WoW, a World Reborn

[Aviditas]

All this talk about WoW and FFXIV had me thinking of an interesting concept and figured I'd bump my post count to share it.

Does anyone else though think this is a perfect opportunity for us to just flat out lose? The Jailer invited us to watch the end of reality. How great would it be if we just finally bit the dust against the BBEG?

We go into that fight, first guild to clear it on mythic has their characters deleted but immortalized in game as "the heroes that tried" (I'm kidding about this). Something along these lines though where we lose the fight, reality gets destroyed, but "insert Thrall/Jaina/Arthas here" gives their lives and transports us to a new world to start WoW, a World Reborn, where Blizzard just tries to get us into a brand new story and set us up with something along of the lines of WoW 2. Just give us a fresh start and figure things out from there?

Obviously, there would be some challenges, and as much as I love WoW, the story is getting to be a bit much. I'd like to just try and wipe the slate clean and pick it up with a fresh start.

[jellmoo]

I mean, in theory that's great, but the reality is that they would have to put the game into maintenance mode for several years while they develop this new WoW. They would certainly lose a ton of money in the process, and Blizzard loves them their money.

[Florena]

FFXIV only did it because of what a dumpster fire 1.0 was, far more than how divisive Shadowlands has been. I don't see it happening, nor do I see people wanting to see the old reality wiped away entirely. That'd be a quick way to wipe out what investment people DO have in the lore and world. ARR was more like Cataclysm. There was a five year time skip and the world got an update but it wasn't a new reality or timeline or anything like that. So people invested in the 1.0 world could continue that same thread.

[Advent]

Please god, never let this happen to wow. That's likely the way to kill it for good.

[bloodmoth13]

No its a bad idea.
Well, losing and facing a cataclysm would be fine, just cata in reverse really...
In fact that would have made cata a lot cooler if the cataclysm happened after fighting dw as a last laugh

[ZazuuPriest]

we have wow classic for people who want to experience an untarnished pure world of warcraft

[aceperson]

i would but you have to keep in mind a few things.

1. the jailer has now openly said that everyone shall serve. if we lose, we won't have anything even close to normal wow.

2. that leaves little to no room for the stupid redemption arc sylvanas is going to have.

3. the best way to have gone about this was have a team work on a new engine in the background as a secret. when it was ready, start remaking wow in it. then, once all of the prior content was done, to begin work on new content and announce this transition along with 9.0. that would build hype around how the story is sl would go and what to look forward to for 10.0.

i just don't see it. but wow is ran by idiots now. so it might happen.

[Biomega]

1. the jailer has now openly said that everyone shall serve. if we lose, we won't have anything even close to normal wow.

2. that leaves little to no room for the stupid redemption arc sylvanas is going to have.

Those could easily be combined, though. The Jailer wins, but as a last act of redemption Sylvanas sacrifices herself to make the new version of reality not COMPLETELY like the Jailer wanted - it's still a hellhole, but there's some hope left. Boom, there's your entry point into a new world.

[Arikara]

Losing and having a tonal shift in how the writing is being handled would perhaps be the ideal scenario

Losing and doing shit to people's characters or otherwise resetting the game or creating a whole new game is an excellent way to kill the franchise for good, which frankly, at this rate might be preferable to the abomination it has been turning into these last few years

[aceperson]

Those could easily be combined, though. The Jailer wins, but as a last act of redemption Sylvanas sacrifices herself to make the new version of reality not COMPLETELY like the Jailer wanted - it's still a hellhole, but there's some hope left. Boom, there's your entry point into a new world.

so you want sylvanas, a mortal with next to no power compared to an unleashed jailer, to somehow screw over his plans to remake the entire multiverse? ya, i don't see that happening without a bigger butt pull than we already got with the sigils.

[rhorle]

Just give us a fresh start and figure things out from there?

Isn't that what each expansion is though? A fresh start with a new story. Shadowlands has a lot of new elements. It also runs into the problem that if people are not satisfied with the story Blizzard has created now then they likely won't be happy with whatever the "fresh start" entails. As it is the same Blizzard creating things.

Also we essentially lost at the end of Warlords of Draenor since Gul'dan escaped and caused the events of Legion.

