WoW's future

Community General Discussion
1

warning: a bit of a rant thread.

first, levels:

so, with the last titan expansion being revealed and coming after midnight, i assume we are gonna reach level 100 (again) in it. does that mean there will be an inetivable level squish (again) for potential expansions afterwards?

previous level per expansion recap: … wotlk 80, cata 85, mop 90, wod 100 (!), legion 110, bfa 120, shadowlands 60 (squish!), dragonflight 70, tww 80, midnight 90.

in my opinion, this feels… unprepared. and confusing. as if the developers dont really have a competent goal in mind, which i could forgive during the early days, but not after 20+ years.

would it be a bad idea to reach ‘too high’ levels?

or, alternatively, would it be a bad idea to stop adding levels? what if wow simply stopped to gain levels, as in with the last titan we reach 100, and then stay at 100 for future expanions? we would still travel to new/revamped zones with new quests and dungeons etc, but we would not gain new levels in them.

second, talents:

with each expansion, and each potential level increase or squish, talent points become an ever-changing mess. we were stuck with mop’s 3 row style talents from… well, mop to shadowlands. it worked, sure. but, most people (from what i have seen) found them less interesting.

we then returned to the ‘classic-styled’ talent trees in dragonflight, which worked for… dragonflight, because blizzard in their wisdom did not realize they would have to rework or add onto the talent trees with future updates.

so, they then added hero talents (or whatever they are called). which, in my opinion, feels like a temporary solution. a bit like the various borrowed power systems we had endured from legion to shadowlands. i predict these will be removed in a future expansion or two, and their most interesting or attractive options will be baked into the classes’ main talents and abilities.

in conjunction with levels, if our player levels stayed at a designated max level for the forseeable future, so could the talent trees. that would mean an easier time to manage and balance each class and spec (potentially). talent trees could still be updated or adjusted per patch or expansion, of course.

third, stats:

with the midnight pre-patch they squished our stats down (again).

on this rogue i post on, i leveled from 80 to 90 through gathering alone. which, in return, resulted in it being geared with 80 gear at 90. so, at 90, i bought some cheap gear options from the auction house.

my helmet has some 50+ agility on it. i then inspected a better geared player (dont remember their item level) but their helmet had 100-something strenght on it.

so, we go from 0 to 50-something ‘main stat’ through level 1 to 90. okay. but then at 90 alone, the stat has doubled to 100+ already. and, that is still in the first tier or whatever. by the end of expansion, our helmets are gonna have 200 to 300 main stats on them probably, if not more.

my point is, what was the purpose of the stat squish if we are gaining stats so rapidly already?

TLDR:

i personally believe wow is at a point where gaining/losing levels, talents, stats etc is outdated, and that wow should ‘stick’ to a max level permanently.

Should WoW stop adding levels with expansions? or, should we keep getting level squishes every now and then?

should WoW keep getting revamped talent trees to fit the ‘now’ instead of the potential future?

stat squishes, are they good or bad? do they serve an actual purpose?

(edit: some bold text and grammar.)

1 Like
2

Just like everybody else‘s subject to entropy, decay and eventual death.

3

Can’t we just go the Disgaea tour?

max level 9999
max stats: yes

4

Previously we got to 120, so I would think if the game keeps being successful enough to keep on making expansions, a squish will happen at some point.

I don’t think we’ll see levelling removed as a mechanic in world of warcraft. Though it’s not the first suggestion to copy other games in this. I’m not sure it’s something I’d be a fan of or not.

5

In D6 the max level is 99999999

6

I haven’t played any yet after the fourth game :confused:
Seems I have some catching up to do, but at least WoW will be fine if we can level to that level :dracthyr_nod:

7

do you agree or disagree with: we gain levels not to ‘strenghten’ our characters, but in order to make previous expansions gear ‘weak’?

which, sure, it keeps us on the treadmill. but, also, seems a bit contradictory and silly.

8

WoW gearing is like a treadmill that people actually use. The idea that a treadmill is something you buy then never use is probably crazy to people who buy a treadmill then use it and like it.

9

They have toned it down again for D7. Wasn’t that big of a fan of D6 and 7. Prefer 4 and 5. Or well, 1. Haven’t touched D:D2 yet.

