Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Nymrohd]

I would sorta hope they'd just make a bunch of new dungeons. Don't really need to clear Scholo, Deadmines, SM and SFK a third time. Shadowforge city and BRD should be a proper dwarven and gnome held questing area by this point, not still full of enemies, same with Stratholme and Gnomer.

Make Depths of Lordaeron the new megadungeon. Add Ruins of Theramore, Azerite Falls under the Wound in Silithus, Gadgetzan Back Alleys, The Scarlet Enclave, The Husk in the burned out trunk of Teldrassil, Tel'abim.

Feels like there's not much reason for a third version of WC or ST or Mara and BFD again, when those instances exist both in cata form and perpetually in Classic. Maybe throw in like one updated old raid or instance (Grim Batol, ZF, AQ) where new forces or something have moved in.

Absolutely agreed. If anything, I'd like several old dungeons to become towns or quest zones. Just imagine Stratholme bay, joining Scarlet Monastery, Hearthglen and Stratholme with some farmlands between them next to the coast. Maybe the Rajani and Tolvir could reclaim the Ahn'qiraj area to expand Uldum. Scholo should just be kept if at some point in the future they ever introduce Necromancers. And an underground zone (or part of a zone) joining Searing Gorge caverns with BRD and LBRS would be nice; heck all of Blackrock Mountain could be zone.

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Yeah, WoW is losing so much for not being in consoles... Final Fantasy XIV, Elder Scrolls Online, and Black Desert are already on consoles, while New World and Lost Ark may join them soon.

I'm 100% sure Classic gameplay would work perfectly fine on consoles, it's Retail with all the complex rotations and add-ons that would f**k everything.

Given how much console players struggle with ESO's harder challenges because of the lack of addons compared to PC, I cannot imagine trying WoW on console.

[Darkarath]

Wow has a massive problem right now that it is TOO big and alot of the content is made completely irrelevant to the point new players look at the game and think F that it's not worth the energy, Blizz needs to attract fresh blood because a majority of the playerbase is falling off due to rl commitments and age, WoW's playerbase is literally old people who are toxic as hell to eachother.

I very much agree with your thoughts.

While I am loving DF, and I have no doubt that if they keep supporting it as they have done until now, it will be the best expansion in WoW's history, I am very negative about WoW's future.

Blizzard is desperate for players to return. The only option to do that is making a world revamp in 11.0. NOTHING would bring back players or generate the interest and hype of a world revamp. But those players that return would inevitably leave the game again, as you said, due to commitments and age.

What WoW needs is new players, and that is just not going to happen. Even if 11.0 is a world revamp and they dramatically improve the new player experience, which right now is just horrible, it would not work.

New players would look at a 20 year old game and say: "Fuck no. Too much content. The game is too big. I would never catch up. Do I have to pay a subscription? I cannot play the game with consoles. Too many skills. Combat is outdated. Why I need addons to play?"

At this point, they can keep supporting the game as they are doing now, and it would have a happy playerbase that slowly but steadily decreases over time, or they just need to do WoW 2.0.

Keep Classic, current WoW, and WoW 2.0 all under the same subscription. We all have different opinions on what WoW 2.0 would need to be, but I would say that in the current market, some key points might be:

- Action RPG combat style.

- Graphics overhaul.

- Game has to be much much more casual. I know that for us current WoW might seem casual but it needs to do much more in this aspect.

- Focus on single player experience with multiplayer elements. I think that Genshin Impact its such a massive success because of this mostly. Players want to be part of a shared world but do not want to play with other players. They want to progress at their own pace. FFXIV is clearly making an effort to go in this direction and WoW will have to do so too.

- Tell a proper story. Improve your narrative devices. WoW's universe is so rich yet they are so terrible are telling stories.

- Explain the game systems to your players.

- No addons.

- Release the game on PC and consoles.

[loras]

I very much agree with your thoughts.

While I am loving DF, and I have no doubt that if they keep supporting it as they have done until now, it will be the best expansion in WoW's history, I am very negative about WoW's future.

Blizzard is desperate for players to return. The only option to do that is making a world revamp in 11.0. NOTHING would bring back players or generate the interest and hype of a world revamp. But those players that return would inevitably leave the game again, as you said, due to commitments and age.

What WoW needs is new players, and that is just not going to happen. Even if 11.0 is a world revamp and they dramatically improve the new player experience, which right now is just horrible, it would not work.

New players would look at a 20 year old game and say: "Fuck no. Too much content. The game is too big. I would never catch up. Do I have to pay a subscription? I cannot play the game with consoles. Too many skills. Combat is outdated. Why I need addons to play?"

