In the original, the items were extremely visually limiting. Rapid Reality has added hordes of weapons, armors, jet-packs and other toys for players to earn and do battle with. The game almost felt like a cartoony version of Tribes once they got suited up and started flying around.

While I was pleased by this development, I wasn’t terribly surprised. After all, this was a couple that had been playing MMORPGs for a while now. Then more folks started getting into the act. A gentleman who is an inveterate gamer but hasn’t even had a focus in MMOGs picked up the game and within a week was higher level than I was. He dragged in his brother and his brother’s girlfriend, two people who to my knowledge had never even touched a MMOG before. Just recently at GenCon, a pair of game snobs who have long shunned many aspects of the Massive genre were felled by the prospect of a free copy of CoH, given away at the NCSoft booth. Whether they make it past the free month is still up in the air, but the fact that they were willing to give it a shot says a great deal about the drawing power of this game.

What’s the draw? What makes City of Heroes a massive game that people can get behind without trepidation, while EQ and SWG continue to have flagging numbers? As anyone who has read some of my previous columns can attest to, I’ve touched on this before. I think it bears looking into though, so I’ll give a bullet point breakdown of the key features that I think tie this game into the popular consciousness -

* Easy Signup – Making an account and creating a character are intuitive processes.
* Pickup Games – It’s incredibly easy to hop on and play for 30 minutes and then quit knowing you’ve accomplished something.
* Accessible Content – By placing the game in the modern age, Cryptic does away with any knowledge gaps that fantasy games can have.
* Personalization – The character creation process binds the player to his avatar in a direct and intimate way.
* Sidekicking – It cannot be overstated how much it makes a difference to be able to play with your friends.

The next game that takes root as a non-niche phenomenon will undoubtedly share some of these characteristics. As for improving on CoH’s high points, there are a few areas that I think could be more fleshed out. The tutorial is where I think the most work could be done. There are many game concepts left unexplored by the tutorial that come up almost immediately upon exiting into the game world proper. The Everquest and Everquest 2 tutorials should, I think, be viewed as benchmarks for the industry in their completeness and ease of use. While EQ2’s pervasive use of voiceovers is a larger choice, voiceovers in the tutorial (done in EQ, EQ2, and SWG) makes for a very human, very personal initial experience.

To steal from another game, the web-based components that World of Warcraft is going to introduce are appeal generating features as well. Detailed information about your characters via a web interface is a good first step. To take it further, allowing you to see which of your friends and guild mates are on at a given time via a web interface would be ideal. While there have already been discussions of developing external to the game text messaging services that could interact with in-game players, combining these two would allow a real world presence that I think would reassure people. The “IM” mentality is something that a lot of people already understand. Hopping onto AIM (or via cell phone?), having someone text message you from in-game that something big is going down would provide a sense of physicality that non-MMOG players may have trouble grasping.

In the end, the marketing of a game is only part of the reason that people buy it. Word of mouth advertising still counts for a lot. If your game is hard to explain (”You have to act out hamlet in a certain way in order to win the creature’s trust!”) no matter how enthusiastic your friends are, you’re just not going to get into it. Accessible content and a good design mean that current players can enthuse to their friends in terms that are easy to understand. Universal appeal is not about building the greatest game, it’s about building a good game that people can relate to.

* You don’t get a pet until level 10. Like with many of the other classes, Blizz is turning the 1-10 level into a primer for the game. You don’t get Cool Thing X (including talents) until you reach level 10. In keeping with the making-it-easy-for-a-new-MMOG-player design concept, I think this is a good move. It does make those 10 levels interminable when you really want to try your hand at beast training, though.

* Hunters are the ranged masters. Whether they use guns or bows, Hunter characters have a bunch of ranged attack opportunities. The first thing you notice when playing the class is the “Autofire” attack, which allows you to fire off several shots at a baddy before it can close to melee. Many times, I’ve been able to get a creature to half of their HP before they make it to me.

* Beyond the straight “fire the weapon”, Hunters also have special shots which do extra damage, and induce states like poison or dizzyness. These are great additions to the class and allow you to develop a rhythm. Poison shot to get the creature’s attention and start a DoT, Dizzy shot to slow it down, Arcane shot to damage it more, and then into melee.

* Ranged weapons can’t be used after a creature gets too close, so Hunters have to maintain melee combat abilities too. They have abilities that assist in melee combat, too, increasing damage and improving defensive abilities.

