WoW 2.0 Needs to happen

[Zantos]

The only way that would happen is to transfer all of that sort of thing over to the new game and well it probably be more hassle than it is worth..

Exactly. That would be the only thing that could get those people to change or go over there. It would have to be free as well.

[Bathory]

I dunno why people keep thinking this is a good idea, always seems like the more drastic, the better. As Moanalisa said, the development time alone would be staggering.

[Zantos]

I dunno why people keep thinking this is a good idea, always seems like the more drastic, the better. As Moanalisa said, the development time alone would be staggering.

Probably for the same reason they think vanilla servers are a good idea. Honestly, this type of thread and old server threads should just be closed / deleted on sight. They go no where and have really nothing to offer.

[Gorgodeus]

I dunno why people keep thinking this is a good idea, always seems like the more drastic, the better. As Moanalisa said, the development time alone would be staggering.

No more staggering than any other MMO.

[Deleted]

What other choice do they have?, i doubt the next expansion will be amazing because the game has changed too much to be amazing, the best expansions where Vanilla, Tbc And Wotlk, and i don't care if u disagree.

[Zantos]

What other choice do they have?, i doubt the next expansion will be amazing because the game has changed too much to be amazing, the best expansions where Vanilla, Tbc And Wotlk, and i don't care if u disagree.

Answer this question. What would be their draw to get people away from all they have invested into their characters? What would be the WoW factor to get people to play it?

[Deleted]

I think now is the time for blizzard to really do something drastic to change the current path the game is heading.

For too long now Blizzard have been making the game easier and easier at the huge cost of it's player base. it is clear to see.

What Happened to the leveling experience? The epic adventure to max level is now now nothing but a casual faceroll to 100, then when you finally get there after a few days max you realize there is actually not a lot to do, Sure you can raid, sure you can pvp, and sure you can sit in your Facebook mini game garrison and collect your daily income with the click of a button.

What happened to the actual challenge of leveling? where is the danger? you can pull 3+ mobs at level 5 and still come out unscratched, everything is just irrelevant and pointless once you get to max level, just Que dungeons while you sit in your comfortable city and get max level in a few days without the threat of ever dying once. or peeking out into this huge world blizzard created


Remember when you had to carefully plan mob pulls? remember when you had to avoid zones until you reached the required level, remember when you had to form groups to engage in challenging quests, my answer is WHY did they do this? why did they make the game so childishly easy that a 5 year old could comfortably level to 100?

Nostalgia grips you, mon? Actually nothing happened to WoW. Age happened to players. There goes all wonder and excitement of discovery.
Yes, it's easier now, why? Because imagine if you had to level the old fashion way all of your alts. To spend months reaching level cap for each of them. At the same time there is this thing called level boost. Now try to imagine what players reaction would be if they ever bring back old leveling experience, while charge you 25bucks should you choose to skip it.
Every player that has 2+ max level characters is no longer interested in leveling. They are interested in max level content.
So no, leveling is right where it should be at this stage of game's lifespan.

I Just can't accept the fact that this game used to be a totally amazing and thriving MMORPG once over and now it is a Empty lifeless world. I don't ever want to see this game die, because I grew up with this game and I am so passionate about it. I want WoW To be the colossal giant it once was, I want WoW To be Reborn.

Exactly my point. Can you get 10 years back of your life and be 15 again? No?

Basically I could go on forever but All I want to see is World Of Warcraft become a MMORPG Again, What it once was, and not a single player empty sandbox world.

WoW never has been a sandbox world. It is channeled leveling experience going from zone to zone depending on your level. And remember what happened to your living thriving world when they opened the dark portal? It got a lot more empty, with some running around leveling guys, impatient to level up so they can join in Outland.

[Deleted]

So for us players, WoW has existed a bit over 10 years now - but for the developers, it was already 5+ years old game when Vanilla launched. It's now pretty goddamn ancient, on any software project measurement standard.

That's why they started building the "next gen MMORPG" already in 2006-2007-ish - it was supposed to be the franchise that would transition WoW players - in sense what the OP is asking: WoW2.
That game was known to us as the "Titan project" - and as the years rolled by, it became apparent that the time of the huge monolithic MMOs was over and the future consisted of building persistent MMO-like features into other genres, like shooters and MOBAs.

