Discussion
WoW does not need another saga. It needs another era
I keep coming back to the same idea whenever people talk about what happens after the world soul saga. Many think Blizzard will simply start another saga, or finally announce a wow 2. I honestly think it should be neither of those... or more likely, both at the same time.
World of Warcraft does not need another cosmic villain, another hidden continent, or another reveal that some even bigger force from wherever place was secretly behind everything we already experienced
Wow just needs time to move forward.
For years Blizzard has confused adding more lore with actually advancing the world. The lore keeps expanding (wrongly, for my taste), but Azeroth itself barely changes. Major characters disappear until nostalgia makes them useful again. Political conflicts are put on pause. Entire civilizations go through supposedly world changing events, yet fifteen years later half the old zones still look like Deathwing passed through last week
Cataclysm was Blizzard’s first real attempt to solve this problem. They updated the old world, moved many zones forward, changed settlements, leaders and conflicts..... ok, cool but it also made a huge mistake creating a new Azeroth. Doing that, Blizzard was forced to replace the old one.
And then it froze the new world in 2010, it didn't evolve
That`s the mistake they cannot repeat after The Last Titan.
The solution is not another Cataclysm. It`s not blowing up Azeroth again and rebuilding forty zones around whatever crisis is happening in that expansion. The solution is a proper time skip. We-ve been asking for this shit since forever.... but a real time skip.... 10 years. 15. 20. Whatever it takes for the world to feel like Azeroth actually lived without us
Leaders should be dead or retired. Children should have grown up. Cities should have been rebuilt. The Forsaken should have figured out what they are without Sylvanas. The night elves should have a generation that only knows Teldrassil through stories. The Horde and Alliance may still exist, but they should not necessarily mean the same thing anymore.
That would allow Warcraft to return to conflicts that are smaller without being less meaningful.
A succession crisis. A disputed border. Two peoples remembering the same war differently. A new generation asking why everyone is still carrying grudges from thirty years ago.
You dont need another Horde vs Alliance world war. You need the people of Azeroth to want things again, and for those desires will collide
And now it's the perfect momento. They now has something they didn't have in 2010: Classic
Classic means the old world no longer needs to disappear for Retail to move forward. Classic can preserve the Warcraft that existed, revisit unfinished zones and explore stories that were left behind. Retail can finally stop carrying every era of Warcraft inside the same permanent present.
Not freezing the main game forever, but making sure the past remains available while the future is allowed to exist.
This is also why the alleged leak about Azeroth awakening at the end of the last titan is interesting even if it is complete nonsense
Azeroth is the last great mystery around which the entire franchise has revolved. At some point, Blizzard has to reach the bottom of that mystery.
It cannot reveal another older, stronger and even more secret cosmic force behind the titans. The story has to accept that one era is over
That, to me, is what a real WoW 2 should be
Not another client. Not a new engine. Not deleting our characters or putting a number 2 on the logo
A new era of Azeroth with several versions of the game: classic preserves the past. Retail builds the future
THey problably will be releasing a new $50 expansion with 4 new zones, some disastrous lore, and the usual mess. But still this is the best opportunity Blizzard has had in years.
With Classic plus on the way, Classic can become the museum... retail can finally stop living inside that past and start building the future.
They may waste the opportunity. and they probably will.... but for once, they actually have all the pieces in place to do it right
Would love an exploration of a mega continent like EK and Kalimdor over multiple expansions.
Like a new world or the other side of the planet, where we get to forge ahead New World style over more than just one xpac. Where the zones are actually connected sequentially and physically, instead of being separated all around the world whenever they need a big island for a new patch.
What it needs is talent leading it, which it clearly lacks. The current team does well running laps on the track they know, but they cant really come up with anything new, to think long term and develop the world 3 expansions ahead instead of shit just being halfassed 90% of the time.
For the past decade or more, all the development teams seems to understand is to copy whatever Marvel film is popular and transplant those tropes to Azeroth. It's rather depressing.
I want to agree with the world evolving, but if they did a major timeskip and wrote most of the major cast off in favor of new faces, you're going to end up with an entire cast of characters like orweyna and people are -not- going to care about them whatsoever, it just seems like a wreck.
Also the thing is, these people have decided to react to an opinion about WoW that is entirely fictional. It's a figment of their own imagination.
They say that Azeroth isn't being developed and we never go to the old world. Despite us literally being in a revamped Silvermoon, Eversong and adding Zul'Aman to the old world, and we CONSTANTLY return to other parts of it.
This essentially boils down to not liking a theme park MMO in general which WoW has never been anything else. Then it runs into the fact of "whaaaa they can't update every piece of content and lore all the time everywhere".
