World of Whorecraft: Battle for Asseroth

[Hoaxmetal]

How much of the Demon Hunter class is actually playable right now in the early access?

The class is live for those who pre-ordered, there is no seperate EA or anything.

 

[Echo Mirage]

How much of the Demon Hunter class is actually playable right now in the early access?

The class is live for those who pre-ordered, there is no seperate EA or anything.

Do they allow you to play past the initial zones and replay older content in the meantime? Or are you locked into starting zones until release?

The possibility of redoing some older content that I missed as a new class is the only thing that would draw me back in right now. If not then I will wait until after release sometime.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

How much of the Demon Hunter class is actually playable right now in the early access?

The class is live for those who pre-ordered, there is no seperate EA or anything.

Do they allow you to play past the initial zones and replay older content in the meantime? Or are you locked into starting zones until release?

The possibility of redoing some older content that I missed as a new class is the only thing that would draw me back in right now. If not then I will wait until after release sometime.

They are like DKs - start at higher level (98), have their own starting area and after completing it you can do whatever you want. The class is live, there's no need to wait for Legion launch.

 

[Metro]

I think it's possible to cross-realm group nowadays, so at least there's that.

Yeah, I've been doing plenty of that in my more active playing times... Though now it occured to me that you're probably alliance, therefore so much for grouping.

They've even gone a step beyond joint realms. Everything, including capital cities, are CRZ or what they call the 'shard' system. Also token prices keep dropping. I suspect they'll go even lower once the expansion launches and people start buying gold to gear up.

 

[v1rus]

As someone who hasn't played WoW since TBC, how well is the cross-realm thing going? I remember that one of the few good things GW2 had was the fact that ALL content was available cross-realm, excluding WvWvW (Battlegrounds).

 

[Metro]

It's fairly pointless and, in some cases, detrimental. Most of the leveling experience has been made so 'accessible' that there's zero reason to group up with random people walking around an area. It's merely for the sake of seeing others do quests and or make it somewhat harder in terms of mob killing if you're used to a lower population realm. On a similar note, killing rare spawns in older content is harder because you're competing against multiple realms. Same for mining and herbalism with the added kicker that the guy who's grabbing all those nodes is from another realm and puts them up on HIS auction house which you can't use. Meanwhile on your low pop realm the prices are crazy because it's easier for a few people to corner the market.

They should have left it at adding the functionality of being able to 'realm hop' if you're invited to another party. Thus people actively seeking groups can have an easier time with world bosses and such, friends can level together, etc. PvP wise it's whatever. Alliance tends to dominate population on most PvP servers these days so you won't really notice a difference.

 

[v1rus]

Now, that sounds shitty. I was asking about limits tho, can you do dungeons/raids/pvp/world content with people from other realms? As far as i can remember, my old server, Dragonmaw (EU) is completely fuckin' abandoned. I remember trying a trial during WotlK or Cata, and seeing almost no items on AH.

 

[Metro]

Yes you can, which is the most redeeming aspect of it. To slightly clarify: you still have to be in the same region, i.e., people with the Europe client can't play with Americans.

 

[Revenant]

Mythic Hellfire Citadel raiding wasn't cross-realm at launch, IIRC. Everything else is fair game, though.

 

[Scroo]

I don't mind cross realm stuff, in fact I kinda like it. Gives me more stuff to kill in wPvP :3

 

[SionIV]

Let's see when the horse will fall over and finally die.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Let's see when the horse will fall over and finally die.

Get a comfortable seat.

 

[sser]

I liked pre-cross server because I played on a small server and was just about the only tank there worth a damn. It made grouping up for stuff very easy. Literally all I did were instances on my human warrior so by the time I got into the higher levels I was basically steamrolling through content with groups that could barely keep up, and my own character barely even needing healing because was so maxed out on tank items (until hitting lvl cap of course). Fun times. I was also virtually unkillable in PVP (again, until lvl cap) which made for some hilarious fun. I might get back into it because I want to play a brewmaster (I love kung fu shit), but it appears my account has been deleted or something so, uh, maybe not...

 

[Xor]

I started playing on a cata private server since I didn't play much cata back in the day...why the fuck can't I stop playing this game

 

[Hoaxmetal]

 

[deuxhero]

This advertisement seems... poorly thought out.

