Wings Required

It's a new year, filled with speculation about the surprises Blizzard has in store for us, from the release of StarCraft II to whether there will be a BlizzCon 2009. Given that Blizzard's rough pattern for WoW expansions has been set as one every 12-14 months, perhaps analysts are not jumping the gun too much in speculating about what new release the coming year has in store for us.

Some have put their money on the Emerald Dream, dragons, and druids. Others are voting for the Maelstrom, with Azshara and her naga crew. And when inquiring minds at BlizzCon asked about the new expansion, the powers that be told us it was underway, completely confidential, and something none of us were going to expect.

While the content may be a mystery to us, I am still willing to put my hard-earned gold down on a couple good wagers regarding the mechanics of the next expansion.

Wings Required. First, I think the next expansion will involve flight. A lot. The gameplay changed in Burning Crusade when you dinged level 70, emptied out your bank vaults and bought that flying mount. I still remember the feeling I had when taking off for the first time - the entire world had just opened up for me, with no limitations. I think the ease and flexibility of flying mounts was something everyone enjoyed in BC, and Blizzard even modified the game mechanics to incorporate flight in WoW, with bombing quests, special areas reachable only by flight, and high-end flying mounts.

Understandably, there was outcry when, upon reaching Northrend, players were asked to trade in their swift and versatile flying mounts for their land mounts again. I am part of the school which believes that making players walk through the new content and appreciate it from a ground perspective in all its glory before taking to the skies is actually a good thing. I'm personally glad that Dalaran is a no-fly zone, forcing players back to the ground to enjoy the intricacies of that magical city and to interact with one another again. But I can also understand that to take away what was for almost everyone the most expensive investment in the game so far - to make people walk on land again, was a stretch for many.

Cold-weather Flying is obtainable at level 77 and costs 1,000 gold, a sum which has been deemed a "flight tax" by some unwilling to pay it. While the idea behind making players wait to fly until the final levels before cap is clearly to better define where players can go in the world (you can't go streaking straight to Arthas when you land in Northrend at level 70) and to make them appreciate the varied and often intricate questlines in the first several leveling zones, I am convinced Blizzard can't pull off the same stunt in the next expansion with impunity.

Flight has to be a built-in part of the third expansion. After all, we'll all be at least to level 78 by then, and capable of flying everywhere but old-world Azeroth on our own.

To help take advantage of flight right off the bat in the next expansion, it's quite possible that the world presented to us will be "tiered" into various levels of related content, much as later parts of Outland were with floating islands in Shadowmoon and Netherstorm, and areas only reachable by flight, like some regions in Blade's Edge.

Quests, too, should be tailored to take advantage of flight - we've already seen bombing quests, delivery quests, even some passenger quests, and these should only be expanded as more and more of us start out on our jet-set (or perhaps wyvern-set?) lifestyles.

We've seen an absolute ton of flying mounts enter the game since those first gryphons and wyverns back in BC. Yet for two expansions, flight speeds (60% or 280%, respectively) have remained the same. Given the plethora of flying creatures on the airways now, it's certainly possible that we'd see a boost in flight speed, especially if flying became the chosen form of travel in the new expansion.

Healing a Go-Go, or: Buff-Based Healing. We've seen a new tanking/melee DPS class enter the arena in Wrath, and most rumor sources have their money set on a healer for the third expansion. Not to buck the trend, I can go along with that, but I've got a new twist on this old favorite.

We all like seeing Renew or Rejuvenation buffs on our characters, because they mean we're getting a little stream of health with every tick of the buff timer. However, for the most part, healing in WoW is still devoted mainly to channeled spells, non-buff instant-casts, or multi-second cast spells. But what if we had a class which was like the anti-warlock - a buff-based healer with a counter for every curse, and whose heals actually compounded based on the number of buffs currently on their target?

Such healers would be nimble, fast-acting, and able to move around even while casting their greatest heals, because if spec'd properly, their buffs would cause a chain-reaction in the amount of hit-points healed, and the time over which damage was repaired.

Also, for the most part, healing classes don't get to use pets - what if the "Go-go Healer" could pop out some creature which enabled them to heal even better over the course of a battle, actually cast its own healing spells on party members, or acted as an off-tank in case the healer got too much aggro?

Only time will tell as to the true identity WoW's third expansion, but for now, there's enough out there to keep the speculation going!