killing of more mods i see :\

i dig the ui changes.

Blizzard has not killed any mods so far. To be honest their "walmart brand addon" is always a few steps behind the times. Have to say I like what was said above is a plus. The ten man instances can be fun but I hope the mistakes in making Kara so class specific will never happen again. With the new accounts coming mostly from countries that have lower earnings per capita and the loss of many of the North American and European players speeding to next expansion will maximize earnings for Blizz. What I see above is a temporary placation till then but welcome still .

meh, at least Blizzard makes the mods useful, and actually worth using. So far they've given us mods that have helped us, not hindered.

Yipppeee!!! Instead of working on the PvE-balance of itemization, or actually working on hybrid-classes as a whole, they implement HeroicBadge-rewards for them! \o/

Now that's useful! Actually shoving it in our faces that the place for us is not in raids, go PUG some heroics for your gear and shut up! Thank you Kaplan, you still got exactly >

"With the new accounts coming mostly from countries that have lower earnings per capita and the loss of many of the North American and European players speeding to next expansion will maximize earnings for Blizz."

Your source?

What was the point of Kaplan's statement that Outlands and Northrend were part of the original plan? Was he responding to a question? It sounds like he was trying to justify the expansion. I don't think it really needs justification, but maybe I'm in the minority.

Also - goes to Tigole's 25-man Sunwell - Not sure I'm happy that the smaller raid design people have apparently won at Blizzard. In the 40-man design, if one person didn't show up, he was easier to replace, i.e. if you needed a healer - you could get a druid, priest, or paladin/shaman. If you needed ranged dps, you could pick a mage, warlock, or hunter, even moonkin.

In the 25-man design, if a person doesn't show up, you need an exact substitute (often of the same class and build) because the encounters require specific secondary abilities or tactics - such as Misdirection, crowd control, etc. Now, I realize that this is a good thing from the point of view of excitement - each player gets to play a larger role. But we are experiencing more failed raids because 1) someone does not show up and we don't have a replacement of the same or near same build and gear; and 2) if has been extremely difficult to hold onto substitutes because they are geared enough to raid, but don't get to raid - so they leave for another guild.

If they keep the 25-man design, and even if they push for a level 80 Naxx with even tighter tolerances (class requirements), then I say they are going in the wrong direction. We need to be able to substitute people or re-spec hybrids with greater ease.

I suppose that's why Kaplan wants to put epic hybrid gear in heroic instances, but I'm not sure that solves the problem - will that gear be just as good as tier 4/5? It will need to be because the player used their badge on paladin healing gear but tonight we need an off-tank.

""With the new accounts coming mostly from countries that have lower earnings per capita and the loss of many of the North American and European players speeding to next expansion will maximize earnings for Blizz."

Your source? "

haha he has no source, people crying like that never do.

""With the new accounts coming mostly from countries that have lower earnings per capita and the loss of many of the North American and European players speeding to next expansion will maximize earnings for Blizz."

Your source? "

haha he has no source, people crying like that never do.

below is just one such country, do the searches yourself for more:

http://www.gamingsteve.com/archives/2005/11/with_all_the_ta.php

http://gigaom.com/2007/06/13/top-ten-most-popular-mmos/

if projections hold true 10 million Chinese will have accounts in the near future; most of which will be in internet cafe's at 4 cents per hour split with blizz's partner in China.

Since the release of the Burning Crusade, the expansion and the vanilla game has finished no. 1 - 2 in sales almost everywhere in the world each week, each month. Latest data from june will show you the same.

"World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade took the No. 1 and No. 2 spots respectively in the weekly charts and grabbed two of the top-ten spots on NPD's overall monthly software sales charts for June." (source: http://pc.ign.com/articles/807/807892p1.html)

This is just NPD, the situation is the same at almost every bigger game distribution networks. The trend what you are talking about is non-existing. You just perceive a more vocal minority as reality, but the picture is a lot more bigger.

Since the upcoming expansion will feature the most well-known villain of all times in the Warcraft universe, I cannot see how could this imaginary trend gain traction nowhere in the near future.

I predict well over 10 mil subsriber base one year from now and a lot new servers opening at the xpack's release.

Kara is not so class specific as you think, even Shattered Halls heroic (as it was in 2.0) were cleared by "notsogood" group - prot-pal as tank, feraldru in catform as dps, mage, bm hunt and holypriest, when the whole world was crying about lastboss and impossibility of completing trial of naaru quest there so are 25man instances, some really unbalanced events are class specific, but most just requires 25 skilled players, and balance of tanks/healers/dps, not counting their class

I've had a few days to think about it and I can explain what sits poorly with me about the statement re: the re-introduction of Naxx as a molten-core-like raid for level 70s: We get a re-tuned Naxx ONLY because Blizzard (Tigole) thinks it's the best raid dungeon ever. *rollseyes* Give us heroic and legendary raids using loot tables for all the legacy instances.

Do it right Blizzard - design a new raiding system that allows for the scaling of the existing content based on the raid leader's level - draw from loot tables that change every 5 or 10 levels. It will take just as much coding to add scaling modifiers to the mobs and draw up loot tables, as it will to re-tune Naxx.