Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[Column] World of Warcraft: The Ramp Up to Warlords
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
This week I geek out over the new Warlords cinematic, we check out the new Lords of War animated series and inspect the goodies in the Warlords Collector’s edition.
Read more of Reza Lackey's All things Warcraft: The Ramp Up to Warlords.
)
Comments
*crickets*
Hmmm....that's some excitement.
Seriously seems like a lot of reused skins, models, assets from previous years of the game. The only thing that looked visually different was the weird plant looking creature in that video above that made me 2nd glance it thinking I was looking at a mutated Sylvari (GW2).
Garrisons, what a joke. Taking the Mages Tower (since Vanilla, Stormwind), Barracks (since Vanilla, any other human hub), and other same model things to then have players set up specific placement in a "phased" (i.e. instanced) area for them to use as a key Daily Quest hub and centralized feature of the expansion means.....means it's really lazy design overall.
Too much waiting time for content in WoW. That's why I don't play currently.
Icecrown Citadel in Wrath was how many months the end game content? Even back then Blizzard were telling players that they want to deliver content faster.
Deathwings raid was endgame content for how many months in cata? Still promised the next expansion would comes faster, but not delivered.
Now, Mists Seige of Orgrimmar raid has been the end game content for how long at this stage? And it still will be for another 3 months! And even now they say that next expansion will come faster (again something we've heard for what, 5 years now?) and that the reason they didnt deliver it was they added so many people to the team that they all had to be trainned up so it was slower.
I personally would like an expansion once a year, like SoE does for Everquest. It doesn't have to be massive, but it just has to deliver enough content with maybe 2 major patches in between expansions every 4 months just to keep the game interesting and retain my sub. If a massive company like Blizzard can't do that when they have the biggest mmo subscriber numbers in the industry, there is a serious problem within the company, be it their staff/management or whatever.
I have 0 reason to re-sub until the big pre-patch occurs, which is again probably 2 months off still.
Actually that would be Warcraft O&H... But who is counting... If you managed to miss the obvious nod to the roots of the franchise that Garrisons are... I pity you.
As for reused... The ideas might be reused but having looked at most of the material presented for the garrisons they are actually new models. Just like they update the players characters and several outland creatures they have facelifted these old buildings.. keeping the look but updating the actual models.
As for them being instanced... No sh*t sherlock... I do not know if you did play SWG back in the days but free housing has never been a good idea or worked... at all...
Any way... Dislike the game all you want but at least complain about things that make sense...
This have been a good conversation
I would have to say, that at the pixel level, it's highly unlikely that they didn't reuse the colors. So in essence, every texture map ever made is a rehash of the same colors we've all seen before.
It's white...
No it's not, is snowflake...
I'd say it's more of a clean linen with a hint of morning air...
It's white...
But EQ2s and other housing was and is very popular without having all the functionality of a city. They very much underestimate many people's desire to have something to call their own in a game world and how that keeps people tied to the game. I used to love finding new items for my house in EQ2 and often did heritage quests just to hang the item on my wall.
One look at how much money SOTA fans are spending on housing before the game is even in beta says a lot. But they aren't using housing to replace city functions either.
The expansion setting doesn't appeal to me. I could care less about Orcs, except stabbing them. The cinematic was just about the Orcs. I'm a Human, NE, and BE kind of guy. Lore that concerns them is what interests me.
With that said, even if the expansion did appeal to me, I still couldn't play it. I resubscribed and bought the last two expansions, but because I'd have to regrind Outlands and Northrend, I kept quitting soon after. I can't stomach redoing the same string of solo quests that I've done before, but picking up where I left off on a max level character really isn't an option either for numerous reasons.
If you buy WoD you get to have one toon start at 90. And each additional toon after that is $60. How exciting.
You can check my posting history to see how disappointed as a whole I am with Blizzard and WoW at the moment.
Though as a whole your post here is entirely wrong, coming from someone who is in beta.
The assets you mentioned are not reused; even the dark portal in that picture was created from scratch. It is much better than the current portal (roughly 20x the size) and has a lot of intricate details. In addition, they did not copy paste things from Stormwind and put them in you garrison. The garrison is completely unique in design -- every building has three levels thus far, and they are all independent of anything in the game. In high definition and with their own architecture (speaking for the Alliance version here).
The first level of the mage tower is actually a large tent. The second level, it still isn't a tower, but contains many books and is moreso a round building with no second story. I've yet to see the third level, as it is no in beta yet.
Even the character models have been made from scratch, as well as each zone, many mobs, etc. The environment is gorgeous and the art team did a fantastic job as a whole. One could say many things about the beta of this expansion, but reusing old assets is not (within reason) one of them.
They do reuse art assets quite a bit, but I don't know any MMO that doesn't. Not to mention most of the WoW assets are so well designed these days, I'm surprised people are attacking that portion. Better to attack all development resources going into the garrisons that nobody wanted (and are certainly NOT what people meant when they wanted player housing)
This is the reason that for the first time i wont buy a wow expansion. I don't want to give my money only to play a couple of months max and after that quit because of boredom. I m not going to repeat the same routine as in cata-mop where jumping in orgrimmar and watch chat channels was my gameplay after a month or two.
As for housing...pls...garrisons are not even close to it.
All Time Favorites: EQ1, WoW, EvE, GW1
Playing Now: WoW, ESO, GW2
Really in all fairness to the "This expansion is all about the orcs... who cares I play alliance" argument. Well you got your expansion time... WOTLK was all about the humans, it is the orcs turn.
Honestly, I don't see much in this expansion that interests me either. I am much more excited by new races or classes, they should have done another hero class for this one, maybe something like Gladiator or Beastmaster it would have fit with the motif. A melee pet class would be pretty cool.
Help support an artist and gamer who has lost his tools to create and play: http://www.gofundme.com/u63nzcgk