Hopes for the next expansion.

[Jibjub]

I will most likely be playing Classic.

[Maudib]

I'm not sure Blizzard can fit the OP's hopes onto a mobile phone. I'm thinking ultra-pruned abilities, more RNG, with really stacked-against-you-odds, loot boxes galore as MTX, and free to play.

PC WoW development of new content will be discontinued with only Classic versions being re-released to keep the monthly subscriber fees rolling in. They may even get into "fresh servers" every year to milk it as much as possible.

Blizzcon 2019 will reveal it all.

[Pua]

One thing they need to stop doing is make our characters feel weaker with every expansion. A level squish would do just that.

It wouldn't.

At all.

Hence the threats are potentially more meaningless when compared to the item level drags.

[Directionalk9]

To level squish or not to level squish, I do not care
1.A Leveling
Every toon at max level adds a multiplier to any toon below max level at any level range. You have 1 toon at 130, any toons below that get a passive 5-10% boost in experience earned. Two toons? 10-20%, etc. Maxing out at 100%, any other forms of experience boost will apply on top of this.

1.B Leveling
1. A new row of talents, pretty obvious, I welcomed ability pruning in WoD, but now a lot of the specs I play, feel like I'm missing 1 or 2 abilities. Out of all the specs I play, one feels more or less right.
2. Every ten level you you get an Ability Boost Point (better name). You apply this to any of your abilities and it increases its effectiveness. I'm sure there will be abilities exempt from this, like Bloodlust, but abilities like Stormstrike, would just hit harder, there would probably have to be rank caps, 3-5 feels right. Having 13 ABPs could lead to cookie cutter allocations, but hopefully there are enough applicable abilities with rank caps that two players of the same spec, would be different enough. People smarter than me have to tell me I'm wrong, I probably am.
3. Every level offers a stat point, 130 of them. This might require adding more stats back into the game. I personally miss having role specific stats like MP5/Spirit for Healers. Pretty basic premise though, you spend these in any available stat, rules might have to introduce spending caps, maybe putting all 130 into Crit or HP is too much, but it gives a reward for each level, that gives you a choice, and makes you stronger where you feel you need/want to be stronger.
4. Minor fixes to the leveling scaling, I like it overall, but there has to/should be a way that you feel stronger as you go, didn't notice it in Legion but in BFA by 115 i felt weaker until I had a higher ilevel at 120.

World Re-vamp
1. Visually everything pre-MoP isn't pretty. There's nostalgia, sure, but its an eyesore, especially when you get Pandaria, and Zandalar (personal opinion) is fucking stunning. I love WoWs art style, but many of those art assets are wildly out of date.
2. The story of many of the older zones are just so old and don't reflect the massive changes to the story as a whole. Taking the BFA zone stories mindset is the way I'd like to see it. No more of those zones sitting in expansion eras. Post-MoP zones I would only lightly touch, and for the time being I'd leave AU Dreanor alone, it's so disconnected physically and narritively that I can't begin to imagine how to make it relevant. Same somewhat applies to Outland, but damn I love that place and don't wanna see it forgotten.
3. The re-vamp cannot just apply to leveling, it has to be relevant for max level player as well. I suspect that was one of the more major issues Cataclysm faced and wasn't well received.

War and Titan Forging Philosophy Change
1. Raiding WF/TF will more or less just be the return of item upgrading from MoP, but won't be using JP/VP. Each boss you kill kill drops a "crystal" call it what you want. The "crystal" will be difficulty and tier locked, resetting with each tier. You only raid LFR you only get "LFR Crystals" etc. You raid two difficulties you're collecting two "crystal" types. Right now we're in the second tier of BFA it launched with nine bosses, you'll need nine "crystals" to Warforge any gear piece you want, and nine more to Titanforge it. "LFR Crystals" can only WF/TF LFR gear, etc. Right now we have two additional bosses from Crucible Raid, you're just speeds "crystal" collection up, for this tier. When Eternal Palace releases, "crystals" reset to zero and now only EP gear can WF/TF. Kinda harsh and strict for people still doing previous tier, but really there is better gear now available so, meh.
2. For pvpers, return of vendor gear, like the good ole days. For honor/conquest you buy a token that Warforges and Titanforges the gear piece you want. Will have to be WF before TF.
3. Have no idea how to apply this to Mythic+ gear maybe just the same as raiding gear, but at a higher "crystal cost" as there are WAY more bosses available to kill per week.
4. Questing and World Quest WF/TF, fine as is... It just cannot get better than what ever the baseline LFR WF gear is.

