World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Comments by Oli Welsh

oh did you guys no you will have to arena pvp even for a blue pvp gear for battlegrounds oh joy how fun arena is /facepalm

looks like i'll have to dust off the old wow sub come november

Achievements will be in the patch

Also I got Jenkins title on the PTR :D, good fun.
LEEEEEEEEEROY!

I've recently gone back to WoW. Playing as a Priest Elf in Westfall on Hellfire, level 15 at the moment. Not easy to solo at all, even with everything packed into Shadow skillz.

Ain't they including a threat meter also?

Could you cover that in an article ?

"oh did you guys no you will have to arena pvp even for a blue pvp gear for battlegrounds oh joy how fun arena is /facepalm "

Not quite true. Crafters can make blue bind on equip PvP gear, so you wont need arena points to get started. It does look like you'll need them for PvP rewards.

coming back for this - quite excited as well! :)

I agree about WoW needing a over-haul on the quest front, so it's a shame to see that - seemingly - Blizzard have again stuck with the typical text-based descriptions telling you were to go next (often in the most vague manner possible). I don't like downloading and using mods, but I think it's sad to see that probably 90% of WoW players have some sort of quest-helper mod simply because the layout of quests is so poor in WoW. Obviously, I don't think Blizzard should go overkill like Bethesda did with the extremely patronizing quest arrows in Oblivion, but some better location descriptions could go a long way to make questing more fun, and less hassle.

I am, however, somewhat glad that the barber shop will add some much needed customization to WoW. Still, I think I'd be foolish to think that - no matter how hard I try - there will be around 100 other players with the exact same class, race and design as my character on my sever. Blizzard should have added more customization options early on when WoW was first released, but this will have to do.

its looking like new dances have been droped

Oooh, thanks, thebuzzard.I think that's a new change. Will amend.

More PVE content is nice but WAR has pvp wrapped up for me at the moment. IMO Blizzard missed a trick by going soley down the Arena road when the majority of people wanted large scale open world PVP.

Old semi-retired WoW Raiding hunter wading into battle here.

spimmy; oh did you guys no you will have to arena pvp even for a blue pvp gear for battlegrounds oh joy how fun arena is /facepalm

Resilience got nerfed oh boo hoo cry me a river. But Blizzard know that the PvP gear was (especially the blues) far too easy to obtain. So Blizzard seem to be addressing that, and coming as a former class leader who had people apply for raiding in arena epics, I actually would prefer such gear being a little more awkward to get. I have nothing against PvP. Just sadly in my experience, when you ask said people if they have any tier gear or raiding gear, the response of "No, raiding Kara/SSC/TK doesn't really interest me" is enough to want to reach through the sreeen and punch the person in the face. Repeatedly. With a glove spiked with rusty nails.

In short, my experience of such people is they're lazy and just wanted to say "Look at me I killed Archimonde/Illidan/Hogger". The latter usually all they're good for, sadly. I know not all are like this, but I can only speak from experience and quite a few applications and demonstrations of skill (or lack thereof). Those of you who are skilled, I respect you and even admire you, but to be reasonable - you are in a minority, the rest are total idiots.

Crofto; I agree about WoW needing a over-haul on the quest front, so it's a shame to see that - seemingly - Blizzard have again stuck with the typical text-based descriptions telling you were to go next (often in the most vague manner possible).

Have to say I'm not sure why people knock the quest system. If you're the sort of person who needs exact co-ordinates in-game at all time to do anything, you may as well ask them to remove elites, group quests and anything that requires the use of more than one braincell. For the most, I've never had much of an issue with the descriptions and the vast majority of issues most have comes from a simple misreading - but then, I may be one of those extremely odd people who enjoys a little adventure and has a reasonable sense of direction and location and will never understand how some can get so lost when you have a map, a mini-map and a description all at your fingertips. Not to mention big icons on a minimap these days for where there are quests, where you finish them etc.

However, interesting you mention the help arrows. There are in-game a few dozens quests that you get those patronising arrows for in the mini-map, so maybe Blizzard tried to implement it before at some point? It's just an interesting point I thought was worth bringing up.

