2008 was a blast. I wish I did a predictions post last year. Who knows what I might’ve gotten correct? Probably nothing. But it’s not too late to do one for 2009!
2009 Predictions: What will happen? Speaking of predictions, check out Doofy’s blog for his!
WoW Blogging growth: We’ll continue to see more and more WoW bloggers entering the blogosphere. Death Knight blogs in particular will be on the rise.
Path of a Hero flourishes: Make sure you add the guy on Twitter (@pathofahero). Epic and Legendary Path of a Hero accounts will be launched soon. This service is just a chronicling of your character’s progression. Think of it as an automated character tracker with text inserts for your journalistic needs.
Machanima standards rise: Craft of War: Blind sets a new standard in WoW machinima.
Warriors spotlighted: The removal of the Titan’s Grip hit penalty will see Warriors doing even higher damage. Where 2008 was the year of the Druid for arena, 2009 could very well be the year of the Warrior.
Dual specs delayed: Delays from trying to interface dual speccing with alternate bars, glyphs, and talents continue. Players continue to fork over hundreds of gold in respecs and reglyphs.
Dance studios delayed: Continuing Blizzard’s trend of releasing stuff “when it’s readyâ€Â, dance studios will reach PTR status but will still not be live just yet.
Swimming mounts implemented: On the other hand, swimming mounts will arrive in the first quarter of 2009.
Achievements become the standard of guild progression: WoW Progress and Warcrafter are sites that rank your progression on both a guild and personal level. In the past, the only way a guild’s success could be measured was via the speed at which bosses were taken down. But achievements, whether you love them or hate them, will eventually be used as another comparison tool between guild A and guild B.
Megan’s arena team vs Hafu’s arena team: They will meet in the grand finals somewhere. This will be the match of the century.
3.1.0 content beaten in 4 months: Difficulty curve of Ulduar and the other unknown instance throw a big curveball to raiding guilds. Blizzard brings back “gated†content like what was done with the last bosses of Sunwell to slow down progression.
Epic gems introduced: Even though epic gems came out in the third tier of content in BC, the difficulty level of Ulduar is ramped up where epic gems become an almost necessity.
Ghostcrawler retires: After much epic QQing and players disagreeing with his perspective and discussions on class balance, Ghostcralwer promptly calls it a career. Class discussion boards and other related forums vanish as blues begin to scale back the amount of posting and responses they do to avoid community burnout.
What are your predictions for 2009?
“Swimming Mounts Implemented”
I sure hope so. I believe its only a matter of time really. Maybe not until a Maelstrom expansion which will put more emphasis on traveling from island to island. Who knows. Maybe they’ll make them sooner.
I can hear the QQ now about new Engineering swimming mount. =O
I will definitely have to do this myself, if I get the time. Probably tomorrow.
And I sort of hope you’re right in your predictions – except maybe Ghostcrawler 🙂
Great predictions Matt. Really loved it. Although mine may vary.
Machanima – Blind: That was an epic movie. I’m not a big fan of machanima, but that was like watching a Tekken trailer. Really good stuff.
Dual Specs. These can’t come fast enough – but I’m still unsure how much of a hassle its going to be to go between specs quickly. Especially when usually a custom UI. Also, when they do come out, my druid is considering going resto and… resto? A spec for raid healing and a spec for big single target heals? I think we need resto druid talent discussion soon. 🙂
3.1 Content – Cleared in less than 2 weeks. I don’t expect the gear jump to be too harsh so gearing shouldnt be a problem. The truly organized and well prepared guilds will simply stroll through anything that is released. Gated content will probably be reserved for Arthas. However, if by “content” you mean all content including those special bonuses like OS/3, then that might take a little bit longer. We tried to do OS/3 last night with a few new members and it was impossible. There is so much going on and the fight starts off with such intensity that people who havent been through the wipes just cant handle it. As a healer staring at your UI is one of the worst things you can do in this fight. Lava walls, void zones, dragon breath, tail swipes, mob adds, huge damage bursts. Even if a group knows that it can’t clear OS/3 its definitely worth a try just to experience it. It’s really the best raid out there right now IMO. And all that action really takes a toll on a PC. We had several people complaining of 10fps or less. Some people actually wound up going out to a LAN center just for the raid.
Sorry this comment wound up being a mini-blog entry. That OS/3 fight just gets me so ramped up.
Most of the predictions seem very much reasonable/feasible. I would change the “gated” scheme to more “vehicle oriented combat” so that players can switch roles. I predict more of the existing clumsy vehicle interfaces for boss fights – think sarth+3 with sarth acting like maly and the whole fight on some sort of vehicle – insanely hard fights. Also, predict that ramped up raid-wide damage during encounters will make a come-back, only this time its a binary state – alive or dead.
I don’t see the problem with dual specs and action bars. A player could create a scroll bar for each spec and scroll out to the right bar. Re-specs may mean one full bar of new abilities/macros at most – should not be an issue….not sure about glyphs though. All in all I predict a very dull 09 for WoW 😀
Blizzard will reward players who have plaved over 1 year and with a level 80 toon the ability to make a level 60 on any server of any class and race. (i so want a warrior..but to start again at 1..QQ)
Blizzard will annouce that they will be making a WoW movie. It will be a digital cartoon. Blizzard will have a contest open only to players. They can submit there picture and if choosen their likeness will make it to the big screen. Missmedic and lil her lil one will be choosen to be a mother/daughter priest family. And her older daughter will be chosen to be a human female teenage warrior. The country is moved by their character storylines they will make a mini DVD series featuring only these characters. Possible stories about the rift in the family as lil one wants to follow the way of the Shadow priest to the dismay of her Disc family and the young warrior trying to prove she is a worthy warrior in a manly dominated class. ^.^
How about diving mounts? And with them, underwater quests.
… plus a deep sea instance somewhat like The Oculus where players must use ride-able sea creatures to take down the boss.
Your mountable shark will give you the breathing buff as long as you’re on it. Druids get an epic seal form… Engineers get a submarine, oi.
You mention achievements becoming the norm for measuring guild A Vs guild B. This seems to be coming true – new guild ranking sites such as http://www.GuildOx.com appear to be ranking guilds base solely on achievements.
Some very interesting predictions, especially the ulduar content diffuclty curve seems interesting.
On another note that Machinima looks simply amazing. Let’s hope that prediction will be true. Oh and ROFL about the deathknight blog thing 🙂