I am a new and old player. Old, because I played the wow release but I stopped very quickly and never reached 60. New, because the only expansion I did seriously was Legion and I stopped directly in the first raid LFR.
With the steamdeck and the DH class, WOW became another game for me. The “All the thing” addon completely changed my way of approaching the game.
And I love the leveling. I am always dressing up with new loot and has the progression that goes with it (even if the leveling scaling takes away a lot of this charm). But once at high level and since I’m not doing group content, I used to considere that there was nothing to do in Wow. « All the Thing » has given me another way to progress in the game. I’m making progress by reaching 100% in a zone and allowing me to (finally!) enjoy the old content I never did. But I still one shot mobs in the old expansions.
One shotting mobs is IMO really damaging for the game. I really liked the DH gameplay, the fact that you were always close to dying, regain your hit points with a cool move, and chain another mob. It’s a really fun gameplay. Which I can’t really do in the old content anymore.
The old content lacks a challenge and it lacks life and I need an addon to feel a progression. It’s also mostly single player content in every sense of the word. I played a lot of TESO. I did very few dungeons but mostly questing (and not even Tmog because I find TESO armors ugly compared to WOW’s ones). But, I loved that moment when informal groups are created in the open world. From saving a new player because I was passing by, or being saved by a mysterious stranger… It’s a MMO feeling. The WOW pre-patch event also shows that the happy mess of world bosses is quite rewarding to experience. And only an MMO can provide that experience. And one shot mobs doesn’t allow for those moments.
So how to solve this problem?
We could make leveling much longer.
This solution would be completely unfair for those who would like to quickly level an alt, or join friends for group content.
We could level the old content up to max level.
This solution would be completely unfair to TMOG hunters, mount collectors and others. Not everyone wants a challenge and I totally understand that.
The solution?
The same as for raids. I’ve done a little of LFR to keep up with the story, but I’m not really interested in all the logistics of guilds and raids. So I don’t do raids other than LFR and I don’t plan to do any raid above LFR in Dragonflight. But for those who are interested in this sort of content, they have several difficulty modes and their own progression. And I think it’s cool that raiders have their own gamedesign.
But then there’s nothing to stop Blizzard from doing a heroic difficulty mode for the old content.
Once you say that, there are a couple of ways to do it. It could be an unlockable mode at max level (soon 70) by talking to an NPC (Chromie ?) or by checking a box. For me, this is logical. At the maximum level, the end game begins. Do you want to do Pvp? Raid? M+ ? Farming the world? For the latter, do you want to do it in chill mode? Or with more challenge and controlled progress? Everyone has different needs and we all deserve to have a good time.
The purpose of this post is not to add 20 years of development to the WOW team for my pleasure. It has to be simple enough to implement and it has to be well done. For example a system that just scales the open world to max lvl would not be a good system. You would have exactly the same world, but everything would take longer to acquire and there would still be no progression.
So how to do it?
Instead of one difficulty per zones, the devs could make one difficulty per expansion. Classic revamp <TBC < WOTLK <…
The gears we would earn in this heroic mode would have another progression system (let’s call it elvl) which would allowed to farm faster and faster in higher expansions and the current expansion. This system should have no impact in the current expansion and thus, wouldn’t disturb raids players. So, the first time, only Classic zones could be done solo. You gain some gear and no you are allowed to solo TBC and so on. The “some gear” part should be tuned, and I don’t have a easy answer.
That’s the general idea, but the devs could refine the idea. For example, there could be subdifficulties by content type. Open world < Dungeons < Raids.
There are 170 dungeons and raids (multiplied by their difficulty), so we can say that the gears should be between 1 elvl to 300 elvl. The hardest thing would be to classify dungeons and raids. The DeadMines could be 2 elvl and drops of 4 elvl gears. And the last classic raid would be 40 elvl. The open world could be at a fixed difficulty or with an adaptive level in specific brackets, for example from 1 elvl to 35 elvl. The open world in TBC would be from 35 to 75 elvl. In my opinion, the hardest part would be organizing the content of classic, the other expansions are better structured. In classic, the player should finish half of a continent ? Just one Raid ? I dunno, tell me.
Why a progression system by gears and not by a paragon system like in TESO?
Because it’s more fun, more concrete than just leveling up without anything behind it. But after all, why not? Leveling up could allow you to buy new skills specific to the open world in heroic mode. For example, reducing the waiting time between two attempts at the same difficulty of a dungeon, or increasing the chance of mount or legendary item drops. (For the latter, I’m not sure it’s possible).
The ideal way to play a game like WoW would be not to gain levels according to experience points by killing things, but by doing things. And that’s where the Wow team could take inspiration from « All The Thing ». On my current character, I should be doing roughly 40k things. So there you go. I could gain levels by doing content in the game that would make it easier for me to discover new content. The advantage of a level progression is that it can be account wide. So you can have an alt in the opposite faction to do the other faction’s content, and have the same benefits.
And there’s nothing to stop it from being multiplayer. Either it would make the content trivial, or for the instances, the dev team could adapt the difficulty of the mobs to the number of players.
Wow is almost 20 years old. And I think players deserve a game mode that praises its universe. And for a new player like me thinking I have such a huge game to discover is quite exciting. Plus it would allow devs to play with that content. For example, Warglaive of Azzinoth is so mythic, it could have an elvl of 300, it would be a weapon that you would keep forever, but the drop chance would be reduced to 1% or less. I think the coolest thing they could do is look at all of their content and pick the most epic stuff out of each expansion in terms of lore and make it super items for that heroic mode. An another advantages is normal mode could be changed at will. New World Boss? New event? On normal mode for everyone to enjoy.
Now the questions:
I’ve been playing since the release and I don’t want to do this old content again.
There’s no problem with that. Don’t do it. Ideally, it would be nice to have achievements specific to this game mode, but even without… I think it stands on its own. So there’s no reason to have to do this game mode. I’m not interested in raids, so I don’t do them, I don’t miss them.
It’s an overall redesign of the game.
I don’t think so. Frankly, the hardest part about this system is the implementation and the gamedesign behind it, which will take some time to get used to. Once it’s done, you just have to implement the new extensions as you go along, so in terms of dev time, it’s not crazy either. But I don’t have access to the game engine, so it’s maybe an impossible idea to implement.
No reason to be interested in old content, you had to be there at the time.
The game is old enough to deserve an ode to its own content. Sort of the ultimate challenge for lovers of the universe. I’m doing this old content right now. It’s really good. It really is. The potential is crazy and huge. Personally, if it’s going to take 3 or 4 years to finish everything, I’d take 3 or 4 years of subscription. We also have to think about new players and bring in fresh blood. When I see the competition, they make something of their open world, even though I find their open world much less attractive than WOW.
How to deal with those who already have a collection?
In my opinion, you have to reset everything when you switch to heroic. You keep your collection in normal/usual mode. But in heroic, you start from 0. There is the same difficulty with the AH. For me, there must be a parallel AH to this mode to avoid to pollute the two game modes.
What about flying?
Personally, I like flying in the old areas, it allows me to choose my fights. I think it should be unlockable, but the question is when? Very quickly ? Halfway through an expansion? For a massive amount of money? Or more easily? I don’t know.
In my eyes, if WOW takes this step to create a non-compulsory side mode with hundreds (thousands?) of hours of content, it would really become the ultimate MMO theme park.