From an interview at the Leipzig Games Convention with WoWarcraft’s senior art director Sam Didier and lead designer Jeffrey Kaplan (Tigole) by ComputerandVideoGames.com’s Stuart Bishop — Tigole said:

The big lesson we learned from The Burning Crusade was that our ten-person instances are extremely popular. So for Wrath of the Lich King we wanted progression in the ten-person raid game for the players… who want to stick to that ten-person cap.

Well dammit boys, you learned the wrong lesson. You completely missed the most important lesson of The Burning Crusade, that is “The Karazhan Mistake”. And really, how could you miss it? I don’t know — I guess because you’re listening to the neo-uber guilds STILL, instead of the meat of the raiding bell curve.

Nevertheless. Since you all failed that portion of the final exam, let’s go over the material again (with some added explanations for the non-WoW people):

Karazhan is a 10-man instance with a reset timer of one week. It is firmly placed in the line of gear progression. Technically, you could skip Kara gear and step right into the first 25-man instances, I suppose, if you had a guild composed entirely of messiahs, prophets and gods. (Hint: none of us do.)

Therefore, since we all had to do Karazhan at some point, every guild either had to run multiple simultaneous weekly Karazhan raids with guildmembers tied to a single raid ID (no swapping of guildmates to the other guild Kara raids), OR, they ran a single Karazhan over and over and over and over many weeks to gear everyone up for the 25-man raids.

Was this fun? (Imagine I drew a huge question mark on the whiteboard at this point.) NO IT WAS NOT. I’ll pause while you take some notes. No pen or paper? Crimony. Never go into class or into the boss’s office without pens (plural) and paper. Write that down too.

We’re continuing. So here’s what happened with Karazhan. If the guild chose to run multiple simultaneous Karazhans, and if they required more than one night to clear Karazhan (typical), every once in a while some of the raiders had real life obligations and couldn’t show up that night and a replacement was needed. And so another guildmate was locked into a raid ID and was unavailable for the other Karazhans as replacements. Inevitably, one Karazhan raid would be the strongest and the others were weaker — either by way of gear or attendance or ability/knowledge of the zone.

While guilds would try to balance out the raids from week to week (to week to week to week), one set of guildmates were well prepared for the 25-mans and ready to go, and the others not so much. Mostly the geared/keyed guildmates would look for greener pastures and move on, or, maybe, wait around for what seemed like flippin-4-evah for the rest of the guild — either way, you’ve set up a pressure cooker for guild implosion.

This precarious period for guilds would last until they could step into the 25-mans (admittedly, that step was made much easier with the lifting of attunements), and continue until the guild could bid fucking adieu to the Kara trashfest.

Now write this part down: This was not lack of commitment or lack of ambition or lack of skeelz, this was poor game mechanics screwing over guilds. You can’t tell your players, ok have a raid force for 40-man gear farms, now slim down for 10-man gear farms, oops, now bulk up for 25-mans.

So here’s the deal. Either fix the fucking raid system for 10-man gear-required instances or stick to a 25-man progression model. Yes, we players love the ideal of 10-man instances, but not if we have to mess with guild numbers up, down, up again, now down … and finally back up again. (Imagine I drew alternating up and down arrows on the whiteboard.) Since, I dare say, you haven’t been active in guild recruitment and raid invites and /tells from the undergeared and the overgeared for quite some time, let me remind you, IT’S A ROYAL PAIN IN THE ASS.

Here’s an example: Poor guildmate has a hard time getting into guild raids for a while, we’re overstaffed with his class, he’s undergeared because he misses the 10-man clear, whatever. I /tell him sorry mate, maybe next run. For a few weeks I tell him this and he complains of course, I listen, but damn, I have a raid to attend. He’s fed up and moves on to another guild. I’m relieved, albeit temporarily because I can see the future. Now we’re firmly in the 25-mans FINALLY, and oops, we need more raiders.

I could ask former guildmates who moved on because they were slower than the rest of us in gearing up IF I liked being told to fuck off (which I don’t, btw), or I can look for a feeder guild, i.e. a guild behind mine in progression whose better geared people are looking for said greener pastures. And I can poach from guilds around the same progression as mine, which is poor form, I know, however, I’m already being told daily to “fuck off” by my former raiders, so being told to “fuck off” by other guild’s leaders isn’t that big of a deal.

