If Blizz gave Warfronts a 2nd chance, what would you like to see

[cparle87]

Thats a typical reaction from Blizzard. If something gets negative feedback, they just toss it out the window. Then they either create something new or dont bother making anything new for the next xpac. IE, WF & Garrison were all features that in itself are cool concepts but obviously needed changes. Garrisons could have been tweaked and changed into a housing system after WoD. IE & WF could have been tweaked and changed into cool side content. WF especially was nice to gear up alts, instead of just running dungeons over and over.

If they did that though you know people would scream at them about "doubling down on bad ideas." I've lost track of the number of threads that asked "How can <insert unpopular thing here> be improved?" And the majority response from posters is "remove it from the game."

[crusadernero]

If they did that though you know people would scream at them about "doubling down on bad ideas." I've lost track of the number of threads that asked "How can <insert unpopular thing here> be improved?" And the majority response from posters is "remove it from the game."

Agree. Theres one more thing - Alot of people(content creators too) have for years been asking Blizzard to be creative towards the game, especially at endgame. Something different, something else than raid, dungeon & WQ. Then Blizzard does so. With IE, WF, Torghast, AP, Garrison and so much more - they have tried out new stuff. Some(maybe most) of it wasnt a great success at the time, but had potential if they stuck with it and did changes from the feedback they got. Instead its just removed and never to be thought of again. At that point they gotta find up something new, lots of productive time potentially wasted yet again.

Xpac features is fine, but it would be an welcome addition if they kept going with certain features in every xpac.

[spalernTJ]

Make Warfronts a cavern of time thing, make them optional, make them a way to see great battles of old play out for those that wishes to experience them. Tag on some cosmetic stuff.

[Fartoo]

Sounds like old school AV, to which everyone found a way to just zerg it cause the rewards were power progression focused

Need content that has nothing to do with power progression as the reward structure

Yeah now that I think of it, it does actually sound like OG AV hah, didn't even occur to me. But I definitely agree, it should not have any ties to power progression. Just be pure side fun content with cosmetics (mounts, transmog, toys, pets, titles).

[Pivotal]

Like others suggested, a PvP version of it. The fact that they didn't even consider it the first time around is baffling. Modern Blizz really don't want their precious players to ever have the risk of losing it seems.

[cparle87]

Agree. Theres one more thing - Alot of people(content creators too) have for years been asking Blizzard to be creative towards the game, especially at endgame. Something different, something else than raid, dungeon & WQ. Then Blizzard does so. With IE, WF, Torghast, AP, Garrison and so much more - they have tried out new stuff. Some(maybe most) of it wasnt a great success at the time, but had potential if they stuck with it and did changes from the feedback they got. Instead its just removed and never to be thought of again. At that point they gotta find up something new, lots of productive time potentially wasted yet again.

Xpac features is fine, but it would be an welcome addition if they kept going with certain features in every xpac.

With the amount of vitriol they get spewed with every time they do anything not bog standard they'd probably just get accused of "doubling down on ideas 'everyone' hates." Island chores, forced to run old raids praying to RNG gods, MoS/AP grinds, garrison raidlog and die, Borghast. The players have a nasty thing to say about practically everything Blizzard has ever done. And Blizzard always reacts too heavily in the other direction in response to criticism.

[crusadernero]

With the amount of vitriol they get spewed with every time they do anything not bog standard they'd probably just get accused of "doubling down on ideas 'everyone' hates." Island chores, forced to run old raids praying to RNG gods, MoS/AP grinds, garrison raidlog and die, Borghast. The players have a nasty thing to say about practically everything Blizzard has ever done. And Blizzard always reacts too heavily in the other direction in response to criticism.

thats been one of my biggest caveats with Blizzard in all these years. When something goes wrong or is not widely popular, they just decide to remove it and often times to the complete opposite direction to the maximum. In many cases, there are no inbetweens.

[Log Cabin]

Because for Blizzard casual =/= easy. Overall players need gear to make game easier for them via overgear. But it almost always requires doing separate harder content, than desired one. Content isn't self-sufficient. For example players can't play Torghast only, because Torghast doesn't have any reward structure. Players still need to play, let's say, M+ in order to be "competitive" in Torghast. Also. Almost always Blizzard confuse casual-friendly with solo-friendly. They think, that if content isn't hard and isn't competitive - then it should be about exceeding grind. Anima grind for example. And grind isn't casual-friendly too.

