Perfect example of the issue which I like to use myself. Cata revamped the story in Azeroth to feed into one narrative - the current leadership and Deathwing’s coming. If zones were revamped to have their own compelling story, they would never have to be touched again.
I also like what you mention about scaling, meaning you can add various rewards to doing the content too, giving max level characters another optional thing to do. Titles, toys, transmog, pets, flavour items. Survivor’s Bag of Coins is something I never really use, but you’ll bet your a** I went and got it on my rogue just for funsies.
You say levelling is fine, but attributing it to that it’s fast, and that you don’t want higher difficulty. It’s not what my post is about, it’s the story and content, and not having so many zones that stand empty.
We have the original world in the Classic series. We have the Cata world in Retail. Both excellent.
The quality of Blizzard’s zones, music, atmosphere and story has been trending steeply downhill. I DO NOT WANT the current team to expand their egos by screwing them up.
Look at what they have already done: Teldrassil/Darnassus. Darkshore. Tirisfal/Undercity. Uldum and Vale under a blue corrupt shadow. Nothing but degradation and destruction there.
Arathi was decent. I prefer the old version, but the new one is OK, faithfully copied. But see below.
I like spending time in them, and it’s something I can do at any time. My Frostsaber is crunching footprints in the snow of Winterspring as I type, with the lovely zone theme playing.
Where do I begin?
There is nothing that can be done to solve this, other than force max level players into the old zones. That much is a simple matter of density.
Max level players cannot practically mix with levellers. Unless they scrap the idea of levels altogether, the power curve and mix of mobs would make no sense, quite apart from gathering nodes. They can “solve” this by phasing the zone into two, as they did with Uldom and Arathi and so on. But even if they make the new phases as faithfully as Arathi, and don’t corrupt them like the others, we will just have max level players in copies of the old zones, while the actual old zones will be equally empty.
Questing should not require others, to complete. A group boss once in a while is fine.
But to get stuck at a single mob like on classic is not the way to go about it.
Questing should not be difficult or too time consuming as endgame content is the focus.
The option for you to have hard questing is there through xp lock and just not upgrading your gear too often.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like in the first half you mostly talk about the zones themselves. Like aesthetically. I’d personally prefer how they looked in classic but maybe updated graphics. I agree that I don’t want older zones to be changed theme-wise. I want them preserved.
I like that you spend time in the old zones anyway! Would you like it even more if your favourite zones had a couple of questlines concerning only that area, and maybe some cool items as a reward? Maybe this would let you see a couple of people running around doing their quests, and some people in the nearby hub doing cringy roleplay (warning: exaggeration for point-making, results may vary).
IMO they can definitely mix levellers with max level players, WoW already has scaling and other MMOs do it already.
I feel like you’ve missed the point of my post a bit. I’m not mentioning difficulty, just story and content.
The only change I would like to see is the taking back of the whole thing to its original state for each expansion and let folk decide if they want to traverse the whole story from beginning to end as it was intended. In that sense they could simply merge classic and retail. Sadly the worst day in this games history was Cata. The expansion that started the rot in terms of diluting the content of the game. Had we simply had a fresh expansion and left things well alone maybe we would not have the fragmented nature of the game we have today.
The second problem is scaling and the removal of zonal progression. There is no way of playing any of the zones to their original potential and design. Take Ghostlands, the zone was designed as a progression though quests and mobs that got gradually harder. The culmination was the hardest area Deatholme and by that stage you were ready to move to the next zone. By introducing scaling the whole story arc was destroyed cus it matters not where you start in the zone… the mobs are all the same.
All this points to a current design team that would scrap pretty much all the original structure and use the excuse ‘NOT’ to have to design new and interesting content, but simply rubber stamp scaled nonsense onto an old footprint.
You will never get players to revisit old zones. Players hardly visit the zones in the new expansions. They will be back here in about a months time moaning about how bored they are. The skill levels are so fractured across the player base, where some are still one shotting everything in game, such that new content gets sucked up faster than a Hoover on heat.
Anyway, I love the old kingdoms of the game. It’s the only reason I still play. For me I’ll still be in Eastern Kingdoms next week… I haven’t done playing there yet.