Max Level Outdoor Content
1. Add weather, but weather is random and zone appropriate, no blizzards in Vol'dun, no heatwaves in Tirisfal, no tsunamis in non-coastal zones. Weather would apply a minimal affix while active for the zone. They shouldn't suddenly ramp up the difficulty, but be a minor annoyance, like real life, when you have to walk to your car when its raining. If its a blizzard, lower visibility, and if you haven't [stayed warm] for more than 30 minutes 2% movement decrease, stacks every additional half hour.
2. I'm fine with reputation grinds being as they are right now. However couple changes. Once at exalted you buy a BoAccount tabard, that allows you to rep grind in dungeons on alts. Also return to MoP/Nightfallen story development unlocking when you meet a rep amount threshold. Getting exalted with the organizations had narrative meaning, in WoD, most of Legion, and now BFA they only exist to give you horse of a specific color, a toy and a pet. I want an epic conclusion, like I did with Shado-pan, Golden Lotus and the Nightfallen.
3. Emissaries and Paragon caches. Keep'em add mounts and maybe a mog set or unique armor colorization mog set. Each reputation caches gives you a coin(s) those coins can be used to buy flavor consumables, but at the launch of next expac, if you've had bad luck or just managed to save them, you can buy the cache rewards... or continue to paragon farm them like a mad man.

Flying
I don't like flying, so the compromise I'd have is, the .2 (secretly I wanna say .3) patch you can just buy it with gold per toon. No path finder, but also not at the expansion launch either. Also I wouldn't set it at an exorbitant price, 5-10K feels right-ish by BFA gold accumulation standards.

Professions
Needs a complete rework.
1. Gear crafting professions should have a unique way of crafting the piece. that involves a "mini-game" of sorts. ALL profession mats have NO SOULBINDING, NONE, and any mat can be found or made in the over-world. Maybe rarer mats can be found at slightly better frequency in instanced content, but not exclusive to them.
2. Time and Effort should pay off for the crafter. Crafted gear should be wildly customization, but require actual tons of mats. bring back elemental mats as well, with each element giving that gear piece a different attribute. Fire increases crit, but Stormed Fire adds a small Fire Damage bonus; Water can replenish small HP; Earth increases durability, Shadow leeches.
3. Gear Tinting; the base mat you use is the main color of the gear. Gear might have a more generic looks, but will have significantly more color options.
4. The base mat has little to no effect on the quality of the gear piece, the usefulness will be determined be the additional mats used, either at initial creation or added later. This could keep older mats, like bronze, Fel Iron, Blackrock, relevant, which would go back and keep the entire game world relavant.
5. Crafted gear probably should be on par with Heroic raid gear,
6. This would have to force a rework for the AH as well. Ideally the AH would be used to bring crafters a level of prominence. Crafting would take a bit a skill more than just, clicking a button that gives you a slow cast bar. Finding and accumulating all the mats would be time consuming for the very best gear.

Cross Faction Grouping
I like the faction, it bothers me to no end to see the community want to see their dissolution. Here's my compromise. Inspired by the Tirion/Eitrigg friendship and the many others that exist in game. There's no need to get rid of them, bring peace to them, get rid of them, or let Horde players in Alliance cities and vice versa. Obvious chat channels would allow for cross-faction communication.
1. If you're Battle.net friends and on opposing factions, you can now invite to group and do all group activities. Raid, dungeons, BGs, Arena, WQ, etc.
2. Queuing for random instanced content would now pull from both factions, LFR, LFD, random BGs only if there are higher unequal queuing, it'll want to try to be faction specific, but can adjust when its imbalanced.
3. Where it wont work. Guilds should still be faction specific, but now with communities and the above changes its not that big of a deal. Pugging, you cant just pick a stranger of the opposing faction and group with them. General and Trade chat channels will still only portray same faction players
4. Battle.net cross faction groups when entering an enemy city will have a buff, you wont be attacked, but can't really interact with with the npcs either, I think that's how "unfriendly" works.

