Same thing i have said many times before. That should also make it easier to figure out what reputations to link to each zone, and have a concise storyline for each.
If anything an issue could be that you have too many zones that need to be combined. Having to make effectively half of Northern EK into one zone to accommodate all the Forsaken/Undead/Scourge storylines. Or the Dwarf stuff seemingly spanning half the continent.
The world revamp dream will never die!
Eh you can still split things a fair bit.
You don't need all of Khaz Modan in one zone. You could make it two or three zones (Twilight Highlands could stay a zone as it is, especially if you add Grim Batol). Azeroth would be two or three zones as well (Kingdom of Stormwind with Elwynn, Westfall, Redridge and Duskwood, Stranglethorn with both the zones and an overland Zul Gurub for questing, and Swamp of Sorrows with the Swamp + Blasted Lands and Deadwind).
Lordaeron is more interesting. You could add Tol Barad to Gilneas (you could add the Channel Islands like Crestfall, Havenswood and maybe Zul'dare and use the new tech to allow seamless transition to Kul Tiras, maybe showing it on the horizon in some static form.) Technically you could add part of Silverpine if we'd be splitting zones. Hillsbrad and Tirisfal belong together for sure and I think joining Arathi and Hinterlands and changing the mountains between them and towards the sea would absolutely work. The two Plaguelands plus opening Stratholme bay and thus adding the Northern subzone (which would connect Scarlet Monastery with Hearthglen and Stratholme and thus allow for an Argent Dawn/Living of Lordaeron area which has so much plot potential). Then we have Quel'thalas which could be a single zone or they could add a Hills of Mashiara zone to give the Forest trolls some more lore (and maybe even a new raid; the corpse of Kithix is directly beneath Zul'aman).
Also have to say, while Khaz Modan and Azeroth stayed fairly consistent to earlier maps, Lordaeron and Kalimdor were MASSIVELY changed through development. One of the weirdest choices imo was that the way they placed Silverpine. On all pre WoW maps, the Lordamere drains into the sea westward with Dalaran positioned right at the channel; the Gilneas peninsula is much more prominent and has a very different shape. I assume it would have broken the zone flow for the Forsaken far too much since they wanted to give them Silverpine (even though half of Silverpine is part of Gilneas). As for Kalimdor, original Kalimdor was far smaller.
Last edited by Nymrohd; 2023-06-06 at 10:24 AM.
I feel like Vyranoth will get empowered by galakronds decay. I think Iridikron is well aware of the dangers of shadowflame and decay and is willing to loose his kind if they wreak some havoc and distract us from pursuing him. With an artifact that apparently can absorb elemental powers from a corpse he can still go back and claim all for himself once the other incarnates are defeated or of no need for him anymore.
Ice and Decay are also a great enemies in an emerald dream patch.
Vyranoth doesn't seem like an idiot though. He'd have to FORCE decay on her. I think Iridikron has found some demon soul prototype.
They could absolutely retcon how the Dragon Soul was created btw. Maybe even the original one was not forged by Neltharion (just the chain made by his goblins) and instead has always been a Black Empire artifact (maybe one that was used to subdue the Elements). And maybe there is more than one of them. Or maybe Neltharion created the Dragon Soul by studying something Iridikron originally used.
Last edited by Nymrohd; 2023-06-06 at 10:27 AM.
The problem wasn't "single vanilla zones are small" though. Khaz Modan is still just Khaz Modan. The problem is that unless you either massively increase scale such that it feels like a whole new zone, or wildly disrupt the zone from its original version such that it is essentially a new zone (Thousand Needles, Silithus, the non-Nagrand WoD zones), what you are left with is just a nicer looking version of the same zone that has been around for twenty years that players have gone through and 'explored' to such a thorough degree that the hope of spatially interesting places to be in a new expansion is lost.
My point is that if you load up 11.0 and it drops you off in Elwynn, and it's all pretty and HD, you'll have like a good half a week to week where it's really neat to see an old zone in new zone quality... and then that's going to really sharply fall off. Because you already know the zone very well. It's not like 2.0.3 where you go through the Dark Portal for the first time and you're in a crazy weird place where you have no idea where anything is. It's not like the first time you land in Jade Forest or step into Azure Span and you have rivers that you don't know where they lead to or from and hills you're not sure what's on the other side of, and around that grove of trees is a beautiful vista where you see a whole subarea you've never seen before and beyond it another entire zone you've never set foot in.
It's just Elwynn, with Goldshire and Crystal Lake and down that same path you've seen a billion times you know for a fact is Westfall and Sentinel Hill and the other way is Redridge and Lakeshire and it's all stuff that's been already explored for two decades. It needs to feel like an actually new place to explore, not like a place you know like the back of your hand but now it's in HD.