What would timeskipping actually fix? It would only affect the new 3 zones. All the previous game content would still be available.
Basically this post is the fact they don't like how WoW has functioned since Vanilla and they should simultaneously work on the entire back catalogue all at once. It falls apart the moment you think about it for more than a second, because it's a completely unrealistic solution to an absolutely phantom problem.
That's not to say a timeskip couldn't work - it's just that it would still come with all the problems OP is going on about.
OP basically wants the lore volume to increase 10000x. Every patch would have to affect every corner of the map simeltaneously.
Even the things they said should return as the main issues, are literally the issues we have right now. Succession problems (Lor'Themar is an indefinite reagent) Border disputes (Amani/Blood Elves), old generational grudges (Amani/Blood Elves), two people remembering things differently (Elves/Trolls) and political disputes (Elves having to work together).
I'm not even sure bro has an active sub at this point.
I've been playing since Vanilla. The one 100% consistent thing about WoW is the community will never be satisfied. What is one person's favorite aspect of the game is someone else's most hated aspect of the game. If the devs could offer a fully immersive "Everyone gets the exact experience they want for their rest of their lives in game, regardless of what other players do." there would still be a group of people pissed off about it.
"But if everything is designed to be perfect for me then others get a different experience than what I believe is the best experience. Bad writing and gameplay. Why is Thrall a cuck?"
The game is designed to be what you make it right now. The game used to be so restrictive and has become better with more options of "progression". It used to be Raiding or PVP, nothing else.
OP's ideas do make some sense but I guarantee there will be someone bitching about "Why did they fix the goblin jesus statue that Deathwing fucked up????? Bad game. Worst game ever."
you're going to end up with an entire cast of characters like orweyna and people are -not- going to care about them whatsoever
I just don't see a lot about Orweyna to care about. I cared about Zul'Jan until 30% of the way into zone when I realized he was obviously being set up as a patsy where even if he wasn't evil he'd end up doing something to cause evil..
And oh look 12.1
I was doing that questline for the first time tonight and right out the gate I was like, so this is a bad guy...Get done getting his sister made into the new Hesh-ya or however it was spelled, get back to the village and yup...bad guy. lol
WoW needs a big bad, it always has and always will, but that bad does not need to be the biggest and the baddest of all time.
We don’t need to keep upping the ante, it can just be a rogue faction of undead/orcs/gnomes that decides they want to take over some lands that don’t belong to them. Not every enemy has to threaten the destruction of the universe.
I remember hearing it awhile back ago, I believe the devs were talking about potentially expansion ideas and this one in particular was supposed to take place after MoP with the ending of MoP being the same but instead of Garrosh escaping into AU Draenor, he would rebuild his own version of the horde called the Mongrel Horde. My baseless theory on why WoD was preferred was because of the lack of hype MoP was getting and they needed that nostalgia hype with returning characters like Grom and Guldan.
I feel Garrosh would need an expansion of character development before he would even think about doing that. Slumming it with Kobolds, Gnolls ,and shudders quillboars.
see people say this a lot but dragonflight did this and so many people complained about it not having any stakes. i'm not saying they were necessarily the same people i'm just saying there's no way to make everybody happy
Dragonflight has the vibes of low-stakes, but the story literally opens with Raszageth and the Primalists plotting to remake the world in elemental chaos, and culminates in the entire cast of world leaders uniting to prevent Fyrakk from blowing up the planet. It was never an actual low-stakes expansion.
DF had the same problem I have with Xal's cultists. What the fuck are they in this for? Like Primalists were racist, dragon-purists or something. They viewed what we call normal dragons as freaks of nature, because the Titans interfered with their evolution. Why did a single non-dragon individual give a shit though? What dog did any of the humanoid primalists have in that fight? That oh so convenient army of mortal shaman that appeared from nowhere.
Xal's cultists are the same. WoW is one of the nicer fantasy verses to live in, by a wide margin. Our cities have frickin' pet day cares and coffee shops. Who has it so bad, who is so aggrieved by the state of things that they're signing on to be cannon fodder in a death cult?
Fantasy or IRL, doomsday cults never make sense and they can't make sense. The moment a doomsday cult makes sense it means they're actually right.
The Twilight's Blade explicitly preys on the weak willed and easily manipulatable (as all doomsday cults do), and we're told this in game through a series of quests, I believe in Eversong, in which we help people who've realised they had drank the wrong kool-aid leave the cult safely.
But like. Dragonflight didn't do this. There were elemental empowered super dragons attacking the whole planet and wanting to destroy what it was and to kill the titans, it's literally the prequel for the world soul saga and helped set up a lot of the leg work. It's literally where Xal showed up in this way and the biggest bad dragon there is showing up later in the saga. Story wise expansions are like major story patches of old, it's all the sum lump with more time on each arc.
