A world revamp? - Speculation and discussion, plus poll

[toffmcsoft]

So, Blizzard is going to reduce the level cap from 120 to 60.

Blizzard is going to release a "Wow 2 / World Remake / Etc" that merges Classic & Retail.

Everyone will sync together and it'll be epic.

[Eurhetemec]

So, what do you think?

As a rule of thumb, when someone asks this on MMO Champ, the answer is "Ghastly...".

But for once, this is actually quite an attractive and well-rendered vision which makes sense and would lay the basis for a better game going forwards. So I'd love to see it.

However, what you're laying out is an enormous amount of work. An unprecedented amount of work for an expansion, I'd say, because it's potentially a large overhaul than Cataclysm. And it's in an era when that kind of work requires more people than it did in 2010. Does that make it impossible? No. But I do think that it makes it rather unlikely. And it's not something that could be half-arsed. Either you do a time-skip or you don't.

On the other hand, I don't expect WoW to stick with the Cataclysm zones forever. As people always point out, we've had them longer than we had Vanilla. And they're not up to modern standards on any level. So I guess it could happen. I'd certainly like it to happen. The difficulty is that, on top of all this, the next expansion has to feature a full endgame, raiding, and so on.

I suppose a lot of that could be in the new zones. They could re-work and re-vamp dungeons and make max-level versions of them into the M+ for that expansion. I think Dragon Isles or Wrath 2 are more likely, and them continuing to put this off, but I hope they do something like this.

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Revamping just doesn't work if it's not applied on everything. So let's say they revamp Azeroth again .. here you are in a time after defeating all bad boys with new threats ... then at level whatever you set sails to Northrend to defeat the Lich King ... just doesn't add up.

Maybe revamp and just add all expansions to Caverns of Time with absolutely no connection to Azeroth. No warchief quests to send you to Outland or wherever .. nothing. They'll just be in CoT. I actually like this.

That's what I'd imagine they'd do. The old world and all the expansions will likely still exist, just as destinations for time travel.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

WC3 Remastered has to be released on or before the date it was announced and made available for pre-order, due to some legalities overseas. They could get slammed with some pretty hefty fines if they don't.

Which is by 12/31/2019. So the the anytime in 2019 safe guard date. Or if you go by announced date.. well... Blizzcon date..

[Cosmic Janitor]

Making more of "the world" and a "better one" is always a good thing in RPGs, as it gives you hooks for story, places to explore and all that. Newer leveling content is also good for new people, since the quality of the cata stuff isn't that great today anymore either.

The big negative is that it takes resources away from possible endgame content, which most of us that already play, are probably the most interrested in. We experienced that already back in Cata and I'm not sure they can make it much better these days.

[Soon-TM]

Well depending on who you are asking WoW is also awful beyond saving. The story, the class design and the profession system are the textbook definition of terrible. The rest are debatable. But definitely no part of it is amazing.

The one saving grace of WoW today are its raids. The rest is awful beyond comprehension, sadly.

[The Stormbringer]

Which is by 12/31/2019. So the the anytime in 2019 safe guard date. Or if you go by announced date.. well... Blizzcon date..

Yeah, it would have to be the announced date and one year after, so Nov 2nd of 2019 at the latest. This is why you don't put out those pre-orders on an international basis without being 100% certain you can meet the deadline.

[Vollus]

If they're going to completely remake all the zones again, they might as well release WoW 2

I disagree. Time and time again we have seen a "2" added to a first gen MMO like Asherons Call, Everquest, and Runescape only to fragment the core audience and hurt both games. Classic is the closest WoW will have gotten to something like that and we will have to wait and see if that does in fact fragment the player base. WoW 2 would give players a 3rd option and could further damage these games. By doing a massive overhaul I think they set themselves up perfectly to give us @o@ 2 and make sure they don't fragment the base further. The only thing I am not sure about is keeping the old engine. It is old and tired and seems like it takes considerable effort to give us more interesting quests and almost incapable of true procedural generated environment. If they have been running a parallel studio and working on a full game replacement on the Overwatch engine then they have a real chance to give us a true game upgrade.

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[dim]

I would like that this expansion end on a defensive, not with some huge victory so we can cheer to ourselves....but the Rise of the Black Empire would cause huge devastations across the whole planet. The Azeroth soul is corrupted, the Old gods gain they power and affecting every corner of the world...and the future is grim.

Than in the new expansion we start in this dark new Azeroth, waging war on the Old Gods on all fronts, losing some fights, winning some fights, but the shit is already established in previous expansion, now we need to overcome that threat. Factions are splits, everyone if fighting for their own homes, temporary alliances are made due to same enemy.....