[Myradin]

"Fresh start' is a sure fire way to absolutely kill the game. Hard cutting everyone off from everything they've worked for will just annoy people, nor is old content the problem with the game. They've proven time and time again they can do whatever they want with the numbers and adjustments, so its not a 'too many levels' or 'numbers getting too big' issue.

A big part of what keeps WoW alive so long is people's attachments to their characters and their collectibles. Its one of the few forms of content in this game that isn't tied to power level that people seem to enjoy doing.

Despite how much people like claiming WoW's engine is old, its received a ton of updates over the years. Its engine isn't 'holding it back'. While class design can be a bit awkward at times, its still quick and responsive, unlike alot of those clunky 'real targeting' mmos. Graphics aren't going to magically make the game better, nor are they really bad if you have a good pc.

There's no guarantee the current team would do any better with a fresh start. Heck, one of the main complaints the community has these days is how much they reset things every expansion. How is resetting literally everything going to make things better? How do we know the designers of the current systems people hate aren't just going to make them again?

Now, I agree the plot needs to move on past the WC3 chars, they've been milked to death. But they should be building up new chars gradually and having the old characters retire or be killed off. They also need to get past this silly "Every expac is a year apart' nonsense. But just throwing out the whole setting and making a new one makes the game not warcraft anymore, it'd be an entirely other game just sharing the name.

ARR worked because the game was barely all that old when they did so.

"WOW2' is just an easy out. Something the mind goes "Surely just making a new one would fix everything" when good chances, it wouldn't. WoW ran on the fame of the warcraft franchise, and too many opportunities to tie its lore elements in with it. If WoW2 just tosses it all out, its not only not WoW, it'll also simply fail.

[kaminaris]

Yes I had this idea (and other people as well including streamers) the moment they saw thanos bootleg = jailer.

Also OP doesn't suggest going to vanilla as in having to regress all the systems back to it.

[SunspotAnims]

Rebooting Azeroth is just throwing away decades of history. The logic I'm trying to follow for suggestions like this, or for a timeskip for that matter, is what exactly do you want to get out of it? Let's say for example you're bringing the suggestion because you don't like the overly cosmic nature of the current plot, why is this the solution? Do you think we can't go from killing a death god to saving a village even though we've been doing that every expansion? Let's say you just don't like the lore in general, why do you think rebooting will make it better? That's a huge gamble compared to just trying to write a better story going forward.

On a gameplay level I think a revamp is on the table for a lot of things, but I don't think we need to tear down years of history to reflect that. A world revamp, for example, can just be a way of showing "here's what's been going on since the Cataclysm" without another cataclysm to kick it off.

[username993720]

Just give us a fresh start and figure things out from there?

That's a recipe for disaster.

[zorkuus]

WoW is a very slowly failing game that still makes a ton of money. FFXIV 1.0 was a total dumpster fire. They're not comparable.

[VinceVega]

Wow is not even close to the mountain of garbage the original FF was.... not even REMOTLY!

Wow is not doing so bad that it varrants a complete overhaul. Before that they go F2P and just expand the cashshop... then they can have a cashshop on par with all the others inculding FF14

[Thestrawman]

Yeah they could... But it's not needed. People still play WoW, people still enjoy WoW. You don't need to pull an ARR, you can just make a new game.

[Temp name]

Pretty much the only reason most casuals still play is because they've played the same game for a loooong time.. What will happen if they no longer have that attachment? Oh yeah, they'd fuck off.

[Geckoo]

I believe that this game (or franchise to be more precise) could benefit from a 'wow 2' with a new engine and new ideas. You can't compare it to FFXIV because they did what they had to do to fix a disaster, in this case the issue is that the game is really old and despite all the changes and improvements over the years, there is still a lot of baggage from stuff that made sense back in 2004 that in my opinion is just limiting the developers and as a consequence, the game.

A fresh start means that they can revisit some of those decisions in a way that an expansion will never allow.

I'm talking about things like redefining what a class is, how it works, how the whole combat system works or how the world works. Basically, the core of how the game works. Everything else is more malleable.

But this is all daydreaming, the main question would be: do they need to? and the answer is no. They can keep throwing expansions for many years and a lot of people will still be playing (without mentioning that older versions of the game are also a thing), if we take the last 3 expansions as an example, they clearly found an expansion mold with self-contained systems that allows them to deliver each expansion as a new ride on this massive theme park: once the ride is over, you just walk to the next one! So while the game could benefit from a second instance, the product clearly doesn't.