In 2008, I discovered a masterpiece game called World of Warcraft! I was still a schoolboy then, and it was the first MMO RPG game I had ever seen, and I dove into it headfirst. At that time, it seemed this game had absolutely everything that could appeal to a young adventure seeker! I explored every stone, every path, and everything was so beautiful, atmospheric, mysterious, and dangerous!
Now I’m an adult man, doing well in life, who wanted to dive back into this magical world with my friends and experience the same emotions as in childhood!
We just needed to decide which version of WoW we wanted to play! Coincidentally, WoW had just been relaunched, and at that time there were 2 versions: Wrath of the Lich King (the original, familiar version), and Dragonflight (aka actual). Being old geezers, we decided to reminisce about our youth and start with Lich King! Oh yes, this is it, everything just like before, so familiar and nostalgic! After playing for a couple of months, we decided to try Actual as well! But it was a complete disappointment, for me at least… Later I’ll describe all the aspects in more detail, but now a bit more introduction 
We put WoW aside for a while, but then WoW SoD was announced. We were in complete anticipation, as it was supposed to be the same familiar WoW, but with some interesting changes. When we tried SoD, it initially met our expectations, but interest quickly faded. In the end, we’re now playing Cataclysm, and unfortunately - it’s the last playable version (in my subjective opinion).
So, what’s wrong with Actual? When I first entered it, I definitely liked the updated engine, with its movement physics and texture detail, but as it turned out, that was it…
For character leveling, I chose the “Exile’s Reach”. Immediately there was a feeling that the game was “licking” me from all sides and helping in every way. “Well, it’s okay for the learning process,” I thought. But after reaching level 20, nothing changed… It was still easy to level up, no “challenge”… Consequently, I quickly got bored with doing quests. Plus, there was a feeling of loneliness and emptiness, as if I had gotten into “The Truman Show”. Then I decided to use the dungeon finder and go through them with real people. But here too I was disappointed… It turned out that everything in the game scales relative to your level, and you can go to the same dungeon until the last level. Each dungeon run was like some stupid “Speed run”, where everyone just ran straight through the mobs to the bosses, killed them in 30 seconds, and it was all over again. There wasn’t even time to realize where you were and what was happening at all. As it turned out, this scaling system also applies to leveling in locations. That is, you can level up in any location you want, and there will always be mobs of your level. And what does this mean for a newbie? When a newbie opens the map, they see a huge incomprehensible world, where it’s unclear what is connected to what and where to even start? And no matter where you start, your subconscious still thinks: “Am I in the right place now, and why am I here?”, “What if I missed something? Do I need to collect any items?”. As a result, there’s a bunch of chaotic information in your head that you simply drown in, and you lose the desire to figure anything out at all, because you understand that you won’t be able to grasp and comprehend everything anyway. Plus, all these locations are deserted, and there are no live players in them. There’s no need to “compete” with anyone for resources, no need to gather in groups to complete particularly difficult tasks, no random encounters with players of the opposite faction to kick their butts, or to lay your own bones to rest Just loneliness and chaos in thoughts.
Regarding the lore: I don’t consider myself the type of person who delves particularly deeply into the universe’s lore, but even I felt that there was no coherent atmosphere here… Everything consists of stitched patches of different universes, which no longer have the spirit of “Alliance versus Horde” or “Alliance together with the Horde, against a single global evil”.
Regarding SoD: This version of WoW started well but ended poorly… The developers took too long to release new content, and there was quickly nothing to do in the current content. I stopped playing SoD after the level 40 phase (after conquering Gnomeregan). The raid dungeons were extremely simple and quickly became boring, and the PvP content was meaningless and quickly lost the spirit of competition (as it all came down to meaningless “meat” once in a while).
What would be a good continuation of the WoW universe for me?
- The engine that’s now in Actual. It’s really not bad!
- What to do with the lore? How to get rid of the overloaded world? You can use a technique like “Alternative course of events”. We can return to that period of time from which the very first WoW started, when the main enemy of the Alliance was the Horde, and vice versa. And when there was a single evil that was approaching the already warring World. Again, I’m not a lore expert, but I’m sure you can find a moment in it where a fateful character of this lore would act differently than the time when, for example, the Lich King appeared.
- The process of leveling up a character. This process should be difficult. The spirit of adventurism should be encouraged, and a sense of danger should always accompany the player. There should be competition between players for resources, but at the same time, to obtain some resources, you need to unite and overcome difficulties together. There must be an atmosphere of hostility towards the opposite faction. In Actual WoW, there’s a tendency towards “Diablo-ization” of level progression, i.e., many groups of mobs that are easy to kill, it’s better to do the opposite, where there will be few mobs, but they will be difficult to kill. There should be mandatory leveling locations where both hostile factions compete for resources (the perfect example is Stranglethorn Vale from the times of Wrath of the Lich King)
- PVP content. PvP should be an integral part of both character leveling and end-game. There should be no division of items into PvP and PVE. If you’re good at PVE, and have “blood and sweat” obtained the desired gear, then this gear should be equally good in both PvP and PVE (and vice versa). Perhaps make a mechanic that to get into some dungeon you need to gather a raid, and first defeat a similar raid of other players in PVP, and only then the winner gets into the dungeon. An excellent PvP event was the ability to organize raid trips to the capitals of opposite factions, this needs to be supported in every way and stimulate players.