The players would start as a Resistance like in Terminator......world has changed, we are fighting a stronger enemy and we need to win.

[Vollus]

It may happen again but I hope it doesn't. I felt like it took too many resources. I have bad memories of Cataclysm. Maybe as a major patch instead?

Yes, they had to port the entire old game into the part of the engine that had flying built in. Then they had to take all of the locations that were unfinished because you could not see them from the ground and actually finish them. That was a huge drain and possibly something they should have started on sooner. Although having played through Vanilla and Cataclysm I thing the work they did was fantastic. My only regret is that we never got the underwater raid because some people hated being under water.

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This year is WoW's 15th anniversary

I fully expect an anniversary raid this year like the Molten Core one we got a few years back. And I expect it to be Ice Crown Citadel.

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I would like that this expansion end on a defensive, not with some huge victory so we can cheer to ourselves....but the Rise of the Black Empire would cause huge devastations across the whole planet. The Azeroth soul is corrupted, the Old gods gain they power and affecting every corner of the world...and the future is grim.

Absolutely. This would be the perfect time to do a Black Empire expansion.

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The one saving grace of WoW today are its raids. The rest is awful beyond comprehension, sadly.

Honestly this is simply not true. The game design in WoW is actually quite good. It still has everything it had like Dungeons, Raids, and Battlegrounds which are all above par when compared to other MMO's that have come and gone. It has changed up the game keeping it fresh by introducing scenarios, daily then world quests, eventually adding incursions and invasions. The class order halls and garrisons giving us mission tables and followers, and even the fact that the game keeps adding zones in expansions. It is by no means awful beyond comprehension unless you have poor comprehension skills.

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Revamping just doesn't work if it's not applied on everything. So let's say they revamp Azeroth again .. here you are in a time after defeating all bad boys with new threats ... then at level whatever you set sails to Northrend to defeat the Lich King ... just doesn't add up.

Maybe just remove the old expansion zones. You could simply level in the old world till say level 20 and then play the next say 40 levels to a new level 60 cap in th enew expansion. Th erevamp would really make all of the moot anyway. You could experience it via timewalking. Or opt to experience it when you hit level 20 where you could choose an expansion to level to 60 and would just do that content till cap them move on to the new content. Taliessen did a youtube video with this idea and I love that idea.

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[dcc626]

I fully expect an anniversary raid this year like the Molten Core one we got a few years back. And I expect it to be Ice Crown Citadel.

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they have said there will be a rai, but i think it may be a new one with favorite old bosses form the past.

[Aenigma84]

to be fair they could revamp the world
have everybody drop to l30 or even 1 but keep assets earned

and at 60 open worldquests acros the entire world
with endgame story wherever they want to

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Yeah, it would have to be the announced date and one year after, so Nov 2nd of 2019 at the latest. This is why you don't put out those pre-orders on an international basis without being 100% certain you can meet the deadline.

Right. But where does this fit in the actual conversation? A very recent (week or two) isn't up to mustard?

[The Stormbringer]

Right. But where does this fit in the actual conversation? A very recent (week or two) isn't up to mustard?

Overall it doesn't really. /shrug I'm mostly just clarifying about the deadlines they have for WC3 Remastered.

On-topic, I do agree with you for the most part, though. I don't think they're going to be a big world re-vamp, even though I wish they would. New Arathi is so much better than old Arathi.

[Vollus]

they have said there will be a rai, but i think it may be a new one with favorite old bosses form the past.

Oh yea... nevermind ...

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On a tangent ....

I am all for a complete engine replacement and update via a revamp. But I am a bit concerned as to how this could even happen. Currently we have a timeline issue.

The game progressed from Azeroth (old world), to Outland (BC edition), to Northrend then we experienced the Cataclysm. Which really resets the base game to Cataclysm and more or less orphans BC and WotlK content as that story took place before it. This is where Blizzard started the situation they are now facing. After that we go to Pandaria and Outland (WoD edition) but in this case outland was not replaced and we now have two outlands. Then we add new zones in Legion and Battle for Azeroth however in both we touch Azeroth (cataclysm edition) and add Invasions and War Fronts. Several BC zones got stuck without flying because they existed in the BC map files as well like Silvermoon.

So lets say they revamp the game. Drop to level 60. Rework classes again. And for the sake of argument lets say they go all "Black Empire (B.E.)" on us. They would need to start from the current Battle for Azeroth files and move the missing zones from BC to this new B.E. version. They could have the revamp remove our access to these older zones. Confine us to just this new B.E. Azeroth but this would not be anything like the old game experience. The world would seem small and extremely hostile as old gods would return, imagine C'Thun the size an entire city sitting where AQ 40 used to be. I even thing starting zones would have to change to become less of a care bear situation. Azeroth story content, dungeons, raids etc would all need to be revamped to reflect this as well.

