8 Things Blizzard Should Focus On in the New WoW Expansion
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A note about player housing: DO NOT make it a hub for daily quests. My biggest issue with Garrisons was that they were a chore to maintain. Sending your followers on missions, filling work orders, mining, etc. I just want a home base to call my own, and let my underlings worry about running it, instead of forcing me to micromanage it.
Also, speaking about endgame content, here's a piece of advice: a boss fight does not need to be long in order to be epic. Any final boss where you can pop Heroism\Bloodlust at the very beginning and have it available at the end is entirely too long. If Blizzard wants to ramp up the difficulty, make it so that the fights are shorter, so that raids can get more attempts in.
Also, speaking about endgame content, here's a piece of advice: a boss fight does not need to be long in order to be epic. Any final boss where you can pop Heroism\Bloodlust at the very beginning and have it available at the end is entirely too long. If Blizzard wants to ramp up the difficulty, make it so that the fights are shorter, so that raids can get more attempts in.
Hmm, should I tackle why exactly Blizzard won't focus on these? Sure. (bear in mind, it's not a criticism of the list, but a criticism of Blizzard)
1. Bring Back the Lore!
In their eyes they are. The problem is for them the lore requires that the player is a passive observer. Since Cata the Player hasn't been a part of the story, simply watched as the story happened around them. Nothing of the story or surroundings affect the player but nothing the player does affects the story or lore, even on a personal level.
2. More Focus on Social Aspects
NOTE: This does not mean we want more Twitter and Facebook tie-ins, Blizzard!
Yeah, see above. They think they are, but once again, instead of thinking social interaction, they're thinking social media. Such is the way of progress, despite being at best easily compromised and at worst more problem loaded than beneficial.
3. Player Housing
Oh they've outright refused on this one, saying that they want to do something "better." What was delivered was the facebook inspired game they called Garrisons which also ended up metering just about every aspect of the game. Some improvement.
4. Solo Dungeons / Skirmishes
But they don't want an MMO to be a solo game. No, seriously, that's their reasoning. Never mind the fact that outside of the joke that is PvP, current dungeons and raids which only require groups because a solo player can't hit the numbers needed to win the fights, the ENTIRE game IS a solo game. The funniest thing? They scrapped flying for WoD because they want people out in the world yet did nothing to encourage it.
5. Cut the Price of Entry
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh that's funny. That's not going to happen. Of anything, after the fact that they have lost over 3 times the amount of players in the same amount of time as any previous point in the games history, they're likely to jack the price up even more and try to throw some lame excuse.
6. Slow Down the Leveling
7. More End Game Content
8. Bring Back the Challenge
I grouped these together because the reason is essentially the same. All the devs care about at this point is raiding. Now it can be argued that that is all they ever cared about but as of Cata it became desperately apparent with unfinished and axed content abounds. For the devs, raiding is their bread and butter so they don't want people struggling to get to it, they don't want to devote resources away from raid content (the phrase "you can have this at the cost of a raid tier came about as a result of this) and they want anyone who plays to be able to see all the content. To that end they will not slow down leveling because they think that raiding is more important that world exploration. They will not make more end game content because all they want to make is raid content. Finally they will not bring back the challenge because they want raiding to be as accessible as possible to ensure people stay. When you think about it, if Raiding was made prohibitive or removed altogether, Blizzard wouldn't have much of a game left.
1. Bring Back the Lore!
In their eyes they are. The problem is for them the lore requires that the player is a passive observer. Since Cata the Player hasn't been a part of the story, simply watched as the story happened around them. Nothing of the story or surroundings affect the player but nothing the player does affects the story or lore, even on a personal level.
2. More Focus on Social Aspects
NOTE: This does not mean we want more Twitter and Facebook tie-ins, Blizzard!
Yeah, see above. They think they are, but once again, instead of thinking social interaction, they're thinking social media. Such is the way of progress, despite being at best easily compromised and at worst more problem loaded than beneficial.
3. Player Housing
Oh they've outright refused on this one, saying that they want to do something "better." What was delivered was the facebook inspired game they called Garrisons which also ended up metering just about every aspect of the game. Some improvement.
4. Solo Dungeons / Skirmishes
But they don't want an MMO to be a solo game. No, seriously, that's their reasoning. Never mind the fact that outside of the joke that is PvP, current dungeons and raids which only require groups because a solo player can't hit the numbers needed to win the fights, the ENTIRE game IS a solo game. The funniest thing? They scrapped flying for WoD because they want people out in the world yet did nothing to encourage it.
5. Cut the Price of Entry
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh that's funny. That's not going to happen. Of anything, after the fact that they have lost over 3 times the amount of players in the same amount of time as any previous point in the games history, they're likely to jack the price up even more and try to throw some lame excuse.
6. Slow Down the Leveling
7. More End Game Content
8. Bring Back the Challenge
I grouped these together because the reason is essentially the same. All the devs care about at this point is raiding. Now it can be argued that that is all they ever cared about but as of Cata it became desperately apparent with unfinished and axed content abounds. For the devs, raiding is their bread and butter so they don't want people struggling to get to it, they don't want to devote resources away from raid content (the phrase "you can have this at the cost of a raid tier came about as a result of this) and they want anyone who plays to be able to see all the content. To that end they will not slow down leveling because they think that raiding is more important that world exploration. They will not make more end game content because all they want to make is raid content. Finally they will not bring back the challenge because they want raiding to be as accessible as possible to ensure people stay. When you think about it, if Raiding was made prohibitive or removed altogether, Blizzard wouldn't have much of a game left.