Thank you, game mechanics.

Two ways I believe 10-man instances could still fit into a 25-man raid-gear progression model:

1. Raid IDs of 3 days for the 10-mans, similar to Zul’Grub. Dare I hope for 1-day raid IDs for 10-mans? No, I do not dare hope.
or 2. Guild-wide raid IDs. Probably the 3-day solution is much easier to implement.

(Imagine I wrote “Hope” on the whiteboard and drew a circle around it with a slash through it, cuz there’s a whole lot of shit I don’t dare hope.)

Be ignorant no more, consider yourself enlightened. Now go forth and develop.

The best writeup I’ve found of the Raids & Dungeons panel was WarCry’s. Skipping the PowerPoint crap, the meat of the panel was:

* Possibly one new 5 man before next expansion.
* KTM and Deadly Boss Mods built into game.
* Ideas for an Item Rack functionality that has extra storage space for alternate sets of gear.
* New 25 man before expansion that is higher level/better gear than Black Temple. It was hinted, but not confirmed that this could be related to Sunwell and Northrend.
* Naxxramas could be redone as an introductory raid dungeon for Northrend to allow those who didn’t get to see the fight a chance to see the fight.
* Horde will be getting fear ward.
* Healing Priest raid vitality is being looked at.
* Possible guild based attunement or account based attunements.

Wow. See how long that development timeline is? Here’s how long ago these were ID’d as serious problems by players:

New 5-man – somewhat recently, i.e. mid Burning Crusade
KTM and DBM – late 2005/early 2006
Extra storage for resist gear – mid 2005
New 25-man – this was the “applause point” for the panel. Did the crowd erupt? Good.
Naxxramas – pre-BC. We’ll be having the same discussion when Expansion #3 is announced about the Black Temple.
Horde’s fear ward – early 2005
Healing raid priests – early BC
Guild-based attunements, aka Karazhan relief – early BC

Also of interest to me was The MMO Gamer’s audience with Tigole. Mr. Kaplan to you/Tigole wants to retune Naxxramas, which will probably take five years, but anyways:

So what I want to do in Northrend is to take Naxxramas in all of its glory, scale it down to the 25 man raid size, and then take the difficulty and retune it — obviously we’d tune for level 80, it would no longer be tuned for level 60, since that would be a little silly and it wouldn’t be a lot of fun for people at that point — but I want to put rewards in there that are very exciting to level 80 players, but make it the entry-level raid, very accessible, tune the encounters so that there’s something for everybody to do, and let the majority get a chance to see that content that they hadn’t seen before.

Much credit to Steven Crews, the interviewer — he stated up front that he was choosing topics and questions midway between softballs and 90 mph fastball screamers, which he did admirably — and then came the “oh snap!”.

The interview was thus concluded. As we stood up to shake hands and say our farewells, he asked me, “Were you a guild leader in EverQuest, too? I assumed that’s what you meant when you said you could relate.”

“No, actually,” I said, “I was the leader of the top guild on my server in WoW.”

“Ah. So, do you still play WoW?”

“No,” I admitted sheepishly. “I quit about a year and a half ago. I took one look at the patch notes with the requirements to open AQ and said to myself, ‘I’m getting the hell out of here.'”

That’s pretty damn funny.

The fastball screamer would have been, “Ya, Legacy of Steel steamrolled us on Avatar of War.” and walk off the mound.

Sure would be nice if more guilds and players could see most of the content from The Burning Crusade before the Wrath expansion arrives.

Since I don’t trust my guildmates with anything so important as a faction choice — they would think it was hilarious for someone to choose unwisely, as would I — WoWWiki to the rescue! If only we had wikis in the old EverQuest days, I wouldn’t have two notebooks full of notes and quest printouts.

Anyways, there’s a great table on the Aldor vs Scryer page to aid neutrals in choosing. (As stated on the page, a table is no substitute for looking at the available rewards and deciding yourself.)

Also, from the General forums, a rare spawn, the informative thread: “A Guide to Aldor and Scryer Rep” by Adaan of Azgalor.

Getting (or already have) the impression that this expansion is all about faction? You’re not alone.

Welcome to December 2000.

