Is It Time For Another "Cataclysm"?

[-Joker-]

Seems like there is almost an entire hidden side of Azeroth we've not yet seen. Some questlines are completely dated, particularly the starting zones, and others still being "destroyed" like Darkshore, Westfall, and Badlands. It might just be me, but it was 6 years before we saw our first real update, and another 6 years have passed. Perhaps this expac would be another look forward as Azeroth has had time to heal from Deathwing. Some examples might include:

- The Defias have made their return to the Eastern Kingdoms as part of this South Seas expansion, knocking out the Orc armies and reclaiming territories for themselves.
- Edwin Van Cleef's bastard Brother Zorren has returned to find his neice and avenge his brother
- Southshore is being reclaimed by the Alliance, and returned to its former glory as Stromgarde castle is now built anew and is no longer in ruins.
- Gilneas has been reclaimed by its rightful inhabitants and is now usable as a home city
- Orgrimmar has almost doubled in size as it moves into territories to the north
- Taurajo is rebuilt as the Tauren bury their dead and attempt to regain control of the territory
- World Shamans have come together to heal areas of Azeroth much the same way they healed Shenzin-Su in Pandaria
- Remove the tornadoes from zones
- Fix Booty Bay
- and so on...

** Please Note: For all of the Pedantics who assume I want Blizz to do it EXACTLY as I have written here... I DON'T. These are merely musings, whimsical ideas of healing Azeroth and updating Starting Zones for new "pertinent" content. Please feel free to express your ideas and opinions, but please be able to distinguish the difference between casual thread conversation and insisting Blizz does it my way. These are just some random thoughts on how to update Azeroth and bring new content to once again stale zones. Would also love to see Silithus and Deadwind Pass get some love.

[Marrilaife]

I'd rather see them concentrate 100% on making a great expansion instead of revisiting old zones. And if someone claims they can do both, well... I'm yet to see Blizz making expansion without cut corners, blatant bugs or rushed imbalanced stuff. So no, I don't believe revisiting old zones wouldn't have a hefty opportunity cost.

[De Lupe]

I certainly hope so.

There are so many outdated quests throughout Kal and EK.

[draynay]

I don't know if they should redo old quests, but they could look into expanding the scaling tech to lower level zones. With how fast leveling is now, you don't really finish a zone before the quests go green or gray.

[derpkitteh]

if it were up to me, they'd do a cataclysm every 3ish expansions.

the world needs to be kept up to date.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Why would they want to reclaim Southshore? In fact they can't. Sylvanas is the diva in charge of the Horde. One swipe of her finger and the entire "resistance" would be wiped out by the plague and no one would be allowed to bat an eye or turn the other cheek.

[sheggaro]

No they're gonna make things even worse.

[Deleted]

I don't know if they should redo old quests, but they could look into expanding the scaling tech to lower level zones. With how fast leveling is now, you don't really finish a zone before the quests go green or gray.

100% this!
Bugs me so much that I can't even finish up a zone without my level being too high for the quests or the mobs. It obliges me to not wear heirlooms if I really want to finish the zone while leveling. Otherwise it easily gets outleveled with heirlooms (or dungeons for that matter).

[Deleted]

definitely needed.

two main reasons:
1. leveling is totally retarded and boring (mabye intentional to sell more boosts)
2. the world still acts as if it's the next day after the cataclysm hit and it makes no sense.

[HumbleDuck]

As much as I like to see world quests be added to all continents, I don't think a whole cataclysm style revamp would do anything but harm.
It will consume too much resources which can be used better elsewhere IMO.

[Deleted]

Reverse Cataclysm but another "one expansion azeroth"? No thanks

[SylviaDragon]

The quests are pretty good right now. (for the most part anyway- its a bit of a chronological mess when it comes to Deathwing and Hellscream) -I certainly wouldn't say no to some updates such as general cleanup and repair that took place after the Cataclysim. (also yes, PLEASE give the worgen their city back, i love Gothic Victorian stuff.) but I don't think the majority of the questing system needs a complete overhaul like it did last time.

The zones themselves on the other hand, are horrifically outdated in terms of graphics quality. I would love it if the trees and terrain were updated. Just this week i let my sister role a few characters on my account during a slow afternoon. She made a Night elf and a Padaren. She was obviously a little shocked by the stark contrast between the two starting zones.
Unfortunately I wouldn't trust Blizz to be capable of remodeling the zones without seriously cutting out the meat of the xpack at max level to do it.