Mission Table
It's pretty innocuous now, any player that is still furious at it, has to be holding on to WoD Mission Table resentment. I wouldn't make a change.

Other Stuff
1. I don't mind an AP system, Azerite is dumb and boring and offers no tangible rewards. I don't need or want a return of Artifact weapons, but I'm open to future iterations of an AP grinding system. I'd like to see Dragonsworn as one. Swear to a flight, unlock unique and special attack and abilities specific to that flight. As you progress you unlock Flight specific, armor type agnostic sets, pets, mounts, toys, and even character customization, dragon horns, draconic eyes, flight colored scales and tattoos.
2. Real player housing, in the form of player owned ships, high level customization, but doesn't lock the players there like Garrisons did.
3. Could add Naval Combat, a side activity like pet battle, but not pet battles with boats. Gearing ships wouldn't be about getting better gear, but outfitting a ship to do what you want it to in battle, very very rock/paper/scissor.
4. A complete and total revamp and overhaul of Warfronts and Island Expeditions. They've under delivered by a large margin, but to remove them doesn't feel like the right move either. I've got things I'd like to see done to both, but I'd rather just create a new thread dedicated to that.

[Onikaroshi]

Where was this stated?? Ion Hazzikostas said in an interview: "We're listening to feedback regarding solutions to Warforging/Titanforging, but the problem is it only affects a small number of players and we need to take a much larger target group into consideration."

That doesn't sound like removing or fixing, seems grey to me...

Should try the newer interview where he stated that they recognize that there is problems with warforging and titanforging and discuss it internally, but want to come to a solution that works for everyone.

[Pua]

Professions
Needs a complete rework.

Amusingly, while I agree with you that they need a lot of work, a return to Classic and The Burning Crusade's versions would be absolutely great and a huge step in the right direction.

[Fred Skinner]

Amusingly, while I agree with you that they need a lot of work, a return to Classic and The Burning Crusade's versions would be absolutely great and a huge step in the right direction.

I agree to the burning crusade version where you could craft tier 4 gear from farming motes. But i do not agree to classic, as there was no useful farmable gear at all. Good patterns were only available in raids.

[Taeldorian]

Where was this stated?? Ion Hazzikostas said in an interview: "We're listening to feedback regarding solutions to Warforging/Titanforging, but the problem is it only affects a small number of players and we need to take a much larger target group into consideration."

That doesn't sound like removing or fixing, seems grey to me...

“They actively discuss a lot of the topics presented on the forums, but don't want to announce changes until they are certain it is the right direction and considers the wider audiences. A good example of this is the problems of Warforging/Titanforging. The team actively discusses it, but want to find a satisfying solution for all audiences.”

Then there’s: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.red...zard_wants_to/

Taliesin went to the creator summit at blizzard and interviewed/spoke to a bunch of devs. You can watch the clip from his stream through that reddit link to see what they told him about it. They told him they want to remove TF/WF and it’s a high priority but they want something to replace the positive side of titanforging before they do.

My assumption is that the positives of TF is the way it allows older content to give a bit of incentive to players to continue to participate in it, however TF doesn’t really do that in a good way at all. In legion AP was abundant from raids and could be farmed from dungeons, which caused people to do world tours of any older tiers for AP and also spam +5-15 level keys. Legendaries helped this as well but most did it for AP farming with a chance of legendaries. There’s many ways to keep content relevant without making the entire game a casino.

[Zandalariprelate]

A new team writers that doesn't have favoritism with humans or that actually write something coherent

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

Okay, so:

The new expansion is 99% to be announced at BlizzCon this year, so having spent a good chunk of time with Battle for Azeroth I think it’s time to make a few suggestions that I’d like to see. Some are going to be agreed, some are going to be disagreed, so please accept that this is a personal list and not a demand to developers that have a whole community to think of.