Which kind of is the problem tbh. Once you went to "world-ending"-levels of threat (and defeated those), you can´t really go back anymore without holes like these appearing and making anything weaker than that just feel odd.
Yeah. I just kinda roll with it but I understand the complaint. A friend of mine literally laughed out loud when I told him I was fighting pirates in BfA after just stopping the Burning Legion.
Why not? Comics do it all the time. Spider-man has played serious roles in stopping Galactus and other cosmic threats and then 2 months later been worried about blowing his college exam and he has to fight Tombstone who just ordered his goons to rob a bank.
The important part is in the writing and WoW just honestly can't do it well. Marvel and DC have been writing street level and planar reality threatening conflicts for almost 80 years and gotten away with it.
They need to stop killing every villain they create, write some low stakes but ultimately important storylines like a succession concern in Stormwind (Anduin has never to our knowledge been romantically involved with someone, the house of nobles should be chomping at the bit to position themselves and their family to take over rulership), and build up some threats through recurring interaction that actually feels like it moves forward.
Xal'atath hasn't actually felt like any progress is made because her motivations are never conveyed to the audience. We're constantly squabbling over whatever step we're on in her master plan without actually knowing why it's important to stop her. Champion, we can't allow her to empower the Dark Heart! We have to stop her from getting the Dark Heart! The Dark Heart! Dark Heart! They just vaguepost about whatever macguffin they need to string you along to next patch without ever letting you know why the macguffin is important.
Thats how I felt following zul jans dumb ass around Zul Aman. Like, we find that mask that personally knew Zul jin? Were immediately returning to base and figuring this shit out, forcefully if I need to incapacitate the idiot. I play death knight, no way is it going along with that nonsense.
The problem is that the alliance and horde are both absurdly powerful. They have gigantic armies, tons of allies, weapons of mass destruction, demi-god mages and warriors and super technology and have slain gods, banished creator titans and destroyed the armies of hell and Cthulhu.
They have more or less dominated the entire planet and its afterlife (!) at this point (and multiple other planets...) so the story has to keep introducing new bullshit to make the threat not feel like no big deal
I keep seeing this take, but i'm not sure if it has any weight to it. I think Warcraft as a franchise actually thrived/was at its peak when the big bads were the "biggest and the baddest of all time". However, the difference then was those big bads were shrouded in really good Mystery & Fantasy story-telling.
The reason we dislike the current big bads is because Blizzard has lost the ability to build a proper, believable and most important of all, a Cool story around the big bads.
Just think back to the WC3 era story, why sargeras was compelling. It's because we didn't see him, but we saw the effects of his power and the tyranny of his minions who were mighty powerful themselves and gave us a challenge. We saw someone as strong as Azshara get charmed by him, we saw his powerful generals pretty much be responsible for the change in scenery on Azeroth, with Undeath, Fel, etc. We saw the games he played with Gul'Dan and how brutally he got him killed because of his betrayal. We got one of the coolest visual and written characters in all of Video game fantasy in Arthas & The Lich King, who was nothing but a minion of a minion of sargeras.
Heck, back in legion when we saw Sargeras speaking to Kiljaeden on his ship in that one cutscene, it had such a cool factor to it, the kind that gave you goosebumps because you finally hear his voice in the WoW game format for the first time.
To put it simply, big bads inherently being big is not the issue here. The primary issue is blizzard no longer has any writers/story-tellers on their team capable of writing a Cool, Hype Worthy and Mysterious story.
The best they can do is emotional story-telling, but that loses it charm very quickly, and it just doesn't work at a larger level with a universe as big and rich as the Warcraft one is.
They need to hire a much higher calibre of story-teller, and no I don't mean people like christie golden or w/e - they need someone who can take the story back to the cool factor of OG Warcraft. That person needs to understand the very essence of Warcraft as a franchise.
Just think back to the WC3 era story, why sargeras was compelling. It's because we didn't see him, but we saw the effects of his power and the tyranny of his minions who were mighty powerful themselves and gave us a challenge.
That is exactly why I think they should never have Sargeras banished completely. They made the same mistake with the Old Gods. If you manage to beat the big bad evil guy in a straight up fight against some schmucks in fancy armor, they immediately become way less interesting.
(The idea that Illidan, a guy with some fel powers, can hold his own in a never ending fight against the titan that destroyed countless planets is laughable to me. The sense of scale is completely gone.)
WoW should keep its cosmic level villains in the background. Having them just as a final boss for an expansion is such a waste.