At this point, they can keep supporting the game as they are doing now, and it would have a happy playerbase that slowly but steadily decreases over time, or they just need to do WoW 2.0.

Keep Classic, current WoW, and WoW 2.0 all under the same subscription. We all have different opinions on what WoW 2.0 would need to be, but I would say that in the current market, some key points might be:

- Action RPG combat style.

- Graphics overhaul.

- Game has to be much much more casual. I know that for us current WoW might seem casual but it needs to do much more in this aspect.

- Focus on single player experience with multiplayer elements. I think that Genshin Impact its such a massive success because of this mostly. Players want to be part of a shared world but do not want to play with other players. They want to progress at their own pace. FFXIV is clearly making an effort to go in this direction and WoW will have to do so too.

- Tell a proper story. Improve your narrative devices. WoW's universe is so rich yet they are so terrible are telling stories.

- Explain the game systems to your players.

- No addons.

- Release the game on PC and consoles.

I like these ideas barring the action rpg (oversaturated market, also does not lend itself to "easy to learn, hard to master" depth that mmo's like WoW require) and the idea it needs to be available on consoles per se (though i do like consoles as a way of keeping a realistic check on button bloat and pointless hardware requirements), and with the caveat that "casual" should in this case refer to very strong limitations on "time investment" and "investment" in general, be that in the social, "skill-by-repetition" or blunt money sense.

And it's not that people don't want to play together, they just don't want to rely on others or be forced to deal with them. That shit should be optional.
For all i care they should allow you to play with a raid of AI-piloted alts of your own in the current version in example, while also allowing any amount of others to raid in place of the AIs.
For PvP it's even easier as autoqueues means everyone is just an npc in the eyes of others by default, with an option for positive exceptions in case you feel like making contact or they succeed in being interesting as a human.

[Lady Atia]

What would be a good megadungeon, or multiple, in the revamp?

Scarlet Monastery?

Scarlet Monastery needs to be a raid the next time we see it.

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Yeah, WoW is losing so much for not being in consoles... Final Fantasy XIV, Elder Scrolls Online, and Black Desert are already on consoles, while New World and Lost Ark may join them soon.

I'm 100% sure Classic gameplay would work perfectly fine on consoles, it's Retail with all the complex rotations and add-ons that would f**k everything.

Tbf, with both the UI revamp and simpler raids like Aberrus we don't really *need* addons anymore in order to play the game just fine. Blizzard just has to sacrifice the 1% in order to potentially gain the masses via consoles. PvP on the other hand, I think they would have to ban addons there in order to make it fair? Either that or split consoles and pc players there.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

I would love to see race campaigns, more cultural/race specific armor sets, weapons and not only one-offs via heritage questline sets, some old racial mounts remade.
It would be also a great way to introduce new and newer players to the race they're playing and make people more "attached" i guess.

Heritage questlines system(especially races i mainly play) gets me all happy when new one show up, for a reason, just like class order halls did in legion.

I don't know to say it, but i guess i could just say that it makes things more "personal" than just going to new land as a stranger, being the hero again.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

- Focus on single player experience with multiplayer elements. I think that Genshin Impact its such a massive success because of this mostly. Players want to be part of a shared world but do not want to play with other players. They want to progress at their own pace. FFXIV is clearly making an effort to go in this direction and WoW will have to do so too.

I don't see the value in this. It seems like encouraging a bad habit among modern gamers more than anything. That they've become so much more introverted seems like a problem to me, and I think the lack of necessity to do things like search for groups through regional chat instead of group finders is one of the factors responsible for WoW's general decline in community and the increased toxicity of the community.

[Darkarath]

I don't see the value in this. It seems like encouraging a bad habit among modern gamers more than anything. That they've become so much more introverted seems like a problem to me, and I think the lack of necessity to do things like search for groups through regional chat instead of group finders is one of the factors responsible for WoW's general decline in community and the increased toxicity of the community.

You might be right regarding toxicity, but the fact is that no one wants to enter a game and spend time looking for a group. Everything needs to have an automatic group finder these days.

How many people play WoW solo? Doing quests, collecting stuff, doing dungeons and raids just once? I would say that the vast majority.

The social aspect of games is dead. No company has ever find a way to encourage this after Vanilla WoW. Gamers have changed. They just want to play a game without depending on others. Hell I would argue that most of WoW's most successful and well regarded content is solo content, and people are always asking for solo progression.

