Given the unfortunate current situation of the company and game alike, I would like to place my thoughts as a lifelong, dedicated fan of WoW here on the official forums, so that it has even a slim chance of being seen and picked up on. Blizzard actually looking for and listening to feedback now gives me more reason than ever to write it. I am currently subscribed and have been for many years.
These thoughts are split into categories and some may echo things commonly brought-up and speculated on already.
(Yes, this will be a very long post, be warned! And no, youâve no obligation to sit through it â itâs just feedback.)
Introduction: General Direction and Focus
WoW doesnât need to be like any other game. Wow doesnât need to be the most high tech MMO with the most flashy features. Itâs been out since 2004. Itâs seen and passed its glory days, its code is aging terribly, and itâs got competitors now. Who are we kidding?
While the engine does need to be brought more into the modern era, and big graphical and technical improvements made, if WoW wants to survive then the main focus should be on the existing game universe.
The Warcraft universe is vast. Itâs complex. Itâs expansive. Most people who still play WoW play it because they love being in the world, not because they think itâs the greatest game ever made.
Back in 2004, Iâm willing to bet what made WoW truly special was that no-one had really felt so transported to another realm before in an online game â and theyâd never experienced a thriving community, made friends or adventured like it before. Both the escapism aspect and the social aspect are vitally important to rekindle.
People know the warcraft world well, and are fond of it. We donât need more planets and more islands, we need more detail on the world as it is. Nostalgia is powerful. Sink them neck-deep in immersion into it, take them on an adventure with our friends. Donât use cheap plot-twists, the ever-perpetuated end of the world, and shock value to keep people invested. People are already invested! They just miss the feeling of the old days, thatâs why theyâre quitting or playing Classic.
However, WoWâs focus on only cultivating the endgame meta experience for years, and skipping out on the immersion-factor and roleplaying, has created a community of jaded, blank-eyed gamers who ignore the story, skip half of every dungeon, and only play it to grind to the biggest number then quit once theyâre âout of contentâ. They donât speak to one another unless theyâre in a guild, theyâre toxic to each other at every oppurtunity, and theyâre cynical.
Perhaps if the sense of wonder, exploration and fantasy was re-instilled, the community would be more like classic today.
Future Expansions
Whatever WoW releases next is enormously important for the game and the company.
People need to know that itâs getting better: Both at the company and inside the game. If they get it wrong after Shadowlands, this could be the final straw for many players, if they havenât already quit. This expansion needs to be crafted with love, care and detailed attention to player-feedback. They need to turn this boat around.
While it is largely speculated upon already, a focus on revamping the old world, focusing on Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms is the healthiest for the game right now. Some content is really showing its age, both in the zoneâs now-outdated story, and in its appearance and gameplay. Taking advantage of how much technology has improved since 2004 to really bring the classic world of Azeroth back to life would reel back in nostalgic players with fond childhood memories, while pleasing existing ones. Nostalgia is something WoW can really market towards, if they do it right.
A faithful HD remaster of each classic zone that tells us how itâs been faring since we last checked up, tells us a story focusing around the commonfolk within, then offers fun innovative new mechanics and bonus content once itâs been completed would be ideal.
I donât believe a timeskip that sweeps their past failings under the rug is the right way to go about this, as that creates a void of time in which player characters and NPCs alike were simply standing idle and aging. It makes a broken continuity thatâs very tricky to write around. If weâre going to see areas rebuilt, remaster the rest of the gameworld first: Then rebuild areas like Darnassus over the course of the first 6 months or so of the expansion, in small increments, so players can see it happening.
Personally, I think keeping the core layout of the zones and towns within precisely as it is would be for the best, or one may feel robbed of what once was. We donât need to create another pointless reason for âclassic vs retailâ debates. However, said set pieces and towns should be fleshed out, made bigger and more alive and intricate. Make every town as pretty and lore-immersive as Suramar, no matter the small size of it. The only areas that should have their look entirely changed are areas of completely flat, blank space thatâs unused.
