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What you believe the next X-pac will be and why?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
what you think the next X-pac will be and why?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
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World of Warcraft: The Emerald Conquest.
Deathwing has decimated all of Azeroth and in the next expansion, the four planes (water/earth/fire/air) have been restored in unity as well as the fifth plane (communication of animals?) but an ancient evil (even more evil and ancient than Deathwing) has arisen to tear down the five planes and wreck havoc amongst the shared but brief alliance between the Horde and the Alliance. Azeroth is in even greater danger of extinction...
Features: Level Cap raised to 90.
-6 more lands to explore.
-Hundred of new quests and items.
-Two new races: Murlocs and Golems.
-A new profession: Shapeshifting.
-3 heroics on release: Heroic Uldaman/Scarlet Monastery (all four sides)/Zul Farrak.
-4 max cap raids on release.
-10 more points to be put into talent trees.
-New PVP gear for arena and guild BGs.
-A new outdoor PVP zone: Zuluzane (located in the hinterlands).
-New Dances.
-New Hairstyles.
-New PVP mounts.
-New Guild rank rewards.
-And many more.....
There were hints that Queen Azshara would be a major antagonist in the next expansion.
But, at this point, who knows. Cataclysm and the return of Deathwing blind sided everyone.
Didn't Blizz say that the next xpac would be outside of Azeroth?.
Edit* my guess would be Milton Keynes.
World Of Warcraft Baaah!: Revenge of the Space Goats
In the new expansion, World of Warcraft will be revamped, even more drastically than in Cataclysm: Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft will combine to form: Call of Guitar Herocraft Online! Beat that!
Blizzard surprised everyone when they stated in 2009 they would launch Cata and redo the old Azeroth world.
No one expected it and it was never done on this scale before.
TBC Outland was certainly a new thing (outside of Azeroth), the return to Northrend was a bit more predictable but mounted combat and siege mechanics were again surprising.
Next on the list could be the explosion of the planet Outland and the adventures throughout Northrend changed.
That sounds logical enough. Along with a new invasion planet to replace Outland.
Imagine a third faction being brought into the game from that planet.
With Blizzard's gold everything is possible.
New continent and another hero class. Lich King copy/paste expansion in the making.
I dont believe I will be able to carry on in a world without this game...
My predictions:
Plot will focus on the Emeral Dream. Devs recently said we will DEFINITELY see it in the near future.
Most of the new zones and content will take place within the ED.
Major villain/s to be The Nightmare or Queen Azshara.
Level cap raised to 90.
New Hero Class. Perhaps Keeper of the Grove, as that seems to be the one most closely associated with the ED. Regardless, I don't see this new hero class being a plate-wearing DPS or tank like the Death Knight. It's more likely to be a "squishy" hybrid/healing class. One of the main reasons why I think they redid the talent trees is to make it easier to create hero classes and balance them.
Outland and Northrend completely updated to reflect the passage of time and changes in lore.
A new profession that encompasses a new form of end game character progression that will include the ability to cross train abilities between classes. Path of the Titans was originally supposed to be something like this. For example, you can have a warrior with blink or a shaman with gouge. You'll probably be able to craft some type of item that grants cross-class abilities.
Standard stuff like new PvP areas and a new BG, new spells, etc.
Depends how SWTOR will be received and how SWTOR PvE will work. I believe however that the adaptation to what SWTOR will offer already started with the linear way the Cataclysm questing works and the way it became more Dragon Age like.
Yes, but Cata showed the story against a big world and phasing techniques without using loaded instances.
Since Bioware only uses pre loading instances in their previous games, I think the pressure is on SWTOR to deliver a real mmorpg with open worlds and since phasing is superior to pre loaded instances ....
I don't think WOW will ever leave the seamless open worlds of background loading.
An advantage it always had over the last 6 years.
Despite what people say about dungeon crawling and lobby gameplay, the full 3D created world behind it is always there and supplements it. Phasing only added to this world changing experience in full 3D (mountains you really can get on top).
So any future expansion is always something that will sets out the standards of world exploration without fake borders. (like a planet that replaces Outland).
I only hope the next expansion will include a new dynamic Siege fortress like in Lake Wintergrasp. Epic. TB is not even dynamically changing with fallen walls and dynamic rubble. A pity.
There are advantages and disadvantages with phasing. The main advantage is that it's a good medium to tell a story without using loading screens. The major disadvantage is that it creates hidden instances of part of zones, depending on how progressed you are in a certain quest line. If you're not progressed enough the zones may seem empty, while in reality you're in a phased instance of your own and only the people that have progressed in the quest line the same as you.
Besides, Cataclysm questing became a single player affair. In previous expansions you could skip a quest hub or an entire zone if you felt the quests were not entertaining. In Cataclysm if you don't do each quest in line, you can't do anything anywhere else, simply because the rest of the quest hubs are in different phased instances.
Bottom line, Cataclysm only supports the illusion of an open world, while in reality it is fragmented now in thousand instances. The illusion is maintained because they found a way to skip the loading screens.
It is a good way to tell a story and I suppose that it would make a decent single player game. But I fear that linearity and multiple instances within a zone (hidden by phasing) is what we should expect from the next expansions.
Thats what i also think too, Outland to be revamped (all quests reset, so everyone will have to redo them again), maybe another island zone put in, level cap raised by 5 too. Probably also be seen alot quicker, say somtime from Nov this year to May 2012 (thats about a year and a half after cata).
World of Warcraft: Diablo
All that noise that that deadwing made, and the prolonged wait for DIII release*, has pissed Lord of Fire to escape his current plane of existance and make order in Azeroth once and for all.
