World of Warcraft: The War Within

[BadassNonbinaryPrincess]

CEO: Subscribers are leaving in droves, people are bored. We have to do something.
Ideas guy: Dragons!
CEO: Dude, enough with the dragons, it is a sign of desperation to just shove dragons in everything. We don't want to be like Skyrim or Dragon Age.
Ideas guy: Dragon Desperation! I love it. It could have dragons on the cover and a chick with big tits.

 

[Just Locus]

Personally I am only playing it to get my MMORPG fix until something better comes along.

You can just play the private servers of Vanilla or any other expansion

Dungeons & Dragons Online is also a solid MMORPG.

 

[Rövtomte]

the fact that according to Meltzen, WoW is going to continue with 10-20 years worth of expansions, is fucking frightening.

Can't wait for The War Within Season of Dickery coming in 2032. Get hype!

Just how far can they actually pull this fucking game.

 

[anvi]

Do you all think they secretly work on a "WoW 2" for a time when this gets too old? I know they did that once before and turned it into that FPS. But there has to be a WoW2 in development, surely? How could you have all that money and not use it in the most obvious way?

 

[Old Hans]

the fact that according to Meltzen, WoW is going to continue with 10-20 years worth of expansions, is fucking frightening.

Can't wait for The War Within Season of Dickery coming in 2032. Get hype!

Just how far can they actually pull this fucking game.

im amazed WoW is a thing that still draws media attention. I remember when everquest was considered an ancient forgotten dinosaur by 2004

 

[Caim]

Do you all think they secretly work on a "WoW 2" for a time when this gets too old? I know they did that once before and turned it into that FPS. But there has to be a WoW2 in development, surely? How could you have all that money and not use it in the most obvious way?

The problem is that the second they release a WoW 2 it gives all the WoW 1 players an out, a bigger quit moment than they ever had before. Even though there will be a lot of excitement for the game only the crustiest of neckbeards will stick to WoW, which will be hampered by the fact that only the most recent expansion will be relevant.

im amazed WoW is a thing that still draws media attention. I remember when everquest was considered an ancient forgotten dinosaur by 2004

There was Everquest 2, but that the poor fortune of coming out 15 days before WoW did.

 

[J1M]

the fact that according to Meltzen, WoW is going to continue with 10-20 years worth of expansions, is fucking frightening.
I genuinely wonder how long their engine is going to be running until they can no longer support it with content that's held together by super glue (the MTX shop will work fine though)

Portions of the engine are rewritten every 2 years. It's not the "same engine" as 20 years ago.

 

[J1M]

The Chinese title (地心之戰 "War at the Center of the Earth") might have been better. For the 11.0 story marketing, the writers have been talking about the expansion is also about "inner turmoil" within Anduin and Alleria, but WoW has never credibly delivered an introspective story like what you would see in a JRPG or a visual novel. Hard to do so when you are playing as a different character rather than as Anduin or Alleria.

That is a wordy mouthful. The War Within is about 3 things: fighting spiders in a cavern, changing certain characters via inner turmoil plots to get them where Metzen wants them for the confrontation with the Titans, and an allegory of the internal struggle at Blizzard about the direction of the franchise.

Chinese title is shit.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Do you all think they secretly work on a "WoW 2" for a time when this gets too old?

No. Blizzard is incapable of producing another MMO. They began suffering brain drain before WoW even launched, with the lead programmer leaving to go start up his own company and produce Guild Wars. And then when WoW launched, many of the vanilla WoW devs left too. And by now almost all of Blizzard's talent is gone. Blizzard is unable to release games. Ghost was cancelled. The second Diablo 3 expansion was cancelled. HotS was put into maintenance mode. The survival game was cancelled. The superhero MMO languished in development hell for years on end before being cancelled. The promised Overwatch 2 singleplayer game never materialized, OW2 was just a OW1 patch branded as a $60 game. The survival game was cancelled. Blizzard's incubation unit hasn't managed to release anything. Diablo immortal is D3 made by another company. D4 is D3 with a different coat of paint.

If another high production value artbook fantasy MMO releases, then it's going to be from Riot games, the only dev that has the resources and the interest to do so. Square Enix has also suffered from brain drain so I doubt there will be a 3rd FF MMO. I have my doubts about Guild Wars 3 given how Anet neglected GW2 to work on two projects that never went anywhere, oh and all of their talent is gone too.

 

[BadassNonbinaryPrincess]

Sucks, gaming is so dead.

 

[Just Locus]

Do you all think they secretly work on a "WoW 2" for a time when this gets too old? I know they did that once before and turned it into that FPS.

I feel like Blizzard knows that they can't strike lightning in a bottle again like they did back in 2004 with WoW.

WoW managed to make MMORPGs more accessible without sacrificing fun in the process, it pioneered many mechanics that many now consider MMORPG staples; an in-game mail system, auction houses where players can trade goods, instanced dungeons that allowed you and your friends to defeat bosses together.

Blizzard knows that WoW's success was and will stay exceptional.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Wow. This shit makes Mythforce look good.

