It’s no secret that Blizzard has been having a lot of trouble; we can’t expect significant content additions. Still, quick and easy tweaks based on player feedback seems to be the best short-term solution for Blizzard to start winning back the player-base. Especially as historically, old Blizzard has the stigma of ignoring or being slow to act on player feedback.
Below are some not so tricky (or labour intensive) suggestions for future Shadowlands patches that focus more on quantity than quality. I would love to see in a blue post with any of these changes before the end of this expansion, and they will undoubtedly be a big step in the right direction:
(TLDR at the end of the post)
Death Advance
Many players can’t access (or can’t easily access) the content locked behind the different covenants. While cool at first, opening up the Shadowlands would be a no brainer way to add to the game without actually adding anything new.
I would suggest that this could be implemented via a short quest unlocked in the higher tier of the renown levels that highlights the Deaths Advance bringing the covenants together and unlocking the below changes:
• Conduit energy - straight up removed from the game. I’m a player who plays all the specs of my main class, and this straight up stops me from playing the game how I want. I’m running my conduit energy to the ground every week and don’t see the reasoning behind it.
• You can change Covenants as quickly as you can change spec, and when you change spec, your conduits change to how you set them for that spec. Your covenant powers will also change when you do this, allowing you to easily switch between the different powers and experience a wide range of abilities rather than being stuck with your meta spec.
• All ‘covenant only’ restrictions on buying items, transmogs and mounts are lifted after this quest. It’s going to have to happen in future expansions anyway, so may as well do it now while it’s current content. This would not affect the covenant dungeon abilities, which will be based on the Covenant you are currently playing (which can now be changed in the talents menu outside of M+)
• You unlock access to all covenant sanctums, and the anima reservoir is shared across all sanctums allowing you to upgrade the others with your abundance of Anima.
Alt progression
I love levelling alts, but at the moment, I only have a handful at level 60 and an abundance of alts at level 50 because the 50-60 experience is just one big grind that I do not enjoy. Anything that makes the alt experience better is a boon at this point but below are some quick quality of life changes I hope to make it into a patch soon:
• Skip the Shadowlands intro (I will blow my brains out if I have to slowly move the shards of the helm of domination to open that portal one more time). But also, skip for campaign stories you have already done to get your character where you want them to be faster.
• Renown – Your Renown should be account-wide. If you have a maximum Renown Night Fae, any other Night Fae you make should also be that Renown. This provides more incentives for players to level up different covenants, and no one wants to do the Renown grind for the same Covenant over and over. I also feel that this makes the world feel more real as your actions on one character impact the others and that you efforts to better the Shadowlands are not going unnoticed.
• Packaged Anima – Broker Diplomat in Oribos should allow us to trade Anima. I’m thinking up to 10k a week, distributed amongst our alts as we see fit to make it easier for our alts to unlock Anima locked content.
Torghast
I’m one of the few who has given a Torghast a second chance, and I’m enjoying it a lot more now and would recommend that anyone reading this give it another go. That said, it still could be a lot better and more relevant with the below changes:
• You can enter Torghast at level 50 and use it to level alts
• At the end of a wing, you receive a chest filled with goodies. Your ash/embers are in this chest (preferably at an increased rate) but also stygian embers, stygian clusters, conduits, significant XP boosts and domination shards. I’m trying to avoid suggestions that require making new rewards, but in this case, I would love to see two re-colours of the raid set also available in these chests. This set could be another route for domination sockets. It would be relatively low item level (depending on your wing) but upgradable with soul ash, making it an excellent progression armour for alts or more casual players. I suggest two sets because there should be a different re-colour at higher ilevels for flawless runs and the adamant vaults.
• More box of many things! I love this, it makes the runs in Torghast a lot better, and I would love to see some bonuses that increase our quality of life in Torghast rather than power levels like the auto-loot e.g. flat out speed increases. However, I’m not too fond of the twisting corridors because it lacks many of the 9.1 changes and we need Empowerment and the Box brought into them.
• The box of many things should 100% be an account-wide unlock!
• The twisting corridors should have a server leaderboard outside of them and the last floor could reward a Maw Mount that can fly in the zone and award some prestigious titles.
Covenants
I’ve mentioned a lot on Covenants already, but with us getting more and more Anima and less and less to spend it on, I wouldn’t mind seeing the below additions for us to buy:
• New transport upgrade tier – this unlocks quick transports from a sanctum to the other sanctums, the Maw and/or Koritha. While I’m on the topic of the transport network, I’ve also always had a personal gripe with the portal to Oribos being a regular portal when every Covenant has its own flavour for transport networks. I’d love to see this changed to be two-way and for there to be a Venthyr mirror in Oribos alongside the Diplomat I suggested or a little Marasmius in a pot for Night Fae (just using them as examples).
• New anima conductor tier – This doubles the rate at which conductors are reinforced, and once all conductors are reinforced, you will receive a chest full of Anima and anima-based goodies each day. I always found it strange the conductor didn’t give you Anima.
• New mission table tier – double the XP gains of all your companions. Simple and effective.
• New covenant flavour upgrade tier – I don’t know the different activities too well, mainly because I find all but the Night Fae one extremely tedious. So, anything that makes them less tedious would be a win in my books.
