Introduction
Throughout the Shadowlands patch drought crisis, plentiful WOW improvement propositions have sprung up. Although sensible, truly well thought-through and often ingenious, they mainly concerned themselves with:
a) Either the current expansion
b) Or progression PVE players problems
as is wont with this WOW establishment of ours, the youtubers, the guild leaders and the guru.
However, it is clear that the game is in a system crisis, has been for the last ten years and is bleeding subscriptions. More LASTING AND COMPREHENSIVE MEASURES SHOULD BE TAKEN FOR THE FRANCHISE TO SURVIVE.
Therefore, please forgive me the audacity, the naivete and the banality, but I should put my two cents in by suggesting easy (and not-so-easy) fixes for the real game problems, which have nothing to do with the ilvl cap, the raids, the class balance and even the token. Similarly, I urge non-progressive players to break silence and to express what the community leaders would not and come up with the overdue propositions and heart-felt wishes for the game, however improbable and unlikely.
The Withering Franchise
Having played from the European launch, I have seen the Warcraft fanbase steadily decrease, fracture and lately simply disperse, despite the Blizzard team performing outstandingly well and launching great expansions.
This has three primary reasons, which in my opinion contribute to the majority of people leaving.
- Firstly, any system is only as good as its weakest link and the weakest link of WOW is obviously its gameplay. You can not possibly expect a person to do one thing and one thing only for well over a decade, namely BASH SKULLS AND PICK UP HYENA EXCREMENTS. Every time Blizzard invents a new activity for the game, such as puzzles, advanced crafting gameplay, garrisons, expeditions, jousting, NPC trading games, mazes, actual farming etc. – it gets either immediately criticized into space or blighted out completely come new expansion. This leads to monotonous gameplay, that can’t possibly keep old players in.
- Secondly, you would think at least the new players are OK, but these actually leave as well due to enormous entry barriers. To actually play the game the perspective player is expected to do HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF GEAR FARMING AND WEEKLY GEAR MAINTENANCE to get the ilvl they need to enjoy the PVP or PVE content of the game. The majority of perspective players are not going to do that. Believe it or not, even in the Classic players would not do that. The majority of the players would get to lvl 25, farm that one blue item from a regular dungeon, that would be good for another 10 levels, and happily play tens of hours of PVP, without getting gunned down immediately by around the clock gear farmers. I have seen dozens of veterans and new players leave for other games, where no repetitive dumb manual labor is required to get to the point of enjoying the game. Psychologically speaking, games are for fun, restoration and education, neither of which quite describes the retail wow version.
- Thirdly, everyone agrees, at least the strongest link of WOW, namely the aesthetics is ok, is it not? WRONG!!! All that talented amazing result of hardworking blizzard artists is actually used in the WORST POSSIBLE WAY IMAGINABLE, as players get locked away from locations they like from the lore, art or music perspective to the one location, that is actual to the current patch. Remember, in classic you could actually somewhat choose where to progress your character, whereas now every location is strictly compulsory. Now, YOU CAN’T EXPECT EVERY PLAYER TO LIKE THE AESTHETICS OF EVERY NEW EXPANSION, can you? And remember, with every new expansion (with a possible exception of WOD and WOTLK) you get further from the legacy of Warcraft 3, which is, frankly, why we are here at all. This is a MAJOR reason WOW is bleeding subscriptions, the old players just don’t like the feel of the place and leave, perhaps, never to return.
Now, the movie has not been taken up for the second part and the reboot of the strategy has failed, miserably.
So I ask you, the devs, and the professional players, and everyone of you, are you really OK with warcraft going down the path of LOTRO in several years? Just because you could not accept, that the tail cannot wiggle the dog?
Because, if you are not, there are MANAGEABLE if not EASY steps to fix it and an unlimited amount of ways to improve on this situation.
Water the damn plant
Now, many of you highbrow whizzes could and hopefully would greatly expand on this, but of the mouths of the babies, right?
Simply put, a game should give emotional value. And here are two impressions the classic wow made:
I. SENSE OF NOVELTY AND INSPIRATION
The game inspired sense of awe, wonder and intrigue to involve the player, make him mingle with and love the world, find his own path in it, inspire achievement within it.
II. SENSE OF CONTINUITY AND HOME
At the same time, the player had the feeling of familiarity and even after a period of absence on returning to the game one would feel something similar to homecoming.
