The Queue: Boats
by Michael Sacco 
Jan 22nd 2011 at 12:00PM
Boats! They float! In water. What the heck.
crooked.wook asked:
Are there any good cloth armor options for leveling or endgame casters, aside from dresses -- I mean, "robes?" I mean, there are shirts, tunics, jerkins, whatever -- is there any way for a serious caster to not be forced to don a robe?
No, and there probably won't be, because tier 8 mage gear had a tunic and pants instead of a robe, and all mages did was bitch, bitch, bitch. This is why we can't have nice things.
Mike asked:
I've been playing WoW since back in Vanilla and finally rolled a druid for the first time when I saw the troll bat flight form. One thing is odd, though. The flight form travels the same speed as the flight mounts, but the land form is only 40% compared to 60%/100%. It does come four levels earlier, but I don't see every using it after level 20. Is there a reason it doesn't match the mount speeds like the flight forms do?
The benefit of class-specific speed-increase forms (like Ghost Wolf and talented Cat Form) isn't that they're as fast as a mount, it's that they're instant-cast (talented, for Ghost Wolf) and usable indoors. You can even use them during combat. You sacrifice a little speed compared to your mount but gain a lot of utility.
Darkseid asked:
As I try to create an Alliance copy of the Horde empire I have created on my original server, its time to ask that age old question again ...
When will Blizzard make our BoA items, like heirlooms, truly "account bound"?
The prospect of gaining all those heirlooms I have on my original server, on the new one, is not that appealing, especially considering that they seem much harder to acquire now. Is there some kind of technical reason behind the delay, or is Blizzard just trying to milk the "pay to transfer a toon with the heirlooms, then pay to send a toon back with the heirlooms later" cow a little longer?
Realms aren't all on the same server hardware, meaning that transfer of data between them is difficult or impossible, depending on the data in question. That's why character transfers are a paid service. Regionwide battleground matching indicates that we're one step closer to being able to mail across servers, but we're not there yet.
Twowolves asked:
With Cata, Blizzard went from the usual 10-level progression to five levels. Is this now the norm, or will a future expansion feature 10 levels? And a followup question: Does advancing five or 10 levels have a significant effect on the associated content being developed?
In the end, it's all just numbers. The 'clysm could've added 10 levels, but you would've gained them twice as fast; it's six of one, half-dozen of the other. Blizzard just looked at what it wanted to add in terms of content and did what made sense to the designers. Me, I'm sure increasing the cap to 81 and having it take five zones to get there was the best choice, but Blizzard didn't agree, apparently. What the heck, Blizz!
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 11)
Sleutel Jan 22nd 2011 12:04PM
IIRC, Blizzard said that the reason they switched up the level cap adjustment with this expansion was so that they wouldn't be locked into the "10 levels per expansion" model. Three in a row with 10 would have conditioned us to always expect that going forward. By making it 5 for Cata, they are allowing themselves the flexibility to vary the level cap gain from expansion to expansion: the next xpac could be 5, 10, 15 levels higher.
Eldoron Jan 22nd 2011 12:08PM
IMHO, after three 10-level expansions they could have easily make a 5-level expansion, with the reasoning "because we say so"
thegatherer Jan 22nd 2011 12:09PM
That and IIRC, someone in blizz said the game would effectively end (i.e. not much new content) after lvl 100.
Sleutel Jan 22nd 2011 12:10PM
@Eldoron:
We have people confused and complaining after only two 10-level expansions. Let's be honest: we're talking about WoW players here. We get very attached to what we see as "the way things should be." If they'd waited another expansion to change people's expectations, the blowback would have just been that much worse.
CaryEverett Jan 22nd 2011 12:12PM
Wan't so much that WoW would end when you hit level 100, it's just that they were sorta making that more a goal point. They'd continue raising the level cap past there and making more expansions as long as WoW is popular.
This just slows it down and means WoW won't be reaching level 200 anytime soon.
Candina@WH Jan 22nd 2011 12:14PM
I think that is partially true, Sleutel,
But I think it also gives them the ability to do more expansions. I remember reading, once a long time ago, a dev had said that they didn't want to go over level 100. So, at ten levels an expansion, they had limited themselves to 2 expansions. At 5? we can do 4 more (after wrath).
I don't know if 100 was a technical limitation, or an arbitrary limitation.
or a Jesus you guys, get a life! I want to develop something else limitation...
Eldoron Jan 22nd 2011 12:15PM
We know that the "plan for WoW" with level 100 was fake, also they stated many times that WoW will go on until there'll be like 1 million subscribers. So level 100 doesn't mean much.
Moeru Jan 22nd 2011 12:46PM
I believe that someone once told me that the current WoW engine freaked out when levels went above 100, which is part of the reason. Besides, with this many expansions, we could probably just redo the previous areas once we reach 100 for following expansions :D
SR Jan 22nd 2011 12:47PM
Except there's already 13 million plus subscribers already.
SR Jan 22nd 2011 12:48PM
Two "already" for added emphasis on a rhetoric comment.
Ok, I lied. WT
SR Jan 22nd 2011 12:49PM
....... Damn these laptops.