* Pet training is as simple as can be. You approach a beast-type creature carefully. If you or the beast enter into combat, you can’t train. Once you’re close enough, you activate the “Train Pet” ability”. Big hearts start floating around as you and the beast get to know each other. By this point, the beast will be protesting this injustice by gnawwing on you. Make sure you have a full health bar before you start this. A timer bar at the bottom of your screen charts the progress of your attempt. If you succeed, congrats, you have a new pet!

* Once a pet is nabbed, you have to keep it. To do do this, you have to feed the pet with the “Feed Pet” ablity. You feed the pet the same food that characters eat. (This makes fishing and cooking good choices for a hunter.) Each pet type has it’s own particularities when it comes to food. Carnivores prefer meat, for example, and won’t eat bread. Feeding a pet increases the pet’s happyness rating.

* The happier a pet is, the more damage it does (theoretically….this is broken right now. more on that in a sec.) and the more loyal it becomes. You accrue loyalty and training points by adventuring with your pet and keeping its happiness up. Additional loyalty results in training points for that individual pet, which lets you purchase abilities for the pet. Right now the only ability to purchase is “growl”, but more are to be added in.

* The pet allows a hunter to pin down a target at long range, get some damage onto it, and then attract it’s attention through a combination of ranged attacks. Using a pet, it’s possible to have the fight practically done by the time your target reaches melee range.

* Using a pet is just cool. Having an intimidating or rare looking pet follow you around is a guarantee to get compliments and questions. One gentleman I heard about died 28 times working his way through Ashenvale and the Barrens to snag himself a raptor for a pet. Over time your pet gains levels with you, and power. High level Hunters will have hard choices to make regarding keeping an old friend around or getting a newer beast.

So, the hunter is shaping up nicely. I’ll have more information to share with you about him as the Beta continues. In the meantime though, I have to mention a turn of events that just proves that no one can be perfect. Since the last patch there have been problems. Lots of problems. Spirit isn’t working, characters have too few hit points, pet damage isn’t working right yet, the bug list goes on and on. It was easy to imagine, prior to this patch, that the released game was just a few days away. Unfortunately, this really is a Beta. There are problems to work through still and difficulties to overcome. I know Blizzard will get them accomplished, and the game is still one of the most polished works currently in the MMOG industry. By the time this thing hits the mass market it’s going to almost be a flawless fantasy massive game. If it gets less than 90% from nearly every reviewer, I’ll be mighty surprised. But, for the meantime, my level 30 warrior is down over 300 hp. Phoo.

City of Villains

The only big news to come out of the con was the revelation that City of Villains would have two new staff members attached to the game. As the press release mentioned, Cryptic Studios has hired Zeb Cook and Shane Hensley to work on the design and writing for CoV. Dave Cook is an amazing guy. The Planescapes setting for Dungeons and Dragons was a really unique twist on the idea. Back in the day, that was about one of the weirdest games on the market, with truly original design, writing, and artwork. If you’ve ever played Deadlands you know that Shane Hensley is a creative powerhouse as well. The “Weird West” roleplaying game is another original and entertaining game. Between the two of these guys, City of Villains should be quite a piece of work. I was there when the Statesman made the announcement to an appreciative crowd, and you can check it out yourself if you’d like to.

Part 1 (50 Megs)
Part 2 (13 Megs)

Dungeons and Dragons 30th Anniversary

Wizards of the Coast went all out this year in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Dungeons and Dragons RPG. There was a huge party where they gave away free totebags and posters (though not to me, sadly). There were seminars, live dungeoncrawling events, and lots of hype about the new Eberron setting, which I’ve discussed in a previous Random Dialogue. With a rules fix as recent as last year, D&D is a fresh, exciting part of the roleplaying industry again.

GURPS 4th Edition

Another old warhorse of the gaming industry got a facelift this year, with Steve Jackson games releasing their newest edition of the GURPS rules set. While GURPS books have always been a staple part of a gamer’s collection, I’ve always had trouble actually finding people who *played* the game. The new rules set is sleeker, simpler, and much more intuitive. (I also got a t-shirt!) At the same time the GURPS system is still the most flexible rules set out there, leaving the playing field wide open for whatever vista or setting a GM and his players want to take on.

Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed and Everquest II

SOE’s booth was dominated by large screen monitors allowing folks to play in the Everquest II Beta. I took a hafling for a spin, and it wasn’t terrible. I didn’t really have enough time to get into much, but the portion of the tutorial I checked out was easy to follow. The voiceovers really made more of a difference than I was expecting. I’ve gotten so used to playing MMOGs basically without sound, because that element of the game isn’t very important. It’ll be interesting to see what things are like there when I get my crack at it later this year. Galaxies, on the other hand, wasn’t even in the SOE booth. I had to head over to the nVidia booth to play Jump to Lightspeed. The brief time I had behind the controls of a YT-3100 was, I will admit, fun. It was not, however, “I’ll take you back despite the way you’ve treated me” wrong. And in light of recent events, I’m very glad I am cured of the SWG bug.

World of Warcraft

WoW’s only appearance at the con was through a pair of PC’s at the nVidia booth. PCs with very, very long lines. The servers were (as you may have heard) up and down the entire length of the convention thanks to the new Hunter Patch, but there were still people in line at all hours of the convention waiting for their chance to check out Azeroth. Listening to people talk about the game around the booth, it’s obvious that even with all the info that has come out about World of Warcraft, folks are still waiting with baited breathe for its release. If you’re one of those people, come back on Friday for the next MMORPGDot World of Warcraft Beta Journal.

Dark Age of Camelot

Mythic’s game occupied a pair of nVidia booth PCs as well. There, they were showing off recent changes to the game through the realms war expansions and free releases. Other folks got a chance to look at art and animations from the upcoming Catacombs expansion to Dark Age of Camelot. The Mythic employees there seemed most amused, and had a steady stream of folks checking out DAoC all week long. They also held a shindig on Wednesday night that I couldn’t make it to, thanks to my freaking hotel. (/fist of fury at the Marriot) If any of you Mythic folks are reading this, I look forward to meeting you in the future.

Overall Impressions

GenCon is one of the few times every year when a large portion of the tabletop gaming community comes together under one roof. Not only is being a dork socially acceptable there, chances are good that your dorkitude will be inversly proportional to your cool factor. Shouting a python quote at a crowd will get you a chorus of responses, as opposed to dull looks. You can make bad jokes about dice, dragons, or chainmail and have an appreciative laugh from passers by. And, as every year, the costumes get more intricate and interesting. This year I saw several people cosplaying as characters from City of Heroes, and at least one rasta Troll from World of Warcraft. This year was a reassuring sign that the massive games that were spawned from the tabletop setting are, to one degree or another, coming home to roost. Though GenCon-SoCal is far and away a more MMOG-friendly environment, I hope that GenCon-Indy will continue to see visitors from the Massive industry in years to come.

The design of most massive games, of course, owes a great deal to D&D. The early MUDs and MUSHs cribbed a great deal from the TSR game, and as a result the graphical games built on their backs have the same flavour. Without “The Temple of Elemental Evil”, we may never have fought Nagafen or Lady Vox. Even beyond massive games, Dungeons and Dragons and it’s brethren lent creative energy to games development. The adventures of the iD Software krewe in their early dungeoneering days led to the likes of Quake and formed elements even today of Doom 3. The spark of creativity and the interest in the fantastical that many designers share almost certainly harkens back to their time spent underground hunting for lost treasure, or saving hapless villagers.

Before you lies a great plain filled with tended fields of wheat. Diligent villagers work the tight rows of grain as you look on. The sky is a sharp blue, with only a few whispy clouds occasionally obscuring the sun. The smell of autumn and the harvest is on the air as you enjoy the view. Suddenly, a shadow passes in front of the sun, darkening the field. You look up and, backlit against the sky, see the serpentine form of a red dragon glide into view. The great beast rears back it’s head, and flames billow forth from it’s gaping maw to engulf a field of foodstuffs. Grimacing, you tighten your grip on your sword…

This scene, or something very much like it, was my first exposure to Dungeons and Dragons. I’d been playing the poorly named “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness” game for about a year, and I was getting tired of portraying the role of a ninja weasel. I was 11, and another kid at my grade school brought the basic rules one day at recess. This wasn’t even 2nd Edition, mind you, this was straight AD&D. Me and two other dorks rolled up characters on the asphalt, in the corner of the parking lot behind the basketball hoops, and our long-on-talk short-on-game DM gave it a go. The three of us (fighter, cleric, and wizard) were to save this town from the depredations of the red wyrm circling above us. Unfortunately for our earstwhile team, our budding DM didn’t really understand the concept of scaling an encounter to fit the level of his players. The dragon we were facing was an adult. In Dungeons and Dragons, the older a wyrm gets, the more powerful it is. In AD&D, an adult dragon could have basically killed a 1st level wizard by squinting at him. (These are the same wizards who, sadly, could be killed by common housecats 65% of the time.)