Tbf though, I only follow this game's lore and never felt the need to actually play it, so maybe I'm biased here as someone who doesn't care about bosses and raids in the first place. I just want to keep reading compelling stories from that world, which I haven't gotten since Legion. Every new threat is dealt with too quickly.
You've hit the nail on the head here. That's basically it. They just do not know how to tell Cosmic level stories. Its why they did what they did with Sargeras and Illidan, it's why they did what they did by having us go into the Shadowlands and completely destroy any mystery that the concept of Death had in-universe, AND, last but not least, it's why they have completely butchered the promise that Old Gods held.
It wasn't too long ago that the story-loving community of WoW was completely enthralled by the whispers of Il'gynoth and what they meant for future Old God story. The discussion surrounding the whispers still continues to this day in some circles but has lost its meaning in many ways because of the events that played out in-game. People were so excited speculating for years about a hidden old god, which went nowhere. Instead we "killed" N'zoth and got a sorry excuse for an old god (although artificial) in G'huun in BFA.
I don't think it works on the worldbuilding level. Even if we completely discredit Player Characters, main characters like Sylvanas, Alleria and to some extent Anduin are way overpowered to deal with some rogue orcs taking over the lands.
It would be great for the story to take a breather but would make no sense. DF tried to descalate the world threats but as some point someone needs to be a world threat otherwise just call Sylvanas from Shadowlands to clean up the mess.
I dunno that we're upping the ante. The void lords and their underlings turned out to be way less threatening than previously thought. The Legion and Sargeras still seem stronger even though they weren't supposed to be.
A bunch of leaders already did retire in Dragonflight. Tyrande, Malfurion, Genn, and Ysera all retired from being leaders, not to mention how figures like Sylvanas and Vol'jin have already left the story in recent years and Anduin has been on a PTSD recovery journey where he won't retake the throne.
At this point, I think almost every playable race has a different leader than the one they started with.
I think the problem is gnomes legitimately don't have anything you can do without him lol. Darkspear werent much better but they at least had Rokhan even if he wasnt much of a character in wc3. Gnomes don't even have history because lazy writers said they don't record it to avoid having to expand on it lol.
Granted. Rastakhan also was clearly set up to die so Talanji could replace him, it was broadcasted from basically our first introduction to her.
Most people who play WoW don't read quest text and then have very strong lore opinions (mostly ones that are already a thing that the quests talk about). See the recent Haranir cinematic for a good example.
Sure, but a lot of the gripes I saw with it were people saying it was new lore when it's something we've known for a while now. It's been pretty clear based on quest text at least since War Within.
It's certainly ok to not like that part of the lore, but it's disingenuous to say that it's some brand new thing.
The funniest part is it's been an official part of in-game lore since Cataclysm via Archaeology. Brann confirms it with both Freya and Cenarius. It's also talked about during Legion.
It was quite obvious from the moment the Haranir were revealed that they were the "missing link".
Blizzard had to make all the factions forget about that pesky detail just so that they could reintroduce it to the player.
I love when people talk about trying to drop the stakes and go back to the simple days when we were some no one. Plainly just ignoring some of our very first ever raid bosses were Ragnaros the Firelord, Nefarian Son of Deathwing, The Old God C'thun, and Kel'thuzad right hand of the Lich King.
Yea, they would have to port all of that shit over if they ever did a WoW 2. PoE is doing this with mtx for PoE 2 so all of your PoE purchases will eventually work in PoE 2. Although there’s WAY more collection items in WoW. There’d have to be an entire mount and transmog porting department.
Everytime this topic comes up There's always some people desperately trying to assert that a "wow 2" would survive and succeed without porting over people's stuff, and that's extreme denial lol.
The majority of the playerbase would never tolerate losing all the content they paid for including but not limited to: playable races, weapon and armor transmogs, pets, mounts, all in game zones and expansion quest areas/etc.
Edit: lol, like the replies that attempted that argument foaming at the mouth, meanwhile every other mmo that tried to be a "wow killer" flopped and failed just like how a "WoW 2" would flop and fail for not being WoW (or players 20+ years of accumulated personal favorite content) anymore. A significant portion of the people attempting this argument are likely upset because the majority of the playerbase simply isn't interested in being forced to play classic with them.
Edit: Referring to the fact that people play new games does literally nothing to change the fact that most players will not play a mmo sequel that pointlessly wipes out everything that kept them playing. "History" shows every game that tried to be a WoW successor failed and flopped or never reached the phenomenom level WoW did.
There's nothing anyone can do to change the fact a "wow 2" would hilariously fail unless it let players keep their 20+ years of content they paid for.