In the end Blizzard canned the Titan project in 2014 after about 6-7 years of development and saved what could be salvaged (Overwatch) - and the VP of Game Design left the house (and after 7 years of burning cash on something that miserably failed to capture the zeitgeist of gamers, what else could he do?).

WoW2 is not going to happen - exactly for the same reasons. The playerbase isn't there anymore and neither is the business case. The world has moved on, other genres have caught up with MMO-like features, that are good enough to satisfy our need for persistence in virtual worlds. Perhaps there will be a retro-wave at some point in the future where a monolithic MMO becomes trendy again, but for now, the big old MMOs are all dying a slow extinction.

If you're fan of the genre - enjoy the slow decline from relevance into "tiny niche genre" over the next 5-6 years. I doubt there will be huge monolitchic tripple-A MMO productions for a long while. There might be some cool, smaller indie productions that will catch the turning trend at some point though.

I wouldn't be surprised if Overwatch would introduce MMO-like features over its lifecycle.

[Deleted]

WoW2 is not going to happen - exactly for the same reasons. The playerbase isn't there anymore and neither is the business case. The world has moved on, other genres have caught up with MMO-like features, that are good enough to satisfy our need for persistence in virtual worlds. Perhaps there will be a retro-wave at some point in the future where a monolithic MMO becomes trendy again, but for now, the big old MMOs are all dying a slow extinction.

This is not entirely true.

MMOs provide for something that no game like HotS or Overwatch, LoL, Dota or the like does - progression. A character to grow and care for.
What's true is, MMOs has started to mutate or evolve, building upon fast-paced, effort-to-reward gameplay experience, rather on the stron feeling of immersion as it was in the past.

Because just as players grow up, so does games. Designers know well that average 5+ years subscriber doesn't have the time or willingness to spend several hours every day in their game (or any game). So they make the gameplay such that even the few hours in the week you can log in counts.

I have Dota 2 on my computer and like to play it from time to time, but it never can be my main game, it just feels dull and repetitive. Lacking any progression.

I bet this is the same for every player that has either WoW, GW2, Rift or any of the MMO titans still installed on their hard drives.

So i don't think MMOs are dying out. They just adapt to playerbase.

[Laca]

And why should they do this? Is there some vast market for this that no one but you really knows about? Because I'll tell you: The developers at Wildstar thought--until the game was out for a while--that they had this thing done. And guess what they found out? They were surprised at how many people simply wanted to play solo; how many people thought the long, long attunements to raid were stupid. They practically killed their own MMO giving people the same thing more or less that you want.

In my opinion, Wildstar took the bad things from vanilla WoW. Long attunements and 40 man raids are the only resemblance I noticed.

What killed Wildstar for me though was the spammy action combat, non-interesting world and lack of immersion. I think what people yearning for the days of past is exactly what Wildstar was lacking, interesting class mechanics and progression along with an interesting and immersive world.

[Deleted]

This is not entirely true.

MMOs provide for something that no game like HotS or Overwatch, LoL, Dota or the like does - progression. A character to grow and care for.
What's true is, MMOs has started to mutate or evolve, building upon fast-paced, effort-to-reward gameplay experience, rather on the stron feeling of immersion as it was in the past.

Because just as players grow up, so does games. Designers know well that average 5+ years subscriber doesn't have the time or willingness to spend several hours every day in their game (or any game). So they make the gameplay such that even the few hours in the week you can log in counts.

While you're of course right (and I'm not presenting my opinion as absolute truth, just as my own observation), you also need to remember the fact that as plyers grow up - another generation of younger players take their place. I've observed this with my own kids - they're avid gamers, but in the world they're growing up, the speed of media consumption is completely different from my own.

So while I'm happy with my slow progression in MMOs and I do really love the genre, much of my late teens/early adulthood were spent building/coding them, the younger generation is completely happy with their HoTS "level progression" and view my pottering around in WoW as "boring" - in their case, the freedom of Minecraft has completely taken over the "vast world" experience. The "on-rails" type of storytelling of WoW isn't for them.

