Old World Content | 2025 Let's Go!

Community General Discussion
1

I enjoy modern content as much as anyone. Khaz Algar is pretty neat!

But for 2025 and beyond, I’d like to see Blizzard offer more content in the Old World—even at endgame, max-level.

Here are some suggestions to get the conversation started:

Improved Trading Post Activities

Let the monthly Trading Post offer daily activities for rewards, on top of the more free-form challenges it offers today.

For example, one day you might be tasked with travelling specifically to Un’Goro Crater in order to gather a special herb, and another day you might be sent off to Zangarmarsh to kill an elite mob.

This would result in a steady flow of daily World Content that requires that you travel to different locations, and it wouldn’t be held back by the Bonus Reward track.

The content could either be baked into the regular UI, or there could be a quest giver NPC next to the Trading Post. It makes sense that they’d be trading at a trading post.

World Quests Expanded

This one is simple. Just place World Quests across old zones.

If you like, theme it by week or month, perhaps controlled by whatever Timewalking theme is currently active.

Gathering Overhaul

Right now, there are hundreds of old gathering nodes spread across Azeroth and beyond. From Silverleaf to Ghost Iron.

Why not add an ‘endgame’ version of each of these, visible if you’re max level or maxed out your gathering profession?

Current recipes could require fish from Mulgore for a more interesting experience. Why not!

Imagine if you had to physically travel to Mulgore and catch an elusive fish as part of the experience.

Warbound so you can’t cheat or use old reagents gathered over 20 years, of course.

Lore Archive

This has been proposed in the past, but it’s still a great idea.
Add an Achievements-like UI that tracks lore.

From completed story quests to various books, scrolls, and other objects you discover.

Frees up your bank and inventory, and lets you examine these things whenever you like. All those old in-game books you’ve found over the years? Right there. Old cinematics and cutscenes? Could work.

That’s it for now, please contribute with more ideas though!

5 Likes
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Id love something like this but sadly Blizzard underutilize the “world” part of World of Warcraft. Majority of the game is rotting away and they keep adding mysteriously never-before-seen islands.

They could easily keep the old zones relevant.

That said, the TWW pre-patch event is not the way. That was bad :no_mouth:

3 Likes
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Id love something like this but sadly Blizzard underutilize the “world” part of World of Warcraft. Majority of the game is rotting away and they keep adding mysteriously never-before-seen islands.

They could easily keep the old zones relevant.

That said, the TWW pre-patch event is not the way. That was bad :no_mouth:

I think this has two possible causes:

  1. They’re holding back because a revamp of the old world is coming at some point.
  2. They worry players would be spread out too much with this in place, resulting in a world that feels empty because we rarely run into each other.

It’s possible they just don’t see the value in offering old content, too. Maybe they’re afraid it won’t be as marketable to newer players who don’t feel nostalgic about it.

But I’m willing to bet it would be a hit as an optional form of endgame.

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I agree that they should use old zones for stuff. But it wont work IMO. People wont like it.

This is my thought:

They tried to give us more variety and things to do with revamped old content. M+ for example.

And there are STILL people that complain that they pay the expansion to get something new. So blizzard is in a tough spot to deliver old world things. So they wont.

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Im willing to bet the same!

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I think the type of content matters greatly, though.

A lot of players asking for old content seem to be world content enjoyers, not so much players who like running dungeons.

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Well you got your answer right there.

Unfortunatelly, from the previous metrics I have seen world content enjoyers are a minority. So you wont get your mega-revamp anytime soon.

If you want old content revamp they need to deliver the whole package. Dungeons, Raids, and of course, Open World things.

1 Like
8

Respectfully disagree on this one, at least until I see numbers (otherwise it’s just anecdotal). :slight_smile:

I am convinced most players—especially lapsed subscribers who might return one day—stick around primarily for the world, not instanced content.

Both forms of content are important and they each serve their unique purpose. But World of Warcraft is first and foremost a form of escapism; a chance to explore a different world.

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That’s the issue, the PvP/M+/Raid crowds hate anything that isn’t 5 minutes or less away from the hub-city, that’s why we get a nice and pushed-together continent each expansion instead of zones placed in the old world like we had in Cataclysm.

I’m not sure about Uda’s claim that people who enjoy world content are in the minority (We don’t really have solid figures about popularity of any content type in WoW), but whether they’re right or wrong, world content seems pretty easy to scatter around the world, i remember late DF, when i couldn’t take two steps without entering another world event, that cramped feeling could be fixed by spreading things around the old world.

I did some rep catch-up on my alt (CC, brood of Noz, Timbermaw), and it was great to see some of these places again, an actual world, left almost completely unused, travel-time wasn’t even that long with dynamic flight. (The four zones of TWW stuck end-to-end are about the length of Kalimdor)

10

Heck, I could even see Blizzard adding a helpful little portal to send players in the right direction. I’m not sure if I’d use it myself, but I wouldn’t mind if the quest said:

(Optional) Use the portal to Feralas
Catch 20 Whatever

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+1

+1

+1

+1

I would like to see all these in the game. Great ideas.

