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

[ImTheMizAwesome]

And I'm sure Blizz exults over the few of you.
But I'd bet hard cash that it's far from the millions of players that Blizz used to have.

I wouldn't say "few of you", it might not fit your narrative which i don't really care about, but there's a lot more likeminded people such as me and some peps in my guild that play a lot more compared to previous two expansions.


Betting a hard cash on a obvious thing? There's a lot more games to play now, times changed, wow will never have the same amount of players it had in the past.

[Shadowferal]

I wouldn't say "few of you", it might not fit your narrative which i don't really care about, but there's a lot more likeminded people such as me and some peps in my guild that play a lot more compared to previous two expansions. Betting a hard cash on a obvious thing? There's a lot more game to play now, times changed, wow will never have the same amount of players it had in the past.

And you're the reason why I've said elsewhere that Blizz is likely to go the cheaper easier maintenance route, rather than reinventing and reinvestment, which wouldn't be cheap in time and money, or easy. They'd need new servers while keeping what remains of the current playerbase happy enough to pay the bills.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

And you're the reason why I've said elsewhere that Blizz is likely to go the cheaper easier maintenance route, rather than reinventing and reinvestment, which wouldn't be cheap in time and money, or easy. They'd need new servers while keeping what remains of the current playerbase happy enough to pay the bills.

Looking at your loud bullshit statements such as "one step from maintenance mode" i would say that you're the type of player, blizzard won't ever need again to be honest or cater to.

Or maybe i should say "doomsday forum player", since looking at your post history it seems like probably 5000 of your posts is about the same subject, trying to convince people to your weird narrative on various subjects, that doesn't have any backing whatsoever.

But enough of that, im going back to play the actual game, but i will probably see you here 5 years from now with 100k posts on your account doing the same thing, unless blizzard specifically caters to you.

[Schwert]

Updating the old world and combining the max level and leveling experience would actually be huge, and worth it for the long term health of the game. They aren't sacrificing as much as people think they are either; the new development tools exist, and there's less work needed to be done in the planning stages - all the old zones have their themes and story threads sorted out. It's actually faster than developing new zones entirely from scratch. Fan-fiction is easier to toss ideas out for than something wholly original.

Chromie Time is atrocious for new players, and BFA being the starting experience is also terrible because it doesn't introduce you to the world - just the basic Horde vs Alliance angle, which gets cut off pretty quick because apparently, war story in war IP is bad.

Unless you have somebody holding your hand, you don't get to learn about your race and get invested as a new player anymore. And this is bad.
That RPG magic most of us had cannot happen anymore, and people still do get gripped by these things. Other MMOs are still pulling it off.

Updating all the old zones, then slapping the starting zones for every race - potentially including (some / all) allied races - into them and building the story up again in modern times, with modern questing mechanics? Huge. And it'd mingle leveling characters and max level characters together, making the world seem lively while leveling again too.

I play Warcraft for Warcraft, and recently we've been going off the rails and straying further and further away from the things we actually know.
I don't care about these new NPC races.
I care about the things I actually play, and their stories being stuck in a 10+ year old stasis that's also outdated and broken mechanically at times? No thanks.
Update the old zones.
Make it an actual world.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

Updating the old world and combining the max level and leveling experience would actually be huge, and worth it for the long term health of the game. They aren't sacrificing as much as people think they are either; the new development tools exist, and there's less work needed to be done in the planning stages - all the old zones have their themes and story threads sorted out. It's actually faster than developing new zones entirely from scratch. Fan-fiction is easier to toss ideas out for than something wholly original.

Chromie Time is atrocious for new players, and BFA being the starting experience is also terrible because it doesn't introduce you to the world - just the basic Horde vs Alliance angle, which gets cut off pretty quick because apparently, war story in war IP is bad.

Unless you have somebody holding your hand, you don't get to learn about your race and get invested as a new player anymore. And this is bad.
That RPG magic most of us had cannot happen anymore, and people still do get gripped by these things. Other MMOs are still pulling it off.

Updating all the old zones, then slapping the starting zones for every race - potentially including (some / all) allied races - into them and building the story up again in modern times, with modern questing mechanics? Huge. And it'd mingle leveling characters and max level characters together, making the world seem lively while leveling again too.

I play Warcraft for Warcraft, and recently we've been going off the rails and straying further and further away from the things we actually know.
I don't care about these new NPC races.
I care about the things I actually play, and their stories being stuck in a 10+ year old stasis that's also outdated and broken mechanically at times? No thanks.
Update the old zones.
Make it an actual world.