 

[Vyvian]

Do you all think they secretly work on a "WoW 2" for a time when this gets too old? I know they did that once before and turned it into that FPS. But there has to be a WoW2 in development, surely? How could you have all that money and not use it in the most obvious way?

I think the most likely outcome is a massive "reset" after this trilogy concludes. It won't be WoW 2 but it'll kinda be WoW 2 just the same game overall.

 

[Thalstarion]

I still remember the golden era fondly. I met a lot of good people back then and I am still in contact with a handful to this very day.

 

[BadassNonbinaryPrincess]

Do you all think they secretly work on a "WoW 2" for a time when this gets too old?

No. Blizzard is incapable of producing another MMO. They began suffering brain drain before WoW even launched, with the lead programmer leaving to go start up his own company and produce Guild Wars. And then when WoW launched, many of the vanilla WoW devs left too. And by now almost all of Blizzard's talent is gone. Blizzard is unable to release games. Ghost was cancelled. The second Diablo 3 expansion was cancelled. HotS was put into maintenance mode. The survival game was cancelled. The superhero MMO languished in development hell for years on end before being cancelled. The promised Overwatch 2 singleplayer game never materialized, OW2 was just a OW1 patch branded as a $60 game. The survival game was cancelled. Blizzard's incubation unit hasn't managed to release anything. Diablo immortal is D3 made by another company. D4 is D3 with a different coat of paint.

If another high production value artbook fantasy MMO releases, then it's going to be from Riot games, the only dev that has the resources and the interest to do so. Square Enix has also suffered from brain drain so I doubt there will be a 3rd FF MMO. I have my doubts about Guild Wars 3 given how Anet neglected GW2 to work on two projects that never went anywhere, oh and all of their talent is gone too.

The story of EQ is a lot like that. Brad McQuaid got rich and promoted to a management position, but it made him miss being hands on with games. So he left to make games, along with some others. EQ made a fortune but they spent all the money on trying to make another hit, but so much was half baked crap. Eventually they ran out of money and sold the company.

 

[Reever]

The amount of people that bought the game edition that's 40 euros more for 3 days of "early access" is disappointing but not unexpected. If there's one fanbase that I definitely expect to be eating up all the shit that a company throws at them it's definitely this one.

 

[ADL]

It's a shame no "make your own MMO" engines were a success. HeroEngine flopped hard. It's easier than ever to make a MMO these days but it's still fucking expensive and you'll be competing against other games with decades of content. Very few succeed and it's a very hard sell to get a hundred million dollar budget to make one.

I strongly suspect that Cloud Imperium is gonna license StarEngine and you only need one or two successful licensees for that to be worth doing. Amazon is gonna do their same with Lumberyard/O3DE using their Lord of the Rings MMO as a showcase and Mark Jacobs is licensing his Camelot Unchained tech to anyone who wants it (lol)

The story of EQ is a lot like that. Brad McQuaid got rich and promoted to a management position, but it made him miss being hands on with games. So he left to make games, along with some others. EQ made a fortune but they spent all the money on trying to make another hit, but so much was half baked crap. Eventually they ran out of money and sold the company.

As unfinished as Vanguard was, I think it'd still be running today if the average person could play it. That game was hilariously unoptomized and required top-end specs.

 

[abija]

The amount of people that bought the game edition that's 40 euros more for 3 days of "early access" is disappointing but not unexpected. If there's one fanbase that I definitely expect to be eating up all the shit that a company throws at them it's definitely this one.

It's like 25 (since it includes 1 month of game time) for a no lag weekend before launch when large part of playerbase has a job. It's one of the easiest sells out there.

 

[Maculo]

The amount of people that bought the game edition that's 40 euros more for 3 days of "early access" is disappointing but not unexpected. If there's one fanbase that I definitely expect to be eating up all the shit that a company throws at them it's definitely this one.

I evidently drunk bought it months ago, which is no excuse. I expected only the most sweaty nerds, but it is pretty chill for the most part. Everyone is practicing, gearing alts up, or trolling trade chat. No regrets so far.

Relative to the prior expansion, you level up really fast. Although you need to complete the campaign at least once, there are more quests than one can know what to do with. Alternatively, you could spam delves or dungeons. I went from 70 to 74 in about an hour through dungeons on my Preservation Evoker. The normal dungeons are too easy.

Hero talents are hit or miss. The new dungeons will cause drama/rage, and so I look forward to mythic+ with friends.

Hallowfall is visually one of the best zones Blizzard has made in WoW.

 

[Just Locus]

It's easier than ever to make a MMO these days but it's still fucking expensive and you'll be competing against other games with decades of content. Very few succeed and it's a very hard sell to get a hundred million dollar budget to make one.

That's the thing, making an MMORPG in a genre as oversaturated as is, is difficult already but having the manpower and will to fill it with years and years worth of content is a whole different beast that many devs don't bother with, the only reason Guild Wars 1 is still up and running is because the servers have negligible server costs. AFAIK Neverwinter Nights 1's Multiplayer is the closest thing to a successful "make your own MMO" type of feature since it's player-ran and players manage and create content for the servers regularly.

