I personally want a class with Tank and Dps spec just like DH. Design being similar to Spectre from Dota. It’s a void character as well, tank will be focused on damage reduction, defense and damage reflect which will be a new concept for wow. Class will have thorns when activated and reflect the damage back to attacker. DPS spec focused on chakram weapon, which also used by wardens and spectre is closed to beign warden kinda anyways but void themed.
Always wanted something like this, all skills will be void themed of course.
I am very sceptical, essentially. Because of how torrentially bad the launch of Dracthyr / Evoker were. No mog options, a garbage visage you were forced to have and it was always forced into being a elf, 1 class on launch. Can’t even sport your tier sets in your content with the form which sold the race.
I don’t want to see new anything until things are brought upto par frankly.
I agree with your assessment of giving players more impact on the world. But covenants as they were executed in SL is not the way to go.
The problem with covenants was not “obsessed with DPS optimization”. Its that Blizzard tied a LOT of player power to such covenants. And you were locked into a Covenant.
So for example, there were covenants that were a +20% damage in Raids but useless in M+, and vice versa… And you could not switch from one to the other.
So in general I agree that the player should impact the world and get that RPG element back… But… NOT with player power. Or, if it has to have some player power, very little (like Racials)…
If the 3rd spec isn’t a healing spec I’ll cry. I LOVE the Demon Hunters but I have mained healer since like 2013 and so dps/tank takes up like 5% of my playtime lol.
I’m glad they took that step, and frankly, they should have done it more often. They should have made it clear to those players focused solely on DPS meters that this is an online western RPG, where the essence of the genre is rooted in something far deeper than raw numbers.
Other than CRPGs that adhere to traditional rule sets, modern RPGs have largely lost the sense of meaningful choice and consequence that once defined the genre. In classic RPGs, character development was more than just a cosmetic change—it was an integral part of the story, the world, and how players interacted with everything around them. When you made a significant decision—whether it was choosing a class, race, or covenant—you were locked into it. Changing something fundamental came at a price, be it time, resources, or emotional investment.
Today, many modern RPGs let you change key aspects of your character as easily as flipping a switch. One day you’re a Kyrian; the next, you’re a Venthyr. Character appearance and covenant allegiances can be swapped with little to no consequence, making choices feel trivial and the world less immersive. When the consequences of your decisions are so easily reversed, it undermines the idea of living with the outcomes of your actions. The world feels static, unresponsive, and lacks the sense of permanence that makes role-playing meaningful.
I argue that these decisions—whether it’s the covenant you choose, the moral paths you follow, or the race you play—should carry weight. If you want to make a major change, it should come at a steep price: losing hard-earned skills, sacrificing your reputation, or even giving up something crucial in the narrative. That’s what makes every decision feel important, forcing players to live with the consequences, much like in real life.
Instead, what we often have now are lobby-style games where no decision is allowed to excel or stand out because it might affect the delicate balance of raid teams who’s fights will be progressively nerfed on content you can complete within weeks using any spec or talent setup. This lack of meaningful consequence diminishes the depth that once made RPGs unique.
WoW is not an RPG. Never was. So it did not “loose anything”.
It is a MMO RPG. You forgot the MMO part.
A bigh chunk of why you cannot focus so much on character development is because of these 2 big reasons :
(A) It dosent matter what the devs put. If its significantly better/worse than what OTHER clases/people you interact with, it needs tuning because you are playing with other people, not alone.
It is not about DPS meters. It never was about that. It is about knowing that you have a 20% dissadvantage and doing a dungeon. And how others look at you knowing they have a person that is being 20% less performant than otherwise.
And im not talking about “cosmetic” 1% damage or things like that. I am talking about a full blown 20% performance difference between being Kyrian or any other covenant. And what affect that has when you play with other people.
And the seccond reason is :
(B) WoW is made to keep you engaged in the game. Its built on having people playing it every day, for years. Its the wet dream of any game developer.
So… if you focus on “character development” of a classic RPG. The game is over once you finish leveling/gearing. There is absolutely nothing else to do.
Like Baldurs Gate 3 for example. All you can do after you finish the story is do it all over again. Instead, WoW focused on repeatability. Dungeons. Raids. ect…
Where its not your character that progresses, its YOU the player and your skill that does.
And that is where you get it so wrong.
The fact that you can do the raids 2 years from does not remove the merit of the people that are doing it now.
Because its not about doing the raid and “seeing it”. Its about the challange and overcoming it. No challange. No fun.
Basically…
You are playing WoW wrong. Its not the game for you if you want a pure RPG experience because it never was. Not even in Vanilla.