Also updating every race mounts would be nice for new players and existing ones.

It's a shame that if you want updated saber cat mounts, you would have to go to some expansion and do this and that, pray for lucky rng drops, some new players that lets say started with NE that like cat mounts, won't even know something like that exist for quite a while.

I think it's a long overdue, and overall i agree with your points.

[Varodoc]

Updating the old world and combining the max level and leveling experience would actually be huge, and worth it for the long term health of the game. They aren't sacrificing as much as people think they are either; the new development tools exist, and there's less work needed to be done in the planning stages - all the old zones have their themes and story threads sorted out. It's actually faster than developing new zones entirely from scratch. Fan-fiction is easier to toss ideas out for than something wholly original.

Chromie Time is atrocious for new players, and BFA being the starting experience is also terrible because it doesn't introduce you to the world - just the basic Horde vs Alliance angle, which gets cut off pretty quick because apparently, war story in war IP is bad.

Unless you have somebody holding your hand, you don't get to learn about your race and get invested as a new player anymore. And this is bad.
That RPG magic most of us had cannot happen anymore, and people still do get gripped by these things. Other MMOs are still pulling it off.

Updating all the old zones, then slapping the starting zones for every race - potentially including (some / all) allied races - into them and building the story up again in modern times, with modern questing mechanics? Huge. And it'd mingle leveling characters and max level characters together, making the world seem lively while leveling again too.

I play Warcraft for Warcraft, and recently we've been going off the rails and straying further and further away from the things we actually know.
I don't care about these new NPC races.
I care about the things I actually play, and their stories being stuck in a 10+ year old stasis that's also outdated and broken mechanically at times? No thanks.
Update the old zones.
Make it an actual world.

Agreed, I don't know why people in this thread are acting like Blizzard has to SACRIFICE something to update the old world. When they actually GAIN from it.

Updating an already-existing world is obviously much easier and less time-consuming than creating a whole new continent from scratch.

For instance, going back to the famous "Kingdom of Stormwind" zone idea;

- We already know what the main settlements are (Stormwind, Goldshire, Sentinel's Hill, Lakeshire, Darkshire);
- We already know what the main aesthetic is (mostly forested area, arid plains in the west, mountains and a big lake in the east, shadowy undead wood in the south);
- We already know what possible threats could be used (a resurgence of the Blackrock orcs, a resurgence of Undead necromancers, a new Gnoll war, so on);
- We already know what the music could sound like;
- We already know what types of flora and fauna we could find.

So why exactly is Blizzard SACRIFICING something to update the world lmfao? How is updating the world not much easier and less time-consuming than creating a whole new continent from scratch, where you have to come up with new themes, aesthetics, races, settlements, music, etc.? Blizzard is only saving time if they update an already-existing world, instead of coming up with a new one from scratch.

Beyond that, people love these zones and this is a fact, so people wouldn't complain that Blizzard is recycling old zones instead of coming up with new continent from scratch.

Another fact is that this will be a good setting for a Light-centred expansion. 1) The Scarlet Crusade can resurface in an updated Lordaeron, coming into conflict with Calia Menethil of the Forsaken (and tying into those BfA pamphlets hating on Calia) ; 2) The Lightbound can invade Stormwind through the Dark Portal; 3) and a third Light force can invade through the Light-infused Sunwell, in an updated Quel'Thalas. An updated Eastern Kingdoms will be the perfect setting for an expansion where the Light begins their invasion of Azeroth, to claim the Soul of that world.

[Nymrohd]

We already have all racial mounts updated. For PvP.

[Alanar]

The First Ones ain't going anywhere bro

Maybe they will reduce their overarching role to mere myths for example, after the many complains.

First ones are stupid.

[Black Rider]

I would love a world revamp. Just don't rush it. Split it up into 2 addons. This would also solve the problem of more and more islands popping up and overcrowding the map for a time.

You could easily merge a lot of zones and have the old zones be subzones. That also makes stories feel bigger, when they tie together these bigger zones. Also make everything available to both factions. With elves and furries everywhere and fading restrictions it's no use anymore.. Both factions have completely lost what made them unique. Give spotlight to the races and make the alliance and horde take a backseat.

