What would be a meaningful way to give capitals enough use to they would be developed, updated, or even expanded on a regular basis?
I've been waiting for a Silvermoon update since TBC started - and we constantly topics about homeless races getting new capitals.. the big problem is, aside from a difficult piece of art to do (so much easier to do deserts and mountains, even forests than cities - which works against cities), they have no other use. The functions of a city can be carried out by a bunch of npcs standing round a camp fire.
Yet they are really important to fans, constantly asked for.. what would be a great way to make them useful?.
1. I think cities should be a unique type of quest zone that is integral to a race's story - but for that to happen, races have to be a thing again and blizzard willing to tell their story - then do you do all cities at once, or do you jump form race to race like they did for heritage armor?
2. Turn cities into dungeons and raids - this is a great way to have a great looking city, part of the story etc.. problem is most races alreayd have not great cities with nothing to do. if they could remake all of them - but then the time that would take. .. From Suramar onwards cities became that quest/raid/dungoen - Suramar, Dazar'alor, Boralus, Mechagon all raids that end in playable races winning it at home, you get a cool piece of real estate.. the dungeon/raid justified the development, but it still has no use after.
the best solution would have cities
1. Always having a value even after being a focus in the expansion raid - [for all their grandness, no one goes to suramar or Dazar'alor anymore]
2. Growth - can cities be a system that can actually expand them so they are always a relevant part of your adventure like the Class order halls were for legion, but more than that?
Maybe you can collect resources to build your city up and expand it every patch - but how many cities should that apply to.
What would you do to necessitate always using them and constantly updating them? Or is the current approach better.
Current Approach
Current approach, is actually a sub-race story being developed and it being or having a new city.. so for example instead of redoing Silvermoon, they instead do a city for void elves in the Thalassian style updated with new graphics but adapted to reflect the void elves. In this vein, Suramar can be viewed as hte night elf city (and blood elves move in), with the void elf city (having night elves move in0. Dazar'alor is the troll city, with Darkspears in it, Mecahgon the gnome city with Gnomes in it, Boralus the new human city and so forth.
This way you're not technically updating anything but instead giving brand new cities. I think this is kinda how it seems to be going, they're just giving new cities to subraces that can be places for existing races.
Anyway, what would you want? And wouldn't you want cities to have some continuous purpose outside being vendor slots? does that mean they should design a system and game specific for cities to make them more relevant?