The title might be a little bit “D’uh” but it’s actually really hard to deliver - yet it is something that Blizzard openly offers at the back of the box.
I wanna have a discussion over what I think it means, and I particularly want to focus on what we’ve lost over the years and how we can get it back and maybe even improve it.
Question: Should I split this up into 12 threads… ? 
Anyway, they can be read and discussed in isolation.
Chapter 1: Seamless world
This is probably one of the most notable issues of modern World of Warcraft.
While the vanilla game offers and delivers hours and hours of gameplay between each loading screen, this is not the case for modern World of Warcraft at all. You’d think there had been some progress with better technology on this front, but no - precisely the opposite is true.
There are many reasons for this, most of them having to do with the emphasis on dungeons, scenarios, arenas, and other instanced content, but also the size of the world. The size of the world has meant Blizzard puts up a lot of portals and, guess what, you get a loading screen, not to mention a total displacement of where you are, whenever you take one.
World of Warcraft featured and still features the flight point system. They are flight points and not teleports precisely so that this sense of place is maintained and there are no loading screens.
So - how to fix this?
Chapter 1.a
Well, firstly we’ve got a lot of cases where we’re not even loading anything. Scenarios that take place on the current location are a great example of this, but entering a dungeon (Mythic) or raid dungeon (non-LFR) is another great example of this.
Even if the dungeon does not physically fit inside the outside gameworld, though often it does these days, it’s simply a matter of phasing the player and rendering a different terrain.
The most prominent example of this technology is the Garrison, and the technology was actually put into the game during WoD. Unfortunately this incredible technology was misapplied and then forgotten like most other things in WoD.
I know you can do this, Blizzard. Do it.
Chapter 1.b
In other cases we change location rapidly. Good example of this are mage portals or ships moving to another map. In these cases it’s harder to avoid, but I think it would be possible for the game to “see it coming” and pre-cache the new area, then briefly fade to black. It’s not perfect, but it’s better.
Another decent idea would be to just have less of this sort of stuff. Yes I know people get upset with travel times, but I really don’t care. We should not completely destroy the immersion of the world just so someone can be 2 minutes faster when seeking to kill The Lich King for the gazillionth time.
Chapter 2: World transport
One of the noteworthy thing about the modern game is that, even when I do want to take physical transports to really go out and about to experience how the world is connected, I often simply can’t do it.
Pandaria, for instance, is completely unreachable without the use of a portal. This is a massive shame as we just had a content patch set there, and we all know that these portals are sort-of a cop-out.
I mean it really were that easy to teleport people in and out of the Shadowlands, why the heck did we do the whole Icecrown thing? Also, why can’t I hop on the space ship to Argus in the Azuremist Isles? Because it’s closed? Okay, fair enough - how do I get there without the aid of Chromie? Why can’t I go to the Broken Isles? We know where it is.
At least with Kul’tiras you can get there by boat - not being able to do that, given it was Kul’tiras, was simply too ridiculous even for this design team.
Chapter 3: Buffs and debuffs
Buffs and debuffs are to be used exclusively to describe effects that are happening to my character’s body an soul. They are not to be used to describe quests or to give awareness of world events. Use the calendar and quests to do that.
Not only is this adding a lot of bloat to our buff frames, but it also just plain doesn’t make sense. My character cannot innately feel that you can do tBC dungeons this week or that the Alliance particularly appreciates help - that’s ridiculous.
Chapter 4: I need to know
One of the most strange additions in recent versions of WoW is NPC’s that invade our minds across the world in order to inform us of what to do.
Usually such characters become memes because people get annoyed. They won’t shut up and they often sound silly.
That whole concept just needs to go completely. Many things are good about the world quest system, but I’ll make an exception for this.
Chapter 5: Reading the lore
One of most noteworthy and perhaps most famously annoying features of vanilla WoW was its teletyping quest text.
I recently found out why this was done: Many of the alpha testers at Blizzard were confused about where to go or felt the game didn’t have enough story. This confused the designers as they had written over 2000 quests full of lore.
As soon as they teletyped it, FORCING people to read it, the problem went away.
I’m not exactly going to propose that solution, but something’s going to have to be done.
Chapter 6: Ambient noises and music
One of World of Warcraft’s most striking features in its original state were the way music was applied. Whereas most games, including WoW’s source material, plays very loud and bombastic music, World of Warcraft was very ambient, quiet, and laid back. So much so that many people would start playing other music over it.
But what this did was it accentuated when the music did start and made something even more epic because it stood out, and it was just really soothing as you listened to all the sounds of the world. The ambience in World of Warcraft: Classic is utterly superb, even if it’s just a few loops of sounds. Just the sound designers absolutely nailing it.
More could be done today, but instead of trying to use ambience to immerse us into a world the music team has completely taken over and started writing as if they’re making an orchestral movie score for a Marvel movie.
I can’t hear anything!
So I tone it down, and all is well in the world, but then all the music is super bombastic but there’s no weightiness to it. And then I start listening to the ambience and… guys, you gotta put some effort in here. It’s not completely worthless, but it’s not what it used to be.
Chapter 7: Onward we march
For me, one of the most compelling aspects of being in a massive open world with other players is that we share a space - just like in the real world. Although we may be in the different places and doing different things at the same time, we are doing them at the same time.
So in my ideal world that means that what takes place in Stormwind today at 14:52 happens at the same time as what takes place in Oribos today at 14:52. The world moves and breathes - it doesn’t revolve around me.
