Part 3 of 4 (1 – 2 – 4)

Here’s your rumors.

To begin with, Jeff Green’s post confirming the two new races in the expansion has been deleted. For reference I’ll mirror it here:

Yay! I can almost start talking about it. Yeah, sorry, that was a bit of a tease, wasn’t it? Well, the issue is due out in about two weeks. Blizzard would probably rip me a new one, and, even worse, disable my WoW account, if I started leaking information here. The only other person who knows anything is my daughter, who also plays WoW and can’t keep a secret. So, if you can figure out which of the millions of players she is online and hit her up, I’m sure she’s spill. :)

I got to see pretty much everything—except for whatever the new race for the Alliance will be. That one they’re either keeping a secret or, more quite possibly, haven’t figured out themselves yet. But everything else I know. And while, like I said, I can’t spill details yet, I can tell you it is *huge*–tons of new content for all levels. It definitely got me motivated to get Eggbert, my gnome warlock, up to 60 ASAP. So I have many nights of serious “work” ahead of me. Yay!

So, as soon as Blizzard gives me the okay, I will replace my desktop picture with our December cover, which pictures an awesome painting from one of the Blizzard artist’s of the new Horde race. I hate being a tease (well, okay, it’s a little fun), but I just can’t tell ya yet. But soon!

Here is, instead, the translation of the *official* explanation about the “leaked” cover of the magazine announcing the level cap to 70:

“During Monday, 17 October we have closed various topics about World of Warcraft. The cover of the upcoming “The Games Machine” in the preview section of this site was also modified. This happened to comply our agreement with Blizzard Entertainment. The omission isn’t representing the desire to censor or disinform, but just the respect of the set date to disclose informations. What happened won’t compromise the content of the next issue of “The Game Machine” that will be regularly out next week.”

Thanks.”

Which basically means (my english is broken but my italian is not) that the cover of the magazine with the title of the expansion (The Burning Crusade) and the catchphrase hinting the cap to 70 were, indeed, reliable.

Again on the forum of the magazine some readers are claiming to own a copy of the preview and wrote down some of the features (and here we have an high probability of fake, but, still, they could make sense):

—
New region:
Outlands

New Instances:
Kharazan – Inside Medivh’s tower in the Deadwing Pass zone (5-man instance evolving into raid)

Caverns of Time in Tanaris (unusual place where the players will be able to move back and forth in time to reenact the main events of the history of Warcraft)

Level cap raised to lvl 70 – There will be repetable quests to gain access to a flying epic mount usable only in the Outlands.

New profession: Jewelcrafting, it will be possible to create gems to apply to weapons and armors and add effects. Other professions will be able to craft objects with embedded slots for these gems.

New races:
Horde – Blood Elves with a new starting zone north of Eastern Plaguelands and a new dungeon.
Alliance – Undisclosed

Battlegrounds shared between servers.

Atmospherical effects.

Release: Not before May 2006.

—
The new region isn’t Northrend but the Outlands, with the remains of the planet Dreanor, the world of the first orcs. The remains of this planet float in the air, this is why it will be formed like separated “isles”.

Same for Tanaris. There will be a brand new instance working like a temporal breach that will allow the players to time travel (hence the name: Caverns of Time) and reenact past events. The war at mount Hyal is one.

The level 70 is real, but no hero classes.

The new race for the horde is the blood elf. The racial traits will be a “Mana Tap” to slowly leech the mana of the target (it will be applicable more than once like the Sunder Armor) and that will then directly load the second trait: “Arcane Torment (or Torrent)” which will work like an area silence. The starting zone will probably be near Quel’thalas.

The Alliance race is still not available but it seems it will be Pandarens.

The new profession will be Jewelcrafting that works in a similar way to how the gems worked in Diablo 2.

And btw, the main boss will be Illidian.

—
Finally, yet another creation screen appeared on the internet (LOL!).

Some of what is written here is true. Some isn’t. It’s like a game. Enjoy.

—
As anticipated in the other article, here more juicy details:

Excerpt:

Now, instead, what will be a surprise: the maximum level for the characters will be upped to 70. As he heard about this, ToSo (an editor) started immediately to weep that he wanted back the all exp he wasted doing quests when already 60 (“and of course! I’m not going to clean cat ass forever!” -ToSo), so if you had the same reaction you are going to take it in the booty. Although the Hero classes haven’t been announced (Rob Pardo, Vice President of Game Design, said: “if we screw the hero classes we risk to fuck up the whole game”) Blizzard didn’t deny they’ll be in the expansion but also didn’t promise it. So we cannot really say much more.

– The new Alliance race WON’T be revealed at BlizzCon and there are more than just rumors confirming it will be the Pandarens.

– Kharazan should be playable at BlizzCon but it’s still undefined how it will be shaped out (could probably start as a 5-man with a second part for a raid of 20 or 40 players).

