The War Within 11.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Well Done Steak]

Because you will abandon those new zones with the next expansion. But you will keep returning to racial capitals. Stormwind harbor has seen constant use since Wrath. We keep returning to Tirisfal every expansion for a new questline. Those places see use.

Capital cities are different... They're effectively hub zones. We have no reason to return to westfall unless some dev has a hard on for it instead of something like Karesh.

[Dancaris]

Wide open spaces with rewamp can be filled in time. You dont need to fill it like prev expansion was. Just main questline, few side quests. And in next expansion fill the space with content. Heck, we can have like another expansions filled with new content but old locations!

Any given character will experience one of seven expansion stories from 1 to 50. You don't get to see all those places on the same character now either.

You can, just not for leveling.

[Wangming]

Capital cities are different... They're effectively hub zones. We have no reason to return to westfall unless some dev has a hard on for it instead of something like Karesh.

Funny you should say that cause the Human Heritage Questline in DF takes us back to Westfall.
Also both Legion, BfA and the Shadowlands launch event affected Duskwood. But we don't see that reflected in the state of the zone. Because that would require a revamp.

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You can, just not for leveling.

Well, you can phisically go to those zones, yes. But you won't experience the storylines.

[Selorian]

And your idea of ambition is what exactly? Don't just be a salty politician from a non-elected party. Give us something better.

More world content, storylines like what we got with the blue dragonflight was cool. More scenarios like Brawler's Guild and Deaths of Chromie or Mage Tower for players to do outside of dungeons/raid that doesn't have a bunch of player power attached to it (stuff like Horrific Visions and Torghast could also fit this), bonus points if it's a fresh experience when playing on a different class. Something that I would enjoy would be like, an advanced leveling experience. A lot of named mobs in the world don't really do anything special, but if they were like a mini-boss encounter or you had mini-dungeons (like Darkmaul Citadel) that could serve as like, something to keep experienced players more engaged while leveling and serving as extra tutorial to the multiplayer aspects of the game for newer players would be good. One of my pet peeves with WoW is that even though I think its combat is very good, it does a horrible job of introducing players to the nuances of combat beyond the basics of your rotation and I think it would be cool to add stuff like that.

To throw the question back at you, what is your idea of an updated old world? What matters there that is going to keep people attached that can't just be done in a new continent? Was what BFA did with Arathi and Darkshore and Uldum and the Vale good? Because fmpov, there is no way to make content that is going to keep people interested in it for years after it's stopped being the current thing. That's simply not how live service games work. Honestly that's not really how any game works unless you are one of the dedicated few that just really loves it or if it's something that happens to have insane depth of gameplay

edit: I also think DF itself was a big risk because of ambition in it. The patch cadence, dragonriding, the talent trees. They abandoned basically everything from Legion/BFA/SL

[Xilurm]

Evergreen content would help with returning to old zones.

[Magistrate]

That explains those revamped Darkmoon Faire tents.... it's all coming together!

? Is this datamined somewhere?

[Wangming]

More world content, storylines like what we got with the blue dragonflight was cool. More scenarios like Brawler's Guild and Deaths of Chromie or Mage Tower for players to do outside of dungeons/raid that doesn't have a bunch of player power attached to it (stuff like Horrific Visions and Torghast could also fit this), bonus points if it's a fresh experience when playing on a different class. Something that I would enjoy would be like, an advanced leveling experience. A lot of named mobs in the world don't really do anything special, but if they were like a mini-boss encounter or you had mini-dungeons (like Darkmaul Citadel) that could serve as like, something to keep experienced players more engaged while leveling and serving as extra tutorial to the multiplayer aspects of the game for newer players would be good. One of my pet peeves with WoW is that even though I think its combat is very good, it does a horrible job of introducing players to the nuances of combat beyond the basics of your rotation and I think it would be cool to add stuff like that.

To throw the question back at you, what is your idea of an updated old world? What matters there that is going to keep people attached that can't just be done in a new continent? Was what BFA did with Arathi and Darkshore and Uldum and the Vale good? Because fmpov, there is no way to make content that is going to keep people interested in it for years after it's stopped being the current thing. That's simply not how live service games work. Honestly that's not really how any game works unless you are one of the dedicated few that just really loves it or if it's something that happens to have insane depth of gameplay

edit: I also think DF itself was a big risk because of ambition in it. The patch cadence, dragonriding, the talent trees. They abandoned basically everything from Legion/BFA/SL

You answered your second paragraph in your first. We need a new leveling experience with mini bosses, scenarios and a cohesive storyline that isn't the distant pass. That can't "just be done in a new continent"
The leveling experience suck balls. You either do Exile's Reach with no contenxt and very little in faction or racial identity or one of the positively ancient racial starters. The newest non-dracthyr one is the demon hunter which is seven years old. After that? You either do BfA with zero context and even less regard to how new you are to the game or you Chromie time to an even more outdated journey for the next 40 or so levels.
A the very least we need to revamp the racial starters and provide a new leveling path up to at least SL if not DF that is up to contemporary standards.

