Is it time for a great purge?

[epigramx]

The game may be daunting to new players; you start a profession and you notice it has recipes from a year people that were born in can now vote; it has zones and instances that serve no purpose other than one-shot-farming and messy timewalking; it has working content like certain battlegrounds that most people hate.

I wonder if it's time to delete some of that and reset the game to a game with no expansions called 'Warcraft'-plain or/and make "timewalking" an actually neverending feature with stable balance a guild can do forever (or at least do it for a feat of strength only if new content should take priority).

[vincink]

Sure, if I can get all my subscription money through TBC refunded. That's over $2000.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The 17 years of content and transmogs is one of WoW's greatest assets. "Purging" one of WoW's last strengths would be a no no.

[Calfredd]

I bet you expect a refund when the game shuts down too right? Better start removing your head from your anus now, because that day will come and no one will see a penny because you all got exactly what you paid for.

You haven't read the OP's post if you thought vincink was being serious; a ridiculous response to a ridiculous idea.

[Huntermyth]

retiring to an accessable position ? maybe

purging entirely ? no

my oldest toon is older than some users in this forum and i want them to stay that way. i sometimes log in to him and check his bank for old av stuff and such. memories man, you can't just discard them.

[deenman]

retiring to an accessable position ? maybe

purging entirely ? no

my oldest toon is older than some users in this forum and i want them to stay that way. i sometimes log in to him and check his bank for old av stuff and such. memories man, you can't just discard them.

Thats actualy an amazing thing i never really considered,the game has been live for that long that so many characters are older than many of the people playing today,ofc this isnt just a wow thing,plenty of other mmo's are even older,but yeah,cool thing to consider

[Calfredd]

And if you think the person I replied to wasn't serious based on the OPs post you must be a fucking mind reader. Hey, what finger am I holding up? Bet you can't guess!

It's the middle finger because you got overheated over a joke comment and didn't like getting called out for it.

[MoanaLisa]

One of the reasons why competitive MMO's have difficulties on startup is that they never have the inventory of places and sheer stuff that WoW has. It's a ridiculous idea to 'purge' anything especially in the light of all of the chatter about stuff that's removed from the game as is. Besides there is important lore associated with the zones that can, in many ways, be experienced instead of just being read about.

Just a bizarre idea that it would be a good thing to gut the game of that much in the way of quests, zones and the like.

[Th3Scourge]

Purge? No.

Making previous content very relevant? Yes

One of the biggest problems with wow to me is that is just cannibalises the tier previous tier whenever new content comes out.

[loras]

The game may be daunting to new players; you start a profession and you notice it has recipes from a year people that were born in can now vote; it has zones and instances that serve no purpose other than one-shot-farming and messy timewalking; it has working content like certain battlegrounds that most people hate.

I wonder if it's time to delete some of that and reset the game to a game with no expansions called 'Warcraft'-plain or/and make "timewalking" an actually neverending feature with stable balance a guild can do forever (or at least do it for a feat of strength only if new content should take priority).

I see where you are coming from, but pruning is not the right option here, as Cataclysm and consequently classic WoW illustrate.

All the way back in TBC i imagined that the devs would go for the obvious with the addition of the caverne of time and make it an elegant integrated in-game repository for deprecated content, with "deprecated" being defined as content that is no longer actively being maintained.

What this would do is to allow them to focus on what is and isn't part of their whole-game-encompassing vision of WoW, while simultanously acknowledging and retaining the past for players to enjoy at their leisure.

Now that alone solves only a few aspects of it, namely keeping content available and bringing clarity to matters of temporal continuity.


The other big issue is content being ignored in gameplay, which runs into issues of "maintenance" versus "wastefulness", as keeping more content up-to-date simultanously creates heavy constant strain / overhead on the company, while simply ditching stuff and starting from scratch every time simply wastes previously spent resources (and it occasionally embarasses when new content fails to be more impressive than new iterations).

To that end i would propose for them to consciously make a choice when it comes to both the world and the instances. For the world i would propose something akin to the Legion solution: A focus on "the expansion" + "the central world", and to uodate them accordingly. This is fairly high maintenance, but in my eyes nothing less than properly maintaining the player-relevant open world will do to keep the expansion going, so the "main setting" (Kalimdor and the EK if we're going by the past 17 years) plus the broken isles, in Legion's case.

And as real constraints may dictate different resource allocation they could try to make placeholder "zoneblockers" to denote that a zone's current state does not reflect the present time, think of fog walls a la darksouls, call it "fog of time" or something just to make it clear that "the present" version of a zone is not currently in game.

For instances i would move away from current timewalking design over time and introduce a dungeon rating system, as it's pointless and undoabke to keep all "moments in history" relevant. Rather use the dungeon rating system to make a selection from past raids and dungeons tobkeep available as "All time highs" and maintain them accordingly. This does come with the caveat that you will need to update all of them every so often anyway in order for players to actually be able to make a choice.

Anyway that's my take on it, seems relatively straightfirward to implement, if not at all cheap, plus it would require some light lore finetuning so that it aids immersion.

