Burning Crusade Feedback, please.

[Lyion]

I've been killed with work and life and not really followed Burning Crusade, much. I hit the Blizzard site and information regarding what new things it's offering is a bit vague.

Outside of Jewelcrafting, what new things is BC offering players, and is the game changing much? I read a bit about the honor reset, and the new talents and things but that seems more of a 'change' than a lot of new stuff.

Can people who've beta'ed BC give some feedback on what they feel it's offering to players and what things are changing? Is the game itself changing at all, outside of a few new levels and talents?

[Tuggan]

paladins and shamans are going to both realms with the new races. thats about all i know.

[Shneider]

From my perspective TBC tries to offer players a fresh start. 40 player raids will soon be a thing of the past so raiding will be more accessable to the average player. Most of the content will be geared towards 5-10 players not to mention the 'heroic/hard' mode instances that follow the whole risk vs. reward mantra.

The expansion really seems to be about offering players a fresh start, assuming you have a level 60 character. It's hard to speculate what will happen to the current content. Occasionally a CM will say that there are no plans to offer hard modes of these, but that's just part of the plausible denile/ ignorant CM syndrom you deal with with Blizzard.

Arlos mentioned at one point, WoW had planned for 7 tiers of play. Basically we have two more layers being added to the cake making the current endgame items obsolete with the advent of the new stamina values or basically anything level 68+ (levels the playing field a bit, there's also diminished returns for gear that is below your level; you can find screenshots of current bosses hitting level 70 tier 3 warriors more than level 60 tier 2 warriors for example). Much of the 'trash encounters' seem to have incorporated current boss abilities into the mix, the end game remains to be seen. You can expect some quasi-zerg encounters from slave pens which are akin to the Priestess Arlokk type enouncters (panther boss), mobs with frequent knockdowns geared towards different styles of tanking and such. The new end game stuff is a mystery to me, so your guess is as good as mine. I heard rumors about a chess game in Kharazan... I doubt we'll see dialogue trees, puzzles or any other RPG elements though if that's what you're looking for. So to answer your question: the more things change, the more they stay the same is pretty much how I'd describe it.

[Lyion]

So, it's more of the same? A la EQ and the expansions?

[Tikker]

So, it's more of the same? A la EQ and the expansions?

it's not a brand new game, so of course


that being said, the new talents are available right now, and just goofing around with different builds right now is pretty fun

I'm having a heck of a lot of fun with my hunter again, duo'ing wit my brother's dual wielding shaman~

[Zanchief]

I'd be tempted to start again. When does the expansion come out?

[Shneider]

In a sense you have new races, abilities, higher levels and all those gimmicks ; but rhetoric is a poor subsitute for action as they say.

If we use the current design mechanics as an anology:

Molten Core: Learn to tank
Blackwing Lair: Learn to heal
Ahn'Qiraj: Learn to do sustained/burst DPS
Necropolis Naxxramas: Takes everything, raises it another notch
The Burning Crusade: Naxxramas-lite for the masses (quite literally), with the the X-factor that's the endgame.

There's always been tacit acceptance about the casual vs. hardcore debate. With saving smaller instances this lessens the consecutive time and shere man hours required is smaller obviously. This is a commercial enterprise, EQ catered to a very small percentage of their population with expansions, I don't see WoW going in that direction to such a degree. The hard stuff is there, but it's optional so people can experience the content.

[Tacks]

I guess it's "more of the same, improved" Lyion. There are still "go kill 20 of these and get back to me" quests but there's also some VERY fun quests. One you get in the very first zone is a bombing run quest. They basically give you a big fucking bomb and you fly on a gryphon over top of a base. You have to click the bomb and aim towards the ground to throw it and it does insane damage...very fun quest. Many of the new quests are a little smarter in that they don't really feel like a grind unless there's 20 people in the same area.

Another good thing they did to make the casual people happy is put in dungeon difficulties. You can now select either Hard or Normal mode for dungeon difficulty. And the Hard mode is tough enough to make the hardcore people happy. The dungeons themselves (for the most part) are set up in the fashion that Scarlet Monastery was set up. You have multiple different wings you can go clear but not all of them are necessary. Say you only have 45 minutes to play...fine that's enough time to clear an entire zone wing and be done.

If you weren't happy with the original game then don't play the expansion. It's a big improvement over the original version but there's not a ton of "new" stuff that you seem to be looking for. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

PS: the tier system everyone is describing was scrapped years ago. They're not following that design scheme.

[Lyion]

No, I like WOW, but I'm worried their design team will get a big head. Recently EQ2 decided to change their game completely, which I didn't like.

Ditto for SWG.

I'd like to see WOW get better and be less about grinding, and I'm intrigued about the expansion. If the game doesn't offer new, better content in the same vein, I'm not interested. If they make the game BETTER but stick to the core fundamentals, I'll consider coming back. Although since I'm guildless, not sure if its an option.