Why aren't Gilneas and Gnomeregan still not restored?

[cparle87]

Because it's easier/cheaper to make entirely new zones than layer on new stuff on top of the old zones, it's much more prone to weird bugs and requires a lot more care to pull off. From the effort/reward pov of devs and beancounters it's clear why nothing is happening with the old cata zones and whenever something does it's simply put into an instanced scenario so they don't have to mess with old code and avoid the mess it'd be altogether to edit.

This. Remember the Chamber of the Heart and how buggy it was by the end of BFA having gone through like 50 layering changes?

[Hawkknight97]

Honestly, I hope they return. It's kind of ridiculous it's been years and already the gnomes and worgens have not gotten a capital city yet. Same thing that can be said about Night Elves too after losing their home.

[rogueMatthias]

It's because since the Stonemasons Guild fiasco, all of the Alliance construction workers are all unionised so it takes years to get anything done, whereas the Horde just beat their peons for not working fast enough.

That's why Orgrimmar has been rebuilt multiple times now, but in Forest Song construction's been going on since BC and the builders are still just standing round asking you to go and collect wood for them.

[Niwes]

I mean cmon how many years has it been?

Isn’t your title a double negotiation and therefore asks the opposite of what you wanna ask?

Shouldn’t it be „Why are Gilneas and Gnomeregan still not restored“ (instead of „aren’t“)?

[Shadowferal]

"Why are Gilneas and Gnomeregan not restored?"
All the destruction from "Cataclysm" is still around. Heck, after doing the quests around Astranaar, I'd have wanted the horde flyers firebombing the place to be gone. But no. They're still defiling the place.
It's like blizz has selective memory lapses and forgets how to phase program things to return to normalcy.

[bullseyed]

IT doesn't even need to be a big expansion thing either. Use phasing like we have for a number of zones, like Silithus. Just have us take a quest to go to the new area for [reason] and use that to trigger loading the new 'current' phase from now on. Add in another bronze dragon in the area to hop back for the cata versions.

If you add phasing, you're splitting the number of players in the zone in half, which means more server load and a worse play experience. Lose/Lose situation.

[Nathreim]

Radiation can last thousands of years and only the Forsaken have a way to clear the blight so Gilneas is uninhabitable.

[Groll]

If you add phasing, you're splitting the number of players in the zone in half, which means more server load and a worse play experience. Lose/Lose situation.

Because the player base is famously split down between people doing current content and cataclysm leveling.

[Iain]

Blizzard could just create an tunnel (not a geographically accurate tunnel, just a short instanced moment) from Gnomeregan to the Mechagon, which is now a capital city accessible by anyone, and call it a day. Maybe turn the island quests into ever-green content while they're at it. Would be perfect as that would give players a reason to keep travelling through Gnomeregan to repeatable quest content.

Gilneas deserves more attention. Doesn't need to be restored, but it could be turned into something like Boralus with friendly parts, hostile parts and maybe covenant-based pvp, preferably contingent on the day and night cycle like Pyrewood village.

[Shadowtwili]

Becuase they aren't Horde cities.

Remember, worgen are now twice refugees, night elves are first time refugees and gnomes have been refugees since vanilla.

In the mean time the goblins have had Bilgewater Harbor since immediatly after losing Kezan, Forsaken have had Lordaeron City restored and gotten a portal room, tauren have always had a capital city.

[Iain]

IT doesn't even need to be a big expansion thing either. Use phasing like we have for a number of zones, like Silithus. Just have us take a quest to go to the new area for [reason] and use that to trigger loading the new 'current' phase from now on. Add in another bronze dragon in the area to hop back for the cata versions.

Yes exactly. And it can be a gradual effort. The most visited zones turning to normalcy first and then incrementally the Cataclysm content gets wiped away from there.

The new content would be more mundan, smaller quests. Preferably world quests that remain relevant in whichever end game future expansions are at.

At the same time, the Infinite Dragonflight could be causing Legion-like invasions which temporarily phases the 'normal' content into an epic scale disaster. Just to spice things up every once in a while. And because it's all time-travel based, this stuff can also keep recurring regardless of what ongoing expansions add to the game.