Time skip or remake?

[Sorrowseer]

I want our characters to be reborn with no memory in a world like 100 years removed that we need to rediscover because a lot has changed.

... that would be awesome, I have to admit kinda sick of saving existence from another unbelievably powerful enemy again and gain, the break would be good.

[Kumorii]

How can you be a new adventurer if you're the hero who destroyed multiple existential threats?

Write it so your character in the time skip is a new adventurer.
"hi new adventurer, let's start with giving you simple task"

The only thing that's kept is the name, canonical it's a new character.

I mean, it's like XCOM did it... You beat the game and the invasion. But in reality when the sequel came around you lost and were captured.

Time skip in of itself justify any "reboot". Then if you can't let go and are set in your ways in that it's the same character who defeated everything in the past, well... I can't really relate to that. If Canon says it's a new character, then it's a new character.

[DarkAmbient]

Never got this complaint. For many years and expansions players in masses complained about getting no in game recognition, claiming we are not mere adventurers anymore and never get credited for saving the world. Then we get the recognition and credit and it's we don;t ant the attention, i just want to be a mere adventurer.

It's not a complaint, it's a question.

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Write it so your character in the time skip is a new adventurer.
"hi new adventurer, let's start with giving you simple task"

The only thing that's kept is the name, canonical it's a new character.

I mean, it's like XCOM did it... You beat the game and the invasion. But in reality when the sequel came around you lost and were captured.

Time skip in of itself justify any "reboot". Then if you can't let go and are set in your ways in that it's the same character who defeated everything in the past, well... I can't really relate to that. If Canon says it's a new character, then it's a new character.

It's got nothing to do with being 'set in your ways', that just sounds like a needless dig. I get the desire to be just another random adventurer again, but if the character you're playing is the one who defeated Deathwing and the Lich King and you're walking around in the spoils of your triumphs the game can't just be like "Oh you didn't actually do those things".

The only way the random adventurer timeskip could make sense is if the time skip is so far ahead that your heroic escapades have passed out of all living memory, but in a world of immortal races I don't see that happening.

[Krayz]

Just imagine if they did remake with a new engine.. remember that video someone did of grizzly hills on unreal engine 4 I believe it was at the time? Looked incredible.

[Goat7]

other: sell all of Warcraft to a company that actually cares, allow them to create a new Warcraft MMO. Imagine the epic story of Warcraft in Unreal Engine and with a company that puts its customers first and commitment to gameplay.

[aceperson]

i'd totally buy a complete remake and/or time skip but ONLY if the current writers (and after the recent controversy, what seems like most of the dev team) are replaced. i don't trust the current team to make a competent, let alone a good game. so i'd want neither if it's in the current teams hands.

[Ethas]

The story/setting are a problem, for sure - they've backed themselves into a corner a little bit with power inflation, so threats become ridiculous. After the Jailer threatens ALL OF REALITY ITSELF it's a little hard to up the stakes.

But the bigger problem is mechanical imo. WoW is an old game, and it shows. There's a lot of design space limitations that they probably can't overcome without a fundamental redesign of the engine itself. WoW desperately needs an update to stay relevant in this generation of games, and merely iterating on things developed close to two DECADES ago isn't going to cut it anymore very, very soon.

This is clearly such a bold statement. Care to back that up? I’ll remind you that most of WoW rivals with newer tech died. Anyways, what specific mechanics do you miss in WoW or are unable to be made in the current engine? Or are you just talking the words you heard elsewhere?

[Biomega]

This is clearly such a bold statement. Care to back that up? I’ll remind you that most of WoW rivals with newer tech died. Anyways, what specific mechanics do you miss in WoW or are unable to be made in the current engine? Or are you just talking the words you heard elsewhere?

Take your pick - action-buttoned based combat, problems integrating players into events, flat and linear resource models, clunky Z-axis, serious limitations on cosmetics, and the list goes on.

[Crionics]

I don't know how to vote but I think they should roll with us actually being killed by N'Zoth and all of this Shadowlands stuff is somehow a plot to redeem ourselves and come back to the living. Others have mentioned it could be a vision of N'Zoth we're experiencing but I hate the whole "and it turns out it never happened after all!" plot twist you see in some horror movies. Somehow they can spin it so what's going on in the Shadowlands had almost no consequences in the realm of the living/Azeroth/universe etc. but did have consequences for our character by somehow making it so that if we fail we're trapped in the Shadowlands forever and everything there goes to hell if the Jailer wins. Better minds than mine can iron out the details, I just hate the Shadowlands story so much as it's been written so far.

I don't think any of these 2 scenarios are possible though, the Jailer and the Shadowlands are too entwined with the living world at this point.

[Rhlor]

I want see emperor dagran II, durak and rehze adults; old king anduin.

[Mojo03]

I've always thought they'd do something dramatic with 10.0 similarly to what they're doing with OW2.

Stuff like an engine upgrade, UI update, fundamental gameplay changes, texture updates, etc, etc, while still keeping the underlying game. If anyone wants the older version, you can play it on the Classic servers now or in the future.