Yeah, I just wanted to say, that it's not Wow, that is dying - it's MMO genre.

Overall I need game, that is more like Diablo. Game, that doesn't have relying on other players, has "passive" competition only (i.e. leaderboard, but no toxic things, like mob stealing) and things like account-wide stash, that allow account-wide progression.

Problem with solo-RPGs - they don't have "infinite" support, as MMOs have. It would be really nice to have solo-RPG with optional multiplayer. I.e. it would still be able to have optional dungeons, raids, arenas and RBGs, but core content would be solo. I would even pay sub fee for such game, if it would exist. That's, where Blizzard are completely wrong. Back in old times they had "We don't need Wow 2.0, because we can always improve Wow" principle. Yeah, Wow had always been MMO and it had always been it's problem. But back in old days it was more solo-friendly. For example whole leveling was nothing more, than just solo-RPG experience. It's several recent xpacks, that shifted towards making "true MMO", where players are "encouraged" (read "forced") to have so called "social interaction" (that actually have negative downsides). But Blizzard are stupid. Players are ready to pay f**king sub fee for solo-RPG. And they miss so great opportunity. And we don't even ask too much. Just may be to remove CRZ, allow flying at release and decrease difficulty of content to make it 100% suitable for playing solo (i.e. no mandatory grouping to kill elites for example), decrease playing session stretching (that Oribos trips), time-gating and grind. Make 1-2 servers with this rules and see, what will happen.

I do agree with you. Over the years wow has increasingly relied on grinding to retain players to what seems to be its own determent. I only really see wow from the top down. I've been a CE raider since mid vanilla before the term was even coined. Around MoP blizzard really started to push the "You must do X" attitude and it only increased each expansion. While most players overlooked it I still couldn't believe that back in the day they stripped out all of the throne of thunder lore about the bosses backstories delivered by wrathion when they removed the cloak quest. The idea that you don't only have to grind but you will actively miss out if you don't hasn't stuck me as being a positive overall...

That being said there is a growing type of player who takes pride in being able to grind excessively to get rewards other players need for content they themselves don't do. Blizzard makes these systems because it appeals to this weird playergroup who never does anything in game but want to know they are more powerful then other players without actually accomplishing anything. It is a weird bizarre parallel to real life I never thought I would see in gaming half a decade ago.

[cparle87]

thats been one of my biggest caveats with Blizzard in all these years. When something goes wrong or is not widely popular, they just decide to remove it and often times to the complete opposite direction to the maximum. In many cases, there are no inbetweens.

Exactly. We hate dailies and "forced" rep grinds for good things in MoP becomes no dailies and reps totally optional in WoD. WoD's nothing to do but raidlog becomes way too many systems and infinite progression they feel they're forced to do. There's no winning.

[Yriel]

I actually liked warfronts, i think what they needed was a better AI strategist who would do coordinated attacks and special point activations that the players have to counter. It was all too static and too inconsequential, players never needed to coordinate to do anything, just some zerging was usually enough.
And Blizzards only idea for improvement was, as usual, "just more boss HP and damage and call it heroic".
I think the concept of pvp withóut pvp is good in principle, it just needed a lot more work.
But as usual, since it wasn't an instant success (even though you could get almost instant queues all expansion long) and no one of the higher ups was interested in it they abandoned it.

[Fahrad Wagner]

No. Next question-

[Gaidax]

I think Warfronts were that really cool idea in theory that just did not click in practice.

I would, however, love to see some sort of Warfront-like raid in future where as opposed to usual static raids, but I doubt it will happen.

[Tojara]

Warfronts how I thought of them like a decade ago would be taking the Moba style gameplay and just putting it into the game.

It would just be a mini game, probably a brawl by today's standards. Literally make gold by killing units, and push into the enemy base. Use said gold to buy items (like in a Moba) to make your character unique, all the while making your character just a uniform iLvL. Basically the items build your character, not the character you chose.

As stated it would just be a one off thing for fun. Warfronts IMO just didn't work because they were too easy and were entirely PvE. While I'm not big on PvP, the whole idea of warfronts to me was always fighting the other team, and essentially being a hero unit on the board in WC3. Doesn't work nearly as well when there aren't other players impeding your process.