Will we ever get real capital cities again?

[JustRob]

Think about it. How long haven't we had proper new capital cities in an expansion?

Stormshield and Warspear are downright terrible. If it weren't for the portal in my garrison, I would never go there. Hell, I wish my garrison just had a portal to Stormwind / Orgrimmar instead. It's the most boring "capital" city I've seen so far, with the same boring architecture used everywhere else, not worthy of being called a capital city. But what baffles me the most, is that it's actually inferior to Shrine because it has less portals. Which is why I still have my HS set to Shrine.

Anyway, last expansion we had Shrine. It wasn't ugly, and the place made me feel "zen", but to say it was a real capital city, no. The fact that the Horde / Alliance just had mirrored versions of the same city also wasn't very original. Faction balance is cool and all, but come on. Still much, much better than Stormshield / Warspear tho.

In Cataclysm, we didn't get any new capital cities because all the portals to all the new zones were available from Stormwind / Orgrimmar. Which was fine, it was nice to be able to hang there again without wasting your time. But still, new capital cities are always nice.

That's right, the last real new capital city we had in a new expansion, was in WotLk: Dalaran. And even though back then I could only move around the city by pointing the camera at the ground (and even then I still had like 5 fps), it was, and still is one of the most beautiful cities in this game. It wasn't just some shithole with portals and the bare essentials, no, you could actually explore it. There was the whole underground sewers, the toy shop, the higher learning achievement, the fountain where you could fish up those awesome coins, etc. It was awesome.

Anyway, with the next expansion slowly coming closer, I'm really hoping we get a new capital city again. And to be honest, I would really prefer if it was one city shared by the Horde and the Alliance, because with MoP and WoD, we've seen that Blizzard is just too fucking lazy to design a new capital city for each faction. So I'd rather have one completely new and awesome capital city then just two mirrored ones again.

What about you? Do you think we'll get capital cities at all, and do you want one for each faction or would you prefer if they share one again?

[Zoneseek]

Imo instead of new capital cities that will become ghost towns 2 years later they should just add more portal clusters to the new zones from org/sw like they did in cataclysm.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Imo instead of new capital cities that will become ghost towns 2 years later they should just add more portal clusters to the new zones from org/sw like they did in cataclysm.

That was a horrible idea then, it still is now.

I'd love a new capital, but honestly I'm cool with mini-capitals like we got in Ashran. But make them feel less stock, make them fit with where they are built.

The Shrines felt too compact, Ashran felt too.... SW/ORG.

[Tyrgannus]

Seeing that BC Shatt and Dal are actually some of my favorite cities...

I would LOVE a new "major city"

[Deleted]

I didn't like Dalaran back in the day tbh, because I had less than 5 fps :P But it is very good indeed.
I wouldn't like Cataclysm bringing new capital cities because the whole point of the expansion was "back to the roots", hence the destruction of Stormwind and the remake of Orgrimmar. I loved staying in the classic capitals, that's for sure, although not having a continent felt a bit "disconnecting".
I never liked shrine, although it has nice architecture, the silly music is annoying and music is a strong element of an area.
I like Ashran's cities, they are kind of messed up and not as inspired as Dalaran, but they are epic. I would much more love the Karabor/Bladespire capitals though, more lore heavy, like Dalaran. Ashran feels like an area that came out of the blue.

More on topic, I'd like to see a shared Capital City in the next expansion, a sanctuary zone. Shared and separate capitals are both great, but we had separate cities for a while now, on for a change. :P I might regret that later though, if the Dalaran thing happens and we can't move, which I think is the reason why all other capitals are separate. Overall though I'd like to see a large capital with wonderful architecture and things to explore, not just a small and simple business center, but also heavily based on lore, like Shattrath and Dalaran.

[Deleted]

I wish they would make the current capital cities more useful; I don't really care if there's a lot of people there, they can make them come to life with good background sound effects like in Guild Wars 2 instead.

Hanging around in Darnassus as a night elf should give me all the benefits of any major city, including portals. It should ideally also offer me some nifty content, like a Darnassus-specific daily quest or something.

[Deleted]

Wait, there's a portal to stormshield in your garrison?

[JustRob]

Wait, there's a portal to stormshield in your garrison?

Yeah. I don't know how it is for Horde, but for Alliance at least there's a big tower in between the mine and the fishing shack, and at the top is a portal to Stormshield. I can't remember if it's only for a lvl 3 garrison though.

[Deleted]

Neah, people just leave capitals after the expansion so why do it? I say that's the same with large zones, they are just abandoned. The same with long boring-quests, no one does them after one expansion. So scratch those two. I say, give us World of Forever Garisonville coupled with World of Forever Arseram. We can use them forever.

[Dasani]

Blizzard is lazy as hell.

