10.0 Revamp - Seems extremely likely now

[rrayy]

You know what a great 10.0 revamp would be? A fresh batch of developers that keep their thoughts to themselves and balance what's good for the game with what the overwhelming majority of the player base wants.

That would be a great revamp, till then....expect this to get from worse to worser. (yes, i wrote that on purpose to focus on the irony).

There is no such thing as an "overwhelmoing" majority in WoW. That is also a bad way to make the game as no section of players should be sole dictators how how the game should be.

[Archmage Xaxxas]

If one thing cata proved was that not having a new landmass to explore is bad for an expansion.

Despite there being 34 zones to explore and find new quests in.
And that's excluding Hyjal, Vash'jir, Deepholm, Uldum, and Twilight Highlands, which are each in their own iconic staples of Azeroth since Cata. (or technically WC3 for Hyjal)

It's always seemed to me to be the case that at the time, Cata wasn't so much a failure when it came to the World Revamp being only for 1-60 again, as much as it was the playerbase being unreceptive to the logic behind keeping that part of the game fresh.

Look at WoW today, it's almost entirely an End-Game content run game with little to no emphasis on the RPG Adventure of exploring with friends, making memories and growing a character over time.

New players have been streamlined into rushing to hit level 60 so they "can start the game" and it's the dirtiest trick, because Shadowlands' Endgame isn't the best WoW Endgame we've had.

1-50 as of Shadowlands' leveling rework has become basically the core value of the game. All of the prized, favored, loved content of years past is consolidated to that Experience which so many are inclined to disregard as annoying, a waste of time etc.
50-60 is enjoyable enough, though indeed a bit foreign to the bulk of the traditional 'Warcraft Adventures', and it ultimately leads to the current pit which is Max Level.

I was of the mind that we won't be going 60-70. I don't see why Blizz crunch the number at their convenient double-of-vanilla cap at 120 down to 50 if we intend to eventually just reach 120 again.
Now I'm not so sure, because they released the Level 60 Boost. I really figured Shadowlands would be plopped into the 10-50 leveling via Chromie Time and that your Level 60 characters would progress without the traditional means of 'leveling up' in 10.0.

Though maybe the new Level 60 precedent actually backs my view, by allowing new players to jump right into the 10.0 content instead of leveling in 50-60 first.

It's possible that the 50-60 Shadowlands is added to Chromie Time, and that extends all of the 10-50 Experiences to 10-60 alongside it.
Play BFA, Wrath, MoP, Legion etc to 60 instead of just 50?

And if you've read this wondering what would replace leveling to 70? Well, I know we don't all like Artifacts & Renown, but they were the testbeds for non-level based progression.
It's a small-ish number, when it goes up, you get power and rewards.
By now we're all quite used to these and won't recoil at them being the main source of 10.0 'leveling up.'

[Relapses]

I was of the mind that we won't be going 60-70. I don't see why Blizz crunch the number at their convenient double-of-vanilla cap at 120 down to 50 if we intend to eventually just reach 120 again.

They said the same thing about numbers squishing back in MoP the first time they did it.

Then they did it again. Twice.

They're definitely planning to scale us right back up to 120 again. Maybe they'll stop at 100 this time though. Who knows. It's not a huge deal either way.

[DeltrusDisc]

I guess maybe I missed it, I've been playing on and off for several years now. From what I've looked up (and I could be wrong), what we know is that the Old Gods convinced Nozdormu that if he can see his own death, maybe he can alter the events leading him there, and that's where the Infinite Dragonflight originally came from. But after Nozdormu realized this he has been avoiding that path, all the while knowing it's going to happen some day. Maybe giving into that power is what allows him to fight Zovaal or something.

That would be interesting, but really? The Dragon Aspect of the Bronze Dragonflight for Azeroth is going to overpower one of the First Ones (or whatever the f they're called) in the Shadowlands? Idk about that. Neat theory though!

[Magnagarde]

some dungeons, some raids and some artifacts were good.

by example, all warrior artifacts sucked ass

I've gotten all 3 mage tower appearances for all 3 warrior artifacts and I enjoyed the specs. Now I have to say that protection warrior felt really bad to play when compared to guardian druid, which remained the go-to tank for pretty much the entire expansion. I heavily disliked Legion's world PvP though.

