How would you make WoW great again!!!???

[Vorkreist]

1. LFR-improvements/Mythic-dungeons/Timewalking/WQ were introduced to counter the low WoD player numbers with SUCCESS
2. TF was introduced in LEGION, it brought back not only many players but the participation over the whole expansion broke their own statistics, a full SUCCESS
3. - 5. ?

The last 2 expansions from team A and B were a huge success compared to WoD and previous expansions. Why would a company fire both expansion teams when they not only delivered but they made players come back and play the game for longer as ever before?

Its allright if you dont like the game, but if they improved the player numbers BACK2BACK for TWO expansions, they clearly know what the majority of the players want from this game.

Strongly opinionated people clearly don't know-it-all.

If you want to see how it works out if blizzards listens to the LOUD community, look at Classic's long given up content rollout plan - DEVs in pure panic mode. If you are looking for a meme to describe the rapid decline of classics community the - THIS IS FINE *EVERYTHING IS BURNING* - it is.

1. Why are you trying to tie mythic dungeons / timewalking w/e to the most garbage cancer feature in mmo history aka LFR and pretend LFR has ever had any success except keeping terribads terribad at the game and away from actual raiding ?

2. TF is one of the most hated features since Legion. Its a stupid thing by design. There was no success. What statistics did it BR0KE ?

You are so clueless and delusional its past funny with those last paragraphs. Bfa is way worse than Wod and the player numbers bs you try to spin is the other way around. Some sub estimates put Bfa below 1mil subs after the first two months. Thats how much people hated the horrible state Bfa launched. Rest of the expansion was just a slow attempt to salvage and fix it.

[Askyl]

No need, Classic is here!

[Ange]

and pretend LFR has ever had any success except keeping terribads terribad at the game and away from actual raiding ?

LFR had allways more player participation as any other raid difficulty combined, we actually have statistics for that. Why do you care so much about the existence of LFR? People clearly play it or blizzard would not keep it updated each content patch.

Just to be sure you understand, if blizzard would ever been forced to shrink raiding to 1 difficulty to minimize dev time for a minority content, the remaining difficulty would be LFR.

Why dont you just enjoy the wide spectrum of the game and just play what ever target difficulty you prefer? Getting mad about LFR, petbattles, whatever makes no sense, since you will never ever see a change of the core game that is targeted agains the majority of the players.

The only major thing people demanded was content even below LFR in difficulty and thats why we got classic WoW.
Do you see many threads about mythic-only-servers?
Do you see players begging for more things to grind to keep the distance to casual gamers?

NO, because the majority does not want harder challenges and power creep even with the short resets gets lot of heat in the forums.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

2. TF was introduced in LEGION, it brought back not only many players but the participation over the whole expansion broke their own statistics, a full SUCCESS

TF is the singlemost hated feature in the history of the game according to polls... and discussion threads. People don’t mind Warforging at all (not as much) because that doesn’t make BiS impossible. TF itself is hated because it can be insanely powerful and because it’s completely random and has no alternative way to obtain the higher ilvl, that makes you notice the bad rolls, no rolls and rolls by others more than you do your own good rolls. In a way that makes it feel unfair, but the big issue is that it makes BiS unobtainable. Imagine f*cking and never climaxing, would you even bother?

[Ange]

TF is the singlemost hated feature in the history of the game according to polls...

Wait and see the polls in 10 months from now with the 8.3 system.

Just to make it clear where my opinion comes from:

1. WoD's RAID-OR-DIE with TIER-SETS-SURPREME gearprogression was declined by the community and forced massive changes
2. TF/WF was the alternative, to get gearprogression outside of just raiding and soften the TIER-SET power creep

The whole system was introduced to counter the fixed-BiS-gear from raiding only. Your "singlemost hated feature" is the counter to WoD's singlemost hated feature what people simply call the RAID-OR-DIE endgame.

Since this MMO got such a long timespan and the community is blessed with a short-term memory I am not sure why the "CURRENT HATED FEATURE" matters at all in this discussion. Most game changes were introduced for a reason and TF/WF actually worked out to bring player back to the game. It was not raiding, since raiding got just harder, it was not challenges, since WoD's Challenge Mode was just as hated as the MageTower from LEGION. It was the simple fact that people had something to do, casually or hardcore and gearprogression was possible for all kind of players.

Since I am a regular player I enjoyed WoD raiding a lot, since it was the normal lootcouncil garanteed tier-set loot for my main character in each content. This does not changed in LEGION/BFA with my main getting close to the ilvl cap every content patch, because of the sheer amount of TF/WF chances you get by playing the game regularly.

Getting BiS gear by default from the guild because you play regularly or getting close to BiS gear by the game because you play regularly did not change anything for me and many other I play with. It is not hard to figure out what kind of players are complaing about this or the old gearing systems.