They already did 3 player content in the form of Scenarios. They were nice for picking up the lore and as a quick snacky type activity, but were woefully dull because Mists of Pandaria just wasn't very challenging.
And I do wonder whether people want challenge from a dungeon, or they want it to be unfair. TBC and Vanilla just plopped very powerful mobs into massive packs so you couldn't fight more than a few at a time. Cataclysm got it perfectly, even if at the start the stats needed a bit of tweaking.
And I do wonder whether people want challenge from a dungeon, or they want it to be unfair. TBC and Vanilla just plopped very powerful mobs into massive packs so you couldn't fight more than a few at a time. Cataclysm got it perfectly, even if at the start the stats needed a bit of tweaking.
If I could run through the "story" missions by myself, I would consider re-activating my account. The guilds I bounced to and from with, only ran with the the highest level members. Not the new guys their adverts promised to include. And I got super bored waiting for an hour or more in the public queue for a less popular dungeon, to get one piece of gear I was missing that "allowed" me to join other more popular runs.
Some of these seem contradictory. More social aspects, but slower leveling? Endgame seems to be what everyone guns for, so either you're slowing down people getting there or you need to incentivize helping with the grind better. Friendships come about much more easily from shared adventure than from one person grinding level 40 mobs while chatting with a level 90 person waiting in LFR.
God yes. The Alliance is boring. Hordies were my mains, but I made a few characters on the blue side, and compared to the Horde's constant struggle, drama and perserverence, the Alliance's "la la la, we're all best friends and things are great, let's hold hands and picnic" aesthetic was as dull as dishwater. I never really felt like the Gnomes were all that put-out by losing their capital, nor did I get a sense of struggle with either the Draenei (once I got off their starter island) or the Worgen (same deal). Maybe I missed something after I skipped out halfway through Pandaria.mikozero said:
The two points of "Make leveling take longer" and "Add more endgame" just made me cringe. Those two things are exactly what's ruining WoW, why the hell would you want to make them worse?
The giant problem with WoW is the division between leveling and endgame. I know dozens of people who quit playing WoW after they got to max level because the new gameplay didn't appeal to them. I also know tons of people who want to do raids, but get bored and quit when they have to first do a whole bunch of leveling.
What WoW needs to do is make the leveling content into viable endgame. The biggest problem with WoW is that players who care about endgame want to skip as much of the leveling content as possible because there is no damn reason to do it anyways. Why bother going out of your way to get some quest reward if it's just trash gear that you'll replace two days later and that has absolutely no value to a maxed out character? There is no good reason for a level 100 character to go back into leveling areas and complete the stories. You can't get anything you actually want for doing so.
This insane division in the content needs to stop. Guild Wars 2 has the right idea, there is nothing stopping you from taking a top end character into a newbie zone to do the events, and you still earn rewards that actually have value to you there. Instead of asking for those two disparate elements of WoW that are easily the biggest factor in what turns people off from the game to both be bigger we should be asking for a WoW that finally brings them together. If someone enjoys questing and exploring the world then they shouldn't end up being cheated out of the vast majority WoW has to offer because they outgrew it, and if someone enjoys playing endgame and building the most powerful possible character then they should have the piece of mind of knowing that something they got from doing the first stupid quest in the game is going to have value to them while they are facing the highest raid tier later.
That's what WoW is lacking. It needs integration between it's vast open worlds and myriads of quests and its endgame content, not a bigger disconnect.
Imagine if instead of getting a new set of gear every few levels and then getting a new set of gear with every raid instance you simply earned +1 stat point on your gear with every quest you complete and similar, larger increases with every raid you finish. Suddenly you'd have a solid reason to do every quest in the world, because they would all come together to make the most powerful character, rather than becoming completely irrelevant the second you're three levels above them.
The giant problem with WoW is the division between leveling and endgame. I know dozens of people who quit playing WoW after they got to max level because the new gameplay didn't appeal to them. I also know tons of people who want to do raids, but get bored and quit when they have to first do a whole bunch of leveling.
What WoW needs to do is make the leveling content into viable endgame. The biggest problem with WoW is that players who care about endgame want to skip as much of the leveling content as possible because there is no damn reason to do it anyways. Why bother going out of your way to get some quest reward if it's just trash gear that you'll replace two days later and that has absolutely no value to a maxed out character? There is no good reason for a level 100 character to go back into leveling areas and complete the stories. You can't get anything you actually want for doing so.
This insane division in the content needs to stop. Guild Wars 2 has the right idea, there is nothing stopping you from taking a top end character into a newbie zone to do the events, and you still earn rewards that actually have value to you there. Instead of asking for those two disparate elements of WoW that are easily the biggest factor in what turns people off from the game to both be bigger we should be asking for a WoW that finally brings them together. If someone enjoys questing and exploring the world then they shouldn't end up being cheated out of the vast majority WoW has to offer because they outgrew it, and if someone enjoys playing endgame and building the most powerful possible character then they should have the piece of mind of knowing that something they got from doing the first stupid quest in the game is going to have value to them while they are facing the highest raid tier later.
That's what WoW is lacking. It needs integration between it's vast open worlds and myriads of quests and its endgame content, not a bigger disconnect.
Imagine if instead of getting a new set of gear every few levels and then getting a new set of gear with every raid instance you simply earned +1 stat point on your gear with every quest you complete and similar, larger increases with every raid you finish. Suddenly you'd have a solid reason to do every quest in the world, because they would all come together to make the most powerful character, rather than becoming completely irrelevant the second you're three levels above them.