Hey everyone!
I’m sorry if you are bored of these “what should be the next expansion” posts. My intention here is to wrap all of those great ideas you can read in different forum posts (and some original) into a full, viable concept pitch of my dream WoW expansion. I hope you going to like it, and plz don’t take it too seriously, it serves only fun theory crafting purposes. Also have to mention this concept is from a casual point of view. The main goal of this concept is to make an expansion, where new and returning player don’t feel lost, and not hard-core players have enough fun content to enjoy the game with their friends.
Key features
- Reworked Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms: a stable version of Azeroth what would be the base of the next WoW era. → ”horizontal” expansions in the new era
- Guild system: Rebuild the community oriented game-style.
- Chromie time 2.0: new solo game mode for old content. Storytelling and follower system.
- Wider variety of dungeons/raids : 10 man raids, reworked classic raids, mega-dungeons.
- New class (semi-) role : Support
- Character power : new class specific item slot, micro-adjustment talent tree
- More RP elements : voice line customization, Legacy names
- Unlock allied races for everyone. (keep the heritage armor set and the mounts behind the quest/achi requirements)
Brief story
We returned from Shadowlands, but something happened before, so we got amnesia, we don’t remember even who we are, or what happened before. Five-ten year past since „Champions of Azeroth” left to Shadowlands, hence the denizens of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms don’t recognize us. We start our journey in Azeroth to reclaim our memories and find our place in the world.
Reworked Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms
If blizzard reworks classic Azeroth, I would like to see a quite „stable” version of it. A place where not everything reminds you that, world is in danger, and you have to be the hero who saves it. Every zones could have his own conflicts, but these shouldn’t necessarily connect to the bigger plot. The expansion should have his own story though, but the reworked areas have to work outside this story.
- Rework Orgrimmar in vanilla style (Huge central square, more relaxing art style, less iron and goblin engineering stuff)
- No flying mounts allowed in cities
- No portals, but more public transport (Zeppelin, boat, tram routes)
Technical details of the reworked Azeroth
- Make it to work like a new expansion continent. When you do the intro quest you spawn on the new Azeroth starting zone, as lvl 1 character. You keep your gear, but not your talents, skills etc. If you want to go back, there is a portal in Caverns of time to the old Azeroth. If you go back you get back the level, what you were in the old version, or if your level is higher than that in the new Azeroth, then stick to that.
- Gear wise: If you start a new character his starting gear going to be ilvl 252. Every item what’s ilvl is lower than 252 scales up to 252 in the new Azeroth.
Guild System
Community is the most important aspect of an MMORPG. How we ended up at a state of WoW, where this game is mostly a single player game, and almost nothing motivates you to make conversation and long term „friendships” in the game? In classic if you wanted to play certain parts of the game (raiding), you had to be in a guild, had to make long term relations with other players. This was because of the loot system, drop rates, the 40-man raid size, the community interest before personal interest (prio gearing tanks, healers, crafting resist gear, wait for aggro and not maxing your dps etc.) As the game changed over the years this aspect was less and less important I don’t think this was the main intention of the devs, but caused as a side-effect. Just for one example: They create personal loot because it’s less stressful and more fair loot system. Personal loot as a side effect removed an important reason to play in guilds. If you join a pug, you going to have a fair loot system by default, and don’t have to deal with ninja looters. There are more changes like this, boss ID-s in raids, achievements etc. The solution is not to reverse these changes, because those were reasonable answers for certain problems, but to make an environment what motivates ppl. to make long term relations, and play in communities. I would love to see a WoW again, where not the FOMO keeps the player base subbed, but a community what they like to be part of. This is why WoW must have a system to motivate players to actually play with each other.
The rewards of the system
- Guild town: Build a town with your guild, and build your own house inside this town, customize and decorate for your own style. Learn different blueprints, customization options, furniture, statues for the town.
- Achievements: Guild achievements for mounts, cosmetics. (f.e.: recolor mount for guild glory achievements, statues for Cutting the edge etc.)
- Weekly chest upgrade: If you earn the requirements for the 2. weekly chest slot within guild groups (4 dungeons, 6 raid boss, 2500 R-honor), you get the 3. options as well.
