content patches before the next expansion, and we've got pretty much nothing to look forward to and nowhere to go before Wrath shows up and changes the world for good. Yes, there is a little more yet to discover at the Sunwell, but once we've seen that instance cleared out (Blizzard originally predicted about a month, and it seems like some players might be moving even faster than that), there'll be nothing left but the waiting.
Things went pretty badly last time around -- guilds stopped raiding (what was the point, when the next expansion would replace all of our gear with greens?), players abandoned the game for a while, and there was a general depression in Azeroth. While people were excited for the expansion, the live realms seemed like yesterday's news.
Hopefully things will be better this time around -- back then, we didn't have dailies to do, there weren't any arena matches or tournaments, and the 40 man high-end raid instances were pretty much the only game in town (nowadays we have 10mans, 25mans, or Heroics, and lots of rewards from each). And depending on when Blizzard gets the expansion out, the wait might not be as bad (although if they wait until January again, the time frame should be about the same as last time). But get ready -- the calm before the storm is coming, and we won't see a new game again until we step foot on the icy shores of Northrend.
Reader Kyver tipped us off to a gem of a post on the Customer Service Forums today, titled "I'm a WoW Widow" (moderately NSFW, PG-13 rating). The story goes like this: A girl, Missmegan, lost her boyfriend to the Burning Crusades [sic]. They used to play together horde side, but after buying the expansion he turned to the alliance and is dedicated to his guild mates. All is lost, as he's no longer interested in his girlfriend's "assets" and rambles like a two-year old.
Of course this makes our forum posting protagonist upset, and she needs her boyfriend back. Now obviously this is a joke. At least I hope it is. And Katie (my girlfriend), if you're reading this I promise I'll never let it get this bad. I mean, I only play for 5 hours a day, not 13 as the boyfriend in the story does. And I make money with all this, so it's okay, right? Sweetie? Darling? Honey... D'oh....
Tagging the first response to this thread is Belfaire The Mighty, with the simple response "Dear WoW Widow, It's actually Burning Crusade. Yours, Belfaire." This had myself and the other writers here laughing. We had to share it.
If you're one of those folks who pines for the days of level 60 and Molten Core, but you've already installed Burning Crusade and made your way to 70, Slorkuz (who?) officially tells us you're out of luck. Once an account has been upgraded to Burning Crusade, there is no going back -- even if you uninstall everything and just put vanilla WoW on your PC, trying to sign in with your BC upgraded account will open up Outland and the latest content yet again.
If you really want to see the world the way it was before the Dark Portal reopened, you'll have to create a new account, and not upgrade it to Burning Crusade. But even then, you won't really go back in time -- you'll still see gems on the AH, and Blood Elves and Draenei wandering around. It's one more reason to keep asking Blizzard for classic servers, apparently -- as of right now, there's no way to really go back to the way things were.
But why would you want to anyway, right? Gold abounds, epics are easy to get, and most of the PvP problems are fixed. Nostalgia may be telling you that you want to stumble around with 39 other people in Motlen Core hoping for a Tier 1 drop every two weeks, but for most people, things are much better nowadays.
Reader Sebastian wrote in to us with an interesting question: what good is patch 2.4 if you don't have the Burning Crusade expansion yet? He has a lower level character that hasn't hit 70 yet (he's on level 46), and wants to know exactly what 2.4 is doing for him. From what we can tell, not much.
You'll still get some of the good interface updates -- so you'll get the buffs to Inspect, the combat log improvements, and all of the other additions Blizzard has made to the UI. All of the talents you have by 46 that got changes will change, too, and of course the improvements to Warsong Gulch are great for characters of almost any level (since almost everyone can go in there). And let's not forget the biggest change this patch: Old Blanchy's Feed Pouch is now an 8 slotter. That's huge.
But no, until you hit level 70, the new daily quests and the Sunwell Instances and the new badge loot won't matter much to you at all. But the good news is that the expansion is only $30, and sometimes even cheaper than that. The weather's getting nice outside, so go mow a few lawns this weekend, and then you'll be able to level up and join us all in the land of the Blood Elves where pretty much everyone has gone mad with magical power. Trust me -- it's more fun than it sounds.
According to numerous reports and several personal experiences, much of the Burning Crusade content is offline on several servers, both in the U.S. and the E.U.. When attempting to access a character in any of these locations you will be presented with an error that says "World Server Down."
This is no doubt from the mass of people who have flocked to the Isle of Quel'Danas in order to see the new content. While the realms and content are being bumpy tonight, checkout our extensive collection of patch 2.4 information.
I'll update this post as the night goes on with the latest realm announcements. Stay tuned!
Update: Realms are all online, although a tad bumpy.
We at WoW Insider felt that, in honor of Easter/Noblegarden, we'd go looking for some of the best Easter eggs in Burning Crusade. This is by no means an exhaustive gallery of all the little nods you can find in BC; it's really almost impossible to go anywhere without running into a programmer's sly joke. I had to limit my gallery to things that could be seen by toons who'd outleveled some of the really good quest-related ones ("How To Serve Goblins" was great) or who had ready access to the Blood Elf/Draenei starter areas.
Enjoy your trawl through a feast of cleverly-placed pop-culture references, and you can visit BlizzPlanet for an exhaustive list of Burning Crusade Easter eggs if these whet your appetite for more! Don't forget that with our new gallery functions, you can hit the "Hi Res" button at the top right of the page if you want to see a photo in more detail.
Jeff Kaplan, the lead game designer, posted in the forums under his username Tigole that Blizzard will be speeding up leveling in the 60 to 70 bracket just as they sped up the 20 to 60 bracket. This has long been rumored and it's great to see this get implemented.
Eloren over on WoW LJ 
So Kil'jaden is dead
It's that time again. Those of you who were around 
And 
If you're one of those folks who 
Reader Sebastian wrote in to us with an interesting question: what good is patch 2.4 if you don't have the 
According to numerous reports and several personal experiences, much of the 
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