I had a friend showing me some “cool stuff” in AoC, he got a load of mobs and then AoE’d them down, meh. Yet most MMO games have sunken down to this level of design where mobs are so brain dead you wonder how they managed to dress themselves in the morning.

How about mobs that react with intelligent Ai, camps that scream out alerts, that run, work as a team etc, that would make killing a mob a real achievement instead of having to kill 10 of the brain dead things to make it feel like you’ve done something.
Everquest 2 does have that a little, I’ve attack a group of 5 to have the tank taunt me off onto him while the healer of that group healed him up, it felt like I was at least in a battle.

And then do the same for the quests, they’re just as much a grind too, how about quests with multiple answers? They make you actually read the text (saving the player from themselves as a lot of quests we ignore have a good story) and then think.

Even better if you make one quest then effect another (maybe effected how you start by your alignment and previous events) then you could no longer just look everything up on the internet something else I think that detracts from the immersion of a game.

Add in other things you’ve mentioned, like being able to change the world (I love pvp mixed in with pve), and something more advanced graphically then the current canned animation models and it’ll be truly next generation, finally we’d get a world we can believe in again, a real successor and next step to EQ1.

Instead with a few PVP only MMO exceptions we’ve been going in the opposite direction for me, more linear, more theme park style less believable.

On the expansions though I preferred the Burning crusade to the original content, the difference here I think is the lore. I don’t have a clear idea what all these dragon aspects are still whereas the Burning Crusade just made sense from a story perspective feeling alien and epic, it didn’t feel high fantasy which initially disappointed me, but after I saw motorbikes and vehicles in the game I realised WoW’s not that sort of game any more anyway.

WotLK on the other hand felt a bit bland after that, and even worse all the content was so easy (and so linear) that I never felt like I had to think about a problem or up my play to do something until I was deep into raiding. In short the game became a chore, I have a feeling I’m not one of their target audience though here.

Because of that I’m guessing this new expansion will be pitched to a similar difficulty, that kills it for me content wise as its raid or quit then.

The other mechanic I’m suspicious of is this new advancement method where your progress is tied to this new archaeology profession, they’ve already admited the advancement is then gated. In other words they’ve taken levelling and combined it with the daily quest mechanic, now the daily quest mechanic was one thing I absolutely hated.

For example the crusader area with the jousting, the jousting itself was ok although not great, but what totally killed it for me was that I could only do it for 15 minutes every day, sure I could do other quests to advance all over the continent, but again they were so simple they were just another 15 minutes, mostly taken up travelling with very little action to engage my brain at the end.

Really bad decision in my opinion, but we’ll see how it turns out I guess.

The other clanger for this expansion I don’t like is the looking for group going multi-server, I’m fine with that in BG’s since pvp is a casual thing for me, but the downside is that I’ll not know anyone from that group before or after it.

Grouping is how I met friends in the game, how we recruited for the guild etc, this change is going to limit that. If its as bad as I feel it could be it could turn WoW even further in Guildwars, a game where you meet up in cities/towns that are big not too instanced areas and then enter into lots of small 5-8 player instances, its moving a long way from the massive formulae, (I’ve been playing Planetside recently and its amazing how far ahead that is when it comes to getting a lot of people together in one area in comparison).

A better solution I think would have been to merge servers, I find it odd personally that in 2004 we had a server that could support X number of people, yet in 2009 technology hasn’t moved on apparently enough to increase the number per a server.

1. Kill the grind. The “grind” is relevant only in a massively multiplayer environment which needs to reward time commitment. This is not to say everyone should instantly be level 80; rather, change the mechanics in such a way to diminish “leveling for leveling’s sake”.

2. Player actions matter. Completed quests should result in permanent changes to the game world. Forged alliances make new enemies, and vice versa. Who you work should actually matter (and this is not just loot). Monster distributions, quests, loot tables change with time, within areas, within regions.

3. A world exists outside the player. Alliance forces forge a temporary alliance and push into horde territory only to be broken by an emergency truce with the undead. Liches rise to power but are ultimately pushed back by a pack of brave adventurers which may or may not include you. No one, including the player, “wins” the game (in general, “victory” in most modern games is far too oversimplified).

4. Achievements outside the achievement system. This was talked about a long time ago, but completely scrap the achievement system and replace with a reputation-based system on multiple axes. Wealth/poverty, saint/evil dictator, trustworthy/conman, brave/cowardly, etc. This should affect all of the above, including who wants to speak with you, quests obtained, dialog choices, etc.

