Why aren't Gilneas and Gnomeregan still not restored?

[Iain]

alliance and horde built a multitude of forts, bases and ports all over northrend, complete with well-manicured roads and did it while being attacked by rabid tuskarr. and that was years ago.

I have to admit that I always found this a little jarring. I get why they did it but the player basically arrived in a continent that's already been tamed.

In the long run, having this amount of infrastructure does age Northrend better. Sitting in a perpetual state of being a new frontier would be jarring as well. But for a fresh expansion it would have been more fun if they phased it. It was the first expansion that introduced phasing. Mists of Pandaria did this much better and Warlord of Draenor pretty much perfected the art of staging outposts in a new territory.

And of course finally Legion took a dump on it all by simply yeeting Dalaran into the Broken Isles.

Gnomeregan is in the process of being safe and habitable again (this was back in cataclysm). There's a canon short story too where mekkatorque kills thermaplugg for real.

The event you describe was before cata launched.

___
Gnomeregan is mostly clean, lore-wise.
Likewise, the gnomes have found a new second home as well: Mechagon.

All of this gets explained in the Gnome heritage armor quest chain too.

THis is why all Blizzard needs to do is spruce up the entrance of Gnomeregan a bit and add a tunnel that runs into a loading screen towards the Mechagon. It's not much gameplay content, pretty much a gimmick, but it would be the keystone on the Gnomish lore.

[baskev]

I mean cmon how many years has it been?

they are not horde.

The patch data mines suggest that lordearon might get back on its feet.

But Gilneas, Gnomeregan and teldrassil will be broken for ever because they are not horde.


Hell gilneas does not even make sense. Forsaken are in shambels. The scream queen is dead/undead in shadowlands. After night elves got all of their lands burned/blighted. The ground around gilneas would be perfect to house all the refugee's.

[Darththeo]

Blizzard only updates cities as required by the story they are telling.

Lorewise, the Exodar and Silvermoon should be repaired too, but they aren't and will never be in game.

[Orby]

Gnomeregan is mostly clean, lore-wise.
Likewise, the gnomes have found a new second home as well: Mechagon.

All of this gets explained in the Gnome heritage armor quest chain too.

A quest line I did but completely forgot. All I remember about that questline was going into Gnoemregan and further cleaning it up. Cannot remember if it was explained that it is actually good enough to re-enter and re-inhabit.

[dragonflight10]

I mean cmon how many years has it been?

Why waste resources on zones that only casuals care about ? they will spend 1 week on each zone then complain about something and unsubscribe

[Graden]

I lost all hope, especially after BFA. It's never going to happen.

[Lex Icon]

i get why they don't. but if anything Stormwind needs an upgrade. it looks like shit compared to most towns in game today.
at least do that.

[Kokolums]

I have to admit that I always found this a little jarring. I get why they did it but the player basically arrived in a continent that's already been tamed. .

Yah I had a completely different concept for Northend before Wrath was released. I thought you could change the entire concept of quest hubs and such by having Northrend being this truly frozen and wild wasteland, and you have these expeditionary caravans being sent out from ships anchored offshore that establish a beachhead and then dynamically crawl the continent in various paths, leading to new quests as you go and explore. You could missions where the caravan is attacked, or safe refuges where a group of caravan gather and hold out for a bit. Maybe lead a force to fight their way back to the ships to resupply.

Instead we got this entire established network of fortified fortresses with paved roads and flying networks like its already been tamed. God I hated that. Missed opportunity to do something new.

[Iain]

That's why a time-based expansion would be cool. Not any of the 'what if' scenarios that often happen. But instead the expansion consist of phased content. Like a player could start on a zone that has already been colonized by a faction, complete with infrastructure and towns. But then next week something triggers and the player is thrown just a few years back when the invading force just arrived and had to fight against the wilds.

Or a player could arrive in a post-apocalyptic hellscape where some disaster happened and the next week the player lives in its golden age.

Just every zone having two or three states that change each week and therefore also change the world quests, the pvp content and the nature of the dungeons that are located in that zone.

How and why these zones change each week can vary. Some can be random, some can be scheduled, and some can be because the players in the realm achieved a certain war effort.

Now here's the cool part: These temporal changes can differ per (Azeroth-based, not Shadowlands) covenant. Depending on how each covenant performs, the time-periods change per zone. A covenant that performs especially in one zone gets to determine the time zone they prefer in another zone for the next week. Or players that perform particularly well (or are lucky because they found some rare consumable or something) get to travel in between several time zones for that week.

By constantly locking off a large part of the end-game content while giving players control over whether or not they can access more than the baseline content, the end-game becomes a living dynamic thing. It gets players out of a rut because each week will be a different unpredictable combination of zones they can access.

[Mysterymask]

All this crying over 2 cities none of y'all are ever gonna visit more than once

Thanks to exiles reach the current versions barely have a point

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

All this crying over 2 cities none of y'all are ever gonna visit more than once

Thanks to exiles reach the current versions barely have a point

I'd visit Gilneas and make it my home.

[Lochton]

All this crying over 2 cities none of y'all are ever gonna visit more than once

Thanks to exiles reach the current versions barely have a point

Would make Gilneas my main city, and I know Gnomeregan and Gilneas would be welcomed by hundreds of people, I am not sure thousands, as the majority hides in Stormwind/Ogrimmar/Oribos.