So what happens to all that old story content. Well maybe they could use the Bronze dragons to allow you to play a scaled version of that older content. AT max level you could choose a point in history and receive a time portal device that would let you travel back and forth in time so as to be able to play current and older content at your leisure. If you want to experience each expansion and its story you would have to experience them all separately.

So what do we do at level 60. Won't adding 10 more levels in an expansion get is to the same point in 15 years. Yes it will. And that should be addressed as well. I personally think traditional leveling should be reserved for the initial leveling experience of a character and that end-game content should progress differently. What if each new expansion only advanced through reputation and real progression came through gear. Your character would of course seem stagnant, no new skills etc. But what if they allowed you to also gain paragon points that let you do interesting things such as gaining access to new/alternate skills, or allowed you to unlock professions so that at some point you could learn all gathering professions and an additional skilled profession. Or what if it let you unlock new character skins, new tattoos, new hair styles, access to new transmogs etc...

In any good hero story there is something called the hero's journey. And because the game jumps all over that journey is a jumbled mess. The current game should simple reflect leveling through whatever the current Azeroth is as you start your journey. Old content needs to be available but not part of the new hero's journey. Once you are a "hero" you need to go on a new journey that should include bettering yourself in many ways but that advancement to a hero is complete now you face the evils of the world as a hero.

Anyway that is way too much and probably off base on several things. I am a game designer but not a designer on WoW so I will trust Ion and the gang to give me the best damn MMO experience that they can. And thank them for all that they have given us this far.

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[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

An old world revamp would take too much resources and dedication, so Blizzard would fail to deliver.
The only chance it could work would be if the players could wait a couple of years without any content so Blizzard could work on that. The players would not wait that long and Blizzard would not do that as they would lose too much money.
Abandon this stupid idea.

[tromage2]

I hope it happens.

You can clearly see zone design improved alot since MoP.
But if they do it then they need to find a way to involve both leveling and endgame experience in those zones.

But i also would not mind them make warfronts as a feature from this point forward and update 3-4 zones each exp pack.

(ps Outland and Northend also are targets to remake at this point)

[Prozach]

There's little I dislike on these forums more than these poorly written story-lines posters put together. "Meanwhile, back in Stormwind..." I mean, they read like shitty comics and they're always the dumbest ideas that would take a vast amount of resources to implement into the game. But somehow everyone thinks they have the 'best' darn ideas for WoW changes.

I take that back, what they sound like is soap opera dialogue, not comics. Comics can at least be pretty cool/entertaining. Soap operas are where horrible ideas are made into reality and desperate housewives have nothing to do but watch them.

[Wangming]

The one saving grace of WoW today are its raids. The rest is awful beyond comprehension, sadly.

Well raiding would be the saving grace if we didn't have stupid faceroll difficulty. and drops that are dead on arrival due to Mythic + dungeons.

[Prozach]

Well raiding would be the saving grace if we didn't have stupid faceroll difficulty. and drops that are dead on arrival due to Mythic + dungeons.

LFR killed raiding. It used to mean something to experience raid content but now basically anyone can do it. The game is inherently competitive and if you're not constantly measuring yourself against other players, there's no incentive to keep gearing up.

Mythic Raider: "I killed 'x' boss yesterday with my guild!"

LFR Player: "I killed them last week in an alt run."

Mythic Raider: "Yeah, but we did it on MYTHIC!!"

LFR Players: "Who gives a shit, it's the same content and I basically get to see it at the same pace as you do."

Mythic raider starts calling the LFR dude 'bad' and other colorful names in order to validate his weekly 20 hour/week raid schedule.

[sam86]

u are wrong in big aspect, that low lvl content is 'new' content, cata failed not because it was available pre patch, it failed because focus was not on late game, on content that u storm in 5 days max and can't even repeat (on ur main at least) if u want to, quests already done
i'm strongly against revamp anything at all ever, not even change a zone like they did in MoP mid zone (can't remember its name), or removing the (back then) lvl 90 barrens, i don't like that, if i have happy memories in caravan i want to relive them when i want, i can't do that because that content is removed from game
i'm against removing anything at all from game, if u 'must' do new things, do it like what they did to blasted lands for example, option to see both old and new zones at same time

But cata biggest fail was really the 'rehash' deathing raid, most of raid is reused content, and the biggest fight in the exp is we fight his toenails, we only needed a mega size clipper -.-