I also agree that having scaling in the low level zones would be great. Its probably one of the more realistic things we can expect to have in the near future. I never finish a zone before I out level it anymore.

[Zoibert the Bear]

Even though I understand that this would take a LOT of time off the new expansion development, I feel that Blizzard should have a small team revamping zones one by one and pushing them along with content patches (X.Y, X.Y.5), even if it takes a few years to get there.

The new player experience at this stage is terrible. I just had my neighbors kid (14 yo) start playing WoW and he is utterly confused about zone lore and timeline nonsense. I felt ashamed trying to justify Blizzards thinking while explaining it to him really.

[Deleted]

Nah. Leveling has been changed into short boring grind. No need to waste resources on it - today's WoW is not MMORPG it used to be, is all about max level.

[rad586]

In my opinion, yes. They should revamp all the old zones, including Outlands and Northrend, to fix chronological order and paradoxes. Both are included with the base game now, so why they should be in their own time bubble ?

That would prepare the grounds for level scaling and future world quests. One coherent story, from start to end. Maybe revamp DK starting zone aswell, to include new races previously impossible.

[Wildmoon]

Not sure about revamping old zones but I remember Ion saying that the xpac after Legion will problably introduce long-lasting solution to the big number problem.

[Mic_128]

100% this!
Bugs me so much that I can't even finish up a zone without my level being too high for the quests or the mobs. It obliges me to not wear heirlooms if I really want to finish the zone while leveling. Otherwise it easily gets outleveled with heirlooms (or dungeons for that matter).

Just finish it anyway. I'm assuming you're wanting the story anyway, right? And if you're going to take off the heirlooms, it'll still take about the same time and get you to the same level by the end of it.

As for the topic, I'd quite be happy with another expansion on Azeroth. Change some of the low level zones to higher levels: Maybe Southshore becomes the front for a new Horde vs Alliance questing area where Kul'Tiras marines make an appearance and off we go (Making Undercity and Ironforge the main cities for an expansion!)

I think it would be cool to see if done well.

[nekobaka]

While I like some old stuff getting brought up to date to not seem like nothing was done and for fun story lines left to rot to have a conclusion the act of doing such eats into non-raid content that the vast majority participate in. The devs was early to admit the lack of non-raid content in Cata of which later was attributed to sub loss was due to the 1-60 revamp that cut into non-raid content.

I would like to see stuff added in particular continuations of questing story lines in the new expansion content where far more of the population will experience and make use of the resources spent on it. Otherwise the only people to really see it are the avid fans that care to go back and experience the new old content rather than skip and focus on end game.

[Deleted]

No, we do not need another cataclysm. The "old world" is fine. A recently quested through large parts of it to finish my Loremaster, and there are many gorgeous details that I didn't even know about.

What we need, though, is a way to keep it more relevant.

I would absolutely love it if they applied the scaling tech to the old world. Have all zones scale from their original base level up to 100. This would be absolutely awesome. I would quest the shit out of the old world with lots of new alts if they did this. Its frustrating to start with a new zone, do the first few quests and then already outlevel the zone and only have grey quests. You never finish those story lines. If the zones scale up, this wouldn't be a problem.
You still get some sense of progressing through teh world, because the higher you get, the more zones unlock.

It would allow us to skip certain zones, like Outland or Northrend, which is imho another big plus. If I doNt want to go to outland, let me quest in the old zones to close the gap to northrend, there is enough of those zones available. It would add much needed freedom to the leveling process.

Finally, make some world quests in the old world. Back in the day we had fishing and cooking quests in SW/IF/darnassus. Add more profession WQs to the whole old world. Make some more other events,e g. make the fishing contest a WQ. Make the Gurubashi Arena a PvP WQ. Make some more old places worthwhile to re-visst.

Invasions would have been a great thing to put all over the old world.


You don't need another catalysm to make the old world great again. Its great.

[Deleted]

Black Empire after legion. Eazy fix

Even with new northrend.

Dont know how big challenge it would be to move BE a DR starting zones to diferent servers to make them part of azeroth world and not outland one.

make zones to scale even for lvling. ofc some ranges like 1-20, 21-40 etc, so u cant ding max lvl in tirisfal glades.

Silithus, Ungoro, feralas part of tanaris highly infested by old gods, Same on northrend stormpeaks mostly, and part of easter kingdoms whe Nzoth will be. other zones updated to face old gods threat.