- Weekly guild reward chest: Reward for a „Shape of Fate” style quest. You get progression for any guild activity, and there would be an assault event. The guild chooses one of the 3 „assault” options for the week, (world pvp/simple world quests/outdoor raid event. If enough guild member completes the contribution quest, you get a personal crate, filled with building resources, gold, craft materials. This chest should have a version for players without guild.
- Customized guild uniform and mount.
- What should not be reward: any type of character power
The guild town:
- Placement: You could choose between many areas for your town. This area should be in unused lands and close to a fast travel point (boats/zeppelins). Somewhere in mountains at zone borders. With a size of like Theramore Isle.
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Building process:
- Choose a plot–> Choose a functionality -->Choose a blueprint
- Set colors (roof, base material etc.)
- Contribute to the construction (resources)
- Decorate inside
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Building types:
- Headquarters: Voting board: decide what to build, what assault you choose for next week etc.
- Inn: set hearthstone, in game guild calendar board, message of the day, guild info.
- Armory: Gear presets: basically a bank for gear. Create the guild uniform, Guild bank
- Stables: create the guild mount.
- Arena with auditorium: Imagine a server arena tournament, every week hosted by different guild, with in game viewers.
- Residential buildings: Player housing.
- Blueprints : Every type of buildings should have at least 4 blueprint (represent all of the original races architectural style. (options to build dwarf/human/night elf/gnome inn in alliance). Add more later on. Get this blueprints with unique guild events.
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Resources: Every member would get them personally. Get it from weekly guild chest and every form of guild activates.
- crazy trading option: There would be more type of resources (stone/wood), and you would get them in random proportion. There should be a trading option with other guilds (1 to 1 trading) with a supplier escort event to the closest harbor.
- Player housing: These buildings should be smaller one, than the others, and there should be place for at least 30-40 of them in a guild town. The officer/guild leader could set the owner of parcels, and the player could build with his own resources. If he leaves the guild, he keeps the blueprint for his house and for a smaller price he could build up again in the new guild.
- Main rule about customization design: Let the players build ugly, and stupid guild towns, don’t over-regulate.
- What should NOT be in the guild town:
- AH; Bank; Barber/Transmog npc; Portals
- Follower command table
- Crafting trainers, vendors.; Quest givers.
- Guild hopping/one man or mega guild prevention:
- Reset the reputation to 0. You could only get rep to the guild, if you do something in a guild group. Tie rewards to rep.
- Active guild member status: The member who contributed to the guild assault the previous week.
- 1 player could get one-one weekly chest reward /horde-alliance/server/account
- The requirements for rewards, player housing in the town would be optimized for 10-50 ppl.
Chromie time 2.0
There is a big problem with the integrity of older content, storylines, dungeon, raids. You can’t really experience the content of old expansions. The story is a mess, there are removed story elements, questlines etc. Many storylines are tied to dungeon and raid content, and it’s impossible to finish them alone during your leveling. Most of the old content makes no sense for a new player. There are a lot of unused content in the game what could be reworked, to give the players the opportunity to enjoy it.
The Chromie time takes place in Caverns of time. Instead of Hyjal and other CoT dungeon entrances, there are the entrances to different expansions and stories where you could start or continue your journey. (also there would be the portal to old Azeroth). This game mode would be available when you reach lvl 50 with at least one character on your account.
An enhanced Chromie time feature would be designed for solo gameplay. (but there would be option to play with your friends) The core of this feature would be a modernized narrow, focused quest-chain what would be lead you through an expansion or a storyline. What does it mean? Let’s take the campaign structure of Shadowlands (a main campaign with optional side quests) and imagine a similar one with the story of Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King. This campaign would lead you through the zones, the dungeons and even the raids of that expansion. You could experience the story and the mechanics of dungeon and raid bosses with the help of your companions. There are 2 main goals of this system.
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Play through the whole WoW story on your own pace.
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A strategy/tactical oriented challenge of old dungeons and raids.
The follower system
During your leveling in the reworked Azeroth, you would unlock companions (like in WoD). They going to be your „group” in the Chroime time system. (and the followers at the usual command table mini-game)
These companions would have a class, 3-5 gear slots, own talent tree, you could transmog them and customize their outlook. In the vanilla like talent trees you could enhance or unlock spells for them. Followers would have 4-5 spells active at a time. They would have a passive auto cast, filler spell (f.e.: fireball,) 1-2 passive spell (mage armor. auras etc.) one active spell (polymorph, interrupt) and a longer cd spell (combat res, bloodlust). With only 1 active spell It would be easy to manage your team during fights on an action bar (like pet bars).
