Best ways to make capitals useful???

[ohwell]

Make "The Sims" like activities you can only do in cities to create more immersion.

I mean people have wanted player housing for a long time and the garrison showed they were capable of it. I'm sure different people would flock to different cities if their "home" would be different based on the city. Otherwise, the main city of each faction serves its purpose just fine, but this would give people a reason to use a different one.

[Demsi]

I would like to see class trainers return, there was something special about going back to town to train every other level, pick up supplies and search the AH for some decent blues, it's those small things that i really appreciate in classic

[schwank05]

I don't care about capitals and think every new major hub in each xpac needs everything the capital cities had so you don't have to waste a HS CD on going back to use AH. My biggest gripe with SL is that moving between zones takes forever.

[Kokolums]

I would like to see class trainers return, there was something special about going back to town to train every other level, pick up supplies and search the AH for some decent blues, it's those small things that i really appreciate in classic

Maybe a personal armorsmith in the city. Every time you level, it has a chance to offer some useful items in its shop.

[AngerFork]

I've definitely been one of those pushing to give the homeless races of Azeroth a home. It feels almost depressing to me to see so many races of Azeroth stuffed into Stormwind & Orgrimmar only to be largely ignored in future storylines, such as what we saw with the Worgen nearly immediately in Cata. But there is some truth to the idea that simply building them to have them in place isn't enough, we have to have reasons to actually go there and not just funnel into whatever the city hub for the moment is.

While I'm hesitant to agree on a full city-building system just due to the immense art resources/phasing such an endeavor would likely take, I do feel we should be doing race-based quests originating from the capitals. Even starting with small breadcrumbs into the next bit of content would be useful. Imagine if Shadowlands had started with a breadcrumb quest from each capital giving a quick update: Blood Elves talking about the hunt for Sylvanas, Forsaken looking to find who they are now, Mechagnomes giving a quick update on how their reintegration with the rest of the gnomes is going. It would force at least a bit of growth in small doses and give me a reason to be a Worgen Druid vs. a Night Elf Druid.

From there, I would absolutely expand it out to have one race-based questing objective per expansion, unlocked a bit at a time with each patch. Worgen could work on cleaning up Gilneas, Forsaken could look at properly electing Voss or Calia, Void Elves could do crazy Void experiments. I would also add in the portal rooms to each city or make a portal in each city to connect to a separate portal network. The current setup funnels people specifically to SW/Org rather than all over the world. This would at least give people one reason to visit their city each patch.

Beyond that, we still need people to have a reason to keep visiting. You could change racials to be more like a mini-talent tree only adjustable in the city, but that may lead to weirdness with the raiding crowd. Vendor adjustments are probably not an option at this point as near everything is available via toys/mounts. FFXIV does a good job of tying current story in with all of their past cities, so there's often a reason to return. That may be an option to look at as well.

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

Just give them all of the stuff they gave Orgrimmar and Stormwind. I'd love to have Undercity be my main city.

[Beloren]

I've definitely been one of those pushing to give the homeless races of Azeroth a home. It feels almost depressing to me to see so many races of Azeroth stuffed into Stormwind & Orgrimmar only to be largely ignored in future storylines, such as what we saw with the Worgen nearly immediately in Cata. But there is some truth to the idea that simply building them to have them in place isn't enough, we have to have reasons to actually go there and not just funnel into whatever the city hub for the moment is.

While I'm hesitant to agree on a full city-building system just due to the immense art resources/phasing such an endeavor would likely take, I do feel we should be doing race-based quests originating from the capitals. Even starting with small breadcrumbs into the next bit of content would be useful. Imagine if Shadowlands had started with a breadcrumb quest from each capital giving a quick update: Blood Elves talking about the hunt for Sylvanas, Forsaken looking to find who they are now, Mechagnomes giving a quick update on how their reintegration with the rest of the gnomes is going. It would force at least a bit of growth in small doses and give me a reason to be a Worgen Druid vs. a Night Elf Druid.

