Racial Questlines, Capital Cities and Housing

[Nosgoth]

I would really like to see Capital Cities receiving some love. All of them. Some more than others. Some I think should be replaced. Some should be reclaimed. Some should be revamped and some should be expanded upon.

I think what would be great is if we get a racial questline for every race, something that shows us doing something with our capital. Like Night Elves growing another tree, over time. Blood Elves rebuilding the second half of Silvermoon. Gilneans and Gnomes getting their capitals back. Then at the end of that questline, we'd be able to pick our own little house in an instanced version of some part of the city.

Some ideas

Humans - Stormwind (revamp, generally big enough, but graphical update needed)
Dwarves - Ironforge (revamp, maybe adding some underground portion to it)
Night Elves - Something'drassil (new tree, looking like an actual tree, bigger than before, with new starting area for Night Elves)
Gnomes - Gnomeregan (actually reclaiming it this time, maybe not as big as the dungeon was)
Draenei - Exodar (maybe flying in the sky? I don't have much here)
Worgen - Gilneas (reclaiming it, we've never actually seen it like a real city, which is a real shame)

Orcs - Orgrimmar (pretty much ok the way it is, maybe getting the Goblins out of there, cleaning up their mess, using the underground portion from SoO)
Trolls - Echo Isles (putting some more stuff on those islands)
Tauren - Thunder Bluff (revamp I guess, don't have many ideas here)
Blood Elves - Silvermoon (rebuild the second half)
Forsaken - Tirisfal (clean up the zone, abandon the sewers and put your capital in the middle of the zone and use some of the Northrend Forsaken architecture that they also used when they revamped Tirisfal with Cataclysm)
Goblins - Kezan, Undermine (fuck it, just give them the whole thing)

Pandaren - no idea, go back to Pandaria

Some of the Allied Races have obvious choices, like Suramar, Thunder Totem or Shadowforge City. Some are a bit harder, and maybe require something new to come up with. Maybe not every Allied Race needs its own city. Mag'har are with the other orcs in Orgrimmar for example.

Generally the idea is, all of them could need a graphical overhaul, and I would like to see all of them get a bit bigger, like Suramar, Boralus and Dazar'alor.

[Briselody]

Then at the end of that questline, we'd be able to pick our own little house in an instanced version of some part of the city.

In before the "BuT wE alREaDy hAD gaRrisOnS!" people.

It sounds good to me. WoW desperately needs a "rebuilding" expansion of some kind. Focused on new stories and fixing problems on the homefront instead of the Apocalypse of the Week. And it would be the perfect place to slide in player housing, the longest-request feature for this game by a wide margin.

[Schizoide]

The game doesn't need new capital cities, because nobody ever uses them, everybody is in the newest expansion hub, and they don't provide any actual gameplay.

I would like to see player housing, though, in a form similar to Wildstar and Elder Scrolls Online with tons of customization. It becomes a whole separate game inside the MMO, like pet battling, and offers an entirely different type of cosmetic reward to give to players for doing stuff.

Kill a boss, mount his head above the fireplace. Collect a transmog set, put it up on a mannequin. Craft an ornate canopy bed, put it in your bedroom. Hit exalted with a rep, hang their banner on the wall. That sort of thing. I wouldn't get into it myself personally, but I know lots of people really enjoy it.

[Nosgoth]

The game doesn't need new capital cities, because nobody ever uses them, everybody is in the newest expansion hub, and they don't provide any actual gameplay.

The new expansion hubs are new capital cities.

[Powerogue]

Night Elves - Something'drassil (new tree, looking like an actual tree, bigger than before, with new starting area for Night Elves)

It's perfect. I never had a name for the theoretical tree planted in Tirisfal, now I do.

[Schizoide]

The new expansion hubs are new capital cities.

Capitals in WoW are typically associated with a race and... well with allied races they are. OK, fair enough.

We don't need new capital cities for already existing races.

[Nosgoth]

Capitals in WoW are typically associated with a race and... well with allied races they are. OK, fair enough.

We don't need new capital cities for already existing races.

Most of my suggestions are not new capital cities, they are revamps, or already existing cities finally becoming a capital, as it was meant to be. Gnomes have retaken their city in Cataclysm, it just wasn't updated to be a proper city. Worgen should have retaken Gilneas by now.

The only new cities would be a new tree for the Night Elves, and a new city for the Forsaken, and yes they both need one, because they don't have one right now. And the whole refugee thing is getting old. Currently the Gnomes, Worgen and Night Elves have no city in the Alliance. And the Forsaken and Goblins have none in the Horde. The Trolls only have a small questing area that can't even be called a capital. That means 1/2 of the core races in the Alliance and the Horde are currently refugee races with no own city.

[Schizoide]

Those cities wouldn't offer any gameplay, they would just be empty spaces like Exodar and Silvermoon are today. From a world-building perspective it's worth doing because you're right, where do all those people live? But it's difficult to justify the work it would take to revamp them.

[Aeula]

It’d be nice but I’d rather put it off until Blizzard have fired the current writers and gotten folks who do more than try and create pure shock value and nothing else.

No more destroyed capitals.

[Marrilaife]

I'm a hard pass on player housing, it's just not that interesting and adds more shit to the game for them to capitalise on aka SWTOR.

SWTOR and other f2p games need to lure people into cash shop spending or they'd be axed as unprofitable ventures.

WOW doesn't go so far with a cash shop yet, for example transmog except few helmets that were later removed didn't really go into cash shop. Meanwhile SWTOR has tons of transmogs, hairstyles and what not in the cash shop. Same for Guild Wars 2, but again it's a f2p game where the only paid element is the latest xpac.

Damn, SWTOR even sells extra races in the cash shop (Nautolan, Togruta and Cathar).

So it's not fair to assume any new feature will instantly be tied to cash shop. It's basically saying you don't want any cosmetic features because they could be sold as mtx.

[Highelf]

It’d be nice but I’d rather put it off until Blizzard have fired the current writers and gotten folks who do more than try and create pure shock value and nothing else.

No more destroyed capitals.

Well stated.

[RyudoTFO]

Although I acknowledge that this would be a nice thing to add to the game from a RP point of view, in the end it would be a huge waste of resources for very little gain.

People tend to flock the cities that give them the best access to the world. For Horde it's Orgrimmar, for Alliance it is Stormwind. Some people are still often visiting Ironforge, like there were also some people always present in Undercity, but distant places like Silvermoon, despite looking gorgeous, will always stay deserted, because they are too far away from anything. You could literally manabomb every capital city except SW/OG and you will hardly notice a difference. Same goes for revamping them.

If you want to revamp them optically, you need to add gameplay relevance to them, like WQ's around them or something like that (WQ's would be a very cheap solution though).

Adding only esthetics to the game isn't enough to keep the players entertained, because for every player who cares for the look of his character and the surroundings, there is at least another one who cares only about stats and another who likes both. If change is to happen, then only little by little and like Aeula said, better with a different story team.

[Nosgoth]

Those cities wouldn't offer any gameplay, they would just be empty spaces like Exodar and Silvermoon are today. From a world-building perspective it's worth doing because you're right, where do all those people live? But it's difficult to justify the work it would take to revamp them.

Why do you think they would be empty spaces?