[quote=http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2010/11/24/world-of-warcraft-the-shattering-patch-403/]If you play "World of WarCraft," the last 24 hours have been...well...eventful. Patch 4.0.3, also known as The Shattering, launched, and it paved the way for the upcoming release of "Cataclysm" next month. But even without having the new expansion, the changes have been massive. Deathwing the Destroyer has made his mark, ripping a hole in the world and changing familiar Azeroth locales forever. Story-wise this all makes sense, as Deathwing is the primary antagonist of "Cataclysm," but gameplay-wise, why would Blizzard trash classic zones and replace them with reworked versions? I spoke with Cory Stockton, the lead content designer on "World of WarCraft," to get the answer.[INDENT]"The reason why we did it is because we felt there's a lot of value in the original zones. There's 37 original zones that shipped with the original 'WoW,' from 1 to 60. We felt like those zones had a lot of story for existing players, and a big thing with 'WoW' is players re-rolling and going back through with new classes and new characters. We thought it was worth it to go back to these zones and bring their level of quality from a questing and story and flow standpoint, up to something equal or hopefully much better than what we did with 'Wrath of the Lich King'."
[/INDENT]One might imagine that the re-worked zones would be bigger, but Blizzard actually went the other way when redesigning everything.[INDENT]"The Barrens is a zone most people would know about. The Barrens was originally a very large zone that covered a large level range, almost 20 levels that players played through in the Barrens. If you look at the way we've transitioned our content over these last years, we've gone from larger zones like that to smaller zones, because it feels better for the player.
"When a player is spending 20 levels in a zone, things tend to get stale. You tend to get only certain storylines you can hit. If you look at Northrend and things like that, we cover much smaller level [ranges]. So the Barrens went from covering 20 levels to covering 5 levels. That goes through every zone that we changed. All of the zones now cover a 5 level range."
[/INDENT]The level range isn't the only thing Blizzard changed about The Barrens. They actually split the zone in two parts, Northern Barrens and the Southern Barrens. "We really feel that when players can focus on the individual storyline that's happening in each zone, the quests feel more focused and the whole flow of the game feels much better," said Stockton. "You're seeing a wider selection of backgrounds and environments rather than being stuck in one place for one time."
All told, The Shattering patch is massive. I asked Stockton how much of the old content was ported over, and he explained that it's almost all from scratch. "We went into it thinking, 'Let's keep as much as we can and only fix the stuff that's really bad.' That went out the window pretty quick, being Blizzard, and seeing that once you make one quest line really awesome, you don't want it to butt up against one that's six years old. In the classic world of [levels] 1 to 60, they created and redid about 2,700 quests."
The Shattering update is available right now, and it should have plenty to keep you occupied until "Cataclysm" launches next month. If ever there was a good time to re-roll as a Gnome Priest (finally!) it's now.[/quote]
Because it's lore.
Because if Blizzard keeps releasing expansions that take months for a casual player to even see, they'll find they hit a wall where they don't get new members, just most existing members buying the xpack.
As long as they keep getting their money from all the die hard raiders things won't change.
I really wish you would stop with the fucking news threads about every single thing you see
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