*all that, plus somebody is having little pets in shape of him - that was the last straw!
http://www.teraonline.info.pl Polski Poradnik Gry Tera Online
I would very much like to believe the "leaked" report of future Blizzard projects. Apparently the document was leaked from a Chinese source ... and they did replace the Chinese CEO within a week after those leaks.
In it you find that the next expansion is planned for the 2nd Q of 2012. That is quite possible, since Gregg Street said CATA took too long to develop (around 6 months too long). So Cata wa sinitially planned for May/june 2011. They really had no content prepared to bridge that 6 months gap.
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We will know it soon enough, since in that report it was stated that WOW Brazil would be launched in 2nd Q of 2011.
EDIT: I would LOVE to believe this planning, because I would very much like to play ... the Computer Collectable Card game (planned in 2012). Wizards of the Coast screwed up their Magic Computer game by having difficulties with their infrastructure (but it was an amazing success up until 2007). Odd no one mentions this as it shows up on the same leaked documents.
What this game needs, more than anything, is a new GFX engine. Imagine how amazing Azeroth would look if they used the Cry Engine.
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Once again it shows you have no clue about phasing in CATA.
Phasing is based upon proximity it is not based on pre loading instances in a zone.
Example : Westfall: you ALL land on the same flying path and see each other. You are ALL in the same world and see each other.
From that landing spot : You can see 3 different possible scenes WHILE still seeing each other. a.n older man with guards b. the man murdered and surrounded by family and friends and a CSI investigation team c. no old er man because he was burried.
ALL players see each other and the phasing still takes place at a mere 5-10 meter distance. I even think Blizzard did this proximity test on purpose, to show the power of phasing.
The old way of multi step questing also couldn't be done when one member was one step behind. So phasing is not as "dire" as you would LIKE to believe.
Grouping can still be done because you are not playing in a complete seperate loaded instance (like AoC)
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So the phasing solves 2 very old MMO problems at once: static worlds become dynamic - personal - story telling AND players still are in the same 3D worlds. The easy grouping of dungeons/ battlegrounds make up for a supplemental group play while leveling - with or without friends or guildies.
I'm well aware on how phasing works. I'm also aware than you can sit on top of a friend of yours and don't see each other if you're not on the same quest line. That was the same in Lich king and it's the same in Cataclysm. Bottom line, you can't help each other unless you're on the same quest line, which will put you on the same phased instance. Whether that phased instance works with proximity or any other way is irrelevant.
Besides, I didn't bash the use of phasing. It's a great story telling tool. Unfortunately it has its own drawback, especially when used extensively, like it's the case in Cataclysm. It makes the game seem a single player experience with a chat channel, until you complete all the quest lines of a particular zone.
It does not need that. It looks great the way it is.
http://www.teraonline.info.pl Polski Poradnik Gry Tera Online
CATA perfected the phasing by creating much smaller distances in which players still see each other. So far that (mostly) players within 10-20 meters distance from each other still see each other.
"Bottom line, you can't help each other unless you're on the same quest line"
That remark was also true in the old days when nothing changed to the worlds. If you were not on the same step of those long questing lines, your quests couldn't be shared.
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I think we should be honest: leveling in a group has always been painful at best in a game that is older than ... 2 months.
Or you would need a very SMALL world with very FEW levels.
The art of an MMO is to let everyone experience his/her adventure and let grouping happen when he/she wants it.
You can cut corners everywhere and complain but the above are the constraints of modern MMORPG design.
The challenge of grouping is done in the leveling game by doing dungeons/battlegrounds. The solo adventuring/leveling is done in the open world that supports the individual experience without "leaving" that open world.
That's the philosophy these days. If you don't like it, find something else. But the bigger the world and the more wide spread the player base the more difficult times you will have to let groups just happen BEFORE the end game.
I don't believe in "world events" in that leveling process, since they showed up in pre Cata as being massive Zerg fests with no personal motivation whatsoever.
The Next Xpac will be Space Marines and Space Ships oO.... that way they can get the rest of Warhammer in there and snag a bit of TOR. It will probably add more action oriented combat as well so that they have this new revolutionary mechanic that no other game has had before. It will be herald as the most innovative thing of all time.
They will likely add another playable race down the line as well called Links and they will use a form of currency called rupees and it too will be the most original and innovative thing an MMO has ever done.
The Xpac will be called "Legend of Star Wars 40k: Ocarina of time"
The next xpac will most likely focus on the Emerald Dream. Why? Because it has been long overdue now. Also, all 5 portals are now in the game.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Well if your thinking story I say this ^^.
Otherwise I say it will have one or two new landmasses, three or four dungeons, 75-100 new quests, a new tier of goodies that replaces EVERYTHING you currently have no matter how hard you worked for it or how long it took to get. Oh yeah and at least 2 new factions you will have to grind for at least 3 months for some crazy thing you didnt really need in the first place. Because thats what they have done in every x-pac so far, why would anyone think it would change (Cata did this, plus made Vanilla usable for the first time in 4 years - but it still did this).
I'm already looking for something else. WoW has become an instanced game, phased or otherwise, the world feeling is long lost. The topic of this thread however was not whether you like the current incarnation of WoW, but what will the next expansion be.
And you derailed it by coming up with lies about how phasing worked, while I discussed the future projects of Blizzard as a whole.
Wow has a perfect 3D full traversable world you can fly, swim, walk, ride in. We discussed what the next expansion plans were for it (like replacing the exploded Outland). I didn't see any constructive post from you except to lie about that world you can fly, swim, ride and walk in.
If you are looking for something else why are you even posting in a thread called "What you believe the next X-pac will be and why?