The Expansion after Shadowlands may be a “Soft Reboot” of WoW.

[Swnem]

This is hands down one of the worst ideas I've ever heard, honestly. If Blizzard actually included Battle Royale in WoW, the game would die very quickly. BR has absolutely no place in an MMO. As for your class ideas, that would basically be a rip off of Guild Wars 2.

Haha i was gonna ignore it but i totally agree with you. That sounded terrible!

New engine means they would have to port the whole game to a new engine. That would take years. Zero chance that would happen. Everything would be started from scratch with a new engine. Which is why they won't do it. It would go the way of every mmo sequel and not be the game that people wanted. WoW2 is simply a bad idea and likely doomed to fail.

[Claymore]

I definitely think "hitting the reset-button" to some extent would be incredibly useful. I would say they need to wrap up all this shit with "the Void Lords", hell maybe even bring the Titans into the mix and have them all die in some great "final battle", causing Azeroth (the Titan) to awaken, wiping out the Void Lords once and for all.

Then, as payment for your sacrifices, she puts you in a deep slumber while the world heals. When you awaken, thousands of years have passed, nature and wild beasts have overtaken the world, and the player races are divided and scattered, most simply tribes now. Kind of a "Breath of the Wild" vibe. When you awaken, Azeroth thanks you, says that you may help reshape the world, and then goes into a deep slumber herself.

From that point on, you just have a totally new "World" of Warcraft to explore, all new threats, new characters, all of it!

I'd probably also change things up, and say that ONLY players retain knowledge of how to use all these incredible abilities. So you're no longer being shown-up by folks like Jaina or Thrall, but instead YOU are the baddest dude around -- save for whatever these new threats are. Maybe some have ties to older threats (ie. a new group of cultists following in the Cult of the Damned, or maybe even a twisted view of the Scarlet Crusade), or brand-new stuff (ie. Kobolds creating entire underground colonies, maybe the Centaur have evolved to be even bigger and have re-established their empire).

Honestly, I would kind of dig it. Hell, maybe even Shadowlands remains playable, and this new thing is just "WoW 2" or something like that.

[TheRevenantHero]

I think you are too focused in fps BR, would be completely diferent for wow, as the camera, movement and spell makes it really special. And you say rip off GW2 as if its a bad thing. Shadowlands first area is copy pasta from gw2 with the final boss and all, everyone loved it. And i would love the map events like gw2 as much i would love the mounts with its special abilities

Battle Royale in an MMO would be trash and would attract the absolute WORST people to the game. I'd rather not have obnoxious Fortnite kids invading WoW. The community of woW is toxic enough as it is. BR is also an absolutely garbage game mode in my own opinion. As for ripping off GW2, there's a difference between using the same story beats and completely ripping off game mechanics. WoW needs to be original and the fact that they have been ripping other games off more and more (poorly, mind you) is causing the game to quickly die. the number of people playing the game now is a shell of what the population once was. Battle Royale introduction would be the final nail in the coffin.

Also, Blizzard has claimed that player housing would take far too much time to implement and would take away from game design. You really think they'd ever bother to make an entire new engine? Not a chance in hell.

[A Chozo]

I think the point people have is that in the lore our characters have creeped into the realm of extremely powerful beings. We have fought Kil'jaeden, Sargeras, Old Gods, and we won against them. We are past the point in the story that normal day to day villains are conceivable as threats. A coup to overthrow the King of Stormwind from pirates? Ha! I defeated a god that destroyed a thousand planets, you are just some upstart human.

The problem with WoW's story is not that there aren't directions to take and places to go, it is that once you have ascended far as we have lore wise, you are the the most powerful being on the planet. It's like we are playing Thanos but are on the Avengers.

They should've put more enfasis on how we managed to defeat such threats.

Where are the NPCs drunkly pointing out that our triunph against Argus was due to the Artifacts? Or how being a Chosen of Azeroth is an unfair advantage? That would make the world more alive and "lower the ego" of the player character.