[schwarzkopf]

1. Encrypt all non systems data for upcoming content so that data mining only uncovers systems (like class changes) and not the rest of the game
2. Have blizzard stop listening to the vocal minority and go back to the days when they just focused on the game.
3. Kill flying completely in current content
4. Add more interesting variations like corrupted gear, rather than meaningless randomness like titan forging.
5. Focus on the main character, make character progression a thing again, no more advancing an item which you lose at the end of the expansion.

Find it fascinating that the OP wants to make WoW like it used to be then goes on to suggest things that weren't the case when WoW used to be

[Kaver]

More advanced mobs in the open world with engaging abilities that matter. Mage tower style enemies in the open world.

There should be more “tutorial scenarios” in the open world which teach players basic mechanics like interrupting prio targets, stunning non-interruptable abilities and use CC. I don’t mean actual tutorials.. it should just come naturally while playing in the world. Make some more skill based requirements to world quest etc. that allow the average player to learn and become better.

The reason why systems like RIO are so popular is because the average player don’t know how to do basic mechanics. They don’t know how to target-switch properly in big mob packs and CC important targets, and they often don’t know how to properly use the utility of their classes. There should be more generic scenarios to learn these things without having to go into a +15 keystone.

[Accendor]

1. Remove sharding, merge Servers
2. Remove all Raid difficulties (including LFR) and create only a single one, between current Heroic and Mythic.
3. Remove TF
4. Fix the broken profession system
5. Remove LFD
6. Disable all scaling everywhere
7. Remove all catchup during one expansion or at least drastically reduce it
8. Make the open world way more dangerous
9. Embrace flying instead of fighting it

[Divada]

Top of my list: A return to one epic continent with no loading screens between zones. The poxy islands/sub-zones with all the loading screens are dire.

[Osmeric]

TF is bad, because they then tune the content to take the existence of TF into account. In other words, non-TF gear is just shard bait, and the real drop rate of gear has been massively reduced. It's a horrible grind increase.

The whole focus on player hours is garbage. The largest cost of playing this game is not $$$ your send to Blizzard, it's the value of your own time at $7/hour and up up up. Make the game take more time and you make players realize they should not be spending the finite, valuable, and rapidly depleting hours of their lives on this activity. The ONLY way the grindiness could make sense to Blizzard is if it's a precursor to going F2P, where the grind will be monetized with buyouts at the cash shop to avoid it.

[Biomega]

1. Redo the talent system entirely, decoupling PvE and PvP

I'd strip each spec down to an absolute minimal core of abilities, and have everything else come from talents. PvE gets an extensive talent tree with meaningful choices beyond mere "pick this for AoE, pick that for ST". PvP stays lean, and has to make tough calls between utility, defense, offense. PvP talent tree is disabled outside of WM and in PvE instances, PvE talent tree is disabled in instanced PvP; in WM, players can switch between PvE or PvP tree in resting zones.

2. Change TF to be a socket proc instead

Items come with 0-3 sockets, with smaller magnitude per socket gem. Values should be adjusted so that 1 socket = about half a tier, so at most you get item with 3 sockets = item of next higher difficulty with 1 socket. Odds of getting sockets decrease with socket number, so 3 sockets is very rare (like a high TF proc now). Tier limitations means you're no longer running trivial content to hope for the stars to align into an insane proc, while still giving some incentive to run one tier lower for potentially decent loot.

3. Change all racials into pure cosmetics/convenience

Things like profession bonuses, vendor prices, call mailbox, etc. are all fine and should be expanded upon. Things like e.g. Shadowmeld or Rocket Jump, as well passive damage increases should be removed. Race should be about how you look, not what you can do in combat.

4. Overhaul professions

Get away from the system of "go afk while you craft 500 bracers just to scrap them". Add a crapton of cosmetics to professions, think old glyph system but tied to xmog. Armor and character effects, unique armor/weapon models, etc. that come from a diverse range of sources and can be traded around. Weekly random discovers, old raids, challenge quests (think Mage Tower), etc. etc. Make raid-level profession items very expensive to make but deterministic - no random procs, but custom items with a guaranteed outcome and incremental investment.

5. Overhaul Transmogging

Tie xmog to item slots rather than items - xmog of a slot will be active as long as anything is equipped in that slot at all, and doesn't change if you switch out the item. Allow players to purchase additional xmog loadout slots so they can switch appearances on the fly. Remove most xmog restrictions, including level requirement, armor type, Legion artifacts, etc. Increase xmog range to include armor effects like sparkles, halos, etc. etc. Add a large number of additional cosmetics to various sources, especially professions.

