Some of these changes sound like a major letdown, but I'm sure the expansion will still end up awesome. The one thing that is probably supposed to excite me but does not is the part where they say Cataclsym is adding 3000 new quests compared to Wrath's 1000. Of course, I guess that includes the whole level range of 1-85, not just 80 to 85. When I first read it I thought oh great, I get to do 2000+ quests just to get from 80 to 85.
As for the possible change to glyphs, I don't think it's a good idea. Making the glyphs just permanent and you can switch around whenever would be like letting you only have to buy one epic gem of each type, then when you felt like it you could just change them around without buying new ones. It's not like it's hard or really expensive to buy glyphs when you need different ones for different fights and stuff.
Say bye bye to making any money on Inscription (other than perhaps the bit from Vellums).
As someone who had his income gutted by the changes to disenchanting (and oh how everyone here told me to suck it up) allow me to be the first to play the world's tinniest violin for all the Inscriptionists.
My main's an Enchanter too so I hear you, believe me, but making any profession go from profitable to goldsink (potentially) is moving in the wrong direction, in my opinion.
GS is a very effective tool for those who know how to properly use it.
But that's only two people.
I wasn't initially sad about Path of the Titans being removed until I realized it was the only character customization after 80 (5 talent points that for most builds aren't going to be that useful? meh).
I think the sum of all the new info has left me feeling underwhelmed.
Path of the Titans: Removed!
Blizzard has scrapped the entire Path of the Titans progression system. As it is, it may be coming back—but not likely.
Tom Chilton explained that Blizzard had spent a long time working on the Path of the Titans system, trying to balance making it complicated enough to be interesting, but simple enough to be understandable. At the end of the day, they realized that they had ripped it all down until it resembled an upgrade to the glyph system. Simultaneously, they felt that the Glyph system wasn't as much of a game-changer in WotLK as they had originally wanted it to be, so they've decided instead to scrap the Path of the Titans concept, and instead focus on making the glyph system into the feature they had originally wanted.
Glyph System Changes
To accomplish this, they've added a new tier of glyphs: Medium Glyphs. Tom explained that in Wrath, people were really powergaming their glyph choices—that glyphs, like talents, had gotten to a point where everyone agreed on what the "best" glyphs were for each class and spec, and anyone who chose otherwise was dumb. With medium glyphs, they're trying to break that system up a bit—major glyphs are still critical, but minor and medium glyphs have more flexibility.
On the UI side, there have also been a few changes—I was asked not to take photos, but the glyph UI now lists all the possible glyphs for your class. Tom Chilton pointed out that up until now there had been no way to get a complete list of all your possible glyphs in-game—the only option was to go to the Auction House and look through what was available (or to patronize our own fine establishment).
There was also talk about making glyphs permanent rather than consumable—so that as soon as you used a glyph for the first time, it was added to your "list", and thereafter you could rearrange your glyphs later on as you chose.
Guild Advancement
Guild Reputation
Firstly, the whole guild currency idea has been scrapped. The rewards that they had originally had in mind for that system, like special guild tabards and mounts (with your guild insignia on them and everything!) are now unlocked by guild achievements. Rather than buying them with guild currency, you buy them with simple gold—but which rewards you can buy is restricted by your guild reputation.
You farm guild rep by doing four things:
Completing quests
Doing rated Battlegrounds
Killing raid bosses (to get credit, the raid that downs the boss must be mostly comprised of guild members—7/10 for 10-mans, and 20/25 for 25-mans)
Earning guild achievements
Basically, you'll be farming rep with your guild in exactly the same way you would farm any endgame rep—and the rewards will (presumably) be similar. A final decision hasn't been made yet about how guild reputation will transfer (if at all) between alts, but they did say that leaving a guild won't immediately wipe your guild reputation—though joining a new guild probably will.
Guild Achievements
Some examples of possible guild achievements were offered:
10,000 total quests completed
Having a max-rank of every profession
Having an 85 of every class
etc.
In addition, some of the existing achievements (like the classic raiding meta) are being converted into guild achievements, to give players a reason to go back and do them. This allows players to farm achievements to help their guild's rank and their guild reputation, even if they already have them all.
As it stands now, guild achievements will be retained by the guild, even if all the members of the guild who were present when the achievement was earned have left the guild. The guild achievement pane actually lists the guild members who were present at the time the achievement was originally earned.