Eastern Kingdoms Addon:
+Hinterlands/Arathi/Hillsbrad/Alterac
+Gilneas/Silverpine/Tirisfal/Tol Barad
+Plaguelands/Unused space north of them
+Ghostlands/Eversong/Quel'danas
+Wetlands/Loch Modan/Twilight Highlands
+Dun Morogh (there is a lot of unused space)
+Badlands/Burning Steppes/Searing Gorge
+Elwynn/Westfall/Duskwood/Redridge
+Deadwind/Swamp of Sorrows/Blasted Lands
+Stranglethorn

Kalimdor Addon:
+Azuremyst/Bloodmyst/Teldrassil Remains
+Darkshore/Moonglade/Felwood/Ashenvale
+Winterspring/Azshara/Hyjal
+Desolace/Stonetalon/Mulgore
+Barrens/Durotar/Dustfallow
+Feralas/Thousand Needles
+Tanaris/Uldum/Un'goro
+Silithus (Make use of all the space and include the bg island from bfa)
+Maybe Kezan (not just the small chunk from cataclysm)
+Maybe a Tinker class

That are still a lot of zones but not all have to be there at release. 2-3 could easily be patch content.

I think old zones must be revamped with patches.
Just put out roadmap that in 2023 we will update this and this and these zones.

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Blizzard has the techniques to make zones more efficiently than they were a decade ago. For Dragonflight, Blizzard's environment artists have created a new technique where rather than hand sculpting by hand the entirety of a continent's geometry in WoWedit, they instead have created modular pieces of terrain that they can quickly copy paste together.






I don't think biomes/zone aesthetics would need to be consolidated as @George Lucas posited. Look at the Waking Shores, a zone which has two biomes/tilesets. If you overlay the Waking Shores onto Kalimdor, it covers the same area as Ashenvale and Winterspring, which are also two biomes/tilesets.




The density of different biomes or zone aesthetics has not changed, the only difference being the quantity of zones/size of the continents that Blizzard releases with every expansion every two years. Kalimdor is about 1/3rd larger than the Dragon Isles. Perhaps if Blizzard hired a few more environment artists, they could release a remade Kalimdor. Though, IMO, I would rather go visit brand new lands with new stuff like Pandaria with the Pandaren and Mogu and Mantid and Saurok, or the Shadowlands, rather than revisit boring old lands. I've already seen Orcs and Quillboar and Centaurs and treants too many times.

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Though another issue with an old world revamp (assuming the size was the same) would be how immersion breaking it would be to hop on your dragonriding mount and soar from one capital city to another in 20 seconds. It would totally kill any pretense of you living on a massive continent. The continent's size would have to be multiplied by 10x just to get us back to the current time it takes to fly from one city to another with old flying mounts, and even then it still feels ridiculous. The map would have to be 50x to 100x larger to make flying between cities at 800% speed feel like you might vaguely be flying across a continent to different kingdoms and countries. Maybe adding an hourly day/night cycle like in GW2 or FFXIV would help sell that sense of travelling across a continent too, rather than visiting everywhere in a single afternoon.

Dude, really interesting points, thanks for posting

[micwini]

There's a big difference between 'let's add some new models' and 'let's remake entire maps'. Those are on completely different levels of effort, difficulty, expense, and - most importantly - cohesion. You can't just have some zones revamped, and other zones being old - not only because that'd be jarring visually, but also for technical reasons, such as terrain boundaries etc. You'd have to either keep the base map the same (in which case are you really revamping?) or you'd have to change it once to fit with bordering old maps and then again each time one of those old maps are updated, which would further balloon the cost of the endeavor.

There's a reason they did it all in one swoop with Cataclysm - it's actually easier than redoing zones one by one over time.

Also: you'll have to spend development resources either way. Spending $500,000 now and $500,000 a year from now doesn't change the fact that you've spent $1,000,000 and that money needs to come from somewhere. You're not thinking in terms of a business. The issue isn't "they can't find the cash in their bank accounts". The issue is "if I spend X money I need to get at least X+Y money back or I'm being a bad business" - which means the money either needs to come out of existing budgets that are recouped by the usual expansion stuff, or it needs to come from newly added revenue. And the problem is that neither of those equations would be likely to work out, currently. (and that's not even talking about the fact that in all likelihood doing it in phases over time is actually more expensive, for various technical and logistical reasons)

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And the business mechanics are different, too. WoW has a lot less players. But it's not like developers now make a lot less money. You don't just get to say "technology!" as if that suddenly means things are free, especially the biggest part of it which is work hours. Has technology progressed? Yes. Does it mean it would be cheaper now than it was 13 years ago? Possibly. Does it mean that this suddenly makes the business math work out? Unlikely.

