How to make Blizzard create more WotLK and Legion like experiences

[Graeham]

To lure me back, the game would need to make some pretty drastic changes:

- Player housing. I have a slice of the game world to call my own in both FFXIV and ESO. WoW's community has always had a weird aversion to the idea of player housing but it really does make a difference.

- Better lore/story elements. The Alliance and Horde conflict is stale. Especially when the Horde are painted as the bad guys and the Alliance as the good guys/eternal victims who are too nice for their own good even as they get slaughtered.

- Any race, any faction. Defectors exist in the setting. Many races no longer make sense to stick to their faction no matter what.

- No removing of content. It sucks. Keep achievements around for people to aim towards. Stop scrapping major expansion features altogether.

- More nuanced writing. Stop hiring hacks with a blatant agenda and/or favouritism. Hire people to write who genuinely care for the setting as a whole instead of having weird crushes on Anduin or Sylvanas.

- Stop taking a dump on the non human races. Get rid of the 'High King' role and have the Alliance act as a council. Give the night elves more cool moments.

[Zantera]

The idea of player housing itself is interesting and I'm not against it but how do you avoid it becoming garrison 2.0?

[Ivarr]

TBC creating player engagement = / = TBC carrying retail on its back. You're creating a narrative in your head then using incomplete information from the shareholder meeting to support it.

Which is more to go by than anyone claiming the contrary has.

The idea of player housing itself is interesting and I'm not against it but how do you avoid it becoming garrison 2.0?

Playing the Sims in WoW gets stale real fast if you're the only one able to look at your creations. But as Garrison shows, being able to share your instance with other players doesn't mean it's going to happen either. Your friends will feign some interest in your house out of courtesy but then they're back to the grind.

The only way housing becomes interesting is when players can put their stamp on the open world. Their own piece of real estate that stands out to everyone. That's possible, that's fun, but to prevent that from becoming too intrusive the amount of players who will able to own such a piece of real estate will be limited to the 0.1%. These players might obtain it through qualifying for extreme conditions. Millions of gold, or being a world first achiever, or the absolute top pvper. More viable would be ownership shifting every week based on weekly achievements.

Now, I do like that way of implementing it but that's clearly not what the people who are demanding player housing have in mind. They want it accessible to everyone.

So then the only other way is some kind of player ghetto where those who are into it can play Animal Crossing together. A garrison neighbourhood where everyone gets a plot of land. A modifiable Order Hall or Covenant Hall or something.

Not my cup of tea, and I still think people are overly romanticising this fantasy and won't go further than the bare necessity that the game requires them to put into it. It's still a Garrison 2.0 and a massive development sink that was one of the reasons why WoD got cut short.

[Relapses]

Which is more to go by than anyone claiming the contrary has.

The absence of proof otherwise is not proof of anything. This is literally how conspiracy theories work. Let's not go there, shall we?

[Alexeht]

It is impossible since Blizzard we known from WotLK is dead

[Ivarr]

The absence of proof otherwise is not proof of anything. This is literally how conspiracy theories work. Let's not go there, shall we?

Merely going by which possibility has the most evidence going for it while allowing for any evidence to the contrary to present itself at any moment.

[Rngmonster The God]

I think having a "boss" playing the own game at a decent / good level is a good step into a good direction.

[pacotaco]

Mage Tower alone kept me subbed the entire time. Not something you can experience in a month.

The problem is:
- Do timegated content that would be released bit by bit -> People complain that they have to wait to play/see the next content bit.
- Do grindable content -> People complain that they NEED to grind endlessly to not get behind.

I personally think that the current one (the first) is the most sustenable for developers and players. They just need to add more variety, and what I think the most important thing: reuse old systems (e.g. mini-games on WQ). Currently, it looks like each new expansion a designer thinks "forget about everything before, I'm gonna do a new thing from the ground", so we now have a bunch of abandoned and half-baked old systems in the game that they could be fun, but they don't invest time on them (housing, island expeditions, etc.)