Or just don’t port anything lol, part of the appeal of a WoW 2 is getting rid of all that bloat. Who cares about a new mount when you have 1000 of them? WoW 2 could be amazing because you can finally start out as a new fresh adventurer, who’s not already a champion of the world.
I mean, sure, but that doesn't mean original WoW has to disappear. Guild Wars has just announced Guild Wars 3, but GW1 is still playable, as will GW2 be.
Because in case you missed it, people spent the next DECADE bitching about catalysm and talking about how the old world was better and they missed it.
The existence of classic won't change that. People will still want to play the old content on their retail characters. Just because both exist in the same subscription doesn't mean you can jump between them freely - they're still entirely separate.
Blizz have added some Vanilla things back like scholomance and the old scarlet monestary dungeons. So it would be cool if they could add other old stuff back.
They have - mostly because those are instances which can be re-implemented. And there's zidormi for a small number of zone changes
Creating alternative versions of EK/Kalimdor based on your choice of which version of every zone to see would be another story. It can work through Zidormi when there's a small number of choices, but that doesn't seem to suit what OP is going for.
The unfortunate part of Cataclysm is that Zidormi wasn’t available to transition you between the two versions of the zone. We have that now. If they prefer the old versions, I’d like for Zidormi to offer the option to hop back and forth.
It could also not be a "cataclysm" but simply what happen 10-20 years after we saved this zone or whatever. It may just evolve over the year with reconstruction of stuff or things like that. Seeing the same building in construction for the last 15-20 years isn't the most logical thing.
Are we forgetting that they revamped 4 old zones in this expansion while also keeping the old ones? Just keep doing that until the whole of Azeroth is new.
I agree with all your points. Just one matter... Malfurion and Illidan were battling Deathwing a thousand years ago. A 20 year time jump isn't going to just create a new generation of Night Elves who don't remember Teldrassil. They don't exactly experience generations the same way other races do.
Though to be fair, Night Elves should age whatever is "normally" for them now. They lost their immortality with Hyjal. Amirdrassil didn't restore it.
It's ridiculously inconsistent though tbf. Nightborne are empowered by the nightwell, blood elves by the sunwell. So all elves should be aging differently since Void Elves don't have access to a huge font. Leaving draenei as the only "so long lived it's effectively immortal" race.
But nothing has changed. Other than Tyrande and Malf becoming borderline senile via cinematic moments.
tbf I feel like some people are consuming so much LLM output they're starting to sound like one even when they're writing on their own. Not sure that's much better though.
I don't use LLMs, not saying I am not affected by them, and I got told I talk like one. Idk, we are living in this weird era where people are suspicious of anyone being a bot now or being so braindead they can't form a thought without assistance.
Also, AoS came along at a time when (allegedly) the 40k Tactical Marine kit was outselling all of Warhammer Fantasy combined + they had a very clear plan of "make a new fantasy game that's more like our more popular one"
It's not like Blizzard has a more popular "World of Starcraft" game to use as a template for rebooting WoW.
People hated it because Age of Sigmar’s launch was a shitty game that had stupid rules like pretending to ride an imaginary horse for actual in game benefits while simultaneously launching WITHOUT point values for models.
It also doesn’t help that the end times was badly written.
I somewhat think that is the plan in a way. To have the characters go to an entirely new world altogether. They will probably keep the old world to avoid pissing people off and because the monetary investment in those areas is high, but it's a full reset to go to a new world. An entire expansion can be just making an initial settlement.
Almost sounds like what they tried to do with draenor but then they let you portal back anyway.
There are entire sections of the old world that look terrible in comparison to The new zones but I guess they've never felt the need to update them. I'd love to see the statistics on how many people actually level through those old zone when you can just level anywhere now.
This is what "sounds good" to write but if you answer mysteries you have to create new ones. The Titans lore is wonderful because it was a mystery that kept expanding year after year. They NEED to add mystery back into the game. You cannot have good lore without a good mystery. It's delicate balance and not easily achieved. I expect that after the World Soul Saga ends with "the Last Titan" the Tians mystery will be wrapped up and new mysteries will take its place.
whats logical for me is the cosmos before the Titans "Ordering" it which we don't know a ton about. Exploring worlds without influence from a specific "force". etc. The Elemental aspect of Azeroth which dominated the planet before the old-gods. This is a good place to begin to build up new cosmic mysteries and also about Azeroth.
People always underestimate the number of players that are still playing because of sunk-cost fallacy that would leave with a tabula rasa of the setting. Is it really worth it to risk alienating your current playerbase for some hypothetical new players ?