There is a reason I used 'shortsighted' instead of a mean word like 'stupid'. If we're talking business, how viable is it to never updated your office at all in over 10 years? Same thing here. EK and Kalimdor look wildly outdated, even compared to something that came one expansion later (pandaria). It also saves them time on the 'idea' phase they would normally have for new expansion areas. As someone said before, they don't make zones like they did back then. They use a modular structure. And seeing as we've seen lots of assets that could be used in a ravamp, i'd say the most work is in the quests and content itself, not the art. And as we've seen with DF, they can easily put massive amounts of content into a large mass for one expansion. Now imagine them working on it since WoD and there you have it: World revamp.

[George Lucas]

Regardless of the scope I would expect Blizzard to start from scratch and leave the old world be available. They could expand the ingame zones vastly, making Elwynn for example as big as modern zones. They could also combine multiple zones into one or even come up with new zones inbetween. Doesn't really matter.

Immersion isn't an argument regarding size. Goldshire is like two houses and newer locations also wouldn't make any sense if they were intended to represent the lore accurate size of a place. To appeal to nostalgia they would just need to bring over some points of interests in a recognisable way.

The Cataclysm revamp was just badly rushed, barely touching the landscape, not even bringing it to the levels of Northrend. The new zones from Cataclysm were on a completely different level.

Recreating old zones from scratch with verticality and density levels from modern WOW would make it feel like new zones and not just some cheap rehash with new fetch quests.

[Skildar]

A recurring theme of the last expansions is that Blizzard is still figuring out what their players do and what they want to do.

Their focus have shifted heavily in legion after MoP that was full of farm and Draenor devoided of one. Neither extreme worked, and their new Legion formula encouraged them to create new gameplay experiences and I really hope that they are able to tell this time around what was interesting for players in Dragonflight and what deserves to be iterated upon.

I don't want a Kinook 2.0 like the mission table that was iterated upon 4 times. Though I like small activities like Kinook, hunt, etc. and would continue liking them if they're small enough and available for the people that roam the world for fun.

The most pressing things to take a look at that have not been addressed in Dragonflight imo are the following :
- questing texts that are not engaging and often times long and repetitive. Just by presenting the text window like if your character was having a real conversation when it is one xould be a huge leap forward
- guild and communities today they are just forced social constructs in the game that don't provide any social experience. I play in a guild and have great friends in it but it is the raiding experience that drives us to play together and engage. They definitely are some areas to explore surrounding guilds activities and challenges. Also making their management a lot more easier would be sweet.

- faction and race story needs to be creative and move forward a hell lot faster. Every patch I'm asking myself, could I summarise all that has happened under 20minutes and it's close. I want more political intrigues, we used to have that a bit and it worked. Every race has some challenges, but for now we only get quick little nods to them like it couldn't make for anything more. Ofc people want to know what the forsaken council has led to since it has been put in place, Ofc people want to know what Gilneans will be able to salvage from their land after half of it has been contaminated and the other half put under water. Even void elves are interesting enough if you give them a place to find what makes them move their ass out of bed, but we don't even know if they have a bed as they're immigrants with a void storage.

- expansion story is usually ok with a lore building that is very interesting. I understand that the expansion story is usually fairly simple because it's like an afterthought of a marketing product. We need people to identify strongly with this next chapter, what should it say upfront ? Then what can story can we tell about it? I'm not against it but they should make for better writing of what the character say and how, stop having bad guys resort to I'm going to enslave/kill/mangle everybody because some people emprisoned me last time I fought for my rightful mission is already getting old.

- activities that don't require wowhead guide or handynotes is it really that impossible for blizzard to leave breadcrumbs and hints, etc. for people to play the game and find rewards in a satisfying way? Who the hell in their right mind conceived profession knowledge points and thought that it would be interesting to have many sources and no indicators on if you've got all you could with no catchup? Why do you still have achievments of stuff nobody can find on their own without a list of coordinates? Even zone sidequests were really hard to find. I didn't want to check in wowhead where to start them byt ended dokng so cause I couldn't find the gnoll king in Azur span.

[Biomega]

There is a reason I used 'shortsighted' instead of a mean word like 'stupid'. If we're talking business, how viable is it to never updated your office at all in over 10 years? Same thing here. EK and Kalimdor look wildly outdated, even compared to something that came one expansion later (pandaria). It also saves them time on the 'idea' phase they would normally have for new expansion areas. As someone said before, they don't make zones like they did back then. They use a modular structure. And seeing as we've seen lots of assets that could be used in a ravamp, i'd say the most work is in the quests and content itself, not the art. And as we've seen with DF, they can easily put massive amounts of content into a large mass for one expansion. Now imagine them working on it since WoD and there you have it: World revamp.