 

[anvi]

It's a shame no "make your own MMO" engines were a success. HeroEngine flopped hard. It's easier than ever to make a MMO these days but it's still fucking expensive and you'll be competing against other games with decades of content. Very few succeed and it's a very hard sell to get a hundred million dollar budget to make one.

I strongly suspect that Cloud Imperium is gonna license StarEngine and you only need one or two successful licensees for that to be worth doing. Amazon is gonna do their same with Lumberyard/O3DE using their Lord of the Rings MMO as a showcase and Mark Jacobs is licensing his Camelot Unchained tech to anyone who wants it (lol)

The story of EQ is a lot like that. Brad McQuaid got rich and promoted to a management position, but it made him miss being hands on with games. So he left to make games, along with some others. EQ made a fortune but they spent all the money on trying to make another hit, but so much was half baked crap. Eventually they ran out of money and sold the company.

As unfinished as Vanguard was, I think it'd still be running today if the average person could play it. That game was hilariously unoptomized and required top-end specs.

I absolutely love Vanguard. I got in the Beta and I upgraded my PC specifically for it. It mostly ran well for me but some areas would be 18fps, and that was with a 8800GTX which I think was top end at the time if not the top card. They later changed a few things that drastically improved performance but I think they disabled some lighting or cloud technology (actual fluffy 3d moving clouds), and it worked. But the game's graphics lost a little something compared to at release. I still loved how it looks though. There is a dungeon with shiny golden and marble surfaces and it still blows my mind to look at it even now. Seeing that in 2006 was mind blowing.

The performance did kill the game though. It was also very buggy at release. A lot of kind of minor bugs that they fixed mostly in the first year or so. But a lot of it was fundamental. Like being able to loot. Sounds dumb but the loot system allowed everyone in the group to roll a dice with need or greed and some other options etc. I played with real life friends and they had been playing WoW a lot and they had zero tolerance for bugs and issues. They both quit before level 14 and they only got that far because I kept hassling them to play with me. They never saw any of the cool stuff. They never saw flying mounts that you could fly anywhere, even straight into a dungeon and then in some cases fly through the dungeon on the mount. They never saw the amazing graphics and textures, or the gigantic dungeons, or the amazing combat, the multiple continents, etc. I don't think they even got the basic horse. I saw a statistic that about 95% of players quit before level 4. Such a disaster, such a shame.

I still play it on the emulator sometimes. That has come a long way lately. TL-dr I think it would have been a big long lasting game too if it could have got another 6 months of development time. The whole thing is Microsoft's fault. (And a little bit Sigil for not tying MS down)

 

[anvi]

About the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes clouds. The game had realistic weather, sunshine and then clouds would form and it could rain and there would be storms and lightning etc. They were actual volumetric actual clouds that players maybe even fly through on a pegasus. A lot of games started having similar tech to this around that time, but the amazing thing with Vanguard is that they planned to have this weather travel across the entire world. So clouds would form and it creates rain and storms in one region, but the clouds are moving so that storm goes to other players in other areas of the world.

The reason they put so much effort into it is that they planned to have weather affect gameplay. Also EverQuest had quite advanced and realistic weather relative to the time, and people loved it. They were trying to improve on that game in every way. And they were using WoW as a benchmark for presentation.

 

[Thalstarion]

Hallowfall is a beautiful zone but so terribly wasted on the Arathi.

I've always disliked half elves but somehow they've made them even more obnoxious than usual by having fat half elves, dark skinned half elves and disabled half elves.

My preferred approach to 'diverse' NPC's is to take the same approach as The Elder Scrolls in terms of having the Bretons and Nords as fair skinned races and then the Redguards as a dark skinned race. Not just randomly painting random members of a race with darker skin and stereotypically ethnic features in order to meet a quota for 'inclusion'.

Hopefully the Arathi will be antagonists in the long term so we can be rid of them for the most part.

It's bad enough that the regular high elves and blood elves can now be 'diverse' too but the Arathi are creepy in terms of their context. Half elves were not only rare but actively shunned until the lore was sanitised heavily but even accounting for their existence, it makes no sense for a bunch of humans and elves to breed with each other to the point where they blend together as a whole.

I just want consistent, immersive world building. It was nostalgic but bittersweet to dip into Classic and see the days of each race having a distinct look without desperately trying to reflect modern day big city demographics.

 

[Maculo]

Arathi are hit or miss. The biggest issue is the one-armed lady (Faerin); she suffers from modern writing. A “not Imperium of Man” would be welcome, but I can already see Blizzard trying to backtrack and water it down with Faerin.

The initial entrance to Hallowfall, where land opens up, the light clears, and the music hits you - perfect. I think the last time I had a reaction to a zone entry was the Dark Portal/Hellfire Peninsula. I don’t know why Blizzard hasn’t managed to nail that recently.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Launch Trailer