I will go ahead and use this thread as my valve to let out the things that made me come back to Warcraft. I have quit Shadowlands after Castle Nathria because the game felt very one dimensional to me. The moment Dragonflight got announced the mere hope that something enjoyable will return. Wow for me has never been about great mechanics, great combat or balance. What made Wow always fun to me was how immersive the world was. Memories like leaving Teldrassil and walking to Stormwind via the “dangerous” wetlands was an adventure like no other. So in high hope that the old world will not just be reheated in a “classic” way I would love to see the following things:
1.Classes & Fantasy
There were 2 Expansions i really felt like having a main and max out one character and take on end game challenges. That was Vanilla and Legion. As in the pretext Wow already has a well established and strong world fantasy. Order halls or class specific quest like learning berserker stance by going to a remote place to learn to fight brawlers is wonderful. If a system like this is tied to power it might feel like a chore to do lots of stuff to get something in return. But even if power is a problem i feel like small things like cosmetics already are an incentive. I had some ideas in mind for the following classes i played and enjoyed a lot:
Warrior:
On of my best memories of being a warrior was identifying as a sword/axe/mace warrior. I feel the topic of being in a stance, learning a style is a fantasy that is highly enjoyable. when fury was reworked and it got new animations i felt like this was just some generalization. I would have much prefered if you start at a basic animation for most of your skills and auto attacks. due to quests you get new effects and animations. For example you become a kaldorei sentinell and learn glaive style giving you a special animation when using glaive weapons. Or you learn how to ignite your blade when you execute by training with burning blade orcs.
Rogue:
I enjoy the 3 specs having a strong flavor reading assassin, pirate and ninja. This is a fantasy that could be expanded upon. change combo points to seals, gold coins that visually and acoustically enhance your gameplay. furthermore i would love the poison profession to return. I could imagine being a a rogue that specializes in the venomous flowers of winterspring who spends time in the mountains gathering his ingredients to acquire the deadly poison in a frost version.
Priest:
There are established religions in azeroth already and i feel like the idea of shadow priest having to pick a old gold idol to pray to makes great gameplay additions if you include other spiritual beings like the light, elune, earthmother etc. spells like flash of light could become a flash of moon light.
Hunter:
Quivers were the reason i loved playing demon hunter in diablo 3. Having a quiver as a bag felt so great. and the legendary bow in tbc shot lasers. I mean hunters already have their minigame in chosing which pet they want to have as company but collection and crafting ammunition that makes your spells look different has a nice flavor.
Mage:
i feel like the stable spells firebolt, frostbolt and arcane blast could be a wonderful foundation to study them. different models for them could be a great result of doing some magical research. a frost mage could work with snowballs, ice spears, dark ice, pure ice. you name it.
Warlock:
More stuff like green fire. this is exactly what im talking about.
2.Professions:
Now with professions actually becoming meaningful i think a new oppertunity is to open up shop in azeroth while reaping the benefits of the rich world architecture. why not have a rentable forging area in the mountains of iron forge where smithing products can be mass produced to work towards a guild goal like a wonderful karawan cart that can be filled in a mining area like the searing gorge and be escorted back to iron forge to produce more stuff like a mithril statue that can be placed in front of goldshire to prove your mastery of mithril crafting and mining.
Another flavor i would like to see is make plants or food zone specific. westfall stew is a perfect example. it can only be made by farming reagents in westfall. It has low value in westfall because its common there. but if you were to travel to booty bay it might become a rare sought after delight.
which brings me to the point of traveling. dragonriding is a gimmick. but it opens up a box of implications. travelling the world is an adventure. especially if it is a cool world. sure sweeping down the blackrock mountain is a fun experience but i think doing your own odyssee around the world would add so much for those who enjoy this content. planing a journey from stranglethorn to desolace. gathering jungle medicine in your storage at kurzens camp. to schedule a fixed date to your guild or hire players via workorders to protect your caravan. bring them to booty bay fighting off tigers and trolls, going over the sea with your trusty captain managing the seas, while your canoneers slay all kraken your way and your navigation team finds the quickest way to the shore. when you finally arrive in theramore you just cross over horde territory if warmode is on the horde might get something of the precious goods. but if you manage you can safely arrive in desolace deliver the medicine and get your reputation, achievement and whatever currency fits.