1. Squish the character level maximum.

Going to 130 simply increases the sheer redundancy of levels, while dropping it to 60 again means pretty much every level becomes meaningful with skills, talents and abilities. You should feel like you’ve achieved something when you ding, not when you ding 20 times. So, if that’s done…

2. Redesign classes with individuality.

Once you’ve got each level doing something, properly redesign classes to be unique to one another. The necessity for “BALANCE EVERYTHING” is no longer needed, given that it’s easier to level alternatives and most players run multiple classes as it is. Classes should be unique and different to one another, so make that happen. Meanwhile…

3. Get rid of the random gear procs.

Enough’s enough, guys. Come on. You shouldn’t be picking up an item, from any piece of content, and hoping to get lucky. Warforged gear was fun for a while, but now it’s a system that makes content redundant because of good luck, or makes players fed up because they get bad luck. My main remains behind two alts in item level because every update is either proccing badly, or trying to replace the sole two good items I already have. But with that…

4. Sort out World Quests.

It worked really well in Legion because it was a start, but it hasn’t developed… At all. For some reason the PvP and Honour options have been wholly removed, the quests are laughably similar across the board with little difference, and the reputation grinds need to be reduced from the extent that they’re currently at. If you sort this…

5. Don’t repeat the Alliance/Horde levelling zones.

I get why you tried it but, honestly, I really don’t like only having three zones to level in. I understand why you tried this out, and made all six zones technically available by trying to tell the level cap story across the board, but the reputation requirement stopped this from being controlled by players and that’s not much fun. If players again get the right number of zones…

6. Change flying to a player unlock.

Set up flying, and let the players unlock it rather than you randomly deciding when it happens. Honestly, you’ve built what the achievements are (explores, quests, reputations all done… Then wait) so let players fly once they’ve completed the achievement. You can do this with each zone you then release, given that you’ve made that work before, or you could build patch zones that encourage flight by using it. Once you manage this…

7. Get rid of the mission tabling.

It’s garbage. You’ve made it completely disinteresting because it’s so unimportant, and the “unlocked” benefits are equally naff. It wasn’t any fun during Draenor or Legion, and it’s remarkably been made even worse now. It’s not hooking anyone, it never hooked anyone, it’s never going to hook anyone. It’s time to retire it. If this is completed…

8. Sort out the needless difficulties.

Honestly, your PvE does not need the number of daft difficulties you’ve added. Dungeons should unlock the levelling ones as you go, all become Heroic at level cap, and Heroic+ for the time tests. Similarly, raids solely need to be “Normal” (first half Normal difficulty, second half Heroic) and Heroic 20-man. Not only does this remove needless difficulties across the board, it has a significant impact on item level inflation. So, if you fix group stuff…

9. Develop solo-player content.

I did the post that answered the question; everyone pretty much wants solo-content to be developed, so go ahead and do it. You could potentially replace LFR altogether if this type of concept was properly designed, and you could build a world where individuals have challenges that they won’t use random groups to complete quests from. You know it makes sense.

And… That’s it. It’s all I can think of for the time being. Sort out levelling, fix classes, sort out gear randomisation, fix World Quests, give players more zones, let us earn flying, get rid of meaningless tables, remove unnecessary difficulties and develop solo-content that can work alongside group stuff.

I’m pretty sure that would solve a lot of the current problems, but I’ve no doubt there’ll be significant disagreement.

Can't wait to read it.

Oh, and:

10. Collapse the Achievement numbers.

New players are NEVER going to catch up all of them. It's high time we turned old expansions into non-point achievements that are summarised, so that players can compete in the current system and actually aim to get themselves well numbered in the achievement system. Starting World of Warcraft, and being presented with thousands of achievements that the game is designed to skip, is just overtly needless. Time to sort that out.

They we'll never replace looking for raid because it doesn't need replacing. It puts people on a gear treadmill and gives them a reason to sub for at least a month or two. There no logical reason to remove it other than feelings.

- - - Updated - - -

I agree to the burning crusade version where you could craft tier 4 gear from farming motes. But i do not agree to classic, as there was no useful farm able gear at all. Good patterns were only available in raids.

Not to mention crafting while leveling suck balls. I got leather-working but item in it are fucking trash. It be nice if we could upgrade recipes based on how often we crafted them until they hit an ilvl cap. You know the more you do something the better you get at it.

[Sencha]

Removing world quests would be a good start.

[Cobman]

Mission tables could exist if u make them like for archeology or new cooking recipes finder or some toys/junk finder tool, to get quest or smt smt.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

Removing world quests would be a good start.

Why it adds variety it just an expansion of dailies.