Guild Leveling
The whole guild talents idea has been scrapped as well. Tom Chilton talked for a while about the issues they faced—Can only the guild leader pick the talents? Do you have respecs? Who pays for them? How do you make all the players feel involved? Do you min-max builds, so that all guilds feel the same? Instead, they've altered it to a simpler system: each guild progresses normally from level 1 to level 25, and gains a new perk at each level—just like a character learning new spells. The guild menu will now show you what your existing perks are, and what the perks will be come the next guild level. No information was given about how exactly guilds would progress, but it's easy to guess at possible methods—raiding, group pvp, guild achievements, etc.
New Guild Interface
Another thing I was frustrated not to be able to photograph, guilds now have a fully revamped interface with a lot of long-awaited features.
First of all, there's a new guild landing page, with a news feed—something broadly similar to the character feed for individual characters on the Armory, but for the entire guild—listing recent successes in raiding, new characters hitting max level, etc. You can also flag items as "sticky", in case you want to make sure the Message of the Day stays up there, or you're exceptionally proud of a recent kill.
In addition, the guild roster is now filterable. You can now see the professions of your guild members from the guild menu—and sort players by profession. This enables you to do things like searching for a crafter in your guild who can make the item you need, so you can easily contact them—a HUGE time-saver.
Raids
10-Mans and 25-Mans
You guys already know that Blizzard is planning to consolidate 10-man and 25-man raiding into less of a difficulty setting and more of a playstyle choice. This means that 10-man and 25-man encounters will be designed to have roughly the same difficulty level, and will drop items from the same loot table. To compensate for the additional logistical hassle of getting 25 players online rather than 10, Blizzard will be giving out more loot per player in 25-mans—specifically, about 50% more. It was strongly hinted that this extra loot would come in the form of Emblems.
What they hadn't announced previously is the ability to "downshift" your raid. Imagine if you do a 25-man run of a new instance, get about halfway through, and call it a night. The next day you get back together to do another run, but—big surprise—only 20 people show up. Well, now you can "downshift" your raid into two separate 10-man groups, and just keep right on going. The maximum number of 10-mans you can make out of one 25-man is three—meaning, if the remaining five guys show up the next day, they can swap down to a 10-man as well and keep right on going.
Blizzard is not allowing players to "upshift". They explained that they felt this would cause a lot of pressure on guild to pull some really unpleasant maneuvers—for instance, stripping out the bottom 15 players to do some particularly difficult encounter, and then inviting them all back in for trash. They figured the legitimate use-cases for upshifting a raid were much more rare.
Raid Lockouts
Here's another big change—they've added a great deal of flexibility to raid lockouts. Rather than being locked into a particular raid ID, you can now join any raid, as long as it doesn't have any bosses up that you have already killed. Basically, as long as you're not killing the same boss twice in one lockout period—you have total freedom.
New Zones
Stormwind
Has been completely redesigned to accomodate fly-overs. A lot of attention specifically has been paid to Stormwind Keep.
A second trade district—mailbox, auction house, bank, etc.—has been added to the Dwarven District.
On the way out of Blackrock mountain, Deathwing has destroyed the Park completely. Have no fear—the druid trainers have relocated.
They've added some new areas in the back—some lake area, as well as a city cemetery. Some quests have been added here to help flesh them out.
Orgrimmar
Garrosh is hanging out in the center of Orgimmar, not the Valley of Wisdom. A metaphor?
The goblins have their own area, the Goblin Slums, in the west end of the Valley of Spirits. Garrosh doesn't think much of them.
There is a second trade district in Orgrimmar too—in the Valley of Honor. They're also adding more forges.
The Valley of Wisdom is now a Tauren district.
There's now a back gate, leading into Azshara—providing a convenient entrance for goblins leveling through that zone.
The Drag is the only throwback to old Orgrimmar.
The Bastion of Twilight
This will be a raid offshoot of Grim Batol, run by the Twilight's Hammer.
This is the "Naxxramas" of Cataclysm—entry level raiding.
5 boss fights, plus a sixth Algalon-style optional, ultra-hard boss.
Will include a "council" fight of Twilight Ascendants, cultist ascended into elementals
Final (non-optional) boss: Cho'gall!