Social improvements would be awesome but players want to play while being part of a social game, not necessarily participating actively in social activities. Solo playstyle must be encouraged in any multiplayer PvE game if it wants to be successful (Genshin Impact, FFXIV, Diablo IV...).

[ImTheMizAwesome]

You might be right regarding toxicity, but the fact is that no one wants to enter a game and spend time looking for a group. Everything needs to have an automatic group finder these days.

How many people play WoW solo? Doing quests, collecting stuff, doing dungeons and raids just once? I would say that the vast majority.

The social aspect of games is dead. No company has ever find a way to encourage this after Vanilla WoW. Gamers have changed. They just want to play a game without depending on others. Hell I would argue that most of WoW's most successful and well regarded content is solo content, and people are always asking for solo progression.

Social improvements would be awesome but players want to play while being part of a social game, not necessarily participating actively in social activities. Solo playstyle must be encouraged in any multiplayer PvE game if it wants to be successful (Genshin Impact, FFXIV, Diablo IV...).

Im a big introvert and honestly mostly prefer to play solo, for example i loved mage tower for a reason that i could do it alone and not depend on others.

In most cases you won't force an introvert to harder and very focused social activities, unless it's done via automatic finder or more casual content, open world quests and such that don't require a lot of talking.

[Dracullus]

My wishlist for 10.1.7 (including pretty obvious things):

1. BfA timewalking, dungeons, PVP Warfronts, evergreen Visions of Stormwind/Orgrimmar (no cloak needed)
2. Throne of Thunder timewalking normal raid; LFR version for each timewalking raid, no new difficulty just option for grouping
3. Quality of life changes - renown rewards fully account wide (I'm looking at you profession recipes), some new treasures to catch up even more with profession knowledge, exploration toy for Dragon Isles, heirloom items for wrist/hands/waist/boots slot.
4. Making all BfA raids easily soloable with S2 gear.
5. Troll/Draenei heritage.
6. Shaman for everyone
7. Zaralek Rares droping around 420-425 gear tokens - I know gearing is easy now, but it would be quick catch up fresh alts for Season 3 similar to 10.0.7 (and way to grab tier set on every class). Also it would revitalize ZC rares, it's pretty dead content compared to FR when it was current.
8. Brawler's Guild big update.
9. Questline leading to 10.2 would be nice.

[Eeram]

Okay, hear me out.
World of Warcraft 2.0
Separate game like classic wow. So classic wow retail wow and 2.0. All under the same subscription like someone said above.
2.0 would be the storm that stops us from traveling to the other side of Azeroth is still raging on but there is a small gap open that could be traveled through a small group of adventures lead by thrall. As we are going through the storm begins to collapse again an thrall uses his elemental powers to hold it open long enough for us to almost make it through only for it to blow our ship and sink us.
Sinking to the depths of the ocean we are saved by the inhabits of whatever on whatever land. Our mounts can no longer answer our call an we lose our gear to the bottom of the ocean or it’s stolen by pirates idk.
The gist is we are starting over no mounts no gear back to level 1 on new lands. Our characters hit there head on a rock amnesia.
You can transfer your characters from retail to 2.0 or you can start fresh.
That’s how they could do 2.0

[Kiria]

I very much agree with your thoughts.

While I am loving DF, and I have no doubt that if they keep supporting it as they have done until now, it will be the best expansion in WoW's history, I am very negative about WoW's future.

Blizzard is desperate for players to return. The only option to do that is making a world revamp in 11.0. NOTHING would bring back players or generate the interest and hype of a world revamp. But those players that return would inevitably leave the game again, as you said, due to commitments and age.

What WoW needs is new players, and that is just not going to happen. Even if 11.0 is a world revamp and they dramatically improve the new player experience, which right now is just horrible, it would not work.

New players would look at a 20 year old game and say: "Fuck no. Too much content. The game is too big. I would never catch up. Do I have to pay a subscription? I cannot play the game with consoles. Too many skills. Combat is outdated. Why I need addons to play?"

At this point, they can keep supporting the game as they are doing now, and it would have a happy playerbase that slowly but steadily decreases over time, or they just need to do WoW 2.0.

Keep Classic, current WoW, and WoW 2.0 all under the same subscription. We all have different opinions on what WoW 2.0 would need to be, but I would say that in the current market, some key points might be:

- Action RPG combat style.

- Graphics overhaul.

- Game has to be much much more casual. I know that for us current WoW might seem casual but it needs to do much more in this aspect.