- Talents. There should be a varied talent tree that would allow building dozens of working builds, depending on the gear you have, and not like now, when there’s only one perfect build and rotation that hangs on Wowhead, and which everyone uses like monkeys copying…
What problems do WoW developers face? How to implement new content when a new version of the game should be released? In my opinion, this is the biggest problem that buried WoW… The developers couldn’t solve the problem of scaling and content scaling.
- The problem of level scaling. Well, for example, in the current version the maximum level = 80. When a new version comes out, the most obvious solution seems to just add +10 levels, add several new dungeons, add new items with even higher characteristics than the current ones. Accordingly, HP will become larger, Damage will become larger, and it seems like everything is good and everyone is happy! But there’s a serious problem lurking here. Let’s say 4 such consecutive additions come out, and now the maximum level is 80 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 120. For constant players, leveling up +10 levels with each addition won’t be difficult, but what about newcomers? It turns out that they have to level up from level 1 to 120!!! That is, if I already have level 120, and I invite a friend to play with me, they will have to spend an eternity just to level up to me… Therefore, increasing the level is a bad idea. What if we lower the level? That is, the maximum character level will always be, for example, 80th, and when a new patch comes out, all 80th level characters become 70th, and they need to gain +10 levels. At the same time, it’s not necessary to rework the talent tree, and it’s into it that you can endlessly add new talents, just now for each +1 level the player will receive not +1 talent, but +1.1 (i.e., with a step of 10 levels, the player will be added +1 additional talent point), but in general it’s not fundamental, just with each new version of the game the maximum level will be unchanged, but talent points can be added.
- The problem of scaling characteristics. This is where increasing HP and Damage is the norm, and it can be increased indefinitely. However, this increase should not be multiple… Let this increase be +1000 - +2000 damage per patch, and not +100000 as it is now.
- The problem of old content. This is one of the main problems. How to make all the content that came out in previous patches remain relevant? Let’s start with quests. It would be good to think through quests in advance so that they are divided into 3 groups. The first group is chains of story quests that tell the player the main story of the game from its very beginning to the current moment. The second group is chains of quests tied to one specific location. The third group is side passing quests that will not affect the plot in any way and which can simply be removed in future versions. The main idea is that with the release of each new version of the game - the total number of quests does not change (since the game always has a maximum level = 80, and does not change). Since each new patch assumes some development of the global story, as well as the addition of new locations, it’s necessary to add new quests. But in order for the universe not to be oversaturated with a bunch of quests, in each new patch - you can simply delete quests from the 3rd group, replacing them with other quests in the same group, but already for the current addition. Thus, new players will visit old locations, but they will pass them much faster than in previous patches (completing quests from the 1st and 2nd groups), while by the time they level up to level 80 - they will be aware of all the backstory.
- The problem of old dungeons. Now, when a new addition comes out, people stop going to old raid dungeons, because it simply doesn’t make sense anymore… Thus, dozens of amazing raid dungeons have been forgotten
This is where scaling comes to the rescue! Only you need to scale not the characters, but the bosses in the dungeons themselves. To kill them should be as difficult as in previous patches. Now we need to solve the problem “What’s the point in going there?”. You can make a special kind of “legendary” gear that can only be obtained by going through all the dungeons from previous additions. Or make it so that unique resources necessary for improving current items fall from raid dungeons of previous dungeons. There may be a problem that at some point there will be so many dungeons that there won’t be enough people to quickly gather a raid to a specific dungeon, but I’m sure you can find dozens of good solutions to this problem! But people will always have something to do in WoW. - The problem of items and their characteristics. If a newbie enters WoW when there’s already, say, the 10th patch, they may face the fact that 40 different dungeons are available to them, where completely different items drop, and it will be difficult for them to understand where exactly they need to go. I would suggest thinking about such a system: in dungeons, not ready-made items with their characteristics will drop, but just empty “blanks” (which have different unique appearances), and also unique resources fall from bosses that allow endowing the corresponding “blanks” with any characteristics that the player himself deems necessary. The only problem with this approach is balance, but I think modern computing power of computers allows for testing and calibration of any combinations of possible characteristics.
- Achievement system. Starting from Cataclysm, the achievement system in WoW has already become too oversaturated… In my opinion, achievements need to be thought out in such a way that they remain relevant regardless of the current patch. And the worst mistake that the developers made is the devaluation of rewards for achievements. I know a story when for some difficult achievement a Mount was given as a reward, and it was really cool to have such a mount, everyone immediately understood what path you went through to get it. But then in subsequent patches, this mount could be bought almost for gold… This was just a spit in the face of real fans of the game…
Well, that’s all from me, I hope this post will find support from other fans of this game, and perhaps even someone from the WoW team will notice it and listen to some ideas