From there, I would absolutely expand it out to have one race-based questing objective per expansion, unlocked a bit at a time with each patch. Worgen could work on cleaning up Gilneas, Forsaken could look at properly electing Voss or Calia, Void Elves could do crazy Void experiments. I would also add in the portal rooms to each city or make a portal in each city to connect to a separate portal network. The current setup funnels people specifically to SW/Org rather than all over the world. This would at least give people one reason to visit their city each patch.

Beyond that, we still need people to have a reason to keep visiting. You could change racials to be more like a mini-talent tree only adjustable in the city, but that may lead to weirdness with the raiding crowd. Vendor adjustments are probably not an option at this point as near everything is available via toys/mounts. FFXIV does a good job of tying current story in with all of their past cities, so there's often a reason to return. That may be an option to look at as well.

That's why I want race quests too, to be tied into all the major expansion storylines and they have to keep going back to their city.

But i think it would be nice to have interesting things to do in cities above vendor functions.

Ways to boost community and interaction.

They could also put many gateways to nearby zones in cities too, not just being able to fly there, but portal there from cities. your class is important too, your class hall has assignments and updates too,

I like an npc system, and you can change the NPCs in your racial city. If you want blood elf NPC followers, you need to go to Silvermoon, want Tauren ones, go to Thunderbluff, want troll ones go to Dazar'alor etc. want hunter belves, get em at the Farstrider enclave etc etc

[Compher]

Add portals to each capital, done. People will spread out to what they think is the nicest city.

People would go to whatever city has the most convenient/optimal layout.

[Soon-TM]

Just give them all of the stuff they gave Orgrimmar and Stormwind. I'd love to have Undercity be my main city.

Sadly, UC is a pool of blistering blighted !@$%, so we'll have to wait until they can be arsed to give new capital cities to all of WoW's refugee races. And that won't happen as long as we are fooling around in parallel worlds/dimensions, or other !@#$ of that kind. I would suggest adding a barbershop and a xmog station to all the remaining capital cities - what could we lose, anyway?

[Lane]

I would never set foot in Orgrimmar if it weren't for all the amenities Blizzard has given it over the years. I think it makes the least amount of cultural sense too, of all the Horde capitals it should've been Silvermoon that had a portal room, barber, transmog, etc. It ought to have a harbor like Stormwind does too.

[Hastis]

Next expansion about world rework with flying in exodar silvermoon, etc story about every one of capital cities, pvp vendors in orgri, pve vendor in thunder bluff new curenncy in silvermoon...

[Geckoo]

The most basic thing to do would be to make them all equally useful, meaning having the same important vendors, services and portals be present on all cities. But let's be real... what's the point? we get a new central hub each expansion, it usually has all the services we need except one and that's the only reason why those lobbies we call capital cities still have a lot of people around them.

Truth is that the fact that the other cities are usually empty is a consequence of World of Warcraft being all about the latest content on whatever planet, recently re-discovered continent, plane of existence we are exploring and too little about the actual massive world that made the game what it is. Don't expect a city to be full of life when you don't expect players to be on that area at all.

[Triceron]

It's kind of backwards to put any more emphasis on Capital cities when we're getting to the point where we're going off-world every other expansion. When we do come back it's always exploring some new island/uncovered land where it makes more sense to just make something closer or more central as the local hub.

There's really no reason to revamp the old cities because it's all old news. There's zero integration into the current storylines.

If there's any reason to revamp a major city, then they should treat it like how they did Suramar, and seed a ton of stuff to do. I just don't see that happening for any future expansion though.

[Zantera]

I think the idea initially to have every capital be the same (in terms of what they offer) is flawed in itself because when every city basically offers the same things, it becomes all about placement and such which just excludes capitals like Silvermoon and Exodar to begin with (and also them not having flying doesn't help).

Personally I wouldn't mind if they gave every capital a few unique things to make them stand out. Maybe Stormwind has the best tailoring trainer (with extra recipes), maybe Ironforge has the best armorsmiths for Blacksmithing. Just add something to kinda give each of them a unique feel.

[javierdsv]

Make it so your characters need to pee, take a bath, and sleep. Only in a capital city.
Profit (?)

They would need to destroy Orgrimmar tho, no one would take a bath there even if getting paid.