Would love to see a new game mode that allows veterans to take new players on a tour of old raids for them to experience them at full mechanics. I think this would also be a great community building tool.

Isn't that Timewalking?

[Vestig3]

the 2 worst expansions?wotlk that started the insane casualisation of the game and legion that started the modern system bloat trend?

id rather play wod classic for all eternity

Yet they are regarded as 2 of the best expansions wow has had by the playerbase? Your comment doesnt make much sense

[Relapses]

Merely going by which possibility has the most evidence going for it while allowing for any evidence to the contrary to present itself at any moment.

Dude. What you're referring to as evidence is a single sentence in an investor report with absolutely zero tanglible substance to it. These QRs are worded intentionally to drum up support for the company but they are also purposefully vague because the only real numbers that matter are the bottom lines. You're free to construct elaborate fantasies in your mind about how TBC Classic is somehow the savior of retail but something tells me retail wouldn't routinely outsell its prior expansions on launch day if there weren't a metric fuckton of people still playing it. But hey, why bother with tangible evidence when you can get happy fun little updoots from internet strangers by saying the game sucks?

[Ivarr]

... something tells me retail wouldn't routinely outsell its prior expansions on launch day if there weren't a metric fuckton of people still playing it. But hey, why bother with tangible evidence when you can get happy fun little updoots from internet strangers by saying the game sucks?

Surely you see the folly in preaching about evidence and everything and then appeal to a 'something' whispering things in your ear?

[Alanar]

It was good he clarified because WotLK wasn't innovative at all. Back then the issues were glaring. If you didn't see them, thats on you.

And using the word Innovative on WotLK made it not really obvious what he wrote. Because WotlK was not innovative in any way. It was not a good example at all.

And WotLK was a huge step down from TBC back then. It was obvious errors in how it was designed. And I love Legion still, and did back then. Legion today would be a huge step up from for instance BfA, by class design alone.


No, I did not.

To me it was obvious he talked about it in that time.. if not then thats you.

I mean its easy to talk like that now, sure mmo-champion excisted as I was there and people complain, but it was hardly compareable to todays issues. YupI already mentioned Legion, not sure if it with you, but Legion had new things as well. Good point on class design, but Imo it realy wasnt better then Mists.

Like I said its literally pointless, no offence, but people need to move on and think about stuff that do excite them in todays standards.

[Deferionus]

So you want to completely remove gear progression......from wow.....yikes.

Where did I say remove gear progression? You would rethink how gear progression works in the sense that you would have gear sets for different areas I guess or another solution someone could come up with. This is my gear template for outland that I work on during BC time walking and this is my template for WOTLK. Most important thing here is to get rid of the damn resets that happen every patch so that each expansions has a meaningful path of progression.

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Which is more to go by than anyone claiming the contrary has.



Playing the Sims in WoW gets stale real fast if you're the only one able to look at your creations. But as Garrison shows, being able to share your instance with other players doesn't mean it's going to happen either. Your friends will feign some interest in your house out of courtesy but then they're back to the grind.

The only way housing becomes interesting is when players can put their stamp on the open world. Their own piece of real estate that stands out to everyone. That's possible, that's fun, but to prevent that from becoming too intrusive the amount of players who will able to own such a piece of real estate will be limited to the 0.1%. These players might obtain it through qualifying for extreme conditions. Millions of gold, or being a world first achiever, or the absolute top pvper. More viable would be ownership shifting every week based on weekly achievements.

Now, I do like that way of implementing it but that's clearly not what the people who are demanding player housing have in mind. They want it accessible to everyone.

So then the only other way is some kind of player ghetto where those who are into it can play Animal Crossing together. A garrison neighbourhood where everyone gets a plot of land. A modifiable Order Hall or Covenant Hall or something.

Not my cup of tea, and I still think people are overly romanticising this fantasy and won't go further than the bare necessity that the game requires them to put into it. It's still a Garrison 2.0 and a massive development sink that was one of the reasons why WoD got cut short.