Very likely. Or they go to 120 again. Both is possible.

Happens after 11+ expansions. Either you keep increasing the levels or you just squish it since they only really care for the max level zones (this has always been the case).

Same with dmg numbers. Some like it, some don’t. That is all that is to this.

I can almost guarantee you that people will throw a fit. And that’s putting it lightly. Including the people that hate leveling. Similar to how the PvPers threw a fit when blizzard implemented templates and removed gear progression because people want some parts to remain even if they can be annoying.

We already had this in the past from Vanilla to Cataclysm. This happens by default if you intend to add more and more talents through leveling. They also revamp the trees if needed (this happened for midnight).

Read above in regards of people throwing a fit. And balance also heavily depends on the dungeons and raid encounters so its subject to permanent change anyway.

To please the people that don’t want too big numbers. Or maybe they have a number limitation in the engine that they are afraid of reaching (similar to how Garrosh was split into 4 phases because he had too much health and would have crashed the game. This has since then been adressed and the game can, at least for health, deal with way bigger numbers).

10

We gain levels to get stronger. We are much stronger at 90 than we were at 80. Gearing then also makes us stronger, so ungeared 90 vs geared 90.

It makes sense in a game like Overwatch that you just log in and play matches, but it doesn’t make much sense to me in an MMO.

11

i dont disagree that wow needs a treadmill, it should have one. i guess my counter question is: should ‘gearing’ be wow’s treadmill?

what if the focus was less on gear and more on skill expression? as in, there are still different difficulties, but you dont gain stronger gear by completing higher levels. your gear stays the same, but you can still climb and tackle dungeons, raids etc.

also, the old question: would you (not specifically just you, but anyone reading) still do dungeons, raids etc if it did not reward gear?

12

Probably wouldn’t have much interest beyond clearing once if the game didn’t actually give us anything for playing through. At present the incentive to keep going back after clearing is to get the drops we want.

13

when we start out an expansion, for example midnight, we feel ‘stronger’ at 81 compared to 89 in measurement of how fast we can kill enemies that are on par with our current level. i felt and noticed this on my warrior who is currently 86. i could kill things faster at 80-81 compared to 86, and i assume it will feel even slower as i go.

it is not the levels dont make us stronger, its that we have good gear that carries our strenght at the lower levels. that gear eventually gets replaced (and ‘better’) as we level. the whole process then ‘resets’ at max level.

also, i feel that wow has become more ‘log in and play matches’ in recent years (most of wow’s lifespan actually). you just log in to do a dungeon or such. there is little mmo going on anymore, unfortunately.

edit at: ‘Probably wouldn’t have much interest beyond clearing once if the game didn’t actually give us anything for playing through. At present the incentive to keep going back after clearing is to get the drops we want.’

does this imply that the gameplay is old and / or stale and boring?

14

Scaling is an issue indeed, but once you hit 90 you’re out of scaling and that goes away. It’s why the advice is to do a tour of delves and all their quests when you are 81/82 and not hand in those quests (with WM on) until you hit 87/88.

I don’t raid log or M+ log so I can’t relate. I have things I do in gearing season and things I do in down time. Gearing is only really a busy time at the start of tiers, after that you only really need to fill vault. Through the season there is less need to fill the vault completely.

If I was bored I wouldn’t play. When I don’t feel I need to do a lot in WoW and am not in the mood for doing stuff in old content, I go and play something else in addition to WoW because I’m not on as much. Or sometimes I just take a break all together.

The time that WoW has felt like a treadmill for me was Legion/BfA with their constant AP farming. I don’t think a subscription game needs make you play metrics.

15

For skill expression I play Fortnite which has no gear progression, I just drop in and send noobs back to the lobby.

As for WoW dungeons, WoW gear is like muscle and the dungeon is the gym. So I do it for the benefits. If I didn’t get anything out of it I wouldn’t do it beyond doing it once to see what’s up.

1 Like
16

I think WoW will ultimately remain as is.

