Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm

Burning Crusade launched in January 2007, and from that point until November 2008, level 70 was the endgame of World of Warcraft. For roughly 23 months (with staggered content releases, with the Black Temple launching later, then Zul’Aman and then Sunwell/Magister’s) we all leveled to 70, ran heroic instances and Karazhan to gear up, and then some of us began making our way through Gruul’s Lair, Magtheridon’s Lair, Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep before moving on to Mount Hyjal and the Black Temple.

Zul’Aman came out to offer scaled challenges (the prototype of the hard mode) with a timed run to get the Amani War Bear, and of course no one can forget the final big content patch, Fury of the Sunwell, which gave some content for just about any level of gameplay from casual daily quest grinding to hardcore raiding. Gameplay was still very stratified in Burning Crusade — there were a handful of guilds progressing through the endgame content (which was still tiered into a couple of 10-man raids, with the majority being 25-man) but most people did dailies, ran some BGs or played Arenas (which debuted with Burning Crusade as well).

With Cataclysm previews coming out and Wrath in its last major content phase (Icecrown Citadel and the upcoming Chamber of Aspects raid being pretty much the end of Wrath’s end game) we can start to look back at how the last expansion unfolded and the life cycle of an expansion in World of Warcraft.

Continue reading The expansion life cycle

The expansion life cycle originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Blizzard, News items, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm

A Battle Plan! Been a while since we’ve seen one of these; in fact, the last time Blizzard posted an official Battle Plan was late 2006, and there may be good reason for that. As a whole, Blizzard is much more open now in terms of communicating development philosophies and providing direct answers to questions posed — I blame Ghostcrawler — than they were four years ago.

Given that we’re on the eve of WoW’s most extensive expansion, though, this is a pretty prime time to catch everybody up on what’s happened thus far since Wrath launched and where Cataclysm is bringing us, and that’s exactly what the Battle Plan does. There’s not a lot at first glance — a small Wrath postmortem, some basic info about the upcoming Ruby Sanctum and Echo Isles/Gnomeregan content — but some closer examination reveals a few interesting tidbits.

• Cataclysm’s Kalimdor content is basically finished. “Much of Eastern Kingdoms” is completed.
• After the upcoming events to retake Gnomeregan and the Echo Isles, all level one gnomes and trolls will start in the newly-reclaimed areas!
• Database hardware upgrades will be put into place to ensure that the Cataclysm launch goes as smoothly as possible.

The entirety of the Battle Plan post is after the break.

Continue reading Blizzard posts the newest World of Warcraft Battle Plan

Blizzard posts the newest World of Warcraft Battle Plan originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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