9.0 General Discussion

[Musta]

Prolly the same idea anyone could come with but: bring back the weapon traits as a trait tree, that you gain by leveling and maintain the brackets as well.

[allegos]

I’d argue that the Artifact weapons and their talent trees wouldn’t have been a bad permanent addition. The Artifact Power numbers were just permitted to get completely out of control because the devs knew the weapons were going to be temporary. I agree that there was no excuse for redesigning the specs to require the temporary weapons.

As many times as this game has deleted whole specs and replaced them with namesakes that play completely different, the game could have several more classes than it does by now. They come up with new classes all the time, but they keep giving them old names like “Demonology Warlock,” “Balance Druid,” and “Survival Hunter.”

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

New class: Dancing Queen still makes me chuckle to this day

Still my main.

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So the Boodsail Buccs discord got on the subject of Tinker tonight and I think I narrowed what I want to see from 9.0 down pretty nicely.

Old Expansions? Gone.
Cata World? Revamped.
Levels? Squished.
Classes? Redesigned.

[Revamp Man]

Agree wholeheartedly.

Rental Item design needs to be shot in the head and never return. It just doesn't fucking work because you inevitably remove the item and everything tied to it. It fucking makes their job harder as they have to re-design the specs which they clearly fucking failed with Legion--->BfA.

I just want control over my character again. Why does my buff bar currently have 6-10 RNG procs on it?

I want moments of glory back, I want to look at a situation and have solutions again. Instead of looking at my bar and going - "Guess I'll just die".


Bring the RPG back.

My favorite moment in raiding was in SoO (late bloomer) on my windwalker and we were on boss 2 on 10-man normal and my rate leader was not happy that I did Rohit with another guild as a tank because him and some other members of The guild said I was a shity brewmaster tank because I liked crit. So he placed a DPS requirement of 170000 on me and me alone and that was pretty high at the time for our group but thanks to the awesome design that was storm Earth and fire back then I was able to have a clone on two of the bosses and have myself interrupting the third boss that never moved along with being able to AOE when necessary and when one boss transition to summon three ads I could place clones on them and do the interrupt or and by the end of that fight my dPS was around 360,000 compared to second play that was 297000

I was able to soak because of how my class worked the few Crocs I had were manageable I was able to build up my DPS cooldown when necessary because there was no RNG involved

Compare that to warlords when I switched over to a retribution paladin and my DPS was wild not just because of the simple proc based spec but also because of the fact that all of the trinkets were proc based as well.

I have never had more fun playing a character then in mists of pandaria on my monk it came close in legion after I had my maxed out artifact weapon in the final raid

[AngerFork]

Having "new models" as an expansion feature IS a cop-out though.

It has been 15 years and Billions of dollars. The best they've done is updated models here and there and updated graphics for new expansion zones as they come out.

Going to the old world is still a jarring experience even with the Cataclysm revamp. We still have like 3-5 hairstyles to choose from, character customization is a joke.

There should be a team working on system/graphics overhauls at all times. It's pretty inexcusable how long it has taken to do Goblins/Worgen. We also still have the same pathetic robe model from Vanilla. Chestplates still wrap onto models. Helms still don't work properly on multiple races.

They need to invest more heavily in this game. For example - sharding is a joke of a system that clearly doesn't work. Invest in bigger, better servers. Not smaller, shit shards.



Overhauling the class system is a gameplay thing and should be top priority. You use your class to experience all other content.

Not sure why sharding got brought into a comment about new models, but whatever...you do make a good point here overall.

Personally, I see why they did those specifically as an expansion feature. While I agree that they should continuously be working on system/graphics improvements (and they are, you can definitely see some textures that are a ton better than say MoP era and the hi-rez druid models from Legion are nice), something like models which are so connected with the player identity need almost a special level of care. It's not the same as replacing a tree that just looks better, there's a ton that goes into not making characters look noticeably different. I'd rather they take the time to make it a special feature and get those as right as they can so I don't feel like I'm playing a stranger.

Whether they are doing them right...that's definitely debatable. They could and should do more with hair and customization. They don't need the every color slider for things like eyes and hair IMO, but more styles and customization would be nice. As for armor clipping, there's enough armor/models from earlier days that I'm not sure they can ever get them fully right. But they definitely need to do better with the new stuff...there's no reason the Nightborne Heritage Armor should have been clipping as long as it was. And Worgen/Goblins waited way too long for their updates.

[rda]

How so?

Just reduce the cap and lvl requirements of zones.
Let Kalimdor and EK scale to lvl 60 as it does now, and the rest of the continents can become optional lvling paths instead.

That solves the timeline issue and opens up a bunch of ways to lvl.

Level requirements exist in a lot of things other than zones. It's in instances, items, mob spells, etc. They touched part of that in quests and quest rewards when they were making them flexible across zone groups (a quest in, say, EPL can adjust its level to yours, etc), but that's just part of what they have. Although they had other changes that kind of work towards everything being able to scale, like with professions where they split the single 1-900 scale into individual ranges. So, I don't know how much stuff they still have to go through, just saying that it could still be a lot.

[LorDC]

They need to invest more heavily in this game. For example - sharding is a joke of a system that clearly doesn't work. Invest in bigger, better servers. Not smaller, shit shards.

Can you please elaborate exactly how and why does sharding not work?
On a side note, investing in bigger and better servers wouldn't help to get rid of shards. Reason is simple - when number of people in a single place scales lineary server load scales quadraticaly. Basically, you need to send everyone info about everyone else. So, even if they switch to the most expensive gear that exists out there it wouldn't help much.

[rda]

Can you please elaborate exactly how and why does sharding not work?

Shards switch and you get phased, that's unpleasant and can be / is abused.