- Focus on single player experience with multiplayer elements. I think that Genshin Impact its such a massive success because of this mostly. Players want to be part of a shared world but do not want to play with other players. They want to progress at their own pace. FFXIV is clearly making an effort to go in this direction and WoW will have to do so too.

- Tell a proper story. Improve your narrative devices. WoW's universe is so rich yet they are so terrible are telling stories.

- Explain the game systems to your players.

- No addons.

- Release the game on PC and consoles.

You are bang on, my baby brother who has only just turned 20 asked me to give him a recruit a friend a few weeks ago so I obliged and he checked out the new content and his response was literally "This is shit" he quit a few hours in stating it was boring and confusing and asked me about the old game, I pointed him in the direction of the Classic servers and I've not heard from him since as he's enjoying the challenging aspect of it and the fact its abit more straight forward and not too big.

[Chickat]

Mind, I also heavily doubt Elementals are next. Dragonflight, much like Cataclysm is also an elemental expansion. The Incarnates are associated with the elements, many of their minions are elementals, you've more of the fuckers running around than at any time since Cata and the Primalist objective is to explicitly retvrn to a time closer to when they ruled the world. They're out of focus amidst the dragon drama, but they're there and I don't see much hope for another air/water/fire/earth themed set of baddies after a villain cast of identically themed dragons and raids like VoI.

Tbh, I wouldnt call DF an elemental expansion in the same way I wouldnt call WoD a demon expansion. There were heavy themes of demons in WoD, but Legion was full on Demons. DF is Dragons with heavy Elementals themes and 11.0 could be full on elementals.

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Let's stop and think this through for a minute.

- In the beginning of Azeroth, there were the Elementals and the Elemental Lords.

- The Void sent the Old Gods to conquer Azeroth. The Elementals fought back, but ultimately lost and became enslaved. The Titans arrived and won the day.

- Then the Protodragons evolved from the Elementals.

- Some Protodragons were turned into Dragon Aspects by the Titans using Order magic, while some went deeper into their Elemental ancestry and became Primal Incarnates.

- Two sides of the same coin, both Elemental in nature but one infused with Order magic, and the other even more Elemental magic.

- Both sides were lured by the Void. Neltharion struck a pact with it, and it seems like Iridikron might've as well.

- Both were engaged in a war, and ultimately the Dragon Aspects came out on top. Essentially, two different philosophies clashed over the right to rule and protect the world they shared: the Elemental magic which had always covered the planet, and the Order magic which had always resided inside with the slumbering Titan.

Right? Okay.

What's happening right now is essentially round 2 of that war. Iridikron is pursuing his endgame, whatever it may be, and Alex is pursuing hers (making sure the Dragon Aspects are empowered once more, and able to fulfill their duty to protect Azeroth).

Then Thrall appears on the cover of BlizzCon 2023. The one guy who's been heavily involved with both the Elementals and the Dragons. The mortal who, in a way, represents both of these forces. He literally was the Earth-warder for a while.

At this point it feels very likely the next expansion will involve some kind of war over Azeroth, which would include Dragons, Elementals, Old Gods and a world revamp.

Theory

War breaks out all over Azeroth, in what is essentially the Hour of Twilight. The Old World is literally torn asunder.

In a cinematic that invokes the spirit of the old Cataclysm cinematic, but with Thrall as the narrator, we see elemental forces clashing, Old God minions lurking in the shadows and deep corners of the earth, and ultimately, Thrall riding a dragon into combat.

Metzen's voice is booming, just as it did when he voiced Deathwing, about the impending dangers and terrible forces now waging war for dominance.

Lands are destroyed and restored, cities rise and fall.

Ultimately the logo appears: World of Warcraft: WORLDBREAKER / AZEROTH / HOUR OF TWILIGHT / TITAN or something like that.

Then, because 11.0 is the final expansion in the "Void" trilogy, after Cataclysm and Dragonflight before it, we get a follow-up to MoP in 12.0 with a thrilling expansion that takes us across the world to the mystical continent of AVALOREN.

Vanilla
TBC -> WoD -> Legion
WotLK -> BfA -> SL
Cata -> DF -> 11.0
MoP - 12.0 -> 13.0

We could even call it Battle for Azeroth.

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Dragonflight is an elemental expansion. It’s primarily about dragons and elementals. Much like BfA was faction conflict and old gods. I’m not sure where people are getting the idea that 11.0 will be primarily elemental focused.

11.0 so far is heavily leaning towards World Revamp. I’ve no doubt that the elements and the elemental lords (as well as the surviving Primalists/Incarnates) will factor into zones stories like they did in Vanilla, but they won’t be the primary theme. It’ll just be Vanilla 2.0 with a combination of various stories, characters and narratives dedicated to each of their zones.

