GotMMOG?

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (Blizzard)

Nothing new after the announcement of the coming expansion called Cataclysm. Goblins, Worgen, 85 level cap, Archaeology profession, major changes to the map, Path of the Titan, flying mounts in the rest of the world. We’ll probably take a stab playing around with it tomorrow but from seeing what was there, it looks like, well…WoW.

It’ll be interesting to see how it feels to roam the lands with everything all different-like. In some respects, this might be one of the smartest moves they’ve made to bring people back (and to get those people to renew their subscriptions).

Thing is, each of these expansions and changes they make to improve lower-level progression and help people get through the content to the higher level PVP end game might help but it’s going to have less and less of an effect each time. People are tired of WoW. But they still like it. What can you do? I think this coming expansion might do enough to bring people back for longer (thus why I think it’s one of their smartest moves of late). No more boring level progression through the same places over and over again with each new character.

The next thing they should do after the expansion (or with?) would be to litter the lower level areas (20-60) with new quests with nice loot for higher levels to accomplish and bring them back. They do mention “hundreds of new quests” in their trailer so…we’ll have to see, maybe we’ll see tomorrow.

g afk

Well, folks (all two of you), the first day of PAX 2009 is over (for me at least…damned allergies). It’s been a long day with a lot of stuff in the Expo worth noting. Bear with me on the summary below. We’ll cover more detail in our post-PAX analysis…when we recover from it.

In the interest of breaking this stuff down into bite sized pieces, we’ll split it up into separate posts…

Here are the things that didn’t warrant their own post (yet):

1) Some MMO devs had booths for existing MMOs, like WAR, that made you wonder why they bothered? They’re not new…they’re not releasing expansions, but they’re here. Okay, maybe they’re trying to drum up more subs but it’s a bit disappointing for active gamers.

2) Global Agenda looks interesting. Sanister got to play which made him an instant convert. I’ll take a look tomorrow. The dev at the booth said what was being demoed was the main multiplayer part of the game (team TPS action). They were still working on the MMO component. My thing was it felt a lot like CrimeCraft which did a terrible job of making it feel like an MMO. The MMO part was just a big empty space where you ran errands before joining the arena-like combat. In essense, another Guild Wars but set in the future. We’ll see tomorrow.

3) That factoid from last year that stated there were over 100 MMOs in development doesn’t seem far off any more. There was a post-apocalyptic, Borderlands style game called Fallen Earth. Nothing ground breaking. We’ll try looking in more detail if we can but it didn’t look very appealing either.

4) On the RPG front, Mass Effect 2 looked…like Mass Effect 1. I dunno…maybe the improved combat system will help smooth out the game and make it feel better, despite it’s console roots.

We’re hoping to dig into Dragon Age: Origins and Bioshock 2 this weekend. No sign of SWTOR anywhere. Odd considering the potential to show off something to a crowd of gamers.

Read on to see the more details from today. We’ll be back tomorrow with even more!

g afk