Blizzard seem very risk averse. They’re not in the business of reinventing anything. They’re trying to hold onto what they have for as long as they can. They’re not going to rock the boat, so to speak. And why would they? If it’s a risk to revamp core systems (because you don’t know how players will respond to the result), then there has to be a benefit for taking on that risk. But WoW seems increasingly like a game that’s played by the same core audience in one expansion after the other. And you have to assume that this audience generally enjoy WoW for what it is. So again, if you’re Blizzard, why change anything? You just risk changing it for the worse as far as your core audience is concerned.

I also don’t think Blizzard have the resources to embark on greater systems design revamps. Even if they had the will – and I’m sure to some degree they can see the age of WoW tearing at the seams of their design – they don’t seem to have the ability.
They’re clearly rushing through both expansion and patch production in order to maintain their fast release cadence of new content. The notion of Blizzard polish and “when it’s ready” has been dead and buried for some time now.
That supercharged production speed doesn’t really seem to leave any room for iteration or taking on any design projects that demand too much time or labor.

WoW after the World Soul Saga will likely continue with expansions that are released increasingly faster, until Blizzard gets it down to 1½-1 year per expansion like Call of Duty (like Bobby wanted and Holly has strived for). And those expansions will be 3-4 zones with a mix of new and revamped old zones. There’ll be new dungeons and raids, which will also move toward being a mix of new and revamped old. And then some superfluous systems feature, like new specs, new races, and shifting things around in the class design in a very ad hoc manner as they’ve done for the past number of expansions. And then it’ll be 10 more levels, copy/paste of the same stat sticks of gear, and the same currency system to underline the longevity of the game’s replay value.

I mean, Blizzard have built their team for this for quite a number of years now. We think of the expansions as “formulaic”. What that means internally is that Blizzard are just turning game development into a factory and they’re now in the process of optimizing how they can produce their product faster and more efficiently. That’s the same business that Call of Duty is in, EA’s Sports Games, Pokémon games, and Blizzard’s other games like Hearthstone expansions and Overwatch Seasons.
It’s a conveyor belt, because it’s a business. It’s not here to make good games, it’s here to make good money.

3 Likes
17

i feel like if people play just in order to get better gear, the gameplay is bad.

would most people do dungeons / raids / whatever if they did not get gear from it? probably not.

im not mainly a pve player. most of my wow history is spent doing random bgs. do i get gear from it? sure, but the gear is not the main goal i want. even after i get the gear, i keep playing just for the sake of pvp. my ‘goal’ is to defeat other players, complete objectives, win matches etc.

could this same ‘formula’ be applied to pve? as in, you get a ‘standard’ set of pve gear, but you then have to tackle future and higher difficulties with it wihout ‘getting stronger’?

18

The dungeons are also fun while playing as the game is fun, it’s also never exactly the same every time. It’s not like I do them and don’t enjoy it.

I compared it to the gym because it’s similar in that it’s the same thing over and over and no one would go to the gym just for the sake of going. Eveyone has something they are looking to get out of going.

There are unlockable items like portals and mounts which people like and can serve as a goal. Also transmog from putting the gear in the Catalyst.

19

I can almost guarantee you that people will throw a fit. And that’s putting it lightly. Including the people that hate leveling. Similar to how the PvPers threw a fit when blizzard implemented templates and removed gear progression because people want some parts to remain even if they can be annoying.

i admit, i was kinda in the camp of not liking pvp templates back in legion. ‘past’ me. ‘current/present’ me; that doesnt seem like too bad of an idea lol. ideally, that could result in more balanced classes / specs in pvp if done correctly.

but, again, im not against the pvp gearing system they introduced back in dragonflight. where you can get ‘fast’ honor gear, and then upgrade it to conquest gear over time.

either works. i just want a fair playing field.

To please the people that don’t want too big numbers. Or maybe they have a number limitation in the engine that they are afraid of reaching (similar to how Garrosh was split into 4 phases because he had too much health and would have crashed the game. This has since then been adressed and the game can, at least for health, deal with way bigger numbers).

i could see and understand that too high numbers / stats could be tolling on the game engine eventually. but also, if that is the case, why are we already seeing such a rapid increase in stats just after a fresh squish as i noticed and mentioned in OP.

20

I would assume it’s because of the difference in ilvls between each season. The gear just gets noticeably stronger and the stats with it.