I meant to say "Ok, I lied. WTB Edit Button"
I really want one now.
Jeremy Jan 22nd 2011 1:05PM
"Except there's already 13 million plus subscribers already."
I don't know how accurate the guy's statement that you're replying to was, but I'm pretty sure he meant until it dropped to 1 million it'd still be profitable to keep making new content. WoW's had more than a million subscribers for quite a while now; I don't think you're really pointing out anything new.
WoW's a business; pretty sure it's never going to "end" until people are no longer playing it (i.e. - it's not making money). Why kill the golden goose?
Ronin Jan 22nd 2011 2:24PM
The main reason I heard for only gaining five levels with this expansion, was to avoid the stat inflation you get when you go through ten levels instead. Just look at how much our health pools expand with each expansion, for example. You have to keep expanding the stats with each level, or there's no real progression (in your character or in the mobs that populate the world). But if you don't find a way to reign that in, then you end up with ridiculously high numbers. My Hunter, for example, is sitting at about halfway through level 82 right now. He has gone from about 8,000 health (in quest gear, at the end of Wrath) to 45,000 health (again, strictly in questing gear from Cata) in about two-and-a-half levels!
Many of you know better than me what the health pools end up like by lvl 85 (I'm addicted to leveling alts, so it's taking me a while to get my main there). Now extrapolate that growth out over five _more_ levels, if the expansion ended at lvl 90! It's truly staggering.
Add to that the problem with them being forced to devalue some stats as you level, because they would just be too powerful otherwise (it takes a lot more points of hit, for example, to equal a 1% gain in hit chance) and you see why this is a problem.
artifex Jan 22nd 2011 5:01PM
Ronin: good point. And besides stat inflation, can you imagine the ilevel inflation of doing another 10?
Sleutel Jan 22nd 2011 5:06PM
I'm not sure stat inflation is really the concern. After all, they have no plans to stop supporting the game anytime soon; stats are going to keep going up. Postponing the higher levels doesn't do much but make us wait a little bit longer.
vocenoctum Jan 22nd 2011 5:07PM
The "same xp across 10 levels as 5" problem is that it doesn't seem to be so. I've gone Hyjal-Deephome-Twilight without a real problem vs Borean/dragonblight/ grizzly/ sholazar/ stormpeaks (or icecrown) or even Hellfire-Zanger-Terrokar- Nagrand-Netherstorm.
Aside from the three-zone-iness of Vashjyr, none of the zones really felt that much longer/deeper than the BC or Wrath equivalents.
I can understand not wanting to escalate stuff as much with stat inflation, but I don't think that was a "balanced across 10 levels" thing so much as "balanced across all the tiers and half tiers and heroic half tiers" at 80.
I don't mean it to sound like a complaint so much, but it seems to me that Cataclysm wasn't as much of an expansion due to the refurbishment of the Old World. And while that is super great, it's not as super in regards to the max-level alts of mine. And since I like to keep my alts on one server and they didn't raise the max-10, I'm restricted there somewhat.
Badgerlikespeed Jan 22nd 2011 6:49PM
The other point is that it looks less intimidating to new players joining the game. Looking up at 90 levels, 100 levels, or even 110 levels in the future is more daunting for a new player. And it means that if (when) they drop the xp requirements then people will get through that much faster.
Durrherd Jan 22nd 2011 10:52PM
"WoW's a business; pretty sure it's never going to "end" until people are no longer playing it (i.e. - it's not making money). Why kill the golden goose?"
Ahh but remember this, WoW's engine is looking pretty old by todays standards, and while WoW is succesful as of this moment, what happens in a couple of years when a new MMO comes along with similar gameplay and a more modern graphics?
WoW is surviving right now because of its good writing, brilliant art style, intuitive gameplay structure, a dedicated fan-base (and even perhaps good old fashioned addiction) but we all know it can't last forever as is.
I know Graphics aren't more important than gameplay, but I believe in order for blizzard to keep a firm chokehold on the mmo market, WoW should effectively "end" in about 5 years with a final expansion to wrap up the storyline.
And then come out with a second Mmo, one thats been built new from the ground up the follows WoW's structure.
It could be a new IP, it could be more warcraft, and if a lack of stories are an issue, its blizz!
They can retcon anything.
Xsinthis Jan 23rd 2011 1:24AM
Too all the comments about the game engine: They can update it when they feel its being pushed to far. Valve does it all the time for their games, and yes i know, significantly smaller player and game bases, but it is possible, which, despite all the work that would be involved, might be better for them than starting a new game, given the loyal fan base to this franchise (going on with the Valve thing, we didn't like it very much when l4d2 was released so quickly).
Also, I'm pretty sure that the game engine you see today isn't the same it was 6 years ago, its probably been upgraded behind the scenes in increments.
Rimar Jan 23rd 2011 2:38AM
I think the less levels cap may be geared towards keeping players (like me) putting the time into leveling thru the expansion. With the previous expansions, I would level my main toon and forget my alts because the process *seemed* to take forever.
Now with this new model it was effortless for me to level my main AND my alts to 85 and get ready for endgame content (which is always Blizzard's desire to get us to). I actually enjoyed leveling to 85 several times.