Sooooo … Blizzard is compensating the affected players by giving them an additional pet, Lurky, a murloc. When I first heard of this, I thought how cool, now I want Lurky too, but that’s just me thinking that more is more. (Well it is! By definition.)

Then I saw all the hoops they have to jump through to get the netherwhelp and the murloc — crimony. Here’s what I don’t get: don’t they have a list or some sort of numbering scheme they used for Collector’s Editions CD keys? Run a script on maintenance day and send out the pets? Not possible?

Maybe they have IT people like at my work where I’ll ask them to do something and they’ll say “that can’t be done, sorry”, when I know very well it can be done, I see other companies doing it, they’re just unwilling to do it.

That’s the point in the conversation when I’ll stomp out of their department cursing and plotting revenge.

And speaking of Collector’s Editions, Amazon just emailed me this morning that they now have Collector’s Editions available. I had submitted my email back in OCTOBER to be notified when CEs were available.

We’re happy to inform you that the items you requested are now available to order from Amazon.com!

Video Games :: World Of Warcraft Burning Crusade Collector’s Edition

Availability: In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Price: $69.99

Well FYVM.

I have the Collector’s Edition with the “I’m cooler than you, nub” netherwhelp, but I don’t have THE BINDER. Total price, $90 to my door, overnight, which I really shouldn’t be boasting about because that’s just nuts for a game but I’m a sucker for the CEs.

If you do get or have the Collector’s Edition, I’ll warn you that Track #3 is the Blood Elf cello music — guaranteed to induce (or exacerbate) clinical depression.

And now I’m even more upset that I don’t have THE BINDER.

About the expansion launch itself, on my server, it went off without a hitch — no restarts, mass dumps or queues during primetime. It was a little crowded in the level 60-noob areas — orcs had a life expectancy of 2 seconds — but that’s not anyone’s fault, just the way of things.

We had several “triumphant returns” of long-lost guildmates. You know the types, they’re MIA for months and then log on with a “hey everyone, I’m back!!” and expect us to cue some “Hail the Conquering Hero” music. (We didn’t.)

Highest character Alliance-side at Wednesday 12:01 am on my server: level 64, night elf hunter. (wtf) Highest characters in my guild: a few level 62-almost 63 dings. (wtf)

Me, I’m still level 60, not even sniffing 61 yet.

I remember clearly now, why I hate leveling so much. I want to enjoy the journey, like so many around me, but I won’t until it’s over. I’ve always been more of a destination kind of player, and I’m not sure if that’s just me or if that’s how past games trained me.

One thing I do know for sure, if I can’t get that cello music out of my head, I may be level 60 forever. In a Warcraft guild full of ex-EverQuest players, that’s a bootable offense.

Of course the bastards never come by my house before 7:00 pm..

Reminds me of the olde days in EverQuest when Planes of Power was released. Almost everything we could want or need was up there, and we had little reason to return to the old world — so we didn’t. It’s no wonder that the younger noobs had no idea how to properly kite the Freeport guards as they hadn’t received the benefit of our unsolicited, and unwelcome, advice. Sloppy kiters, every one of ’em.

Time marches on, even in virtual worlds, and we come to the future of World of Warcraft.

As I’ve posited lately to some of my more panicky guildmates, this will change everything — our raids, our allies, our friends, our guilds, our groups, and our characters.

And that will be good for all of us.

Here’s some to get you started:

EBGames.com – “No more processing” (Probably 2 million people pumping the My Orders button on the EBGames site has destroyed their servers.)
Best Buy preorder issues – Blizzard speak to BB
Who here is outside a gamestop w/ tent? (wtf)
Amazon Shipping Info
Gamestop Warehouses Delayed: Ice Storm (Can’t Blizzard call God and have Him melt the ice? Crimony, doesn’t anyone work over there?!?!?!)

UPDATE: On the EBgames.com website >> My Orders:

Due to system maintenance our order status system is temporarily unavailable. Please do not call our customer service center as they share the same system and do not have additional information. We apologize for the inconvenience; please check back later.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade orders are shipping today, on schedule, out of our Louisville, Kentucky distribution center. If you placed an order before 2:00pm (cst) on Monday January 15, 2007, and have NOT received an email from us requesting additional payment processing information, your Burning Crusade order should ship today at the shipping service level you requested.

We Warcrafters are like a swarm of locusts, we destroy everything in our path.