Burning Crusade Starter Zones in Cataclysm
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Heartbourne on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 23 Comments Tags: bc, blood elf, burning crusade, cataclysm, instance, jewelcrafting, shadowfang keep
Heartbourne on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 23 Comments Tags: bc, blood elf, burning crusade, cataclysm, instance, jewelcrafting, shadowfang keep 
One of the features of World of Warcraft that really pulled me into the game was the seamless transition between zones. I had just stopped playing Final Fantasy XI, which had a dismal loading time between zones and really made the world feel disconnected. There was no way all of those zones would fit together on a world map. WoW's seamless transition between zones offered a great level of immersion. The few loading screens were either from crossing continents, which felt justified with a picture of a world map, or for instanced dungeons. Going through a portal and getting instanced really felt like I was being removed from the world and placed elsewhere; if I looked out onto Silverpine from Shadowfang Keep, I couldn't see other players or even monsters wandering the world like I would if I was outside. It made instances where you observe the outside world, like Scholomance (or recently Oculus or Utgarde Keep), a little confusing at times until I reminded myself I was still in Azeroth.Fast forward to the release of Burning Crusade. I was ecstatic to play a Blood Elf, but one thing that took me out of the game was zoning between Quel'thalas and the rest of the world. The transporter to Undercity and portals into Silvermoon weren't a big deal since they took some time to load anyway, but simply walking into Eastern Plaguelands requiring a loading screen to go from the new "Burning Crusade instance" to the Eastern Kingdoms seemed unacceptable. Additionally, for players in the Draenei and Blood Elf cities and starting zones, player arrows on the minimap showed up when players were in other Burning Crusade lands, like Outland, but not nearby in Eastern Plaguelands! I was convinced it was one of the reasons by beloved Silvermoon city wasn't more popular and why I spent so little time there, even compared to the Undercity.
This got me thinking forward to Cataclysm. With flying mounts now allowed in Azeroth, unless Wintergrasp-like flying restrictions are put in place, most of the world is going to have to be one big chunk of an instance. Blizzard will have to make sure that the Ghostlands border with Eastern Kingdoms is ironed out and remove the instancing restriction. Acherus will probably now be accessible to non-Death Knight players. The Draenei areas will likely be brought into the fold as well. Some areas like the Echo Isles and other distant zones may not have to be accessible by flying mount to the main continents.
The implications of this are interesting. The Burning Crusade starting zones were instanced because they wanted the new starting quests to be exclusive to people who bought the expansion to sell more games. In addition, Jewelcrafting, the new profession at the time, only had starting trainers in Silvermoon and the Exodar, so players had to have Burning Crusade to train for it. The question that now arises is: what will happen to this Burning Crusade exclusive content? Will owners of only original WoW now be able to train in Jewelcrafting and do the Blood Elf and Draenei quests, and even maybe make Blood Elf and Draenei characters?
Perhaps Burning Crusade, and maybe even Wrath or Cataclysm, will be rolled into the original WoW. The start-up cost to get into WoW is getting price prohibitive for getting new players, and players starting anew will already be experiencing the new post-cataclysm world. These new players would be "free riders" on the Cataclysm content, so why not include all the expansions, at least through Wrath, to new players? If they are getting the content anyway and it entices them to stay longer, they will make more money on subscriptions from enticing players to stay anyway.
What do you think? Is it time to roll all of the old games together?
Reader Comments (23)
shoulda been like that from the beginning imo...what if someone only wanted to play a blood elf, but couldnt until they spent the money on bc, and got turned away from the game because they couldnt?
there is always the option "Fatigue" even on the mount..
Yes, but I meant for travel between say Eastern Plagelands and Ghostlands. Fatigue wouldn't kick in nearly soon enough to be a deterrent.
They could do the "haze" thing like in CoS
A great anology is illegal immigration. You have been paying your way all your life and someone comes to your country and gets their healthcare payed for by you.
It's the same thing in WoW. Someone shouldn't be able to join the WoW community and get content they didn't pay for. If you want BC content then you should have to pay for it. The rest of us did.
To point out. u need BC to play wrath due to the 70-80 level cap. i'm betting that for catalcysm blizz is gonna still require you to have wrath to play it. but as for making the old world one full area? i do want to see that.
Blizz did make it well-known that they were going to make more use of phasing in Cataclysm, so the "haze" idea would fit in very well.
They will have to change their current scheme of buying each expansion. I have a couple of friends who started playing after WOTLK, and are now balking at the idea of having to buy additional expansions in order to keep playing (playing beyond level 60 anyway).
Great thoughts I was thinking of Acherus myself.
I was thinking, world PVP would get a lot more exciting now that flying mount are in Azeroth, what better spot to strike then above the enemy?
Back to Acherus, I wonder (if accessible to non-death knights) what will that provide them with?
Yeah, it would probably be a good idea for Blizzard to mostly discontinue vanilla, BC, and Wrath when Cataclysm comes out and instead release them as one big package (with Cataclysm being *the* expansion). It might be a good idea to keep the BC and Wrath products around as well for those who never upgraded in the first place, but the main products would be World of Warcraft Battlechest (or something like that) and World of Warcraft Cataclysm.
The reason why the drani and blood elf zones required loading screens to go to the rest of Azaroth was because though on the map it looked like they where conected in reality those 2(well4) zones where actually on the outland servers not Eastern Kindgoms server or Kalimdor server... the servers are broken down into Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Outlands, Northrend, Instances, and Battlegrounds... which is why on buggy patch days EK or Kalimdor may run perfectly smooth while the other continent you may not even be able to get to so you can log onto character in continent x or y, but when you try to log into the ones on z or q you either can't or if you do lag so badly that you can't even really play.