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Evergreen content would help with returning to old zones.

Yeah that would indeed help a lot.

[Gloriandus]

cinematic:
dragon isles, massive energy release
slow zoom out to azeroth in space, continents lighting up
elemental planes encroaching into azeroth
destruction scenes
elemental energies coalescing, massive damage
thousands of shaman/earthen ring
kalimdor split in 2
back out to azeroth in space
globe rotating past known lands. camera zooming in, then black
title

[Well Done Steak]

Funny you should say that cause the Human Heritage Questline in DF takes us back to Westfall.
Also both Legion, BfA and the Shadowlands launch event affected Duskwood. But we don't see that reflected in the state of the zone. Because that would require a revamp.

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Well, you can phisically go to those zones, yes. But you won't experience the storylines.

Quests having us return to old zones is just fine.

That doesn't justify dumping resources on revamping like 25 zones over building a while new landmass, realm, or planet.

The old world is revisited as it needs, all it needs is just updated textures.

[Gregoronsen]

Well, you can phisically go to those zones, yes. But you won't experience the storylines.

i have never heard someone so confidently wrong about what they are saying. have you ever been to an old zone? every zone storyline is still very much within the game, there is a whole achievement for going and doing all of them.

[Cheezits]

cinematic:
dragon isles, massive energy release
slow zoom out to azeroth in space, continents lighting up
elemental planes encroaching into azeroth
destruction scenes
elemental energies coalescing, massive damage
thousands of shaman/earthen ring
kalimdor split in 2
back out to azeroth in space
globe rotating past known lands. camera zooming in, then black
title

Wrath of the Cataclysm!

Kalimdor exploding for no reason would be very funny. Like EK is just fine but Kalimdor gets rekt.

[Revamp Man]

once again, why are you talking about losing anything?
wow classic isn't here for nothing

Classic is a different game entirely


Unless what you are saying is it makes more sense for blizzard to not take advantage of the same tech used in BfA and other expansions to save content some players like and just going "quit or invest time into redoing everything again"

[Selorian]

I'll actually discuss in detail a system that failed and how it could be improved: Torghast. There are 4 reasons Torghast failed:

1. It was tied to player power, which made it feel like a chore
2. It was too easy
3. Enemy design was bland and generic
4. Your powers were bland and generic

1 can be solved by uh, not doing that. Make it optional, give it some cosmetics, titles, whatever. Go crazy. This in turn solves 2 because the entire reason it was this easy is that Blizzard expects things like this to be completed by anyone.

3 gets fixed a little by not having to do 2 (unrelated but see how these things are all interlinked), enemies being allowed to hit harder or not just get instantly blown up means their mechanics matter more, which baseline differentiates them a little but also being able to make the higher difficulties truly challenging lets the designers add some extra spice.

4 is the least linked and is just a weird flaw with torghast. For some reasons, all the powers there were either totally generic (+health, +crit, w/e) or class-wide. This meant every power had to interact with all of your character's specs, which led to a lot of weird stuff (hunters had way too many pet-based powers). If this was being reworked into longlasting, evergreen content, there would be incentives to put in more dev time to alleviate this.

But Torghast sucked, you might say, you hate SL. The Maw atmosphere sucked and was dreary. But here's the thing, the gameplay systems of this experience don't require the setting and flavor of SL at all. We can actually do something much better: We make it the Caverns of Time. Instead, every wing is our player going back to experience some major event (my idea was older raids modified to be a single player experience, but that's just me). So you can do the Icecrown Citadel wing, and you get sent into a single player roguelike experience fighting through the halls of ICC, fighting Scourge mobs, powering up, fighting minibosses based on ICC bosses, and at the end you get to fight the Lich King. You add some difficulty layers to it (like Torghast and most roguelikes these days have) and you get something that lets people experience big lore moments and something with some gameplay for everyone.

They could add a new wing in mini-patches or something as well.

