What hasn't Blizzard done yet?

[I Push Buttons]

@I Push Buttons you can do that already though. Normal scales to however many people you have in the raid.

I am talking about instance size not raid group size.

[thilicen]

A proper lovecraftian horror-themed zone built around an Old God. N'zoth would make for a glorious chance at this if they are willing to take it.

[Taeldorian]

I am talking about instance size not raid group size.

So a smaller raid? Tier 11 wasn't really small though. I mean Bastion of Twilight kind of was. I mean honestly I'd love to have more tiers, cataclysms opening tiers were fantastic. So if you mean a small raid like BoT then I agree. I think we should have both, large and small raids, 3-4 tiers total.

[Soeroah]

Maybe next expansion Blizzard will just make raiding outside of LFR and Mythic work the same way as the Legion Dungeon system, where the better your group does, the more stats/better gear will drop the next time....


To answer the actual question, I'm not really sure what they can do to be 'unique' in terms of zone design from this point. Vashj'ir was largely disliked, but it's one of the most unique zones in the game, IMO. Netherstorm is probably the second most unique, but it's kind of just a recoloured Hellfire Peninsula.

In terms of thematic concepts and appearance, I'd be interested in seeing an "Australia" analogue continent, the way MoP was an "Asian" one, or Northrend was Norse, etc. Probably can't make a whole continent based off deserts, a couple rainforests and a bunch of beaches, though, so maybe just one island in a "continent" comprised of a couple large island zones? But that's mostly because I like seeing how Blizzard marries sci-fi, real-world cultures and fantasy elements together. Not that I want to see Kangaroos and Koalas and Strine and the like, but I like the idea of Emus and Echidnas as hunter pets, and the idea of another Pandaria-like lost continent that's less full of a particular type of culture and more like an untouched wilderness, perhaps with the remnants of a dead civilisation underground where the plot is focused around.

MoP was supposed to be one, but we haven't really gotten an expansion where the leveling content is us -exploring-. They sort of made Pandaria sound like we were going to be stranded there and discover Pandaria, but when we got there we were kinda handheld by the Pandaren. We were told Draenor was 'savage' but when we got there it was mostly by the numbers, we were just in the middle of a war. I'd be interested in an expansion where at least a couple zones are based around us having a story driven by our characters and their army/faction exploring alongside them, as opposed to meeting a previously uncontacted peoples there and letting them tell us what to do.

"Azerothians discover a new continent south of Pandaria with a dead civilisation and Titan facilities, with a dark secret unraveling the deeper they explore the dangerous wilds" sounds closer to something they haven't done than concepts like "desert" and "tundra" to me. All our expansions have been about reacting to events. We've never really been the initiators. Pandaria came closest, but again, that was an accidental discovery and we were directed around the place by a people familiar with the area.

I mean you could replace this whole continent idea with Azerothians discovering a portal to a dead demon-destroyed world, where we try to find out what happened to them, if there are any survivors at all, and find any technology that might help us defend Azeroth against another Legion attack or contact other races that might be able to help us.

[I Push Buttons]

So a smaller raid? Tier 11 wasn't really small though. I mean Bastion of Twilight kind of was. I mean honestly I'd love to have more tiers, cataclysms opening tiers were fantastic. So if you mean a small raid like BoT then I agree. I think we should have both, large and small raids, 3-4 tiers total.

Tier 11 as a whole wasn't small, but it was three different raids in one. Bastion of Twilight was five bosses, Blackwing Descent was six bosses, and Throne of the Four Winds was two bosses.

[Deleted]

Tier 11 as a whole wasn't small, but it was three different raids in one. Bastion of Twilight was five bosses, Blackwing Descent was six bosses, and Throne of the Four Winds was two bosses.

It was a good set up, apart from having to resolve arguments about where to go due to loot issues.

Short raids you can learn and then bang out are better than the huge sprawlers, even if it is mostly psychological.

[I Push Buttons]

It was a good set up, apart from having to resolve arguments about where to go due to loot issues.

Short raids you can learn and then bang out are better than the huge sprawlers, even if it is mostly psychological.

My opinion exactly.

[NorthWay]

They could perhaps take a leaf out of the "Elite"(1984) book and make a humongous sea-world part where you can travel between islands, ports, trading posts, and major cities (the flightpaths to get there). Give the players different ships available, let them travel around and do trade among the different places (think auction houses). Add obstacles along the way in the form of pirates (NPCs), sea monsters(giants), storms(aoe effect?), sirens, and faction/free-for-all pvp zones (perhaps make those bigger on pvp servers). Goods shold be possible to be lost or stolen. Naval warfare should be supported by the ships, but also regular combat if getting close enough to enter a ship.

Make sure the tradestuff is regular bag type items that your ship can carry, that you could possibly use or want, and that you dock at a major city to trade it at an auction house connected to the already existing ones to make the goods enter the regular game. Think of all kinds of possibilities to find items to put up on the sea AHs: Travelling NPCs selling and buying, seasons of harvest making farmer NPCs selling products, fishing, salvaging, digging for treasure, killing pirates, raiding wild tribes, killing+looting other players, pearl diving, precious stone mining. So do the "buy low, sell high" approach, but also give the players a way to inject some goods into the trade market themselves. (But not too much or too profitable or it is just like a regular zone...)

[Nurvus]

We've gotten forests, deserts, underwater zones, snow zones, out of this world zones, swamps and everything in between.

What hasn't Blizzard done yet? What zones could Blizzard possibly do next that wouldn't be a repeat of what they've already done?