– The Blood Elves will be Mages, Warlocks and Warriors but it’s undecided if either hunters or rogues.

– Their starting zone will be Quel’Thalas (what is left of it), north of the Eastern Plaguelands and with a three-zones valley inbetween (Eversong Woods with the capital Silvermoon, Ghostland and a troll themed zone called Zul’Aman).

– About the live content, the opening of Silithus will be introduced by a live event that will require the collaboration of everyone and that will only happen once for each server. Behind the gates there will be a open zone tailored for 20 players (defined by Blizzard “casual hardcore”) with a temple at the center with an instance that will be the biggest to date (two-three times Molten Core). The players will also get access to special mounts (insects) that will be only usable in the dungeon.

– The Outlands will be divided into differently themed regions (like the rock valleys of the Hellfire Peninsula and the luxuriant forests of Zanga Marsh, part of what is left of Dreanor). While within Shadowmoon Valley there will be the Black Temple with the Illidian guy.

– The flying mount will be for level 70 players and after an epic quest chain. But only usable in the Outlands (floating isles).

– No new engine changes or features. The Blood Elves models seem to use 20% more polygons. Blizzard is also sperimenting with Specular Environmental Mapping.

– The atmospherical effects should arrive soon(TM) as a live patch.

– Also, by the time the expansion is out, the BGs should be finally linked between the servers to kill the queues.

—

Hopefully last edit ever:
I refused to make public my translation of the expansion preview, this is why I gathered only this sort of feature list. But if you want to read a more fluent translation of the article you can look here. Besides a few minor imprecisations and omissions it’s a decent translation of the whole thing (I could read only 80% of it, myself, so there are parts missing here).

—
Last update as explained here (I also slightly edited some details above to avoid contradictions):

– The whole expansion will be centered around the Outlands, Medivh and the Dark Portal to make the main storyline progress.

– Background: Sargeras, the Titan representing the “evil” in the game, still wants to destroy the universe. His last plan is to ignore Azeroth, where he ecountered an unexpected resistence, to focus on the Outland. The realm with the remains of the planet of Dreanor, homeland of the orcs. What is left of this place grants access to the Twisting Nether, a portal that can be used to access every other plane of the existence. Here is where the battle between the forces of Azeroth and the demonic forces of Sargeras and his two lieutenants, Archimonde and Kil’Jaeden, will take place.

– The orcs were brought on Azeroth by Medivh through the Dark Portal. Still through the same portal the humans invaded Dreanor and damaged the portal, producing devastations on both sides. Destroying Dreanor from one and creating the Blasted Lands from the other.

– Through the Caverns of Time (located in Tanaris) the players will be able to see the zone surrounding the portal before the disaster and, in particular reenact the invasion of the orcs through the portal. The Caverns of Time are the place where the bronze dragons lead by Nordozmu “supervise” the flow of time.

– The Caverns of Time will allow the players to reenact three events. The invasion of the orcs as written above, the release of Thrall from enslavement and the battle of Mount Hyal, where the humans, orc and elves defeated Arthas and his army.

– The Deadwind Pass zone should get a restyle with the new year to be ready for the release of the expansion and the Kharazan instance.

– At least these two big instances are confirmed. Kharazan and the Caverns of Time.

Part 2 of 4 (1 – 3 – 4)

Taken from Corpnews. Both screenshots and commentary that I see fit:

Freakazoid:
I fully expect this expansion to take an easy route. By that, I mean they will re-use as much texture and models as they can and still call it new content. I also don’t expect anymore plot integrity. The recent good-dragons-gone-bad thing tells me Blizzard has given up on immersion to support the catassers who are happy to have a new dragon to raid.

CrashCat:
I was going to say, I’m sure glad those millions of subscriptions gave them enough money to afford sophisticated development techniques such as pallette shifting. Woo!

It seems that the Horde got its “pretty” race. A bit too familiar. but pretty.

(and we’ll finally discover that the alliance/horde unbalance problem is not as trivial as everyone expected it to be…)

I remove from the homepage the creation screen that was revealed (in the comments here) as fake.

Now can I have my quiet website back? Those are just a couple of screenshots posted everywhere.

Part 1 of 4 (2 – 3 – 4)

I get italian news from the interweb.

THE BURNING CRUSADE.

The correct translation of the diciture is: “Blizzard surprises everyone by bringing us to level 70!”

Or something like that. Now it’s 22.30 here, but you can be sure I’ll go out early tomorrow and find out what I can. If there’s something juicy I could try to scan it. I’m not sure whether the magazine is out or not, though.

Anyway, that’s the most important PC game magazine we have here and it is surely reliable.

It’s also sad that Blizzard couldn’t think anything else than just to rise the level cap. How innovative.

