What would you change in the current retail game for it to be the best it can be?

[RemasteredClassic]

I would love to see them turn old raids into 5 to 10 man flexible mega dungeons with their own queue, dropping mythic 0 level gear from the last boss and heroic dungeon level gear from other bosses using original loot tables as an addition to Chromie time for levels 50 to 60 players.

Also would be nice to see all end-game heroic and mythic dungeons from previous expansions not currently available in Chromie time or TW added to the timewalking roaster of dungeons as well as enable old content endgame open world zones to scale to 60 during the TW event period for level appropriate rewards.

Timewalking should repeat every week rotating through all previous expansions. New bonus objectives can be added using the current TW cycle instead by making it so the gear dropped is of higher quality and so is the difficulty.

Basically old raids would have their own separate queue for levels 50 to 60 available via Chromie time. Dungeons and open world end game zones become part of TW with level appropriate rewards and new world quests scaled to levels in the range of 10-60 all over the world map, and not only in the latest expansion.

Account wide progress on all reputations and major expansion specific long quest lines such as the legion quest line to unlock certain weapon skins.

F2P expanded to level 50.

WoW token limited to conveying gold to playtime and no longer purchasable with real money (no more pay2win).

Ability to play with anyone from any region.

An option to subscribe to individual classic versions of the game at 5 dollars a month, with the 15 dollars a month continuing to give access to all versions.

What would you change? This question concerns the current state of the game and not future content additions.

[MrLachyG]

Also would be nice to see all end-game heroic and mythic dungeons from previous expansions not currently available in Chromie time or TW added to the timewalking roaster of dungeons as well as enable old content endgame open world zones to scale to 60 during the TW event period for level appropriate rewards.

Timewalking should repeat every week rotating through all previous expansions. New bonus objectives can be added using the current TW cycle instead by making it so the gear dropped is of higher quality and so is the difficulty.

Basically old raids would have their own separate queue for levels 50 to 60 available via Chromie time. Dungeons and open world end game zones become part of TW with level appropriate rewards and new world quests scaled to levels in the range of 10-60 all over the world map, and not only in the latest expansion.
.

your other ideas are generally ok, but I'm going to focus on this one and why it's the worst idea in conception.

Timewalking SHOULD NOT be an "every week" event. Currently the special events run for a week and that is fine. Otherwise, why stop there? make every week mythic dungeon week too! oh and Pet Battle week, that should be every week as well. Also some of those dungeons are trash, much better to stick with 6 but they should definitely change it up more often (which I believe they are doing in 9.1.5)

Next we come to TW raids. If the "special event" reason wasn't enough for you to drop this madness that is asking for TW events every week, then the raids should be. The focus should be on doing the new raid, not the older ones that are outdated. Compare the scenarios:

Scenario 1: ok raid opens next week oh and it's also timewalking week - make sure to do your 5 TW dungeons before raid so you don't get a double up of loot.

Scenario 2: ok raid opens next week oh and it's also timewalking week - make sure to do your 5 TW dungeons before raid so you don't get a double up of loot. Now it's BC week so since TW raids all drop heroic gear we're going to be running every single raid so that we get the maximum gear for the first week. So I hope you're not busy because Wednesday we're running Gruul/Mag/Kara, then Thursday we're doing SSC and TK, then Friday we're running BT. Saturday is our day off but then we're back at it Sunday with Sunwell Plateau and hopefully Battle for Mt Hyjal if we have time. Monday we finish off Mt Hyjal and then we can start progressing on the actual raid tier.

Which one do you think people will actually do? Even if people do the second scenario, it will lead to mass burnout. The current timewalking system is fine, it doesn't need to be every week and every dungeon/raid. They should definitely change the dungeons and raids more frequently

[RemasteredClassic]

your other ideas are generally ok, but I'm going to focus on this one and why it's the worst idea in conception.