The dungeons and raid bosses would be more of a strategy challenge, and not „reflex/skill based” challenge. To beat them you have to build your team to suit the fight. Bring the right Companions, spells, talents, gear. If a boss cast a heal, you need more interrupt for that boss fight, or more cc etc.
If you doing outdoor quests you would have only 1 companion by your side, 2 in dungeons, and 4 in raids. With the increasing numbers of companions, the complexity of fights would raise too, so you could replicate the original tactics and mechanics for the bosses. There would be 2 different difficulty mode for the dungeons and raids. One easy just for the story, and one more challenging for greater rewards.
During the quests the companion would make conversations with you, and be a narrative tool for the story. They could tell you less important parts of the expansion story, which did not fit into the narrowed down campaign. This whole follower system would be account wide. Every character of yours would have the same followers with the talents, gear etc. you choose to them before.
Rewards:
- Level up alt with this system – hence the followers are account wide, if you finished BC with an alt, you can go into Wotlk with another one, and continue the progression.
- Unlock transmogs, mounts, reputation – You would get the transmogs from quests and dungeon/raid loot, just like now when you doing old content. If you finish an expansion/raid you would get a token to buy a specific transmog of your choice from that expansion.
- Achievements – Devs could optimize the dungeon/raid hero achievments and many more to be achievable when you doing dungeons in Chromie time.
- The currency of this system is Timewarped Badge. You would get it for bosses, and finishing chapters of the campaign. You could buy gear for your alts during leveling, and everything what’s currently available for TwB.
Timewalking dungeons
What to do with the current Time walking system? Mostly just leave it as it is. I have 2 change to suggest though.
- Time walking event should be in every 2 weeks.
- Every Time walking dungeon and raids should scale to 252 ilvl.
Time walking currently is the „wild mode” (from hearthstone) of WoW. Players love to make builds with outdated, overpowered gear, borrowed power, gems etc. Let these ppl play that game. Every item what you loot in the old world (pre 10.0) should scale with your level up to ilvl 252. The meaning of this is that every single item would be useable in time walking dungeons regardless of its original ilvl.
Bring Island of expedition and Torghast with BFA and SL time walking event.
Leveling experience
We got amnesia, so when we wake up in the starting zones. We start at lvl 1 with no skills, no mount. We can keep our gear though (technical reasons) and new players start with last normal raid tier equivalent starter gear. (ilvl 252). As we leveling up we remember more and more skills of us.
The first zone gives us the basics about the game, what’s going on in Azeroth etc. This should be the starting zones for the new players as well.
When we finish the first zone (lvl 10) we got back the skill to use mounts again (60% speed, and ground only (flying mounts only in 10.1.)). After this point we can choose what zones we want to start to lvl at the Command Board (just like, how it works now).
The mini campaigns are leading us through 2-3 zones. They are totally detached from each other and from the main story. During these quests we get know Azeroth and our characters better. This stories could tell us more about the main plot, but should not be actively part of it. (during design, have to keep in mind, that these quests, and zones has to be logically uncompromised by the story of the next 2-3 expansions. – that was not a concern during Cata rework) You can do the campaigns in any order you want. They are not required to do all of them to level up. If you finish one campaign, you unlock the world quests on those zones. (account wide)
At lvl 20, we get our first class quest in the designated class hall (not instanced, but completely designed to represent 1-1 class fantasy.) These quests are more like fun challenges (smt. like mage tower). There are easier one to teach you, how to use different abilities of your class (for example: rogue’s stealth/pickpocket mission, priest: mind soothe/mind vison etc.), and more challenging ones for cool cosmetic rewards. The rewards for this quests would be the new(?) class specific items (librams, quivers, idols, totems etc., and class specific mounts and cosmetics.
At level 30, we can start the main story campaign and make progress every week. Keep questing, doing dungeons and other activities till hit lvl 60.
Dungeon and raid types (with loot ilvl if it were 9.1)
- Standard dungeons : Just like now. normal (up to 184/hc (197) /mythic (210)/m+ (up to 246) mode.
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Mega-dungeons: Designed purely for questing, storytelling, fun mechanics and puzzles. They never going to be part of M+ roaster.