EDIT: It seem the scan was posted on the official site and is now removed. It’s not sure whether a fake or deleted on Blizzard request. The moderators on the forum of the magazine are closing all the threads about the episode and asking everyone to understand that the situation isn’t simple and they cannot comment further.

Official comment from the editor of the magazine: at this point it’s advisable a general “no comment”. Do it for me, please! (and thanks)

They have always previewed the cover and summary long before the magazine is out. I believe they just didn’t anticipate what was going to happen in this special case and now they are in trouble.

And, since we are talking about rumors, there’s a screenshot hinting that the new horde race will be the “blood elves”. That the expansion will have two new races, one for each faction, was somewhat confirmed here.

Worldofwar also commented this “leak” and added more details about the title:

A little more on the Burning Crusade name. This trademark was registered by Blizzard back on 3 May of this year under ‘computer software’. At the time speculation tied it to a WoW expansion after discovering mention of the name on Blizzard’s page about Sargeras, champion of the Titans, specifically this bit:

“Once Sargeras saw that his armies were amassed and ready to follow his every command, he launched his raging forces into the vastness of the Great Dark. He referred to his growing army as the Burning Legion. To this date, it is still unclear how many worlds they consumed and burned on their unholy Burning Crusade across the universe.”

And finally a screenshot with what seems a Blood Elves town:

Something that has been coming up repeatedly in the recent past is the player perception of Meeting Stones. While we have worked to add functionality to them, players do not appear to be using them much. I have made comments regarding this topic before, however, I would like to take the opportunity to gather specifics from the community.

It has been mentioned that certain mods are preferred for an LFG system. We would like to have a system in place that is particular to this game and to that end I would ask the community to participate in the following feedback thread.

Maybe you can get your stupid feedback from the leaked patch notes.

Follow-up.

—

Frott:
And this is just bullshit: if you normally play in the “off hours” wouldn’t it make sense to play on a server where your “peak hours” are most of the server’s peak hours? IE, play sorted by locale?

You really come across at arguing both sides of the argument, with yourself.

No, that’s bullshit.

Having both coasts play on the same servers means that the population shifts and is kept uniform. Which means that the life cycle of each server for each day last more hours. The server is playable for more hours.

At the same time the population on each server is kept constant and doesn’t have high peaks and valleys. In WoW they had HUGE SERVER PROBLEMS because all the players on a server log ALL AT ONCE. Exactly because all the players on that server chose the same timezone.

This is why Blizzard needed to push more that 100 servers. Because all the servers filled up quickly instead of having a balanced population spread between the hours. If the servers weren’t matched with timezones the population during an evening would shift uniformly from the east coasters to the west coasters. On the same server.

The same server would hold a lot more players thanks to this uniform load because it wouldn’t have 3500 players logging ALL AT ONCE, to the leave en-masse three hours later, leaving the server in a “low” status (and hence the latest resort to mark the servers permanently “full”).

Everything I say was confirmed by Blizzard and all the problems they had. I’m sure you do not remember but Blizzard blatantly begged the players to log on servers flagged for different timezones from their own:

# When choosing your server for the first time, the server wizard will suggest a server with low load to improve your game-play experience. However, if you decide to pick your own server to play on, we suggest picking a server where the population is not high during peak hours (peak hours are 6pm through midnight in your local time zone).

Should I quote yourself again?

Frott:
wouldn’t it make sense to play on a server where your “peak hours” are most of the server’s peak hours? IE, play sorted by locale?

As you can see your idea isn’t Blizzard idea. They asked the players to go play on different timezones as they saw that the idea of localizing the servers had DISASTROUS consequences (should I remember you the situation of the servers in the first months? And should I remember how unbalanced they STILL are?).

Not only. Two weeks after launch they applied an EMERGENCY PATCH to REMOVE THE TIMEZONES from the UI.

Because they finally noticed, too late, how completely retarded were those ideas and how completely clueless they were about these problems.

I found a thread on FOH’s forums that reminded me my (futile) crusade against the localised and “timezoned” servers in WoW more than a year ago, with me in full berserk on any known forum. Today, my words are even more valid than how they were at that time.

This is what I replied today to that thread.
—

Kolle:
That’s all sad and terrible, but the conspiracy part comes into play with server listings. Some of you have probably noticed that the realm select list isn’t exactly accurate. I noticed this many months ago when I was searching for a new home loaded with PvP and PvE endgame. I quickly realized that I couldn’t judge things by the realm select list. This was a painful lesson when I bothered getting about 40 levels on a character before bothering to do a census on both sides during primetime to actually see what the truth was. The ‘full’ listing was anything but right. I only thought to check because I found out how dead the lvl 60 BGs were.

I can explain this.

Before they introduced the “full” flag the “high”, “medium” and “low” values weren’t dependent on “fixed” numbers. For example an “high” server during the offpeak was equal to LESS players. This because, instead of using a fixed value, the flags were set on a percent value based on the overall pool of players between all the servers.