[Syegfryed]

I've gotten all 3 mage tower appearances for all 3 warrior artifacts and I enjoyed the specs. Now I have to say that protection warrior felt really bad to play when compared to guardian druid, which remained the go-to tank for pretty much the entire expansion. I heavily disliked Legion's world PvP though.

i mostly mean about the design and the lore behind those artifacts, completely lazy and some of then were awful.

[Mojo03]

I'm betting it'll be Dragon Isles, Tel Abim, and Undermine (maybe 1-2 other zones)

And a slight world update. Like they just update the world so the damage from Deathwing is fixed, they update the textures (so it looks nicer and newer), and update many of the settlements with newer buildings they will either make or have already made (like Arathi). All fairly easy ways to make the world feel updated and newer without huge time commitments.

I think they'll finally do the Nozdormu transition to Murazond story arc and use the time theme to update and bring back a lot of the older content and make it relevant again.

I also think they will FF14-ify the game like they Diablo-fied the game in Legion.

Examples
- They'll make all content somewhat relevant and more easily available
- Some kind of housing
- More in-depth story
- Removal of most FOMO systems
- Much deeper profession system
- Etc

[Lady Atia]

I'm betting it'll be Dragon Isles, Tel Abim, and Undermine (maybe 1-2 other zones)

And a slight world update. Like they just update the world so the damage from Deathwing is fixed, they update the textures (so it looks nicer and newer), and update many of the settlements with newer buildings they will either make or have already made (like Arathi). All fairly easy ways to make the world feel updated and newer without huge time commitments.

I think they'll finally do the Nozdormu transition to Murazond story arc and use the time theme to update and bring back a lot of the older content and make it relevant again.

I also think they will FF14-ify the game like they Diablo-fied the game in Legion.

Examples
- They'll make all content somewhat relevant and more easily available
- Some kind of housing
- More in-depth story
- Removal of most FOMO systems
- Much deeper profession system
- Etc

I agree that we need housing aswell as more accessible content (for example adding rating to normal random battlegrounds to make it more like in classic as a way for casuals to grind up pvp "elite" rewards). For professions - they tried that in Legion and people hated it. The story has no problems besides the annoying cliffhangers and content drought, it's not really that different from Cataclysm era storytelling (hello Thrall) and honestly, have you played TBC? That expansion hat bad lore.

Also they sure as hell won't remove FOMO. Cataclysm f.e. had none and honestly it felt super bad because people who played TBC and early WotLK all got FOMO stuff but suddenly they stopped it. The only thing they should do is creating more FOMO for everyone (as in, casuals not elite content), maybe via a battlepass system similiar to renown.

Also we need a world revamp with all zones being similiar to korthia and available for new chars and max chars, more customization, covenant races as allied races and loosening of transmog rules aswell as new mount achievements (450, 500, 550 and 600 atleast).

[HansLolo]

A lot of Shadowlands feels contrived and forced. However, if you start to look at it from the perspective of the developers who probably want to update their 17 year old game, the plot point of a mega Lich King with the keys to remake reality starts to make a lot more sense. (BTW, sidenote: I have a feeling the Jailer won't be choosing how to remake the reality, and the main characters will just come together to "fix" a few of their past mistakes - Thrall and Garrosh/Draenor, Sylvanas and Teldrassil, Jaina and stopping Arthas at Strath etc).

1) They don't want to do a WoW 2.0 and segment the playerbase. Both EQ/EQ2 and Destiny 1/2 already did this and the issues with it are quite clear.

2) They NEED to make MASSIVE updates to the game, one of the primary faction capitals of Stormwind looks like it's made out of Legos comparatively to any other modern WoW city.

3) A zillion loose ends with time period phasing. Does it make sense to update Outland when you have Draenor? Bronze Dragonflight NPCs everywhere that you talk to for different phases.

4) WoW's file size is getting larger and larger as we speak. Destiny 2 showed us that companies are willing to "vault" content to preserve file size. This is horrible in Destiny 2 in my opinion, but WoW has WoW Classic to hold and preserve the old zones. They're also clearly going to continue progressing classic servers so everyone will always get to play old stuff whenever they want - if they follow the EverQuest path you can have multiple server sets running in parallel at different chronological periods so everyone has access to a game state they want.