[Lothaeryn]

Would make Gilneas my main city, and I know Gnomeregan and Gilneas would be welcomed by hundreds of people, I am not sure thousands, as the majority hides in Stormwind/Ogrimmar/Oribos.

I would have kept Ironforge as my capital had it been updated and kept up to speed with Portals just like Stormwind.

Thats the major issue with WoW: all of the amenities get put into Org and Stormwind, and every other city is completely ignored. They might as well not exist anymore with that level of neglect.

Outside of Org and Stormwind, I think Silvermoon is literally the only other city that gets attention from the playerbase. The lack of Amenities such as transmog vendors and portal routes needs to be addressed but likely never will.

[Lochton]

I would have kept Ironforge as my capital had it been updated and kept up to speed with Portals just like Stormwind.

Thats the major issue with WoW: all of the amenities get put into Org and Stormwind, and every other city is completely ignored. They might as well not exist anymore with that level of neglect.

Outside of Org and Stormwind, I think Silvermoon is literally the only other city that gets attention from the playerbase. The lack of Amenities such as transmog vendors and portal routes needs to be addressed but likely never will.

Alas, it is a curse of players' demands for convenience that has set most other cities in a drought. I would love, and I do miss it, that cities have their own thing to offer for the adventurer. It'll suck for the lazy hub dwellers who just sit there, and queue or wait for summons but for players out actually adventuring, it would be another little experience upon arrival in a city. Doesn't have to be much but something different, like a special portal, vendor, or feature.

[Iain]

All this crying over 2 cities none of y'all are ever gonna visit more than once

Thanks to exiles reach the current versions barely have a point

A new patch is released, a NPC comes running to you with a quest, the quest gives you the optional waypoint to travel through a portal, and you instantly get to the shiny new stuff. And the moment you go through this portal, you already know that a large part of the game suddenly became less relevant.

In their mission to create greater convenience to the players, to get them quicker to the latest content, Blizzard eroded elements out of the game that players used to enjoy. Blizzard stripped the 'Massive' out and turned wow into a 'Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game'. Players no longer have to embark on a journey to get to where they need to be. Both the reason to travel and the need to travel (different things) have been stripped away.

The portal hub has essentially consolidated all the capital cities and meshed them together into one big city. A city in which most of these capital cities are, as you said, indeed not worth visiting because they aren't even worth the loading screen wait time.

In order to make these cities relevant again. Blizzard would not just have to start building new content in these cities and their surrounding regions, they would also have to limit or even close the portal hub again, and accommodate more interesting ways for players to journey to these places.

That's a tall order, I'm sure many people would hate it, but I would love nothing more than to see this happen. I know the reply, "If you want to travel without using portals, then just do that, don't obstruct us for doing that." But there's three problems with that. Firstly, the portal hub is a crutch in Blizzard's own design. It allows them not to have to think to much about all the ways they could make journeys more interactive and interesting. Secondly, everyone taking portals everywhere makes the world deserted. In Vanilla, players from different levels with different destinations would constantly be crossing each other and wonder where the other would be going. Even flightmasters gave that feeling. Portals but also flying mounts removed that sensation. And thirdly, figuring out the fastest/safest way to get somewhere is part of what makes travelling interesting, it's part of the original gameplay. The existence of a no-brainer like a portal strips that away from the game.

And I get it. Players want to get to the end-game asap. But this is also circular. Players immediately want to get to the in-game because Blizzard isn't offering them anything else. And that's precisely how an MMO slowly got streamlined into something more akin to a platform of mini-games.

- - - Updated - - -

Alas, it is a curse of players' demands for convenience that has set most other cities in a drought. I would love, and I do miss it, that cities have their own thing to offer for the adventurer. It'll suck for the lazy hub dwellers who just sit there, and queue or wait for summons but for players out actually adventuring, it would be another little experience upon arrival in a city. Doesn't have to be much but something different, like a special portal, vendor, or feature.

This is what happens when a games studio starts seeing itself as a software developer and start treating their game like an app that needs to have a smooth user experience. I'm glad that Elden Ring's success has shown that the absence of a smooth user experience is often the challenging gameplay that people crave so much.

[Lochton]

This is what happens when a games studio starts seeing itself as a software developer and start treating their game like an app that needs to have a smooth user experience. I'm glad that Elden Ring's success has shown that the absence of a smooth user experience is often the challenging gameplay that people crave so much.

True, but watch out, Elden Ring and its family members cannot translate correctly to an MMORPG. Easy enough to make a vision like Elden Ring and the Darksouls, but they don't go as well on paper in an MMORPG.

[Mysterymask]

True, but watch out, Elden Ring and its family members cannot translate correctly to an MMORPG. Easy enough to make a vision like Elden Ring and the Darksouls, but they don't go as well on paper in an MMORPG.

Goes on to say the other fun part

From Software gives 0 shits if you play the game die once and never again....Wow needs you to keep playing

[Iain]

[Lochton]

Goes on to say the other fun part

From Software gives 0 shits if you play the game die once and never again....Wow needs you to keep playing

And a company that is just meant to sell you on the singular adventure can give zero shits about you, if you can't beat it, get better, but for WoW, they have to sell a wider range of products within their game, not just the singular adventure.

[hulkgor]

Would be pointless for them to do so.

Simply put, there are too much zones, areas and circumstances to be updating everything regularly. Get over it.

Also, they are completely irrelevant.