Idea for a new feature: Journey through Time

[McNeil]

This idea for a new feature takes warfronts to the next step. The main goal is to make them feel a lot more engaging, co-operative and challenging.

''Journey through Time'' (JTT for short) is a feature where you and your raid will travel through a certain point in time, where you have to help out to keep the timeline intact. It is somewhat similiar to the Caverns of Time dungeons, except that they resemble warfronts a lot more. Some notable stuff:

- Requires up to 20-30 players to participate
- Alliance and Horde can both join each others team, so it is possible to team up from the opposite faction
- Once inside the timeline, your character will be transformed into the race your helping out
- There are 3 different modes: normal, heroic and mythic. Normal can be queue'd for, heroic and mythic requires a pre-made group
- Mythic is considerably harder than heroic, so it is vital that your raid performs and knows how to co-operate
- Objectives are different in each timeline. They will be made clear as you are playing
- You will have to make different groups to do objectives troughout the map, so co-operation is vital
- Every map in JTT is quite big, and sometimes they don't exactly take place in Azeroth, but rather its own instance (for example Alterac Valley not being an actual part of the world)
- You don't start the match right away when you zone into the timeline, you first have to talk to the main hero to start. This allows free roam trough the entire zone, and might help to co-ordinate your team which path they need to follow
- There is only one kind of resource to turn in, which is gained from doing secondary objectives
- There will also be RP if it was present at the time

How does a Journey trough Time work:

- Each timeline has at least one main objective which is very straightforward. Completing the main objective finishes your match and you will receive loot and other rewards
- There are a lot of secondary objectives which are highly recommended to do them, as it makes the match considerably easier. And there will be extra loot by finishing them
- Unlike warfronts, you do not have to upgrade every building. Instead you only have to turn in resources at the main building. Upgrading the main building will increase its health by a lot, all NPC units will be a lot stronger and even gain a new ability, and the unit spawn rate will be increased
- There aren't as many units in JTT as there are in warfronts, but they will be a lot more durable and act a lot smarter
- You can lose your JTT when one of the following occurs: either when your main hero dies, or when your main building gets destroyed by the enemy
- Heroes like Arthas, Grom and Lothar can be found in their timeline who have their own set of abilities (mostly from WC3)
- If JTT turn out to be a succes, then more will be added in the future

These are the current JTT events in mind: The Defense of Hearthglen, The Evacuation of Stormwind and The Corruption of the Warsong Clan. I'll describe the first event of what it would look like to play:


The Defense of Hearthglen:

Main objective: Defend Hearthglen until Uther arrives with reinforcements

Secondary objectives: Variates troughout all of Eastweald (Western Plagueland). Rescue civilians in danger of the Scourge, purge civilians who have been affected by the plague, look for survivors who are willing to fight against the Scourge, reach the border to the Bulwark to send a messenger for extra reinforcements, escort a batalion trough a passage in the mountains to Hearthglen

The most important secondary objective is to deal with the undead caravan which is also in the WC3 mission. By failing this objective will cause the Scourge to attack from the secret passage into Hearthglen, which will make it a lot harder to win the match. If you do succeed then you are given a significant amount of resources to turn into your Town Hall.

- Arthas and his army will defend Hearthglen at the main gate. If he or the town hall falls, the match will be lost. Arthas can take a lot of beating as he also has a divine shield, and his cavalry will taunt off enemies once Arthas gets to low on health. Also his healers will focus on him more
- The amount of time to defend Hearthglen is rather unpredictable to tell, but the attacking waves will become larger and larger to the point that 2 very powerful liches will attack at the final assault
- The actual map is taken from the original Western Plagueland and recalled ''Eastweald'', which shows the map before the Scourge defield the lands
- There are 2 entries for the Scourge to invade Hearthglen which are all defended by human units. A 3rd entry will be opened for the Scourge if the players fail to destroy the caravan in time
- The raid must split into different groups: one that defends hearthglen, and the rest do as many secondary objectives as possible
- At a certain time when Uther has nearly arrived, the Scourge will send a considerably large army to attack Hearthglen, which makes it really hard to defend
- Once Hearthglen has been defended long enough, Uther will arrive with a huge army of knights to whipe out the undead. The match is then won and players will receive loot. The more objectives your team has completed, the more rewards you get
- It is not recommended to ignore all secondary objective and let the entire raid defend Hearthglen. It will make your units stay very weak, your town hall will have little health and the Scourge waves will be a lot harder to fight. It will be nearly impossible to complete it this way
- Upgrading your town hall will make your units stronger and give them extra abilities. Priests will learn how to dispel magic and cast inner fire, sorceresses will learn how to use invincible and polymorph, knights will learn to charge and cast thunder clap (which was not in WC3) etc