While my early roleplaying experiences were rocky, they built on my foundations as a Nintendo player and began to open my horizons to the world of geekery at large. This sentiment seems to be the case for almost everyone I can think of designing massive games. Time and time again in interviews I see Tolkien, Heinlein, and Gary Gygax as formative influences on game designers. And why not? At their core pen and paper roleplaying games are sports, theatre, storytelling and social events all rolled into one. For the young, socially disinclined kid (statistically male, but of course not always) pen and paper gaming is a real first step into the larger world. Not only are you working your imagination, having fun, and eating Doritos, but you’re doing it with other people. Any port in the storm for social interaction is a very good thing. Beyond getting to know how to deal with other people, as a child gaming lets you move towards adulthood by play acting as one for a while.

Granted, I’ve done very little princess rescuing or village saving now that I’m ostensibly an “adult”. Just the same, those are not the kind of situations the average 11 year old has to deal with. “How do I get the villagers to safety without endangering them?” Even within the limited confines of our youthful minds, those were weighty questions with some serious implications. Problem solving seems to be one of the big factors involved in the mysterious process of growing up, and solving problems is pretty much all you do in pen and paper gaming. If not for the inneffectuality of the average village-dweller, I don’t think there would be many adventurer’s with livelyhoods. This hands-on, trial and error approach to weighty issues has undoubtedly played an important role in the maturity of many a die rolling neophyte.

While Massively Multiplayer games are without a doubt beautiful works, there will always be a place for pen and paper gaming. There is nothing like a group of friends sitting down to an evening of dragon slaying, kindgom saving, and storytelling. Pen and paper gaming is an emminently social activity that will likely always play a role in encouraging people down a path towards geekhood. I’ll have a lot to talk about when I get back from the Con of Cons. Until then…

Star Trek

The other great science fiction franchise is easily as deserving as Star Wars of it’s own graphical massive game. I should point out that there are already several text-based Trek games, and if the very concept of a massive Trek environment makes your mouth water a quick Googling should make you a happy human. The key in a commercial, graphical game is that from the get-go you have to focus the game where the shows and movies have been: in space. A Trek game could actually be several disperate and interesting types of game in one. Taking on the role of a freighter captain, you could haul cargo through contested space, dodging freebooters and patrols to get your cargo in on time. As an officer you could command a small crew on a lower priority ship exploring the fringes of the galaxy, patroling the edge of the neutral zone, or running humanitarian missions within the federation. It would probably be a wise decision to maintain the tradition set by EVE and Earth and Beyond, where the player’s “character” is in fact a ship and not an individual. While the game should probably not focus on combat, development time and thought should be put into ship-to-ship combat. The grandeur and elegance of Trek combat would be a challenge to get right, but the results would be eminently satisfying. Think sailing ships and broadsides more than dogfights and hairpin turns.

Shadowrun

One of the grand old dames of the Pen and Paper roleplaying world, Shadowrun is an eminently MMORPGable franchise. In Shadowrun (SR), you take on the role of criminals eking out a living in a vaguely dystopic near-future. There is cyberware, grit, and lots of guns. The twist is that early in the 21st century magic “returns” to the world, adding elves, trolls, orcs, dragons and spells into the grit and guns mix. The result has almost twnenty years of intriguing backstory behind it and a following of loyal minions. While the initial explanation of the world may take some time, the world is an almost sure-fired hook. It has a lot of personality and is very accessible to the gamer and non-gamer alike. The powerful drive limos and the poor eat fast food. It just so happens the guy in the limo is an elf and the guy eating a McHugh’s burger is a troll. Game design-wise, a Tabula-Rasa style setup involving heavily instanced missions and housing combined with public hangout areas would probably be the best way to go. Doing well would earn you money and reputation, allowing you access to a better tier of missions and fellow runners. Man, what I wouldn’t give to get my hands on a Predator. If you like this idea, bother Microsoft. They own the digital distribution rights to SR through FASA Interactive.

