In my opinion the game would be FAR better served, for its genre, if for once we actually made use of the world we already have.
The game effectively stays the same size, or shrinks, every new expansion because it’s just a matter of packing your bags and moving to the new continent. As has been pointed out, Dragonflight technically being on Azeroth is meaningless, because in pratice it’s the same situation as Shadowlands, just reskinned.
Is it really better always have new zones, rather than giving us new stuff to do in familar ones? Seems to me the latter ties in all aspects of the game far better, and most importantly adds to the in-game community aspect as the zones will be shared by many level ranges. It would greatly combat the issue of the levelling game feeling completely disconnected from the ‘end-game’.
The game world is enormous, just how many zones are there? Yet 95% of it is effectively pointless and obsolete with every major content patch these days.
Much would be improved if they expanded on the Timewalking system. Why can’t we just scale down to caps of any expansion and just do the content, for the fun of it? Maybe they could have some currency you earn a small amount of for completing quests, which can be traded in for cosmetic armour reskins of appropriate design (recolours of questing sets from old expansions).
I spend all my time levelling now, because it’s just what I want from an open-world adventure game. I want to feel like I’m in a vast world, and I don’t like excessively linear over-arching stories.
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If a continent isn’t appearing out of nowhere, is it really a WoW expansion?
Though I too think a lot more zones could be recycled with phasing and/or bronze dragoning.
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Dragon Isles were planned for Vanilla.
I’ve waited for 69 years…
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I’m not against new zones. I just dislike the absolute nature of rendering ALL previous ones meaningless.
I just think there’s too much focus on the ‘new lands’. Other MMOs seem to find the balance between new stuff and refreshing previous content, and making it fit together.
Cuz new lands are the best lands.
We’ve already seen the ‘‘olde ye lands’’ for ages from leveling etc. It’s not really interesting seeing the same areas but SLIGHTLY ALTERED. At least not to me - I only speak for myself, and the birds.
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Uldum and Vale are sending regards 
Didn’t end-up as people expected.
That being said, your proposal is fair and reasonable, however i do not agree with. Usage of old zone in new way would lead to even more ‘parallel universes’ which splits players onto layers (it even rhymes)
In my opinion, low level player should see and should be able to interact with high level player.
I wasn’t a big fan of the Uldum/Vale stuff. Until then I thought revamping old zones would be a good thing. After that I wasn’t so sure.
It’s a nuisance having to find the timey whimey dragon every time to swap when you need to.
I honestly prefer new zones, new content, new shinies, not recycling the old.
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Slightly altered, why only slightly?
Why are the new lands the ‘best’?
How much time have you really spent in say, Westfall? I think you’ll find you’ve spent rather a lot of time in Argus, or Zereth Mortis.
You seem to be making an argument against repetition, or spending a lot of time in a given zone, in essence living in a second world. Isn’t that one of the major reasons why people play MMORPGs?
Like I said, I’m not against new zones.
Oh boi, you’ve no idea how many alts I’ve leveled these past 12 years.
Barely any in comparison.
No, I’m making an argument for new zones over the old ones we’ve already seen for the past 18 years. And very often when they remake old zones, they utterly ruin them.
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Tons of time during the Legion event. Man that was fun. Otherwise though, urgh. Crap zone, it’s at the bottom of the lists alongside the swamps.
If you say the same about Dun Morogh, imma have to bust a cap on yo bony butt.
Dun Morogh is a lovely zone with great ambience. There’s a zone they could use more.
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Well, I have some objection to the term ‘recycling’ because it rather seems like a cheap negative buzz word to disgregard something which I find is rather important to a persistent open world role playing game.
It’s called the world itself. The sense of being in a vast a populated second land.
‘Recycle’ dismisses the process of keeping the playable world fresh, and relevant. Making sure all players are kept together.
The Matrix Online is one of the few that had a sensible approach to how the ‘overall story’ should work in an MMORPG. That has a main story that progressed and if you joined late, well tough luck, this is a persitent and progressing world and that’s just how it works.
