I Dream of the Day WoW Releases Player Mod Tools and Servers

[Edward Wu]

WoW despite being a behemoth of a video game success-wise, doesn't have an infinite lifespan. They are beginning to dig into the classical eras of WoW and offering that alongside the modern version of the game. Retail WoW has gone through 8 expansions now and those will soon be in double digit numbers. How many times can they iterate on the game before its completely stale? Not only that, but it feels like the player base is splintering further and further as the years go by, rather than unifying. Players can have massively different goals and desires when it comes to WoW these days.

So, I'm not asking them to add this now or requesting it as a feature, but just opening up discussion on it. Blizzard releasing mod tools and servers for players to run their own versions of WoW hosted officially by Blizzard (payed for by the server owner, of course)?

Would you be interested in this king of thing?
Is it even a realistic possibility?
What kind of quality control should there be in place so not just any rando can sign up for their own server?

It's not an unheard of idea for MMO's. Neverwinter Online has offered players the chance to create their own dungeons and zones and host them on servers for people to join.

I imagine in my head a dropdown list of player-run servers, much like the official list with the name and a small description of what the server is about, with a clear view of the current pop (since it's not Blizzarrd's they don't need to worry about masking that) and eventually, only the most dedicated and focused dev teams would have servers remaining. Business-wise something like an upfront fee charged by Blizzard to sign up for a server and monthly payments to Blizzard to continue hosting that servers. Any advertising for that server would be entirely be left to the responsibility of the player owner of the server. To generate money to keep these servers afloat, the server owner could ask for donations and a portion of the proceeds would go directly to Blizzard. And of course, to access these servers you would need a subscription to WoW.

People might have knee-jerk responses to this thread but I envision this as years down the road, possibly decade+ in any realistic sense, when they've truly emptied all resources and fresh ideas and WoW is probably nearly 30 years old.

[Triceron]

Could be good if for an isolated chunk of content. Have a true sandbox zone and let players go ham.

[Beet]

Would be amazing. We’d get a better classic than classic if they did this. Could have vanilla launch with its actual vanilla patch so warriors wouldn’t be wrecking raids instantly.

[Edward Wu]

Would be amazing. We’d get a better classic than classic if they did this. Could have vanilla launch with its actual vanilla patch so warriors wouldn’t be wrecking raids instantly.

You can take it even futher rather than just a player's perfect vision of different eras of WoW.

With mod tools someone can make a genuine Warcraft 1+2 MMO and design a game around that. It'd be cool as hell.