TIMEWALKER CONTENT - New way to fight Content Droughts?

[Gyrotex]

Hi folks,

I've decided to read a bit more into the German site interview with Tom Chilton, as the brief mention of Timewalker Content on the homepage got me wondering what exactly did they mean talking about all those implementation complexities, and rewards system, etc.

So I wrote up a little blog article on this here, if you're interested.



A little preview:

So, the main thing that I sort of understood from German-to-English translation of the interview is that Blizzard is waiting for some sort of a CONTENT GAP, when they’ll feel like they need to press the cheap and cheerful button that would enable “Timewalker content”, and therefore reward the players.

I could be wrong here, but it sounds to me like they HAVE the feature technically ready behind the scenes (perhaps without detailed rewards, but that would take them 1 week to finalize, not longer than that…) but are waiting till we run out of things to do, basically.

Then they’d invest A BIT of time into finalizing rewards (whatever those might be – drops, transmog items, some tokens/valor points, etc), and enable that feature as a content gap-filler, quite cheaply for themselves.

It’s certainly not the “we just don’t know how to reward you at this point” case. Nope. They are way too smart and calculated for that.

Your thoughts on my Content Drought fighting theory?

[MrFiddleswitch]

I'd personally like to see the Timewalker content as an outlet for gear recolors, achieves, pets, toys, mount recolors, and other vanity items. Items that take very little developer/artist time, but give us a decent amount of content to dig through while they are banging away on upcoming patches and expansions.

[Gyrotex]

I'd personally like to see the Timewalker content as an outlet for gear recolors, achieves, pets, toys, mount recolors, and other vanity items. Items that take very little developer/artist time, but give us a decent amount of content to dig through while they are banging away on upcoming patches and expansions.

I agree. Actual gear gets old, but pets, toys, transmogs last pretty much forever.

I actually support Blizzard being smart about investing less development time, but delivering "big" (in our eyes). I'm ok to be fooled, as long as I benefit as a casual player anyway - by gaining extra content and having a reason to re-run dungeons on my numerous alts.

[corngrenade]

Valor points being removed sticks timewalker dungeons with a big problem. Valor points would have been the perfect reason to motivate high level players to go back and do them. Say you get a little valor per dungeon per day you do, or something of that nature. Could have transmog items and toy items drop in them as well. Could also just have straight up gear drop for the level the old dungeons were intended for to get leveling-up players to run them again, with the max level players being stat-squished down to the intended level anyway.

Really anything would be awesome to bring these back at this point, Blizzard has killed off a lot of its own content over the years by focusing so much on max level -- it's kind of a dumb strategy and makes the game not very fun for new players in particular, or even just ones that didn't play a particular expansion.

[Lemmiwink]

Could also be tied in with an achievement meta where completing everything grants you a transmog set/mount/pet or all three. Could also have a daily quest where there is a chance of dropping heroic dungeon level gear/profession materials/recipes/flasks/potions/enchanting scrolls etc.

[GarGar]

If they do do this, it should at least be tuned to where normal dungeons are at the beginning of an expansion. As in, don't scale us down to heirloom-level, where any class can basically solo the dungeon.

I think it's a great idea in theory though. Maybe have a weekly thing where they open up certain "themes" of dungeons. Orcs this week, dragons the next week, Twilight forces another week, etc.