The evacuation of Stormwind:

Main objective: Hold off the orcs from invading Stormwind long enough for the refugees to escape

Secondary objectives: Variates Troughout all of Elwynn Forest and inside Stormwind. Find civilians and direct them to Stormwind, keep the roads safe from beasts and bandits to assure the civilians safety, kill elite mobs for resources, convince other allies like the dwarves to join the battle, reinforce the barricade that holds off orcs in the Stormwind harbor, kill orc warlords to diminish the orcs invading forces

There are several important secondary quests that helps the raid a lot. The most important one, which even Lothar recommends you to do, is to help protect the outlying human villages as long as possible to keep the orcs away from Stormwind even longer and for you to rescue a lot of civlians. There is also a rather secret quest within Stormwind that lets you meet a bandit leader, and if he ends up satisfied he will send his bandits to help defend the city. The third is to kill the orc warlords who lead the attacks outside the city, though they will be hard to defeat as they are heavily defended and requires a good group

- The actual map takes place in an older version of Stormwind and Elwynn Forest, taking place during the First War. There are a lot of similarities to the current zones, but a lot of it is different and fits the WC1 timeline
- The assault with in the city has 4 stages. The first one takes place at the gate where the orcs invade over the bridge, the second takes place at the market square, the third takes place outside the cathedral, the final stage takes place in the harbor where you need to defend your barricade aswell
- Lothar will be leading the defense of Stormwind, and will retreat once he goes down to 5%, which is where the next stage starts. He can only really die during the 4th stage in which he is also defending the barricade. He will be restored to full health every time he has retreated
- If a stage is taking to long for the orcs to break trough, a special event occurs where Gul'dan shows up and expresses his frustration of why it is taking so long. He will then instantly kill every NPC defending the gate and Lothar will be brought down to 5%, causing him to retreat
- Unlike the other JTT's, there is no town hall where you deliver your resources. Instead they will be delivered to the harbor master who is near the barricade in the harbor
- There are two ways you will lose this match: when Lothar dies or your barricade falls, in which case the orcs will have free passage to the boats and slaughter the civilians
- Your barricade will grow significally stronger with the resources you are contributing, and all NPC's will be upgraded
- The orcs will also attack with rather small naval forces, but they are rather easily hold off by the ahrbor guards. This will be a different story in mythic though
- Also in mythic mode, occasionaly an orc Juggernaut arrives at the Stormwind Harbor, using its cannons to damage all NPC's and the barricade. Players can destroy this juggernaut by hopping on gryphons and enter the ship to destroy it from the inside
- Llane Wrynn I and Varian Wrynn are also in this match. Varian must be escorted before the battle occurs in which you will gain resources. Llane is scripted to die in Stormwind Keep, and when this happens it will demoralise all NPC's for 10 minutes, reducing their attacks by 20%
- It is possible to inspire your troops by doing secondary objectives, making them stronger for a period of time
- Orgrim Doomhammer and Gul'dan will also play a role in this JTT. Orgrim is the final boss you fight during stage 4, but you are unable to kill him as you need to flee on ship while Gul'dans reinforcements are arriving. Gul'dan only appears during roleplaying and plays no fighting role in this event
- Once you finish this JTT, you will sail away from Stormwind on a boat with all the refugees. Ending with a rather beautiful view of a burning Stormwind
- A lot of phasing will occur in Stormwind the more the orcs push into the city. Buildings will be set ablaze and will be destroyed, the screams of humans and the sound of orc drums will be heard over human music, every civilian the orcs encounter will be killed on spot. This is all to go for a rather epic experience of seeing Stormwind fall over time

These are some early thought for a feature I'd love to see. If you have some ideas or if you want to see other points in time in this feature then I'd love to hear them.

[Relapses]

This seems like a well thought-out idea but I simply cannot get behind an extension of Warfronts. One of the best things about Shadowlands imo is the fact that Warfronts are not carrying over.