[Pua]

They we'll never replace looking for raid because it doesn't need replacing. It puts people on a gear treadmill and gives them a reason to sub for at least a month or two. There no logical reason to remove it other than feelings.

Once again, I should explain:

I'm not suggesting they remove it.

I'm only suggesting that an approach to solo-content might allow it to be used in ways that are vastly better than the current version of LFR. If not, then keeping it is perfectly reasonable, I generally think.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

Once again, I should explain:

I'm not suggesting they remove it.

I'm only suggesting that an approach to solo-content might allow it to be used in ways that are vastly better than the current version of LFR. If not, then keeping it is perfectly reasonable, I generally think.

Nothing we'll though that's my point. It would be a dumb move to remove looking for raid lol but I jumped the gun.

[Pua]

Nothing we'll though that's my point.

So you think that using LFR, as a developed system that adds solo-related content to the game, is "nothing"?

I'm sorry, but that's a wildly out-of-line assessment.

Those using LFR lose absolutely nothing, while the overwhelming support of developing solo-related content is provided.

Honestly, I'll just assume that you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

So you think that using LFR, as a developed system that adds solo-related content to the game, is "nothing"?

I'm sorry, but that's a wildly out-of-line assessment.

Those using LFR lose absolutely nothing, while the overwhelming support of developing solo-related content is provided.

Honestly, I'll just assume that you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.

Your original post was basically introducing more solo content to replace looking for raid.. Solo content we'll never replace the function that looking for aid provides which is putting casual players on the raid gear treadmill. It's probably why blizzard won't remove it out right.

[Shakana]

@Directionalk9

Your idea about professions is only crafting? What about the rest, that's not the only thing professions do tho. C'mon

- I hate pathfinders, i like flying without needing to unlock a shit ton of achievments and reps. I want it to be bought with gold and max just some rep exalted, wouldn't be bothered about that, but all this pathfinders part 1 and 2 annoy the heck out of me. Just do locked flying until you reach exalted, and we are good.
- AP is more than dumb, i like azerite color, doesn't make me an apologist! xD i don't like azerite.
- I don't like anymore being in a city only Alliance or only Horde, i got used to Dalaran and i like to see both factions, i want a neutral city to see them where they can't wipe me out of the world and i can do emotes to them like "Shooo pest" and they can't do anything about it. I'm a jerk, i like it. Makes it fun cause they can't either be all together to gank me and i can chicken jokes everytime. It's just fun. On alliance or just horde you don't need to have much interaction. Plus, they can't understand your language so when you talk: "I love your horns cow", they think i'm saying "why don't you disappear from my face", it's so fun, i swear. It's fun aswell being able to comunicate with demon hunter to demon hunter, void elfs and blood elfs.

There are many things i would like changed, i'm just not in the mood to make more comments and topics about it atm. I miss this tho.

[tripleh]

Next expansion will be the same crap. Until you change up the dev team and person in charge,its all gonna be the same ideals. They start off by cutting back on things only to see how much they can get away with,before players start complaining. Then it takes months to change things with patches after admitting that there changes were wrong to do in the first place. Then another 10+month wait for flying to unlock via pathfinder. Lets also not forget Rng, and ignoring beta feedback to push the expansion out. Also I'm sure players were upset once they found out that Kultirans and Zandalari trolls were gonna be heald back for months. Same crap this blizzcon, announce some new race. Only to wait months while the hype builds with taking preorders. Then announce some features won't be avaiable when the next expansion goes live. At this point players are so use to being screwed by the devs they can literally figure out how things are gonna go majority of time. The cycle repeats itself. Lets also not forget the bad writting at the hands of Steve Danuser.

[wushootaki]

1. Get Rid of Pruning:
-Axe PvP talents, hand most of them back to baseline kits
-Get rid of auxiliary progression systems (Artifacts, Azerite, etc.) roll certain abilities into baseline kits.

2. Remove Titanforging
3. Flying at Max Level
4. Roll World Quests into hubs
5. Hire better writers so the story isn't a complete dumpster fire.

I could really go on, but #1 is the issue I'm really burning about at the moment. Granted, they don't seem to get it.

They already have solution to flying. If Flying killed world pvp, then when you have war mode on, you can't fly. Problem solved.