Like I just said, WoD could also be called a demon expansion, but Legion was literally right after it. I dont think your point means anything tbh.

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WoD heavily featured the Burning Legion, and we got Legion right after.
BfA heavily features Death-themes and the storylines surrounding Jaina, Arthas, Uther, Drust, Sylvanas, Bwonsamdi, etc., and we got SL right after.

So there is no reason why 11.0 can't contain Elemental stuff. In fact, going by history, it seems quite likely.

Beat me to it i guess. Im a few days behind, just catching up. Certain people in this thread will be familiar with my time traveling capabilities.

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Sometimes a Thrall is just a Thrall.

I think it’s as simple as Blizzard wanting a banner that shows off each franchise’s most iconic character. Thrall is a logical choice for WoW. Nothing more to it.

People literally said the same thing about Jaina and then we got BFA.

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Yeah Blizzcon does make a difference. DF is OK so far, but the announcement was very much unhype and scuffed. First time we didnt get one of those feature trailers (although the SL one was also very barebones).

Yeah, I hope they remember the disappointment from DF reveal and include a traditional feature trailer.

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Well, yeah. WoD, BfA, and DF are the middle acts of their trilogies, and they all had to both pick up the thread where their predecessors left off, and ramp up the tension for the big finale. So neither of them go all-in with their different themes.

You'd have to be blind and deaf (no offense) if you don't see that WoD sets Legion in motion, BfA sets SL in motion, and that DF is setting something involving the elements etc in motion right now.

Well Elementals are 100% the secondary theme just like Demons were in WoD.

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Water like you've never seen before!

Or was it "unlike any water you've seen before" i don't remember, but i remember jokes about it.

Something about walking on water?

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Remember when a lot of people were against the return of talent trees when it was suggested before DFL?

I wouldn't really take people who really for the removal of talent trees seriously. Their opinions and goalposts change based on Blizz's changes. Somehow, magically they were for it when previously they were against it.

Tbf the talent trees we have now are so much better than the old ones. People should be allowed to change their mind, especially after 9 or 10 years ffs.

If I had to make a chose of going back to Wrath/cata trees or MoP-SL trees I would pick the later trees every time. I happen to think Blizz innovated and included the best of both worlds with the new trees.

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They are fairly large in general. I think Dragonriding probably makes them feel smaller than they actually are, but they are still large even with that. If we were just riding on the ground at 100% speed, a zone like Azure Span would be absolutely massive.


I mean the latter. Combining zones is sort of irrelevant and doesn't actually accomplish much. Like, you could combine Elwynn, Redridge, Westfall and Duskwood into "Elwynn", but that won't address the actual problem, which is that those zones (nearly all Vanilla zones) were built from the perspective of even epic riding being a fairly late luxury.

A zone like Elwynn forest was built to be a forest when you are running around at level 1-10, without even 60% riding, just moving about at regular run speed. It's a small wooded area in the modern game. Even with 310% flying it's a quick zip across that forest, combing Duskwood into it still results in a fairly small-ish forest region. It doesn't feel like an expansive forest you can go get lost in. It did back in the day, but especially in the context of a revamp, it's size becomes a limiting factor.

Ditto a zone like STV. Even recombined into the original single zone, STV is quite small. It's not some sprawling expansive jungle in the way that Azure Span is a massive region of pine forest.

There's only a couple zones (The Barrens, Tanaris, Desolace) that actually have a decent breadth to them, and barrens aside, even those are a quick traversal.

I think it's difficult to appreciate just how small old zones are. Here is the view from the hills up by Everbloom's portal in Stormwind. Look at how close Sentinel hill (more than halfway down westfall) and the great tree (the halfway point in Duskwood) are. It's a quick jog. It takes like 20 seconds on an Evoker using soar to get from Stormwind to Duskwood.

This problem is made even worse by dragonriding, because you move through a zone so fast.

So I hope that they realize this problem, and understand that to have any hope of capturing the sense of exploration in a revmap, they need to bump up scale. Forests need to feel like large forests. A town like Goldshire needs to feel like an actual town, not like a single Inn with a blacksmith and a nearby house. Stranglethorn needs to be an expansive jungle. Tanaris needs to be a massive desert, especially if they're updating gadgetzan to be the metropolis it's supposed to be in the lore. The large lakes, Loch Modan, Moonglade's Elune'ara, Darrowmere (the scholo lake) need to be actually large lakes, not small lakes you can bound across in a couple seconds with a casual one button press on a dragonriding mount.