[SirPaper]

Since it's a Journey through Time, is it just a for-fun thing? Or could the Infinite Dragonflight show up?

Otherwise, it sounds pretty cool. Without the need to constantly go back and forth with resources,
AFK'ing at the resource chest, or waiting for catapults to destroy glaives (that one still bothers me).

[Temp1on2]

This seems like a well thought-out idea but I simply cannot get behind an extension of Warfronts. One of the best things about Shadowlands imo is the fact that Warfronts are not carrying over.

Yea, this sounds at best like a caverns of time raid (not good) and at worse a caverns of time warfront (kill me now). Plus with 20-30 players needed it will have to be trivially easy to see widespread participation.

[Relapses]

Yea, this sounds at best like a caverns of time raid (not good) and at worse a caverns of time warfront (kill me now). Plus with 20-30 players needed it will have to be trivially easy to see widespread participation.

This idea suffers the same issue that Warfronts have: Sounds fun on paper until you actually do it and realize it's literally half the raid going AFK while the other half lazily pushes the required buttons to make it end.

[Omybad]

Since it's a Journey through Time, is it just a for-fun thing? Or could the Infinite Dragonflight show up?

I think there should be a reason we're messing with the timeline, not just for fun.

But I like this idea

[Temp1on2]

This idea suffers the same issue that Warfronts have: Sounds fun on paper until you actually do it and realize it's literally half the raid going AFK while the other half lazily pushes the required buttons to make it end.

Couldn't agree more, and what's sad is I don't even blame people going afk in warfronts, its mind-numbingly boring, beyond contributing resource you feel like you have 0 impact on the outcome. Grinding them to get the transmogs was soul destroying LOL.

WoW is an RPG, not an RTS, its ill-suited to be fighting armies without feeling ridiculous and/or insignificant.

[McNeil]

I've always liked the idea of warfronts but I don't like how it was executed. I find it way to dull and easy (even pugging in heroic) and your just doing chores that are not fun or engaging. But I do think that the concept has potential if you take out all the bad stuff and try to go for a more epic experience. JTT would not have something dull like having to demolish the gate while the whole raid is waiting, or have people fight for wood/iron and wait for the respawns. I'd say that doing secondary objectives with a group is far more engaging and fun. There's also not this same Alliance vs Horde conflict (in my feature its only in the Evacuation of Stormwind, and even that is with the old Horde).

As for why we would go back in time, there is not a real lore reason to do so. Its kinda like the Battle of Mount Hyjal in TBC which was there for the sole purpose of experiencing one of the most epic moments in Warcraft history. Its just a fun feature that doesn't need to be tied into lore to expansions, so there is a lot of breating room to expand this feature in the following expansions. But I guess you could throw in some infinite dragonflight shenanigans to build them up for the future.

[Amariw]

It does sound cool, with a little polish it could be a different experience to the standard raid, and taking side objectives from wc3 campaign sidequests is a nice touch, and allows stuff like splitting the raid to be meaningfuly encouraged. I like the idea, worth experimenting with.

[Kokolums]

Couldn't agree more, and what's sad is I don't even blame people going afk in warfronts, its mind-numbingly boring, beyond contributing resource you feel like you have 0 impact on the outcome. Grinding them to get the transmogs was soul destroying LOL.

WoW is an RPG, not an RTS, its ill-suited to be fighting armies without feeling ridiculous and/or insignificant.

wow is an MMO, not an RPG nor an RTS.

- - - Updated - - -

There's nothing wrong with the JTT idea. It just doesn't seem to solve any problems WoW has, nor help differentiate WoW from other games. WoW needs a value add. WoW needs to be made with this question in mind: Why make new expansions? This is neither a value add nor answers that question. The idea itself is fine though.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

This is a neat idea. I've been wanting another Caverns of Time raid since Battle for Mount Hyjal. So many cool points in WoW history that would be excellent choices for another.


However, I think Blizzard needs to utilize the theme of the Caverns of Time and go ahead and just make older raids from previous expansions accessible again at the level they were designed for. I would have to imagine they have the tech now that you could use the Premade Group Finder, find a group for - let's say - Siege of Orgrimmar or even Trial of the Crusader and then scale down to 90 or 80 respectively to do that raid. Any raid from any previous expansion.