I think the answer is to use some existing empty houses and add some to the existing capital cities. The 'over world' housing is very experience, and can be sold to other players. Add this to every city in the game, including Shattrath, Dalaran, Bolarus, etc. Then outside of this have 'instanced' apartments people can 'rent' until they have gold to buy a major house. Future cities added to the game can add additional housing.

Probly not perfect and has a lot of flaws but its an idea.

[FarmerJim]

Player

Houses

and

guild

free to build on land for guilds

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The idea of player housing itself is interesting and I'm not against it but how do you avoid it becoming garrison 2.0?

I think a guild base/garrison/town with player housing inside would be a happy medium. Instanced like garrisons but for all of your guild together yet you could invite people outside your guild if you wanted to. It could be sized based on your guild membership as well. This could help keep the "MMO" feel, build up guilds again and give players something they want.

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First, get us back to Azeroth to do stuff. No more of that cosmic BS that just keep getting upped with each expansion where gods have gods, who have gods, who have gods.

Second, give players something productive to do for themselves that DOESN'T solely involve daily or world quests that require you to grind reputation. We need more mage tower and Chronie scenarios.

There is no good reason not to re-open something like the mage tower and scale it to an appropriate level (you down to it or it up to level 60). Torghast could've been much closer to the mage tower (still can if they do it) and they can fill it with cosmetic goodness, mounts, pets and achievements.

[arkanon]

Where did I say remove gear progression?

When you said horizontal progression. So no power increase at all. Unless i misunderstood what you meant.

[THEORACLE64]

Player

Houses

and

guild

free to build on land for guilds

Player housing? Garrison’s were the closest things we got an yeah, people loooooved that idea…

[deenman]

Yet they are regarded as 2 of the best expansions wow has had by the playerbase? Your comment doesnt make much sense

yes i am fully aware casual easy mode games are liked,just look at the mobile industry

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Player housing? Garrison’s were the closest things we got an yeah, people loooooved that idea…

maybe because garrisons and player housing have zero in common?

[Kuntantee]

- Good story(telling). If current story/story-telling is the best Blizzard can do, they just need to replace their writers. Simple as that. In my view, MoP was the pinnacle of story-telling whereas TBC/WotLK was the pinnacle of creativity/appeal in terms of story. They also need to give up on giving answers to philosophical/cosmic problems. Anything on cosmic scale should be left vague on purpose.

- More content. Simple. More dungeons, more raids or faster patches. I think quality of the dungeons and raids are top notch in Shadowlands. The difficulty is, in my view, spot on. They did a fantastic job with Shadowland raids and dungeons. No wonder recent events and the decline of the game will trigger change. Shadowland dungeons/raids should be the blueprint of dungeon building moving forward. They have the right idea and need to keep this quality up.

- Less complex systems. Less complex reward structure, less complex power growth/skill system, pretty much less complex everything.

People seem to have this idea that designing a complex system is harder than designing a simple system. This is the precise opposite of the reality. Designing a simple system that meets the requirements/constraints is the harder and more expensive route to take. This is either a budget problem or competence issue. I'd go with the latter.

[Relapses]

Surely you see the folly in preaching about evidence and everything and then appeal to a 'something' whispering things in your ear?

...a game that "nobody" plays doesn't sell 3 million+ expansions on launch day. I know you're trying to play semantics for some kind of ridiculous gotcha moment but this is ridiculous.

[Sentynel]

WoTLK experience? Heaven forbid... expansion with 2 dogshit raids, 1 great one and 1 meh one and nothing new outside in patches besides for the silly 2x4 arena area? At least it did do good on new dungeons, so there's that.

Heck... I don't know what's worse, Naxx reuse or ToTGC a frikkin' 2 room raid with 6 bosses for a tier.

Yeahhhh... nope.

Forgot to add recycled Onyxia.