In what ways could Shadowlands end up being GREAT?

[Soon-TM]

So, we have a negative thread already so let's bring up all the things that could potentially make SL great or even the best expansion yet.

- Covenants is much more interesting than reputations and gives you something to look forward to.
- Toghast having a lot of replayability and fun rewards in different tiers of drop chance.
- Potential "corruption mechanic" that's more balanced and gives us a risk-reward gameplay throughout the expansion.
- Old abilities feeling more than nostalgic, actually feeling class defining and useful.

What can you come up with?

• Covenants being something more than a rep bar + AP grind, with the powers they grant being properly balanced.
• No AP/Azerite/corruption/lolforging systems please. Maybe, maaaaaaybe something minor such as +5/+10 warforging - but that's it.
• Drastically reduced RNG, especially when it comes to gearing.
• Good story, aka better characters, coherent plot, less morality lessons, less author favouritism, less deus ex machina.
• More fleshed out classes than the ZzzZZz worthy stuff of BfA, and even Legion, if you take artifacts out of the equation.

[Osmeric]

I'm sure it will be much better than "Cats". You'll want to play it again and again.

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-l...lexander/n9457

[Nebron]

• Covenants being something more than a rep bar + AP grind, with the powers they grant being properly balanced.
• No AP/Azerite/corruption/lolforging systems please. Maybe, maaaaaaybe something minor such as +5/+10 warforging - but that's it.
• Drastically reduced RNG, especially when it comes to gearing.
• Good story, aka better characters, coherent plot, less morality lessons, less author favouritism, less deus ex machina.
• More fleshed out classes than the ZzzZZz worthy stuff of BfA, and even Legion, if you take artifacts out of the equation.

This. Literally, this is what it takes for a way better expansion than BfA and Legion combined. And it's that simple.

You just get rid of that unncesseary balance, where every single class has a ress, combat ress, stun, silence, interrupt of any kind. This way you bring back much more uniqueness, which by definiton itself makes classes more diverse.

You quite moralistical storytelling (at least when you are unable to proivde a proper one). You write a story with a well outlined, strong main plotline, with multiple sub-plotlines. You give a leading position to AT BEST 5 characters. The more =/= the better. Since Legion the story began to get terribly watered-down and strongly dispersed on too many characters.

You create a strong villian with a rational goal. An aim that is mysterious, but still uncovered throughout the expansion. You fight the foes who happen to be villians allies. You can also work with a traitor, who eventually becomes a main ally in your conquest.
It's totally generic and yet it ALWAYS WORKS.

You get rid off any magical, over-powerful artifact which power is absolutely incosistent throughout the story, but whenever the script requires so, artifact is the KEY. That's ALWAYS lame. There are thousands of ideas they can eventually develop, yet they always focus on a fucking lame artifacts. Dues ex machina - well. Yeah, that's even more lame than artifacts.

Reducing RNG at that point should be a common sense. It does not require any arguments.

Same with any type of -forging. As long as it cannot be controlled, it becomes a fuel in community which drives people mad and toxic. It doesn't even fulfill the sense of reward. It's just a passive pleasure you can't work toward.

Stop focusing on OPEN-ENDINGS so much. They set it as their storytelling-wise goal, and so WoW stories became absolutely unsatisfactory. There's nothing you can defeat that won't come back. It. Is. Ridiculous.

Something, to make that gold-inflation disappear. No matter how GREAT you would make professions again, the amount of gold will always make professions meaningless. But yeah, also a DRASTIC change to how professions work. Make it difficult, expensive and rare again. So that everyone is willing to have one and SPECIALIZE in it.

There's no much that needs to be done. It's just the RIGHT things that need to be adressed.

[Swnem]

gear "simpler" its a very bad decision, what do you want, to have only primary stat and stamina? that stupid

Takes one to think that is what i meant.

Maybe the war/titanforges/corruptions? Maybe random gear slots? Maybe random traits in azerite gear?