I assure you, that these can be brough back by the same practical changes, that would fix the above mentioned problems, contributing to players’ desertion.
I am going to mark these changes with I or II for the corresponding input.
NO-BRAIN SHOULD-HAVE-BEEN-DONE-YESTERDAY EASY FIXES
These will immediately make the game more enjoyable and help cauterize the subscription bleeding for the moment.
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Every time new expansion hits, decrease level 60 characters to lvl 50 (I)
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USE OLD EXPANSIONS (II)
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All factions give rewards after exalted
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Old expansions now scale via Chromie to 60 (max level)
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Old dungeons and raids get mythic+ (or at least non-stop timewalking)
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Old expansion items scale to ilvl of current expansion
If you do legion world quest, you get shadowlands world quest ilvl. If you do legion mythic+, you get current mythic+ ilvl. If you do legion crafting, you get current crafting ilvl (fine, lock the recipes behind high level)
- Doing old content gives currency, e.g. valor, honor and conquest, that you are free to use for up-to-date gear. Also gold rewards scale as well
- FIX PVP MATCHING (I)
Current balancing system does not work.
ADD WEIGHT CATEGORIES
It’s fun metrics, it’s a clear goal and a it’s a better user experience.
You need 3 categories:
-Ungeared (Recruit)
Below full honor gear. Fighting in this category rewards honor.
-Honor-geared (Veteran)
Below full conquest gear. Fighting in this category rewards conquest.
-Conquest-geared (Champion)
Full conquest gear. Fighting in this category rewards titles, mounts, pets, mogs etc.
NO CONQUEST GEAR PEACES IMPROVEMENT IS ALLOWED. Reduce discrepancies withing brackets.
Players can opt to be matched up with heavy weight opponents, if they feel they can obtain better rewards with worse gear.
With this system in place, these following MAGNIFICENT THINGS BEGIN TO HAPPEN:
-New players can immediately do PVP using only lore quest gear with similar ilvl opponents, immediate pvp fun for new players
-Experienced players, who feel bored, can take off a couple of pieces of gear and match up with heavier categories for more challenge and better rewards
-Raiders can technically still boast a higher ilvl
- Story progression save (II)
There is just much too much story. Here is how to assure players can keep track:
-Return completed quests archive
-Insert cutscene NPC, that would allow to rewatch cutscenes. (loooooooooong overdue)
- Minor changes: (I)
- Fix sharding
Quest zones should be depopulated, event zones should be populated. Do not let Brewfest location look like a graveyard, while daily quest location resembles a black Friday shop.
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Add soundtrack toys
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Return breadcrumb quests
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Goblin and other AH towns should have the trade chat, everyone of them. Maybe add a trade chat mount or toy
LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE
Next I am going to reiterate the a/m propositions, pointing out, where, having basically fixed the bugs, one can restore, build, expand and add new features, that in the long-term can attract players from other games and genres.
- Use old expansions (I&II)
- Actualize activities from the old expansions and copypast them into new ones.
There is a lot of great gameplay in current gamecode, that should be absolutely leveraged for more variety in gameplay for the current content.
a) Peaceful activities
Racing dredger carts, Venthyr mirror mazes, icecrown jousting, dalaran world quest minigames, WOD glider mountain climbing, the garrison and the order hall etc. etc.
MMORPG can not only be about aforementioned skull bashing.
Specifically, I want to mention WOD treasure hunt. THE TREASURE CHESTS SHOULD HAVE PETS, MOUNTS, MOGS AND TOYS, NOT JUST GEAR PROGRESSION CURRENCY AND VENDOR TRASH
b) Not-so-peaceful activities
E.g. island expeditions, visions of N’zoth, mage tower or zombie whisperers-style mini strategy game from the Legion
All of these are fine and fun and should be available to be used in levelling and obtaining rewards and if possible, maintained in current expansions.
- Return old expansion character development features for wild format
The reason many people left is because expansion after expansion you take away their borrowed powers, which could be a source of great variety within the game. Scale artifact weapons, the heart of Azeroth, the ring, the covenant abilities etc. (all of it) and allow for one borrowed power of choice to be used in open world as well as WILD FORMAT for PVE and PVP activities.
- Fix PVP matching (I&II)
-Copy wild format from HS into WOW, for unranked AND ranked PVP.
I assure you, many players will LOVE getting back their beloved spells and borrowed powers.