[Nadiru]

i have never heard someone so confidently wrong about what they are saying. have you ever been to an old zone? every zone storyline is still very much within the game, there is a whole achievement for going and doing all of them.

hes some kind of FFXIV fan, perhaps self-identifying as a "wow refugee". small wonder the guy whose location is "not azeroth" is disingenuous about WoW

[Yzmor]

Cough Dragonriding Cough

no please, we definitely don't need dragonriding in the old world. I hate how it's a never ending game:

ground mounts = normal zones feel huge; flying = normal zones feel smaller, slightly bigger zones feel big enough; dragonriding = the huge, empty, useless expanse what the dragon isles are feel huge indeed, dragonriding was made for such zones, everything else is just a stain on the map when you can have 900%-1300% movement speeds; what's next? spaceshipdimensionrifting with whole planets as new zones for an expansion?


If dragonriding got enabled, they would make the devs start redesigning the old zones with the coming revamp in/past 12.0 with the new navigation speed in mind and it would kill the old world fantasy.

Why are people so obsessed with this thing?? If a zone is of just the right size, normal flying should be more than enough for traveling, I actually enjoyed zones where you needed to use ground mounts and could get immersed in the details unless the zone was too big and had a surface structure hard to navigate (like Revendreth). Obviously I wouldn't like to navigate a huge effing zone like Azure Span with a ground mount, but for god's sake why would we need such massive empty zones? Only for dragonriding.

I feel like this feature is just about to be used the wrong way. This should be left in the dragon isles and only be carried on via events like the cups so people who like it are still able to access it in a way in current content, but it's not even close to being such a huge revolutionary feature that all ladscapes of all future expansions should be designed around it from now on. Please no.

To those, who come up with the creative clapback "you don't need to use it... you can turn off dynamic flight starting 10.2":

Yes I do! I am forced to! Because if other players use it to get to an event or a rare, I have a disadvantage if I opt out. So it's not a fair alternative to just switch it off if others keep using it.

[Marlamin]

? Is this datamined somewhere?

Yeah, probably didn't get a ton of traction though. Imagine the Darkmoon Faire tents, but higher resolution.

[Nadiru]

no please, we definitely don't need dragonriding in the old world. I hate how it's a never ending game:

ground mounts = normal zones feel huge; flying = normal zones feel smaller, slightly bigger zones feel big enough; dragonriding = the huge, empty, useless expanse what the dragon isles are feel huge indeed, dragonriding was made for such zones, everything else is just a stain on the map when you can have 900%-1300% movement speeds; what's next? spaceshipdimensionrifting with whole planets as new zones for an expansion?


If dragonriding got enabled, they would make the devs start redesigning the old zones with the coming revamp in/past 12.0 with the new navigation speed in mind and it would kill the old world fantasy.

Why are people so obsessed with this thing?? If a zone is of just the right size, normal flying should be more than enough for traveling, I actually enjoyed zones where you needed to use ground mounts and could get immersed in the details unless the zone was too big and had a surface structure hard to navigate (like Revendreth). Obviously I wouldn't like to navigate a huge effing zone like Azure Span with a ground mount, but for god's sake why would we need such massive empty zones? Only for dragonriding.

I feel like this feature is just about to be used the wrong way. This should be left in the dragon isles and only be carried on via events like the cups so people who like it are still able to access it in a way in current content, but it's not even close to being such a huge revolutionary feature that all ladscapes of all future expansions should be designed around it from now on. Please no.

To those, who come up with the creative clapback "you don't need to use it... you can turn off dynamic flight starting 10.2":

Yes I do! I am forced to! Because if other players use it to get to an event or a rare, I have a disadvantage if I opt out. So it's not a fair alternative to just switch it off if others keep using it.

Dynamic flying is fun. Going fast, is fun. We play video games for fun. So the zones have to be bigger. Make them bigger! Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms were built in the way they are because of technical limitations, not because God told them to. Half the joy of classic is that the game world feels expansive, so expand the game world in retail and recapture that feeling.

[lostsoup]

Yeah, I'd much prefer seeing a reimagined version of EK and Kalimdor built for the modern game. I'd love to see all the classic locations feel big and expansive again and be closer to their lore size. I wouldn't be interested at all in an expansion that's just new stories in a repaired Cataclysm world.

[Xilurm]

no please, we definitely don't need dragonriding in the old world. I hate how it's a never ending game:

Well I'm sorry to say but Dragonriding is pretty much possible within the old zones, otherwise the current racing cups wouldn't be available. It really puts into perspective how fast you're going when you fly with the new system, zooming past the zones makes them feel tiny.

Anyway I do agree with you to an extent. When I'm questing in a zone I prefer either walking from place to place and taking in the sights or using a ground mount. Only time I really started using my dragon in DF was when I got to Thaldraszus. That zone was made for flying specifically.

[Reive]

I wouldn't like to be blizzard tbh. people don't even know what they want from wow anymore.