But, sure, i must be advocating removing secondary stats. XD

[taishar68]

Well, I don’t say this would make it popular per se, but what I’d like to see is:

Removal of Heroic Dungeons, and the LFD default is Mythic 0.

More content, like Legion, but spread out a little bit better; in Legion there was almost too much at beginning.

Unprune classes as you like, BUT: stop designing raid encounters that don’t allow players to complete rotations (I know, get good, etc., but dammit it’s my list so there)

Take away the timed content, and the time gating. If you try to use player health as an excuse, I’m touched, but let me keep rolling when I have time to work on things.

Give us flying upon hitting max level. No more pathfinders and waiting and then new zones where you can’t fly.

Fix professions. Make them relevant, and stop this BS of paying X gold to go up a rank and you use one less mat on an item you’ll that no one needs or wants. (I’ve received the Rank 3 Boralus Blood Sausage recipe twice in emissary boxes but I’m not paying $1200 just to use it)

Fix the Sylvanas story so we (the Horde) can kill her, instead of her being this I killed you to save you anti hero.

[Nachtigal]

I'm hoping that with all the resources freed from not adding a new class, they're able to bring classes into a good, engaging spot.

What do you mean when you say engaging?

[Dystemper]

Go back to MOP classes, no more Ap grinds or corruption type systems. If they dont fix the classes then SL will fail

[spalernTJ]

Revisiting class design and ensuring all specs / classes plays well and proper - without - The need to rely on the borrowed powers like; Azerite traits and Essences. It feels like Blizzard is trying to balance everything as much as possible, causing homogenization, yet there's still large gaps in balance.

[Doffen]

Takes one to think that is what i meant.

Maybe the war/titanforges/corruptions? Maybe random gear slots? Maybe random traits in azerite gear?

But, sure, i must be advocating removing secondary stats. XD

You want stamina ONLY? HUH???! ONE armor type for all???

To be more serious, I don't mind shit on gear, as long it is balanced. Make stuff utility only. Or just normal drops like back in the day. Variety can be nice.

[kaminaris]

Content gets people to play until it eventually runs out as it always does. Deep, complex classes can have people playing for much longer in pursuit of mastery and competition. PvP gets very little content but it remained popular up until classes were butchered.

No. Complex classes will not keep anyone if content sucks, not even pvp folks.

[pkusa]

No Corruption system, no Azerite Gear. Remove that, and i'll be happy. That's all I need them to do. But I'm sure they'll find a system even worse to implement than Corruption, somehow.

[kaminaris]

In the state WOW is in, it would be smarter to stick with what the industry views as successful game design. I don't think they should be experimenting at this stage of the game.

Yea, no one is arguing that they need innovation, but they are not even testing out these new systems or even having a focus group. The player base is literally guineapigs. It feels like they just put things into the game and hope it pans out, but it doesn't work that way, especially since wow is very old and would need to adhere to the industry standards in order to remain relevant.

They have made many many missteps, so there is a lot of reason that adhering to industry standards are more appropriate now. For example, FF14 has very proven systems that work.

There is no such thing as "industry standard: lol, but thanks for making me giggle.
WoW became popular because it was different than all other grinders. And stayed on top because they innovated, evolved.
Sticking to the old shit would become nail to it's coffin.

Missteps will happen but that absolutely doesn't mean they have to repeat patterns, it actually means the opposite.

What could improve WoW is basically only:
1. communicating with players faster, acting quicker on their mistakes (and no, just because some forum screechers says something it bad doesn't mean it is)
2. implementing non-intrusive systems that adds to game without changing core gameplay ex pet battles, player housing (with zero power added). So purely cosmetic/fun stuff.

[Zexaniro]

More fun? Many people seem to think MoP classes were the best

enough with the random class obsession. if you think classes are drastically different from MOP, even Legion, then you're nostalgia blinded and quite frankly delusional.

the fact that blizzard is going go listen to the forum dwellers and give us back a dozen of useless abilities that we won't even put in our bars lmfao

[Dioporco]

enough with the random class obsession. if you think classes are drastically different from MOP, even Legion, then you're nostalgia blinded and quite frankly delusional.

the fact that blizzard is going go listen to the forum dwellers and give us back a dozen of useless abilities that we won't even put in our bars lmfao

Kill Shot useless? what.