Your question makes no sense.

There are hundreds of ways to make a forest.
There are dozens of ways to make a desert.

All of it without feeling repeated.

But I guess Blizzard hasn't done a deep cavern type zone, or even better - a continent-wide network of caverns beneath existing continents, with vastly different extremities, like some very crystalline places, others more magma-like, others with some cavern vegetation, some even connecting to the sea, and so on.

The "Underdark" of World of Warcraft.

Would be even cooler if we had no Map while navigating the caverns. xD

[Deleted]

I'd like to see actual forest zone, not just "well there's one tree every 100 meters, it's a forest!" like Elwynn etc. Actual dense forest, where you could just not see any sun or even sky, and definitely could not just run beeline through it. Some areas of Grizzly Hills are decent-looking scandinavian pine forests (though too clean, like there's harvesters going on every few years, cutting every second tree) but not enough.

[GerdaroThePandaren]

Springfield with Homer as world boss

[Teaklog]

A proper friends and family raid difficulty.

They are hilariously bad at catering to the average and below average skilled players who comprise the vast majority of their playerbase.

80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. Remember that. If you cater to the 80% of your customers who give you you 20% of your business (The ones who log in once every other week) you will likely lose that 20%. Pretty much a general rule of thumb.

Compare alcoholics at a bar to people who go once or twice a month. For every 1000 people who set foot in a bar, maybe 20 of them will return every day. But you will make more money off those 20 people than you did the other 980.
What makes WoW different (And this is why I personally believe most MMO's are going F2P + Micro) is because we pay a fee to play, and that is it. Blizzard does not make any more money off of those 20 people who play 50 hours a day than they do those who play 2 hours a month. Originally, Blizzard still catered to the 20 alcoholics and that worked well (Whether it was correlation or causation is debatable), but now they cater to the 980. The issue with that is the goal should be to turn the 980 regular visitors into the 20 alcoholics. Blizzard does not do that part any more, and that part is not up for debate.

I don't like using bars as an example because addiction, but generally that holds true for most any business. Diners, gas stations, video game stores, etc. Generally the less macro the store (think walmart vs. gamestop) the smaller that % of repeat customers will be, the more visits to the store the customer will make. Blizzard should really be trying to get us to log in every hour of every day (They tried and failed with garrisons, but the logic remains the same).

I kinda rambled there but hopefully you pulled something out of that post.

On topic: Large scale quests. Quests that are supposed to take days if you have a few days off from work, or weeks if you don't. Not time gated, but story gated. Think group questlines. My issue with current questing is it makes zero sense to me how it took 25 of us to kill the sha of fear, yet me and 1 other guy killed the sha of doubt in the steppes (I believe it was doubt). They should have made me get a party of 5 to do that entire quest line.

[Taeldorian]

Tier 11 as a whole wasn't small, but it was three different raids in one. Bastion of Twilight was five bosses, Blackwing Descent was six bosses, and Throne of the Four Winds was two bosses.

I'm down to have this. As long as we also have a longer raid. Cata's raid set up was fantastic, tier 11 then FL was fantastic. I agree with you 100%.

[Tomana]

Easy-peasy, 100% success guaranteed.

Yeah easy, -80% subs in 2 months guaranteed. XDDD

[Weaponized Nuclear Kitten]

Yeah easy, -80% subs in 2 months guaranteed. XDDD

This expansion will mark the "giant city that encompasses the entire zone" (not one that you go into and AFK or chat in) off the list and that's the one I really wanted.

[Oncereborn]

A proper friends and family raid difficulty.

They are hilariously bad at catering to the average and below average skilled players who comprise the vast majority of their playerbase.

Your going to cop alot of negative comments for this from elitists, but I'd have to agree with you. As someone who's raided many years in all difficulties I personally have no issues stepping into any of the modes, however these days I tend to play only with my girlfriend, her parents and our close friends, all of them are very casual (even to the point of dying in LFR and not knowing why they died). It's not really possible to do anything outside of LFR at this point as the difficulty leap from LFR to normal is quite high, with the introduction now of Mythic, I can't see why they can't make normal more along the lines of a private LFR run, and make Heroic the new norm as progression for proper raiders and Mythic as the high end stuff. Loot is a non issue, nerf it to oblivion for all I care, gameplay is the important part and something it's missing currently.

EDIT: After reading some more of the thread, maybe instead they could change LFR to be more flexible, so instead of being automated and needing 25 players, I could queue with 10 of my family and friends and have the same experience in difficulty, but in a private setting and we can move at our own pace instead of the zerg wave that is LFR.

[hrugner]

We've gotten forests, deserts, underwater zones, snow zones, out of this world zones, swamps and everything in between.

What hasn't Blizzard done yet? What zones could Blizzard possibly do next that wouldn't be a repeat of what they've already done?

Anti-gravity zones. Non-euclidean geometry zones. endless winding tunnels and mazes. A massive city. A titanic overgrown slowly decomposing corpse. An active flood plain or shifting river. Really any sort of dynamic landscape.

[Deleted]

We didn't have Arctic like zones. Or big underground cities.

???

Arctic zones: Winterspring, Alterac Valley (bg), Icecrown, Frostfire Ridge
Underground cities: Undercity, Iron Forge

[Snes]

A proper friends and family raid difficulty.

They are hilariously bad at catering to the average and below average skilled players who comprise the vast majority of their playerbase.

Wat. Have you been in Normal modes?

[Erudean]

We need a subterranean expansion, a lost realm,city of an old god that has been gathering power right under our nose.