The destruction of classic cities for cheap drama in Battle for Azeroth was a terrible decision, and seeing them rebuilt to even brighter and bigger than their former glory would be the only right thing to do. Cataclysm wrecked so many zones that were never restored, and vitally need to be, or else the entire world of Azeroth is going to end up a pile of rubble in 10 expansionsâ time.
While technically a burning crusade area, Eversong woods and Azuremyst isle feel both painfully unfinished even years later, and deserve much better. They do reside in EK and Kalimdor after all â so the expansion should unphase them, add flying, and completely remaster them.
Later in the expansion cycle, revamped versions of cataclysm zones that lie within Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms (like Uldum and Mount Hyjal) could be added, one with each major patch, completing the full set.
This does leave the problem of Outland and Northrend being the oldest content in the game, still, however â and itâs showing its age too. While this canât be tackled all at once, it can be solved with time and patience, and perhaps some more earnest notices to new players about the age of that content and what to expect in the meantime.
Factions
Thereâs much talk of faction-neutrality and either a complete merge or a third, neutral faction. While I think this would be wonderful if it worked, it sounds like a logistical nightmare to unpick all of wowâs spaghetti-code relating to it when simple gameplay barriers could be taken down (like the proposed cross-faction raiding, dungeons and communication.)
I think the idea of cross-faction raiding and dungeons, as well as making PVP more abstract fun rather than always horde vs alliance is very good for the longterm health of the game. Cross faction parties and questing would be a tricky but wonderful addition if it were ever possible. Cross faction communication, while it should be disabled in PVP, needs to finally be enabled. Not being able to communicate on worldbosses and such becomes a huge hidrance after a while.
A third faction would take so much time, money and manpower away from revamping the vanilla zones, of which there are already an enormous amount to cover for the team. If the revamp came out half-baked, many could lose faith in the new future of wow altogether.
I believe it could make a good main storyline for the expansion after the proposed azeroth-revamp, however: We play through the story of rebuilding relations and digging through complex, old hatreds divided, but eventually peace wins out: and near the end of the expansion, the gameâs faction walls are finally lifted and the players are free to mingle for the first time and celebrate.
Races and Classes
Wow has a lot of classes now, and refining and building the fantasy and specs of the existing classes should take priority over adding more. I was a big fan of legionâs seperation of the specs â adding more specs to existing classes would be far better received than a half-baked new class.
Classes should focus on fantasy and have race and lore-specific animations, like Elune-based Night Elf Priest spells, and loa-based Troll Druid spells. Itâd encourage people to play the existing races for their theming and story.
The current race selection is confusing and bloated, even if I am a big fan of some of the new additions. Reorganising them according to lore into races and subraces (but still keeping it seperated by faction) would tidy it up.
For example: Core race, High Elf, subrace, Void Elf. Core race: Orc, Subrace: Magâhar Orc, and so on.
If there are to ever be any more races added, Iâd love them to add the ones that have existed for a very long time, were considered already but decided against in classic or BC (like Naga or Krokul) or are a logical subrace of an existing race. Again, we need to stop perpetually reaching for something new thatâll last 5 minutes then never even be story-relevant again.
Story Direction: Negative Feedback
World of Warcraftâs story tends to have a habit of perpetually building âupâ, not âoutâ.
The focus on each expansion adding an entirely new continent or planet, each with its own races, story and ideas, works as an occasional breather: However, knowing it will be abaondoned for something ânewâ each time makes it feel throwaway, and causes the story and lore to be enormous in size, but shallow in depth. Thereâs too much power creep. The lore is bloated and inaccessible to new players.
We need to start going back and filling in the blanks, instead of iterating endlessly. We donât need to blow up and rearrange more zones, or stick a big sword in them to make them interesting. We just need to add more classic warcraft-brand depth and flavour.
The main storylineâs writing has been increasingly terrible throughout Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands, ranging from bad to insulting the viewerâs intelligence. The Fourth War made no logistical sense. The Forsworn so clearly were right as we were forced to quest through massacring them, and we waited and waited for them to acknowledge it, but they never did, eventually doing it too little and too late for anyone to care.