3. Character story / world:
I still remember quite fondly how i saved that night elf girl in astranaar from her poison and the grateful bow of her father when i did wake her up. This is such a fond memory that i actually got really mad that astanaar was attacked in BFA. Both emotions are actually good for identifying with the world. Create little stories and questlines that are just that. Missing pilots in dun murogh, the linken questline in un’goro, mankriks wife and so on. i feel a zone like zereth mortis is rich in lore and interaction. this is why i like the idea to turn the four zones of dragonflight into mini zereth mortis. but i feel like there is no point in reinventing the wheel when you already have a wonderful world that could harbor 36 or more zereth morti. I still think questlines like thousand needles before and after the flood offer so much to build and progress in. we all know how a mage that spends time in karazan looks different from a mage that helps selling ice cream in thousand needles.
4. Player made content.
I still dont understand why there never was any incentive to make players create their own content. i know raids and dungeons have become the main pillar of wow. Their polish is usually very high. But i always felt like what made world of warcraft, league of legends and a few other stand alone games rise was the infinite creativity of the warcraft 3 player base. If players where given the chance to create dungeons, weapons, spell effects or quests it would add tremendous amount of value to the game. Of course there will be a lot of offensive and low quality bait. But at the end of the day we all get to chose if we subject ourselves to that. And in turn places where anything can happen it will usually give birth to both the worst and the best ideas.
5. Resting areas
Just forgot to add this point. I feel like self sustainability is in a way fun since it removes the unfun “inactive” time. but i think there should be an action before that reward.
What im trying to say is that being out in the world killing some couple of hundred of gnolls then go fight the next dragon just to lift of to one shot 2345 ogres does not really feel immersive. its more like getting a grocery list done. a good example for this is the warrior talent second wind: if you receive no damage your life will go back to full automatically. I know there is huge gap between perceived difficulty and actual difficulty but feeling “threatened” by the wilderness should be a no brainer. I mean just imagine going afk in the middle of raven hill, duskwood back in vanilla. no sane person would do that. Antorus the burning throne, oh i just fly a few inches in the air and suddenly i can bring out the trash while my character chills on an alien world inhabited by the death titan. 2 horrible and threatening scenarios but someone a wandering elite mor ladim is a bigger nightmare than argus. For me i always had good memories in darkshire inn. it was a place to level up cooking and talking to other players about how that orc rogue killed me again last night at raven hill. For me there was a clear indication that the darkshire inn was “green” the road to raven hill was “yellow” and raven hill was “red” I knew when to be alerted and when to watch netflix on my other monitor. On a side note when i played ragnarok online way back in the day most classes had to take a break while leveling, due to mana, ammunition or health running low. The time to refill, restock or recharge was always tied to player interaction. ( finding a priest that heals you, finding a merchant to sell cheap ammunition or just chatting with other people regenerating).
It might be a slippery slope but i think just like in the maw there should be a factor limiting your time in the wilerness. A “stamina” like stat that determines your out of combat reneneration. when its empty you are on your own. fight 2-3 more mobs and you have use cds for single trash mobs. Since the world now has this threat a player can find a prefered way to fix this. Maybe logging out in an inn will get you that rested bonus that makes your stamina drain more slowly. Maybe a chef prepared travel rations that keep you goind for hours. or you play in a party making stamina almost irrelevant.
Speaking of Inns. add minigames. Hearthstone, Bejeweled, Azeroth Poker, whatever. Make it fun to spend time in the Inn and make it Fun to interact with other people who also spend time at the Inn.