Because I have been playing WoW for 15 years, feeling that WoW Classic is at the crossroads at the moment uncertain about it’s future, I think I’d share my humble idea on how possibly game could potentially look like in the future.
Tell me why this idea is bad:
- make a Vanilla, TBC & WoTLK server, all-in-one, implementing Time-Traveling features using Chromie (compliant with Lore),
- it would need to work with Chromie’s interaction option “Move me to a TBC Era / Move me to the Original Era” etc.
- when you click that, within one client, it reloads your UI (if needed) and changes lots of things, if you switched to the Original Era, Outland and Northrend is inaccessible,
- when you switch to other Era, you have a snapshot of your toon, as it was taken at the moment you switched to it. lets say you have full rare 60 gear and switch to TBC. your TBC toon now has that full rare gear. You earn some TBC gear and switch back to Vanilla, you go back to your rare gear you had when you switched. You then earn some gear in Vanilla and switch to TBC, you still have the exact same gear you had on your TBC era when you switched to Vanilla. Basically you progress your toon in 3 WoW version in the same time (if you opt-in, you can just be playing Original or TBC Era)
Pros of this solution:
- you have a single toon that you can progress in 3 different expansions at once, you have 3 x as many raids to do, dungeons, quests, content,
- there’s no need to create several multiple eras and worry about them dying, there’s just one Eternal WoW Era. Sometimes people will organically just choose to play WoTLK more, sometimes Classic more. There should be enough people to make any of the Eras alive,
- much harder to get bored. You are fed up with Original Era? You can easily hop into WoTLK era and start your progress again. Then when you feel that Classic itch, you talk to Chromie and return to your AQ Progress.
- one UI setup, one addon, one client, one Era to maintain for Blizzard,
- things like Cadence (reset every 2 years of fresh realms) and Eternal Era should be thought-through,
General things that Classic needs (in my opinion)
- no GDKP / player boosting service,
- better anti-cheat and moderation (wishful thinking, I know)
- to keep world alive and prevent dungeon spamming, the HC dungeon daily ID and more XP per boss should work well,
- the above should also limit the speed of gearing → make professions / questing / trade more meaningful,
- no RDF with teleport, but working meetings stones and a tool like Group Bulletin Board could be in place to allow forming groups,
- SoD-like faction balancing needs to be put in place,
- SoM-like a little bit of spicing the boss mechanics could make raiding more interesting,
- Dual-spec needs to be in every Era. It simply enables people to play more, imaigine warrior prot in Classic/TBC,
- parsing and min/maxing meta needs to be considered. it motivates those who are able to dedicate a lot to the game but makes the game worse who just want to casually chill in the game
- additional content needs consideration. I don’t think there’s any reason that content from TBC added to Dustwallow Marsh shouldn’t be in that type of Era, or any other, as long as it’s strictly compliant with the Original Trilogy Lore.
- keep “average joe” narrative. You are nobody, working hard to earn your place in the game, combating obstacles is only possible with cooperation with your friends. Hero narrative instantly kills the immersion. You are killing wolves at level 2 in Northshire Valley and Stormwind Soldiers are calling you a hero. Just as the thousands other heroes killing the same wolves around, in a world where everybody is a hero, nobody is a hero.
- besides that draw the line, say nothing else is going to be added, draw a line of no further changes,
- no store boosts, token, gear, absolutely nothing that impacts the game in any way,
- I think honestly shop with cosmetic things non-impacting the gameplay could be added to make it attractive from Blizzard perspective as well,