New info about WOW: The Burning Crusade

[Brandonheat]

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofw ... t;action;1

A few quotes of interest.

On end game raiding:

Molten Core. Blackwing Lair. The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. Naxxramas Necropolis. And nothing else. Looking ahead to Blizzard's expansion for World of Warcraft, Burning Crusade, the aforementioned instanced raids will be the last of Blizzard's 40-man raid content. In Burning Crusade, end game raiding (which occupies WoW's max level players) will be done in groups of 25 or 10. Illidan's Black Temple, the most challenging raid instance that will appear in Burning Crusade (at release), has a 25-player limit.
It's true, the plan is for five-player capped grouped dungeons. Ten-player capped raid dungeons. As well as Twenty-five-player capped epic raid dungeons. We wanted to focus on smaller raid environments, primarily to allow for greater individual player contribution. Also, in these smaller environments, hybrid classes have more opportunity t
to shine.
Never thought they'd make raids smaller. I figured if anything, they'd make em bigger. Good change? Time will tell.
--
On PvP:

For starters, two major changes are being made to PvP: one, the game's existing "honor" system is being revamped so that it will no longer be a competitive ladder. Instead, players will be able to, according to lead game designer Tom Chilton, earn honor "at their own pace," and use their honor points as currency to spend on rewards. Secondly, Burning Crusade will add an all-new form of PvP: an arena combat system, which lets players form teams of two to five players and go up against other teams in designated arenas.
Arena battles will even let players fight Horde vs. Horde or Alliance vs. Alliance battles, which should not only make for more-varied contests, but which should also help keep arena battle queues moving along briskly, instead of having to match three queued-up Horde teams against twelve queued-up Alliance teams. Then again, the expansion's new races, particularly the Horde's blood elves (which look more aesthetically pleasing to a general audience than the original Horde races) might even things out so that the game's race balance will be less of an issue. Blizzard plans to have arena combat allow players fight against each other across servers from the moment the expansion launches.
This will certainly help the more casual PvPers earn rewards they would otherwise have no chance of earning. I think, overall, this should be a good change. The arena fights seem like an interesting idea to me. Forming elite groups of PvPers to battle against each other. Seems like a good way to spark competition instead of the normal honor grind.

Also, we finally get to go up against our own race! Now all those guilds who talk crap about each other from the same faction, can finally prove who the best really are.
--
Shaman & Paladins:

Two key changes Chilton talks about are brand new skills that the once-faction defining classes will each have. The long-rumored Shaman ability Bloodlust from previous Warcraft games will be live in Burning Crusade and available to level 70 players. Bloodlust will be a party buff that will increase the speed of melee attacks and reduce cast times (and include the requisite growing animation and beastly howls Lore fiends would expect) for a short duration. The ability's duration and its and its cooldown are still undergoing internal testing.

The Paladin class will see a class-defining ability of its own in an ability to pull aggressive creatures off of classes with a "snap-aggro" ability. That ability, Chilton explains as the equivalent of an AOE taunt, but instead of being cast on the enemies, instead, true to the Paladin's role of buffing and supporting players, it is castable buff on a party member. At that point, the mobs that were attacking the party member within an Area of Effect range will then turn and attack the Paladin. It continues to reinforce Blizzard's desire to turn the Paladin into a secondary tank and a healer, instead of the simple healer the class has been relegated to.


pallies might actually can be ... dare i say it tanks

[Twiz]

smaller scale content. thank you. thank you. thank you. much easier to find 10-25 reliable people that you like as opposed to 40 you hardly know. if this is true then best move ever made by blizz.

[Dualraid]

the arena thing sounds interesting...maybe we can havea guild tournament

[lili]

Oh I can see the lag now. I smell placenta everywhere now. Is it bad that when I'm talking to a patient the husband sleeping on the sofa decided to put his hand down his pants?

[Padishar]

smaller scale content. thank you. thank you. thank you. much easier to find 10-25 reliable people that you like as opposed to 40 you hardly know. if this is true then best move ever made by blizz.

Oh heck ya!

[Bladesinger]

I think we need to be able to gamble on these gladiatorial PVP matches. That would be awesome.

[Padishar]

Might be hard to regulate gambling, as it wouldn't be 2 hard to 'fix' the matches

[requiemdreamer]

I'm loving that our guild, at the size that it is, will be able to handle pretty much every enounter in the game. We will be able to handle MC easily as we level up. That goes for BWL, AQ40, and Naxx as well. No more stress of trying to grow larger. No more being stuck at lvl 60 with nothing left to do except MC and higher. I think this idea of 10-25 person raid groups is JUST what our guild needs. And scaleable instances!? ZOMG. Now we've just gotta sit tight and wait for release day to come. Go go power lvl everyone to 60!!!

Now.... What to do about school... Damn it's going to be hard to concentrate on work when this comes out.

[Ans]

Please hold all my calls, ill be "unavailable" all morning Thats how i'm gonna handle it.
i realy like the attitude of this guild. smaller grp requirements wil definatly be a nice change, unless your on the waiting list

[requiemdreamer]

Here is another website that I found which has some information similar to the Brandonheat's post, but also has a lot of new info:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=C ... ail&id=164

Well, if you're on a waiting list for a 25-man raid it seems like it would be pretty easy to get another group of 5 people to take on a smaller yet just-as-hard instance.

[Brandonheat]

Don't think that just because its 25, its going to be easy. The hardest instance in the game is going to 25.

More interesting quotes for the lazy

.... once players hit level 70, they will have an option to boost the difficulty levels of the new dungeons. There will be a normal and hard mode. The hard version of these dungeons will yield more powerful treasures and rewards for endgame players. The hope is that at level 70 there will be many challenging encounters to do.... instances can be saved midway through progress and returned to as much as a week later...

Current professions will also be expanded up to a 375 skill level called "Master", including a new trainer and a whole new suite of recipes. Racial bonuses, like the Gnomes +10 to Engineering, will be boosted to +15. Announcements at Gen Con Indy promise to add specializations for Alchemy: Potion Specialization and Elixir Alchemy. Tailoring will also receive similar treatment and be divided into Shadoweave, Divine and Arcane Tailoring specializations. There will be numerous more powerful and epic recipes added.

[Trixster]

oh no i have to level more skills 2.........

oh well better have some good stuff added into the new levels.

But i am happy to say it looks like they may give pallys a break during the expantion, agro gain ability. that will be really nice. might make it worth wile for me to level my pally.

[sakuragi]

u have a pally???
man, who doesn't have a pally now???
man, i gotta work on my shammy again...well, at least i know where hokie is so i can go gank him for the next 10 lvls again...hehehe...