5) If you look at what the game lacks from the perspective of an entire team knowing they're going to be making dramatic updates. No player housing yet, when every other MMO has it, starts to make sense if they knew they were building up to a massive reconstruction of the game. These are massive player investments. Who the hell would make a house in Stormwind or Silvermoon if you had an option to do it in Suramar or updated Dalaran?

6) Players wondered where all the big class updates are, it makes sense to wait until something like this happens to make dramatic changes.


Does anyone else feel this makes the revamp way more likely given what we know what this is all building up to? The developers have led us, however confusingly, to a point where we have a method to remake reality, seems crazy they would squander it in the light of how badly WoW needs to be refreshed updated.

You know what that means technically? It requires they start from scratch. The blocks are not something you can upgrade to version 2.0.

It takes approx 5 years to create a game at this size. Giving they have all the backlog and they just need to 'move' it some other engine, we can cut this to half(2/3 years). That means that should been working on it latest since BFA and we should be in beta by now(and heard of announcements).

So the chances for 10.0 is a revamp is not really good. The car is too old - you can only polish it.

[Rageonit]

Maybe they shouldn't rely on 2 year windows to recharge for the same game we've already paid for every single expansion Maybe they should just drop the Box price and continue to give us new experiences via content updates instead of trying to reinvent the wheel every 2 years which doesn't work. Restricting themselves to that kind of development window is what's ruining the game.

That's all fine and dandy, but how would they make up for the $$$ loss on box sales? Which are a huge part of their WoW income (AFAIK Shadowlands sold pretty well). Thinking they will go for a model that can result in a drop of income is naivety.

[ro9ue]

You know what that means technically? It requires they start from scratch. The blocks are not something you can upgrade to version 2.0.

It takes approx 5 years to create a game at this size. Giving they have all the backlog and they just need to 'move' it some other engine, we can cut this to half(2/3 years). That means that should been working on it latest since BFA and we should be in beta by now(and heard of announcements).

So the chances for 10.0 is a revamp is not really good. The car is too old - you can only polish it.

This is just speculative of course but... imagine a scenario where they spent 50% of their time since the end of Legion on the revamp and putting 50% towards 8.0 and 9.0. Back during BFA I speculated they were doing all of these new Warfronts as a reason to generate all of these new faction-styled houses and buildings. They also outright destroyed two cities that one could probably recognize are the worst in terms of navigation and structure in the modern game - UC and Teldrassil.

They've shown in Ardenweald and in Val'Sharah they have much more interesting ways to utilize a tree for housing with spiral ramps, hanging huts, etc. Just a flat top tree with a huge vertical trunk is super crappy. Between Suramar and the Legion Night Elf Temples you have a ton of structures for a new Silvermoon that just needs a new coat of red paint. You have the Stromgarde Warfront assets for upgrading Stormwind and Orgrimmar. You also have Nathria and Black Rook Hold as a template for a really cool, gothic new Undercity-style capital for the Forsaken, Dark Rangers, San'layn, etc. There's also that random Rexxar model redesign that hints at Moknathal. Seething Shore and the random Ogre structures being used...

Could also explain why the last 2 expansions were kinda... meh. Some might say bad. They don't seem as bad anymore if we find out these were the side efforts of a team focused on a big 10.0 revamp.

Obviously - 10.0 could be announced, it ends up just being more of the same. 10 more levels. Some temporary progression gimmick. Bronze dragons v Infinite dragons and dragon isles or some Void v Light conflict with the same AP / Covenant style systems, shitty crafting, etc. I've just had a really hard time grasping with the fact the same people who created Legion, my personal favorite expansion ever made for WoW since its existence... and then went and made BFA and Shadowlands. Something has to be brewing for it to make sense for me.

I'm an idiot, but I try to be a hopeful idiot. This is a game I've been playing for almost 2 decades and this is the scenario I want to believe plays out so I have a reason to play again.

[HansLolo]

This is just speculative of course but... imagine a scenario where they spent 50% of their time since the end of Legion on the revamp and putting 50% towards 8.0 and 9.0. Back during BFA I speculated they were doing all of these new Warfronts as a reason to generate all of these new faction-styled houses and buildings. They also outright destroyed two cities that one could probably recognize are the worst in terms of navigation and structure in the modern game - UC and Teldrassil.