Skywall
The elemental plane of air, home to both a dungeon and a raid
Vortex Pinnacle: 5-man, will battle against the minions of Al'Akir the Windlord. Bosses include a djinn, a storm dragon, and a lesser elemental lord
You will be able to use your flying mount to fly from platform to platform (real mount, unlike The Oculus)
Raid is similar to this, but larger in scope—you WILL fight Al'Akir himself
Holy cow I wish I could take pictures, this place looks gorgeous. It's like a cross between Ulduar, Dalaran, and clouds.
Deepholm
The Orgrim's Hammer has crash-landed in this zone! The Skybreaker is still in the air, and you will be tasked with finding out what happened!
Deepholm USED to be settled, but when Deathwing broke out of the Earth temple, the whole zone became disrupted.
Therazane the Stonemother will be hanging out here. She'll run a quest hub with dailies and a rep similar to the Sons of Hodir, but, you know, better.
Uldum
This is like WoW does Egypt. Like titan architecture, but with squares and pyramids instead of circles and globes.
Denizens of Uldum are called the "Tol'Vir", and are connected somehow with Al'Akir's wind elementals.
Other Juicy Tidbits
The Shimmering Flats is mostly submerged, but the majority of the gameplay still takes place above water.
You will be hearing brand new music in familiar zones.
The Forsaken are coming into their own—you'll be seeing their own unique architecture as they spread across Silverpine Forest and other zones.
When you gain a level, an announcement appears in the center of the screen letting you know what new abilities you have access to, and advising you to see your trainer. Skills you're leveled for but haven't trained yet will be marked as such in your spellbook.
Archaeology will let you find two types of items—Common Artifacts, which are kind of a collection game where you're trying to find all of the artifacts for a particular race, and Rare Items which will produce actual usable items. Most Rare Items will be cosmetic only, but a few will have actual effects.
Cross-server raiding still hasn't been solved. They're working on it, but it's not there yet.
There will be more Algalon-style encounters—ultra-hard optional bosses for hardcore players only.
The current heirlooms will stop growing after level 80. There will be a whole new crop of heirlooms for Cataclysm. Goblins and Worgen will be able to start using heirlooms immediately at launch.
Wrath of the Lich King had about 1000 new quests. Cataclysm has over 3000.
Path of the titans seemed fun and interesting at first, but it also was a gated progression setup, so new 85's would have to slog through it for a while before they reach full potential power. It would have really annoyed me once I'm 2 or 3 alts into the expansion. Taking the ideas to make glyphs more interesting seems fine.
Also Guild Talents being simplified down into a plain levelling system seems fine, although the guild reputation thing seems odd.
-SPI- on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited June 2010
Well the concept of guilds having a reputation is a sound one. I just hope the rewards are appropriate.
Edit - And the guild tab being revamped sounds cool as shit.
Well the concept of guilds having a reputation is a sound one. I just hope the rewards are appropriate.
Edit - And the guild tab being revamped sounds cool as shit.
I don't think guilds themselves have a reputation (just levels), but characters within a guild have a reputation which seems to be raised just by doing the same things that would level the guild up. It makes it so someone can't join a guild and immediately have access to all the goodies the guild has earned.
I guess I like that.
Tomanta on
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GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
edited June 2010
Guild levels 1-5 should just be additional bank tabs. Yes, my guild consists entirely of people like that Orc in the PA comic.
On another note, I need an addon that replaces all ingame sounds with that Vuvuzela horn. And a tool to remotely install it on every computer everywhere.
That's a bummer they're removing Path of the Titans. I was pretty excited about having an option to advance and customize my character further. I hope they add something to replace it but it's prolly not going to happen since it would likely push back the release date a few months.
Man when they said that they're going to remove all the boring talents, I thought they meant it. But there's still plenty 'increases crit chance by x%' types left. Hope those get replaced too.
They did add something to replace it. Medium Glyphs.
Been there. Done that. I want something new...it being an expansion with, you know, new stuff.
It is new. MEDIUM glyphs. That's in-between minor and major glyphs! I mean come on!
Confirmed for the Emerald Dream expansion: Extreme and Insignificant Glyphs.
Seriously though. Medium glyphs. What the fuck does that even mean? "Well it's not important enough to be Major, buuuut it's not trivial enough to be Minor."
HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
edited June 2010
The thing is, the way they described the glyphs back in the WotLK preview pretty much said the same thing (sans the Medium glyph part). Minor was for aesthetic, non-combat changes and Major was for things that would affect your DPS in a meaningful way. That's still the only two categories that exist, when you get down to it. Breaking those two things up into a third category just doesn't make sense to me, especially when they didn't do so well at fleshing out their original idea. As things are today, minor glyphs range from 'complete shit' to 'practically mandatory', and the Majors are much the same way. Strangely, their rationale for removing the Path of the Titans was "well, people would've just found a way to min/max that as well, so there wasn't a way to make it any kind of meaningful option, so we scrapped it". As though that isn't something that happens with every aspect of the game anyway.
It'd be nice if they made the less useful major glyphs and the extremely useful minor glyphs into mediums, and then added tons upon tons of awesome cosmetic minor glyphs.
I swear I remember there being 3 levels of glyphs early on in the testing WotLK. And the reason there are so many underpowered major glyphs is that most of the middle group were just reclassified as major glyphs. Maybe it was just speculation on why there were so many crappy major glyphs. /shrug
TheTish on
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
Remember that lockout system we were talking about last thread?
Raid Lockouts
Here's another big change—they've added a great deal of flexibility to raid lockouts. Rather than being locked into a particular raid ID, you can now join any raid, as long as it doesn't have any bosses up that you have already killed. Basically, as long as you're not killing the same boss twice in one lockout period—you have total freedom.
Hell ya!
Yayyyyyy.
Not as flexible as I would have liked, but this does pretty much what we really want.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
edited June 2010
That might've been the case for Alpha WotLK, but from Beta on there were only the minor and major glyph types, and they were pretty much always as they are today, from "meh" to "must have" in both categories.
I'm pretty glad path of the titans is gone, mandatory shit you need to do on all your characters is annoying when there's no alternative methods like there is with levelling now.
Plus guild talent points were due to cause a tonne of bitching whenever anyone disagreed anyway.
815165 on
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
edited June 2010
I wouldn't have minded the removal of PotT so much if they'd replaced it with another type of character progression. As it was, Path was their excuse for not having 10 levels of character advancement in Cat. Without that, we're truly left with 5 levels of advancement and then it's back to the gear treadmill.
I'm interested to see what they have in store for Archaeology, maybe there'll be more to do on that front.
I wouldn't have minded the removal of PotT so much if they'd replaced it with another type of character progression. As it was, Path was their excuse for not having 10 levels of character advancement in Cat. Without that, we're truly left with 5 levels of advancement and then it's back to the gear treadmill.
I'm interested to see what they have in store for Archaeology, maybe there'll be more to do on that front.
This. Right here. For level 80's were getting shit on. A week of leveling, a week of experimenting with builds, and then grinding dungeons again. Meanwhile, all the "new" content is designed for people who make new characters. Which is fine because that is the direction they are taking the expansion.
I just hope the Glyphs and Guild Skills are fucking awesome because otherwise I wouldn't see my self playing much longer after because 2 years of what were doing now wouldn't work for me, lol.
I don't know how I feel about all this PotT stuff. While new glyphs will be cool, the fact that they don't want to make them consumable is irritating. That's like the way I make money with glyphs. Oh well, maybe I'll just drop inscription and redo enchanting on my paladin. At least I kept my runed titanium rod, those things are a bitch to make.
They did add something to replace it. Medium Glyphs.
Been there. Done that. I want something new...it being an expansion with, you know, new stuff.
It is new. MEDIUM glyphs. That's in-between minor and major glyphs! I mean come on!
I was ready to go all Indiana Jones on that Path of the Titans/Archaeology stuff. It was something different for once beyond just levels and gear. They could at least rip off EQ's AA system and give us that all polished up and served on a silver platter.
is this titan path crap the same as the Alternative Advancement crap they introduced in AoC? Because that shit pretty much destroyed any desire anyone had to make alts in that game, and I am glad it was not introduced in WoW
I think the removal of guild talent points is a good thing. Now I've never lead a guild but I've been told it's very stressful. Now throw in a talent tree in which probably half the guild wants points put into "this" talent while the other half wants more points in another. I think it will make the whole guild progression thing a lot easier with the leveling system as long as they don't give a guild made of 100+ people who play 24/7 a quick way to get to max level within a week after Cataclysm's release as opposed to a guild of maybe 40 active players who aren't able to be online all day.