We were told to ignore our role in the world, and focus on the main characters, but none of them were even acting in-character: like watching a bizarre and embarassing stage production bumble its way along.
The plot has been increasingly relying solely on shock value. Destorying Teldrassil, revealing the Jailor conspiracy, Elune, Sylvanasâ absolutely seesaw character motivations and characterisation, itâs like killing a character off or wrecking a place just to make people upset. Itâs not good writing.
The focus on âescalating cosmic adventuresâ, as it was put, has become so extreme itâs become alienating to the original world. Take roleplay servers for an example, as theyâre the most immersed in the ongoings: Practically nobody has been able to even interact with the story of Shadowlands so far, and some have even opted to pretend it isnât happening at all to preserve the peace of mind of the average Stormwindian civilian. Does the common man on the street even know whatâs happening? Would they even want to know? If the average Night Elf found out how Elune was portrayed recently, would it destroy them?
Stories are also left in a sort of linear timeline-limbo after their expansion. Itâs been years since the release of Wrath of the Lich King, what is Northrend like today? How are the Forsaken populace coping with their wild changes in leadership and insecurity of their future? What has the Argent Crusade been doing all these years? Is Eastern Plaguelands even still a plagued land? Questions like this constantly arise.
The colourful races of Azeroth, Draenor, and Argus are all absolutely fascinating and deserve a deep dive into their cultures, traditions and every day lives to fully immerse the player in the game world. Thereâs so much material that was used once and never iterated on: We donât even know how long some races lifespans are, despite them being in the game since vanilla. I want to know what they eat, their art, their fashion, their lives â not see simply how they go to war and die.
Even if it isnât practical to be perpetually updating the same content over and over instead of focusing on adding engaging gameplay, a tiny nod to it in each patch (like when we saw the Argent Crusade come back to help with the scourge outbreak) would work. We keep seeing new additions of decorative NPCs around Stormind and Orgrimmar, and theyâre easy to add or remove: why not swap some out every patch in each major racial capital, to give us a brief summary of the ongoings of the surrounding area?
Story Direction: Positive Feedback
The above expansions have had great moments, too. All of them have been in the original release, the levelling zones added with the expansion: Kul Tiras and Zandalar had immersive and fun worlds that you could get lost in. The art and sound team really carried that whole expansion. This is where WoW needs to keep its focus, small-scale environmental storytelling, not a single set of âmain charactersâ in an online game with thousands of characters.
Whichever writer or team of writers wrote the Suramar storyline, and the Mists of Pandaria original questing storyline, need to be put front and center of the team. These were the most genuine, interesting and carefully-considered stories in WoW to date. They dared to question authority, challenge playersâ perceptions and create characters with memorable personalities.
Despite playersâ lashback at Mists of Pandaria at the time, I was one of the few who thought it was genius. Even the content focusing around other races, like the night elf questline in Krasarang Wilds felt like the most lore-considerate story Iâd played in a long time. But now the expansion is held in high regard compared to the recent offerings, so itâs clear their complaints were founded in nothing but toxicity that shouldnât have been listened to so closely. They didnât want to like the heartfelt, well executed, perfectly serious and lore-abiding expansion, because pandas are gay! They wanted more pointless war crimes!
Blizzard has a problem with listening to the most loud, toxic, minority instead of the quieter majority of fans who have actually considered their feedback. Iâm writing this to make that majority a little less quiet.
Gameplay Direction
WoW will always be an MMO, and revolve around those few classic mechanics. This is fine. Grinding in itself can be fun for some people, and a good way to keep your hands busy as long as it doesnât feel unfair or exploitative of your subscription. However, innovative new versions like world quests and minigames, and experimental random-generated features like torghast were a great choice. More content that makes something infinitely replayable, and fun and varied each time, is always good.
The joke is often exchanged among players: Blizzard says, no fun allowed. When something is added like a toy, it has ridiculously long cooldowns and limitations, and combinations that allow you to, god forbid, do something silly, are very quickly swept up and patched out. This ethos needs to change. Itâs a video game, the focus should be fun, fun fun! More features should be added that allow you to goof around, because why even have a toy section if you donât want people to? We need more toys that let you steal NPC appearances and donât time out or have absurd cooldowns.