• More Anima! I’ve already added many new ways to spend/share Anima, but in line with the previous patch, unlocking more tiers should still increase anima rewards.
• Grateful offerings – I’m not too fond of currencies on top of currencies; I switched mains midway through the expansion, and I never seem to have all the offerings I need to spend all my Anima. This is frustrating because I don’t want to change covenants on this character until I complete my collection. Please double or even quadruple the rate we get these or add more ways to get them. Like I previously mentioned, unlocking all Covenant content will give players more quests and rares each day already in the game anyway.
• Remove or increase maximum Anima in the Reservoir! Until recently, I didn’t know this was a thing, and I hate it because it doesn’t even stop me from getting Anima. It just means I have to carry it and wait till I have the other currencies/Renown I need to actually spend it. Please increase the maximum Anima, because it does literally nothing but get in the way.
Other quality of life changes
Below is just a bunch of quality-of-life changes that I’ve not managed to fit in so far:
• The weekly ‘collect souls’ quest is now irrelevant – it should reward a bag of goodies with Stygian clusters, Soul Ash, Soul Embers, Stygian Embers. You should also be bale to collect your souls in TORGHAST and the SoD, not just the Maw (which currently makes no sense. A souls a soul, right?)
• Mythic keystones removed – Instead, you do the M+ dungeon you want to the highest tier you’ve unlocked, like Torghast.
• Currency caps increased – I love helping the noobies of my guild with lower keys, but I hit max valour after like one dungeon. It’s boring, frustrating and makes progression feel slow. Please incentivize me to help people with lower keys by increasing this faster or deleting it? I imagine similar currencies are equally frustrating.
• Mog farming – when soloing content, could we have it that the enemies drop gear I can actually use like in current content?
• Free and Double XP weekends for WoW – great for getting new friends into wow and great for levelling alts.
• Archivist Codex – the grind it too much. I’ve played an insane amount of WoW while not at work, and even being able to play for like 6-12 hours a day I’m still not Tier 6. How can the average player benefit from its rewards? Double the reputation gains and let the more casual players access the 230 ilevel upgrades faster, they need it more than me.
• Domination Shards – just let us swap them out. We don’t need a random chisel in our bags.
• Conduits – So far, the only way I’ve been able to get conduits is from the raid and Torghast upgrades. All higher tier content should reward the higher tier conduits. You shouldn’t have to clear Mythic raids to get the conduits to run 20+ keys. You should get them from doing the high-end content you want to play.
• More communication on changes and more blue posts
PTR
I understand why the PTR is a thing, I know it’s free labour so will likely never change, but with all the YouTubers making videos and reviewing content, it’s rare we ever actually get to enter a patch with fresh eyes. I loved the first few weeks of Korthia as I discovered all its little secrets. Still, moving forward, I think we should be working towards a WoW that preserves and extends that experience as much as possible and making the race to world first a little more challenging.
This isn’t really relevant to this post as it’s a significant change on blizzards end, but it would be great if more testing could be done internally and we could towards turning the PTR into more of a theory-crafters playground filled with tools that allow for the easy testing of class changes and number tweaking rather than the big’ol spoiler it is now. Many people are going to struggle to swallow that pill, but I think deep down, we can all see how this will help WoWs future.
The PTR shouldn’t be what it is; it should just be a playground, nothing more. It shouldn’t give us an insight into new raids, dungeons or story content and should be just for testing numbers, playing with different gear combinations, specs and theory crafting the meta.
The next patch isn’t really the time to introduce something like this, but I think players need to start adjusting the idea of this enhance as it will make for an overall better WoW experience.
TLDR
Below is the TLDR of what I’ve said. Not including the Quality of life changes above.
• Instant covenant switching in the specialization menu.
• Access to all Covenant Sanctums, upgrades, collectables and content
• Change covenants and soul binds as easily as changing spec
• Conduits change when you change spec, and conduit energy is removed from the game entirely.
• All ‘covenant only’ restrictions lifted from vendors, items, mounts and transmogs.
• Packaged Anima vendor in Oribos
• Renown for each individual Covenant is account-wide
• More story skips for content you have already done
• Levelling from 50-60 in Torghast and collecting domination themed progression gear.
• More rewards and progression options for alts in Torghast offers upgradable domination gear, domination shards, stygian embers, stygian clusters, conduits, and XP boosts for levelling.
• Account-wide unlock on the Box of Many Things
• 9.1 changes to Torghast implemented into the twisting corridors and a server leaderboard outside.
• More quality-of-life changes to Torghast, e.g. faster movement speed from the box of many things.
• New covernent sanctum tiers to spend Anima on with a focus on quality of life benefits.
• Increase grateful offering rewards and Archivist Codex renown gains.
• Remove or increase the cap on the anima reservoir
• 1-click to swap domination shards and no random inventory items
• Double XP weekends – this would encourage us to play alts way more! And lets have some free weekends while we’re at it (if the servers can take it).
• Better weekly souls quest – more Maw rewards and more locations to claim souls
• Mythic keystones replaced with Mythic tier unlocks to remove RNG.
• Valor and similar curriences to have their cap increased faster
• Change the PRT, increase internal testing and replace it with a theory-crafting playground