I understand that. The wonder of exploration will be missing. The idea is to replace it with nostalgia and familiarity. Obviously adding evergreen features that make the area something that can be useful at all levels instead of just a visual upgrade.
I am not sure it is worthwhile. It IS worthwhile to me but I never expect games to be designed around what I want. It would depend on the devs actually creating evergreen content. Imo it would be FAR safer for them to create the evergreen model for a larger world and testing it with timewalking zones in more modern expansions first before committing to something like a revamp.
But I feel like that's sort of speaking to the problem. Extra content features is fine for like, a patch based return to zone, like Battlefield: Barrens (putting aside that the example in question was god awful). I do not think it has the draw to support an expansion itself, especially when that is the expansion and patches. I honestly feel like even someone like you, who is drawn to the idea of that, would get into 11.0 and in record time be bored. Look at how slow these very threads have been relative to older expansions, simply because the last two expansions we haven't really had any idea what zones we're going to end up seeing in patches, and then imagine a world where the answer is "there's no added zones in any of the patches this expansion, we're just gonna add neat features in the updated zones you've been in for months (that you've also been familiar with for decades).
Genuine question: How long do you think that an updated Elwynn (Elwynn, Westfall, Duskwood, Redridge) would keep you entertained? Features aside, how long do you think poking around those zones doing stuff would feel exciting to you? A few days? A week? Two? As someone who spent the better part of a year in Vanilla RPing in Stormwind and the surrounding area, I think that within a month at the absolute best, you'd be sick of those zones and desperately hoping that Blizzard changed their minds and 11.1 is Tel'abim or Azjol-Nerub so that you can be playing somewhere new. That's without even getting into the narrative fatigue side of things, because fighting gnolls and murlocs is going to make you hate being stuck there even more.
I can't see a pure revamp working out unless either Elwynn's region now dwarfs Azure Span, or the entire region is scorched into a desert by Light Invasion.
How is the familiarity of old zones made fresh any markedly different from new zones though? I feel like you are splitting hairs on when exactly the zone goes from new and exciting, to just a zone you are already intimately familiar with.
Are you looking at Thaldraszus or the Waking Shore currently, and still being amazed at how new it is?
If the old zones are copied over wholesale then that is one thing, but I feel even a small amount of updates would make exploring the old world feel fresh. At the very least make it feel fresh for about the same amount of time a completely new zone does.
My argument on this is also that for each player that wants a new zone, that I am sure there is another that absolutely loves Feralas, or Tirisfal. The nostalgia of old zones are just as potent a draw as completely new zones that may or may not be all that great.
The world revamp dream will never die!
Thing is, new players have no attachment to the old world. So you're better off just trying to attract them with something glitzy and new (Dragon Isles)
The larger issue with the revamp is tackling the design shift from vanilla to now. The vanilla world was created for a game where leveling was intended to be major grind. Now leveling is trivial. There's no going back on this either. Every time they've tried the playerbase complains. So how do you utilize 38+ zones if they aren't just for leveling?
Do you maybe just having 4 leveling zones and and ton of max level content per continent? Do you split up the revamp and do it in sections? How do you keep the system evergreen so it doesn't just become Cataclysm 2.0?
Personally, I think a revamp only works if its tied to some personal story system where the world can continue to be updated and evolve through future expansions. Never being in a static state. This is what I imagine Cataclysm was supposed to be with phasing but became abandoned as a concept at some point.
A revamp does little for new players because they don't have the previous experience to contrast with. No new player gets to Redridge and goes "Oh wow, a complete bridge!" or goes to Desolace or the Barrens and is impressed by the surge of green in those zones. A new player enters Thousand Needles and doesn't even realize that it's a zone that's been flooded, that's just how that zone is.
You can't really design a revamp around new players because the basis of a standard revamp (like the not Elwynn gets glassed by the Yrel's army sort of revamp) is progression from existing plot lines. It's stuff like the Plaguelands now being largely healed. But EPL being a green, vibrant zone isn't exciting to a new player, it's just a generic green hills and trees zone. It's only interesting because of that context of "this used to be a plagued hellscape".
Exile's Reach > Dragonflight >any other expansion that comes after is already a fairly solid introduction for new players. And while there may be more new players this expansion, they are still the very, very small minority--and also the most fickle and likely to just play a bit and then quit. You can't target them as an audience while ignoring the rest of your playerbase.
Could be he wants to inject Decay into one of the Aspects and ruin them.
Idk, very curious what he intends to do with it, assuming he is actually sucking Galakrond's Decay. Iridikron so far has been shown to be quite smart, so doubt he will try to use Decay on himself, given what it could do to the user.