James Bond

More of a realization that I’d like to play in a spy MMOG than anything else, I think a spy MMOG branded as a Bond game would get really good traction. For inspiration I would look to an equal amount of “Everything or Nothing” (stealth elements + Bond moments) and Splinter Cell. Another great candidate for heavy use of instancing, this game would be focused on very small teams. Say two or three people cooperating to infiltrate an embassy, or a crack team of four using scuba gear and stealth to get into a villain’s compound. Non-instanced common areas could be areas of the MI6 headquarters, pubs, or training facilities. There could also be some interesting crafting elements here, allowing agents to step into the shoes of Q division operatives and outfitting themselves and others with interesting gadgetry. At the very least a Bond game would be a chance to try out your double entendres on an unsuspecting populous.

Oz

No, not the HBO series. By Oz, I’m referring to the world created by Frank Baum, most notoriously seen through the movies “The Wizard of Oz” and “Return to Oz”. Baum’s works in Oz actually stretched far beyond the scope of the world shown by the movies through more than two dozen books. Beyond Frank Baum, other writers have participated in the literary world, extending it’s life even further. While not always a kid-friendly environment, I think Oz would be an amazing vehicle for a MMOG centered on younger gamers. Utilizing canned chat the way that ToonTown Online does, folks new to online gaming could be introduced without the swear-fests of more traditional games. As for game elements, there are several distinct countries throughout the world of Oz. The actual Land of Oz, the lands of the Winkies, Quadlings, Munchkins, and Gillkins, would make for a great entry level area. Beyond the Impassable Desert lies many other surreal lands to be explored (such as the Country of the Gargoyles, Boboland, The Kingdom of Ix, and The Dominions of the Nome King). Cooperative problem solving is usually the focus of Oz-based books, and would make for good gameplay as well. Think ToonTown and Puzzle Pirates hooking up and spawning a child.

Regardless of the franchise involved a massive game is only as good as the mechanics that support it. That said, choosing the right franchise (and the right direction to approach that franchise) can be the difference between a built-in audience and an angry fanbase.

Major Changes Implimented

Since my last Journal the much anticipated PvP server has gone up. This server is very rough around the edges, with fast and loose rules for PvP in place. Blizzard is essentially using it to work out balance inconsistencies between the classes by allowing a form of free-for-all to take place. This has resulted in some frustration as gangs of high level characters gank lowbies repeatedly in certain key locations. Booty Bay, a supposedly neutral port on the southern coast of Azeroth, is almost always in the control of one of the factions or the other. The PvP server is a proving ground for the faction based combat Blizz intends to make available on some servers once the game goes live, and as such has provided a good deal of entertainment for players and onlookers alike. You can follow the action here on the WoW War News page.

Along with PvP, both servers have had guard systems implimented for many of the major cities. Blizzard intends to provide guards for nearly every settlement by the time the game goes live. These guards protect PCs and NPCs alike from ravagers from the opposing faction. They also add some more life to the game, with the militaristic nature of the Warcraft universe being more apparent. Besides eye candy, they serve a purpose. Guards now act as tour guides. They can be queried for locations of important NPCs and Vendors, Trainers, and Buildings. Stormwind is the only city where this is implimented at the moment, but all the major racial cities will soon have this feature as well.

The largest system implimentation has to be the inclusion of Talents. At the moment only Mages and Warriors have Talents, but all the classes will net them eventually. Talents are arrayed in a tree structure, not unlike Diablo 2. Beginning at 2nd level your character accrues 1 Talent Point per level. These points can be spent on abilities in one of three different talent pools. Each class will have it’s own unique pool sets. To the left you can see the talent pool “Arms Mastery” for the Warrior class. This set allows a Warrior to improve his combat abilities, and eventually gain new ones. The first row is available at level 2 automatically. The second ability from the right allows you to improve your strike power by having it cost less rage to use. The other three abilities improve your chances to hit with axes, swords, and maces. Through these abilities you can customize your character to be as unique as you want it to be. The second tier of pool abilites is reached by accruing 5 points, in any ability combinations, in Arms Mastery. Here, the second row is open because I’ve maxed out Strike at 3 and put 2 points into Axe Mastery. These powers, and ones subsequent, improve other abilites the Warrior has and at higher levels grants him entirely new abilities not available to the average Warrior. The other two pool sets for the Warrior are Rage Mastery and Protection Mastery. By focusing on a particular pool, or not, you can tweak the vanilla Warrior into a Master-At-Arms, a Raging Berserker, or a Defender of the Weak as you see fit to do. The pools available to the other classes will tweak the generic class role in similar ways, allowing players to specialize their characters, or not, as they desire.