There shouldn’t a timeline you walk through, and when you make a new character you are in the current world, not Azeroth from 2005. Obviously this is a game and there are limits to how much content can be delivered, but an obviously idiotic thing to do is well, Cataclysm, as in making 1-60 be the end-game story-- with absolutely no thought for the future post-Cataclysm.
The annoying thing is this singlularly idiotic decision has tainted ALL suggestions of going back to old zones. All people need to do is bring up that expansion and they think they’ve played the winning card. The only reason why the Classic zones worked so well in an MMO setting is because each zone had isolated stories, and they work in any timeframe. Regardless of who the current major villain is, Lakeshire will always have a problem with murlocs in the lake.
I don’t see how it can be argued that the world feels vast, because by design each expansion is effectively a sequel. It’s WoW 10 next and we move wholesale to a new continent.
They can simultaneously update and refresh the graphics in a zone, and add in some high level content, or better still ‘evergreen’ Timewalking content.
I think they could/should revert all Cata leveling zones (not Twilight Highlands etc), to be in Vanilla timezone. They could keep the general chains of their old zones, but make 'em more linear like they did in Cata. But the change of timezone ruined a lot, imo.
We go leveling from 1-60 (Back in 2011), ARthas is dead, Illidan is dead etc - bam, we reach Outland and Illidan is the villain. Wut? We then go to Northrend, and Arthas is the villain. What? See what I mean?
It makes no sense, storywise.
But I rather they dont touch any old zones now, due to this. All rehashes they’ve done has been pure trash. So I’d rather they dont touch it.
How can it be a buzzword. Reusing old content to make it something else is recycling. If factual terminology can’t be used then there really isn’t a valid argument.
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I would challenge that argument.
In current patch zones you spend EVERY day for months there. You have not spent 17 years in Westfall. You have levelled how many alts, actually? How much time does one spend in a levelling zone these days?
I think you’d be surprised how they tally up.
Do you level up characters every week? I mean Westfall is one zones out of how many to level in?
Let’s just do a rough sum. Let’s be generous and say this person levels a new character up once every three months (I find that amazing to believe your average person does so as frequently). How often will they pick Westfall with so much choice? Again let’s be generous and say every one out of three alts. How long does it actually take to level through Westfall? About two hours at most?
So I think it’s rather fair to say your average person spend something like five to six hours or so in Westfall a year. Hmm… that’s not really an awful lot.
How much time does your average player spend in Zereth Mortis for three months?
People really do seem to argue as if levelling is something they spend all their time doing, like endgame.
Uuuuh… more than 200 these past 12 years? I’ve deleted many.
I dont.
I stayed in ZM until I got Revered, and I only did the WQs every day, then left. And I haven’t returned since.
I might, and as alliance I usually do: Dun Morogh > Loch Modan > Westfall > Redridge Darkshire. Then maybe one more zone if I havent reached 50 at this point.
I’ve also done plenty of Westfall stuff in Classic… in fact, I’ve done it 3-4 times these past 2 weeks (I have issues deciding on characters, so I might remake). And it takes far more than 2 hours in Classic.
It has a negative connotation, which to me seems at odds with the genre.
It suggests it’s done purely out of laziness, or lack of creativity. As I just said, it can be very sensibly argued that keeping the whole world relevant and connected is most certainly a laudible goal in an MMORPG.
You don’t think they re-use assets from expansion to expansion?
Besides they would have to remake all the environment because the old art is just too dated.
I find it amazing that people seem entirely on the side of ‘new new new’. The Blizzard Bulldozer as I have called it, the ‘sweep EVERYTHING previous in the bin and march forward!’. How can it not be important in a persistent living world to keep the whole world alive and fresh, and yes at the same time add new things-- which surely should take the form of both new zones, new monsters, and also adding things to existing zones.
Because the older zones (Pre-Legion/WoD) has more character than newer ones ever will.
That’s what you associate with it, that’s not my fault. I suggest you spend more time making a case rather than arguing about what terminology you find acceptable.
I will call a spade a spade.
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