The only way you'll see a halfway decent capital city is if it is shared by both alliance and horde like dalaran. If there is one for each faction, they're just going to half-ass it since they have to make two of them. WOD had a lot of potential for truly epic capitals but they decided it wasn't worth the effort, and if you can't muster up enough enthusiasm to make Karabor into a badass capital city then don't expect much from the next xpac.

[Aqua]

Imo instead of new capital cities that will become ghost towns 2 years later they should just add more portal clusters to the new zones from org/sw like they did in cataclysm.

Ew no. Just. Ew. Portals blow chunks, it's immersion breaking, lazy and the kind of thing WoW used to avoid like the plague unless it was for dire circumstances or within lore (Like secret areas, mages or continent crossing in a pinch)

That system sucked and forever will. At least the towns of Shattrath and Dalaran invoke some fond memories. I look around new Orgrimmar and the shrine and just remember being very... underwhelmed and disappointed at the amount of stationary rubbish happening around me. There was nothing that interesting about them. Dalaran had a goddamn slew of shit to do around it, book finding, fishing, people in close contact showing off their shiny shit, cooking dailies, the underground arena, Rhonin nattering his tits off about epic world ending bull. People were always there doing things. It felt alive! Shattrath also always looked 'prepared', things looked like they were happening left and right. It was a hub for all.

Ghost town now or not, it's not relevant end game anymore, so it did it's job, and will always feel good to returning players when they level up again or visit for some reason.

The shrine had...it had a tour guide... and daily..er...direction givers. Yes. Okay.


We need a city/town format again, neutral. The time has come.

[theun]

Mentioned before one way they can make capital cities relevant again.

The next villain group arrives in full force and every once a week or something like that, one or two of each faction's capitals are invaded by the enemy. And it is the players who needs to help go to these cities and help repel the invaders who are of all levels so anyone can participate. The higher level invaders would mostly go after the cities top npcs including the faction leaders.
Now if you succeed in repelling the invaders off, you are rewarded with stuff but let's say if the invaders successfully defeat the leader the city itself is lost to you, all the quest givers, auctioneers and masters in that city are locked out, the leaders regroup in one of the other cities and you will need to charge in and take the city back from the invaders.
After this, the city would be damaged and you can do various daily quests to contribute the repairing of the city.
And to make sure the invaders don't conquer every city your faction have, the fact that defeated faction leaders will also be present in the remaining cities would make it impossible for the invaders to be 100% successful so at least you will always have a city available.

Something like that.

[Thalian]

Vanilla WoW - 6 new capital cities

The Burning Crusade - 3 new capital cities

Wrath of the Lich King - 1 new capital city

Cataclysm - 0 new capital cities

Mists of Pandaria - 0 new capital cities (2 small hubs)

Warlords of Draenor - 0 new capital cities (2 small hubs)

[Noctifer616]

Capital cities are quite expensive to make. I would prefer that they do things like in Ashran where it's all based on already existing assets and is not too large and than use the dev time and add it to raid development.

[Dangg]

Blizzard is lazy and we will get small boring hubs that all look the same. They will get their $$ without designing anything like Silvermoon or Thunder Bluff ever again.

[Deleted]

Imo instead of new capital cities that will become ghost towns 2 years later they should just add more portal clusters to the new zones from org/sw like they did in cataclysm.

Excellent line of thinking! It's not like every goddamn zone in the game except for the lvl 100 zone isn't completely abandoned anyway outside of the occasional explorer/leveler.

Just go to Silverpine Forest, in my opinion still the best zone in the game. It gets the atmosphere, art, music and story completely right. Yet, there's just about no one there. Is it a shame? No, that's what an open world is about.

It's time for a new grand city hub. Dalaran and even Shattrath had something to show. Especially Dalaran had so many nooks and crannies filled with something interesting, you never grew really tired of it.

[Blupparen]

Major city thats shared? Probably not in a while. But one for each faction, yes I think so.

[Deleted]

Capital cities are quite expensive to make. I would prefer that they do things like in Ashran where it's all based on already existing assets and is not too large and than use the dev time and add it to raid development.

Correct, it's not like BC or Wrath had decent content outside of the capital cities because the devs used up all their resources to craft those cities, let alone that Blizzard has different teams working on different aspects of the game.

[Super Kami Dende]

How are the Shrines from MoP not Capitals to you?

They literally had everything that you needed in a pretty awesome looking location.

I don't exactly see what tonnes of empty space does that makes Dalaran or Shattrath any more "capitals" than the Shrines.

[Noctifer616]

Correct, it's not like BC or Wrath had decent content outside of the capital cities because the devs used up all their resources to craft those cities, let alone that Blizzard has different teams working on different aspects of the game.

WoTLK had Naxx, which required no work from artits, ToC was also really cheap to make. Also keep in mind that art assets today cost more than they did in the past due to higher polygon count and higher resolution. Molten Core was done in a week, something like ToT take a lot longer to make.