- Normal mode for leveling ( scale up to 210)
- Mythic and Hard mode (226/233)
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10 Man raids : Same as mega-dungeons, only mythic mode. Quite challenging, but fun and not competitive design. Mostly reworked classic raids. Some Legendary powers drops here.
- Mythic (236)
- Last boss (242)
- Standard raids : same as now. (N-226/233; HC-239/246; M (252/259)
Content schedule sample
10.0:
- 10-12 standard dungeon (M+ season is 6 of these + 2 sl/bfa/legion dung, changes every season)
- 4-5 mega dungeon (f.e.: Sunken Temple, Maraudon)
- 10-man raid: Onyxia
- New Standard raid
10.5 :
- New mega dungeon (f.e.: Blackrock Spire,)
- New 10-man raid: Molten Core
- New Chromie time story
10.1:
- New Standard raid
- New standard dungeon
- New zone (something like Blasted Lands, Ungoro/Silithus etc)
10.1.5:
- New mega dungeon: Fulborg Cave in Azshara
- New 10-man raid: BWL
- Wotlk in Chromie time
Class design
Currently all of the healer specs are designed to heal and do dps. There is no pure support spec. Some of these specs are feeling right as semi-dps. Disc priest, and holy paladin healing is somehow tied to doing dmg, but other classes could be work as a healer + semi support class. . If we follow this thread, there could be semi dps/support and tank/support specs as well.
New/reworked specs:
- MW monk: heal/funnel support (like Mercy in OW)
- Resto Shaman: heal/party support with totem buffing spells (smt. like classic shaman totem twisting, and paladin seals)
- Demon Hunter 3. spec: Ranged dps/support
- Battle mage: Melee dps/support
- Blood dk: Tank/support
- Hunter tank spec: BM/survi hunter rework or 4. hunter spec (i’d prefer to rework BM into a melee tank spec, and redesign survi hunter spell animations into a Javelin spec. Bomb=explosive javelin, serpent sting= poison javelin, kill shot=throw a javelin. or at least give hunters glyphs to change these animations.
Character Power
Main rule: get rid of borrowed power systems, and replace them with permanent solutions.
Compared to Shadowlands:
SL equivalent → 10.0
Legendary → The same, but add more fun, and group synergy based power.
Tier sets: → Get tokens from raid/dungeons/pvp vendor, and craft them like SL
legendaries. Different sets and set bonuses for M+, PVP, and Raid.
Conduits, soulbinds → Talent tree. Blizzard struggling for a long time, with these borrowed power systems to replace the original micro-character power customization tool: the talent trees. Keep the current choose from 3 format, but there should be an additional tree for micro adjustments. The 3 spec inside this tree would be the class specific equivalent of potency/endurance/finesse.
Covenant abilities → Class specific item slot: librams, quivers, idols, totems etc. Transmogable and gives you a new ability. Get them from class quests.
More RP elements:
- Choose from 3-4 voice line options/race/gender for your character. Your avatar finally takes part in the conversations.
- Over the shoulder camera mode option (for casual reasons)
- Legacy names for characters: It comes from Swtor, you can choose one „family name” for all of your characters on a server. (could be useful, if devs decides to merge the connected servers)
Some thoughts about why this could be a more realistic concept, than you think at first sight.
- Many world assets could be „borrowed” from earlier expansions (BFA, SL). Some zones are using the same assets. This also true for dungeons. That 10-12 dungeon I mentioned earlier its actually 6-7 if you looking at the design and other assets. (RFK/RFD, 2 Dire maul, 2 Scarlet monastery etc.)
- Most of the quests in the old zones are timeless and reusable.
- The followers in the chromie time 2.0 could be stolen from HS mercenaries. backstories, voice lines etc.
- Most of the mentioned new systems are just upgraded version of something what’s already in the game.
- It’s probably faster to rework, then creating something from zero.
- SL is a short expansion (content wise), and this would be the start of a new era. Devs, take your time and create something, what brings new players into WoW. (If you look at the time gap between the last content patch of WoD and Legion release its more than 1 year 2 month. If 9.2 comes in feb/march, the 10.0 release could be in 2023 May or Aug/September. That’s a lot of time for creating a new expansion.
Thank you for reading, and Happy Holidays!