The WoW team needs to make the game more social. Right now, thereâs far too much phasing. War mode, chromie time and party sync make an absolutely dreadful trifecta which makes meeting up with your friends in a multiplayer game agonizing. Adding new ways for us to level together was a great choice, and the original party sync feature was revolutionary in the way I levelled. However, when it was layered with the new chromie time, which I was originally excited for, it was a confusing mess! Playing together should be as simple as a couple of clicks.
We need to make phasing as rare as we possibly can, and allow adding people to your party to put you in the same phase as much as possible. Old cataclysm zones with weird phased areas need to be ironed out.
The level squish was great, and it needed to be cut down, but right now levelling is weird. Levelling needs to cover an entire single expansionâs storyline, not awkwardly try and make you complete 1 zone for 50 levels, or spread you across 10 half-finished zones.
To echo my previous sentiment on classes, anything that makes them feel unique to each other is good. While some disliked it, I enjoyed legionâs pruning and seperating of abilities into distinct specialisations, each with its own theme. Some classes could do with new specs being added to the existing offerings, to give people more of a reason to replay them again on alts.
While time-gating new content and catching players up has been good on the release of Shadowlands to stop an unfair advantage for people who have more free time on their hands, time-gating the endgame content of previous expansions (like the horrible nzoth vision grind) feels exploitative of your subscription.
Development Ethos
Itâs evident at the moment that the WoW team is under a lot of strain and undergoing a lot of changes. Itâs showing in recent content, but that is inevitable. Putting that thought aside and acknowledging the hard work of the staff, especially the female staff who endured the company culture, here are some of my thoughts from before the scandal.
Right now, as a subscribed player, itâs been a lingering feeling for a few years now that the team is only adding things to the game or fixing bugs if theyâre forced to, not out of desire to improve the game*.* The team only pays attention to glaring problems if people kick up enough fuss, or if the media reports on it. We only got things weâve been asking for for years (like allied race customisations) because of the company desperately trying to patch over the scandal, finally listening to the fans. Many promised features came out feeling half-finished, then were never finished. Many systems feel buggy and ill concieved. Animations on some player models have been broken and frozen for years, now, taking sometimes an entire year to be bothered to be fixed â while toys allowing you to have fun in a way that isnât blizzard mandated are patched out immediately.
Things that are easy to create and implement, like cosmetic items and retextures of existing models/items, should be continually added, indefinitely â not dropped once then left as they are.
Almost every single new NPC race, player race, mount or pet for the past 3 expansions has re-used rigging from a previous expansion. A full set of new animations is extremely time consuming, yes, but reusing these assets becomes increasingly noticable with time and should be the exception not the rule. It contributes to the game feeling lazy. If youâre going to re-use rigging, make it for a good reason â to produce more content and options than you would have, not the same amount with less effort.
Art Direction
As stated above, the old zones desperately need a total HD remaster. Stormwind and Orgrimmar are in the most desperate need of this: Faithfully remastering the existing city to be a pixel-for-pixel HD version of its current self: but adding more districts in the surrounding areas to make them more city-sized would be fantastic. Especially if these districts were more focused on the other races of each faction, not just humans or orcs. Boralus and Suramar are shining examples of what cities couldâve been back in the day, if the technology was only there. However, these cities need to keep their soul, and keep their stylized chunkiness, as thatâs vitally important to keeping the aesthetic of WoW.
Vanilla models that are still frequently in-use, like in racial core mounts and paladin charger spells, need to be remastered. Thereâs just no excuse for these anymore. Heritage sets need to be finished â itâs been years, now.
The new focus on character customisation has been fantastic, and so sorely needed. I say itâs only just the start. Customisation should continue to be added indefinitely, as itâs a huge draw. Adding simple retextures and recolours are so simple to implement, so why limit them so much? It, again, adds to the game feeling lazy. Faces especially, being the main source of individuality for a character in the current engine, need to be diversified in every race. More skintones were so sorely needed and have been an excellent addition.