The vanilla scale of biomes just doesn't work as well in the current game. They should be larger.

I understand, and I agree with you, but I dont think it will happen. That would be building 2 contients completely from scratch at that point. The scale would end up being like 4 or 5 Dragonflight continents combined. Just not feasible in a live service already launched mmo.

I think what we get is Darkshore/Arathi type revamp. New mountain shapes, new textures, trees, doodads, skybox, buildings, mobs etc. I think in a lot of scenarios they will even leave half the quests as they are and only update the ones directly mentioning the cataclysm.

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My pet theory is that we're going to get a (more or less) full revamp of the old world, and a new zone. Why?

1. The 20th Anniversary and 10th Expansion are going to be big for both players / paying subscribers and for the shareholders. They need to wow the playerbase and bring back those who've quit.

2. They've been talking about Team A and Team B for a few expansions now. They may have a team working on converting all the old zones to use hi-rez assets as we speak.

3. It seems to me that a number of the streamers (Belular etc) are saying that Blizz has already updated a significant number gameplay assets, these buildings etc are just in the new zones.

But as the song says, que sera sera, what will be will be.

The speculation is fun though.

IM pretty sure they have shot down the rumors of an A and B team for years. Theres the WoW team and the wow classic team but thats it.

[Hitei]

I work in schools. This is patently false. More accurately, new players have very little interest in WoW. As an entry point into the genre, at least. GW2, ESO, and especially FFXIV get a lot of young players. WoW itself is more of a niche. That being said, I do think Dragonflight is a step toward getting these younger casuals interested.

That you've seen a couple kids play niche, low population MMOs doesn't change the reality of what 97% of kids are playing now. There is a reason that things like Runescape and early wow were culturally massive and now the bar for MMO success is simply not going under. Kids do not give a shit about MMORPGs. They are playing Valorant, Apex and Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox, Genshin, fotm things like Fall Guys and Among Us, even LoL is still more popular with kids despite how old the MOBA genre is also getting.

I grew up in a generation that had strong investment in MMORPGs. Where everyone was playing runescape during breaks and even people not normally into video games were playing pseduo MMO shit like Coke Music and Habbo. I have a 12 year old niece, I see what she plays, and what her friends (across two countries) are also into, we talk about games. You can see with even a casual glance what youtubers and streamers are popular with young demographics.

All of MMORPGs are niche in 2023. It is a niche genre. When new MMOs are successful, their success isn't from all sorts of kids who have never played an MMO jumping in and discovering the genre for the first time; their success is from cannibalizing decades-old MMO players from other existing MMOs. There is a reason that most new MMOs base their whole sales pitch on "it's like X old MMORPGs back in the day, remember?"

It's a genre that has been downtrending for a decade, with an archaic core design philosophy. Kids do not want a years long character progression journey based on leveling individual skills, pressing buttons to cast a spell at a boss, and doing written out quests to kill 12 wolves and collect haunted pinecones. They don't want a spell book with a bunch of tooltips they have to read through and decide when to use what. They want drop in, drop out, fast and fun, typically match based MP games where story (if there is one) is accessory.

Of course there are exceptions. I played Starsiege: Tribes when I was a kid; No one else I knew, even the other "gamer" kids, knew what the fuck that was or had ever heard of it. But exceptions are exceptions, and youth as a whole have very little interest in MMORPGs as a genre.

I understand, and I agree with you, but I dont think it will happen. That would be building 2 contients completely from scratch at that point. The scale would end up being like 4 or 5 Dragonflight continents combined. Just not feasible in a live service already launched mmo.

I think what we get is Darkshore/Arathi type revamp. New mountain shapes, new textures, trees, doodads, skybox, buildings, mobs etc. I think in a lot of scenarios they will even leave half the quests as they are and only update the ones directly mentioning the cataclysm.

Yeah, I also think that is what we will get. Which is why I hate the idea of a revamp expansion. Because making textures nicer looking isn't enough to make helping the same NPCs fight the same enemy groups in mostly the same zones (for the third time in a 20 year progression) not sound like absolute torture.

[Raetary]

The newcomer experience can only be fixed with a full revamp.

Imo, they should shelve all legacy content, and gate it behind Zidormi and Chromie for veteran players only, and basically make the game focus entirely on the new experience that Newzeroth brings to the table.

Fuck exiles reach, return to racial starting zones as a simple and straightforward introduction to the culture and and racial identity of the playable race they chose.
Return class trainers as quest NPCs to explain the basic gameplay mechanics.

