Is it worth making huge new Continents every expansion?

[dacoolist]

Cata was the expac everyone hated, it was the first time I've seen millions and millions insta ripinpeace from wow forever, they made barely any new areas accessible, and obvious, I loved Cata, but it was for xmog, and some pvp aspects etc - it sure as hell wasn't for the revamped world (although it was nice) - having new areas to explorer is super legit nice for new feels.

[Altariell]

Totally agree. I love Draenor. It was the best leveling experience so far with all the secrets, treasures and rares.
It's just a shame i don't have to step in any of the zones anymore after leveling.

I loved draenor too, the exploration for hunt treasures and bosses, I hope the old zones had the same things one day, Where you can revisit old maps with new objectives.

[Raugnaut]

In Draenor's case, no, because there's no useful activity in the world.
If they managed to make each zone relevant (I think the mechanics in Legion will allow that), then yes.

But, keep in mind, Draenor feels like a Island, not a continent. They'r reducing the M² of each expansion map, and nowadays you can't really say that they are "huge" continents. Original Draenor was a continent, ours.... isn't D:

Draenor is, area-wise, only ~31% smaller then either Kalimdor or the Eastern Kingdoms, and is actually a bit bigger then Pandaria, and significantly bigger then the Outland.

You also always have to keep in mind that nothing is to scale. If you looked up old Alpha footages for vanilla, you would see that at the start Blizzard was attempting to make everything much, much more bigger - Villages/Outposts/Towns consisted of more then 2-3 buildings (Original Goldshire had, I think it was, 23 buildings or something in the original implementation, which is MUCH bigger then the current 3 of today), a few of the Capitals at the time had additional levels (Undercity had an extra level in the outside ring, Org had a few extra plateaus, ect). Took up too much server space though to make EVERY town like that, or even 10% of them like that, so they greatly reduced their overall scale. Imagine each town/city/zone/continent 20x bigger, and you would have something a bit more realistic.

[ro9ue]

Yes, the problem is they are just not utilizing them properly throughout the expansion. It's "World" of Warcraft. The outdoor world can't be a means to an end. WoD was essentially spending the first week or two in the world questing and leveling and then the remaining year sitting in your Garrison waiting for queues, sans-Tanaan.

[Katchii]

I would be totally for re-using older areas with some new added quests or a small new quest hub if a whole lot of additional lore (quests, dungeons, etc...) was added, some phasing maybe so that the old area was viable for higher level players without getting in the way of the lower level ones.

Not sure if they could do it so it didn't feel stupid or contrived, but I don't think completely new continents/ areas are required to have a fulfilling expansion.

[Count Zero]

I think they could give us a much larger expansion if they reused old lands in new ways. Especially since art is always their bottleneck.

I think it's pretty easy to say this, but pretty hard to do. Either it doesn't wind up looking unique at all or you've put as much time adjusting the existing assets as you would have just creating new assets.

Dragon Soul used the art of Wyrmrest Temple in a way that to me at least doesn't even make it feel like the same location. But people still scream "rehash!" to this day about it.

Visual identity has a ton to do with the story in WoW. It's things like that, which is why they're pretty hesitant to change existing art. The entire Cataclysm expansion and the various model updates are notable exceptions, but I think they really do only change things if they feel they absolutely must or when they can just do something really great with it they couldn't otherwise.

But anyway, yeah - I personally would love for them to be less hesitant to tell new stories in existing locations / with existing art, if it makes sense (like I feel Dragon Soul did with Wyrmrest Temple). But even if Blizz feels the same way, I think they are very conscious of how much content they "rehash". I have to imagine even Draenor itself floated a lot closer than many folks over there are comfortable with in regard to re-using expansion content.

Maybe one day we will see a return to Northrend for a new story there. Or wherever. I just don't see them really doing more than what they already do, tho. At least not anytime soon ... and, well, by the time I think it would really make sense, I think at that point it would possibly be too open to the worst criticisms of re-using content, and that they'd probably steer away from re-using an entire continent just a deliberate matter of policy at that point. Which really is pretty soon unless the movie and Legion bring us back to Cata (or higher) sub numbers (not that we'd know exactly, beyond extrapolating from revenue)

[MoanaLisa]

I used to think so but their practice of abandoning them after every expansion makes me wonder. So, maybe. I do wish they paid much more attention to the existing world but would likely miss new zones if they were not there at all. My personal preference is probably new zones for launch content and a mix of things to do in the newer zones and the rest of the world for patch content.

[Rudkobing]

Yes, its worth making huge continents.

[huehuehue]

I would be for phasing zones to be higher level content, as long as the expansion took place on a full continent or at the very least a cluster of nearby zones. I hated the Cataclysm disconnected feel of spread out zones.

[Splenda]

Yes I enjoy exploring completely new areas, even if we don't revisit outside of alts.

[Deleted]

Yes, its worth making huge continents.

Is it really that hard to put some thought behind it ?

Exploring a world for no reason is really a niche thing.

[Constraint]

I probably won't buy an expansion without a new continent anymore. Cataclysm was my least memorable expansion for a good reason.

[Deleted]

I probably won't buy an expansion without a new continent anymore. Cataclysm was my least memorable expansion for a good reason.

Thats odd i actually liked that about cataclysm. It had new areas but the way they placed them made old areas relevant aswell

[Low Hanging Fruit]

The world is great. What they do with it suffers. All they really have to do is add in a few events/treasures/quests per patch to keep it in the realm of at least breathing. Problem is it is only there for a few select things. One, to level to max in. Two, to have verious resources to gather in. Three, a place to put instance portals in. Of course garrison and instant portal to most the instances took a lot of the point of two of those away. Which is why you can see why people ask questions like this. Why when you fly around in the world in WoD you ask yourself what was the point of flying around this place, why am I here, wtf am I doing anywhere besides my garrison, an instance, or the main city.

[Deleted]

When did this game ever have huge continents?

Huge in the sense that Blizzard had lot's of work and attention to detail to make hundreds of quests, secrets, rare mobs, jumping puzzles, chests etc
Leveling in Draenor almost felt like playing Skyrim (not really but they tried).
I remember finding a tower where the NPC's where stuck in time and finding a sword on a stone like excalibur and when i pressed it a rare mob hapeared.

Seems like a lot of work for something that is forgotten after 3 days into the expansion.