Half-elf, half-orc or half-draenei options for any race which qualifies would build an interesting story for each individual character and be a good nod to classic characters like Garona.
WoWâs lack of body type customisation dates the game more than anything, customisation-wise right now. Even if the gameâs aging engine doesnât make slider customisation ever possible, using the opposite genderâs rigging to create different character frames and builds, even if there was a simple choice of skinny or muscular, would make such an absolute world of difference. Animations wouldnât even need to be redone, and armour would still fit fine. Male faces need to have more young, non-wrinkly options for every race, and female faces need to have more old faces.
Characters need more individual personality, as wowâs cartoonish style has always been where it shined the most. Being able to pick between 2 or 3 different idle standing poses/animations would be simple and make a world of difference, and make them look less clone-like.
Adding to that, height customisation needs to be implemented one way or another. While engine limitations may hinder realistic proportioned character heights, using a simple full-body scale in very tiny increments can produce a realistic effect too. Look at the scale that Darkmoon Firewater gives a character â itâs subtle, but it works. I think the slider should only go that far up, and the same amount down, to stop people from all whacking it up cluelessly to maximum and producing oddly-scaled giants.
Art Direction: A Reflection on Hearthstone
Blizzardâs art and sound team has always been one of the best in the industry, and even in the worst content thereâs beautifully stylized sights and sounds to go with it. This shows especially in the game Hearthstone.
This is a playground in which, taking from the Warcraft universe, the artists were allowed to envision these characters and places anew without having to carbon-copy the awkward ingame models. The artwork ebbs character and life from every pore â and so does the music. So often Iâve looked at a Hearthstone card and so dearly wished that was how defined in personality my character could look ingame.
Best of all, WoWâs cartoony artstyle and painterly textures are carried through into Hearthstone; instead of being sacrificed for the same old bland realism every game is going for nowadays. WoWâs look and feel needs to follow in Heathstoneâs footsteps, not the other way around.
User Interface
The UI needs to retain its classic style, fonts and frames but needs to be updated. Most of the playerbase using a custom UI is not a good sign. Whatâs more, these third party UIs often completely change the graphical style of the interface, mismatching WoWâs classic look and feel, something which wouldnât happen if the default UI functioned better.
Windows need to be all movable and scaleable by default. Options and customisability needs to be added for raiders.
I strongly believe that the popular addon Immersion should be the default quest text window, as itâs a frame already in the game and easy to swap out, matches the gameâs aesthetic, and looks so much more modern.
The TRP3 Nameplates Module is worth looking into for inspiration, as it fits snugly into the default UI and makes the game look great.
Player Housing
Perhaps a controversial view, I donât believe player housing is as on high on the priority list as some believe. Saving the future of the game comes first.
However, if it was to be implemented, I believe that player housing would work best if kept simple. Games which allow players to create an entire seperate game world in their backyard lead to populations being fragmented and antisocial playstyles, when WoW desperately needs to rekindle its social aspect.
I think the best of both worlds would be if player housing was a single phased building interior, a la Animal Crossing. It should be highly customisable to the playerâs personality, and have a broad array of choices and tools, but it shouldnât exceed the interior of 1 building. This way itâs a fun way to hang out with friends on occasion without encouraging people to bubble off inside their own phase all of the time.
Cultural Direction
Itâs no news to anyone that actiblizz has a culture problem, itâs been all over the news. But that culture is seeped deep into the game since its inception. Old quests are riddled with tired sexism, racism, transphobia and more. But the problem isnât just this small handful of poorly-concieved gags that one can magic away by patching them out. Itâs more the nature of the stories themselves that are born in the culture and die in the culture.
WoWâs story has always revolved around war, and thatâs no surprise at all given itâs in the warcraft universe. Violence and war are always going to be a part of a game like this, as itâs necessary for its main game mechanic â and thatâs okay.