"Oh yeah, 'you' defeated C'thun? I swear I saw an entire army equipped to the teeth enter Ahn'qiraj! If you are so great, why didn't you defeat him alone?" or something along those lines.

[Hayna]

Battle Royale in an MMO would be trash and would attract the absolute WORST people to the game. I'd rather not have obnoxious Fortnite kids invading WoW. The community of woW is toxic enough as it is. BR is also an absolutely garbage game mode in my own opinion. As for ripping off GW2, there's a difference between using the same story beats and completely ripping off game mechanics. WoW needs to be original and the fact that they have been ripping other games off more and more (poorly, mind you) is causing the game to quickly die. the number of people playing the game now is a shell of what the population once was. Battle Royale introduction would be the final nail in the coffin.

Also, Blizzard has claimed that player housing would take far too much time to implement and would take away from game design. You really think they'd ever bother to make an entire new engine? Not a chance in hell.

Agree with the comunity aspect, would be separated from the main game but yes, would invite some players to it.

And if blizzard doesnt want to implement a new engine for a 10.0(wow2?) expansion, i think this would be the death of the game. World of Warcraft without a nice and smooth WAR aspect already made the game loose too many players. The lags and crashes are not the pc or the internet, its this crap old engine.

[TheRevenantHero]

Agree with the comunity aspect, would be separated from the main game but yes, would invite some players to it.

And if blizzard doesnt want to implement a new engine for a 10.0(wow2?) expansion, i think this would be the death of the game. World of Warcraft without a nice and smooth WAR aspect already made the game loose too many players. The lags and crashes are not the pc or the internet, its this crap old engine.

Battle Royale would tank the game hard. Because all the toxic people who love BR games would chase away people trying to play other aspects of the game. WoW would just become a mostly BR game because that would be the largest portion of the playerbase.

Blizzard isn't going to make a new engine for WoW. they might make tweaks here and there but there is no way in hell they'd devote time to making a brand new engine. coupled with the terrible game decisions they made in BfA and for Shadowlands, I really don't see WoW living very much longer.

[Pury]

GGG makes PoE 2, based on regular PoE with a lot of updates and changes, but it won't be a completely new game from zero on a completely different engine.
Blizzard does the same with Overwatch 2, as they said, they are "redefining the definition of sequel".
Not 100% new game from zero, but a lot of changes and updates, enough to call it part 2.
Maybe this is how WoW 2 is going to be. Game needs a lot of updates and changes to move forward, but expecting everything getting rebooted from the scratch is unrealistic.
Soft reboots and sequels based on existing game is how all this huge service/mmo games will get their new parts 2/3 etc? Looks like it so far.

[Hastis]

My biggest problem with the story telling and lore in WoW, is the fact that all of these major events are essentially compacted into what, like a 10/20 year period? Probably even less? Especially when we are told how old the planet is, yet everything just happens spit-fire one after another at this point in history. Now obviously the consequences of one event will lead to another, but I think the lack of "breathing room" in a sense, is why people may have gotten tired of the "story" of the franchise and how we cleared through so many major threats on the to-do list.

In my personal opinion, if they are to do a "soft-reboot" expansion, I think they should set the game some decent ways off into the future, like anywhere from 30-100 years, maybe even longer. Let things mellow out, let new background lore build-up in that period we are not playing that can become the new quests like Vanilla had, introduce new characters or the future versions of them years later. For our own characters let them be the exact same as before, but consider them the descendants of your original character, complete with options like "family-heirlooms" you can obtain which were the hi-end gear and legendarys you already had, scale-down the content to the point it feels like fresh new character's quests, even though its a continued expansion, they could even make the accomplishments of your previous character as the new quests, like a previous raid-boss they destroyed has returned or recovering a piece of their mythic level armor. Hell, doesn't even have to be a descendant, they could just pull a Breath of the Wild and have our characters sealed away for a 100 years or so, or let the more long-lived races or undead not even need that bit.

no, everyone is dead it will be time for a new characters but they will be empty without those who we killed

[Twdft]

Battle Royale in an MMO would be trash and would attract the absolute WORST people to the game.