Nephirion; IMO Blizzard missed a trick by going soley down the Arena road when the majority of people wanted large scale open world PVP.

Blizzard have tried this many times, some of you may remember when Blizzard put PvP into Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands. How often did this get used on the majority of servers? Umm... not a lot, it must be said. Even in Outland and with dailies, for the most part there was usually surprisingly little drive to do that. There's another attempt for Blizzard to get it right with a PvP zone in Northrend, where you can engage in siege warfare. This might work or it might not, but Blizzard do try to implement a bit of it in for people with benefits like buffs and gear and the like. Whether this is going to be third time lucky for them, who knows. I hope it works out, some decent PvP wouldn't go amiss...

However, there is open-world PvP between Horde and Alliance, on PvP and RPPvP servers. Okay, it's not much better there but the choice is open to people. WoW, and this will piss the PvPers off but is technically true, is largely a PvE game with a light dusting of PvP sprinkles to keep people happy. Some will enjoy the sprinkles and pick them off first. Some will nosh down the whole thing. And some will pick off the sprinkles and throw them away. And maybe I should drop the cake analogy before someone tells me it's a lie.

As for me, I am returning to WoW, picking up my hunter again and going out into the big bad world to see what is what. I've been on PTR and I must say, I've enjoyed it but am limiting myself so I can go full-out on patch release. Nothing worse than burning up all that energy and excitement in the PTR and then losing the drive when it goes live. Northrend looks like it'll be a lot of fun, I'm looking forward to getting myself a bloody big rhino pet (I'd prefer a kodo pet but I guess that was too obvious for Blizzard) and I am especially glad Blizzard won't be releasing every shade of tier raiding at the same time.

Some things do concern me. Achievements may become too much of a focus. Honour should be reset but it isn't so many are just farming day and night for it now so they can get a ton of lvl 80 stuff.

Still, can't wait to see Northrend... just wondering where they go from here in the next inevitable expansion...

I do hope I have mis-understood the implications mentioned about PVP gear now ONLY being available via arena?

Are you saying I will no longer be able to get my Epic armour & weapons from doing a couple of months intense PVP battlegrounds ( AV, AB WSG , EOTS ) and by earning honour and tokens, and instead will be forced do to Arena battles ( 2v2, 5v5 etc ) ?

If this is the case where does the casual gamer go to get his Epics ? A raid dungeon where, once you've killed the boss an epic bit of kit for your class may have a 10% chance to drop, then if you are lucky, you will win the roll against a bunch of other players?
If that's the case that sucks.

PVP battlegrounds rewards are setup perfectly currently, if they are messing with that then thats WOW pvp out the door for me.

What about EXP for partaking in a BG sub 80?

What about decent rewards I can rely on instead of hoping something drops in a sub 80 instance?

Sorry but WAR has shown the way on this (and yes I'm mentioning WAR, care face). I loved wow, absolutely bloody loved it, more than the missus, the outside, pretty much eveything else since it was released but all i can see is grind. Grind to hit 80, grind post 80. At least WAR has the good sense to hide the grind behind lots of mini-grinds that you get rewarded for. People I know on beta have said its more of the same, so meh from me. Having too much fun on WAR to be arsed with this. Not intended as a flame post or something to get people upset, I'd be interested to see if this breaks PC day 1 sales records like BC did. I reckon there will be a lot of people too busy taking keeps than there will be to buy it this time.

*ready to be proved wrong :P*

As an end-game raider in WOW I am having doubts to continue playing. Another grind to 80, another rep grind and another 6 month of doing end-game instances for those epic drops you need and totally broken PvP. I am not sure... WAR is giving me a lot more right now. My WoW days might be over. If I want to quest I will stick to LOTRO.

Fook this shite, just sounds like yet more cynical grinds branded as "new". Keeping that hamster wheel well greased for the addicts.

Anyone losing interest should watch the Wrathgate cinematic from one of the huge questlines.

IT. IS. EPIC. Huge potential implications for where the game is going story wise.

I know MMOs (and games in general) tend to follow trends and "borrow" from each other, but Lich King's list of "new" features makes me think Blizzard have been playing LOTRO...

Lich King thread on the forum