It’s a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), with the core concept being to simulate the social experience of tabletop role-playing in a virtual space. Your first point misses the mark. Early MMORPGs stayed true to that vision, building on the genre’s foundations and thriving because of it. However, when World of Warcraft started stripping away those foundational constraints, the game began losing its appeal, and its popularity has been declining ever since.
What’s interesting is that you’d expect modern MMORPGs to push boundaries with deeper mechanics and more immersive world dynamics. Instead, we’ve seen the opposite. The mechanics and systems have been watered down and simplified, turning the game into more of a lobby experience, with the open world serving mostly as a marketing tool for the endgame. Unfortunately, this shift offers very little payoff for players invested in the original spirit of the genre.
RPGs have never been about solo play; they’ve always been centered around social interaction. The idea of a single-player RPG came much later. In any RPG, balance and diversity are always at odds. Perfect balance has never been achieved in any RPG, and it’s impossible. You’ll always have classes that are 20%+ or more stronger in certain areas, and that’s by design. Originally, classes were created to fill specific roles, not to be as numerically equal as one another.
The idea of strict numerical balance is a newer concept and only gained traction when players didn’t want to play multiple classes or felt entitled to bring their favorite class to a raid without being penalized for it. This shift in philosophy led to a dilution of encounters and limited the variety of encounters developers could create. They had to make them less niche and homogenize the classes because players didn’t like being excluded when their toolkit wasn’t versatile enough. It’s an insane shift, and because of it, classes have become more and more alike, losing the unique strengths and weaknesses that originally made them interesting.
People have been playing MMORPGs daily for years—this isn’t something unique to World of Warcraft. What is unique to WoW is the dynamic it introduced, which has stagnated the genre for the past two decades. Now, we’re seeing a resurgence of newer MMORPGs returning to the roots laid by EverQuest and Ultima Online, because the formula that WoW popularized ultimately strayed from what makes an RPG immersive.
WoW’s approach gradually hollowed out the game, narrowing its focus to a few select pillars of content. In contrast, earlier MMORPGs thrived by integrating everything into the open world, where content was naturally woven into the environment rather than segmented into isolated activities. WoW’s model, while successful for a time, led to a less cohesive world and diluted the richness of the RPG experience. That’s why many newer games are now moving away from the WoW formula and embracing the open-world philosophy that made early MMORPGs so compelling.
The fact that you believe character development is only tied to leveling and gear shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what an RPG truly is. RPGs don’t even require leveling or gear to function. What defines an MMORPG is the social nature of the game and how the world and its systems react to player interactions—this is where the “role-playing” aspect comes in. Leveling and gear are simply mechanics to support that experience, not the end goal.
The concept of an “endgame” is something WoW introduced; it didn’t exist in traditional MMORPGs. Similarly, terms like “casual” and “hardcore” are modern inventions that didn’t apply back then. In early MMORPGs, everyone had access to all the content in the open world as part of the ongoing role-playing journey. If players wanted to relive the experience, they’d roll a new character, or spend their time socializing in their guilds, contributing to things like housing, or simply making friends and building a community.
Some players would even take it further, hosting community events or running traditional tabletop-style role-playing campaigns within the game. MMORPGs were designed to be living, breathing worlds, not compartmentalized “lobby games” like Destiny. The focus was always on creating a shared space where players could immerse themselves in the world and the relationships they built within it, not just chase after gear or endgame content.
There is no “wrong” way to play a game, especially one built around role-playing in a living, breathing world. The beauty of such games is that you play them your way, and the world reacts accordingly. What you’ve essentially said is, “You’re not playing the way I think it should be played, so it’s wrong.” But in a true RPG, the whole point is freedom—there’s no single correct path, just the one each player chooses to take. Your experience, choices, and interactions are what shape the world, and that’s the core of the genre.
The fact that you think I’m talking about something happening two years from now shows you’re stuck in a solo-player mindset. If you approach World of Warcraft as an actual MMORPG—joining a guild, building friendships, and playing as part of a community—you can clear most content, with any talent setup, within a few weeks. This excludes Mythic difficulty, of course, but even then, the developers progressively nerf encounters early on because they struggle to balance fights across multiple difficulties.
The truth is, there likely shouldn’t be multiple difficulty levels for raids or dungeons at all. One difficulty would allow the developers to focus on creating engaging encounters without having to worry about tweaking every variable across different settings. It would also push players to engage more with their communities instead of focusing so much on optimising for every single difficulty tier.
Very interesting phylosofical and historical dissertation.
But I am a practical person. It all boils down to this statement right here.
WoW made “endgame” and all it entails in Vanilla. And we are still capitalizing on that game design.
So back to your original coment :
WoW never was an RPG. It was always centered on the “end game”. And this, mechanically, has consequences. Big ones.
