Dragonflight is another instance of retail that doesnt nail it anymore and player counts are decreasing. Another expansion wont fix this issue, Dragonflights content was already good enough.
Instead of a WoW 2, which among all experiences of new AAA games, will probably lack quality, Retail WoW could be reset.
But to have a successful reset, it has to offer something that players want.
So why do people come back to classic or hc classic? Because of the leveling experience, the struggle in difficulty and its rng while also being relaxing because there is no feeling of having to be permanent behind in content. It also offers more variety in character stats and more of a feeling that makes somebody identify more with the effort the character has gone through. This creates a social bound to it.
So to not make more classic servers, reiterate through cata, mop or wod, or to speak about the imagination of WoW Plus, just use Retail with its content, but not its current state of gameplay.
Create servers parallel to all other currently existing WoW instances with a RESETTED state of Retail and unique gameplay features.
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Challenge Mode Servers:
Every content of the game, from leveling to endgame, droprates to gold value is harder. You can die in leveling, bots have no chance, you have progress likewise to Classic and your endgame content is not immediately hotfixed so people can do it, maybe nobody will ever kill the mythic raid boss of the current WoW playerbase, these are not sc2 pros and the missed items wont be necessary. It has to have an “impossible” mode, so there is a clear goal, but nobody cares.
Furthermore, every old endgame Raid is also endgame Raid for this new Retail. So there is a lot to choose.
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Microtransactions
There is no way to buy anything. No Shop at all. No Boosts, nothing.
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Meaningful Character Stats with RNG
Avoid, Resist, etc.
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No more vertical progression
Only add more horizontal progression content.
Equally as good gear. Your prestige comes from beating content, not outgearing it to roll through.
Challenge Mode is also for lesser skilled players or casuals. Moreover due to its endgame nature, especially casuals can love their characters progress, which felt meaningful and has meaning in it to get stronger. There is no problem for casuals to beat normal difficulty, or level, likewise as casuals are able to play Classic.
I dont intend to argue with this post, it is no subjective suggestion that is based on incomplete data of what is successful or makes a game successful.
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This looks to me like a HUGE flop.
This is exactly what WoW doesn’t need.
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I fail to see how fracturing a player base even more than it already is will “save” WoW.
People can only play on one server at a time.
Sure some people might like it and some people won’t. Those that do will leave retail which will make the number on retail drop more.
Unless your suggesting a complete reset and if that’s the case I’d cry myself to sleep and leave.
It would certainly kill my interest.
People are all different and like different things but not a single thing in that post would interest me.
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Never thought id see an actual intelligent, visionary topic in this cesspool.
You hit the nail in the head around… 98% of your analysis.
So, GW2.
If that’s what you like, go play GW2.
You have veterans playing classic and wotlk classic ,new players gets bombarded with the amount of stuff that is confusing so they end up just stoping.
WoW needs to reset everything in a sense where there isnt many continents,keep it up until wotlk,( you keep everything you have but its unobtainable).
Proper player housing like in (DC universe online)
Class design is a bit meh,some class are really at better stat that they were but others are straight up downgrade (warlocks “my own experience”) to the point where 10 years ago felt smoother(modern) then it is now.
Complexity with gear upgrade and way too many difficulty (raidfinder,normal,hc,mythic,mythic+,timewalking)
And this is just the beginning,while i think DF has done many things right,they have to do something major for next expo otherwise it will be empty as it is now.
yeah nah we’re good, but hey, classic and classic hardcore are open if that’s your kind of thing, leave us on retail alone, thanks
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I don’t feel like the promise of a challenge mode on retail will bring anyone back that’s left after BFA + SL back to back
I doubt the majority of those players will ever come back and if they do it likely won’t be this expansion.
Sure things got better, but a lot of things still suck. I know people who quit over legacy raids still having rings and trinkets and artifact relics who won’t come back until Blizzard has given that some attention. Leveling is still a mess and won’t retain any new players attention
At this point i think retail has dug themselves so far into the grave that there is no turning back. I would much rather see them turn the focus towards classic +, or any other new horizon.