[Flurryfang]

Make the Torgast system really BIG and allow you to make it complicated. Allow us to earn many currencies, to do even choose some of the puzzle halls if we want to just do them for fun and make it all non-mandatory. Show that there was time spent on just having fun things in the system, that not directly connects to getting better gear or your legendaries. If they show that they also thought "Hey, this could be really fun" when it comes to Thorgast, i think it could carry the expansion.

But that does not have to be it. They could also add things like player housing or an "arcade" in game with fun complex mini-games. The housing does not even have to be complex, just something a little bit higher than your farm in MoP and i would be overjoyed.

For me, the good expansions are typical the ones, where i find fun things to do outside of doing M+ and raiding. The expansions, where when i say goodnight to my raid team, i stay up 1 hour more just to do something i like. In TBC, it was Ogrila and Etherial stuff in Blades Edge, in Wrath it was the Argent tournament, MoP was all the fun and wierd achievements you could get + the farm, and in Legion it was exploring all the interesting artifacts. Make cool things outside of raiding/m+ and the game is improved greatly right there.

[Ludvig]

Good class design (not legion's), no wf/tf, flying at max lvl, old pvp gearing, old pve gearing. The scrolling combat text from vanilla-wod, and no arbitrary damage from too many sources, the spells that the classes have should do the damage, not anything else. The content doesn't even need to be that good if these are true. While if the problems remain from bfa/legion, it won't matter what content they create, the game will be crap.

[Powerogue]

It's impossible to say yet whether Shadowlands will be more like Legion/BFA, with a heavy connection to existing storytelling and characters that keeps me invested, or more like WOD where everything feels isolated from that and inconsequential.

At the very least I'm hoping for plenty of familiar faces. Kael'thas comes to mind. We know he's there, but what will he do, now that his people have thrived despite him and defeated his demonic masters? Will there be joy? Spite? All I know is I want to see that. Any such reunions in WOD were tarnished by them not being the real people, and everyone having to be hush-hush about the whole time travel thing to avoid the locals asking too many questions.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, have Garithos show up. "I TOLD YOU FOOLS NEVER TO TRUST AN ELF!" only to get flattened by Sylvanas again and eaten by ghost-ghouls.

[Soon-TM]

Please, for the love of all that is holy, have Garithos show up. "I TOLD YOU FOOLS NEVER TO TRUST AN ELF!" only to get flattened by Sylvanas again and eaten by ghost-ghouls.

I'd personally prefer if Garithos came back, only to have his ugly face roasted by a huge ass Pyroblast from Kael. It would be just fair

As for Sylvanas, she ideally should be killed (for good this time) again by Arthas, and not returning ever, not even as a ghostly ghoul. It would be a fitting end for a career as plenty of failures as hers.

[Advent]

Most likely Shadowlands will be fine. Many people will play it and enjoy it. YouTubers like Preachwill complain about everything in order to keep their views and subs up. The vocal minority will fill message boards like this with continuous bitching and whining. Just like every other expansion.

Fixed that for you.

[WowIsDead64]

So, we have a negative thread already so let's bring up all the things that could potentially make SL great or even the best expansion yet.

- Covenants is much more interesting than reputations and gives you something to look forward to.
- Toghast having a lot of replayability and fun rewards in different tiers of drop chance.
- Potential "corruption mechanic" that's more balanced and gives us a risk-reward gameplay throughout the expansion.
- Old abilities feeling more than nostalgic, actually feeling class defining and useful.

What can you come up with?

It would be GREAT, if Blizzard would make some changes in direction of development to make things, like hardcore, challenge, grind, time-gating, RNG, forced interaction between players, like competition for quest mobs/items, PVP, etc., OPTIONAL, i.e. only for players, who actually need them, and will bring old successful casual/alt-friendly game design back.