Namely, that EVERYONE wants to take part in that end-game. And hence, you cannot allow certain classes to perform 20% weaker by design. You must give everyone equal chance.
And this is not considering any history. Or philosophy of what an RPG is or whatnot. Its pure and simple engeneering and the practical application of a game like WoW.
Therefore, if you want to implement RPG story-telling elements, with choices and what not… they CANNOT include player power. And that was the mistake they did with Covenants.
You’re not being pragmatic—you’re just inflating your ego. World of Warcraft was originally an RPG that thrived on its open-world and traditional dynamics, which is why it became so popular and why the MMORPG community flocked to it. This success didn’t happen overnight; it evolved gradually. In Vanilla WoW, the concept of “endgame” didn’t even exist because players were more focused on exploring, socializing, and role-playing in the open world. Raids emerged as an aspirational goal from building strong, engaged communities.
As the game shifted its focus towards raids and solo player progression, it lost that original open-world, community-driven essence and increasingly became a lobby game. Developers have tried to address this by reintroducing elements like open-world PvP and delves, but these efforts fall short. Many of these features still cater primarily to solo players or those chasing anspirational achievements, rather than fostering the social cohesion that made WoW special. This shift harms the game by causing the raiding community to wither as fewer solo players join raids, in the past their friends would have been the motivating force for them to progress.
The only solution is to shift to a lobby-based game model, like Darktide, where players sign up and are instantly placed into lobbies with either bots or random players. In this model, guilds would become mere chat channels for buffs and fail to fulfill their intended purpose of fostering community and collaboration. This approach streamlines gameplay but sacrifices the rich, community-driven experience that traditional MMORPGs aimed to deliver which is what has happend.
Before Dragonflight, even the game’s director admitted that the game was no longer designed for the majority of players. Instead, it catered to a niche focused on “Game 2”—the DPS chasers and number crunchers. Some of the original designers have also acknowledged that this emphasis on optimization and convenience undermined the game’s social fabric, replacing a community-driven experience with a more individualized, achievement-focused mentality.
Raids and dungeons did not emerge. They were there when the game launched. And a couple of months later, they opened up new raids. Because they were in the “pipeline” sort of speak since launch.
And then, yes. Originally people focused on exploration and socialization and role-playing in the open world. Untill they reached level 60.
And then all that “socializing” always ended up in : “Lets do something toguether”.
What is that something ? Eventually you saw all the open world. You saw all the zones and all the quests. It took ~ 4 months.
Then what ? What do you do once you ding level 60 ?
As I said. Molten Core was there on launch. With Onixial Lair.
It was part of the plan from the beginning.
But as I said. If you want to raid, you need to farm gold. You need to farm dungeons. You need to “focus on DPS” basically.
This is something that makes me laught. Really. This is what I had to say about the “social aspect” :
WoW did not change. People did. And there is nothing Blizz can do about it.
Let me be real here : the main reason wow became a “lobby game” as you call it… is 100% players did not want to socialize. They begged for LFR and LFG because they did not want to post on /trade that they were looking for a group.
PLAYERS did not want it. Blizzard just delivered.
In other words. Blizzard cant force or incentive people to socialize if they dont want to socialize.
I play a lot of darktide. With my buddies. What are you talking about here ?
Like I said. Daddy “Fatshark” cant force people to talk to other people. I installed the game. Entered my first random match and instantly started to add people to my friends list. Now im in a Darktide discord and I can always play with people at any moment and socialize with them via Discord.
Fatsharc CANNOT force people to take initiative. Im sorry… Its people that dont do it.
Same as in WoW !
Il just quote this to repeat once again : Guilds are, and were chat channels. Most of the socializing happened in Ventrilo (from back then). Discord today.
In my 20 years of WoW experience, I find that people join guilds and (A) dont talk in /guild. (B) dont install Discord and dont talk to people.
They expect people to talk to THEM, with out doing any effort. Or worse, they join a guild expecting some material “gift” or some rush or something…
That is 70% of people that join guilds. In Vanilla. And today.
Not blizzards fault. And this "rich comunity driven thing… " that was the 30% of people that did take the initiative. In Vanilla. And today.
No that is not what developers said.
What they said is that shifting from Server only to Cross-Realm killed the “comunity driven experience”.
But again. Cross-Real was a required change to save the game. Because you had a few overpopulated servers and a lot of empty servers. With majority Horde, or majority Alliance.
And this by the way is human nature. Not game design. Its the same reason we live in cities.
Everything in the game is available at launch, yet it still fosters emergent gameplay. Your focus on semantics indicates a misunderstanding and an effort to dismiss my point. Emergent gameplay introduces unique dynamics over time that aren’t present in conventional setups up to that point. In this case, the emergent aspects were so impactful that we had to scale them back over the years. Even the concept of a raid was fundamentally different before “Vanilla WoW.”