Timewalking SHOULD NOT be an "every week" event. Currently the special events run for a week and that is fine. Otherwise, why stop there? make every week mythic dungeon week too! oh and Pet Battle week, that should be every week as well. Also some of those dungeons are trash, much better to stick with 6 but they should definitely change it up more often (which I believe they are doing in 9.1.5)

Next we come to TW raids. If the "special event" reason wasn't enough for you to drop this madness that is asking for TW events every week, then the raids should be. The focus should be on doing the new raid, not the older ones that are outdated. Compare the scenarios:

Scenario 1: ok raid opens next week oh and it's also timewalking week - make sure to do your 5 TW dungeons before raid so you don't get a double up of loot.

Scenario 2: ok raid opens next week oh and it's also timewalking week - make sure to do your 5 TW dungeons before raid so you don't get a double up of loot. Now it's BC week so since TW raids all drop heroic gear we're going to be running every single raid so that we get the maximum gear for the first week. So I hope you're not busy because Wednesday we're running Gruul/Mag/Kara, then Thursday we're doing SSC and TK, then Friday we're running BT. Saturday is our day off but then we're back at it Sunday with Sunwell Plateau and hopefully Battle for Mt Hyjal if we have time. Monday we finish off Mt Hyjal and then we can start progressing on the actual raid tier.

Which one do you think people will actually do? Even if people do the second scenario, it will lead to mass burnout. The current timewalking system is fine, it doesn't need to be every week and every dungeon/raid. They should definitely change the dungeons and raids more frequently

Exactly. I agree with everything you said and it’s exactly why I’m asking for the old raids to be turned into mega dungeons with loot that doesn’t compete with current raids or m+ dungeons.

TW rotations would still be there but they would focus on making that week especially more worth it to do the TW content outside of its weekly rotation.

[Skylarking]

Playable fruit characters and instead of killing people you get points for who can hug the most people

[Paperfox]

How about this: figure out the profile of your customer base. Then design the majority of the content for the majority of the customer base, keeping in mind that there will be overlap. If 90% fall into the "casual" audience, then design 90% of the content for them.

Have a few dedicated servers/realms for the e-sports customers. They can rocket through leveling so they can get to end game and then they can compete/play with players of their own skill level.

The remaining servers/realms would be for the 90% of players.

[exochaft]

Playable fruit characters and instead of killing people you get points for who can hug the most people

You know... I'm seeing the Fruit Ninja game in a whole new light. Maybe Blizz has a kink that I didn't think of... sick bastards!

But yeah, what needs to change for WoW is that the social pillar needs to be reconstructed. That will rub some players wrong, but you can give the players what they want, even if they didn't think they wanted it initially. What's different between what I'm promoting and what's being shoved down the players' throats right now is that good change for the game makes it fun and engaging, not "Top 10 Game Changes That Gets Me Twitter Likes". I'm being slightly hyperbolic, but then again we're at the point where hyperbolic is closer to the truth than describing things in a tame manner.

[Al Gorefiend]

• Fix the level cap at 60 permanently
• Let every expansion scale to 60
• Balance all endgame from every expansion at 60
• Organize every expansion's content as a "chapter" in the Warcraft story
• Double down on using phasing to reflect changes to the world as you play through the chapters.
• Reward chapter and endgame progress with customizations for your class, subclass, and race, as ways to customize your playstyle.
• Cap the item level gear curve at endgame permanently, so that normal - heroic - mythic difficulty act as true difficulties rather than gear checks.
• With the gear curve permanently capped, revalue rare, epic, and legendary items as chapter-specific endgame progress rewards.
• Rebalance professions, especially crafting ones, for the permanently capped level progress, to make them useful across all content.
• Remove factions from being anything but a story device, and allow players to team up in PvE regardless of faction.
• Make flying available all of the time, but significantly reduce the speed of it so that ground mounts remain useful.
• Rebalance reputation grinds to be more alt-friendly.
• Remove filler achievements.