This means that there were always 1/3 of the servers flagged for each category, no matter of the time of the day and the current population (for example you’d find about the same number of “high” servers even if checking during the early morning, when you would expect all servers to be “low” or “medium” at best).

When the “full” flag was introduced nothing in the system changed. The “full” flag was just an added “manual” flag, set directly by Blizzard.

This means that a “full” server will be always shown as full even if there’s just one player loggeed in. But this also didn’t change the previous system. The system still wants 1/3 of the servers for EACH category. With the difference that it considers the “full” servers as “high”. In fact you can see that, at any time, there are only 2-3 servers marked as high, while all the other available “spots” in the category are taken by servers *permanently* marked as “full”.

The division between “high”, “medium” and “low” is still correct (while the order WITHIN each category was broken by Blizzard and still is). Instead the “full” servers are manually and permanently marked as full, no matter of the population.

Kolle:
The situation is this: Several PvP servers are listed as ‘full’ when in fact they are low or barely medium.

If you follow what I wrote you can easily understand why this happens. The “full” flag isn’t set by the log-in server as it happens for the other three flags (high, medium and low) but it’s instead set *manually* and remains *permanent*. This means that it will never change, no matter of the actual situation of the server.

Blizzard decided to do this because servers like Blackrock had insane peak times, focusing on just a few hours to then descend to low or medium for most of the day when they were even surpassed by more balanced servers. This had the result of players rolling on those servers expecting to have them moderately crowded when instead they had just insane peaks and off-peaks. So they decided to brand them permanently “full” and discourage the players to create characters no matter of the time of the day.

Ultimately this is again the direct result of the retarded decision to divide the servers in different timezones and localize them as much as possible. Creating and making critical the peaks and off-peaks of the population.

Making a point: I ranted *endlessly* for MONTHS against this during beta. We were discussing and criticizing that retarded decision to localize the servers in September 2004. Quoting Walt:

WoW’s population peaks and valleys will be worse than most other MMO’s out there.

Having a worldwide server – like EQ – means that population lows in Europe, East Coast, West Coast and Asia don’t coincide – the servers remain relatively populated as players log in and log off throughout their peak playing hours.

WoW won’t have that – when they are at off-peak, they will *really* be off peak, and their server populations will be very low.

And we were discussing the problems of the BGs and the cross-server idea back in early June 2004.

And quoting myself again months ago:

Most of the problems they had about load balance are design problems before techincal problems. That they BLATANTLY ignored. In the same way they are having now SERIOUS population and faction balance issues that will become cronic six month down the road.
—
Right now the servers are starting to see the beginning of many problems that will become critical in the next months. In particular in the battlegrounds (but not only).

There are simply not enough players and not enough balanced between the factions to support properly the battlegrounds and make them accessible and playable. While this can be tolerated on an high populate server, the possibilities to enjoy the PvP in a smaller server or during the off-peak are TINY. Tiny right now that the Battlegrounds are a novelty and everyone goes to check them. Now think to what happens six months down the road when pretty much everyone will be bored to tears to perma-catass an insane honor system that isn’t satisfying for anyone.

Why this belongs to this thread? Because it’s back about the role of the design into balancing BOTH the population between the servers AND between the factions. My simple point is: this is a relevant aspect of the game that CANNOT be ignored, it has the highest priority and you should start from there as you start to plan something. Surely not something you discover and figure out six months AFTER RELEASE.

Six months (and more) have passed. And I stand correct.

(continued)

Yesterday there were reports about Nefarion, the big guy at the end of BlackWing Lair (I think), being finally killed (with pathetic drops, by the way).

Today Blizzard hotfixes the game because the kill was illegitimate and due to an exploit instead of good community cooperation.

It reminds me of something.

Best Q&A ever (on Slashdot, even):

Q: How much economic monitoring do you do?

A: We monitor the economics of the game very closely.

Q: Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently, and when?

A: We learned from those challenges and used that knowledge to improve the game at every opportunity.

Q: What is the process the dev team goes through for balancing character classes, items, NPCs, etc.? Also, How much of an effect does feedback from the community have on this process?

A: Our designers work very hard to try to balance the game. The feedback of our beta testers has always been invaluable.

Q: Are you planning to introduce “events” into the gaming world that would actually shape it permanently, like in Asheron’s call?

A: That’s something we’re looking into.

Q: The early game is brilliant, and playing it was a joy. Why is that so hard to retain in level 60 play?

A: It is difficult to please all gamers all the time.

Q: Would your company encourage, allocate time for and generally nudge willing developers to blog?

A: Huh? We feel that the World of Warcraft community site is a great way to keep gamers up to date and informed about every aspect of World of Warcraft. The forums are also a great place for gamers to express their opinions and give feedback about the game.

Informativeness for the win.