[saintminya]

Are you serious? Purges have been nothing but detrimental to the game, amounting to nothing beyond alienating or outright pissing off devoted players. The only positive purge was the world revamp of Cata, but even now some loud minority continues to bitch about that. Sacked abilities often find their way back into the game, but never soon enough to make up for the insult. That so many end up back in the game is demonstration enough that such purges are always ill-advised and devoid of purpose.

What would be the point of deleting entire zones and instances other than to just spit in more players' faces? No point at all. The presence of them has no bearing on you if you don't derive enjoyment from collecting transmogs or taking the time in a solo run to admire the art and design. Same goes for the zones, as you can simply just not go there if you deem them to lack value whether aesthetically or otherwise. You may not miss them for whatever reason, but I guarantee you that you'd be outnumbered by hordes of fans that would be highly upset at the removal of any zone or instance. Timewalking should no longer be gated to random cycling weeks though, and should simply be another difficulty to toggle for every single dungeon. Timewalking raids ought to be available far more frequently than they are at this point, but preferably would just be immediately available to toggle.

As for professions? So what? You only need to learn the relevant recipes anyway, and can just hide the rest. Perhaps all zones could properly scale to max level, but that alone wouldn't make it relevant to someone only seeking reward. I am all in favour of more zones getting the Darkshore treatment, granting us more zones to go hunt elites with worthwhile loot. Burning more Night elf settlements would just be a bonus...

[Rusken]

A much better idea is to go the way of ESO, where the entire game scales with you and you can essentially pick anywhere in the world to go regardless of what level you are. Wanna start at lvl 1 in Shadowlands and work backwards? Go ahead. They did half of it with the level squish and letting you "timewalk" to level through specific expansions, but this would open it up even more to the point where you could for example start in Grizzly Hills, move on to Townlong Steppes then back to Icecrown etc, depending on what stories you wanted to play through as you went.

[cparle87]

Purge? No.

Making previous content very relevant? Yes

One of the biggest problems with wow to me is that is just cannibalises the tier previous tier whenever new content comes out.

But there's no line between relevant and mandatory to way too many players. Remember titanforging and infinite progression on artifacts? People felt like because you COULD do them you HAD to or you were somehow falling behind everyone else who you believed felt the same way you did and you didn't want to be the ONLY guy falling behind everyone else.

[Lochton]

The game may be daunting to new players; you start a profession and you notice it has recipes from a year people that were born in can now vote; it has zones and instances that serve no purpose other than one-shot-farming and messy timewalking; it has working content like certain battlegrounds that most people hate.

I wonder if it's time to delete some of that and reset the game to a game with no expansions called 'Warcraft'-plain or/and make "timewalking" an actually neverending feature with stable balance a guild can do forever (or at least do it for a feat of strength only if new content should take priority).

Eh... What? No? We need to progress, if you need retro feeling, you have the Classic project, you cannot revert the main game as much as you would like without causing mass problems. We're too far in to reset anything unless a reset is called WoW2 with a new engine and taking place at a future point.

- - - Updated - - -

But there's no line between relevant and mandatory to way too many players. Remember titanforging and infinite progression on artifacts? People felt like because you COULD do them you HAD to or you were somehow falling behind everyone else who you believed felt the same way you did and you didn't want to be the ONLY guy falling behind everyone else.

This is the curse of MMOs in general. Many people think that because you can, you MUST. People have a problem managing their own time and gameplay to a point where they wish to blame the game for having too much or missing out.

[Paperfox]

A new player will go through BfA then SL and all the recipes they get will be relevant to them.

Once they've completed that journey on one toon, then hopefully they've heard other players talking about all the old stuff and the new player can now go experience it for themselves.

They might get excited about all the areas they get to explore, instead of thinking of a mountain they need to climb.

I guess this puts me firmly in the "No" camp.

[McNeil]

How can you even consider that? There's got to be some other way!

[Ehrenpanzer]

How can you even consider that? There's got to be some other way!

Morhaime! As your final paying subscriber, I ORDER YOU to purge this game!

[LauraHydra1]

I love that the old content is still there for me to visit when I feel like it. Every expansion since Cata has been pretty much limited to its own area, questwise, so I don't think it's much of a bother for new players. Yes, there's that whole big world for them to look at, but they don't HAVE to. Catas great weakness was that the expansion content felt pretty disjointed and the travel times were ...not great.

A new player isn't hit with a ton of old recipes when they learn professions, they'll just get the Shadowlands ones. You don't have to go back to the old world and farm there to get your skills up, that hasn't been a thing for a long time. "I can't pick that herb, my skill level is too low" hasn't been around since Pandaria.

Timewalking is not perfect, some stuff scalles weirdly, and there are mechanics and quirks in the older content that new players may not be familiar with. But for me, that's part of the charm of it. It's fun to see how far we've come, and how the game has evolved over the years. Even in something as simple as boss models.

I was sceptical of the new levelling system at first, but I'Ve really come to like the idea of picking one expansion and going through that. Much more enjoyable than doing three quests in an old world zone, hitting the level cap for that area, and having to move on almost immediately.

[Coolface330]

Morhaime! As your final paying subscriber, I ORDER YOU to purge this game!

You are not my Sugar Daddy yet, Boy. Nor would I obey that command if you were!

[kranur]

Would make no sense to remove the old stuff.
Move them out of the world, like putting them in caverns of time, sure.