Again, just my own observations - I'm sure The Absolute Truth is still somewhere out there - but I'm having hard time seeing anyone taking the risk of committing to a monolithic tripple-A MMO these days. The money is elsewhere at the moment.

[Pull My Finger]

*snip*

The usual blah and whine. But what does that have to do with a WoW successor and how would the making of it change or "fix" anything of that? What makes you even think that it's halfway plausible that they would suddenly do things differently? Wouldn't a new game with a new engine and more powerful systems give them even more possibilities of effectively pursuing an obviously deliberate design philosophy?

No, a "WoW 2.0" (by the way - we're at 6.2 currently) doesn't need to happen - what needs to happen is that people stop making these boring and vapid threads over and over again.

[Deleted]

While you're of course right (and I'm not presenting my opinion as absolute truth, just as my own observation), you also need to remember the fact that as plyers grow up - another generation of younger players take their place. I've observed this with my own kids - they're avid gamers, but in the world they're growing up, the speed of media consumption is completely different from my own.

So while I'm happy with my slow progression in MMOs and I do really love the genre, much of my late teens/early adulthood were spent building/coding them, the younger generation is completely happy with their HoTS "level progression" and view my pottering around in WoW as "boring" - in their case, the freedom of Minecraft has completely taken over the "vast world" experience. The "on-rails" type of storytelling of WoW isn't for them.

Again, just my own observations - I'm sure The Absolute Truth is still somewhere out there - but I'm having hard time seeing anyone taking the risk of committing to a monolithic tripple-A MMO these days. The money is elsewhere at the moment.

Now i can't speak of the younger generation. Waht i can say is, even in my early gaming days back in 1995-96, there has been this divide inbetween computer gamers (playing complex, immersive and brain-involving games) and Sega gamers (playing simple, action oriented 4-button games). If i remember well, in the garrage we gathered to play there were 6-7 Sega stations and only 2 computers. You can imagine we were quite fewer, while much more compact and devoted group.

What i am trying to say is that yes, complex and immersive games has seemingly always had fewer audience than the Sega/PS game types. Yet they not only survived, but flourished. And gamers from my generation, that grew up with games like Might and Magic, Warcraft, Command and Conquer, Riva, Heroes of Might and Magic - they will never "die". Judging by miself, i will always save a little time in the evening to play on my computer, although having a wife and a baby. Even when i am 40 or 50. So i think.
Thus, the market should be there.

[Nyoken]

Hmm....do i wanna start over again??? do all those achievements again? get all those battle pets again? grind all those mounts again....get all those toys again....grind all the rep again.....get my 250k HKs again....do i........ ahhh im fine right now!

[Deleted]

I don't see that happening with current development team. They are too focused on arcade elements, they forgot what RPG is. With current dev team in charge we'd get 1 hour long linear leveling experience, during which we'll be guided by helpful NPCs to prevent us from facing any danger, then we'll be greeted with choices of raid instances displayed in convenient menu.

You do realize that it's the market (playerbase) driving these changes? If the game remained in its vanilla state today, as fun as it may seem, forums like these wouldn't exist anymore.

No, player base has nothing to do with it. Player base is huge. There are players from every spectrum. Imagine a feature and you'll find people who want it, no matter how bad feature is for game. Blizzard isn't listening to players, they do whatever they want. Blizzard developers are in charge of game direction, not players.

[Khovai]

WoW 2.0 nor any ever large scale MMO like WoW is ever going to happen again.

1) Newer MMOs have to compete with a game that has had 10 years to evolve and 10 years to add content.

2) Companies and budget boards won't allow it. Companies have realized how profitable small resource games like Hearthstone are today, compared to a massive game like WoW that probably has a huge cost to upkeep.

3) The average "gamer" that plays these types of games has changed. 10 years ago, you couldn't be a casual player or have a life and enjoy this game as much as everyone else did. If you were a casual player 10 years ago, you didn't get anything accomplished nor did you ever get any gear. Today, the game caters to more of the Soccer Mom style player who logs into Facebook to check on Farmville progress. Just look at the reaction every "remove LFR" post gets on the forums. Anything that doesn't agree with the forward moving casual playstyle is downvoted into oblivion.