However, the extremely strong and repeated lean on race-wars, war crimes, genocide and racial hatred driving all the conflicts gets tired. If the devs want to make a game thatâs relatable for everyone, they need to cast a wider net with their narratives. Itâs not wrong to write about these things, nor does one have to make a statement with it â however, if one only writes about these things, it starts to become tiring for players who experience parallels to this in their real lives every day. It stops being escapism for them.
The social tone-deafness has been a problem, too. While some storylines (like Suramarâs revolution) were wonderfully thought-through and executed, others (like Talanji ruthlessly crushing anyone who protests) werenât.
With races like the Tauren, Trolls, Centaurs and Pygmies, some lore that is really beginning to show its age and unfortunate racially-stereotyped bedrock. It would be good to take the elements that made the races truly unique to the world of Azeroth â Like their fictional gods and their shamanic and druidic roots â Moving away from the heavy lean on real-life indigenous cultures and 1950s jungle savage sterotypes. While Tauren and Trolls are vital to the game, I doubt anyone would be too heartbroken if Pygmies were patched out and Centaurs were reworked: it really depends on the impact of the race.
WoW is a role-playing game. Itâs important that someone can connect with their character and become immersed in the world through them. Leaning into the section on art direction, less absurdly-gendered character models would be welcome for a multitude of reasons. The current level of sexual dimorphism is very extreme, creating unhealthy body standards for both men and women. Making an androgynous or gender nonconforming character is nigh impossible, too, and thatâs going to alienate a lot of players, and continue to look bad for the company after the recent scandal.
Even if one seperates the issue from gender politics, people have wanted body types for years. News of gender customisation being pronoun-related was a good step forward, but one very rarely sees their pronouns ingame. What they do see and hear constantly is their model. A choice of voice pitch/timbre would go a long way for both character customisiability and inclusion.
While a relatively new subject in the discussion of video games, I feel as a wheelchair user there is often no way to play a disabled person â While Iâm sure adding a wheelchair onto the player model itself is impossible, prosthetic limb customisations would be a rigging-friendly way to implement this. And why not lean into WoWâs fantasy setting? Disabled characters could have arcane prostheses, tree-limbs, or float. A set of enchanted floating chair mounts that are regular chair-sized and lets you sit in the appropriate animation would be fun for both disabled players and non-disabled players, especially if theyâre usable indoors at a lower speed.
WoW is still sorely behind on other media in 2021 on its diversity. Due to fear of backlash from its sometimes regressive fans, often hide representation away in one-off sidequests and books to keep it away from the spotlight. The game simply needs more visible representation for both players and main cast, period.
Cultural Direction: Shadowlands
Blizzardâs decision in Shadowlands to make many NPC races have a single, androgynous model with different voices for characters like the Brokers was genius. Not only does it save time without sacrificing quality, but it erases the utterly pointless trend of making a male monster and then a sexy, slim female version of it that looks considerably more human. Daring to create feminine-looking men as well as masculine was a huge step forwarrds in this expansion and I hope it continues.
The habit of making a male model then running out of time to add women, like with the ogres, is both lazy and unnecessary when a solution like the Arakkoa or Brokers could be reached. Only representing men as the âdefaultâ of a race has been a problem in WoW for years.
An Addendum: Think About Roleplayers
Roleplayers are the people who are most invested in your game and story. Theyâre going to be giving the suggestions that are most in-fitting with wowâs world, rather than just blindly suggesting features from other MMOs. Listen to them. Look at what theyâre doing. People pull some insane work-arounds to get past wowâs limitations, and if people are willing to chug a potion once every 10 minutes for 5 hours straight for immersion, then itâs probably something you need to add. Theyâre the most loyal subscribers and will continue to be.
Summary
Wow is a classic game with a timeless feel and an immense power of nostalgia for most folks â but what it needs now is a change of culture, writing direction, attitude and ethos to survive. Iâm glad to see them pushed to listen to the players recently, as itâs the kick they need to get themselves in gear for the future.
Thank you for reading, if you made it all the way to the bottom â I wholeheartedly appreciate it. 