Since 2020’s World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, the venerable MMO has been following a really particular enlargement launch formulation—4 new zones, three raids, eight dungeons, a few new options corresponding to delves, and 4 seasons to maintain you busy after you’re performed with status grind and the marketing campaign.
Despite the fact that Blizzard did develop and enhance this formulation in Dragonflight by including smaller patches like 10.0.5 and 10.0.7 centered on class balancing and new occasions, the construction has remained intact throughout the final three expansions, and far of that construction was additionally inherited from the expansions that got here earlier than. WoW’s modified loads over the past 20 years, and it is time to change once more—to shake up the nice outdated formulation and breathe in a brand new life into the enlargement cycle.
Credit score the place credit score’s due
It is clear that Blizzard has drastically improved the modern-day WoW for the reason that catastrophe that was Shadowlands, with its time-gating, lack of alt-friendly options, borrowed energy within the type of covenants and legendaries, poor storytelling, and most significantly, content material drought.
In Dragonflight, Blizzard took all of the suggestions it received from gamers, and used it as a method to enhance the sport. That meant common class balancing updates, extra alt-friendly options, and frequent patches which all the time launched a brand new occasion for catch-up gear, in addition to enjoyable diversions just like the Daybreak of the Infinite mega-dungeon.
The Struggle Inside takes these enhancements and runs with them, notably in areas like world quests, the Nice Vault rewards, and account-wide development (the Warbands system) that makes spending time together with your alts a delight relatively than a trouble. However this does not imply Blizzard ought to relaxation on its laurels.
New options invalidate the outdated ones
Blizzard has a behavior that is distinctive to WoW—releasing new options that robotically invalidate outdated ones. For instance, with the discharge of The Struggle Inside, the Dragon Isles and the months and months of growth that went into it are now not related, together with raids, dungeons, reputations, and, after all, gear. No different MMO does this.
Last Fantasy 14 and Outdated Faculty RuneScape, as an example, discovered a strategy to protect stuff from earlier updates and forestall it from changing into irrelevant.
The commonest instrument Outdated Faculty RuneScape devs use is upgrading the outdated gear. So, as a substitute of merely getting a brand new ring, you’d must improve the outdated one. On prime of that, some objects have area of interest makes use of and exactly due to that, they are going to all the time be an necessary piece of substances.
The perk of Last Fantasy 14 is that it does not take away the outdated options (in contrast to WoW), which means you may all the time return. The sport additionally leads you to previous zones for quests or gear, and gamers benefit from the expanded story in alliance and regular raids.
Proper now, there are 20 years price of WoW price raids, dungeons and places, most of them revisited solely due to achievement, mount, transmog, and pet farms. Sadly, this additionally applies to raids in the identical enlargement. Nerub-ar Palace is the latest raid in The Struggle Inside, and as quickly as a brand new giant replace drops, discovering a bunch to clear will probably be more and more tougher because the enlargement goes on just because not many gamers can be clearing it.
The principle motive why gamers return to earlier zones and raids is to get transmogs and achievements. The brand new raid will supply higher gear and will probably be a problem to clear it, because it’s balanced round your new gear.
Though Timewalking can provide you a glimpse of how one of many earlier expansions seemed and felt, these are restricted, albeit recurring, occasions. Mist of Pandaria: Remix, in the meantime, was a step in the proper course, but it surely was a limited-time mode and separate from retail World of Warcraft, and now it is gone.
Blizzard might go about this in quite a lot of other ways, however what I would like to see are large-scale Mists of Pandaria: Remix-like occasions in retail World of Warcraft which final for a month or two. Gadgets, dungeons, and raids ought to be scaled for present merchandise ranges, and gamers can select whether or not they need to full the brand new or the outdated stuff.
On prime of that, Blizzard might make supplies from earlier expansions important for crafting new objects, add new occasions and world quests to outdated zones (like in Season of Discovery) which grant new rewards and currencies, realm-wide quests that require large-scale contributions (akin to the opening of Ahn’Qiraj gates).
Leveling is now not the journey it was once
One of the vital obvious variations whenever you examine The Struggle Inside to its basic counterpart (particularly vanilla WoW, relatively than Cataclysm Basic) is leveling. World of Warcraft: Basic is all in regards to the journey and the buddies you made alongside the best way, and it has a robust sense of neighborhood due to that. In distinction, retail leveling is solely a method to get to the max degree.
I’ve but to satisfy a participant who enjoys leveling in modern-day World of Warcraft because it feels too grindy, the gear upgrades are meaningless and you’ll exchange them together with your best-in-slot as quickly as you attain the endgame. All the course of feels redundant, as all you need to do is attain your vacation spot: max degree.
