Blizzard's Next WoW Expansion Looks to the Past
By now you've heard the news of a new World of Warcraft expansion, announced here at Blizzcon. Judging by comments made at a WoW panel, this expansion is going to be a lot tougher on players than the previous one and its Kung Fu Pandas.
For "World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor," Blizzard took Grommash Hellscream, the Orc leader from the old "Warcraft" games, and asked what would happen if he could go back in time and make one change.
The result will be the Iron Horde, which is trying to open a portal into the current world of Azeroth and go after Horde and Alliance alike. "This is exactly the kind of thought that gets our franchise back home," said Dave Kosak, lead narrative designer for WoW during the panel.
He described Draenor, the world inhabited by the Iron Horde, as "a savage world that gives us a great place to have heroic adventures." In addition to taking on Grommash and his Iron Horde, you will also see old cities now in ruins, like the Alliance home world.
WoW is in need of a shot in the arm. "Mists of Pandaria" stiffed with consumers and the game has plunged from 10 million subscribers a year ago to 7.6 million. The game is approaching its tenth year and people are getting bored. But there was palpable excitement among players and a resoluteness on the part of the Blizzard staff to say ok, we get it, no more Kung Fu Panda, no more easy button. You want a fight? You'll get a fight.

I quit WoW a few months before Cataclysm launched and have never regretted it. It's not a bad game but they catered to casual players too much and sacrificed game-play to add subscriptions. Thanks to WoW, I have completely written off the MMO genre.
The best part of the game for me was the story and IMO, Blizzard (more than likely under Kotick's supervision) actively ruined that.
1st head: So angry!
2nd head: So hungry!
Bringing back content from WC2 won't save the MMO, neither will what they're trying to do here.
A Warcraft 4 is long overdue, imo, if only for the sake of story.
Warcraft needs a break. Fast forward 20 or 30 or even more years in the fictional universe, make some real changes, get out a new strategy game, cultivate some characters of Arthas's caliber instead of these nondescript one-dimensional guys. Right now, the way they're treating the franchise both story- and gameplay-wise feels like unashamed milking.
Ultima Online is still going, Everquest just had its 20th expansion, or we can go older....The Realm is still going and that was from the mid 90s.
Seriously though I want warcraft 4 and the continuation of the story in a new engine. How hard can that be???
WoW is the king of casual MMO's. They just need fresh ideas and better graphics to win back the casual players. Turning it into a hardcore mode will lose most of its players it still has and win back... Wait, you the hardcore player already left and haven't been back in years. You yourself said you would never go back. Now how the hell does it make any business sense for Blizzard to go hard mode?
The changes WoW has gone through is majorly quality of life improvements, such as the hassle of sorting material, walking endlessly for 30mins etc. Nothing to do with the actual challenges of game play, such as boss fights. Unless finding flight paths and leveling up is your idea of a good time. These things are time consuming not challenging.
I strongly doubt any of you even played any end game content in WoW.
The changes WoW has gone through is majorly quality of life improvements, such as the hassle of sorting material, walking endlessly for 30mins etc. Nothing to do with the actual challenges of game play, such as boss fights. Unless finding flight paths and leveling up is your idea of a good time. These things are time consuming not challenging.
I strongly doubt any of you even played any end game content in WoW.
I agree completely.
The AoE tanking/dps for 5-mans would be OK if they waited until the first (or 2nd) patch after an x-pac to make it easy - then those of us that like things hard could take on the dungeons the way they used to - and all the casuals could do the dps-fest later.
But as with previous x-pacs, we'll see how much stays, because I remember then saying this and that won't be on gear anymore early, but by the time it came out - they couldn't go through with the change. This or that won't be a mechanic anymore - but was still left in. And while making the 15 level talents - they really have made each class cookie cutter - instead of having to pick one every level that made each character unique. (And screw that "balance" thing - certain specs should be good for certain things and horrible at other things - not this "every spec" should be good "for" everything.....)