What makes you think that they can do classic +, if their retail content is boring? It’s the same people and the same writers. This company couldn’t write an immersive story, if their life depended on it I think. They have too many rules and too much bureaucracy with their P.R. managers dictating things for their story to justify their job.
Watch a youtube video about the night elf heritage armor quest line. It’s the most boring and safe writing I’ve ever seen.
Removing content on such a huge scale wouldn’t work for me, especially removing my abiltity to go back to farm anything that you haven’t collected yet is a big no no for me. I don’t think you can pretend the bits you didn’t like didn’t happen. Only if you go on Classic maybe. However you’re not removing anything for anyone else.
People all have different preferences and I think it’s great that Blizzard offer Classic versions as well as the modern Retail. I find Classic incredibly slow, restrictive and frankly dull. Other people find it more meaningful, exciting, fun.
I dabble with the Classics every time they are released, spend about a month on them then come back to Retail and appreciate how far the game has come. The gameplay is dreadful, even with my favourite expansion Wrath, going back was very tedious.
I have a friend who is praying the Classics make it to MoP as that’s when he started playing and he has such fond memories. It’s also when Survival was still a ranged spec and he misses it. We will have to wait and see if they do Cata first. But all those things firmly belong in Classic IMO.
It seems very successful for games like OSRS. I think Classic Plus would definitely appeal to the bulk of current Classic enjoyers.
I agree.
I lasted 6 months in Vanilla originally and I was exactly the domo for this game (played pen & paper RPGs since the 80s). In that 6 months I got an Orc Warrior to 30 with roughly 30g and a Troll Shaman to 16.
Sure it was immersive. When a quest said to go to such a hill or into yonder forest of thngy I knew exactly where they were. I’d spent months in the Barrens.
But I ran out of steam doing the same thing over and over.
When I came back in TBC it had eased quite a bit and was much better. And in Wrath it eased even more and was even better.
The less grindy the game got the more fun it got. The era of Wrath to MOP was when WoW was structured the best in terms of zones, music, questing. Cata wasn’t great at endgame but this was because they used all their resources rebuilding the whole world (perhaps this should have been done differently or they should have hired more resources).
The reason players enjoyed the game more back then is not the long grind for leveling (even if this did have a better immersive experience).
The reason was because the game was simpler. The era starting with WoD is the era of systems. Convoluted systems on top of systems.
DF is slightly better in terms of this, although we still have a convoluted profession system for no real reason. And we have all these Events each with half a dozen currencies filling our bags.
The only thing we should bring back from ye olde WoWe is simplicity. Back to Basics.
What the game needs, is to play into the strengths of its genre. WoW has been treating an MMO like separate Multiplayer / Co-op games with attached expansions.
The game needs systems / features that transcends expansions and levels. I firmly believe Torghast was on the right track, and once talked with my friend about how they should take the system of Torghast; the roguelike experience, and plop it into caverns of time.
Make it a system that has its own progressions, linked to your account, regardless of character level / achievements.
Now, instead of a dull, underworld prison, you go through maps / zones that are linked to the history of Warcraft, meaning one floor can be wildly different from the previous ones. Bosses / minibosses can be time-corrupt versions of popular / powerful beings of warcraft history, hence the need to power up throughout the run.
One floor might be the undead march upon Silvermoon, where the floor boss is a corrupt version of Sylvanas, where you have to assist Arthas, then the next, you could be in uldum, witnessing Titan creation.
Plop in some system rewards / tokens and transmog stuff you can buy with them. Weekly challenges, unlockable powerups etc.
I won’t say this in particular is what WoW needs, but it needs systems that doesn’t become obsolete from one expansion to the next. I also advocate for housing for the same reason, just features where you don’t lose all progress every 1½-2 years.
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i’d rather have story involving old continents then just magicaly appearing new continents and what not
You aren’t alone, quite a few people would like that, however that does not mean deleting content we’ve already done should be a thing.
Thanks for agreeing with your arguments to the things I wrote. Unfortunately bad for you I guess to not be able to read in the first place.