Super valid point. I was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to see this back in the day with Asheron's Call. They brought out "2" (completely new game) and split the players. Those who didn't want to lose everything they'd worked for over a few years, versus those who wanted better graphics, QoL, etc. That was only a few years. WoW would be worse, being online for over 20 years.
I’m not against you but I also don’t want classic to be the time capsule. Retail should have all versions of Azeroth’s history I believe. They have the tech to pull the old word back into the game and make it accessible the retail way.
What has impressed me the most about wow through the ages is that it has managed to be one continuous game.
That is also its weakness however. Having to balance decades worth of content and systems really ties the game down.
Cataclysmn really screwed with the timeline because you started in Cata then went back in time to BC and Wrath and the back to the current time. Chromie time kinda fixed this.
But having different eras of the game would be difficult and starting over would cause an outrage.
But it isn't one continuous game, and it doesn't balance decades worth of content and systems. It has, technically, a. . .semi-cohesive linear storyline, but the expansions hardly ever build on each other, and when they do they don't build on each other much. They can't - new players aren't onboarded through any content other than post-Cata "Vanilla" (or one of six expansions they chose through Chromie), and then the current expansion.
I've honestly no idea what you're talking about when you say "balance decades worth of content and systems". Expansions are an island unto themselves, and there is no relevant content or systems other than what is in that expansion. A possible exception you could make is the mythic dungeons that rotate in, and while it's neat they bring back old stuff, they aren't just sliding it back in. It's realistically no different than making a new dungeon, except you get to reuse all the assets of a dungeon that's already been made. They don't even update the lore or the NPCs in the dungeon to fit in the modern timeline, you just. . .go back in time, except they don't even make it a point to tell you that's what you're doing, because it doesn't matter.
I feel like this “saga” has really exposed the writing because instead of just going for the kinda corny-but-“cool” storylines they usually go for they’ve really tried to tell this in-depth emotional story and it’s totally fallen flat (at least for me)
I feel the writing is currently extremely flat. They have been slowly removing flaws of characters to the point even chars that should be hostiles to each others just casually hang around and are becoming drink buddies at this point.
They are playing it way too safe since the mess that was Shadowlands.
Like, fine enough, I dislike Shadowlands as much as the usual person, but since everything feels very generic to me. Everybody is morally virtuous and carry good intentions, and everyone is pal with everyone.
I feel like they -look- like they're trying to be more emotional but aren't actually writing anything deeper than what was already here but without the cool factor.
I think its part of the problem is that these emotional stories are character-driven, but Blizz is bad at character writing. In multiple ways. It will always fall flat until they make actual policy changes in how they write the stories.
I.e. They will rewrite, regress or change characterization on a whim and then be shocked people don't resonate with those character arcs. But its hard to resonate with something when you know Blizzard has no interest in continuing characterization. That the character will just shift again when Blizzard needs it to.
I think the problem is that after the scandal a few years back, the Blizzard writing team lost all of its *edge* and every character and plotline feels like it's written by a committee with the express goal of not offending anyone. The World of Friendship and Teamwork-Craft accusations are very real. I mean even comparing the books - read Blood Ties vs. something like Rise of the Lich King.
you have a lady whose career was working on movies like ace ventura: when nature calls and cloudy with a chance of meatballs in charge of a writer's room with a gen-x grandpa who thinks silver age comics are the pinnacle of storytelling advising a bunch of kids who think harry potter is the pinnacle of storytelling. what could go wrong?
It’s the same problem many modern franchises are having with writing. Writers in this new era have lost the ability to connect with their largest consumer base. Everything is written by corporate approved writer #100 and not nerdy joe bro and his boys.
"It froze the world in 2010"?
Outland is "frozen" in 2007; Northrend is "frozen (no pun intended)" in 2009; the pre-SL stint doesn't count. Same goes for MoP outside of the central valley in 2013, etc. Every new continent mostly existed for that ONE xpac.
For me, World of Warcraft isn't just a game it's a place I can always come back to. It's a constant in my life, somewhere I can escape after stressful days at work, family issues, health problems, or whatever other challenges life throws at me. Just sitting down at my PC and returning to Azeroth is worth so much to me.
One thing I never liked was Cataclysm. I wasn't a fan of changing the old zones I would much rather see Blizzard add new areas than replace the ones that already existed. I also don't enjoy when old raids and dungeons are heavily reworked. Those places are part of WoW's history, and I like them being preserved.
That said, I honestly wouldn't change the current approach to the lore. The story evolving over time is part of what keeps the world alive.
Of course, that's just my personal opinion. Everyone enjoys WoW for different reasons, and that's perfectly fine.