The people who used to play those games have grown up (some still play) and the average "gamer" in general has changed considerably. We went from people who grew up playing old consoles to people who grew up on smart phones and broadband.

4) Like above, no company could justify the cost of making a game as large as WoW 2.0 and making it profitable. Does WoW turn a profit? Absolutely. However, it's far more profitable to do what they're doing now. They're diversifying their game market and making a bunch of small resource games packed to the brim with DLC and micro transactions.

That's the future of gaming. Large IPs and large scale MMOs like this one are dead.

We have no one to blame but ourselves for the garbage of today's state of games. DLCs, micro transactions, early access, etc. We're the ones who keep buying it all, so it's no wonder as time has gone forward, investors and board members became attracted to the video game industry.

Just look at the reaction of E3. People do this EVERY... SINGLE... GAME... They're hyping up a bunch of polished demos when you and I both well know that most of the stuff previewed at E3 will be the same DLC/Micro Transaction filled garbage with a bunch of missing features and a game that's nowhere near promised. People just keep doing it though.

WoW is going to keep going until the game is no longer profitable. Will the servers ever shut down? I sincerely doubt it.

I know this sounds cynical but I honestly don't want a WoW 2.0 or a Warcraft 4 to be made by Blizzard. At least not in today's state of gaming in general. Bring back the team from Blizzard North and ditch the board executives that inevitably control the directions of games today and sure, but not today.

Also, I saw a comment about WildStar flopping because it was too hardcore. No, not even close. WildStar flopped because it was rushed out and felt really untested. I spent half the time in-game closing interface errors, pop ups and dealing with ridiculous bugs that should have been fixed in beta. The actual launch of the game wasn't too bad but the game itself was in an abysmal state and shouldn't have been launched.

Not only that but the developers own ignorance killed the game when they refused to listen to any feedback. They took a "we know what's best for you" approach and just didn't change anything.

[Deleted]

OK, how long until it comes out? Three years at least, maybe five, maybe more? What happens in the meantime with WoW 1? I mean, we all want WoW II to be the best it can be so they'll need to put all hands on it, right? So no expansions for a few years?

I'd wait upwards of 5 years like Fry's dog if it meant having something good to play after those 5 years, instead of having more mediocre WoW expansions come out.

And why should they do this? Is there some vast market for this that no one but you really knows about? Because I'll tell you: The developers at Wildstar thought--until the game was out for a while--that they had this thing done. And guess what they found out? They were surprised at how many people simply wanted to play solo; how many people thought the long, long attunements to raid were stupid. They practically killed their own MMO giving people the same thing more or less that you want.

WildStar is inaccessible, boring, thematically incorrect, non-innovative in terms of systems, and badly managed. The two IPs are practically incomparable. WoW 2 wouldn't be a 'Wildstar of WoW', it'd be far greater than that.

Again, WoW 2 wouldn't have raiding ready to kill every other system that'd make the game shine, raiding would simply be an aside.

[Deleted]

wasn't patch 2.0 tbc? Kappa

[Deleted]

I don't see that happening with current development team. They are too focused on arcade elements, they forgot what RPG is. With current dev team in charge we'd get 1 hour long linear leveling experience, during which we'll be guided by helpful NPCs to prevent us from facing any danger, then we'll be greeted with choices of raid instances displayed in convenient menu.

Haha, that was good.

No, player base has nothing to do with it. Player base is huge. There are players from every spectrum. Imagine a feature and you'll find people who want it, no matter how bad feature is for game. Blizzard isn't listening to players, they do whatever they want. Blizzard developers are in charge of game direction, not players.

Now this is not that good.
Playerbase is huge, more than electorate in a small country. Yet, government in said country will be chosen by prevailing part of society, despite the desires of the minority.
If you think developers do whatever they like, paying no attention to playerbase, you are dellusional.

Developers have a good idea what majority of it wants. If you think a multi-bilion business is running with no regard to customers, with no market surveys, no benchmarks, no business trends monitoring - you are out of this world. Or just blinded by rage that nothing of what you want is happening.