The game needs a proper introduction into the world of Azeroth.
For which Exiles reach simply is too inadequate to do, it's too arbitrary and too disconnected from the rest of the established World.

Entering Azeroth with a new character should be a very simple affair, and lvling up and moving to other areas should feel organic, clear and satisfying.

As is, after finishing ogre island, the game just throws you into the void, with the aim to get you into a particular piece of content (BfA) which it more often than not seems to fail at (cue, every newcomer being stuck in god knows where, instead of the places that they are intended to be in), all while punishing you for it by restricting your access to dungeons, and making it a pain in the ass to progress through that old content because of Introductory scenarios and lack of direction and transport.

It's confusing, not fun and exhausting.

[Kiria]

The newcomer experience can only be fixed with a full revamp.

Imo, they should shelve all legacy content, and gate it behind Zidormi and Chromie for veteran players only, and basically make the game focus entirely on the new experience that Newzeroth brings to the table.

Fuck exiles reach, return to racial starting zones as a simple and straightforward introduction to the culture and and racial identity of the playable race they chose.
Return class trainers as quest NPCs to explain the basic gameplay mechanics.

The game needs a proper introduction into the world of Azeroth.
For which Exiles reach simply is too inadequate to do, it's too arbitrary and too disconnected from the rest of the established World.

Entering Azeroth with a new character should be a very simple affair, and lvling up and moving to other areas should feel organic, clear and satisfying.

As is, after finishing ogre island, the game just throws you into the void, with the aim to get you into a particular piece of content (BfA) which it more often than not seems to fail at (cue, every newcomer being stuck in god knows where, instead of the places that they are intended to be in), all while punishing you for it by restricting your access to dungeons, and making it a pain in the ass to progress through that old content because of Introductory scenarios and lack of direction and transport.

It's confusing, not fun and exhausting.

I absolutely agree with this, as it stands WoW is too big and conflated for its own good, new players will absolutely lose interest almost immediately.

[huth]

All of MMORPGs are niche in 2023. It is a niche genre. When new MMOs are successful, their success isn't from all sorts of kids who have never played an MMO jumping in and discovering the genre for the first time; their success is from cannibalizing decades-old MMO players from other existing MMOs. There is a reason that most new MMOs base their whole sales pitch on "it's like X old MMORPGs back in the day, remember?"

Even at its height, WoW peaked at 14M concurrent players while being available in markets that comprise >2B people. I'd argue MMOs never really got out of niche to begin with. Video games as a whole only really became mainstream relatively recently, historically speaking. Pong turned 50 last year.

[Hyde]

snip
- - - Updated - - -

Changing minds is fine, just that they conveniently changed their mind to whatever changes Blizz made even though they would criticize others' people suggestions that led to Blizz's changes. Then they will magically support after the changes are made.

0 chars

[Hitei]

The newcomer experience can only be fixed with a full revamp.

-snip-

I'd argue that a revamp doesn't actually make for much of a newcomer experience at all.

I've expressed this position before but: by necessity a revamp of this sort is targeted at veteran players. When you make EPL and WPL into a hilly green zone with ongoing farming efforts; that is only exciting for veteran players. It's made interesting because a veteran player knows the history of the area, they (obviously, assumptions) saw it fall in WC3, they saw the argents struggle to hold the line in Vanilla, they saw the fall of the Scourge in Wrath, the beginnings of recovery and healing in Cata, and that green zone represents a payoff for a 20 year plotline.

A new player just sees a generic fantasy forest zone. You can tell them it used to be a plagued hellscape, but they're just gonna take it as "oh, that's neat."

A veteran player sees Auberdine destroyed, or the bridge in Redridge complete, or Thousand Needles entirely flooded and it has deep meaning. A new one just sees ruins they have no connection to, a normal stone bridge and a weird long lake.

The solution for this presents even more problems. Because you have an uphill battle trying to impart the history and context of a location or race or NPC to a newplayer, in a way that doesn't feel like painful overexplaining for every existing player, who are still 95% of who is going to be doing those quests.

I agree that individual starter zones indicate racial identity more, but that's also (and this being good or bad is an entire debate in itself) not the direction that characters and narrative have been moving in. The Alliance and horde are no longer loose associations of largely independent racial groups that stick to their own and firmly embrace established traditions and racial identity. They are increasingly a cohesive society of culturally mobile individuals: A 2004 female night elf was (lorewise) presented as probably a priestess or some martial variety of sentinel, or exceptionally, a newly trained druid where males typically held that role. A 2023 female night elf might be someone more like Elise Starseeker, an explorer's league gal through and through, who dresses more like a dwarf and is, despite being a druid, more interested in cataloging and charting ancient troll ruins than typical night elf things.