Aeyther on
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
edited June 2010
The thing that bugs me about the guild talent tree revamp is this:
The whole guild talents idea has been scrapped as well. Tom Chilton talked for a while about the issues they faced—Can only the guild leader pick the talents? Do you have respecs? Who pays for them? How do you make all the players feel involved? Do you min-max builds, so that all guilds feel the same?
How do you not ask those questions before you announce the feature to millions of people at your yearly convention and make it a solid bullet point of your upcoming expansion? It just seems like a very ass-backwards approach. I'm not saying that I necessarily disagree with their ultimate approach, but it floors me that this company still announces features without having any of the groundwork already built (let's not even get started on the hairstyles or dance studio).
Posts
As for the possible change to glyphs, I don't think it's a good idea. Making the glyphs just permanent and you can switch around whenever would be like letting you only have to buy one epic gem of each type, then when you felt like it you could just change them around without buying new ones. It's not like it's hard or really expensive to buy glyphs when you need different ones for different fights and stuff.
Absolutely, but misery does love company.
Eh wahat? Is that the little troll village on the Zoram Strand in Ashenvale?
There will be blood. :x
But that's only two people.
I wasn't initially sad about Path of the Titans being removed until I realized it was the only character customization after 80 (5 talent points that for most builds aren't going to be that useful? meh).
I think the sum of all the new info has left me feeling underwhelmed.
Well it's a cataclysm, dog. They're all dead.
Quoting over so people can catch it in case they haven't yet.
The Path of the Titans thing going away sorta disappoints me but it's in no way a deal breaker.
Also, I guess they're leaving all the classic game raiding shit in. So I was wrong in it being removed, huh.
Uh, would anyone mind uploading a not fucking' 2mb version of that so I can see it?
Also Guild Talents being simplified down into a plain levelling system seems fine, although the guild reputation thing seems odd.
Edit - And the guild tab being revamped sounds cool as shit.
I don't think guilds themselves have a reputation (just levels), but characters within a guild have a reputation which seems to be raised just by doing the same things that would level the guild up. It makes it so someone can't join a guild and immediately have access to all the goodies the guild has earned.
I guess I like that.
On another note, I need an addon that replaces all ingame sounds with that Vuvuzela horn. And a tool to remotely install it on every computer everywhere.
Hey, come back here with my goalposts.
:P
Been there. Done that. I want something new...it being an expansion with, you know, new stuff.
It is new. MEDIUM glyphs. That's in-between minor and major glyphs! I mean come on!
I would rather have DECENT glyphs not ones that are so so or not that great like Glyph of Demonic Circle and many others
,
Seriously though. Medium glyphs. What the fuck does that even mean? "Well it's not important enough to be Major, buuuut it's not trivial enough to be Minor."
Minor is going to be for class-perk type stuff.
Medium is going to be for class combat stuff.
Major is going to be for talent type stuff.
... Well, that'd be the smart way to do it at any rate.
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
Yayyyyyy.
Not as flexible as I would have liked, but this does pretty much what we really want.
Plus guild talent points were due to cause a tonne of bitching whenever anyone disagreed anyway.
I'm interested to see what they have in store for Archaeology, maybe there'll be more to do on that front.
This. Right here. For level 80's were getting shit on. A week of leveling, a week of experimenting with builds, and then grinding dungeons again. Meanwhile, all the "new" content is designed for people who make new characters. Which is fine because that is the direction they are taking the expansion.
I just hope the Glyphs and Guild Skills are fucking awesome because otherwise I wouldn't see my self playing much longer after because 2 years of what were doing now wouldn't work for me, lol.
I was ready to go all Indiana Jones on that Path of the Titans/Archaeology stuff. It was something different for once beyond just levels and gear. They could at least rip off EQ's AA system and give us that all polished up and served on a silver platter.
How do you not ask those questions before you announce the feature to millions of people at your yearly convention and make it a solid bullet point of your upcoming expansion? It just seems like a very ass-backwards approach. I'm not saying that I necessarily disagree with their ultimate approach, but it floors me that this company still announces features without having any of the groundwork already built (let's not even get started on the hairstyles or dance studio).