Socialising is doing things together; one cannot be separated from the other. The essence of being in the world is to act socially, and all game dynamics were designed to enhance the social fabric of the game. Raids are in the game to facilitate socialisation, socialisation is not in the game to facilitate raiding.
Your mindset is overly reductive, reducing a game to its component parts and insisting that it must provide predefined activities. In reality, other players are the true content; socializing itself is the core of the experience. The dynamic interaction between players creates the engaging content that you seek.
Everyone from Ion Hazzikostas and John Hight to Holly Lonsdale and Kevin Jordan has emphasized this point. It might be worthwhile for you to do some research .
No, that wasn’t the case. Realm communities evolve over time and will continue to do so. The decline of realm communities was not due to pruning unnecessary servers or failing to modernize infrastructure with mega servers. Rather, it stemmed from the erosion of the social fabric. You’re misplacing the cause and effect by putting the cart before the horse.
It is not overly reductive. I always try to reach the essence of things and stay away from too much over-complication.
That is how one reaches the most solid conclusions.
And in this case, I am correct at doing that assesment.
“The game must provide predefined activities” is the correct way to put it. You PLAY a game. None of us are here to play WhatsUp chat simulation.
In other words : Whatever conversation you have with other people, it will always, 100% of times end in “so… lets do SOMETHING together”.
Blizzards job is to provide that “something”. And that is where the core of my argument falls into.
That something is, and always will be… instanced content. Ever since Vanilla. Ever since I did my 1st toon and at level 8 gave me a quest to go do Raging Chasm in Orgrimmar.
Nothing has changed. Not even raids. It was, and always will be : join up with X people and wipe Y times on a big massive boss.
All this disertation about “emergent gameplay” and “the essence of the raid” is not grounded in practicality.
As I said before. I am a practical person. Its irrelevant if raids are in the game to socialize or not. The fact is that they EXIST. Why ? Its not important.
What is important is that to kill the boss, you have to min-max your toon. Because you HAVE TO. By how the raid and dungeons are designed. Its how combat in an RPG in general is designed.
I should saved that interview. Tried to find it, ran out of patience after 10 minutes.
You missunderstand what I said.
In Vanilla servers were fixed. The people you saw in Orgrimar were the same people. All the time. They had names. Guilds were numbered and well known. And you had a reputation.
There was “little village” type of communities where you could relate to the gossip of other people/guilds and you were interested. When 1 guild disbanded, it was a big deal !
People saw your name in /trade. You had realm forums. People that ganked for fun were known, and you had parties that were made in order to find and chase that ganker.
Ect…
Then in Cata or MoP (I dont remember) they made cross-realm. Now all of a sudden you share the same space with 20 realms. So you never find the same people in Orgrimar and became 1 of a million. A total nobody for anyone outside your own guild and friends list.
And then they did sharding. With sharding it became even worse because now you can only see ~ 20 people at a time. Chosen at random from your whole region. Now you are a nobody 1 in 10 million.
I know. I was there. I lived through all that.
However. As sad as it may be, the impact cross-realm had was for the better. And that “little village” situation we had in Vanilla was a good trade-off for what we have now.
Because the problem with “little villages” is that there is never enough people. At one point it took literal hours sitting in Orgrimmar spamming non stop in /trade “looking for group to XYZ”…
Or if you wanted to raid… tough luck. There were ZERO guilds raiding in that server.
That forced people to move to the high population servers. And as time passed it became worse and worse. Both for blizzard and the players.
So even if blizzard did not implement cross-server, inevitably people would have clustered up all in the same mega-server while all the rest were empty. Blizzard just did it correctly to avoid having people to move servers and bust their server infrastructure.
You’re oversimplifying the concept and being reductive. By breaking things down to their most basic elements, you’re disregarding the complexities that don’t align with your confirmation bias. While you may feel confident in your conclusions, true understanding requires looking at the bigger picture and considering every aspect in its entirety. Deconstructing ideas to fit preconceived notions will never lead to a full or accurate understanding. Since we clearly won’t see eye to eye, there’s no sense in continuing this conversation—I won’t waste more energy on trying to change your backwards mindset where you try to stroke your ego playing peacock.
But if we’re going from scratch, let’s add in some ranged melee hitters, hunters I think are the only ones ATM? Be nice if they had ammo back as well instead of a magical quile
It’s a bit sad, that the only playable void-users we have in the game are shadowpriests. I thought first, that Affliction Warlocks use void, but it’s unclear. It seems to be some weird Fel-shadow-magic. So now we kind of have 6 Fel-themed specs, 13 nature/spirit themed specs, but only 1 void-themed spec…