1. The level cap is fixed at 60, presumably. I think your first idea is actually happening but we'll see in 10.0
2. Agreed. If someone likes WotLK they should be able to level 1-60 in Northrend. Thought this was the plan until I hit level 50 midway through collecting 7/12 quest items and they just teleport you back to Orgrimmar and turn the quests grey.
3. I think the endgame should be constantly evolving, no support on this one
4. Agreed
5. Super agree, they've been teasing the "potential for phasing" since MoP.
6. WoW does this already, maybe not to the extent you hope for though
7. I don't think I'm understanding this right. Cap item level gear curve at endgame? It already is if you play a lot, and if its hard capped you kill the endless grind concept of WoW
8. Under this design, do legendaries of previous expacs all carry a same level of power? So if you play through each expac, you have a character with a legendary weapon, cloak, ring, any items from Legion in every slot?
9. Hard agree. Professions should go to the runescape/new world design where every player can level every profession.
10. Absolutely disagree. You cant say something more polarizing than this in any WoW community these days, seems a 50/50 split on who wants this.
11. Flying from level 1 sounds like a bad idea for the health of the game, I dunno though. Maybe as a reward for having a certain number of max level characters.
12. They tend to do this around the end of an expacs cycle, or give people more avenues to earn rep with a faction they need.
13. Achievements are useless so unless the pop-up on your screen really bugs you, just ignore them.

[potis]

The game simply needs another "Cataclysm" in the sense of consolidated quest lines, the same way they changed many areas to have their own story line, but on a "big story per expansion" scaling level.

All the other MMOs some people are "praising", simply have forced story mode as content, while WoW is endgame based, but this new-gen of people cant seem to understand that, so everyone actually doing content is inherently evil, elitist, racist, non SJW or whatever else is the latest hate trend.

Something i did notice while talking to many new-gen players is that they cant comprehend the RPG differently from MMORPG (more like MMOARPG now but yeah) part of WoW, they think they are gonna play Skyrim in cartoony graphics and many times as a veteran i am asked "HOW DO I PLAY THE STORY" and they simply dont understand when i tell them "Whelp, you should have been playing when it was active i guess".

1)So, when it comes to old content, create and consolidate a story line per expansion the same way most other games do to keep all these people busy, the same way Vanilla kept everyone busy and people are praising it, if they wanna play 400 hours on things they should do in 40 hours, let them play for 400 hours.

The problem though is, the game started having "Story per expansion" around MoP, and before that its just raids and a general story line, so its not that easy pre-MoP.

2)Game design shift, enough with listening to the 0.1% of weirdos that want "RPG" elements, make things fun, make things account wide, even if slower to farm, and let us play as we want.

SL would have been fine if instead of 4 spread out campaigns, we had the leveling story, followed by big ass campaign, expanded upon, and things unlocked into a "Choose whatever ability, whenever you want", and similar things.

The game became literally worst with this stupid decision of "RPG choice".


TLDR, Create a story mode for all these new-gen kids that cant comprehend that WoW is about raiding and not about ANIMU story line, same time its a legit problem since for the last few years, all the newbie players i have met literally ask me "How do i play the story", and frankly for a 17 year old game, its weird they havent abused the fact yet, where they can simply reuse every asset, add 50 quests, and make new players play like 400 hours on irrelevant scenarions/irrelevant content while leveling to make $$ off them.

Game shift design again, the same way they did at Legion, but this time while listening to the community as a whole and not some weird us RPers with "RPG CHOICE MATTERS", its 2021, make things account wide already and let us play as we want.

Rest of the game is fine, just keep all the bad players busy longer with irrelevant content, as they did the first few years and everyone was happy.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

• Reimplement all removed content. Vanilla questlines, Battle for the Undercity, the MoP and WoD legendary questlines, challenge mode, the Mage Tower (NOT as a fomo timed event), etc.

