From F13, The Burning Crusade official trailer. Mostly a rehack of previously released CG scenes along with a few gameplay shots. Not so great.

Possible reasons of the letdown? The same speculations I’ve heard for some time:

Yes many members of the cinematics team have left Blizzard (three went to Red 5 Studios including the WoW cinematics director).

This E3 hasn’t been so amazing for Blizzard. Nothing too great to announce beside the Alliance race. Which was also deluding on its own. The model isn’t really good and the race hasn’t an overall interesting personality. Quite deluding.

I’ve quickly given a glance at the lore and it sounds really silly. Nothing even remotely close to the appeal of the original races. It’s like if the whole game is becoming more and more childish.

The Blood Elves racial traits not only seem more fun to play (with two skills interacting) but way too overpowered in PvP, following the trend that wants Alliance overpowered in PvE and Horde in PvP. Really bad design there, even if I have the suspect that to fire the Arcane Torrent you need to have the Mana Tap active (as hinted in the October’s leak), making the practical use a bit more tricky. The Draenei racials instead are pathetic and underline another design limitation.

They could have shown something more interesting like the flying mounts, or at least the standard mounts of the new races, but nothing. I don’t think this expansion will really bring something worthwhile and significant to the game. From the screenshots I’ve seen of the new zones there isn’t anything that tickles the interest. They seem rather bland and too close to what’s already in the game. “More content” doesn’t appeal me if this content doesn’t show anything new. It looks like it’s more of the same like EQ2 is doing. Not even a new feature for the graphic engine or the game in general.

But the real risk is another. This content risks to not be on par even with the WoW we know already.

Cosmik has the NY interview with Tigole. Some passages are really bad:

Q. Why not add any new low-level instances like Deadmines?

A. Stuff like the Deadmines and Wailing Caverns is extremely popular and gets a lot of use. But at the same time people skip over and pass that content extremely fast and they never go back. So there’s not a lot of bang for our buck in those dungeons. And Draenei and Blood Elves will be able to do those dungeons anyway. If we put the time into making another Deadmines, it would mean one less instance at level 60 or something when you need it to level up.

Hello flawed logic:

Q. Overall, what percentage of level 60 players do you think have killed Ragnaros?

A. I don’t have firm statistics, but my gut feeling is around 25 percent.

Q. And what about Nefarian?

A. From the gut, I’d say maybe 15 percent.

Beside the fact that he really has no clue about the overall playerbase (the numbers he gives are way too high to be reasonable), you get the idea.

There are valid reasons to avoid adding too much new content at the lower levels (like the mudflation), but the “convenience” of higher level content isn’t one.

(Tobold commented this too)

It’s insteresting also what he says about the itemization with tokens and factional grinds. Acknowledging what EVERYONE ELSE knew from the very beginning. Of course it’s the whole approach to be fucked up, but understanding that would be too much:

We sure have been learning from our mistakes. I think that itemization is something that’s never perfected. The key is just to learn from your mistakes and avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.

In Ahn’Qiraj and Zul’Gurub we realized we made a bad mistake with itemization. Token systems can be good and reputation systems can be very useful, but combining token systems with reputation requirements is not necessarily a good design decision, or at least it wasn’t with ZG and AQ. For example, ZG was supposed to be a stepping stone into raiding. So you take a guild that has little experience and they go into ZG and for a new group, it’s going to take them a few tries to down the first boss, Venoxis. And they finally kill Venoxis and what do they get? Probably one blue item and then this token item. But even using that token item might require Honored reputation, and so they feel like they’re not being rewarded.

I had that happen to me on one of my characters and I was like, “This is just broken.” So we realize things like that and we’re moving to fix them.

He had to have it happen to him to realize that his game design was broken.

They would be able to “fix them” only if they understood what is really wrong in the system. But they don’t. And don’t expect anything to change in ZG and AQ. When he says he wants to fix them he means with the new content. What was fucked up before will be left behind.

And they also have NO IDEA about the mudflation. This would be the VERY FIRST big problem you would have to consider when you start to design something new. Instead they don’t even have started testing it:

Q. In terms of how Burning Crusade players will be able to handle older content, how many level 70 characters, for example, do you think it will take to kill Ragnaros?

A. I’m not sure because we’re actually about to start testing on that, but I would guess 10 to 15.

They are just continuing to slam their face against the same wall. Blizzard was able to push forward the genre significantly and remove many bad habits. But now they don’t know how to proceed past the problems they revealed for the first time and the current trend will reveal to be ruinous.

This, of course, opens the way to the competition. There are many significant mistakes that Blizzard is doing and that could become the very strength of the competion. The problem here is that everyone else is even more clueless and no project (between the hundreds announced) has something valid to suggest and the resources to deliver.

So THERE IS a space. But there isn’t anyone that is moving to take it right now.

That’s pretty much what Blizzard’s E3 tells me. It is revealing vulnerabilities and that, past WoW’s huge success, they now seem out of fuel.

EDIT: LOL! Voltron!