They've shown in Ardenweald and in Val'Sharah they have much more interesting ways to utilize a tree for housing with spiral ramps, hanging huts, etc. Just a flat top tree with a huge vertical trunk is super crappy. Between Suramar and the Legion Night Elf Temples you have a ton of structures for a new Silvermoon that just needs a new coat of red paint. You have the Stromgarde Warfront assets for upgrading Stormwind and Orgrimmar. You also have Nathria and Black Rook Hold as a template for a really cool, gothic new Undercity-style capital for the Forsaken, Dark Rangers, San'layn, etc. There's also that random Rexxar model redesign that hints at Moknathal. Seething Shore and the random Ogre structures being used...

Could also explain why the last 2 expansions were kinda... meh. Some might say bad. They don't seem as bad anymore if we find out these were the side efforts of a team focused on a big 10.0 revamp.

Obviously - 10.0 could be announced, it ends up just being more of the same. 10 more levels. Some temporary progression gimmick. Bronze dragons v Infinite dragons and dragon isles or some Void v Light conflict with the same AP / Covenant style systems, shitty crafting, etc. I've just had a really hard time grasping with the fact the same people who created Legion, my personal favorite expansion ever made for WoW since its existence... and then went and made BFA and Shadowlands. Something has to be brewing for it to make sense for me.

I'm an idiot, but I try to be a hopeful idiot. This is a game I've been playing for almost 2 decades and this is the scenario I want to believe plays out so I have a reason to play again.

My "realistic" hopes:

1)WC4 release.
2)WoW2 release.

In the following order.

[Hablion]

My "realistic" hopes:

1)WC4 release.
2)WoW2 release.

In the following order.

I do not think WoW2 will ever happen because rarely does a Sequel in MMO genre games do well.

[Unholyground]

That's all fine and dandy, but how would they make up for the $$$ loss on box sales? Which are a huge part of their WoW income (AFAIK Shadowlands sold pretty well). Thinking they will go for a model that can result in a drop of income is naivety.

I don't play anymore personally but they need to do something if they want me to come back.

[draugril]

I don't play anymore personally but they need to do something if they want me to come back.

They just want to cash in on those initial sales and do the bare minimum to retain the diehards in-between. Subscriptions are probably a tertiary source of income at this point. Why should you or I stick around for the loot treadmill if we're buying a box every two years hoping that there's something new?

[Masternap]

There's no point in releasing WoW 2 with the people currently working on the game. If they want to try with a completely new team, be my guest. But the current team will just create the same crap they've been creating for over 5 years now.

[Relapses]

They just want to cash in on those initial sales and do the bare minimum to retain the diehards in-between. Subscriptions are probably a tertiary source of income at this point. Why should you or I stick around for the loot treadmill if we're buying a box every two years hoping that there's something new?

They could also continue to develop the game for people who are paying for the product they're delivering instead of capitulating to the incessant whining of ex-fans who can't cope with the game not being their favorite expansion any more.

[DookuDookuTree]

The new models for mobs/critters that they have peetered out once in a while for a couple of years now looks horrible, they are a huge step backwards because they look even more cartoony than the original models, they might have a little more polygons but that's barely noticeable at all. expect SL2.

[Coldkil]

They could also continue to develop the game for people who are paying for the product they're delivering instead of capitulating to the incessant whining of ex-fans who can't cope with the game not being their favorite expansion any more.

It's not mutually exclusive. Though i agree that too many people lectures me about how bad WoW is while they start with "i don't play it from X expansion".

The main error dev team imho is doing is trying to make the game "good for everyone". Which is not possible and wastes effort in trying to appeal multiple playerbases. They should check what players actually like to do in game the most (they have all kind of metrics) and focus on improve that. You'll lose someone but keep the core players happy. If they're not already doing it and i eother don't realize it or don't like it.

And if the game changes in a way someone doesn't like it, well, no one is forced to play it. Myself included. Right now i find difficult to understand if i am part of their target players or not.

[dwarven]

I don't really care. Not even a revamp would make me want to come back. I've had enough WoW for my lifetime.