Zereth Mortis and Bastion are gorgeous - props to the art team - but I am so tired of the overdramatized, cosmic, ‘player as the hero/mawwalker’ storylines in Shadowlands. I want the convenience and playstyle of modern WoW with more simple, boots-to-the-ground conflict and storylines based in Azeroth.
Being the hero/mawwalker constantly makes me feel like I’m playing a single-player RPG and not an MMORPG. All I want is to be a plebe footman/grunt fighting in the Azerothian trenches alongside my homies.
I’ve heard that multiple times, but… do we actually have a source for that? I only remember that Ion interview where he basically said that doing cosmic won’t stop them from doing something more grounded when they care to, and vice versa, but that’s hardly a hard promise for 10.0.
Ion on cosmic scale stuff
GamesBeat: We’ve seen the story and setting for Warcraft get bigger and more cosmic. Some people like that and some people don’t. But I guess I wonder, is it possible to go back? Or is the genie out of the bottle as far as the size and scope of what we’re fighting?
Hazzikostas: I don’t think it is, no. That’s definitely feedback we hear as well. There are some who like that escalation. We’ve faced the Titans. What comes next? Let’s go through the whole cosmology. There are others who miss just being in an inn in Elwynn Forest, being an adventurer on a more humble scale. At this point the WoW protagonists are heroes. You’ve done a lot of stuff. You’ll probably never go back to being anonymous adventurers in the forest. But Azeroth is the heart of the WoW franchise, and it started with orcs and humans and dwarves and night elves and the rest. We want to get back to that too. There’s room to tell a big cosmic-scale story, and there’s also room for more traditional core fantasy. That’s not something we want to lose sight of. Even going all the way back, this isn’t necessarily something new. The first expansion for WoW was going to Outland. We had the draenei coming in effectively spaceships and landing on Azeroth. There was a lot of cosmic stuff there. But we want to cover the whole gamut. It’s something we think about when we’re planning expansions as well. We maybe alternate between something that’s more traditional and terrestrial, and then something that’s higher concept. https://venturebeat.com/2021/11/01/world-of-warcraft-director-ion-hazzikostas-talks-the-games-future-and-current-soul-searching/
I mean… it’s very, very likely that we are going back to Azeroth, but that doesn’t make the claim that Blizzard said it anymore true, if there is no fitting source.
Why not? If they update the majority of the zones “Cataclysm-style” with new questlines, I’m pretty sure a decent amount of adventurers would play through them even if they are now max level.
For example if they update Quel’thalas, I definitely would do the new questlines with my main Blood Elf characters even if they are just meant for “new” and low-level adventurers…it’s not like I would feel bad anyway one-shotting Trolls, Undead and Alliance members (if still present) so if I really want I could still be able to “return into the forest” as an anonymous adventurer anyway
It can be done easily, if you ever played Gothic 2 protagonist of that game got near death in Gothic 1 and was brough back, but price paid was all his power and knowledge gone. They can do something like it in wow.
They’ve done it many times in one form or another and it sucks every time.
F.ex. I’d be 100% okay with Legion players with fully upgraded artifacts to steamroll BfA questing. They worked for it fair and square. But no, let’s have the 3rd quest green almost outperform fully upgraded artifacts, that’s a great game design right guys?
Not to mention the absurdity of e.g. killing Arthas himself and next expansion some guy in a new quest zone is like: “Not impressed, kid. Just go bring me those 5 boar intestines.”
The suspension of disbelief can be stretched only so far before it breaks. WoW is currently 50 kilometres beyond that border.
And they still pretend it’s a role-playing game which is the funniest thing.
so if I really want I could still be able to “return into the forest” as an anonymous adventurer anyway 