Unfortunately the game is not getting updates. Most of the locations we can go to do not even remotely resemble their current situation in the lore. That is, in my opinion, unacceptable. The world is too big and it’s full of outdated content that nobody plays.
Fair enough that people wanna visit the bronze dragons and have a bit of nostalgia, but we gotta keep the current time straight. To hell with it when you literally use the bronze dragons as the plot driver like with WoD, but generally I think the world should reflect what it is.
Chapter 8: Collections
Many players in World of Warcraft now have exceptionally large amounts of collectable rewards. Many of these rewards are cool and all that, and I have many of them myself, but I’ve come to the conclusion that they are just becoming far too ridiculous.
Nothing destroys my sense of place and world more than standing in Lake Shire and then someone comes down riding on an ungodly horrific dog made of 5 Draenei stitched together to buy cheese and, instead of being intimidated and running for dear life, the cheese vendor says “Good day to you!” and waves kindly.
I mean honestly, if the guy is that tolerant why does he have a problem with Orcs? As a matter of fact I can literally sit on the back of a dragon that completely destroyed his village and burned his house down about a decade ago and he’ll still be “Good day to you!”
WoW solved this using racial mounts. By simply tying the mount to my race and tying my race to my alignment the problem went away.
Is that a little simplistic and boring? Perhaps - but at least it’s not what we’ve got now.
I get that people are very proud of their collections, but it’s really over the top now.
Chapter 9: Emotions and identity
One of the most important aspects of World of Warcraft is the fact that it’s an MMORPG, and that means we all get to have individual identities in a massive world, and these identities are not our real identities necessarily.
Even though we’re not actively roleplaying like it’s a D&D session (unless it’s on the RP realms) and even though we’re all having fun playing a game and not actually pretending it’s real life we’re still roleplaying.
This is because an identity formed by our character’s history, race, location, equipment, experience, class, gender, and body language is plastered on top of our normal appearance. What results is a combining of our mind and a different body as seen from the perspective of others. For example, my friends in WoW call me “Kitler” - why? Because I was a very stern Feral Druid raid leader for 3 years. I am still me to all the rest of the world, and they wouldn’t flinch if they saw me IRL, and nobody’s pretending I’m actually a cat - and yet…
This is a really powerful aspect of the game and this is the only kind of the game that exists which can deliver this, and I really have to say that this aspect of the game has been neglected badly to the point where it’s upsetting.
Everybody’s been very focused on our ability to change the appearance of our characters with transmogs and re-customisation that nobody ever really stopped and said: What does it do to our sense of identity when we can, at a moment’s notice, change the length of our hair, or our race, or our gender, or literally whatever else? Where is the sense of identity here?
But worse still, the game is full of animation systems that would allow us to express all sorts of things with our characters, but we can’t use them. Lip syncing, smiling, frowning, furrowing our brows, facepalming, and many other such animations that already exist. Why are they not in use specifically for player characters? Why can I not access them with /commands? Come on. Give us facial expressions!
Chapter 10: Languages
World of Warcraft has a rich tapestry of languages. Much of it has been lifted wholesale from Tolkien and Gary Gygax’s works, but nevertheless it’s cool and can really provide a lot of mystery that players have to chat to each other, in regular languages, to solve. But it’s not really being used at all.
Also, Pandaren speaking the language of “Pandaren” that is just “nom nom nom” instead of the Mogu language, based loosely on Chinese, is ridiculous. I don’t care if you think a character saying “Ching chang chong” is racist. Not even the Chinese care. Trust me, I spoke to them about it.
And, of course, don’t make it actually say Ching chang chong. Make it a little more sophisticated, yeah? Just like the other languages.
And add more. And let us learn new ones to unravel hints and secrets.
Chapter 11: Vendors
Too focused on gameplay, let’s get some world. There are so many vendors in World of Warcraft that just don’t sell you anything useful. They used to be useful, but now they’re not. Who ever goes to an armor vendor or a cheese vendor to get something? I know I don’t. There’s basically just the water vendor and the reputation vendors and the repair bot, and then we’ve got the profession trainers and the banker and that’s about it.
So what did Blizzard do? Well, they deleted literally all of the world-building vendors in newer content. Why? I don’t know. Useless NPC’s are boring I guess?
Look - just compare the vibrancy and depth of Stormwind, Undercity, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, etc. to Boralus. It’s a joke. Get some more interesting NPC’s in here and make them sell me some stuff I can actually use.
Chapter 12: In-game economy and the WoW Token
I’ve got many arguments against this system, but let’s make one based on immersion: Mixing real world economy with the game world means that World of Warcraft isn’t actually an isolated economy any more. This is bad because it takes away from the sense of world.
World of Warcraft’s market were so interesting and dynamic that professional market place experts and investors actually went in and researched it, but now? Nobody cares. Blizzard broke it.
And I know people are going to say “Nah the players broke it” because they were already selling gold - okay, fair enough, I’ll let Blizzard off the hook and instead accuse them of refusing to take “Play fair” seriously and letting it happen, and also: You broke it. Yes, you, making that argument.
Epilogue:
Thank you reading - unless you didn’t and you just read this message in which case not thank you for not reading.
My hands are cramped.
I really want WoW to be a more atmospheric and immersive game again, and I really don’t want to have to play a 14 year old version of it to make that happen.
I don’t necessarily know how to solve all these, though some of them are quite easy.
Blizzard please - try to remember that you’re making an MMORPG here. It’s not a linear co-op action adventure, alright?
(yeti pajamas… ffs WHYYYY!!!)
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