• Remove borrowed power grinds. Grinds are not a substitute for actual, quality content.

• Remove item levels. No gear grind whatsoever. Gear does not give stats at all.

• Remove Allied Race requirements and make them playable on a new account from the very beginning.

• Revamp War Mode so that you can't fly while in it and add honorable combat (1v1) zones to the game.

• Add reputation storylines back into the game. World quests are not a substitute.

• Remove cloth/leather/mail/plate restrictions on transmog.

• Add the real Alterac Valley back into the game.

• Start making new BGs again.

• Add player housing.

• Stop designing the game around you having to buy a WoW token.

• Revamp proving grounds and make beating it on silver a requirement to queue for instances with other players.

• Revamp professions and make them fun minigames like FFXIV.

• No flying requirements whatsoever and stop making zones inconvenient to travel around on foot.

• Fire all of the current writers, bring Metzen and the Wrath-MoP era writers back.

• Bring back Russell Brower and Jeremy Soule and have them make good music for WoW again. If they're unavailable then hire a Japanese composer.

- - - Updated - - -

Make flying available all of the time, but significantly reduce the speed of it so that ground mounts remain useful

Or just copy GW2's award winning mount system. One of the very few things that game actually did right. I'm surprised it hasn't been cloned in other games. For those who don't know, in GW2 you can unlock a Griffon mount, which is a glorified glider. You have momentum based flying where your mount has an energy bar that is used to flap its wing and gain height. Diving into a freefall will give you increased momentum, and also regenerated your energy bar. Skilled players can maintain their height and fly far but it's challenging.

[saintminya]

A few key changes:
- Enable all zones to scale to max level, and allow you to level in whatever manner you like. I don't just mean opting to go do Wrath, or Cata, or whatever you fancy, but rather to be able to mix and match entirely.
- No timegating or locking flying behind achievements or questlines. Make it cost enough gold so that it isn't just automatically earned, and unlock it at level 25 or 30.
- Design zones like WoD and Legion where it was cool to initially traverse on foot, but not overly dense and convulted like Bfa and the current mess.
- Healthy blend of WQs, Dailies, Reputation quests.
- Quit solely prioritizing raiding and m+. Don't skimp on them either, but new BGs would be nice. Even MoP scenarios could be brought back.
- Go back to ilvl and stat priority. No more AP and "gimmick of the patch" gear.
- Legion style professions.
- Put some bloody effort into the story and ditch the "rule of cool".

[Edit]
- Forgot all about Timewalking. Make all dungeons accesible at all times. Raids can stay as special events... for now.

[epigramx]

Make it illegal to get any rewards with mundande grindings. Every high level gear drop must happen after a skilled encounter.

But it will never happen; they think it sells subs to grind; they might be wrong too since a better game brings subs.

[Biomega]

I'm honestly struggling to come up with simple fixes, as so many fundamental mechanics are just incredibly dated and unfun at this point. But here's a few points:

- Totally agree with people on the "free leveling choice" thing; just make everything scale from 1-60 and let people level where they want
- A lot more stuff needs to be account-wide. People make alts anyway, just to play new classes; having them redo all their reps and unlocks and whatnot is just horribly tedious
- Design for FUN first - I know this is hard, but if you're making a zone like the Maw, make it so we WANT to be there, not so we HAVE to be there
- Completely redo the talent system. Part of why borrowed power keeps happening is that the inbuilt talent system is way too simplistic. Get rid of borrowed power, and instead give us more complex CHARACTER power
- Split PvP and PvE more. I know Blizz wants to have everyone jump from their raid into an m+ into an RBG without changing a thing but that's already not reality; and bleedover balance problems have been ruining BOTH sides since forever. Just streamline PvP for more competitive choices, and leave PvE alone. Warmode can be the FFA crossover where you can do both, but split it up in instances
- Change the way gear works. More customization - not necessarily reforging, but not necessarily NOT reforging. Make fractional gear acquisition more of a thing, to smooth out RNG spikes. Give us back bonus rolls, but make them one-a-week 100% rolls so you know you'll get at least SOME piece you have a degree of control over
- Roll normal/heroic/regular mythic dungeons into M+. Just make M+1 to M+10 require no keystone and substitute for those difficulties, and go with keystones for 11+. Make keystones into a drop-down system allowing you to select any level up to the max instead of the stupid dungeon reset thing. Make keystones universal; perhaps give each character a rotating, one-time bonus loot (extra valor?) on one particular dungeon every 3 days or so, if you're worried people will only spam the same dungeon
- Get rid of essential class buffs like the DH debuff etc. Remember "pick the player not the class"? Uniqueness is overrated, focus on making people enjoy the class THEY like rather than making them play what they think will get them a raid spot
- In the same vein, make uniqueness FLAVORFUL instead of functional. Give us cool shit, not overpowered shit
- Vastly expand cosmetic options - free xmog without restrictions; why can't I have a fish in my offhand, but running around as a purple clown with dragon wings is a-okay? What's the actual problem with a warrior wearing a dress, or a mage wielding a hammer? More xmog shit wouldn't hurt, either

[WinningOne]

Turn WoW into a premium service instead of attempting to catch the most fish.

• Raise the monthly fee until 65% of the player base quits. Possibly require first 3 to 6 months up front for new subscribers.
• Consolidate all servers down to whatever it takes to make sure there's around 5000 players on each server.
• Hire four or five times more staff and eliminate automated systems to provide better customer service and rules enforcement.
• Eliminate the bid portion of the AH. All prices are calculated by the server and are first posted first sold.
• Multi boxing with key broadcasting allowed for up to three simultaneous accounts.
• Require proper grammar and citations for forum posts.
• Better monitoring of in game chat channels.
• No more server change services.
• All store items available in game as part of the subscription

[epigramx]

Turn WoW into a premium service instead of attempting to catch the most fish.

• Raise the monthly fee until 65% of the player base quits. Possibly require first 3 to 6 months up front for new subscribers.
• Consolidate all servers down to whatever it takes to make sure there's around 5000 players on each server.

Then plot to take over the world /s. That sounds like the start of a conspiracy. I love it.

[RemasteredClassic]

Turn WoW into a premium service instead of attempting to catch the most fish.

• Raise the monthly fee until 65% of the player base quits. Possibly require first 3 to 6 months up front for new subscribers.
• Consolidate all servers down to whatever it takes to make sure there's around 5000 players on each server.
• Hire four or five times more staff and eliminate automated systems to provide better customer service and rules enforcement.
• Eliminate the bid portion of the AH. All prices are calculated by the server and are first posted first sold.
• Multi boxing with key broadcasting allowed for up to three simultaneous accounts.
• Require proper grammar and citations for forum posts.
• Better monitoring of in game chat channels.
• No more server change services.
• All store items available in game as part of the subscription

95% of the playerbase quit already

[aceperson]

i'd change the entire management team. it's clear they are egotistical and don't care for the game considering they refuse to stand up against bad ideas if all this censorship is actually corporate caused.

[Demithio]

Geez. I don't think anyone truly knows anymore, it's so far gone. Blast it back to 2008?

[Itisamuh]

The big ones for me would be combining the factions into one, allowing all races to be all classes, and removing gear entirely from PvP.

[Dacia Ultan]

• Remove factions from being anything but a story device, and allow players to team up in PvE regardless of faction.

- Go back to ilvl and stat priority. No more AP and "gimmick of the patch" gear.
- Legion style professions.
- Put some bloody effort into the story and ditch the "rule of cool".

I basically second these. Additionally: Argus should have been an entire xpack; I might tentatively suggest making it buy-to-play (with each xpack needing to be purchased separately); and the removed fart and wank jokes should be replaced with new ones.