 

[Metro]

Perhaps Legion sales aren't going as well as they liked? I'm sure tons of people remember there was no content in the 6.1 update so Blizzard is forced to pre-hype a content patch that probably won't arrive for another six months before its actual expansion even launches.

 

[SionIV]

With subscription numbers at around 2.5 - 3 million, I highly doubt that sales will ever reach the 10 million number again. They should be happy if they can break 7 million, and even that seems very optimistic. There is nothing new nor exciting about Legion. They failed to deliver many of the things that they promised us in WoD, and what they did deliver was not what was expected. They really have to come up with a miracle to regain the trust and respect of their player base, the one that they have been alienating for years now saying "We know what you guys want".

The amount of content we get has been reduced with every expansion, and the prices for the expansions have been increasing. We're paying more money now than ever before, and we're getting less content.

Yes I'm fucking bitter, I spent a massive amount of time on this game and I've seen them slowly destroy it for years now. I started losing my faith in them during Cataclysm, I became more jaded with MoP and once WoD came out I gave up on it. They took something wonderful and broke it down into a simple shadow of what it once was.

 

[Echo Mirage]

I'm surprised at just how low the numbers are now. When I left there was around 7 million or so subscribers. And people had been saying forever that WoW was dying but were returning with each expansion. What the hell happened between the end of Pandaria and now for things to drop that low?

All I heard in my time away was that dungeons were great as were the raids but WOD daily quests were really bad and people were feeling imprisoned by their garrisons.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Perhaps Legion sales aren't going as well as they liked? I'm sure tons of people remember there was no content in the 6.1 update so Blizzard is forced to pre-hype a content patch that probably won't arrive for another six months before its actual expansion even launches.

Well, people have been streaming Legion Beta for half a year now so everything's been seen 1000x already.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

patch that probably won't arrive for another six months

It's supposed to be on PTR already after launch, so at least we'll see how far from competition it is.

What the hell happened between the end of Pandaria and now for things to drop that low?

Garrisons, son.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I'm surprised at just how low the numbers are now. When I left there was around 7 million or so subscribers. And people had been saying forever that WoW was dying but were returning with each expansion. What the hell happened between the end of Pandaria and now for things to drop that low?

All I heard in my time away was that dungeons were great as were the raids but WOD daily quests were really bad and people were feeling imprisoned by their garrisons.

Subscription numbers have been dropping since Cataclysm. Each expansion brings back some old players to check things out, who then quickly leave and the hemorrhage continues.

or if you prefer this:

Of course, the accurate numbers are from the last time Blizzard reported subscription numbers. They stopped doing that some time ago because the numbers are going down so fast. Based on people who run Census+ on official servers, the actual number of players is really low and this can be fairly easily confirmed by visiting the capitals and seeing them for the ghost towns that they largely are.

Legion will undoubtedly bring lot of players back but those same players will quit in a month when they've done personal weapon quest and the initial zone quests, and see that the rest of the content is garrisons 2.0 and other bullshit.

 

[SionIV]

While WoW subscriptions have decreased, it's never happened so fast before. Compare MoP to WoD and you'll see a massive jump in subscription losses.

 

[Zetor]

The main takeaway from that graph is steady unstoppable decline since Cataclysm, which shouldn't really surprise anyone.

What immediately caught my eye was that the number of subs during the 'expansion bump' phase of MoP and WoD was the same (10mil, WoD was very slightly above MoP here), indicating that the total number of people interested in WOW was still high... but the drop-off was much sharper for WoD, which makes sense considering what a shitty expac it was wrt content. I wonder what the bump for Legion will look like...

edit: interestingly, a lot of my guildies who've sworn off WOW are still planning to reactivate for any number of reasons. In addition to feature-related reasons (much less gear-based pvp, larger emphasis on challenging dungeons), there are plenty of ~feelz~ such as Karazhan, Dalaran, DHs/Illidan and the Warcraft movie (I swear I am not making this shit up). Also, the WoD setting / aesthetic was perceived as shit pretty much universally, it was like a less interesting Cataclysm... only without the 1-60 quest revamp this time.

 

[Maculo]

I am tempted to resub, which is a bad idea considering all the things going. The problem is that I really enjoy the first month or two of an expansion, but as time goes on I just cannot keep playing consistently. The new dungeon system looks promising though.

Edit: Warlocks look rather funky now, especially demonology. Demonology target switches look like a nightmare.