I get what you meant, but it's not that simple. The longer-term you plan, the more uncertain your predictions. Making big long-term investments increases the risk substantially, because you don't know what's going to happen. No one can predict gaming 10 years from now. Even 5 years. You're positing that somehow a massive investment like that will pay off eventually - you have no way of knowing that. If anything, WoW's dropping player numbers speak AGAINST an investment like that, and the general age of the game makes a more conservative strategy far more attractive. No one is saying WoW's collapse is imminent or anything like that, but after 20 years it's not exactly a good time to be making massive investments into a product like this; even the best-quality game will outlive itself eventually. Whatever they may have planned in terms of succession we don't know, but even assuming they just keep on going as-is it would be an extremely shaky proposition to think that something on that level is ever going to generate the necessary returns.

There's a reason many businesses now focus on short/medium-term planning - it's safer, it's more attractive to investors, and it's far more easily controlled.

[Revamp Man]

Update one capitol city each
Make ziidormi phases for 5 zones
Each patch add another zone

Not a full remake but preserves the past while giving new content

[Skytotem]

With Jorin Deadeye saying he's bringing the Outland bleeding hollow members to Azeroth in the orc heritage quest, I wonder if they plan to revamp a swamp/jungle zone next or what?

[Nymrohd]

With Jorin Deadeye saying he's bringing the Outland bleeding hollow members to Azeroth in the orc heritage quest, I wonder if they plan to revamp a swamp/jungle zone next or what?

I mean Dustwallow is an ugly zone and without Onyxia and Theramore it has not plot hooks. The ogres never really fit there anyway. Make it look more vibrant and bring the bleeding hollow.

[Biomega]

Who said it was a huge investment? The size of the continents are just as large as the islands of the latest expansions. Knowing that the zones already exist, it would go much faster to redo them because less effort and resources are required unlike for a new zone out of nowhere.. You start from the premise that it's a big effort, when it certainly isn't.

You're casually speaking of creating an expansion with new expansion zones AND with two new continents each of which are, by your own admission, the size of those new zones. That's three times the size in maps alone.

On top of the terrain redesign, you then also need the NPCs, quests, and so on, all of which needs to be both true to the old spirit AND related to the old world. In many ways, that's HARDER than making entirely new stuff, because there at least you can do whatever you want with little care for cohesion or integration into preceding layouts or events. Not to mention that since those are lower-level zones, it all must be tuned to work in a 1-X level scaling environment, reflecting the appropriate complexity, routing, and so on. And that's not even going into the technical challenges of redoing existing stuff rather than making new stuff, as databases have to be modified, ported, reorganized, etc. etc.

You are VASTLY underestimating the actual scope of a project like this.

[Skytotem]

I mean Dustwallow is an ugly zone and without Onyxia and Theramore it has not plot hooks. The ogres never really fit there anyway. Make it look more vibrant and bring the bleeding hollow.

The stonemaul have been there since TFT so I dunno about moving them out entirely, but having them keep a token presence with some of the Mok'nathal while Jorin and the Bleeding Hollow take the former Grimtotem towns for themselves would be cool.

A Dustwallow revamp would also be nice since Onyxia's lair can provide ties to Dragonflight.

[Nymrohd]

The stonemaul have been there since TFT so I dunno about moving them out entirely, but having them keep a token presence with some of the Mok'nathal while Jorin and the Bleeding Hollow take the former Grimtotem towns for themselves would be cool.

A Dustwallow revamp would also be nice since Onyxia's lair can provide ties to Dragonflight.

Honestly I want the Ogres to get some proper place instead of dwelling in other races ruins. We saw how an ogre city would look in WoD and it is pretty damn awesome. As fairly large creatures they seem to prefer open areas so they could move somewhere else. A swamp just doesn't seem to fit them. they are not shrek

[Skytotem]

Honestly I want the Ogres to get some proper place instead of dwelling in other races ruins. We saw how an ogre city would look in WoD and it is pretty damn awesome. As fairly large creatures they seem to prefer open areas so they could move somewhere else. A swamp just doesn't seem to fit them. they are not shrek

I'd split the difference and have them move into some of the mountains between Dustwallow and Barrens, or Dustwallow's border with 1k Needles.

I dunno if the Stonemaul would be able to reproduce Highmaul's style though since they had a bunch of Apexis Crystals to make their Ogres smart.