It doesn't mean they will alway take the best decisions. It doesn't mean that when they take the best decision they will implement it properly. But in general, the game is moving along with it's customerbase. With their desires, growing playtime limitations, heck, even things they don't realize.

Damn, i want to play a game as emmersive as Baldur's Gate. But when i tryied to play it again last year you know what i realied? I was spending my 1 hour daily gaming time just to read through 2-3 conversations. Ended up playing for a week like that and only completed few starting quests. So i uninstalled it.

Sad, but true. What i want is not equal to what i can afford.

[McTurbo]

I think now is the time for blizzard to really do something drastic to change the current path the game is heading.

For too long now Blizzard have been making the game easier and easier at the huge cost of it's player base. it is clear to see.

What Happened to the leveling experience? The epic adventure to max level is now now nothing but a casual faceroll to 100, then when you finally get there after a few days max you realize there is actually not a lot to do, Sure you can raid, sure you can pvp, and sure you can sit in your Facebook mini game garrison and collect your daily income with the click of a button.

What happened to the actual challenge of leveling? where is the danger? you can pull 3+ mobs at level 5 and still come out unscratched, everything is just irrelevant and pointless once you get to max level, just Que dungeons while you sit in your comfortable city and get max level in a few days without the threat of ever dying once. or peeking out into this huge world blizzard created


Remember when you had to carefully plan mob pulls? remember when you had to avoid zones until you reached the required level, remember when you had to form groups to engage in challenging quests, my answer is WHY did they do this? why did they make the game so childishly easy that a 5 year old could comfortably level to 100?


The Whole game is like a different game to what it was designed to be, what it was intended to be. this is not World of Warcraft anymore, this is a single player RPG.


They cant continue to churn out expansions, Increasing the level cap to stupid amounts, level 110? ffs. adding new continents, because the world is simply way too big for the amount of players on the servers to feel like an mmo.

They need to bring the focus back to 2 islands, Kalimdor and eastern Kingdoms, and they need to get people into these zones again,

They need to Make the game feel like a living, breathing world full of adventures, challenge, wonder, and social experiences where you can meet people daily, That is why WoW became so world renowned as the no1 MMO, people never became never become bored of it, there was so much that you could do in earlier expansions up until Cataclysm that you never got bored.

I Just can't accept the fact that this game used to be a totally amazing and thriving MMORPG once over and now it is a Empty lifeless world. I don't ever want to see this game die, because I grew up with this game and I am so passionate about it. I want WoW To be the colossal giant it once was, I want WoW To be Reborn.

Basically I could go on forever but All I want to see is World Of Warcraft become a MMORPG Again, What it once was, and not a single player empty sandbox world.

and all of that is pointless... you act like the game is brand new and most of us are leveling toons for the first time. The world is now old.. most of us have seen it multiple times from both horde and alliance perspective.. the majority of your low levels have a high chance of being rerolls trying to get back to max level not new players who never played before..as for the planned pulls on challenging quests.. that was great when we were all in vanilla/bc still learning the game and the majority was leveling... now its empty.. and no one wants to wait 2 hours to find someone to do a quest anymore.. to facilitate how empty it is.. they have to pull toons from other worlds into yours (or you into theirs) just so that you will see other people while you level.

Now all that being said.. i too would love to see WoW 2.0 .. for all the reasons you listed plus the fact that the adventure and sense of exploration is gone from the game.. everything about the game is known.. we get a new patch tomorrow.. every boss, ability, quest, pet, mount ect is already listed on the front page of MMO.. NOW .. and we still have 12 hours before it goes live..I know that i can ignore it if i choose.. but the point is players have all the information at thier fingertips.. something that just does not happen when a game is new..

WoW 2.0 to me would be an advancement of the timeline by 100 years or more.. our characters retiring (non playable) yet we can see them lingering around and helping out in our Garrisons walking around in what ever gear we stopped in.. (hall of heroes for us to inspect those toons and thier achievements?) in the end.. its time for a new world with new challenges and to bring back the sense of adventure.. while i am sure the graphic requirements are to high.. i couldnt help but play witcher 3 lately and imagine how WoW would look like if it was using that engine..