The critique I ALWAYS hear about retail is how WOTLK talent system is so much better and how loosing a power every expansion is loathsome.
- Make Warfronts shorter and add the pvp mode
- Story progression save (II)
- Add in-game adventurer journal
Major games and social networks track user’s actions to ensure sense of continuity and home.
WOW achievement journal, on the other hand, is depersonalized.
Allow users to opt for action tracking, creating an automatically compiled story, similar to facebook timeline, Morrowind quest log or Crusader Kings dynasty chronicle. Allow user to make entries and link characters. Letters from NPCs and other players should be automatically saved here. Maybe add links to in-game cutscenes. Maybe at some point even allow this tracker to save a small limited amount of screenshots on the cloud to improve the aesthetics of the journal.
Players should be able to share their adventurer journals with friends and community members.
This might be worth your time
- Quest phasing
For lore fans, explorers, RP and raw materials gatherers the absence of phasing can be a real thorn in the side. Please consider adding optional phasing, where all the mobs at a place are dead after you have done the associated lore achievement. The kind of inconsistency, when you kill 250 NPCs, blow the place up and burn the ships, which after everything respawns in 50 seconds, completely breaks any immersion in the story or sense of progression.
- Introducing player housing (II)
All other games have this. Here is how you introduce player housing in WOW over time
-On a server one house belongs to one player or one group of players. No instancing
-Allow only one house per WOW account, regardless if the house is shared with other players or solitary.
-The houses are only visible in a phased version of the location, available after completing the lore achievement, or the capitals
-The housing options only appear, after the corresponding locus has been developed by the players of the correspondent server enough
-A player becomes eligible to acquire a house based on the locus rules. One or several of the following criteria can be applied, based on the locus rules: investment in locus development (resources/dailies/pvp or otherwise), achievements, locus faction reputation, auction outcome, pvp rank, raid or mythic+ progression, lottery and others.
-All game locations receive housing options, even the Shadowlands, where you can make housing in the spires of the venthyr, or the separate locations such as Gnomeregan. Mountains between game locations are used as additional loci space.
-Locus development is similar to warfronts or the brokenshore, where players can impact the development of the locus through input.
-Every locus plot is filled with a building, that has in-game functionality, from creating more player housing options to adding additional patrols and security, access to Trade chat, the Auction house, daily quest NPCs, elite mobs, special vendors, mythic+ dungeon entrances, etc. Every house and locus has customization options.
-Some loci in remote locations are exclusive to guilds. Any usual locus actions on these loci are only executed by the guild members. Guild locus provide player housing based on guild rules. Guilds can obtain such a locus via special actions based on the locus rules: outbidding and paying a locus rent, receiving a high raid or mythic+ rank, via a direct military assault etc.
Other guilds can overtake the locus, based on the same rules.
- Introducing iron man mode (I)
All other games have this. Here is how you introduce new difficulty level in WOW over time
Additionally to turning on the PVP mode, the players can now turn on the iron man mode.
The mode can potentially add the following impediments:
-Hunger
Eat player crafted food to stay in the pink
-Fatigue
Get tired of all that skull bashing, unless you happen to be a mechagnome, an undead etc. Finally use that /sleep emote
-Tempest
Buy up that northrend gear to do the icecrown for more rewards or enjoy being a fire mage for a change
-Disease
Which can include mana addiction or fell contamination
-Impediment to resurrection
Can be resurrected by another player, can be resurrected if has reincarnation spell or similar, can opt to race change to undead or class change to death knight, can make a pact with Bwonsamdi if troll, can opt to go to shadowlands, can opt to permanently die and pass the belongings to another character.
While dead, can be looted for a part of the loot in bags.
-Social behavior
Loosing or gaining reputation with factions for killing players and NPCs, wearing certain gear, riding certain mounts or making quest decisions in future expansions similar to BFA quests or Desolace quests in classic wow. Thus, to optimize farming rep with Stormwind for above-exalted rewards, use tabard and stormwind guard mogs.
This mode would add endless hours of gameplay for veteran players and allow for countless new achievements, new rewards and, most importantly, bring world of warcraft player economy from the dead as there will be a constant need for food, warm clothes, bodyguard services etc.
- New classes/specs
Just use this
wowpedia.fandom.
com/wiki/Category:NPC_occupations
Thank you for considering these propositions.
Hmm, how do you mean?