Vyranoth and Iridikron might not get a power-up as well, for all we know they are much more powerful than the other 2.
Life essence is a possibility although wouldn't that mess up the Dream/Tree? Surely we don't do that to another one lol
By expanding level cap. Yea, I know it might not work to have 200th level toon, but Blizzard should have a separate server to try things out.
I dare say most of the "classic" crowd might be on board for the beta test phase. Singing my song...(in c-major it sounds more like WoW 2.0) I believe that changing the stories/quests would have many curious enough to visit the not-so-old zones to do the quests and see/hear all the redone aesthetics. (And then there's the changes made to classes and races that a WoW 2.0 would have) If nothing else, I believe "you'd" be subscribed longer than a month or two.
Seems odd that Iridikron would sit out the Shadowflame if he was taking a “gotta catch ‘em all”-approach to collecting cosmic forces.
They are fundamentally two entirely different things so I'm not sure how to answer this question.
We're not talking about Draenor Shadowmoon Valley. Loch Modan with the dam repaired and better tree models is just Loch Modan. We're comparing Waking Shore to Arathi. How much time did you spend doing more than glancing at new Arathi? How much time have you spent looking around Waking Shores?
Let's not be disingenuous. It's not a matter of "being amazed at how new it is", it's a matter of freshness. I enjoy going around Thaldraszus because the time I've spent there is in the, at the highest, dozens of hours. I enjoy gathering in Waking Shore because while at this point I "know" the terrain, it's still relatively new, I'm not sick of seeing it.Are you looking at Thaldraszus or the Waking Shore currently, and still being amazed at how new it is?
If the old zones are copied over wholesale then that is one thing, but I feel even a small amount of updates would make exploring the old world feel fresh. At the very least make it feel fresh for about the same amount of time a completely new zone does.
My argument on this is also that for each player that wants a new zone, that I am sure there is another that absolutely loves Feralas, or Tirisfal. The nostalgia of old zones are just as potent a draw as completely new zones that may or may not be all that great.
I could tell you the exact placement of the stretches of fence around Goldshire's roads. I know about how far north from the fork in the road the first wolf+young wolf spawn wanders. Do you know what the most effective route to get your protodrake kills at the start of the Waking Shores quest line is? I have no idea. But I can tell you exactly what four individual boars you should kill at the start of Redridge's quest line to finish the Parker quest efficiently while you're doing the three gnoll plans because I have spent so much time leveling through that zone.
That is the marked difference. Even now, months later, Thaldraszus and Waking Shore are relatively new. No zone on the entirety of Kalimdor or EK is new, even now, potentially a year+ before a hypothetical 11.0, I already know those zones intricately. I know where every cave is, I know where every river goes to, where every town is located and what the structure of that town is and where the inn is. I spent, and I am not exaggerating, thousands of hours in Elwynn and Stormwind RPing in Vanilla and have leveled hundreds of characters through those zones in their vanilla, cata and classic iterations. So believe me when I tell you both that I like the old zones very much and that there is an extreme difference between a zone that has been in game for twenty years that has new textures and some rearranged towns, and one that is brand new.
We are talking about wholesale because that is the entire argument I was making: That a zone needs to either be nuked from orbit on the level of 1k needles or SMV or wildly changed in scale in order to be meaningfully different on the level of an actual new zone. Sticking a bunch of Howling Fjord inspired buildings and worgen into Silverpine didn't suddenly make it a new zone. Updating a zone with the updated textures and moving the questlines forward a step is interesting but it's also not the same thing as having a brand new area. EPL but it's healed now is not as interesting a zone, even for someone like me, who really likes EPL and Stratholme, as a hypothetical Azjol zone or Undermine, or some never seen before zone on the other side of the world.
I love Darkshore, it's one of my favorite zones. I hate Zuldazar and trolls. Zuldazar is still a more interesting new zone to run around in than if updated Darkshore had been an expansion zone. Because I have spent years in Darkshore and had never seen Zuldazar.
Yeah, I keep seeing the idea tossed around, but I doubt it’s his end goal if he’s already rejected Order and ignored Void.
That being said, I hate that we don’t know what their ultimate goal is yet. That should be one of the first things established. An understandable - even sympathetic - goal of your villain is what makes your villain enjoyable. Basic storytelling. Giving your character an actual motivation is not material for a “big reveal.”
I agree.
I'd like to think the Incarnates are just intended to be simple villains but the small hints of the Black Empire not being 100% evil and Titans not 100% the good guys make me think they are going for some big reveal moment in story. The fact they are trying to be obscure about it makes think its being done for shock value and to be subversive. Which has literally never worked for them in the past. So I don't know why they would be treading down that road again. Especially after the how it ended in the past two expansions.