Out of Pod Experience

Its as if it didn't occur to Blizzard that Western things are the counterpart to exotic flavour to East Asian culture. If they wanted to get more of the East Asian audience focusing on Renaissance Europe would have been the best bet in my opinion.

That's for sure. (I'm looking at you EA and your SimCity)

Ulduar was the best raid they ever did plus the best raid story they ever did, the best art design in the game, just epic in every sense.

Naturally, Blizzard decided it was crap and was going to focus on the really awesome stuff like the trials or the whine king. And whatever crap came after. Plus casual and normal mode.

I enjoyed vanilla wow and TBC. I played from 2005 to i think around 2008 if memory serves. I was never much of a raider, more a market guy (go figure) playing the AH and generally mining and herbing everything. I really enjoyed the community of my server but TBC seemed to take away some of that element and it just got worse and worse with each expansion.

When i lived at home i used to go to my buddies house with other friends and the 5 of us would pretty much LAN Alterac Valley for hours and hours and hours. It was amazing fun for us. Then they added random BGs and it became about speed rungs. Then they added arenas and it became "seriouz bizness".

I think it was arenas that really started the decline for me. Yes they were fun, but i was more a balls to the wall fury dwarf warrior who didnt care about dying if i could have a laugh. As the expansions came world events got more scarce too. I used to love the little rolling battles that flared up in er... the place escapes me now. That little alliance village where Tarren Mill was. Start off small and escalate with loads of level 60s showing up. Then Lich King came and added some interesting features like the fractal time system which was very interesting, but later on it made finding someone to do a certain quest with a serious pain in the arse after the initial rush to 80.

WoW wont die until WoW 2 comes out but i doubt Blizzard will cater for the group that made it big in vanilla and TBC and keep the push for casual which is a real shame.

Still, WoW has an excellent soundtrack. Got to give it props on that.

To an extent i agree.

The server i played on eventually suffered from a massive imbalance and seemed to be very top heavy. Why blizzard with their massive multi expansion world couldnt up the server player count and merge servers (beyond the chicken little wags who would scream WoW is dying and might effect their share value) to give a greater player density is beyond me. Although i suspect there might be some back end technical limitations there.

A single server might be an issue given wows design with questing. Trying to do kill xyz mob in xyz area would be impossible with a single server. But a greater player density would be nice.

Towards the end of my wow life i would dearly have loved an influx of say 5-10k more players even if they were max level. The numbers of alts created would have given the lower level content more spice and kept people like me happy. And i could have met more new folks and the AH would have become more interesting.

I still dont think a single shardstyle system is doable but not in the current wow form. It works in eve as eve is skill based not exp based. Youd need a truly massive world to do that and would spread the players out too much imo. Could be wrong though.

That said, i do like or did like wows crafting system though it might have changed to the worse i dont know. A more dynamic trade would be very interesting indeed. WoW traders really do pall in comparison to even a moderate eve marketeer or trader and if they could attract eves type of market economists the game would be very interesting.

Another reason id like few shards is that it means less "cross server" crap, i hated cross realm BGs and so on. How can you harass / troll / moan about the other side if theyre on another server? I want to stomp the faces of my servers opposing side, it gives it more meaning.

Maybe a few "big" worlds. Like East Coast / West Coast North America / English French German etc servers for Europe like they have now but compacted. Could keep the game fresher for longer as players if they made alts etc would see the lower levels have a great population than being pretty dead as it was when i last played in 2008.

Stormwind with a million people... just imagine trade chat.

I think they might have to make it a tad bigger.

They have already done a single shard type model. It's called "Cross Realm Zones" It was put into place when Mists came out. Major cities are still on their own server's, for economy reason's and because a million people in SW would suck.

However as soon as you leave any major city you are now in these cross realm zones where many server's are grouped together. It has brought a new flood of QQ from people getting ganked left and right on PVP server's to RP events getting crashed by people on other server's ruining it.

But it seems now people are getting used to it.

(deleted to avoid the mighty banhammer)

Not sure.
I found it funny.
But a mod in a bad mood could have considered it gross racialism.
Pity that we cannot delete our own posts- or can we?