It is actually kind of an elephant in the room, with Classic now a separate product with the original gameplay, why Vanilla content (i.e. pre-Cata Kalimdor+Eastern Kingdoms) hasn’t been made a timewalking mode. Especially considering the exciting storytelling back then.
This right here is a problem indeed. It’s a given that people like different things, and Blizzard will for the sake of the game’s health listen to the majority (data on how people play, not whiners like me on forums). It’s likely there isn’t enough interest in going back to old zones, and I don’t think Blizzard would put the manpower in to create something this huge when it’s purely optional and for the people who want story/completion.
Leveling can never be endgame content.
If your propose more difficult mechanics for mobs, sure we can agree. It would be more challeging to quest.
If your propose HP sponges like in vanilla where you spend 5 minutes spamming 30 frostbolts for a single mob to die, then no thanks.
They even buffed Leveling speed in the prepatch so i’m happy.
Scaling leveling in current content will also remove the sense of power gain.
I personally don’t want this
I am already of the opinion scaling BFA content to 60 is just absurd, and is basically narratively ridiculous…
It’s four years old, content I did when It was current, I have gained more power now, but this is not reflected in even the open world environment, it feels incredibly stagnant.
I want to feel godlike there now, I have beaten it once, if everything scales, what exactly is the point.
It’s one of the reasons GW2 feels so crap, narratively speaking you should be quite powerful, but even the starting training areas scale so you always feel irrelevant in the world.
Now, I don’t want to dictate others gameplay, so options at start to scale and have more challenge to personal individuality would be okay by me.
However I want the easy mode option, I don’t play for challenge, nor am I interested in the achievements of others. I come here merely for some easy, stress free escapism…
I get enough challenges in real life thank you very much. Here I just want to relax, kick back and chill…
Totally agree that going to old zones should be stompin’ time. I just wish there was something nice to go back to.
Hard disagree that GW2’s old zones still pose a challenge at max level with exotic gear+decent build. (Bosses aside but they aren’t meant to be soloed!)
Well, one dude wants to run mythic+ and another dude wants to do kobold quests in Elwynn forest. Why would you refuse any of them?
Because of the difficulty disparity. The gear chase is the main motivator for the vast majority. It makes sense for harder content to reward the better gear.
If endgame content rewarded the same gear as world questing did. There is no reason to run it. That’s just how human psyche works.
You can talk about running m+ and raiding for fun. But the same can be said of questing. You should just quest for the fun of it. And not the rewards.
Very much gonna insert here that I agree difficulty should determine the rewards. There are so many non-powerful rewards people would like. Just look at the amount of people farming old mounts, titles, and achievements.
Exactly, i myself run old content for transmog and mounts, where i one shot stuff, or join up with others in the more difficult legacy content.
And i’m having plenty of fun with it. If it all began to scale to current level, i would be very upset.
To be honest, there really shouldn’t be any parameters that need to be met to negate the challenge in the starting area, I would imagine if you can walk upright and hold a stick they should be like a creche, however that’s a narrative plot point, I play in a very role play fashion…
I am actually back in old areas now scouting RP settings, so they do get used a lot, just not by the masses…which is a shame I’ll agree there is a very intriguing spiritual wizard town on Netherstorm
Open world wise, this game is immense, it just needs a little creativity in how they approach their making of content. They can do it too look at the Lucid Nightmare, that was a challenge that was very much dependent on old content and open world
blizzard already said they will never do another world revamp if you wanted that you should have loved cata more but since its failed expansion it doomed any revamp pretty much forever which means the old world is effectively dead
Where/when did they say this? Would love a link, I’ve missed it.
The revamped zones were definitely not the reason the expansion didn’t do well. However, the zones did not only update but were effectively “ruined” by Deathwing. It’s also been 12 years since that update, and the zones are still in the same narrative. So I don’t think it’s comparable to an update that would restore the zones theme-wise, and give them lower fantasy zone-contained storylines.
Without a source I’m gonna keep whining for my cause, because I can’t find anything confirming this!
The discussion has derailed a bit, but in regards to my original post I don’t think that old world zone storylines should reward endgame rewards, since the zones are actually there for levelling - hence not very difficult. In comparison - it would be like, in Vanilla, going back to Un’goro Crater and recieving raid-like rewards. Updated zones and story would just allow people to go back and see old content in a better way.