The reason why ghostlands has a loading screen to get to EPL is because they put ghostlands on the outland server to make it so people without BC could not get to it... though this may be a pain since everyone figures that everyone at least has the first expansion by now it is still that way to prevent people with only vanilla wow from accessing BC only content.
It is possible that they might change their mind on allowing access to these zones next expansion for vanilla WoW players and moving them from OL server to Kalimdor/EK servers since they are redoing vanilla anyways but highly unlikely since access to these two zones (which also means the JC profession) was one of the big perks into upgrading from vanilla WoW to BC WoW besides the obious level cap raise, 2 classes, and access to outlands (offical outlands, not just OL to prevent vanilla access).
As to the question the post asked... I could see them rolling vanilla and BC together yet keeping wrath and Cat separate, mainly because well the same point as my last post as to why they had loading screens for the BC starter zones... they are redoing the old world and so might as well mesh the BE/Drani zones into the servers since at this point most everyone who plays enough to want any expansion already has atleast BC and well having new people who want to get capped who are new having to spend 20+30+30+40= $120 just to have access to it all is a bit steep and drives people away... now if it was just 20+30+40= $90 its still steep but rather then having to spend $80 to gain acces to 80 and then once 80 and additional 40 to gain last 5 level, it would just be $50 to get to 80 and then 40 to get last 5 which is more feasible, I mean console games cost $50-60 and so to have most access for that cost and then the rest later would not be bad,
But I mean comeon its not guitar hero here we are not getting some motion sensor sword here to hack and slash with it should not have over a $60 start up fee to still be shy a expansion.
Sorry for the block text, but with that said I do see the point of rolling 1&2 into just 1, yet keeping wrath as its own... I can see start up cost + 2 expansions at any given time, but any more then 2 and they should start getting bundled down each time a new one comes out, so when teh one after Cat comes out Vanilla/BC/and wath should be 1 thing and then Cat as one and whatever is after cat...then when the next one comes out smush Cat with the first 3, etc making it always a 1 major + 2 expansion cost for new people.
I read that the main game client will include cataclysm "changes" to the old world but not the cataclysm "content". So new players and player who never got BC will see the world after the cataclysm but wont be able to run any new high end content. I dont like this idea because it makes going off to Outlands and Northrend seem pointless and out of sync with the time line/lore. So a level 1 toon is like "Ok the cataclysm just happened! Im gonna level to 60 in revamped, a smashed up, phased out, new questy Old World and then...go....to....Outland to fight the Burning Crusade? Wth? Weren't they defeated before the Cataclysm ever happened? What? I have to go to Northrend (un-cataclysmed no less) and battle the Lich King before I can get back to the new Old World to deal with events that just took place when I was level 1 but now still just took place even tho im level 80, but some how occurred after and before I went to Outland to fight a battle that had been over for 2 expansions?" Weird huh?
you misspelled draenei :P
you wrote draeni
Bah! Silly Alliance and their silly spellings of things.
Meh, tells you how often I play Draenei... I play both sides of the field equally the 2 races I play most on both sides is Night Elf/ Human for alliance and Troll/ Undead for the horde, my only 2 alliance that I ever made as Draenei was my hunter and Shaman both in which I started the night the expansion released, got nice and leveled yet haven't touched them since wrath came out because I have been in my horde kick since then. (Mainly because my alliance server is pretty broke since thats the side I started on and so didn't know how to make money during leveling back then, and being broke sucks)
I personally don't like the fact that older versions of the game will be "updated" to include the cataclysm changes just not content. I had to buy original and BC just to start and then 10 months later buy Wrath. Yet now the people who have not even gone into BC yet are going to get to see all the changes basically for free? That's a load of crap. Each expansion should require you to upgrade or quit. If you don't want to go over 60, too bad. Don't want to go over 70? Quit. If you don't want to see what happens next in the game, why are you playing? Stop wasting your money each month and put it toward something you'll get more use out of. Maybe I'm wierd like that but I don't believe in staying at one point in the game and never seeing all the new stuff developers can come up with. Just me and this is just my two cents worth. I started at the end of burning crusade so am a little miffed about a lot of upcoming things so probably wouldn't understand what would be so fun about staying with a vanilla account or such.
FOR THE HORDE!!
Actually, with every upgraded expansion, there is a content patch where you get SOME of the features of the new expansion, but not the most important ones. Talent changes, profession changes, etc. It's always been that way.
But with Cataclysm, they are drastically changing the entire world (of warcraft). It would be impossible to have people running around in old Azeroth and have people running around in the new. So, just like the way it's always been, the changes that MUST be added are added in the content patch. I expect talent and profession changes to be included in that also.
It would be a bad idea for Blizz to force people to end their subscription just because they didn't buy the new expac immediately, they'd loose money.
Think about it. Content patches before expansions are necessary and have always been around.
Nice post man, I personally don't like the flying mount feature in the Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor... just think of all the world pvp that will be lost! And what I kinda like with those two areas is that you get to explore everything from the ground and not like in Outland or Northrend were you could just fly around and explore everything very briefly... I mean, I still carry around a lot of memories running my ram (yes, i'm a dwarf) across these continents. Keep up the good work Heartbourne :-)
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