Those racial groups don't really exist in the same fashion in the modern setting the way they did in Vanilla or Cata. Tauren are still Tauren, but they're also now two culturally distinct groups the HM associated and Bloodhoof, they're also Cenarion members, and Sunwalkers and members of the Earthen Ring. Even without getting into the arcane using tauren mages or piratey tauren rogues, they have a much larger and more difficult to gloss cultural distribution compared to when in 2004 they just needed to be plains hunters with typical indigenous-resembling ceremonies and rituals.

I think that's why they went with Exiles'. Because the idea they want to move forward with is that your character is an individual with their own agenda and context rather than just a sort of stamp generated by a preconceived racial identity and it's traditional values and identity.

[Schwert]

"Kids" - teenagers - not being into MMORPGs doesn't feel quite right, when I can walk into any local gaming or anime convention and see XIV cosplay and fan merch everywhere. That game is extremely popular with younger players.

Is it Fortnite levels of popular? No. Nothing will really reach those levels, but teenagers and young adults are absolutely playing MMOs. Their reasons for playing differ though, and a lot of that focus is on the more social features. While not roleplayers, a lot of these people play for the questing / easy raids and to just simply hang out at events. Something that WoW has been lacking due to it's refusal to put in features like player housing for years. (Although, XIV has a more modern aesthetic mixed into it's look too, which WoW cannot emulate.)

And I agree that WoW is way too bloated and complicated now.
I tried to get my boyfriend into the story, and he just couldn't figure out what was going on. BFA is an awful introduction as it just launches you right into "you hate this guy" without the build up that Vanilla to WoD gave us, Shadowlands is just garbage in general, and Dragonflight is "why do I care about any of this?" because it has nothing to do with the actual player races.

World revamp of EK + Kalimdor back to Vanilla style basics would be immense in helping the new player experience, and to help veteran players rekindle interest in the core of the story, and keeping things more grounded like they were back in Vanilla too. None of this world scale insane conflict stuff; stories related to the player races, their rebuildings and their conflicts.

I don't care about big bad taking over the world.
I care about taking Gilneas back from the Forsaken.
I care about healing Darkshore.
I care about the House of Nobles.
I care about... whatever the hell Void Elves are doing, anything, a crumb of content.

Just give us back stories that invest us in what we're actually playing. Shadowlands and Dragonflight have both fallen completely flat on that, and BFA isn't an introductory experience, as much as I liked the start of it.

[Hyde]

"Kids" - teenagers - not being into MMORPGs doesn't feel quite right, when I can walk into any local gaming or anime convention and see XIV cosplay and fan merch everywhere. That game is extremely popular with younger players.

Is it Fortnite levels of popular? No. Nothing will really reach those levels, but teenagers and young adults are absolutely playing MMOs. Their reasons for playing differ though, and a lot of that focus is on the more social features. While not roleplayers, a lot of these people play for the questing / easy raids and to just simply hang out at events. Something that WoW has been lacking due to it's refusal to put in features like player housing for years. (Although, XIV has a more modern aesthetic mixed into it's look too, which WoW cannot emulate.)

And I agree that WoW is way too bloated and complicated now.
I tried to get my boyfriend into the story, and he just couldn't figure out what was going on. BFA is an awful introduction as it just launches you right into "you hate this guy" without the build up that Vanilla to WoD gave us, Shadowlands is just garbage in general, and Dragonflight is "why do I care about any of this?" because it has nothing to do with the actual player races.

World revamp of EK + Kalimdor back to Vanilla style basics would be immense in helping the new player experience, and to help veteran players rekindle interest in the core of the story, and keeping things more grounded like they were back in Vanilla too. None of this world scale insane conflict stuff; stories related to the player races, their rebuildings and their conflicts.

I don't care about big bad taking over the world.
I care about taking Gilneas back from the Forsaken.
I care about healing Darkshore.
I care about the House of Nobles.
I care about... whatever the hell Void Elves are doing, anything, a crumb of content.

Just give us back stories that invest us in what we're actually playing. Shadowlands and Dragonflight have both fallen completely flat on that, and BFA isn't an introductory experience, as much as I liked the start of it.

TBF younger generation couldn't really afford to pay wow subscription. I started playing wow during TBC because I finally got a stable job after a couple of years of graduation.