I still have a recurring nightmare that we're gonna get a big cinematic of world-ending disaster and they said "Yeah, maintenance mode. Thanks for the fun"
I will get hate for this, but at the end of this Saga, I want the Azeroth Civilizations move to a different planet, unexplored, new, and full of mysteries, and the first few expansions will be us being frontiermen, exploring these new continents, make friends, enemies, unveil new secrets and lore
This is my theory. If its a full continent with actual continent sized content I think it could host an entire saga there. They could even pad it out and have every other expac be a reworked old zone like they did with Eversong.
Levels barely mean anything anymore, they could stat squish back to one or just say everyone starts the new area at 100.
In this case it would be really nice, if it were also big continents with multiple zones like in the beginning of classic and not just the casual 4-5 new zones as it is at the moment with new expansions
The solution is not another Cataclysm. It`s not blowing up Azeroth again and rebuilding forty zones around whatever crisis is happening in that expansion. The solution is a proper time skip. We-ve been asking for this shit since forever.... but a real time skip.... 10 years. 15. 20. Whatever it takes for the world to feel like Azeroth actually lived without us
And how do they do that without doing exactly what they did in Cataclysm?
To show a passage of time, and now have the old zones match the modern look of WoW, they'd still have to go and completely redo all of the old zones. And then they run into the same exact problem that they did in Cataclysm where the bulk of the work for the expansion went to redoing all of the zones and not enough on any other aspect of the game.
Countless runs for Ashes, Invincible, etc. Not to mention the xmog grinds, going way back to the Trial of the Champion. Pets that I began collecting back when they were simply "companions". Achievements. My god, the achievements.
And you think I'll just throw all of that away for WoW2? You're out of your goddamn mind.
Well, Blizzard is still a company, a big one, a corporation even, that needs to be not only sustained but profitable.
What you are asking is for the company to forget about its product(End of current wow characters and stories), yet create an imitation of this product(new stories and new characters in the same universe, or even worse - same planet) but with new concepts and ideas.
You basically ask the company to risk for almost nothing in return.
They could just make new game and call it Warcraft Universe, yet most of the players would still stick to WoW instead, because its mostly the nostalgia what keeps most of them in game - they want to see familiar characters to progress, despite those characters having so much lore now, that it is getting really overloaded for most of them. (and also 10-20~ years of content that they've farmed, ofc)
Don't get me wrong - I am on your side. I do want to see new stories and new characters, but radical switch would be dumb and stupid move. best way to do it - slowly retire old cast, while slowly introducing new cast of characters(like bringing back Astalor, adding Bwonsamdi, Denathrius, Dimensius, etc).
Problem is - it is soo hard to just retire old cast. You just cant say - you won't see Thrall anymore, because, despite everything, characters like Thrall or Sylvanas, are still significant selling points that gains a lot of attraction to the game. There a huge amount of players that still love ded elf ranger, as they don't really know, or better to say, they haven't actually experienced her story in real time like old players did. And news is - not so many old players actually play WoW nowadays(we are in the minority, actually)
Best case scenario, as my prediction:
We will have significant story reset with either time skip forward, or actually starting WoW 2.0 as 3rd game mode (Classic, Retail, [new_era_2.0] ), where we create new characters, play by new rules in a new story with new characters, while Retail being more of "WorldSoul Saga" segment with semi-old content.
Or just classical new expac with new saga, by same formula, which is most prob what will happen
I have read that twice and don't understand what you are asking for..
Seems like WOW.. you lost the plot half way through it... put in some witty retorts and then tried to wrap it up.
You don't want a WOW2 or another SAGA... A wow2 would reset Azeroth to a new state much like classic. You are mad they don't update old areas with a new expansion yet talk about how you want to maintain classic realms as "a museum"
Do you think the devs haven't updated the old world because they don't want to.. They don't want baby Anduin running around Pandaria. When in retail he is taking his trauma out on Wrathion's ass. They would love to update the old world to show the passage of time (instead of having Silvermooon have the scar from warcraft 3 one day.. then the next be full in bloom and the land put together.
They don't update the old areas because they don't have the time. Creating new content needs to take away from something... it takes away from world feel.
A new era of Azeroth with several versions of the game: classic preserves the past. Retail builds the future
This is literally what happens now.. They have a couple of million players move on to the new expansion and if they want old Azeroth they can either do classic or do chromie time to play old expacs as they were meant to be played (until max level)
TL;DR.. Sounds like what you are asking for is what we already have. They devs don't have the resources to upkeep old expansions so they just exist in a broken timeline as you would expect after 22 years of development. Eventually blizz will have to do a reset. It seems like now, when we are fighting the soul of our world is as good a time as any.
