One of two things is happening:
1) The Blizzard interns that were running WoW have finally figured it out
or
2) The genre is such crap that WoW is starting to look appealing
In all seriousness the newly announced expansion, on paper, doesn’t sound terrible. Upgrading the character models is about 5 years overdue, but still something to cheer. The housing thing could be interesting. It’s WoW and the lore hasn’t mattered since the space goats crash, so going back in time is just fine. Instant 90 character? Meh, whatever. The rest is just more of the same, which is what expansions do.
What I’m finding most interesting however is how negative the general response has been to the announcement. I must be losing it…
Hardcore Casual 
it just seem like more MoP with different lore…only 6 new dungeons because somehow they think people like the crap scenarios?
http://www.wowhead.com/zones=2.1
But the problem is the community…the community of wow has changed so much over the years and even if Blizzard release the best game ever, with such a bad community of cry LFR babies, it would still be un-enjoyable
The thing to remember about WoW.
7 Million people.
In most games, the 10% moron population is maybe 100k. Spread amongst enough servers and forums, not bad. In a game with 10 classes, that could be about 10k per forums.
We have 700k morons. That’s 70k a forum. I explain below though about why LFR is crying. And oh do we love those tears in the 20-25% actual raiding population. (which, by it’s size, is almost the size of an average MMO itself, which is why we stay)
Interesting that you comment on the interns. http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/blizzcon-2013-can-the-return-of-alex-afrasiabi-save-world-of-warcraft/#270df
The 1 to 90 experience has already become so marginalized, due to changes to the EXP curve and loot drops, that skipping it entirely is only natural. Curiously, this brings WoW closer to the old Guild Wars model of a compressed level system, whereby the character are all mostly equal in level and are distinguished only by equipment and player skill.
That may not be bad for a game with Guild Wars’ business model. But it’s a terrible idea for a true MMO, where player need long-term goals and a good social network to stay interested. Players will invest a lot of time and effort into getting even a 2% advantage; I’m not sure the loot treadmill alone will be sufficient, especially since WoW provides easy access to newer and better equipment with each update. Corollary, WoW has been losing content through its insistence on essentially handing out free equipment, because it eliminates any interest most players have in running old content.
I’m starting to think that the old MMOs had the right idea, with open-access public dungeons and worlds, no real restrictions on party size, and no instancing. The experience curve in those games made reaching ‘level cap’ a potentially multi-year endeavor for a typical player. The open nature of the world facilitated social interaction, as did the forced grouping, since solo play was inherently inefficient and in most higher-level areas downright impossible. And since any scripted or voice-acted dungeon will stop being interesting on its own after the first few run-throughs, the real content was player-established goals, and the social fabric established via guilds and such, although pretty backdrops did help. It also reduced pressure on developers to pump out crap every six months, because players could spend a long time running the same handful of maps, and each added area would continue to provide content down the road.
I think the trick in the new expansion will be Garrison. If I understood it correctly it will progress with the “eve” system. You will buy an upgrade and then you wait for days/weeks (offline progress too) until it completes. You also send companions on missions that may need days and weeks too…if all these have meaningful returns, or even the +2% it would be enough for the most people to stay subbed…
It seems they care most for subs than overall player activity..it reminds some facebook games where you have to log once per day or 2 and push 1 button.
It’s actually a little close to a mix between that and the SWOTOR merc system. Close though.
Did they eliminate flying mounts? I may actually play again if people couldn’t escape PvP with such ease.
In open world, no, but it’s sounding like thieir PVP Sandbox world-zone coming will not have flying.
While it may be anecdotal, the entirety of our 200 person guild is quite looking forward the the changes. They are sticking with a tiered raid rollout of 16 bosses, the latter 10 being in a 3 wing non-linear instance. The flex solution is being applied to all tiers but the last, meaning no more swapping to 10-man and sitting 12 people.
Think of this expansion like one of the eve ones that has tons of quality of life changes. That is what is getting actual players excited about this one. The most vocal ones are the annoyed people that are living with the realization that LFR is going to get worse.
For those not in the know, after Flex with Open Raid/Open Queue was introduced, standard players stopped hitting LFR since an OQ-Flex raid was the same difficulty, better loot, and 80% less mouth breathers. OQ/OR is being added into default wow now, along with heroic mode also going to flexible.
That’s why LFR is being nerfed even more into the ground. Most people will point to it and call it ‘Game Dead!’ or ‘Making it too easy’, but that’s because the rest of us don’t have to carry them anymore, and now the game itself has to carry them.
Can you explain how Open Raid/Open Queue works?
It is basically a giant cross-server group finder. But not an automated one, its more of a posting system. The raid leader puts up their posting saying they want to do X raid and need people with whatever gear level deemed appropriate for the content. People browsing the raids can signup for the event, the raid leader sees them sign up and can choose to take them based on what they need and if the person signing up is any good.
Its cross-realm, so you can make raids with people on other servers or with people already on your friends list. They do have to be the same faction however.
With blizzard integrating it in game we’ll be seeing a lot more cross-realm standard raid groups next expac. Basically raiding on a weekly schedule without the guild structure or same-server requirement.
The current main provider of this service right now is openraid.us. So Blizzard will be trying to take over the functionality currently provided by that third party website.
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Throwing in the whole Flexible system as well means that even if someone has to leave early or can’t make it at all the raid can go on. Blizzard is continuing the trend of making raiding more accessible. But now they’re doing it in much better ways then they were in the past. Scaling raid sizes and cross realm grouping is wayyy more appealing then just making a brain-dead easy mode that forces you to group with terrible players.
OpenQueue uses the RealID system to create a huge net of people. Your friends branch out to their friends branch out to theirs. There is also an in-game ui that allows these groups to “queue” for a dungeon, event, quest, whatever they choose.
Openraid uses RealID as an invite mechanic, you sign up with your BattleTag, and when you sign up for an event on the website, all you have to do is be online on the right character at the time to get invited to that event. It has features such as rep, a block list, etc. All the things you kind of wish LFR had.
Using either of those with flex raiding gives an experience as easy as LFR with close to zero of the drama. We’re talking 1%-5% bad apples instead of 20-50. Also, kicks are much, much faster for fails, since it’s dictator and not votes. Took about 5 minutes from their forums for who was good/bad, and I was able to get in things like swift firelands-heroic T-mog runs, a Nalak kill (after he is a worthless boss, but good for quest), and a flex SoO that did all 14 bosses in about 3 hours.
Good info, thanks to both of you.
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I will go back for this, at least to be a tourist. The two draws for me?
1) No/reduced dailies – I fricken hate dailies. Always have. Felt like I had to do them to progress as a pure LFR raider.
2) One gear set. I was calling for this since 2008. Now I can play one character, with one set of gear, and still multispec, etc.
Those two things are enough for me to give it a shot.