The Auction House is another big addition to World of Warcraft, quieting the incessant Trade Channels and making the Auction functionality in wow-add ons superfluous. Like the PvP rules, the AH is a little rough around the edges at the moment. The interface is a little clunky, and it resembles EBay to a greater or lesser extent in many ways. Last minute item ganking is common, but overall the implimentation appears sound. Once the kinks are worked out and the interface is made more user friendly the AH will be a great addition to the game. It has already leveled the playing field a great deal, allowing players of all types to get access to better weapons and armor than they might otherwise have come across. It’s also a good way to make money fairly. Players can set prices manually when the post the auction, but a server specified minimum bid is also required based on the level and power of the item. Thus a player putting an axe up for auction can always feel safe in the knowledge that they’ll be getting a mostly fair price for their wares.

The other big game system to be affected is the much maligned Rest state. Rest is now an *only* beneficial system. I’m going to quote from the patch notes to avoid miscommunicating what they’ve done:

The Rest State system has undergone several changes. There are now two tiers of rest states: Rested = 200% experience and Normal = 100% experience.

At level one, players will all start in the normal tier. When a player rests be it in a city or at an inn they will gain rest bonus at a very slow rate. Eight hours of rest will be needed for a player to gain one “bubble” of rest bonus. At any given time, players will be able to accumulate a maximum of 30 “bubbles” worth of rest bonus which translates into approximately 1.5 levels worth of rested play (before your character returns to normal rest state).

The changes to the Rest State have been made with the understanding that most players will be in the Normal experience tier most of the time. The Rested tier is primarily intended for players that take a day or more off from playing or are very casual with their play schedules. This has enabled us to greatly reduce the experience necessary for all players to level regardless of which rest state tier they play under.

Probably the most visible of the changes they’ve made has been the inordinate amount of polish they’ve been putting into the game. You can now purchase small pets for a very reasonable sum, that follow you around and generally make your life cute. They have no purpose other than to be neat and collectable. There are vendors for the standard pets (parrots, cats, cockroaches) in the major cities, but you can get uniquish pets such as small dragons or interestingly colored pets like an all white kitty via quests and out-of-the-way vendors. There have been a number of changes made to the racial capitols for the express purpose of making the cities easier to navigate. In IronForge this has resulted in the facinating Tinkertown, the gnomish part of the city. Mapping has greatly improved in the cities and zones as well. Finally, there are small things they’ve added that just make the game really sing. The screenshot below and to the right is a small glowing orb in a tower within the bounds of the Elwynn forest. It belongs to a magess who will eventually offer you a quest. Looking through the orb by clicking on it gives you a mini-cinematic of the surroundings of and internal spaces of a completely different tower in another zone. Isn’t that just cool? Blizz just keeps heaping on the good stuff, making the game better every day.

Upcoming Changes

That’s just the stuff they’ve already added! Upcoming in the next patch, we’re (hopefully) going to see the *much* anticipated Hunter class, a level cap raise to 55, fixes to the Auction House, the addition of Talents to Rogues and Priests, new clothing art (including a Tuxedo and Top Hat) and more!

Some of the more includes new Micro Dungeons! I quote Tigole:

In the upcoming patch, players will be treated to some new micro-dungeons. We realize players don’t like seeing the same micros repeated more than once. We’re working on making them all as unique as possible.

Here’s a sampling of what will be patched in:

GOLDMINES

Hillsbrad – Azurelode Mine
Mulgore – The Venture Co. Mine
Blasted Lands – Garrison Armory

CAVES

Searing Gorge – The Slag Pit (this one rocks)
Wetlands – Thelgen Rock
Wetlands – Raptor Ridge
Hinterlands – Jintha’Alor
Swamp of Sorrows Cave
Arathi Highlands – Drywhisker Gorge
Stranglethorn – The Stockpile
Stranglethorn – Crystalvein Mine – MushroomCave03
RedRidge – Rethban Caverns

These changes are coming as a direct result of Alpha and Beta tester feedback. Keep up the testing!

I’ll cap off this DL of info and screens with two notes about what I don’t know. Hero classes have officially been pushed passed the end of release, meaning that we won’t be able to see them in Beta. They’ll likely be released into the live game once people start approaching the level cap at launch. I also have no word from anyone about the PvP instanced Battlegrounds. I imagine we’ll get a “yes” or “no” to them relatively soon, but as yet no word either way.

The next patch isn’t going to be up for at least a week. In the meantime, I have to see a man about some Ogres…