Blizzcon Announcements

[Ashe]

Further proof that no matter what happens, tons of people will bitch and moan.

Also, about the complaint of no new ally shaman: Dwarves are getting that.

There are very few complaints I have about all this (which will likely get me to resub and Erin and I might both play to level some Goblins or something). Those being that I'm not entirely sure why Draenai Warlock was never considered (the reason given was akin to something like "There are too many Draenai as is" and yet Blood Elves, the most populated race in the game, get Warriors? I'd complain about the lack of lore reasoning there, but BE rogues kinda messes with that too (and now Hunters since they lose mana). Its not a major complaint, just an odd one.

I like more Druid races finally, I fucking love the new "old azeroth". Also, no to whoever is thinking that "everyone is forced to buy the new expansion just to play old content now". That's a pretty large and dumb assumption. They are going to be replacing the zones, yes. It will use phasing, but you are right in that they will be straight replaced and not phased in. There will be no visiting the old version. But in doing this, its pretty common sense that they are changing your map files in the client regardless of your expansion setting. New players will be able to take advantage of this entire world revamp with only vanilla, they just can't do it as new races or with new professions.

Deathwing coming back is nice, as is Ragnaros, as is Onyxia raid, as is all that stuff. Desolace, the big boring grey world, suddenly turning all NE style with lots of trees is hilariously ironic.

I'm actually psyched. Yeah, the "hardcore" in me will probably stop playing again after leveling for a bit, but then using this as a good excuse to redo the entire old world just so they can get flying mounts working in the old world is pro. For those that don't know, the reason they couldn't just allow them before is the original design issue.

When the game was first made, this was during the time of EQ and other games featuring load times between outside zones. You had invisible zone walls and if you crossed them, boom, you had load time and a screen, then you got in. The old world was actually advanced for that time in its method of avoiding this, and did similar to fps games with loading on the fly. However, to do this, they created a world that didn't actually fit together, as at the time it didn't seem possible. They had fragments of world that basically said "we only have to design as far as you can see and get to" and you would enter through certain paths which loaded things for you. So (just like SW was at one point till they redid it, thus why the mini map there is weird now) parts of the world technically existed on top of other parts of the world, that just weren't loaded. Think phasing before phasing, in a sense.

Now its dealt with, and to add to it, the Barrens isn't retardedly huge anymore. The quests are going to be much better too, dealing with the fact that all old content is completely boring at this point.