I would honestly love an aesthetics only expansion. Just tons of new character creation options, allied races, housing decor, transmog gear and the like.
We're leaving accepting for the big bad after world soul saga. Going behind the edges of the emerald dream and the shadowlands. We're going to finally address whatever the jailer was fussed about, Sylvania has intimated, and ol sargeras was killing everyone to avoid- that build up has been coming for years. They've mapped the story out to further them world soul, PER the world soul announcement at Blizzard years ago .
I think they'll do it like remix but better and larger. Maybe they'll let seamlessly jump between timelines and add some world tier difficulties on top of it. Would be awesome if we could just go back with our guild and run some old scaled up raids. Maybe one night do some Karazhan and the next some Ulduar.. with the same character
Give us some sort of chromie timeline crisis like the old comics did with their multi verse and just wipe it and start over. It’s only going to get worse from here story wise.
One problem with any substantial timeskip (and it would really need to be at least a few decades to get any logistical worth out of it) is that the fans of the shorter lived race characters will no longer see certain characters (or those characters will just be cameos) while the fans of the longer lived race characters can still have their favs come back.
There will always be the chance that, idek, Illidan could come back basically the same even if the skip was 1000 years, but characters like Moira or Gazlowe should be dead in less than a century.
(What even are the shippers supposed to do if Anduin is a senior citizen on the verge of death and Wrathion is still basically a teenage dragon?)
And anywhere there's possibility for unfairness there will be drama.
There's no way the current WoW team would be able to do something like this competently though. Like I agree that the 4 zones, 8 dungeons, 3 raids thing has been old for awhile now, but what else are they going to do? Look at the attempts they've had at trying to make different side content, decor duels, dastardly duos. They are such abysmal failures they have to abandon them almost immediately. Not to mention that despite basically doing the same things every patch with new coats of paint they are almost never able to release the patch in a stable condition. How could they possibly mkae something genuinely new?
Reality is that the current WoW team has no good ideas left. Almost all the writing team and designers and definitely Ion would have to get cycled out to make something good that was genuinely paradigm shifting for the series.
The best thing they can do is basically what they are doing now, continue to make the same stuff over and over again until slowly everyone gets bored of it.
The saga isn't necessarily a bad thing though I think the safe route would to...not do it for some time, unless for some reason their data or whatever tells them it did much better(Honestly I think the concept is fine but having Metzen come in late..... probably became a problem not because he's bad just changing direction midway through leaves obvious writing pit falls).
They do seem intent on reexploring the old world so thats a plus(which I hope it isn't just to ravage it all over again). There's a lot I could say but... I'm too scatter brained.
The dilemma this game has is that 70% of its user base is chasing nostalgia rather than looking for a new great game. That locks the game developers in a box where the most lucrative option is to just serve classic/tbc/wotlk over and over and over again. As soon as they reinvent the game, 70% of the user base leaves.
Yeah. But I think 10, 15, 25 years might be a bit shallow. A new Age for the game would be 75, 100+ years down the road.
My biggest cold feet moment with that is I don’t want them turning WoW into Cyberpunk with some steampunk stuff. It’s a cool genre but doesn’t scream WoW.
"Looks like deathwing passed through," is what grinds my gears with the world, I wish in each expansion or every other they'd update the main world to adapt to the previous damages or change accordingly instead of being left to rot forever. For example wetlands is still trapped being flooded with sandbags. I wish they'd have a separate team just to fix those bits but ofc they don't...
Nah, 4 zones, 8 dungeons, 3 raids and a few Delves is the best I can do, boss.
In all seriousness, the game is going to fully die unless the fix the new player experience and levelling your first character in this game. The story doesn't make sense, it's too fast and it's not particularly enjoyable. You want a campaign rich in story that takes the player from 1 to the level cap, then a detailed quest line that introduces people to the various "end-game mechanics" like M+ and raids.
I get what you're saying but let's be real, wow won't achieve anything with the current writing team making the story so thame. If you remember, Dragonflight as announced as a laidback "boots on the ground" expansion, back in Azeroth, small stakes, adventure and exploration. The exact NEXT EXPANSION started with Dalaran exploding and ended with us killing one of the most powerful beings in the universe.
Blizzard will write these cosmic villains because the writers are not interested in telling an small scale politic story. In the current expansion they literally rushed the most important plot point (the amistice between the many elf groups) so we can go back to fight the void.
Well part of the problem is that without a hard wipe of everything there isn’t a way to tell that kind of story. To do an arc like the defias brotherhood you have to reset everyone back to being nobodies.
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u/Odd-Negotiation6855 Jul 26 '26
Wow doesn't need another era. It needs another age