Disappointed with the quality of WotLK

I want to start this thread by saying that I thoroughly enjoy the WoW experience. While it is no longer my primary MMOG of choice, (I won’t state the other as it may side-track the discussion,) I really do enjoy WoW, despite what I consider some major flaws in terms of necessary grinding and farming in the end game. I will be purchasing the expansion, mostly because the leveling content in this game is great and very enjoyable, and also because I’ve joined one of the top raiding guilds on my server and to be sure if I don’t buy the expansion, I’ll be left behind.

Now let me get to the topic of this thread. I’m disappointed at the apparent quality of the expansion. While this does somewhat extend to The Burning Crusade, I’m focusing this thread on WotLK. I am disappointed. Not in quality of quests (which will likely always remain rather low compared to some other MMOGs, quality over quantity IMHO,) or in the 10 new levels, or talents, or any of that. But with visual appeal. Nearly every new screenshot or movie I see of the expansion uses the same, tired textures. The same, tired buildings. The same, tired monsters. Every single tree is the same ones you find in the regular game in low level zones. I see screenshots with murlocs. The same damn monster I’ve been hating since I was level 5. Now they even seem to have their own faction! Wonderful, I get to grind out murloc faction. I am not looking forward to that one.

My point is, Blizzard appears to be adding a few new art assets (mostly in the form of gear, and buildings,) a few new textures, a few changes to existing monster meshes, quickly generating some terrain using the same hightmap tool they’ve been using since the original game and slapping a $45 sticker price on it, throwing it out the door and calling it an expansion. It happened with the last expansion as well to a strong point. I mean I was fighting pigs at 60th lvl again? Sure they were big, and they had a new mesh and texture, but it was still pigs. I was at least happy that most of the regions had new looks. A forest of giant mushrooms, while cliché as hell, is still a welcome change - though really for the most part the only difference between one zone and a previous base game zone was the color of its fog. But it’s even worst in WotLK and I’m really disappointed by it.

Maybe I’m just an old MMOG player who is used to getting expansion that are radically different then the base game in design, graphical look and even gameplay. In Anarchy Online we got the Shadowlands which not only looked completely different but played different, had a completely different appeal. Then we got player cities and invading aliens which added a completely new twist to the base game. Some would say too much. In Star Wars Galaxies we got Space, with ships of our own and even group ships you could man different positions in. Very.. very different from the base game for obvious reasons.

Even DAoC, at least its early expansions, weren’t that much different graphically, but they offered new gameplay experience, new classes, new forms of PvP, even updated graphic engines.

But not WoW. It’s expansions add a few new areas that may or may not look slightly different and offer slightly different or new enemies to fight with slightly different quests and slightly different dungeons and slightly different factions to grind. I mean look at some of these screenshots. They are all from the official WotLK website but many of them could be taken from the base game and you’d never even know it.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/screenshot.xml?s=40
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/screenshot.xml?s=33
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/screenshot.xml?s=20

I’ll be the first to admit that even with these disappointments my chances of buying the expansion are extremely high. But I just wanted to get this off my chest and hope that someone who actually works on this stuff might read this and maybe get an inkling that making a $45 expansion that consists almost completely of the same assets and gameplay as the base game, isn’t such a grand idea. Though it’s rather obvious that this thing will sell like hotcakes anyway. Eventually the quality of expansions is just going to degrade. Like games based on movies. We know they suck, yet because they are based on a movie, they sell millions. Producers know they’ll sell crazy, so they couldn’t give a crap how bad they are. Atari ET anyone?

I know this post is likely to drop off the first page in a matter of seconds but I for one am simply sick and tired of looking at the same 2 tavern designs throughout the entire game. The same exact trees in every single zone. The same exact castle texture on every single castle throughout the entire game. Fighting the same exact murlocs and boars I was fighting at level 5, but with a slightly altered texture or mesh. I know because the game is an open world that it’s texture budget is extremely limited. Much more so then than a zoned game and that really you cannot use different textures for each zone entirely and must make some tweaks to give each area a visual difference, (things like fog color, view distance, sky map, etc.) But come on, lets get some variety in there.

Thanks everyone for reading, hope to hear some comments before this thread falls into the abyss that is the WoW forums pages 2 onward lol.