Leveling ought to be equally or much more necessary than the endgame, although. Gamers are all the time leveling new characters, both as their alts or mains. It is one thing all of us do, a number of occasions, so it ought to be as partaking because the high-level actions. Though the method is made easy via power-leveling with heirlooms, dungeons, Chromie time, and even boosts, it is an actual disgrace such an necessary side of the sport hasn’t been revisited correctly for 4 years now.
Even Blizzard itself is, to an extent, acknowledging that leveling isn’t an pleasurable expertise by constantly providing you raid-ready boosts. Former World of Warcraft (and the League of Legends MMO) developer Greg ‘Ghostcrawler’ Road believes that reaching max degree ought to be an accomplishment, and “not a blip,” and it is arduous to not agree. With power-leveling, there is no time to study and deeply perceive your class, have memorable encounters you will retell your pals, and even discover the enlargement.
Leveling would profit from a serious overhaul with lowered expertise good points, higher leveling gear choices, further rewards for questing, and the elimination of sharding fully. The world feels all too empty, and being alone on a whole continent isn’t thrilling. If gamers knew there have been a whole bunch, if not 1000’s, of others leveling in the identical enlargement, they’d be extra inclined to exit within the open world and be a part of forces.
Am I a hamster?
In case you look past the joy of timed dungeons and the sweat and tears that go into semi-hardcore and hardcore raiding, the endgame boils right down to a hamster wheel of chasing gear of upper merchandise ranges.
It is true that increased difficulties, corresponding to Heroic raids and high-end Mythic+ keys, require you to ‘git gud’ and perceive the boundaries of your class, however as quickly as you grasp these, the one different limitations are the variety of raids and the dungeons you have accomplished and your merchandise degree that’s slowly (and I imply slooooowly) transferring up. So that you’re caught in a loop of doing dungeons for the sake of bettering the merchandise degree of your gear as a way to do the identical dungeons and raids however at a better problem.
Dungeons, raids, and PvP are the true endgame focus, whereas world quests and status farming look like nothing extra however chores it’s important to full since you’re both on the hunt on your subsequent achievement otherwise you want extra foreign money to improve your merchandise degree.
The endgame lacks depth, and Blizzard might enhance it by including significant rewards behind world quests, including extra distinctive recipes within the open world, organizing realm-wide occasions and efforts, bringing again attunements, and together with extra options which have direct penalties in your character. WoW centered an excessive amount of on merchandise degree and problem that it forgot the RPG ingredient in MMORPG.
Do we actually want this many currencies?
WoW gamers have time and time once more complained in regards to the variety of currencies, and all that Blizzard has performed is transfer them into our foreign money tab (no less than a few of them). Proper now, I’ve seven totally different currencies on my important (not counting Coffer Key Shards and different in-bag currencies).
Not solely does this make it arduous to determine the supply of those currencies, however this manner you are forcing gamers to finish actions they really do not need to do. For instance, all Renown Quartermasters promote you their gear and toys for Resonance Crystals, however Severed Threads Quartermasters ask for Kej. In addition to that, why are there 4 currencies for upgrading gear, and never just one or two?
As a substitute, Blizzard ought to trim down the variety of currencies and divide them into three classes—PvE, cosmetics and mounts, and PvP. It would not be overwhelming to have two to 3 currencies for every class. Additionally, this could apply retroactively and all previous currencies ought to be changed with the brand new ones.
World of Warcraft, transferring ahead
For years now, WoW has been caught in the identical cycle—creating new options and raids, abandoning them, after which creating some extra new stuff that may fill in the identical gap. Ner’ubar Palace changed Woke up Raids, and a few months later, it too can be changed with one other one. The system lacks a clear-cut strategy to make all these months and years of developed options evergreen.
Whereas the system of churning out one other eight dungeons, raids, and zones each enlargement works for retail WoW, Blizzard also needs to give attention to diving again into its legacy and reinvigorating all of the stuff that is already within the sport however simply accumulating mud. Every new enlargement ought to embrace new options, but it surely also needs to take one other have a look at programs corresponding to stale endgame actions, leveling, and currencies.
The neighborhood is aching for updates of the outdated world and programs, and plenty of followers would gladly revisit outdated expansions, as was the case with Mists of Pandaria: Remix. Revamping outdated and outdated programs and zones would give gamers greater than sufficient motive to return to beloved expansions, particularly in the event that they have not skilled the enlargement.
Designing such a system the place Legion and Mists of Pandaria might dwell in symbiosis and are equally necessary, the place leveling is the journey it was once, and the endgame is extra thrilling than an infinite loop would open up WoW in unimaginable methods and produce the sport again to its former glory.