A long long time ago in an MMO far far away, EQ revamped the Befallen once to try to get people to back to the old world. It didn’t work so well as it wasn’t really done properly and it was only 1 zone.

Enter EQ2, which is basically Norrath after the Sundering (AKA a huge Cataclysm) with which they made a whole new game out of.

The thing I think Cataclysm has going for it is that it builds on where Blizz knows their success lies. I loved Vanilla WoW and many others did as well when it came out (obviously). It was followed up by what many claim to be the single trashiest expansion ever made, Burning Crusade, which introduced sci-fi, interdimensional fortresses and space goats. Very lame. Then Blizz went back to its roots and released WotLK, located in Northrend, BACK on Azeroth.

Now, Cataclysm not only remains on Azeroth, but also revamps the old world, making it new, but gives people the chance to go back and experience the old world how it is now, before they change it.

The other things the more successful expansions had that BC didn’t was a verifiable Dragon Aspect presence. Yes you got to see Sinestra out on the netherdrake island, but they never went anywhere with it and the aspects weren’t really all that important, save for the CoT instances (which dealt with the infintes).

Vanilla had Onyxia. BWL and the black dragonflight as their main focus points. WotLK has ALL the aspects present in glorious fights, makes Malygos a prime target as well as Sartharion and evolves the dragons into proto-drakes. Cataclysm will shift focus to Deathwing, yet another famous dragon, as the main bad person (that we know of right now). I guess people like dragons in their fantasy MMOs

MMOs should be a constantly evolving experience. Lands should change, NPCs should die, events should happen. Cataclysm is going to shake things up. Pardon the pun

I will not pay a subscription to play *any* game, but the times I’ve played WoW (either as trials or at a friend’s place), I’ve enjoyed puttering around in the world, and would willingly buy a single player offline version of the game.

I really don’t like grindy, shallow DIKU game mechanics, but the art direction in WoW really is excellent.

They have made some design decisions that I think are idiotic (Achievements, rep grinds, back and forth quests, etc.), but I think that Cataclysm’s Old Azeroth revamp is a great idea. (OK, maybe it’s just because I advocated such a year ago.)

So, yes, I think that they are on the right track with Cataclysm, inasmuch as they seem to be addressing some fundamental problems with a game that stays “online” for more than a few years. They aren’t going far enough in my direction to make me buy in, but I do concede that they seem to be doing some things right. (A concession I make fairly regularly; they wouldn’t be as successful as they are without doing at least *something* right, but neither am I willing to put them on a pedestal.)

- (1) – For raid bosses only!

- (2) – I seem to have missed the announcement that guild XP will be convertible to gold… Are you sure it is not just a token system to purchase guild items and heirlooms?

- (3) – How significant remains to be seen. Granted if you don’t raid you don’t whipe, so your soloing costs are already reduced. Goblins will repair at lowest prices just by racial.

- (4) – Noone said these “heirlooms” will replace actual set items. For all it’s worth they could be just cosmetic, like guild tabards. Also noone said you could fill your entire inventory with just heirloom items – it could be just a shoulder piece. We already know the concept of “guild recipes”, so heirlooms might not even be items at all. Even then, the matter of their cost remains, as well as whether they will be better than high end PvE/PvP rewards. I suspect they will be something like badge vendor loot.

- (5) The guilds will be able to buy, but it will still cost them, so the gold sellers are still in business. Also noone said they will be able to buy all their reagents, nor did they say the amounts of reagents you could buy will be unlimited. This is just wishful thinking here, as Blizzard will be fools to completely void half of their professions.

I think to understand the direction of Blizzard’s expansions you have to consider what their rivals are doing.

When TBC launched the rival was Vanguard. (VG was a horrible failure as it turned out but no one knew this in advance). To spoil Vanguard, a game aiming to get raiding back to its roots, they implemented a very raid-focussed expansion with substantial challenge.

When WotlK launched the rivals were AoC and War. To spoil them WotLK had more accessible raiding, a dark gothic look, a dark gothic new character class and some very well designed new pvp content.

When Cat launches (when the Cat is out of the bag?) the main rival will be SWTOR. SWTOR will emphasise story and alting so expect Cat to be very strong in these areas.

A few bloggers are claiming Cat will kill soloing :
http://playervsdeveloper.blogspot.com/2009/08/on-supposed-death-of-solo-pve-in.html

This won’t happen because if they killed soloing soloers would play SWTOR.