Also: a hundred rogues sneaking around trying to avoid each other until the map collapses on them. Such fun.

[TheRevenantHero]

Also: a hundred rogues sneaking around trying to avoid each other until the map collapses on them. Such fun.

I didn't even think of that and it sounds absolutely terrible.

[cozzri]

I think time crash could be a pretty cool concept. The infinite dragon flight and bronze dragon flight attempting to undo the damage from the death world unraveling; and in doing so time gets warped, some zones are driven back in time, others are warped into the future; kind of like alternate dimensions crashing together on a larger scale than caverns of time.

[Dug]

do you "GIEF US WOW 2" even try to think what a WoW 2 would mean? you know like characters gone.. i doubt that even you WoW 2 screamers will just leave behind your characters you invested 15 years into .. gosh

Wow gosh I never thought of it that way. Thanks for this new startling revelation on the implications of WoW 2
Yeah I don't care about leaving some pixels behind to start anew in a brand new fun game. Have done it many times over in countless video game sequels.

[rrayy]

Blizzard isn't going to make a new engine for WoW. they might make tweaks here and there but there is no way in hell they'd devote time to making a brand new engine. coupled with the terrible game decisions they made in BfA and for Shadowlands, I really don't see WoW living very much longer.

People like you said the same thing after Cata, MOP, WoD, Legion and now BFA. Yet, WoW continues to move right along and continues to be profitable. IT has been wwrong and will continue to be wrong. WoW will keep on keeping on.

[Felmourn]

I think this idea came up during WoD as well due to there being a time skip while we were there.

I read about 5 1/2 pages worth of replies to get the gist of what's being talked about unless it's drastically changed.

What WoW needs is to re-establish their fundamental core pillars of the game. I'm not talking about Horde vs. Alliance, or hamster wheel to keep players moving towards X, Y, and Z goals. As we see, WoW has "ABC" philosophy for patch x.x.1 and then changes completely in patch x.x.2, by patch x.x.3 we have a whole new meta of how WoW works for THIS expansion. I think why people consider Vanilla - Wrath as the golden era of WoW is because they built off what Vanilla was. Sure, philosophies changed a bit, but there was still a core to the game that you could feel from Vanilla to Wrath. It felt like the same game, just better as the content progressed. Now, it feels like another "soft reboot" every expansion.

I think what could help as well is since Blizzard builds their own engines, they should do an overhaul. Keep that Warcraft feel, but improve it more! They are getting a good start on that with the new customization options coming in SL.

Just my 2 Copper.

[Moonrage]

Let the dead stay dead please. There is no point in killing characters if they can come back right away.

[Dastreus]

wow 2 please

[Moonrage]

Also, how big will this time skip be? A 100 years? Most humans and orcs we know will be dead, but most elves, draenei and dwarves will still be alive.

Unless we immediately skip like 5000 years, which I doubt.

[Soon-TM]

Also, how big will this time skip be? A 100 years? Most humans and orcs we know will be dead, but most elves, draenei and dwarves will still be alive.

Unless we immediately skip like 5000 years, which I doubt.

Well, the skip might be however long the writers want, since it could be easily explained that 2 years in the SL equal to 5/10/30 or whatever the devs want.

[LorDC]

I think why people consider Vanilla - Wrath as the golden era of WoW is because they built off what Vanilla was. Sure, philosophies changed a bit, but there was still a core to the game that you could feel from Vanilla to Wrath.

Really? Your "changed a bit" is introduction of achievements, arena, dailies, phasing, complete 180 on a dungeon design, half a dozen iterations on raid design. Compared to that, we didn't see a single change in the game since the beginning of the Legion.

[Chromell]

Didn't they say in an interview they WONT do big revamps anymore?

They also said, many times, we wouldn't get to transmog into legendary items, yet here we are.