[SirPaper]

Sounds fun on paper.

Everything sounds fun on me.

[Temp1on2]

wow is an MMO, not an RPG nor an RTS.

A mmoRPG.

There's nothing wrong with the JTT idea. It just doesn't seem to solve any problems WoW has, nor help differentiate WoW from other games. WoW needs a value add. WoW needs to be made with this question in mind: Why make new expansions? This is neither a value add nor answers that question. The idea itself is fine though.

And clearly some people think there's something wrong with the idea and some people don't think it's fine. They've said as much in this thread lol. They've even given examples of how extremely similar ideas have gone down extremely poorly with the player base.

Blanketly stating something as "fine" doesn't make it so.

- - - Updated - - -

However, I think Blizzard needs to utilize the theme of the Caverns of Time and go ahead and just make older raids from previous expansions accessible again at the level they were designed for. I would have to imagine they have the tech now that you could use the Premade Group Finder, find a group for - let's say - Siege of Orgrimmar or even Trial of the Crusader and then scale down to 90 or 80 respectively to do that raid. Any raid from any previous expansion.

The problem is that it isn't a case of just scaling down level. Most raids have been designed with the realities of when they were created in mind (specifically things like class abilities/talents and armour set bonuses). To make these encounters not exceptionally aggravating, or even impossible, would take valuable development time away that could be spent developing new and original content. The alternative would be to make them trivially easy (like most time walking dungeons) which kinda defeats the purpose.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

The problem is that it isn't a case of just scaling down level. Most raids have been designed with the realities of when they were created in mind (specifically things like class abilities/talents and armour set bonuses). To make these encounters not exceptionally aggravating, or even impossible, would take valuable development time away that could be spent developing new and original content. The alternative would be to make them trivially easy (like most time walking dungeons) which kinda defeats the purpose.

That makes sense. How about the case for the Timewalking raids (BT, Ulduar) and their difficulty? I have not done them myself. Are they even difficult for 30 people scaled down to the appropriate level?

[Temp1on2]

That makes sense. How about the case for the Timewalking raids (BT, Ulduar) and their difficulty? I have not done them myself. Are they even difficult for 30 people scaled down to the appropriate level?

They've experimented with it, there was the anniversary MC raid they released a few years ago. I wasn't subbed then so I can't really comment on that, but the most recent anniversary event had some boss encounters, they were however ridiculously easy (and even then I was in a group that wiped several times on some bosses - but i'll give the benefit of the doubt and say this was just down to not knowing what to do).

The problem is raids require coordination, the type of coordination that is impossible with strangers - and guilds that do have said coordination won't want to spend time raiding if its not giving proper rewards (current ilevel gear) which means devs won't see it as a worthwhile time investment.
I think the closest we will ever get (whilst blizz is still actively developing original content) is a LFR style version of old raids (perhaps with a weekly quest for a lump of TW tokens or piece of Heroic loot) where mechanics are just so under-tuned your're practically handed the win, which again kind of defeats the point of what I think you were hoping for?

[McNeil]

Updated the OP with a concept of the The evacuation of Stormwind. It shares similarities yet also has a lot of differences compared to the Defense of Hearthglen, going for unique experiences to try to make these historic events look as epic as possible.

[Zyky]

Warfronts left a very sour taste in the players mouth because they were halfassed, Blizzards motto lately is doing the least amount of work to push something out with the bare minimum. Honestly this would just end up being halfassed too, which would kill the it for the diehard Warcraft fans seeing events like Hearthglen being shit on by terrible development team. Blizzard needs to first find themselves and realize that they can't get away with putting out significantly subpar content like Warfronts before they ruin other ideas that have the potential of being amazing(like this idea for example).

[rrayy]

This idea suffers the same issue that Warfronts have: Sounds fun on paper until you actually do it and realize it's literally half the raid going AFK while the other half lazily pushes the required buttons to make it end.

Sorry, but I have never been a Warfront where half the raid was AFK'ing. You are making it completely up.

[Relapses]

Sorry, but I have never been a Warfront where half the raid was AFK'ing. You are making it completely up.

I'm going to have to invoke Poe's Law here. I honestly cannot tell if you're being sarcastic.

[Tiwack]

I'll always be down for more gnomie adventures.