A follow-up on the rest: sending everyone info on everyone else can be done differently. The way WoW does it is bad and does not scale. Changing is difficult, yes, but that's why big fights in WoW universally suck much worse than they do in other games.

[LorDC]

Shards switch and you get phased, that's unpleasant and can be / is abused.

A follow-up on the rest: sending everyone info on everyone else can be done differently. The way WoW does it is bad and does not scale. Changing is difficult, yes, but that's why big fights in WoW universally suck much worse than they do in other games.

Sharding can certainly use some tuning but it is not that bad. And it is certainly better than alternatives.

And server-scaling problems are way thougher than you think they are. No one really managed to solve them except in very fine-tuned laboratory conditions.
And on top of that you get into game design limits. Remember how frog farming looked back in MoP? Now imagine that every zone looks like this.

[rda]

Sharding can certainly use some tuning but it is not that bad. And it is certainly better than alternatives.

And server-scaling problems are way thougher than you think they are. No one really managed to solve them except in very fine-tuned laboratory conditions.
And on top of that you get into game design limits. Remember how frog farming looked back in MoP? Now imagine that every zone looks like this.

I actually know how tough server-scaling problems are first-hand. They are tough, yes, but WoW's approach to solving them was invariably just avoiding them by splitting people into parts. There are other approaches where the levels of info you pass around decrease as the amounts of actors grow. They increase the ceiling substantially. Eg, in GW2 you can have meaningful fights of hundreds of people, their code starts to crumble 5-8 times later than WoW's. There are other things you can do, too.

[sirethas]

I agree with class redesign on a overall level. The main issue was the Legion, where devs designed classes with artifacts and legendaries in mind, and we could all see how that ended up in BFA.
I would rather see devs recreate classes so they are fully functional without any azerite/artifact/legendary items and rather add those as some niche mechanics which adds some fantasy to the game rather than identify the class because in long run, it will turn into the dumpster we have now (there are of course some exceptions and some specs are fine). I just don't see system like this sustainable into the future.

[Shadochi]

New class: Dancing Queen still makes me chuckle to this day

Specs: Young and Sweet
Starting level: Only Seventeen

[matrix123mko]

Any new leak this week?

[TheFirstOnes]

I do think that class design was actually adapted well into Legion, to be honest. But, whatever...

Other than that, I wanted to talk about something here real quick. I mean, let's be honest here.

Am I the only one who'd love to see a mini series next expansion, where it shows the rise of the Pantheon, and the fall of Sargeras, and why the Void's such a massive threat, but in a Lords of War style?

That'd be fucking amazing. Seeing Sargeras create the Legion, demolish the Titan Pantheon, and understand the Void Lords and their Lovecraftian nature would be beautiful and add far more depth to the Satanic badass.

[TriHard]

Tinkers would have fit in this expansion funnily enough. With all the new "azerite tech" and Mechagon.

Does anyone else find it a bit weird that Rustbolt haven't fixed Mechatorques injuries from 8.1?


I think it would be really disappointing if Tinkers turned out to be "Titan Tech" with all titan themed abilities. I'd much prefer a Gobbo/Gnome themed engineer class.

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This.

I would much prefer 9.0 to skip a new class and compeltely focus on a FULL OVERHAUL of the current class, spec and talent system.

Ion has already admitted that they went too far with pruning. He also says they went to far with spec identity instead of class identity.

The talent system also needs a huge overhaul and the pace at which you receive abilities as you level.

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No. They're really not.

they really are.

[AngerFork]

I do think that class design was actually adapted well into Legion, to be honest. But, whatever...

Other than that, I wanted to talk about something here real quick. I mean, let's be honest here.

Am I the only one who'd love to see a mini series next expansion, where it shows the rise of the Pantheon, and the fall of Sargeras, and why the Void's such a massive threat, but in a Lords of War style?

That'd be fucking amazing. Seeing Sargeras create the Legion, demolish the Titan Pantheon, and understand the Void Lords and their Lovecraftian nature would be beautiful and add far more depth to the Satanic badass.

I'd be down for a series like that. Would be a good lead into a new storyline if they did it Warbringers style. My only real catch is that you'd have to make it huge to really get the effect properly.

Perhaps if they did it in stages. Maybe start out with something showing the Void Lords and their nature first so we understand what we're facing, then turn to Sargeras partway through the expansion so that we can see what he was trying to avoid from his point of view. Could easily turn him into a sympathetic character if done right.

[Wangming]

Level squish + World Revamp + Time skip is the holy trinity of my expectations for the next expac.

Mine is Class rework + World Revamp + New writers

[Nyel]

Indeed 8.0 would have been the best place for a Tinker class due to how light-hearted much of the content is. For the next expansion I don't see this yet again.

[Varolyn]

they really are.

Class design is not good at all in BFA. It might be better than what it was in 8.0 but that is only due to broken azerite traits and broken essences that makes everyone far more powerful and that feeling only feels good for so long. Classes are too basic in what they do, maybe not rotationally but utility wise. Many classes don't have a "cool" button to press hence blizz brought in the essence system to serve as a bandaid for the rest of BFA while they figure out wtf they are gonna do next expansion.

And moreover, there is the terrible character progression system. The talent trees are really poor, you go through 20 levels without gaining anything after that last talent. And even worse, there are classes that stop getting things in there spell book after level 90. That's 30 levels of essentially getting nothing for your class.

[Firefox72]

If they do revamp the EK and Kalimdor along with a level squish i'd like them to make you be able to level from 1 to max or atleast till Legion or BFA with only these 2 continents so you have a focused and up2date narative and story. Now Outland, Northrend, Cata, Pandaria should still get unlocked at a certain level mid leveling and if someone really wants to do those or is new to the game and wants to experience them, they are free to do them but insert a warning how this fucks up the timeline of the story.