I still think they'll do something like that.

Time skip makes the most sense to me. 10 years or so. Enough time to keep it familiar, but also enough time to make it feel different.

I wouldn't be surprised if they release 9.2 and hold off on 10.0 for 18 - 24 months.

[Phyrexia-KulTiras]

Everything revolves around making money, as all companies should. So as long as money output is higher then input, nothing will change. Unless there is a project that will generate more.

I would love to see a remake. But costs for such a project will only be feasible for a company, when there is a need to. Maybe when the subs drop to a all time low, they would consider it.

But personally i dont see that happening ever. I'd think that if they would create a new MMO, it would be a new IP. That would be easier to promote since you have something distinctively different.

[Qnubi]

The game can be frozen in time (Shadowlands). Next expansion we play the "new" reality created by the Jailer, without all the bloat and new lore characters.

[Toppy]

While they should certain timeskip or remake at this point, it would only work if they also reshuffled the entire dev team... and brought back Samwise.

This current team (writers included) can't be trusted, at least its leadership cant.

We can maybe get rid of Dansaur but Golden is here to stay at that, so I dont think there much hope.

[Kumorii]

It's got nothing to do with being 'set in your ways', that just sounds like a needless dig. I get the desire to be just another random adventurer again, but if the character you're playing is the one who defeated Deathwing and the Lich King and you're walking around in the spoils of your triumphs the game can't just be like "Oh you didn't actually do those things".

The only way the random adventurer timeskip could make sense is if the time skip is so far ahead that your heroic escapades have passed out of all living memory, but in a world of immortal races I don't see that happening.

The game isn't saying you didn't do those things.
It's saying that a previous character did those things.

Your character won't be the same character. It's not trying to erase or tell you that something didn't happen or you as a player didn't do those things.

The character you play won't be the same character canonically. Gameplay wise it will, but not story wise. If we want to be cheesy it can be explained that you are now a descendant of a previous hero.

[hecpercu]

For me they can take their company and throw it off the toilet, i will never, ever, spend a single penny in anything with their brand on it

[Naranjaskun]

Time skip.
Right now dev team has the best excuse they ever had to start everything over.
Let's say we go to the place where Zooval is, he made kind of a pocket dimension with him, and when we stop him, that dimension dissapears with him and with us. Our soul/anima goes back to shadowlands.
When the arbiter sees our souls, she sends us to the eternal ones, who reminds us our fight against Zooval. They can't bring us to life now, cause our body dissapeared in another plane, but they can help us to reincarnate and get some memories back with the help of Chromie.
Years have passed, Thrall, Jaina and the other heroes who couldn't get to pass the portal are now old; Anduin is now old too, cause the light saved him. Chromie tells us she can get our mounts/gear (as cosmetic) back, but no one will know we're the champion who saved the universe from Zooval. As we reincarnated, we can now choose race and looks, Chromie makes the time pass on our character so we can ignore the age thing.
We're 40+ years in the future as a new explorer, Azeroth have changed, all that godly story is over, we are again to face new enemies who stay logical (none of those godly beings).
Sounds cheap, but with that, they have it easier to make new stories. They can get ride of the champions who could kill godly beings, which is a really bad writting resource IMO.

[huth]

Write it so your character in the time skip is a new adventurer.
"hi new adventurer, let's start with giving you simple task"

The only thing that's kept is the name, canonical it's a new character.

I mean, it's like XCOM did it... You beat the game and the invasion. But in reality when the sequel came around you lost and were captured.

Time skip in of itself justify any "reboot". Then if you can't let go and are set in your ways in that it's the same character who defeated everything in the past, well... I can't really relate to that. If Canon says it's a new character, then it's a new character.

That's not a timeskip, though. That's a new adventure with a new character. At that point, it makes no sense to even keep the name.

Timeskips do not justify any reboot. Timeskips skip over periods of time so things that take longer than a few days have time to happen, or to skip over dry spells in the story where nothing of relevance happens. Any longer story will probably skip any time the characters are asleep, because describing how they're lying in their bed for 8 hours isn't very interesting. It's still the same story, though, just later on.
XCOM does something else entirely. It looks at an alternate version of the story where things went differently. Not a timeskip.

[Prozach]

How would a long time skip work lore-wise if we continue playing the same characters?

One word: Delorean

[Kumorii]

That's not a timeskip, though. That's a new adventure with a new character. At that point, it makes no sense to even keep the name.

Timeskips do not justify any reboot. Timeskips skip over periods of time so things that take longer than a few days have time to happen, or to skip over dry spells in the story where nothing of relevance happens. Any longer story will probably skip any time the characters are asleep, because describing how they're lying in their bed for 8 hours isn't very interesting. It's still the same story, though, just later on.
XCOM does something else entirely. It looks at an alternate version of the story where things went differently. Not a timeskip.

I mean yeah, that's how timeskips work. They can also vary from minutes to millions of years.

My example with Xcom was about how Canon trumps what transpired. To drive home that if its Canon that its a new character, then it is a new character regardless of how the player feel about it. It wasn't an example of a time skip.