12

I’m not a fan of the recycling. I didn’t like the use of Vale/Uldum during BfA.

With the various secrets we had to travel all over the place and that’s okay but I don’t want to be going there all the time.

I know there are very mixed views on this, and for me it varies too. I did enjoy Arathi Highlands/Darkshore and I’m very much looking forward to Midnight. So I guess there is a right and a wrong way.

I can’t imagine it’s much fun for levellers if we start occupying old zones and my biggest concern would be that the content would be boring to repeat, having done it already when it was current.

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Here’s how I like to think about it:

Don’t

  • Don’t drastically alter an old zone with new content, and create a bunch of phasing. (Especially when that content is depressing and makes the zone worse, like in Uldum.)
  • Don’t flood a zone with a hundred players all at once. This causes lag and might ruin immersion somewhat for players just levelling there.
  • Don’t send players on endless trips back and forth with systems like Secrets of Azeroth.

Do

  • Send players to different places, giving them a chance and a reason to visit an old zone for a little while without it becoming crowded.
  • Offer interesting breadcrumbs for players to pursue, prompting some exploration.
  • Let players do types of content they like (having a choice is good).

If, for example, they have a pool of 20 different fish/herbs/mining nodes/etc, 20 newly made elite mobs, and perhaps 20 different special objects you can look for, then they could easily randomise what to do each day for every player.

What you’d end up with, if 10 players are logged on, is that 1 might visit the Shadowlands, 1 Pandaria, 1 Draenor, 1 Outland, 1 Kul Tiras, 1 Zandalar, 1 Kalimdor, 1 Eastern Kingdoms, 1 Argus, and 1 the Broken Isles.

Nobody currently in those locations would feel a large impact of this, and players doing this content would feel it is diverse and interesting, without too much of a committment.

Example

  1. I visit the Trading Post in Khaz Algar.
  2. I am asked to catch 30 “Elusive Zangarian Sporefish” (elusive being an added keyword to highlight the fact that this is a new WB or BoP item).
  3. I travel there, either with the use of a handy portal provided to me, or on my own terms.
  4. I spend 30 minutes chilling by some pond or creek I like, catching fish.
  5. I return triumphantly to Dornogal, hand in the fish, and pocket some currency.
  6. Ideally, there are more quests for me if I like. Perhaps each one has diminishing returns, or maybe I need to wait for the Weekly Quest and select these quests as my preferred type of content for the week, if I want to do multiple of them for a bigger reward.
1 Like
14

If Trading Post dailies are instead of completing the other tasks then possibly. If you add any more Tender to the Trading Post then it becomes mandatory content and a chore that players must do. You will try to argue that this is option (don’t bother as it’s not to many many players).

I would quite like there to be quests out in the world done for the Bronze Dragons (Chromie or Zidormu or whoever) to earn some Timewarped Badges. These could be soloing old dungeons and raids for some items. These could be quests in the world like bring them a bottle of wine from the Inn in Valgarde Keep in Northrend.

The Artifact quests and the Heritage Armour quests were also quite good uses of the existing world.

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I do believe any content offered needs to be a valid option for endgame, so it needs to offer the same type of currencies etc.

That said, I like the Weekly Quest approach where you perhaps choose to get some extra benefit out of a particular type of content. Extending the Trading Post each week could be one such choice, but it’d reward you with the same stuff as other weekly content—not more tenders.

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Go to any open world zone and see how many people are there.

Go to any event (theater, ect…) and see how many people are there.

And then…

Go to any dungeon and see how many people are in the summoning stone.

You got your numbers right there. Dont beleive me? Go see yourself.

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Only if it’s going to be on a same layer with the low level players. BFA version of Uldum and Vale is on a separate layer which is not mmo-ish to say like that.

18

Those anedcotal observations don’t really show that players prefer instanced content, only that instanced content is worthwhile doing. As we know, Blizzard actively promotes instanced content through various reward systems. That’s why I feel this thread needs to exist.

19

I agree, needs to be the proper open world. Same phase.

1 Like
20

None of that forms part of the metric. WHY there are not more people is not part of the observation. The observation is that there are more people in a dungeon than in OW content.

Therefore, if they do MORE OW content then we can expect the same results. And to be honest, they have made OW things with diverse reward systems and different ways… and the result is always similar… so I dont expect massive results even if you changed the WQ formula.

In other words, if they move all the WQ and events from Donorgal to Durotar then I expect to see the same amount of people doing them. And if they happen to have an M+ dungeon in Durotar I also expect to see the same amount of people summoning their parties.

If you want to talk about changing OW content so that more people play it is a completely different conversation. We are talking the WHERE. Not the WHAT. If that makes sense.