I'd say they should just abandon the guild concept and just find a way to migrate guild benefits into communities. They are the better designed social feature. I think far too much about guilds is hardcoded so making them cross faction will be hard, not to even consider things like letting people join multiple guilds.
First rule: don't fix what isn't broken. There are so many moving parts that any change may screw up things more. Currently world first is big show that draw a lot attention to WoW. World first guilds are too good and dedicated for intented Mythic difficulty. Buffing things always cause massive backlash, so if they are not sure they MUST overtune and later nerf things (same logic applies to various grinds in game).
Sure, they could think about some 'tournament' difficulty and make race more official, but that would detach it from whole game. Whole point is to inspire people to do harder stuff. But nerfing hardest content as patch progress was always a thing, so I don't see what's big issue in the first place. In general 'hardcore' core of game is solid, especially since in 10.0 player power related stuff will be as simple as it gets. Focus should be put elsewhere.
Yeah I don't think there is any elegant solution that is not technically a mess. Perhaps they could do a transition where they first make all guilds also count as communities then slowly duplicate everything associated with guilds to communities behind the scenes.
- - - Updated - - -
I'd say their main thing is how much the World First Race "stimulates" the economy of the game (and their wallets).
Don't be silly, how many guilds are so into this that they make gold debt, 10? 20? WoW is played by millions.
Not to mention I'm not sure how much tokens are involved, it they get gold through direct donations or as payment for boost, it has nothing to do with Blizzard. For sure I don't see any impact on WoW token price.
Is it? I really don't think it is, especially regarding your statement that those models already exist. Customization is one of the easiest points to cash players on, too (if they'd want to).
- - - Updated - - -
I think it's not about liking or disliking them, but about the effort they put into them. And you can clearly see it's not much. That's what players complain about and I think everyone has to agree on this topic. Copying existing models for the human form is bad enough, but then limiting them to two races that are already everywhere in the game? Lazy.
MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again
so season 4 is going to be shorter
the average length according to the dev in an interview is 6-8 months so we have 4-5 months as a possibility
we can guess that this season will only last 6
that places season 4 ending in january
the leak red shirt guy was linked says q1 release for 10.0
You are welcome, Metzen. I hope you won't fuck up my underground expansion idea.
Scaleface posted all his information (i.e. the name and class and some other facts) before the 4chan post was made.
Meanwhile, the 4chan post got the name of the class wrong (Invoker instead of Evoker), said there would be covenants for the Dragonflights (there aren't), said that the main characters would be Alexstrasza and Wrathion, when Wrathion really was only mentioned to be active in one zone, fails to mention Kalec or Khadgar (who is probably gonna be our actual main guide), and mentions Murozond as the villain when Scaleface said there is no real appearance towards the villain yet, but it seems to be Galakrond.
Scaleface is 100% legit and there is no doubt about it.
The only thing the 4chan leak got right were things Scaleface revealed himself hours prior to the post. Scaleface mentioned a talent revamp, Scaleface mentioned the names, the amount of zones was obvious given the last few expansions.
- - - Updated - - -
Season 4 certainly won't be long though. All the loot changes hint at that, the affixes seem more in the players favour than being difficult, the most desirable reward is obtainable from LFR.
Season 4 will probably only be 4 months.
I think if they had a chance to release in 2022 we would have gotten a release date.
Maybe they wanted to avoid a repeat of last time. They clearly had projections that they could finish it a few months earlier for SL, but in the end they needed more, which just pissed alot of people off. I guess the big unknown is how painful the full talent overhaul will end up being for Blizzard, along with systemic changes to crafting.
You are welcome, Metzen. I hope you won't fuck up my underground expansion idea.