[Dadwen]

1: Make Survival hunters Ranged again. *Ya that's my #1....
2: roll Back talent\skills\Professions etc to closely resemble LK or MOP's systems
3: work out a better "reward" system going forward so your not adding more and more buttons into the mix while still giving a feeling of progression and something to look forward to, also not relying on "rented powers" like the legendary weapon or neck.
4: scaling optional.
5: dump pathfinder as it is, or scale what's needed back (keep in the map discovery and level, but cut back on all the rep's and crap).

[vincink]

1. Remove LFR
2. Remove TF
3. Fire Ion
4. Fire the entire systems team
5. Fire the writers

Thats just a start but the game would already become better than anything in recent years

So basically, make the WoW team leaderless and absent of any ability to tell a story?

[Loeko]

Most people here are absolutely alergic to that idea, but I can't help to think that more challenging content outside of Mythic instances would be a good thing in the game.

I can do with the shitty class design, I can do with the retarded titanforging, I can actually do with many of the bad aspects of WoW, but I can't stand the fact that the only challenging content represents only 1 or 2% of the game. Everytime I quest, everytime I farm, everytime I explore the world, do expeditions or warfronts, or simply level an ALT, I feel like Blizzard thinks that I'm a damn retarded person that will quit if I die, so they give me a retarded version of what the game could be and hope that I will be happy feeling overpowered, which is of course not the case.

I know many people are happy with this because for them, everything outside of Mythic is an absolute chore and must be done as fast as possible, but I strongly believe that Blizzard created a vicious cycle by trying to answer only that part of the community.

[huth]

So basically, make the WoW team leaderless and absent of any ability to tell a story?

And remove all ability to create new features, as well, on top of removing one of the bigger ones.

I'm not entirely sure what you're supposed to do with a team of creatives but nobody to actually make their ideas work.

- - - Updated - - -

Most people here are absolutely alergic to that idea, but I can't help to think that more challenging content outside of Mythic instances would be a good thing in the game.

Blizzard tried that. Turns out most people aren't very interested and will just not do that content. Hope that helps with the thinking.

[Vampyrr]

Cross Faction play is a must, this does not mean Faction unification as Faction pride and differences are very important. Also does not mean Alliance in Horde Towns or Horde in Alliance Towns, I would still have npcs treat it as At War. But allowing Cross Faction grouping and possibly sharing a guild is extremely important to the health and longevity of the game.

[Blyatxyz]

1. Bring back pvp and pve vendors
2. Classes need more spells
3. Cataclysm (& previous expansions) talents
4. Remove Azerite (srsly sup with this bs ffs)
5. Make leveling harder

[Shakana]

1. Bring back pvp and pve vendors
2. Classes need more spells
3. Cataclysm (& previous expansions) talents
4. Remove Azerite (srsly sup with this bs ffs)
5. Make leveling harder

This. Cata wasn't my favorite expansion but it was pretty ok and i played through and i used to love tree talents, just didn't do pve besides firelands, i tried dragon soul and so on but didn't try more than once. And Leveling will be better next expansion too.
I would add:
- More solo content where it can be flexible but not necessary, if you want to have a friend or 2
- Remove GCDs
- Go back to group loot, personal is quite interesting but i feel like group loot just gives me more satisfaction for some reason, maybe also because of the master loot
- Tier sets (Even if they are simply class related themed)
- Professions are one of the things i love the most, i want them to be relevant and also the gear to be BoE and not soulbound

[Stardrift]

Ban anyone that uses twitter. Bunch of weird ass casuals that are into gaming because it's a trend, otherwise they'd be still talking about Starbucks and plant based meals and discussing how healthy it is to let your girlfriend have an open relationship while abstaining yourself.

That's why we have pet battles, selfie cams, twitter integration and stupid shit like that fucking onesie crammed into the game. To appease that soy nu-male culture.

Getting rid of them would be a big step towards making this game better. No more listening to the shitty echochamber that is Twitter.

[Swnem]

Do you really think that if the game hadn't changed from how it was over an entire fucking decade ago that everybody would be happily playing it? This is the kind of backwards thinking I see plastered all across this forum and it always baffles the shit out of me. Gaming has change a lot in 10 years and there's nothing to indicate to me that the solution is as simple as "going back" to what worked when WoW was at peak popularity. The reality is that MMOs had a boom that peaked somewhere during the time of Wrath and everything since has been life support for the genre. WoW has, against literally all odds, somehow managed to keep itself afloat despite the shift away from the genre. A lot of the systems that are so universally complained about on this forum are likely the exact reason that the game is still around. I don't like a lot of them any more than anybody else but, fuck. I'd rather have a WoW to play than nothing at all.

Cause you say so? Wow is not the only mmo around. I didnt speak about population, or popularity, i talked about the game design and community.
Gaming has only changed for the worse in the last 10 years actually with freemium design creeping into sub and fully priced games. Nothing about it is an evolution, its a de-evolution in order to extort more money. Gaming has factually gotten worse in the last 10 years, so get off that horse, its not yours.