Expansion Pack: Inquiry minds wanna know.

[Eyeball-Dragonmaw]

I personally don't understand that when they have decided on expansion packs they keep raising the levels.

Is there reasoning behind it?

Can't they just add content, and keep raising tiered gear but keep the level cap the same?

I just don't see how a 25 man level 70 dungeon with 75 Elites running around could be any different than a 25 man level 60 dungeon with 65 elites running around. The same strats would be used for both. A prime example is the 60/70 AV's. Same place, mobs, just higher levels.

I mean eventually they will be up to level 100. Who wants to level an alt 1-100? The grind will keep getting longer each expansion. I know they are easing the grind a little, but you still have to start at level 1.

[Hybuir]

I'd hope for just different areas. I do realize that they dont want to give you a new layout with the same ol quests (kill 20 camels, 10 birds, 30 dogs) to give you rewards that are not superior than what you have. I do realize that if gold were the only reward then you would probably just leave them be until you needed them. They are raising the bar to introduce that much more character development with skills and abilities.

I do realize that they are making the grind better... I think the percentage was 15% overall but I'd like +15%EXP -15% to ding. or 10 and 10. 15% doesn't sound great when you have to burn through 2 expansions to go through.

I really (REALLY) think that the death knight will be preferred as an alt due to the severe lack of 'ramping' up for alts, but then again the servers will get overburdened with their class, much like rogues nowadays. Although loot will be harder to get since, what are they going to wear? leather/mail/plate?!?! a new type needs to be in place for the extra mouth on the epic foodstamp line.

(see what I did there Bizzam & Carlweathers? )

[Balgair]

I personally don't understand that when they have decided on expansion packs they keep raising the levels.

Is there reasoning behind it?

Can't they just add content, and keep raising tiered gear but keep the level cap the same?

What good would that do? Doing new quests is a lot more fun if you've got something to gain from it (experience) than if you don't. Maybe for hardcore raiders, they're happy to stay as max level forever, but for me it's boring being max level; I've got four lvl 70s, I'm levelling more alts, I've done everything I realistically can at 70... I'm bored.

Only the raised level cap to 80 will solve that boredom - it was the same when TBC came, I was bored of vanilla wow and while new zones would've been something different, the raised level cap and the feeling of levelling again and actually progressing my characters was what made it fun.

[Dev0]

I like when the level cap increases new talents new skills new area's, aswell as new conceps. I'm really interested in how the expac will affect the population. Personally I expect a big bump before and after, however I don't think it will be nearly as big as it was for BC.

Infact I hope its not even close, seems to me the only real way that blizzard will help the low population servers is to have them get so bad people quit in grooves. Otherwise if there is a large spike again at the start, it then gives them reason to keep going without changing anything.

I can tell you being on a low pop server is not the funnest, sure I enjoy raiding with my guild and pvping with my arena team. However beyond that there is very very little world pvp hardly any premade BG groups and trying to organize anything different from the norm is impossible.

[Balgair]

I can tell you being on a low pop server is not the funnest, sure I enjoy raiding with my guild and pvping with my arena team. However beyond that there is very very little world pvp hardly any premade BG groups and trying to organize anything different from the norm is impossible.

I can sympathise there; I'm on one of the highest pop European servers (at least highest reported pop, but given that I census tons it's a lot better covered than most), but it's also got a roughly 2:1 ratio, and the Horde side frankly feels dead.

I've been playing Horde lately, and pug groups barely exist from what I see on the LFG channel; there's a few at 70 but my horde alts are levelling and there's nothing for them. The AH is pretty empty, although it's a good place to make money as everything sells for more than on alliance. Although strangely the most successful guilds are all on Horde side - alliance has quantity but not quality, as Horde has a guild that's cleared BT and two others entering it, while the furthest alliance guild is only halfway through Hyjal; the rest haven't cleared TK.

Got the feeling this expansion won't help low pop servers much though; there's no new races so no people rolling new characters (yeah there's death knights but we don't know how they're implemented yet, and if they have to be on the same server as your main it won't help other servers at all) The people who've got bored and quit will come back to try it, but mostly to their old characters probably on higher pop servers.

[xpolockx]

Yeah, I'm not expecting too much newness from the next expansion, although I don't mind leveling particularly (a terminal case of alt-itis) since I enjoy anything new. It should be interesting to see how Blizzard rebalances the classes at 80 and updates talent trees, and I can hope in vain that one day all classes will have 3 viable and useful talent trees I just hope they're able to implement more than one new class, since as Hyb said it will be some serious overcrowding if they only have death knight. Sort of like (dps) warrior is now

As far as population goes, honestly, I'd rather be on a slightly overpopulated server than an underpopulated one. It's why even when Mal'Ganis was queued for months before BC and for about a month afterwards, I chose to stay even though they opened up free transfers to new servers twice. Don't get me wrong, I'm relieved that we no longer have queues, but being on a ghost town server hardly qualifies as fun imo. But, to each his/her own I guess. Mostly I just like to play with my RL friends, and I'm glad I brought them all over to Mal'Ganis