Hi,
It feels like blizzard needs to start using all the old areas in some way.
Today we have huge areas and cities that are never used any more. And thats sad. We have beautiful areas and cities that could be used for one or several purposes.
With every new expansion it feels like a new political party is taking over and wants to try something new.
The grass is not always better on the other side.
During the period of wow there has been so much good and so much bad. One thing they havent tried is player housing and more complexity like modern mmo’s. That is now possible with all the old dead areas.
So why is blizzard spending hundreds of thousand’s if now millions of man hours on a expansion. And as soon as a new expansion appears all the old areas are thrown into the garbage.
Re-using old world content will just create phasing issues and end up confusing players over which phase they should be in.
Have you ever been to Tirisfal Glades? I can never work out which Timeline I’m supposed to be playing it.
Personally I prefer new zones as it drives the game forward, although I do like that they go back and rework old ones occasionally.
Also they did answer this exact question in an interview recently. Unfortunately I can’t remember who it was with, so can’t point you in the right direction.
if they use Zones as they are right now, i think players will be critical, as they were while 8.3 was out about the cheap reuse of Uldum and The Vale of Eternal Blossom who had close to no change and was considered as a lazy patch in consequence.
BFA had seen 2 successful zone revamp with Darkshore and Arathi highlands, but those kind of revamps need near as much of work than a new zone to be done, between custom new models, update to old ones, event and world quest implementation, redesign of mobs, pathing, rebuild of the terrain and redesign of the reward loop. And even then, with all that, those two zones did not met a warm welcome from the community, which, on an expac release could be pretty hurtful to the brand.
I think those world revamps are a good thing, but they should keep them for x.5-x.7, like they did with the Reach, as an addition of world content, but not as a major focus of an expansion. Else, it would need a major world revamp (including level scaling) like Cata had to make it worth.
Steve Danuser as soft announced the rebuilding of Lordaeron(Undercity) and Gilneas will be done in-game during a future patch, saying concretely that he did not wanted to put those events in the time skip before Dragonflight to allow players to experience it by themself instead of by reading it in a lore book.
During that same patch we could have new development around the new Scarlet Brotherhood that’s rampant in that region and could be a good introduction to a light expansion. Plus we know the Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance had been ajusted for MM+ with all others MoP dungeons. This could be a 10.3.5, season 5 open world content, preparing stuff for the next expansion.
It could when the Alliance will need to find Anduin for a reason or another. We know they keep an eye on him since Legion and part of this is because they dislike his peace politic. For them to try to capture him while he’s alone would not be too surprising.
And this is the exact wording of Danuser about Gilneas when he talked about the timeskip:
As for changes to the world that have been discussed or foreshadowed, such as the resettlement of Gilneas, those will not be happening during the fast-forward. As cool as it is to show locations and populations evolving because of story progression, we want events of this importance to be in-game questing that our players experience for themselves (as with the reclaiming of the Ruins of Lordaeron in the 9.2.5 update) rather than having it happen off-camera. https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/im-in-favor-of-the-timeskip/1301042/47
They could have easily done it in BFA if they had kept with a Faction War theme for the expansion.
Revamp old zones as the entirity of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms are “solidified” under the control of either Faction. Updated towns and cities. Points of interest and strategic zones like mines or defensive camps.
We could have seen a world moved on from the Cataclysm.
We have Chromie’s Timewalking Campaigns already, so new players and characters could relive those stories, but they could also venture forth from Durotar or the Barrens or wherever and actually have a consistent link to the present.
Phasing might only be an issue if its done based on relatively small jumps within an expansion. If its simply done based on “phase of history” then it can be more easily controlled.
You can unlock everything by replaying the story in Chromie time or, if you just want to jump back and visit the final chapter of an expansion, you can. Everything would be “unlocked” so to speak.
I do not think that Blizzard will touch old world content. The last time they did it on a massive scale was during Cataclysm, and to my recollection people flipped their tables in response to it.
Log into classic and play your old zones. Level a new character and play your old zones.
Old zones are reused sometimes but they cannot be the focus of new expansions. That is super boring. Besides, you can see how buggy and broken the game is, right? Fly paths on old continents fly through mountains and whatnot. They cannot go back and fix that whole code again before they can even add new stuff in.
Think of this game as spaguetti code. The farther you go, the more unlikely it is anyone wants to go back and untangle that web. Much of it was made by people who aren’t even in the company anymore.
I would be happy to see the Bronze Flight being properly harnessed for daily quests to the old world. Put up a portal, pop us out literally anywhere in WoW’s past with a few relevant mobs to kill and some items to gather.
It doesn’t have to be big world shattering stuff, but it would be a nice reminder that Theramore or Zangar Marsh exist. There’s probably players who started in the last few years have no idea where those places are and it would be all new scenery for them!
Personally, I thought this was an excellent use of resources and is something they should keep doing. I actually expected the final patch of Shadowlands (the one we didn’t get) to be the return to Azeroth where we chased the Jailer into a previously undiscovered titan facility in a revamped zone. That would have been fun, and it would have made the threat to Azeroth, and our characters’ homes, feel more real.
Well i mean if they would use the Old World, they could create new zones by changing up the old zones. I mean look at Silithis before and after Legion, i mean it’s not like much changed, it’s still an absolut hell hole, but i think you get the Idea.
They made pretty good use of the old world in Legion for all those Artifact acquisition quests. Whether doing stuff in Pandaria to get my Hand of Raden or stuff in Black Temple on my DH.
There were even some nice simple (yet very effective) quests with giving Varian’s compass to Anduin and walking around Stormwind.